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EFF Appeals 2600 Decision
eclectro writes "The EFF representing 2600 has appealed the district court's decision that banned the posting of the DeCSS source code on websites. The case will be argued in April." EFF's brief makes good reading. If this is new to you, we've posted a few things about the DeCSS cases before.
Now to the real issue. If you buy a book, you can include a passage in a review or an academic article without prior permission. If you buy a protected DVD, it is currently illegal for you to include a passage in a review or an article. If you buy a book, you can type it into your computer to facilitate automatic searches. If you buy a protected DVD, it is currently illegal for you to decode it through your computer to facilitate automatic searches. If a book (or magazine) has ads interspersed with the content, you can cut them out. If a DVD includes ads, it is currently illegal to remove or bypass them. With a book, it's fair use. With a DVD, it's illegal.
The core question is control. The industry believes its pocketbook relies on controlling what you can and cannot do with a DVD. Many artists also feel they have exclusive rights to control what you can and cannot do with their work. Traditionally in the US, the majority of the control has rested with the citizen who purchased the work (now solely referred to as a consumer, go fig). In many people's eyes, this makes sense. The citizen is the one who paid money for the work. The citizen is the one with the physical medium holding the work. Some control was traditionally reserved for the artist, who then gave it all to the publishing industry. This was to allow the artist to recoup costs and make a bit of money to start the next work. Now it's used by the publishing / recording industry to pay for expensive offices and little, fake statuettes. A bit is used to take risks on ``the next big thing.'' These risks almost never pay off, so they are rarely made. (The next big thing almost always comes from outside the traditional publishing industry.)
This changed with a little bill known as the Millennium Digital Copyright Act. The citizens' representatives gave citizens a big ol' middle finger and ate very well at meals bought by the publishing industry. Now the publishing industry gets to tell you how many minutes of commercials you must watch, and they get to determine which reviews are allowed and which are not. Of course, they swear up and down that they'll never use those powers. Then they turn around and sue people who have produced technology to return fair-use rights to the citizens. There are no balances to the powers granted by the DMCA. They will be abused. Many would claim that they are being abused.
That's a little bit on why this is moral and should be legal. Others can fill in more details.
Just donate 5, 10 , 25 per month!!! I donate 25.00 per month, less than the cost of eating out once!
I disagree. If anything Kaplan's decision shows a quite different but an even more severe problem: corruption. Didn't you know that Kaplan used to work for MPAA?
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Except for the fact that DVDs don't have an EULA. All restrictions on them are under normal copyright law, just like a book or a VHS tape, and the DMCA, which only applies to digital stuff. So they do have to be constitutional.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The real quesion is...did "Antitrust" make them money?
pooptruck
Summary paragraph from the brief:
In short, by failing to limit copyright owners' ability to prevent access to their works, the District Court's interpretation of Sect. 1201(a)(2) grants them powers far beyond those allowed by copyright law or the First Amendment, placing the statute on a collision course with the constitution. A reasonable interpretation of the statute, however, could allow it to remain a powerful tool to prevent copyright infringement, while also preserving freedom of expression as movies move into the digital age.
Sound pretty reasonable to me. But then, I am a resonable man. Judge Kaplan didn't seem very resonable to me.
I liked this part alot:
as often occurs in First Amendment cases, the District Court allowed its feelings about the individual speaker before it to color its judgment of his right to speak.
He's saying that Kaplan doesnt like hackers? And that this colored his judgement?
Duh.
I hope they get a better judge in this one. I will be watching.
-geekd
I am disappointed by this sentence from EFF. The problem is with the "CSS is designed to prevent copyright infringement" part and it just shows that MPAA has actually gotten EFF itself to think it their terms.
CSS is not designed to prevent copyright infringement. CSS is designed to prevent copying. (The fact that it doesn't work is a whole other topic...)
If I can take an invention that accomplishes an easy-to-understand low-level specific, and claim that its purpose is to achieve a particular high-level goal (which is one among many of the high-level effects), then I can get away with all kinds of amazing lies. For example: a gun is a medical instrument. (Rationale: you can use a gun to euthanize an infected patient so that they don't infect other people.)
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Even better - IIRC, it was actually to fulfill a condition in an international treaty, part of the GATT round. This means that even if the US Congress wanted to reverse the change, they'd have to either renegotiate the treaty or break their word to the other countries.
That said, most academics aren't too worried about copyright as such. Leaving aside the fact that most of them own copyrights themselves, they have book-buying allowances and institutional libraries to help them get over the cost of getting access to copyrighted material. Copyright powers are sometimes used to mess them about, but it's traditionally been the relatives of dead authors and public figures who usually do it, not professional publishers. The combination of fair use, financial support, and reasonable behaviour by copyright holders means that the status quo is acceptable to them, even if it does cost them large amounts of money. Take away fair use (and reasonable behaviour) and it would be a very different story.
