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Amicus Brief in DeCSS case
e271828 writes "Brian Kernighan, Marvin Minsky, Ron Rivest, and Richard Stallman are among the CS stalwarts that have jointly filed an amici curiae brief supporting the EFF and 2600. The brief, hosted on Cryptome makes for excellent reading." This is to accompany the appeal that we mentioned a few days ago.
A friend of mine couldn't find a free player for Windows, either. There are several software DVD players for Linux now, albeit not with the most efficient software decoders.
If you really don't want to pay for a shareware player, it looks like your only option is to download a DVD ripper (I think FlaskMPEG+DeCSS is the only choice if you don't already have a DVD player software) and make DivX copies of those movies. You can then get the codec installed in Windows (and Linux, thanks to the avifile Wine loader hackery) for free.
But with all the noise about this case I would think they were fighting something "REAL", not just some source code sippets.
Get on an OpenNAP server, search for "divx". There are hundreds of ripped movies out there, although bandwidth is still precious enough that people will only let you trade, not freeload. (Or is fear of authority the problem? Hell, I'm nervous enough to post anonymously and I don't even have any pirated movies)
The MPAA is scared as hell. Thanks to Blockbuster's "DVD per night" rental card and CD-Rs it costs about a dollar to rip a DVD movie. Thanks to cable modems it costs about a dollar more (or zero marginal cost, for people who would get a cable modem anyway and only trade a couple movies per day) to send a copy of that rip across the country. That's a fraction of what the movie would cost otherwise, and only a fraction of that goes to the producers through Blockbuster.
Don't get me wrong, it's still not enough reason to stomp on the First Amendment, but if they weren't trying to destroy fair use rights I'd actually be sympathetic.
I love it! They referenced various poems written in perl as an example of creative speech using computer code, and the Internation Obfuscated C Code Contest as an example of satire. Never thought I'd see *that* in a legal brief.
Causation can cause correlation
I seem to recall a case in the 1800s involving counterfeit music rolls for player pianos. Judgement was something to the effect that, machine-read documents could be protected under copyright law the same as human-read ones.
That judgement, I also seem to remember, WAS the standard by which computer software was allowed to be copyrighted up until the next major reform in copyright law sometime in the 1980s.
Now I want to go a step further. Machine language and people language are equivalent for copyright purposes - otherwise software, and for that matter, the MPEG streams contained on a DVD, can't be protected by copyright! But the MPAA, which THRIVES on the fact that machine and human languages are equivalent under copyright law, wants to separate the two under the First Amendment - and it's gonna be damn hard for them to demonstrate LEGALLY (not financially) why they should be allowed to have it both ways.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
If you are willing to ditch W2K, Xine with the Captain CSS plug-in makes watching DVDs in linux a joy.
The core technologies of DVD are the disc and player itself, MPEG-2 video compression, various audio encodings including AC3, and a file system with chapters, menus, and branching.
about a ISP that is not backing down to the MPAA threats
news.com
good timing
http://Lenny.com
You obviously don't know much about how the US judicial system works.
Civil suits are between two parties. Everyone else is an observer, even if it's clear to everyone involved that the plantiff carefully searched for a defendant who 1) didn't have many resources to fight the case and 2) seemed to have the best case for establishing broad precedents.
Once the judgement comes down against the plantiff the details don't matter - the precedence has been established and every subsequent court case in this jurisdiction must consider it. (I won't get into binding vs. non-binding precedents, etc.) This is a powerful tool for suppressing dissent, since every future defendant must prove why the precedence doesn't apply in their case.
Needless to say, this create a HUGE potential for mischief. To balance it, courts allow others affected by any precedence established, but not involved in the specific case, to file briefs that may be considered by the court. These briefs usually illuminate points that one party doesn't want brought up - and the other party *can't* bring up because of the rules of the courtroom. This might result in a reversed judgement, or at least the restriction of the judgement to be non-precedent setting.
The MPAA may be fuming about the content of this brief, but there's not a whole lot they can do about it. Any attempt to suppress it would merely serve to highly just how carefully constrained their case is -- and why it must not be used to establish precedence for suppressing such publications.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I paid attention in civics class. If you think I have no right to discuss this (and potentially learn from others) then you believe that either 1) voters are best when ignorant and apathetic or 2) that only practicing lawyers should have the right to vote. Either way, you are no friend of democracy.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Perhaps the most important quote:
...", the core purpose of copyright. U.S. CONST., art. I, 8 (Copyright Clause). Minimizing First Amendment protections given to code would deter, not promote, the progress of science.
