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MP3.com Nixes Decss.mp3
adric writes: "It seems that MP3.com has removed
decss.mp3 (but its still available), allegedly for having "offensive lyrics". You can read a bit more here. The best part is the gallery of DeCSS showing the world of
clever places this little bit of code has migrated to. T-Shirts, songs, poetry, non-existent languages, PNG comments, embedded in jpgs, gifs, and more. Even if the MPAA's lawyers can make source code illegal, they'll never remove DeCSS from the Net. Can everyone please just drop this now and let us have Linux drivers (and for that matter, let us fast forward through commercials on DVDs!)
On the money.
The MPAA hasn't stopped distribution of the DeCSS source, but I think they've successfully chilled development of the tools DeCSS should spawn, players aside:
If DeCSS just sits there unused on 75,000 hard drives, the MPAA has won. The next move should not be further, somewhat pointless distribution of the source, but distribution of players and neat tools using DeCSS. If we don't move forward, we lose.
Seems kind of appropriate, somehow.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
> DeCSS code in an MP3 is "offensive lyrics".
Ah, but it does offend the MPAA.
What matters isn't how offensive you are; it's who you offend.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Operation Currently Prohibited by Disk
The first time I saw this crap spewing from my DVD player I nearly exploded. I read fast, I don't need the FBI warning onscreen for 30 seconds, it's what, 40-60 words? Oh yeah, 40-60 meaningless, completely ignored words. Let me fastforward through it, or go to the menu, I have chosen to forfeit a few hours of my time, which is valuable, don't waste it by locking me out of my own stuff.
The very idea that someone can decide how I will view something I've purchased makes my blood boil. Yes it's a viewing license, no I don't technically "own" the movie, but damn it, I want to be able use this on my terms, in my house, in any way I see fit.
Actually, besides the excellent picture and sound, there is a lot on DVDs that sucks:
Viewer control Can't skip or fastforward through the FBI warning and studio crap, effectively creating an arbitrary "boot time".
No bookmarks on players? Come on, I've got more memory in my cel phone then the computers that landed men on the moon, how about a meager scrap of memory to bookmark timecodes for the last 20-30 disks?
Macrovision Yes it prevents casual taping of disks, but it is mostly just a nuisance for owners with non-standard hookups. Try running your DVD signal through a VCR, and you're hosed. There are plenty of reasons to do this besides piracy. Old TVs, TVs with one input, TVs in two different rooms...
Region encoding Words fail me. Create a huge management and manufacturing overhead to prevent users in different parts of the world from seeing anything other than that which is sanctioned for their particular area. This verges on mind-control.
Built in obsolescence The (NTSC) signal is 480 lines tall. Of course the MPAA did this so you will have to re-buy everything again whenever the industry finally switches over to HiDef TV. Jay Leno shouldn't look better than the movie you just purchased, but if you have a HDTV, he does.
If only VHS didn't look like crap and wasn't tape...
Once again, I beg everyone reading this story
to please mirror the song and send an email
to webmaster@joeysmith.com telling me where
they are...this is a 386 with 32 MB of RAM,
and it is absolutely dying!
(Not to mention saturating the pipe it's hosted on)
I disagree. DeCSS will not last long after it is outlawed. The only reason it is so prevailent today is because distributing it is a fad. This, like all fads wil die down. News ways of posting it will no longer hit the news sites, people will stop getting the publicity, and it'll quietly fold until it becomes almost impossible to find someone still mirroring it. Now that won't be this month or even this year, but in a year or two mark my words - you had better have gotten it while you can.
And let's not forget the real problem here. DeCSS by itself is not a threat to the MPAA - it's the threat of players being built with it. As long as DeCSS is blacklisted, no players (OSS or otherwise) will use it, meaning they won. We have to make this 100% legal, or we'll be stuck duel-booting forever.
http://kered.org
That said, I am a bit disappointed to see this kind of subjective judgement used when deciding what to host or not. I'd rather they said "Damn, we don't want to get sued over this." Then we could call them paranoid and get on with our lives. :)
I guess this is what frivolous lawsuits bring about -- we don't need censorship, because companies will censor themselves out of fear of legislation.
--
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
no no no, you're wasting precious data space!
:P )
A = 00
T = 01
C = 10
G = 11
This way, you can fit two bits into each dna segment.
(what? you were just making a point? Oh
--
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grep "xercist"
DeCSS code in an MP3 is "offensive lyrics".
The Cocky Sticks' tracks, "I'm a Catholic Girl, of course I swallow!" (featuring samples like "OK, whoever hasn't had their dick in my mouth, form a line over here, uh, I mean at all today", from what appears to be a gangbang video), and "Fuckin' Wheelbarrow" ("I'll pull the skin o' yer ass o'er yer head and turn ya inta a fuckin' wheelbarrow!", which sounds like something I'd pay good money to see a judge do to Hilary Rosen, come to think of it)... don't contain offensive content. We won't even get into Adolf Hitler (oops, thread's over!) being sampled into "House of the Rising Sun".
Personally, I think the Cocky Sticks are great. I love 'em. Got a (paid-for!) CD of 'em. But while I'm not personally offended by their samples, I'm willing to say that many might be. But a bunch of goddamn code expressed as speech?
But it seems to me that Michael Robertson really has become Hilary Rosen's bitch as a result of his my.mp3.com trials.
And that is far more offensive than anything I've heard or seen in the music on MP3.com.
"Wisen up 'cuz on Election Day, we'll see who's banned in the USA"