Also, as I recall, there was actual testimony in the DeCSS case where some MPAA drone admitted that because of the DMCA, using video clips of a movie on VHS in an academic paper would be legal, while video clips taken from a DVD would not..
That's why I'm so surprised that the EFF wasn't able (or willing?) to get a single historian or someone similar into its long line of witnesses, to explain how his profession would be affected, just as (damn, forgotten his name right now) did so well for computer science. Even just to have someone like that in the line-up would go a long way to counteracting the preception that this was an issue that only "hackers" (by the media definition) and computer nerds cared about.
The DMCA, as it stands now interpreted by "judge" Kaplan would seem to prevent ANY academic use of digital media....
Kaplan is a legitimate US federal judge, whether or not we agree with his ruling or think he's a good judge. Having to live with the possibility of bad verdicts is one price we pay for living under the rule of law, rather than the rule of might (read: dictatorship or bloody anarchy). Sorry to get up on my high-horse about that, it's just too important to let pass.
These academics need access to old data, really any old data, the more the better - even the most boring or transient stuff could be extremely useful to somebody sometime. In the nineteenth century (for instance), most records went onto paper. Paper is a surprisingly durable storage medium over the long run. By contrast, we in the later twentieth century create much more data, but increasingly it gets put in formats that may well be unreadable ("dead media") in 20, never mind 200 years' time. The data may have degraded beyond recovery by the time researchers come back to it, even assuming that they can still get a working media player to read it. Or take the celebrated case of the US federal housing data, stored on paper tape or something some decades back. (I'm afraid I can't remember details, and I'm in a hurry to get this posted). There are historians, sociologists, economists, social geographers and others who would kill to get the chance to sift through it. They may never get the chance, for while the data has been well preserved, and physically reading it isn't a problem, nobody knows what the data format is anymore!
For these reasons, these academics have mixed feelings about the increasing computerisation of our data. Now we throw in the DVDCCA's licence control, soon , it seems, to be followed by similar locks on recorded music and even electronic texts. If you think these restrictions are going to make academics' lives hard today, just wait 40 years or so. Getting working media readers and transferring the data onto new media for safekeeping might now be not only impossible but actually illegal. Who will be holding the DVD licences in two generations or more's time? Will it even be clear who holds them? Who would care to bet that they'll feel like helping out academics as a public service, instead of, say, shaking them down royally for every disk they save, possibly even pushing some ideological agenda in dictating what can be saved, or God knows what?
Clearly, every half-decent humanities and social science department in the USA and beyond should be up in arms by now. They're very obviously not, and I'm reasonably sure that it's because they are still largely unaware of the DMCA threat. My father is a full-time professional historian, a member of the American Historical Association and a subscriber to their journal. The first he heard of the DVDCCA and the DMCA was from me. The word isn't getting out to these people. It's all very well for the EFF to have a very popular website, but if it can't reach what should be a huge grassroots support base, it's just not functioning well as a pressure group.
We can't afford not to pick up allies like this in such an important fight, not when we're up against hugely powerful organisations like the DVDCCA and MPAA. Fortunately, it's easy to make a start. If you have the ear of a non-science academic, take the next chance you have to bring them up to speed on what the DMCA will mean, not just for video but soon for audio and texts as well, and encourage them to spread the message to their peers.
How can I hack into something I paid money for. I bought the dvd and player. It is mine. I can use it however I like. It is true that the content on a DVD is still copyrighted and you can't redistribute that content. But the DMCA isn't about content. It is about giving an excessive amount of protection to a certain class of encryption algorithms. I should be able to toss bits at a piece of hardware and see what happens all day if I like. I you saying that using the "print to file" function of the Windows print dialog for a simple image and then using that output to create printer drivers for linux or *bsd or any other system is illegal. If so then their are a dozen or so ghostscript drivers out there for Lexmark and HP printers that should be considered illegal.
It has absolutely nothing to do with copying - it's whole reason for existance is for content control. The only part they never mention is that it wouldn't have teeth if not for the DMCA and in the future, if more states pas it, the UCITA...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
CSS is an encryption scheme. In all of the legal proceeding, it has always been applied specifically to the plaintifs and their products. This is not the whole story. Anyone who makes DVD's could use the CSS encryption algorithm. This is as ludicrous as banning HTML information becuase the some company accidentally exposed credit card numbers in HTML format.