2. Among academics and programmers, communicating in computer code (in addition to or in lieu of a natural language) is essential "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts
While I agree with the conclusion, I don't think the argument is the most important one, either legally or morally in the present case. Legally, the DMCA could stand even if it were not authorized under the Copyright Clause -- because Congress could still be empowered to enact the statute under the Commerce Clause.
Morally, the importance of promoting the arts is salutory, but not at the core of the First Amendment. Even if there were no redeeming social value whatsoever to software content, the First Amendment does not permit government to regulate it (with exceptions not relevant here). The point is that it doesn't matter whether the Court believes the content is good, bad or ugly -- what matters is that it is expressive.
At the end of the day, it is for the marketplace of ideas, and not the government, to decide the worth and worthiness of expressive content.
This, to me, is the most important issue.
I think we all agree that Kaplan was nothing but a paid lackey for the MPAA.
Kaplan doesn't give a damn about the MPAA. I have yet to meet a Federal judge (and I know well over two dozen of them) who doesn't possess a remarkable degree of intransigence and stubbornness. These are not necessarily bad traits in a judge, by the by; you want a judge who is stubborn enough to stand his ground and decide things according to legal principle and the demands of justice, regardless of public opinion.
Brown v Board of Education was a tremendously unpopular decision in much of America, but the Supreme Court simply didn't care. Ditto with Roe v Wade, which to this day causes Supreme Court justices to get mailbags full of hate mail.
By and large, Federal judges cannot be "paid lackeys". A lackey is the inferior of, and subservient to, the person he serves. Federal judges possess such intransigence (and, some would argue, arrogance) that the only thing they consider themselves inferior of and subservient to are abstract notions like law, social justice, individual liberties and so on.
what happens to him then?
We send him lots of mail at his courthouse accusing him of being an intellectual coward who ought to step down from the bench to spare the Judiciary further humiliation. But guess what? That's our only recourse.
Was his decision wrong? Yes. Poorly reasoned? Yes. Was his decision so horrifically negligient as to rise to the level of an impeachable offense? Nope.
We want judges to possess near-ultimate judicial independence. Look at Judge John Sirica, who (some would argue) used sweeping and unprecedented powers of the judiciary to assist a grand jury in its investigation of the Watergate break-in. Nixon hated Sirica and probably spent every waking moment wishing Maximum John would get hit by a city bus.
Nixon challenged Sirica's legal authority both in Congress and in court. The Judiciary Committee refused to even consider impeaching Maximum John; while what Sirica had done was sweeping, it was far from impeachable. The Supreme Court refused to overrule Maximum John; while the Court agreed that Sirica was going like gangbusters, the Court said that Sirica was acting in accordance with the best traditions of the Federal Judiciary.
Now, if the President of the United States can't get rid of one single Federal judge, a judge who possesses lifetime tenure specifically so he can check abuses in other branches of government, do you really think you have any chance of getting Kaplan off the bench because he made a decision you don't like?
It is sad that there is even any question about whether code is language. Can you imagine calculus without notation? Code is good for expressing certain kinds of ideas; English is good for expressing a different set of ideas; and French is better than English for expressing some ideas. Different cultures have different ideas about what is important and the language will reflect this.
This link should work better than the one at the top of the page.
It's a good brief, and it's especially worth reading if you think no lawyer can write anything except impenetrable jargon.
One of its great strengths is the way in which it tries to connect the subject of the case, First Amendment protection for source code, with things judges know about. Judges (and lawyers) for that matter tend to resist learning about technology. Even if they're willing, they have little opportunity. So you have to talk about it in the way they understand.
Early in the brief, we get a couple of lines of Visual Basic. They wouldn't do much in real life, but they illustrate the point. My favorite part of the brief is footnote 4, which compares source code to legal citation: each is impenetrable to outsiders, but each is a clean, compact, and efficient representation, which is transparent to people who speak the language.
The only thing that makes me sad is that I doubt the court will recognize the weight attached to the names on the brief. We all recognize names like Kernighan, Minsky, and Stallman but there's really no way to communicate that weight to an outsider. It's like those newspaper ads demanding that Mumia be released from jail and appointed dictator-for-life--there's lots of names signed at the bottom, and some of them are connected to impressive institutions, but I suspect that they're adjuncts, or junior assistant professors, or leaders of impressively-named organizations that don't do anything because these people invented them.