This stinks of Napster-eqse corporate influences. Once Napster got into the deal with a big music company, for some reason it becuase unquestionably legal for it to support peer-to-peer music sharing. Some of those shared files could be data copyrighted by 3rd-party artists or independent musicians. For them, the situation has not changed at all. But now a few certain big companies are getting monetary cuts. How does that change the real or percieved legality of Napster's buisness at all??
You wrote:
:)
Oh that stupid cliche, Information wants to be free.
The real quote is from Stewart Brand. The actual quote is:
Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine -- too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient.
Stewart Brand, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T. (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987).
the implications of this is up to the reader of course, but please do try to keep things in context.
I thought the /. wisdom was that CSS is there to make sure only authorised DVD players could play industry discs, and that it really doesn't pertain to copying since you can just copy the raw data from one disc to another, just like I can copy a Finnish text character by character without understanding a word of it.
Or did I mix up the conspiracies?
My favorite part was when the courts put all of the source code out in writing as public record as part of the evidence.
I believe they sealed it later, but for several days they were doing the exact same thing they convicted 2600 of doing.
- I like pudding.
Based on your name, you sound like an Aussie. You might want to try EFA, the Aussie version of EFF.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Electronic Frontier Ireland is probably worth looking into, then. Perhaps you can get a tax break by donating to them? I don't know how active they are, but it can't hurt to send them a note and ask if they have suggestions.
You can also still donate to the EFF, you just won't get the tax break. (Though at least in the US tax law, if you're poor, you generally want to just take the "standard deduction" anyway, which means you wouldn't get a tax break for charitable donations.)
First off, as a 501(c)3 the EFF can't do as much lobbying as a "real" political action group, so contributions are not considered campaign/political donations.
Second, the MPAA doesn't seem to care if you're a US citizen or not; just ask Jon Johansen!
The DVD issue at hand is a worldwide issue. (CSS exists to enforce region codes, among other things.) The fight happens to be taking place in the US, but that doesn't mean it's not going to affect the rest of the world...so affect it right back.
Don't forget to join and support the EFF. The MPAA has plenty of money from selling all those VHS tapes, DVDs, movie tickets, etc. The EFF only has what we can give it.
Broke? Student/low income membership is $20. That's what, three pizzas from the cheap pizza parlor? Two CDs? A month of saving a buck a day by skipping that vending machine soda every weekday....
Not broke? Got stock that is still worth more than you paid for it at the IPO? Need a tax deduction? They're a registered nonprofit.
Lazy? They take Visa and Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, and a bunch of other options. If you'll shop online for your music, books, games, hardware...how about shopping online for your rights?
(And see if your employer might match your donation.)
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
Don't forget to pick up an OpenDVD T-Shirt from Copyleft too! $4 of each purchase goes to the EFF. Support the boys in the trenches and use that walking ad space to express your opinion, all in one fell swoop.
[begin included text]
From legion@dimensional.com Thu Nov 30 19:50:14 2000
Subject: Re: copkiller.org
To: mpaa23@pacbell.net (mpaa23)
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:50:09 -0700 (MST)
To Whom it May Concern:
My initial response to your threats of legal action ("Go fuck yourself") did not address the irony of this situation. Allow me to educate you.
I had the DeCSS source up on copkiller.org for about a week, way back when all of your threats were just starting. I voluntarily removed it because the administrator of Dimensional was already receiving grief from people upset about the nature of my page, and I felt that he shouldn't have to take any more problems on my behalf. Since DeCSS has not been available on copkiller.org for quite some time (what is it now, a year?), I can only assume that you're basing your "knowledge" off of a few lists cirulating around the internet.
The irony, of course, is this: now that you've decided to come after me (albeit extremely late) for DeCSS, I plan to link to a lycos search on decss.zip. Note that this is a link to a search engine, not to a particular file, and you'll damn well have to drag me to court to get a ruling on it. If Dimensional wants me to remove the link (and by this I mean *Dimensional*, not MPAA or its slime-sucking lawyers), I will do so immediately and without question, but this will not stop me from hosting the actual DeCSS file from a country with smarter laws, nor will it stop me from distributing the file via other means.
Let me spell out the irony for you: I've had little actual interest in DeCSS since it all started, but now you've renewed that interest, and I can fully assure you that I will not let this matter go.
-steve
[Original text appears below]
From mpaa23@pacbell.net Wed Nov 29 17:56:12 2000
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 16:46:38 -0800
From: mpaa23 <mpaa23@pacbell.net>
Subject: copkiller.org
To: Legion@copkiller.org
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200
MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC. 15503 VENTURA BOULEVARD ENCINO, CALIFORNIA 91436
UNITED STATES
PHONE: (818) 728-8127 Email: MPAA23@pacbell.net Anti-Piracy Operations
November 29, 2000
Steve Pordon Squealing Pigs, LLC 123 Main Street Yourtown, CO 80201 Legion@copkiller.org
RE: Distribution of Unauthorized Product Site/Email Address: copkiller.org MPAA File #: 5-671-267
Dear Steve Pordon:
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) represents the following motion picture production and distribution companies:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Disney Enterprises, Inc. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Paramount Pictures Corporation TriStar Pictures, Inc. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation United Artists Pictures, Inc. United Artists Corporation Universal City Studios, Inc. Warner Bros., a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.
We have received information that you are unlawfully offering product at the above-referenced web site. We have notified your ISP of the unlawful nature of this web site and have asked for its immediate removal. Our letter to your ISP is set forth below for your reference.
Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email if you should have any questions.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Very truly yours,
Motion Picture Association of America
MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC. 15503 VENTURA BOULEVARD ENCINO, CALIFORNIA 91436
UNITED STATES
PHONE: (818) 728-8127 Email: MPAA23@pacbell.net Anti-Piracy Operations
November 29, 2000
Chuck U. Farley Dimensional Communications, LLC 910 16th Street Suite 1015 Denver, CO 80202 Copyrightwrong@dimensional.com
RE: Illegal Provision of DeCSS/Circumvention Device Site/URL: copkiller.org MPAA File#: 5-671-267
Dear Chuck U. Farley:
The Motion Picture Association of America is authorized to act on behalf = of the following copyright owners:
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Disney Enterprises, Inc. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Paramount Pictures Corporation TriStar Pictures, Inc. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation=20 United Artists Pictures, Inc. United Artists Corporation Universal City Studios, Inc. Warner Bros., a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P.
We have knowledge that the above-referenced Internet site is providing a = circumvention device commonly known as DeCSS. DeCSS is a software = utility that decrypts or unscrambles the contents of DVDs (consisting of = copyrighted motion pictures) or otherwise circumvents the protection = afforded by the Contents Scramble System (CSS) and permits the copying = of the DVD contents and/or any portion thereof. As such, DeCSS is an = unlawful circumvention device within the meaning of the Digital = Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. Section 1201(a)(2),(3). Providing = or offering DeCSS to the public on your system or network violates the = provisions of Section 1201(a)(2) which prohibits the "manufacturing, = importing or offering to the public, providing, or otherwise = trafficking" in an unlawful circumvention device. (17 U.S.C. Section = 1201 et seq. hereafter is referred to as the "DMCA").
On August 17, 2000, a federal district court in the Southern District of = New York confirmed that offering, providing, or trafficking in DeCSS, or = any other device designed to circumvent CSS, violates the DMCA. The = district court granted a permanent injunction against (1) posting on = any Internet site, or in any other way manufacturing, importing or = offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking in DeCSS or = any other technology primarily designed to circumvent CSS, and (2) = linking any Internet web site, either directly or through a series of = links, to any other Internet web site containing DeCSS.=20
The district court's ruling makes clear that by providing DeCSS, the = above- referenced Internet site violates the DMCA. We therefore demand = that you:
1) take appropriate steps to cause immediate removal of DeCSS from the = above identified URL, along with such other actions as may be necessary = or appropriate to suspend this illegal activity;
2) provide appropriate notice to the subscriber or account holder = responsible for the presence of DeCSS on your system or network, = advising him/her of the contents of this notice and directing that = person to contact the undersigned immediately at the e-mail address = provided above;
Failure to comply with these measures will subject you to liability as = described above.
We also request that you maintain, and take whatever steps are necessary = to prevent the destruction of, all records, including electronic = records, in your possession or control respecting this URL, account = holder or subscriber.
By copy of this letter, the owner of the above-referenced URL and/or = email account is hereby directed to cease and desist from the conduct = complained of herein.
On behalf of the respective owners of the exclusive rights to the = copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, pursuant = to the DMCA that we have a good faith belief that the acts complained of = are not authorized by the copyright owners, their respective agents, or = the law.
Also pursuant to DMCA, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury under = the law of California and under the laws of the United States, that the = information in this notification is accurate and that we are authorized = to act on behalf of the owners of the exclusive rights being infringed = as set forth in this notification.
Should you have any questions, please contact us at the above listed = address.
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your immediate response = is requested.