I keep seeing people on /. saying "use package foo and bar to watch DVDs under Linux".
People, I feel this is the wrong approach. Until I can use software that has NO legal cloud over its head, I refuse to buy DVDs, DVD players or DVD drives.
One of my machines at home threw a CDROM drive night before last. I went to buy another. I had a simple choice: buy a 50x CDROM drive for $X, or buy a 16x DVD drive for 2*$X. The cost delta meant next to nothing to me - either was an incidental, "do you want fries with that" type of purchase. I waffled briefly over buying the DVD drive, then said to myself, "HELL NO! I am NOT going to give the MPAA any satisfaction on this. I WILL stick to my guns, and wait until the DeCSS is held to be completely legal before I buy a DVD. And if that day never comes, then I will never buy a DVD."
I don't want to come off as an extremist, but this is the BEST way we can make the MPAA change their tune: hit them in the ass pocket. Don't buy their crap. Don't give them money. Encourage your friends to do the same.
Just say NO!
www.eFax.com are spammers
We cannot know what the court would have done had it been asked to enjoin a purely English narrative of the DeCSS source, but the note strongly suggests the court's willingness to do so. It is unfathomable that English prose could be a circumvention measure under the terms of DMCA, yet the court intimated that it might have so found. And if DMCA could be read to proscribe English as a circumvention measure, the Constitutional ramifications come into even sharper focus.
The brief in general culminates to this point, which is essentially that the Court enjoined speech to protect the interests of corporate money. Now even the most Republican judge will stop and pause before letting THAT slide. Despite the Republicans and the corporate leaders being age old bedfellows, they still have to face a certain degree of public review. And even the most average Joe Schmoe who couldn't understand the cake recipe, let alone a Perl program, will be able to understand that point. No American, no matter how Republican or right-wing (or Liberal or left-wing) is going to accept a courts decision to enjoin anything on the grounds of protecting corporate money. Ever. It's probably the one thing you can count on Americans to get angry about, actually. As long as the case continues to be presented in this light, the public support will ultimately fall on "our" side.
Very well reasoned and argued, as one would expect given the source.
Perhaps the most important quote:
That point cannot be made often enough. What the MPAA wants to do is use copyright in a way completely antithetical to the reason copyrights were granted to begin with.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
wow. this is a great example. blew me away.
4. If "$plain_text = $file_key ^ $xor_block" seems unapproachable, consider what those not trained in the language of legal citation would make of "111 F.Supp.2d 294, 326 (S.D.N.Y. 2000)." Each is meaningless to those unfamiliar with the language; but each is more precise and compact for those who do understand than would be an English narrative equivalent.
no
on this site is at:
http://cryptome.org/jg-wwwcp.htm
Great info on how the industry is working to stop digital reproduction rights.
Do you have an MP3 collection? A directory full of your favorite music in a single easily-accessible place that lets you determine how, when, and where you listen to it?
Would you like to be able to do the same with movies someday, when the necessary storage space is cheap enough?
I'd like to keep that ability (and the right to exercise it without becoming a criminal). And that's why I oppose access-control schemes of all types. They simply don't do a thing for me as a consumer.
I don't like to see the Federal legislative process brought to bear against my fair-use rights. Unless action is taken on consumers' behalf, the lawmaking-by-payola charade that brought us the DMCA will only get worse.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Wait a minute let's get clear that there are two different kind of impacts.
Your father is dead right that in terms of the effect of the JUDGMENT, that only the parties are bound. That is, whether or not 2600 can put DeCSS on its web site is determined by the outcome of THIS CASE.
On the effect of PRECEDENT, that's part right. The trial judge's opinion has little precedential value. Some other trial judges might give it weight, or might not. Again, your father is right that it is not that big a deal for anyone else.
The place where this veers into the land of incorrectness is the impact that the APPEAL will have. This is to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. When the Second Circuit decides this case, that makes the law for all of the federal trial courts in the Second Circuit that includes NY. A federal trial judge in NY will look at the opinion and see one that he is bound to follow.
In addition, the Second Circuit is one of the most influential federal courts of appeal in the nation. Other federal trial judges and appellate judges, even those not bound to follow the Second Circuit, will be substantially influenced by the opinion.