Respectfully, The Motion Picture Association of America
[end included text]
-Legion
Remember that this is just the first round of appellate briefs, so four months is not that far away. Next Friday is the due date for amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in support of 2600, of which there will be several (including mine). Then, the studios do their brief in a month from now. A week after, their amici file, then 2600 does a reply brief. So the interval from the last brief to the oral arguments is not that great.
that people give away their fair use rights doesn't bother me all THAT much. what really pisses me of is some people who have these kickass home entertainment systems, but have no taste in movies; who needs to watch Howard the Duck in 5 channel surround sound anyway? It's like the people who have these really nice, expensive stereo systems and the only CD they own is the Dolby decoder test CD with the cannon-firing sounds. Why, back in my day we used mono cassette players plugged into 5 dollar computer speakers, and WE LIKED IT!
NO CARRIER
Heh, it looks like about 1/3 of the way down they forgot to close a tag :-) /. posters aren't the only ones :-)
Doh!
Granted you have to have a subscription to get into the website, but The Perl Journal published a really kewl article on converting C to english using a perl script called decss2.pl. More info on converting C code to gramatically correct English is here. The author of the article published the entire deccs program in english in the fall issue.
Fair Use derives from the Constitution ... I don't think it's possible to sign away or agree to anything that conflicts with the Constitution.
<IANAL>
The United States Constitution, as amended, states that "Congress shall make no law" abridging freedom of speech (17 USC 107, the fair use section, makes most of copyright law constitutional), not that private individuals shall make no law (that is, contract). If this were true, non-disclosure agreements would be unconstitutional. A EULA for DVDs that pretty much amounts to an NDA would not be out of the question.
And yes, the contract is there; the offer is the EULA, the acceptance is removing the content from the package, and the consideration is the price paid for the content (in terms of dollars, square inches of ad space, or personal information) in exchange for the right to view the content.
</IANAL>
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I am already a member, but I must say that I think the jump from low income/student to regular member is a bit stiff.
$65 may not be that much to a sysadmin or programmer, but to Jolene Sixpack it might be confusing why it's three times the cost of, say, her favorite magazine subscription.
Sometimes an org can grow very rapidly if they remember "economy of scale".
On the other hand, freedom is never free. Corporations like Microsoft and Seagrams have masses of attorneys in Washington looking out for their shareholders...which means maximizing profits by any means necessary...even if this takes away your right to code.
The EFF and ACLU are taking brave steps towards protecting our freedom to code. Power to the Programmers!
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
> never been better choice in content, there has
> never been more accessible mass importation of
> foreign product such as Japanese anime.
> Overall, things got better.
Is this a joke ?
A lot of people interested in foreign movies had multi-standard VCRs and TVs that could read Pal & Secam Tapes. Now, YOU CAN NO LONGER WATCH ANY EUROPEAN MOVIES ON DVD. Except those that Holiwood feels are US-worthy to edit in Zone 1, i.e. a tiny percentage.
For all the other ones, screw you, multi-zone DVD players are easy to find in Europe, but they are a lot harder to come by here in California, because the average american doesn't care about obscure foreign movies.
When i went back home to Europe for X-mas, i saw in stores lots of french DVDs that I wanted to buy, but couldn't knowing they wouldn't work on my Sony DVD player here. ALL of those, because they are in French and mostly pertinent to european culture (TV shows and such), are ONLY available in Zone 2. Screw me. Overall, things got worse.
I think the most interesting part of the EFF argument was about functionality of speech.
Part of the ruling of the District Court was that "functional speech" was not granted the same protection as other modes of speech. The EFF argued that nothing in the first amendment, or until now, the judgements on the first amendment, had ever made a distinction between "functional" and "non-functional" speech.
If speech isn't meant to have a function, and have an influence on things, what is the point of speech? This would be a world of totally reflective speech, where speech will only be able to repeat or abstract what already exists. I think that speech is inherently meant to change things and have a function, not just to describe the world as it is. If the courts seem to think that only descriptive speech is protected, I think we are in trouble.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
But with digital equipment and broadband access, it is becoming easier and cheaper to produce and distribute content -- even "professional" quality. Eventually, artists are going to hit upon a mechanism for direct pay -- perhaps Street Performer Protocol, perhaps something else -- and then the scales will fall from their eyes. They will realize they don't need the big distribution houses and the big studios. And then music will be free, in the political sense, because they'll see they can make a decent profit without forking over creative control, 95% of the money, and their souls in return for a contract.
I eagerly await the first album to truly take off due to Internet exposure. That will be the "killer app" that lights the fuse and launches the Free Art revolution. The biggest threat is that Big Money Media will seize control of the broadband pipe before this liberation happens. Then they'll try to convince everyone that the Internet is just TV II, and will strangle people whose philosophy threatens their own. Think it can't happen? Can you say, AOL/Time-Warner?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
But mostly, if the 20th century taught us anything, it's that you can't just ignore something evil. It's not good enough if you've found a place you think is safe. The problem with routing around damage is, the damage remains... and remains a threat.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
It's not that I don't have opinions about various things that happen, but I feel that as a guest I don't have the right to influence them. As a foriegn national I'm not eternally tied to the results of decisions (legal and otherwise) in the same way that a US citizen is. I can always go back to my country if I don't like things.
However, in cases involving the net, actions taken in the US can directly affect the net everywhere, and the EFF seems like a good place to get involved. I'm not looking so much for absolution to join the EFF, but rather asking how /.'s USAian readership feels
about foriegners trying to influence American
public policy.
Cheers, quokka
I've been involved in a car accident case for two and a half years now. We will have our pre-trial meeting with the judge this coming March. Then our trial date will be set.
___
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I don't see anywhere that the source code is linked to as the brief claims. Can someone point it out to me or did she pull the link in fear of getting a lawsuit herself? I'd imagine that she would have agreed to let them link to her site in the brief. It would be a real blow to the argument if she pulled the rug out from under them.
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
Perl, Lisp, or C? (Or maybe all three!)
Then again, maybe some sed scripts would be sufficiently arcane.
Any takers?
There is only one body that can prevent such a thing from happening, and its not the government. It's the people; frankly, most people don't care. They would rather watch their movies in Digital Surround Sound and Digital Image Quality in trade for their rights of fair use then boycott the whole damn thing and demand better from these companies.
Whatever the court decision, this issue in a broader sense is not going away, and WON'T ever, and its going to keep on getting worse as people keep on selling their rights away for comfortable living. Does it remind you a little bit of something, like perhaps the fall of Rome?
Ah well. It was good while it lasted.
BTW didn't Garbus defend free speach issues for Lenny Bruce before a judge named Kaplan? Is this the same Kaplan?
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Probably being redundant in posting this, but if you haven't already read the other posts about the subject here on /. you need to be whacked upside the head.
The DeCSS source code could be used for other means other than piracy. Or would you prefer that in order to play a dvd that you legally own you must have windblows since anything open source would void the copy protection code. In my case I can't really argue anyhow since I'm not using any *nix derivative on the machine that has a dvd player. (Only because it's a company loaner until they decide it's really obsolete and give it to me.) Of course this does become extremely relevant when I finish building my new system because I intend to have FreeBSD on it. Whether I keep the laptop or not, I still own the discs and they are useless without a player. And a dvd drive is useless without software.
I also think that taxing blank media is a dumb idea. What happens when I don't use the blanks for "copyrighted" material, but personal stuff? Hmm? So now if I need to make a backup of corporate pdf docs, or put together a utils disc that has all the stuff a new hire might need I get taxed to support the media industry? I think not. That is nothing but a load of bull. Who decides who gets what for compensation anyhow? If you put all the taxes into a slush fund that feeds the artists, how do you decide how much an artist gets? And whether the people who made the product CLEARLY don't want it used that way in your words, have you stopped to consider that as a consumer you have a right to use the product you bought as you see fit as long as you don't profit from someone elses work? When are people going to wake up and realize that copy protection doesn't hurt pirates as much as it hurts people who have a legit copy and need to make a backup so that the original doesn't get scratched, or wants to use an alternate operating system with the software/movie. Good thing they haven't thought of taxing DNA just because someone might figure out how to store computer data on it.
One of my real pet peeves are people who think something needs to be taken away just because a few individuals can't use it properly.
I find it amusing that there are 2 consecutive stories on the front page about 2600. Not the same 2600, but I like it. I don't know why...
--hongpong.com
I did a little research at Oyez and was suprised at how often the conservative judges on the Supreme Court rule in favor of first ammendment cases. Even after twelve years of Republican appointments, they ruled 9-0 in favor of a constitutional right to burn the flag, found the CDA unconstitutional, upheld the rights of the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi party to hold rallies, upheld the right to cable porn, upheld the right for criminals to sell books about their crimes, and so on. It seems likely the Supreme Court will uphold a right to distribute code. Of course, there could be subtle differences here which, since IANAL I wouln't understand.
The big boys surely can't seize control of the current situation - i would think that it's grown beyond a level where they can control distribution over the net. If you really believe that they can then I'm scared.
You make it sound as though Big Brother's waiting around the corner...
comeontheni'lltakeyouallon
Instead, 2600 Magazine was found liable for publishing a technology that might someday be used by someone to access a movie without the "authority" of the copyright owner. The District Court acknowledged that the published material, the text of a computer program called DeCSS that decrypts the data on DVDs, has substantial noninfringing uses, including scholarly study of cryptography, enabling fair use of copyrighted movies, and development of competing DVD players.