In sum, now is when the rubber really hits the road. Walking away before this step was not a big deal to uninvolved people. Whatever happens with this appeal will have lasting effect on what others can expect when they walk into court.
The most important piece of insight about court cases came from my dad (a lawyer) a few weeks back.
:-)
He pointed out that, when all is said and done, only two parties (the plaintiff and the defendant) are impacted by a court decision. It is in fact meaningless to everyone else. They can interpret the Constitution any rotten way they want, but only two parties are impacted. I bring this up, because at first I thought this kind of crap (banning DeCSS) was going to make being a programmer (my beloved profession) insufferable in 15 years. But it won't, cause the court is only one arm of the government, and is no more or less corrupt than any other. Witness, the election, sure we were impacted because we may care who the president is, but only Bush and Gore were able to receive relief. In this case only MPAA receives relief (though they don't deserve it). Every other piece of code that breaks the DMCA has to have an injunction brought against it as well. This does not stop you from hacking other copy encryptions (even CSS), it just stop DeCSS. Let them ban it, maybe I'll start my own CSS decryption project and they'll have to come after me. Then you write your own, and they come after you. It still doesn't matter. Trials only affect two parties.
And thank goodness I might add, otherwise I might of sat up nights worrying (and I used to think about this kind of stuff alot) about something as insignificant as the judicial branch.
I think the real problem is that not very many people are informed about what the MPAA is doing and what we can do about it....That is why I got the anti dvdcca shirt and the got decss shirt from copyleft. I get extremely strange looks in the halls, and when people question me about the shirt, I am able to tell them about the oppression from the MPAA and about decss and why source code is free speech and such things..I think if anything is going to be done, we need to get the word out.
want to see the shirt in action? go here
The anti-salmon
As noted further:
This point is not only important, but has a broader relevance on other technology issues, such as the the push to leave out technology options for recording, time-shifting, etc.The case continues to have a wider importance then we first imagined.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In the U.S., it is actually a point of law that any judge is able to rule on any subject (law students may know the case that affirmed this). This means a judge that has no agricultural background can rule on agricultural cases, those with no science background can rule on scientific cases, etc, and that a judge who can't turn on a computer can rule on computer issues. This is necessary (should a case not be tried due to a lack of "expert" judges in a district?), but annoying, resulting in judges issuing decisions that make us shake our heads in confusion.
Because judges are often not experts, they require a case be argued in terms of earlier cases, or rely on expert witnesses. Often, the defendant who "looks better" in the eyes of the law will have "better" expert witnesses and present "more convincing" previous cases to base decisions. A corporation's lawyers will often look better than lawyers representing a hacker's magazine.
For this reason, Amicus Briefs that are as clear as this one are very important. This lets a judge hear what the real experts think, and even confirm the briefs with outside sources.
Of course, it would also help to create a new degree, comp-sci-law, so that all programmers are also lawyers. That way, we can argue these kinds of cases on equal footing, and we make money whichever way a case goes. Maybe a few of us would make it into Congress as well...
We're already there. The lawyers are now telling Prof. Ed Felton of Princeton him that he can't release his promised details on what was wrong with the SDMI watermarking systems, because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Wake up people.
The URL for the Gallery is cited in the amicus brief. I'm proud to point out that among the co-sponsors of this brief there are four Carnegie Mellon faculty, including the dean of the School of Computer Science. MPAA has been keeping a hands-off attitude toward the Gallery, perhaps because they realize how bad it would look if they tried to censor an academic work.
Now we just have to hope that the appeals court can connect enough brain cells to comprehend it.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Back in the early 80's, when HBO was broadcast through the air, the entertainment industry said it was illegal to make your own antenna, but it wasn't. Then they scrambled the signal and told people it was illegal to unscramble it, but it wasn't. Now they are telling people it is illegal to decode some bytes on a disk. It isn't.
The only way the industry was able to make TV scrambling stick was with 2-way communication between the home receiver and the transmitter, because circumventing that system requires sending a fraudulent (illegal) signal to the transmitter. To protect DVDs they will have to force develop a similar system whereby the player must get a new decryption key from the movie company every time you play the DVD. For now they are merely using their time-honored tactic of legal intimidation until the necessary technology comes online. The really significant battle will be between entities like the MPAA and the DVD player manufacturers who decide not to go along. Whoever has the best lawyers will win. Ask OJ.