Copyright owners have never had the right to prevent such uses. The District Court's interpretation of Sect. 1201, however, now gives them this right.
1) If I write a program for a nuclear reaction in a science textbook, derived from the Hiroshima bomb, for study of physics, chemistry, or epidemiology, am I guilty of violating the terrorism laws?
2) The people who jump onto DeCSS posts are motivated primarily by a profit incentive and seem to think that this right to profit abrogrates our First Amendment rights.
3) The fair use agreement, which is something I use all the time as a journalist, gives me the right to use whatever tool I want, including an open-source tool written by a gifted private individual instead of a corporation which catalogs and reports your every use of their technology to marketing departments and federal agencies.
Oh that stupid cliche, Information wants to be free. It's true. Information is a valuable commodity like everything else under capitalism, and the only principled stand being taken against 2600 is not a protection of artists, but a protection of profit. Many artists have spoken out in support of this freedom.
Goat sex free since 2001
"Sad, really. I thought our judiciary was beyond blatant corporate/monetary influence."
No, that is what lobbying government is all about. Using the power of the government and other people's money to get your way.
Which is why I'm morally opposed to government having any more power than is absolutely needed to prevent mass anarchy. In fact, government's ONLY legitimate role in commerce is preventing corporate cartels like the MPAA from walking over the Constitution...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Money ALWAYS buys influence and loyalty. This includes employer-employee relationships. Kaplan was once an indirect (through his lawfirm) an employee of the MPAA.
What is insane is a system of government made up of politicians who have to shake down donors to get re-elected. This is one drawback of an elective Republic.
I belive that there needs to be mandatory FULL DISCLOSURE of all contributions, relationships, et all for ALL elected politicians and judges. This should have to be disclosed publically, and the officer/etc/judge should then be required to recuse themselves in any case/vote etc that involves a contributor...
Furthermore, only INDIVIDUALS should be allowed to contribute anything to campaigns. Corporations, organizations, unions, etc should be forbidden to influence government with contributions.
Will this ever happen? Of course not. Something like John McCain's hairbrained, unbalanced, and farcical "campaign finance reform" that will do nothing to stop corporate or organization/union contributions, nor will it require FULL disclosure is far more likely.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Correct. Furthermore, this time, the EFF has the initiative... This case is proceeding to court AFTER they have prepared it. The Kaplan screwjob was more of a mugging than a trial. The defendants were obstructed and confounded constantly by him.
Assuming that the appelate judge isn't another Kaplan, this hearing will be a LOT different. I've read most of the EFF legal brief now, and I have to say, it makes things very clear, simple and SCARY... Kaplan's ruling is potentially the Dred Scott Decision of the 1st Amendment if it stands (ruled that blacks were not entitled to ANY Constitutional due process).
And for those who got their History from a government school, the Dred Scott decision led to the Civil War... Kaplan's ruling could necessitate more bloodshed to retake this country from a tyrannical corporate owned goverment...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Actually, Fair Use derives from the Constitution, not from statutory law.
I don't think it's possible to sign away or agree to anything that conflicts with the Constitution. If it were that easy, would-be tyrants would long ago have done it.
The DVD "EULA" shrink-wrap license terms that conflict with fair use are legal only in that they (may) be written to use the DMCA. The DMCA is statutory law, and is trumped by Constitutional law..
There is a LONG line of supreme court rulings on fair use that would seem to make using the DMCA in the way the MPAA did (and Kaplan rubber stamped) in the DeCSS case unconstitutional.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"I thought only the Supreme Court was supposed to handle that?"
Nope. That is the primary Constitutional role for the Federal Judiciary. ALL judges have that power, which, of course, can be overridden by higher courts up to the Supreme Court.
By failing to take the Constitution into account at all in the DeCSS case, so-called "judge" Kaplan violated the oath he took when he became a judge.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"What puzzles me is that I believe that Antitrust was made by a member of the MPAA (correct me if wrong)."
Hollywood itself (the writers, actors, production talent, etc) is not at all represented by the MPAA. The MPAA represents the studio/corpers.
Though as a conservative I frequently disagree with Hollywood, there is still an element there that does stand for free expression.
I haven't seen this movie yet, so I can't comment intelligently on it. However, many (in fact, EVERY) Hollywood movie about hackers since War Games has had many extreme inaccuracies.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I think shrinkwrap EULA's have been (in principle) upheld by some Federal Court, I don't think the Supreme Court has ruled on it.
However, the terms of ANY specific EULA (they are almost all different) in a technical sense, are NOT gospel until ruled on by a court, and then not until the Supreme Court.
So it can be said that ANY EULA is as binding as either party is willing to either enforce it or challenge it. IMO, most EULA's violate at least SOME law somewhere, including the Constitution, so most of them are probably, at least in part, illegal.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
An addendum...
There are so many laws in the USA (over 60,000 NEW state, local and Federal laws passed any given year) it may, in fact be IMPOSSIBLE for any EULA to be 100% legal in every single state, or locale.
The very complexity of them are their weakness. Simple EULA's that stuck to Constitutional law would be enforceable anywhere. However, the whole point of a EULA is to deprive the end user of their rights...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
DUH!
Kaplan ruled the DMCA not only Constitutional, but ADDED to it with his hyperlink ruling...
Kaplan had a RESPONSIBILITY, based on his OATH he took when he was confirmed as a federal judge (Clinton appointee), to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution".
How could ruling so blatantly and partisanly in favor of the MPAA, with the attitude "Constitution be dammed, I'm looking out for ME" be upholding that oath? Kaplan could, I suppose have ruled that the DMCA WAS constitutional, but he totaly failed to give ANY JUSTIFICATION WHATSOEVER in his ruling...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
If upheld, the DeCSS case could "Dred Scott" away the 1st Amendment. There will then, for all practical purposes, cease to be any such thing as "free speech" that is not approved by the MPAA/RIAA, which are huge corporate cartels.
This would have a chilling effect on the Internet, technology and education. Read what Valenti (chief MPAA goon) was saying about academia having NO fair use rights in the DMCA world...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"Hey, if they want to tax blank media to offset piracy, then I'm going to pirate to offset the blank media tax. Fair is fair. "
In a moral sense, a tax on blank media pretty much would piracy. After all, you are PAYING the RIAA/MPAA through the tax for their audio/video/software whether you bought it or not.
IMO, a tax on blank media is one of those "thin edge of the wedge" issues. Clearly the MPAA/RIAA want to get a cut, but it will obviously be abused to the point to make blank media artificially expensive. Blank CD-R discs used to cost more than $5 a pop, now they can be had for less than $.50.
Their justification for increasing the "RIAA/MPAA tax" every year? Why that skyrocketing $$$ they claim every year (though never in their SEC filings, which is a felony) that is "lost" to piracy. If you think hundres of billion$ are being "lost" to piracy now, watch it soar into the trillion$ if that "tax" got passed.
I also wonder about the Constitutionality of such a tax... Is it legal to tax citizens on behalf of a corporation?
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
There are limits to a NDA. For example, a NDA becomes void if the company breaks the law. You are not bound by it in that case.
Also, NDA's etc and EULA's are cases of tort or CIVIL law. You cannot be arrested or jailed for violating them.
The DMCA has the effect of taking civil EULA's and raising their power to the level of CRIMINAL law, which is definately on the shady side of legal.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
At least this time, as the party bringing the case to court, 2600 will be able to have a lot more control over the scheduling.
One act that really exposed Kaplan's bias was his constant caving in to the MPAA in moving up schedules. This was done deliberately to deny Garbus the time to make his case.
Remember the first injunction hearing? Everyone got less than a WEEK's notice... Kaplan allowed himself to be used to completely blindside the defendants.
Remember, time and preparation are good for our side and bad for the MPAA. After all, they really can't come up with any new arguments, and thus benefit from rushing things thru.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I was getting a bit worried that this wasn't going to happen, and that a bought and paid for corporate hack, the dishonorable "judge" Kaplan was going to be allowed to have the final word on this...
Kaplan failed to uphold his responsibility in this case in several ways... Among them:
1. He failed to apply the required Constitutionality test to the DMCA. In so doing, he not only interpreted the DMCA in it's most narrow way possible (ignoring the clause that allows circumvention devices for uses OTHER than piracy, such as creation of a Linux DVD player), but he EXTENDED it by adding to it making hyperlinks to DeCSS illegal...
2. He failed to disclose his previous DIRECT ties to the MPAA, which was, if memory serves, being part of a law firm that had once REPRESENTED them. He then refused to recuse himself when it was requested of the defendant. He EXCORIATED Martin Garbus, the lead attorney for 2600, for a much lesser (and trivial) conflict of interest (Garbus once represented a media company later bought by Time-Warner).
Point #1 could be excused as incompetence, though, IMO, that is no excuse at ALL for a federal judge.
Point #2 leads me to believe that the actions in point #1 were because Kaplan is extremely corrupt. He worked for a MPAA lawfirm BEFORE he was a judge, and, likely, he will work for one AFTER. He stood to gain a LOT of money for ruling in the way that he did, for the MPAA. That is impeachable. Judges in particular should be held to the highest standards of character and conduct in a case. For the very reason that Federal judges in particular, weild a TON of power.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance