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DVD Case Follow-Up
sirhan writes "The ACLU made a court brief today concerning the DVD CCA case. The release can be found here." There were actually a number of amicus briefs filed at the same time for this case, and now I think most of them are online. Journalists and publishers, law professors, law professors II, the Association for Computing Machinery, programmers and academics, library and public interest, cryptographers, and Arnold Reinhold. These are all in support of the EFF's appeal in the case, of course. The briefs make good reading because they attempt to convey, in a very direct and concise manner, the arguments of these various groups against the DMCA.
These bills would have satisfied WIPO without doing the sort of violence to our Constitution that the DMCA does.
But they were rejected. I remember reading a news report where Valenti (the guy who compared VCRs to the Boston Strangler) pronounced that a law that did not outlaw circumvention in every case would be "unacceptable". To him, maybe -- but as his VCR pronouncement clearly shows, he and the MPAA shouldn't be in the driver's seat.
In theory you're correct. But CSS was/is the chosen method of the DVD-CCA to control how and where DVD's are played. If the DVD-CCA allowed licencees to put digital outs, firewire ports, MPEG-n streams etc. on their players, the whole CSS thing would be a non-issue.
I hope that at least some of the "amicus curiae" briefs will mention this, since infringement on Free Speech is not the only major Constitutional problem with the DMCA as it is currently written and applied.
Funny how when the "many" are, say, artists who actually create music, and the "few" are, say, major record labels, the good of the few prevails.
Actually, while it is legal to circumvent a work for which you have permission, it is illegal to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that allows you to do so.
And so what the large print giveth, the small print taketh away. Except that it's impossible to take away fair use rights, which derive from the Constitution, and I think it's pretty obvious that access to works is a necesary prerequisite to use, covering it too.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
But does it? Does the DCMA not only make it illegal to circumvent protection of access to copyright material without the copyright owner's (note copyright owner of the protected material, not owner/author of the protection system) permission. If you own the copyright then surely all you have to do is give yourself permission to circumvent the protection mechanism and gain access.
Read the law professors' brief. It explains clearly that:
- Implementing a treaty didn't give Congress the right to break the constitution.
- The WIPO treaty *didn't* require anything like the DMCA. The US proposed DMCA-like language for WIPO, and it was rejected out of concerns much like the ones being brought up in this trial.
In other words, the DMCA can be overturned without having to pull out of WIPO- someone would just have to make another DMCA-like law without the unconstitutional bits, that would implement the sane bits of WIPO (if there are any).
Stuart.
What's the logic behind makeing religious organizations pay taxes to become elegible for government grants for community service programs, while the non-religious organizations that get the grants now are tax exempt?
That's a good general principle, but "the iron isn't hot." On the religeous issue, the topic is in the public eye right now and some people are angry over it. It seems like concentrating on the religeous issue would have a greater chance of succeeding than trying to solve the general case. Once victory is achieved on this one point, then it can later be used toward solving the real problem, both by being a precedent, and by having raised people's awareness.
The public isn't thinking in terms of accountability. Attacking religeous funding may be a way to get them to start.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Dissenter
Dissenter
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
IMHO, the best way to fix the general problem of corporate abuse in the political arena is to take away their ability to grease the palms of politicians and their parties. Please consider not only opposing the DMCA-like bills whenever they come before Congress, but also supporting campaign finance reform. This will take away the biggest weapon that corporations have in influencing legislation more than is just. We are (again IMHO) sliding towards being governed by a de facto plutocracy, something that none of us want to see, no matter how libertarian we might be. So please, purty please, do whatever you think is best to help get campaign finance reform passed so that nefarious legislation such as the DMCA have a much harder time of getting passed in the future.
It is possible to support the free market but not support the market holding the reigns of legislators.
- Rev.--
Or people could just voluntarily ignore it... it's everyone's choice.
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Apologies. It was listed as "library and public interest" in the story summary, but I didn't think that did it justicse, considering that the ACLU, ALA, and EPIC were included in that, and only the ALA was obvious.
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Are you suggesting that CSS was possibly intentionally weakened to allow hackers to get at it, to bring this sort of precedent into existance faster?
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Whether or not 2600 has an injunction against it is an insignificant question next to what the studios are trying to achive.
step 1: Establish precedent for squashing DVD decryption methods, tools or knowledge.
step 2: switch to son-of-CSS - and you can bet that it will be 10e27 * more powerful than CSS was.
If this happens you can say goodbye to DVD on any Open Source OS forever. Also you can say hello to more expensive home DVD players - as newer models are required to have phenomenal computing power to decode this new CSS format. And you can relegate your old machine to watching movies released before son-of-CSS.
I don't think so. I guess it could have been, but it's a big risk for the studios! Probably they were pretty surprised when it got cracked, and maybe it would have been safe much longer if Xing had not screwed up and let a key out of the bag. What I'm suggesting is that they're in damage control mode right now, and will make sure (if they get the chance) that it won't happen again.
The Intellectual Property Clause ... permits grants of exclusive protection only for those "discoveries" in the "useful arts" that would not have been obvious to one reasonably skilled in the art, Graham, 383 U.S. at 6, and only for those "writings" that constitute original expression,
Case closed. Everyone knows that nothing original has come out of Hollywood since Green Acres.
I get allergic smelling hay!
Just send 'em a money order, same amount as a membership. That's the effect you're looking for by joining, right? Give 'em money to help fight the good fight?
Being a member of either the two orgs you mentioned gets you lots of paper in the mail. Save them the cost, save yourself the hassle, fight the doog fight!
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
From Profs. Benkler & Lessig Amici Brief in "MPAA v. 2600" Case
As applied to prohibit DeCSS, the antidevice provision of the DMCA violates the First Amendment. CSS is a device that makes fair and otherwise privileged uses of digitized materials practically impossible. Prohibiting its circumvention in the absolute way that the antidevice provision, as interpreted below, does, would render these materials practically unavailable to the vast majority of users who are not computer geeks. (emphasis mine).
As a side note, is there a legal test for "computer geek?"
At a certain shopping mall in thailand you can now get perfect copies (with encryption still intact) of your favourite DVD for 350 - 400 baht, and prices can be expected to drop further so this whole thing about certain burners not being capable, or CCS being a copy-protection circumvention device, is totally irrelevant..
...the Supreme Court ruled that a technology designed to enable copying of copyrighted works -- the VCR -- could not serve as the basis for contributory infringement liability because it had substantial noninfringing uses...
:)
"Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses."
that made my day.
check out my comic: Essential Tremors
Or option B you could read the post and notice that the second link is to the same press release.
I suppose we could just get rid of the moderation system, since so many people seem to thing it is "highly flawed".
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Personally, I'd be more inclined toward the American Center for Law and Justice than the ACLU.
Constitutionally Correct
Exactly. This is what needs to be addressed in McCain's campaign finance reform bill. I applaud the Libertarian and Constitution parties for their stand on not accepting matching funds. The gov't is forcing all of us to finance the promotion of ideals we don't agree with, and that's wrong.
I have no sympathy for anyone who voted Green in November, either, since the point was about securing matching funds for next time. None for the Reform voters either, since Buchanan abandoned his principles in order to get to the money.
That's precisely how they'd like you to look at it. The truth is that once you start feeding at the federal trough, it's hard to get away from it. If you start accepting their money, they've already started exerting control over you. If the church starts accepting money, the next thing is the gov't will want to dictate acceptable doctrines to preach, or start wanting to collect taxes from churches. No, thanks. This would set a very dangerous precedent.
If GWB really wants to help religious (or any sort really) charities, cut taxes. If I had more money free to do with as I pleased, I'd do more to help others. I already give 10% of my gross to my church, and still pay taxes besides. With taxes reduced there's just that much more I could give directly to charities without gov't bureaucracy as the middleman.
Constitutionally Correct
ACLU Press Release
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Oooh. Bad luck. I didn't click on the link, but I did type in the address. Should've consulted a lawyer first.
By reading this sentence or any of following sentences, or portions thereof, you agree to this EULA. This comment is the copyrighted intellectual property of Kreeblah. Copying and transmitting by any means, including chemical, electrical, and other means, biological, or otherwise, is permitted, provided the copying party remits one U.S. dollar per copy to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to defending freedom from unfair technology-based licensing agreements.
If the ACLU was unhappy with the results that would have come from a win, they could have appealed the remedy to a higher court.
"I do acknowledge the MPAA's goals here - they are entitled to cash for movies."
Small nit - the MPAA is entitled to however much their customers are willing to pay. The marketplace does not reward effort, just results, and fair price is determined by the suppliers and consumers together. In short, the MPAA cannot just set their own price and expect to collect payment, unless they can convince their customers to play along. The MPAA's true owners are the moviegoing fans.
Evan - needs to hit preview before submitting
I hear ya!
Sorry, my spelling sucks. Hit the submit button instead of preview again
Then the mail started.
Every week I'd receive a dozen or more pieces of mail... only one or so from ACLU, but many from liberal political organizations begging me for money.
I approved of most of these organizations. I would have cheerfully given almost all of them money. However, I didn't have any money.
Dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of letters arrived over the next two years. In the end, I'm sure that while I gave $20 to ACLU, it ended up costing liberal political organizations in general far more than $20 to mail me all these fund raising solicitations. So, I felt that my contribution was a net negative for causes I approve of.
And no, I don't believe I was given the option not to have my address sold (or shared, whatever).
You're new here, aren't you?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Thank you for stating this again.
CSS seems to be a way to enforce localization of the disks, and it prevents unlicensed players from being produced.
CSS doesn't prevent the user from making copies to tape, that's the purpose of macrovision. And since there is no cheap, reliable way of copying DVDs in a home setting, you quickly conclude that CSS has nothing to do with the protection of content.
The larger question that no one want to talk about is why the US government is the collection agent and protection racket for record and movie companies. There's more than a whiff of corruption about the entire thing.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
This is going to sound very stupid, but you must look at it not from the standpoint of geekdom, but rather from the standpoint of a scum-sucking lawyer (the good lawyers would also find this idiotic, but they don't seem to count much in the real world).
.exe's you distribute, and included a setup program that, after EULA, ROT13'd them back to usable state, they would be "effectively unusable" in their "encrypted" form. Sure, an evil cracker could reverse-engineer them, but how can a court make a rule about the complexity of the math required to decrypt something? A common user wouldn't have any idea how to un-ROT13 a binary executable without using your WinROT Protection System.
If you ROT13'd all the
Now, if they say that, say, DSA with at least 128 bits is "effective", then what about, say, an elliptical cipher of a certain arbitrary length. Of what about some new-fangled one? How big a Blowfish key do you need, or what about if you use Twofish?
This would obviously be unconstitutionally vague, and so they would have to either allow our WinROT encrypted binaries the same protection as the almost (but not quite) equally flawed DVD CSS, or they'd have to do the only sane thing and blow the law back up the location it came from.
Worst case scenario: When puzzle books have to be reprinted to explicitly include permission to solve the included puzzles, we just might be able to get a few people to dress up like natives and destroy large shipments of coffee destined for Washington DC.
When the previos poster mentioned "the many," and the few," I'm not sure he meant people. I think he meant greenbacks. In that case, his statemet make sense, which is probably the most frightening aspect of anyone who attempts to effect a change that benefits the cumsumer at large.
--
--
Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
> So we shouldn't fight? pooey
Never said that. Sometimes you have to fight, knowing you're going to lose. The other way is to lose the argument in such a way that others start to lose, too. Maybe if you can make enough people lose with you, then they will get concerned, too.
As long as this is a 'Geek issue', we're going nowhere. The biggest benefit to us is that Hollywood has whetted their appetite, and are now going after general recording rights - and in a way that's going to hit time-shifters and commercial-zappers. Now maybe Joe Sixpak is going to be on our side.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
if religous orginizations want money from the government, they can start paying taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
well, considering the mpaa had enough power to get a kid in another country arrested, without evidence, I would say its global.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Save the whales, the birds, the trees (ha!), and the waters, stop the $BADPEOPLE from doing $BADTHING to $PLACE, fill out the form, turn in the survey, be aware of $BADTHING, write your congressperson about $BADTHING, write $BADPEOPLE about $BADTHING and tell them that $BADTHING isn't a good thing, send more money, here are some stamps can you send us some money, we don't guilt-trip you by sending you stamps can you send us some money, did you know about $BADTHING, send us some money and we'll fight it....ARRGGHHH.
None of the stuff I'm talking about is from the ACLU, and all of it started after I sent in my name and money.
I know, I'm a moron.
I'm happy to just get some bills in the mail, now.
I do get local ACLU news, candiate summaries, and the like, too, and that stuff I don't mind. But this other stuff....
-- PondScum, SamThe
The way forward is to show that it is incorrect to have the encryption, but that it is okay for the copyright owners to enforce their copyright, within reason. .txt or unenecrypted PDF available for $0.00...... ... they sell VCRs which are capable of breaking copyright law, but then make sure that the general public are so scared/incapable of programming them, that they do not achieve the desired results.
I can publish a book for $5.99, and get $5.99 a copy (less costs - let's say $1), or make a PDF (encrypted) available for $4.99 (a la Adobe's new idea), or make a
I'd go for the highest profit, not the best deal for the consumer, were I a publisher.
I do acknowledge the MPAA's goals here - they are entitled to cash for movies. The question is how they get it. Encryption shouldn't be an issue - I can photocopy a book, tape-to-tape a VHS tape, burn an audio CD onto a CDR; I expect the same ability with DVD. And this is, to the consumer, where it hangs. It may or may not ne legal, but I have always had the ability to make my own copies (for legal or illegal purposes), and now the MPAA are trying to remove this ability, regardless of my intent. Better encryption is not the issue at all - it's enforcement of copyright, which, when using technology to make the copies, is impossible without artifical intelligence.
My PC, or any other device, is not able to make an accurate legal judgement of whether or not I am allowed, under my local law, to make the copy I am requesting of it. Even if it could, it would still be trivial to circumvent. So technological protection is duff by defenition.
We should just make it tricky, like Sony et al already do
The public issuing of a Windows-only, poor-quality, DVD copying software, approved by the MPAA, would be their best solution here, as far as I can see. It would mean all that Napster and VHS really achieves - get a poor quality copy, or buy the real thing. Leave DeCSS users alone, so long as they don't make this kind of thing available to AOL users.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Two things to keep in mind:
First, the only cases that can be cited as precedent are those that have been appealed and adjudicated at the Appeals Court level (or higher). Precedent will be set in this case. It's going to be a landmark case, I don't think there's any doubt about it. And no matter the outcome of the court's decision, you can bet it will eventually end up with the U.S. Supreme Court. There's just too much at stake for both sides.
Second, courts don't like to deal with constitutional arguments for a variety of reasons. If there's sufficient precedent or other laws that apply below the level of the U.S. Constitution, courts will seek to avoid arguments that center on it alone. Another reason to think this case will make it all the way up to the Supreme Court because there are no precedent cases that directly relate to the specific facts of this case.
It will be interesting to see what the final outcome will be. Since Copyrights and Patents stem directly from the U.S. Constitution it seems to me that this case richly deserves a hearing before the Supreme Court. Which way will they decide (if they choose to hear it)? Does the RIAA or the MPAA have any major presence in any states where the Governor is the President's brother?
The link labelled "copyrighted link" below is (c) 2001 by shepd.
By clicking on the "copyrighted link" and decrypting the data using ROT-13 (only on the alpha characters) you are hereby required to pay the copyright holder $1000 US PER CLICK.
Payment details can be acquired by simply emailing me at me email address as specified by following the instuctions of signature at the end of this letter and applying them to my email address as specified as a link on my username.
Show me you support the DMCA by either clicking on the link and contacting me for payment options, or, if you prefer, don't click the link.
Can you resist my click attraction?
And remember, I can do this... let me quote slashdot:
"All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster."
Thanks slashdot.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
#vapyhqr
vag znva()
{
cevags("Uryyb Jbeyq");
erghea(0);
}
/* Gur Bar Zvahgr Jnvgvat Crevbq Qbrfa'g Fgbc Gebyyf Naq Znxrf Fynfuqbg FHPX! */
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Yes it would.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Actually, Haloid Xerox Company introduced the xerographic copier in the early 'fifties, but they weren't widely available until the middle to late 'fifties. Coin-operated copiers would copy one page for five cents, and the librarian kept a supply of nickels on hand to make change. For reference, beginning in 1957, a 6-1/2 ounce Coca Cola was seven cents for a short while, then they upped the bottle to ten ounces and raised the price to ten cents. Before that a "coke" was a nickel.
Religious organizations can get government money for charitable projects. They just have to demonstrate that the charity is distinct from the religion - essentially, that they're not saying "Join our church and we'll give you food."
What Duhbya's "faith-based" charity program allows is essentially federally funded churches, as long as the churches use some of the money for charity. My local newspaper had an article today which talked about some effects of a similar program already going on in Texas. The interesting part was that about 1/3 of the end recipients of the charity said that they had been pressured to join a religious organization or to change their beliefs.
The federal government has absolutely no right to use my tax money to convert heathens to some governmentally preferred religion. I would really like to read the text of the bill, when it becomes available. I'd like to see how they make it sound like "We're going to give money to churches" isn't a "law respecting an establishment of religion."
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
People then seemed to be significantly more willing to stand up, grab a rifle, and really enforce their rights. So far, peaceful legal opposition has stopped the more abrupt, flagrant abuses of power. Very little seems to be happening to stop the more gradual erosion of personal liberty.
I really have to thank the MPAA for being stupid enough to let this case get public. Anything that gets more people to realize what kind of state their freedoms are in is, at least in part, a good thing.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
Who knew that the moving picture box could cause such controversy?
-antipop
The ACLU is more a group of local organizations than an overarching national organization. The local organizations each tend to focus on different things from one another, and vary in ideology from uber-left to kinda semi-conservative. You should go to a meeting of your local chapter & see what you think.
I just noticed the site
http://www.mit.edu/~ocschwar/C_English.html
The site has perl scripts which convert between C and English. I bet such general tools can't be banned by any legislation, not even the DMCA. And so far, nobody seems to have challenged the legality of the narrative versions of DeCSS written (or spoken) in English.
If something like eng2c was included in the open source OS distributions, maybe that would make it safer to distribute software unwanted by certain corporations?
I fail to see what you have against the Defense Contract Management Agency. Dirty bastards, managing defense contracts!
oh wait, you're talking about the DMCA. It always seems to me that people mix up acronyms when talking about organizations and law. People seemed to have a grudge against the IBM AS/400 community for going on a rampage against emulation and ROM sites when it was actually The Interactive Digital Software Association that was terrorizing the emulation community.
I don't mean to be grammar police, but please get your acronyms straight.
Does anyone on /. know of a natural language description of the DeCSS algorithm? I mean, no-one can complain about that, and if it's clear enough any newbie could have a blast at coding it. There'd be more implemetations of DeCSS than you could shake a stick at.
These MPAA guys are has-beens. They don't know it yet, but their form of coarse-grained media will only be increasingly marginalised in the future. They're trading for political favours on the remnants of their glory days, using the last of their glamour to embroil politicians in a fight with the intellectually progressive elements. They won't be thanked for this in the long run.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
I was disappointed at the amount of junk mail I started receiving after joining the ACLU. It was mainly from non-profits that I generally approve of like Planned Parenthood - but junk mail is junk mail.
"Emmanuel Goldstein's take on this recent court development, tonight at 9."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Not in my country. Yankee imperialists fuck off. New Zealand is a sovereign state. The yanks can put pressure on our spineless gummint, but the people won't take it.
Waiting for the -1; flamebait
Nietzche is dead - God
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
I'm probably joining a flood of similar replies here, but I always like replying to the "other side". So basically you're saying that a corporation can put whatever terms they want on something I own? And I have to live with it because there's a card in the box that says so? Hardly. Here's the hard truth for you: I buy something, I own that thing, I can do whatever I want with it short of selling/distributing copies. I can decrypt it, encrypt it again, make 1800 copies (MAKE 1800 copies), bury it, resell it (and not keep a copy, lol), piss on it . . . I think you get the idea. As for your "it's illegal because it's illegal" argument is the very essence of circular reasoning. And a small circle it is.
>> 'fair use' has gotten stretched way out of context.
>> 'fair use' is the right to quote from a work in limited excerpts.
>> it's also the ability to make reasonable backup copies (backup
>> copies are those things you then put in a vault and don't use regularly).
What does it matter if you use them regularly or not? They're your copies, do with them as you will. Keep one at home, one at work, one at school, one in a locker, one in your car, etc, etc.
>> It is NOT the right to strip off the copy protection and spew
>> it all over the 'net anonymously to strangers.
Since when was this the issue at hand? I don't think we're condoning this type of behavior. We're talking about "stripping off the copy protection" so we can use it how we want to in our own homes and our own DVD players, not "spew it all over the 'net" - just because it's possible for this to happen doesn't justify this law. It's possible (and fairly easy) to kill someone with a knife, yet are they illegal? No. Why? Because there are MORE USES THAN JUST THE ILLEGAL ONES.
>>>>A CSS encrypted disk requires the key area to contain some information. Commercially available DVD burners cannot copy into that region, so copies of a protected disk cannot be made. The copy protection comes in with the artificial scarcity of burners capable of setting the key area.>>>> There are obviously burners out there that can write to this sector (how else would there even be such disks?) so it doesn't really matter how many people have or can get get the technology. The fact is: with the proper equipment you can make a direct copy of a region coded DVD, therefore CSS doesn't protect copyright per se, but this should be a third-string argument at best, because it legitimizes the DMCA to a point we do not want to.
So we shouldn't fight? pooey
Yeah, that is probably the ultimate goal: to get the average American on our side. And we will, once they start trying to play other region DVDs, copying DVDs to VHS, etc, etc. At least I hope so.
I'm just jokin' around. Pretty clearly a lot of people are banding together at last! :-)
--hongpong.com
Good lord, that's the longest acronym I've ever seen! Hardly a "nice abstraction!"
Everyone's going to look at the title and say, "Damn, I don't even know what NAIS means. Screw this!"
--hongpong.com
I think more attention needs to be given to this key phrase in the Act. Skimming over the briefs, it seems that the EFF's appeal is the only one that comes right out and says that the circumvention in question does not even intersect the Act because by selling a copy of a DVD the copyright owner is giving the purchaser the authority to access its content.
This should be made into a firm component of judicial doctrine regarding copyright--that even when the content is digital and protected, the legal owner of a copy is always deemed to have the copyright owner's authority to access the copy, and that this presumption of authority is part and parcel of copy ownernship.
-----------------------------------
--When you buy proprietary software, you don't get better software. What you get is the right to complain about it.
so it may be awhile before the law is truly struck down
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1) http://www.aclu.org
2) "join the ACLU"
3) "read our privacy policy"
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
BdosError
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
"If you start accepting their money, they've already started exerting control over you." Have you looked at the IRS requirements for a church to get a tax exemption? Giving churches a tax exemption gives government the power to say what a church is, and IMO that's already too much power. I'd tax the church itself as an entertainment business and exempt church charities on the same rules as other charities.
Actually, the court decision sounds more like:
5. You tell someone where a key salesman is, where to find a book on locksmithing, or where to find a group discussing keys.
There are people doing 10 years in Leavenworth just for telling the wrong person (a federal narc) where to find a particular kind of salesman... I disagree with those laws too, but you aren't going to get the courts to declare them unconstitutional on 1st Amendment grounds.
1) The President and Congress do not have the power to make a treaty that violates the Constitution.
2) As I understand it, the worst provisions of the WIPO were put in at the insistence of the corporate whores representing the US, and the DMCA goes well beyond that.
"Before that a "coke" was a nickel" Is that where the phrase "nickel bags" originated? ;)
I like what the ACLU said about links. They are "just digital footnotes." A very apt description.
The difference is that the curch run after school program is much more likely to try to brainwash the kids into believing.
I must disagree with you. Taxpayer funding of a wide range of parties is important to secure the diversity in politics. So much so, that if anything, I'd prefer the political parties to be government funded, and donations to the parties outside a small membership due, outlawed.
What you see in countries like the US, and UK, is that the large parties get a hegemony because they get almost all the public exposure, and because they are the ones with an apparatus big enough to secure solid campaign funding, and most government funding is based to heavily on their election numbers.
To further promote diversity, I'd like to see a government funding scheme for parties that give the smaller parties significantly more per member or vote than the larger parties. Of course, if as a result of that the smaller parties get hugely successfuly, then their funding per member or vote would drop as a result.
Hopefully that would mean that the ideologies and policies of the parties would start accounting for more than their fundraising skills and their current economic foundation.
It never good to lose. You assume it will go to the Supreme Court. Its like rolling a dice.
The only question is with which notions to brainwash them. My personal belief is that children should be brainwashed to think logically, to be inquisitive, and to be self-reliant. Thus my children would not be going to one of these "faith based" programs. However, for those parents with different values, who will raise their children to be narrow-minded religious zealots anyhow, what is the harm of allowing them to send their children to the brainwashing institution of their choice?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Not likely. Assuming 2600 wins, they only need to win on one of those three grounds (or some other ground). There is no need for a judge to stick their neck out to establish that "Restrictions on linking are restraint of free press" if they decide that "The DCMA circumvention clauses are not a valid use of constitutional power".
I can hope that all three are held, but I expect not. Well I guess if it goes to a N judge panel (say the suprime court) some judges may rule on (1) others on (2) and others on (3), but I'm not sure if that eastablishes all three as legal doctrone, or only any (if any!) of the three that get a majority...
Besides, it's not just about $. An organization that has more members has better standing, I would think.
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Read page 13 of the ACLU amici... it states..
"The constitutional interest embodied in fair use, however, do not evaporate merely because a copyright owner uses technologocal wrappers to protect copies of its work. And just as Congress could not repeal the fair use provision of US copyright law without creating serious conflicts with the First Amendment, it cannoe accomplist the same result indirectly by banning all technologoes through which fair use can be made."
Ka-BOOM.
It's impressive that our Congress (Specifically) has the balls to squash the First Amendment.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Well, I've been on a fishing trip... the DMCA is really flakey, more than anything. Having been born from the UN sponsered WIPO (which is mostly funded by private industry) and spawned into a monster.
..."
.substantial non infringing uses"
7 9.html
Interresting comments from the Senate Discussion..
These are comments about a version of the bill that was later changed.
Can you guess which Senator said these remarks?
"It thus should be about as clear as can be to a judge or jury that, unless otherwise specified, nothing in this legislatuion should be interpreted to limit manufacturers of legitimate products with substantial noninfringing users - such as VCRs and personal computers
"As important, the amendment reflected the working assumption of all of my colleagues that this bill is aimed fundamentally at so-called "black boxes" and not at legitimate products that have
But that's not what heppened. I think honestly that Congress was brainwashed into thinking that they were protecting an industry from Chinese pillage. I remember probably 20 stories on NPR about the poor movie industry having no protection from piracy. They had no idea that the MPAA would take it's new found freedom and create a virtual monopoly on DVD device manufacturing and distribution.
It really is a shame that nobody in our great Congress understands!! But atleast Orin Hatch (The original DMCA Sponser nonetheless) has all but said it was a mistake.. even going so far as to invite the creator of Napster to speak with him! ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/co)ntent/archive/141
What is sad, is that I used MY tax dollars paying politicians et cetera to come up with this law (I personally paid 33 cents to each one, if my figuring is right), and I am helping pay for the legal cost of overturning it. Damn.
Pan
Ohh, and the comments were from Senator Ashcroft. He even mentions the Betamax case as a standard
for the DMCA to abide by. ( http://www.hrrc.org/html/DMCA-leg-hist.html
)
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
These are several, strong briefs attacking the DCMA and CSS from several different angles: authority, freedom of speech, freedom to link, unconstitutionality of the act. I can't imagine that much will be left standing once the courts are through. Hollywood may have bought Congress and the White House, but they haven't bought the Judiciary -- yet.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The parallel with recent events is so obvious that I'm convinced this was written to double as a deadpan poke at the antics of the DVDCCA, MPAA and co.
It's all well and good to be self-congraturlatory about these briefs (and yes, they are great work), but I would like to see stories/discussion on what the other side is up to.
After all, what the enemy is doing should be just as interesting and important news as what we are doing ( why else would Slashdot include so much danged MS coverage, anyway... ;) )
Worse, it would make hash of the First Amendment. Even under existing contribution regulations, the IRS is proposing to regulate Web links on pages published by non-profit organizations. McCain-Feingold would open the floodgates to similar abuses against any individual or organization in the country.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
'Cuz if double DES and triple DES were just as strong, then nobody would consume the extra CPU cycles or hardware traces to do 50% more computation, just to have the same results.
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It wouldn't really matter if it wasn't constitutional anyways since the constitution is more or less a recommendation for laws rather than hard limits.
Wrong. The constitution exists to prevent the tyranny of the majority -- in this area, it has absolutely firm limits on what is allowed. It's largely a list of restrictions on what the government is allowed to do.
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Also, "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" doesn't have any mention of "Linux" or "open source" or anything like that. In fact, even if it did, I would think the subject matter would be influenced by what its readers want to read, not by what some random guy named Rob (or CmdrT4c0) wants to see.
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But suffice it to say that even if DMCA is struck down, there will be a lot more fighting to do.
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Oh bah, so they make one political decision once in a while. That doesn't mean they should instantly be regarded as corrupt.
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Not to mention that the DMCA is just the implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty that the US signed, along with many other countries. So there's a lot of political motivation to not overturn DMCA.
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You'd need someone who would be willing to do the following:
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The good of the many (MegaCorp, Inc.) outweighs the good of the few (the lone individual who's hard to control).
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No doubt. From the cases I've seen where the feds managed to decrypt some suspected files, often the key was gotten directly from the user in some way (cache laying around on disk), rather than brute forcing the password, because such human engineering efforts take less time.
For instance, which would cost more? 10e27 as much brute forcing equipment? Or financing a tactical operation to get someone to leak the key from the inside, and provide enough money to keep that person from being exposed? After a certain point, the something akin to the latter becomes more cost-effective. (though the advantage of the former is that it can sometimes be done with mere brains and time, which are things that bored college students often in abundance)
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Correct. Actually to be more specific, the Constitution is supposed to be an enumeration of *all* the powers that the federal government has. The regularly ignored 9th and 10th amendments emphasize this point, reiterating that powers not explicitly granted to the federal government are reserved to the people and the states. Of course this means that the majority of what the federal government does is unconstitutional, but that argument won't work very well on April 15th.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
What I was thinking (although I don't really see any use for such an OS . . .) was to distribute an encryption key for the binaries to be encrypted with, and compile the decryption key into the kernel. Kind of like a public-key/private-key system on an operating system level.
On the other hand, if the operating system was open-source, an encryption/decryption key generation prog could be distributed with it for people building their own distros. For security purposes, perhaps, only programs encrypted for that specific distro (perhaps a bank's internal distribution, or a DoD network) would run. And they wouldn't run on other systems.
At any rate, I figured that if the DVD format was upheld by the DMCA, there could be threats from it on the reverse-engineering front.
"Encryption" is simply the word we use to describe information that is stored in an unconventional format. One could conceivably write an operating system that uses Blowfish-encrypted binaries as its standard binary format. It wouldn't be the quickest OS since it wouldn't use processor-native code, but if it were released as binary-only, would it be protected against reverse-engineering under the DMCA?
There wasn't any need for hacking the Xing executable - bruteforcing everything from the crap algorithm itself would had been just as easy.
it's in my head
There is no really big change comming. What is being proposed is alowing "Faith Bassed" organizations to bid on "charitable" contracts. They can already do that by creating a seperated organization with a supposedly independent administration. Essentially, the "faith bassed" groups would no longer be hobbled with extra administration costs in order to compete to do good works. They will have to meet all the qualifications of non faith bassed organizations. That's a far cry from establishing an official religion.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
OK, I violated your stinking EULA contract. No need to make a federal case of it or search my house. Here's the stupid DVD, now give me my money back. Contract over, piss off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't understand why no one challenges the premise that CSS is a copyright protection device.
Why is it accepted as fact when it is obvious that CSS has nothing to do with copyright protection - a CSS encrypted disc can be duplicated ad nauseam just like an unencrypted disc.
Why doesn't someone just state the obvious - CSS is simply about generating more money by creating artificial market barriers and designated hardware vendors.
Maybe then the whole case will be dismissed as a non-copyright issue which has nothing to do with the DMCA...
Most Courts of Appeal do not announce which judges will hear the case until the day of oral argument. That way, the parties cannot try to tilt their briefs to attempt to influence specific judges.
Usually three judges hear an appellate case. The court can also hear it "en banc" which means that every full-status judge on the court sits on the case. Even when only three judges hear the case, they usually circulate the opinion to the non-sitting judges to see if anyone has big problems with it before releasing it.
The result is a much more intensive examination of the legal issues, not as subject to the biases of any one judge.
Yes - I like the idea of doing a Slashdot brief. After all, Slashdot readers (mostly Technical type people) have a huge interest in ensuring that the development of Open Source, Free (as in speach) software is allowed to continue.
I'd certainly sign up to this. Anyone else feel like joining in? What about CmdrTaco and the other Slashdot guys - would you be interested in this?
Of course this is scarcely exclusive to the DMCA. There are a lot of attempts underway by various interests that would allow them to defacto write their own laws about their products. Shrinkwrap licenses are another excellent example. If a company is allowed to place restrictions in addition to copyright as required conditions of gaining access to their products, then they are effectively allowed to legislate additions to copyright. Hell, if shrinkwrap licenses are deemed to be legal, those companies don't really need copyright protection either; they can just put "no copying for any reason" as one of their shrinkwrap terms and they've gotten all the protection of copyright and then some. It's ludicrous.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
we have to look at the amount of money involved here, and realize that the current administrateion seems to e planning to run the government, 'like a corporation.' There's good and bad to that, and I think we're about to see the bad.
Regardless of the merits of the arguments, I expect to see money win, here. I regret having become somewhat cynical about this.
Nor do I expect anything better out of the Supreme Court, any more.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The 40 bit key length of CSS was almost certainly due to the export restrictions that existed at the time. As much fun as conspiracy theories are, a 40 bit key corresponds just too well with the 40 bit export limit when CSS was designed.
There are plenty of fast algorithms that can use 128 bit keys and are quite fast and efficient. Even tripple DES (112 bits) is fast and easy with a little dedicated hardware. 2^128 is a whole lot more than 2^40, in fact 2^88 times harder to brute force. 2^88 is approx 3e26, so your 10e27 is just about right for CSS-II with a 128 bit key length.
Of course, all the key length in the world isn't going to help when the key is stored in a software-based player and a pair of anonymous German hackers team up with a 16-year old kid for a not-profit-motivated reverse engineering effort.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
New Story: 1970s Newsflash
A radical new paper-industry company, known to insiders as "Xerox", are now in court against a coalition of publishers, including Mills&Boon, Future Publishing, Penguin, Black Swan.
It appears that the Xerox corporation are planning to introduce a radical new machine, which they claim will soon be commenplace in offices around the world. This new machine will be capable of making accurate paper copies of any book, magazine, or other publication ever made, without any payment being made to the original publisher or author.
It has been suggested that in thirty years' time, it would be possible for Xerox users to use the same technique to copy movies for their own private use.
Surely the whole world must be united in stopping the evil Xerox corporation.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
"Almost" I'm sure this was the plan from the very start. In fact I would not be surprised to learn that it was planned out with the people now writing about it. In this sense it was a good thing the lost the first trail and we now have a chance to just maybe take it all the way to the top. I agree with you this is a *very* good thing.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Yes, indeed, and it is very important to note. When practicing civil disobedience, it is very important that the case ends up in court, and the higher the court the better. Hopefully, at some level, in some court, there is some judge who gets a clue, and understands that the law is unjust, or that there are other concerns that must be valued higher, for example the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in our case Article 19 is important. Then, there will be a powerful drive towards social change, that's what you aim for.
If you go around breaking the law, and try to hide the fact that you break it, there is little drive towards social change. It could be that you make the law effectively unenforceable, but you might as well see more unjust laws.
So, take pride in what you do.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The idea of granting protection for copyrighted material is a good one however the current implementations have all been bad. I seriously doubt that they can be modified enough to protect individual rights Vs the Studios and the rights of the artists. The Studios supported the DMCA because it insured that they would not be taken out of the process at any time in the near future. It also makes them money. Anyone who seriously believes that the studios are trying to protect the artists rights with the DMCA needs to visit a shrink most promptly. The only solution to this situation is for a new system to be developed. An open source development process would be perfect for systems of this type in my opinion. We all know that if the DMCA is struck down the MPAA would start the next day pushing for it to be replaced with a new and possibly worse system. How would you protect the disparate rights of the Studios, the Artist, and the public? Remember the system while granting fair use would have to prevent or make duplication of the media harder.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I've written letters to my congressmen about the DMCA (as EVERYONE here should, not just emails, but actually paper letters). I got only one response and that was from Senator John Kerry.
In his letter, he wrote, "... court rulings will, to a large extent, determine the strength of this law."
It angers me to no end to know that our congress knowingly passed an overly broad law in order to satisfy an international treaty, but have left it to the courts to figure out what it means. Shouldn't they know what it means and understand the consequences BEFORE they pass it?
Remember that the DMCA was written to comply with the WIPO Copyright Treaty. In an effort to kiss the asses of foreign governments and multi-national corporations with huge donation pockets, the DMCA was passed by a unanimous vote (it was actually a hand vote, so there's no record, but I've seen the word unanimous used).
-Steve
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I would like to think that all of us, worldwide, could help fight this, but the question comes to mind: Is this a global issue, or an isolated (American) issue?
I would like to hope that in the worst case scenerio having other countries without these laws may still provide hope for those without. However with recent events (i'm thinking of the whole yahoo! vs France issue here), I'm concerned that this may be the initial step in a globalized domino effect.
eno.
Fair use, as you point out, gives me the right to make a backup copy. But I can also make as many as I want -- so long as I do not resell or otherwise redistribute them. If I want to back it up to hard disk, that's my business and DeCSS gives me that capability.
The problem with corporate entities deciding what I can and cannot copy is that they don't have my interests at heart nor are they interested in protecting my rights. They like the idea of forcing people to buy a DVD and a VHS tape of the same movie to watch in two rooms. They want to make me buy a CD for home use and a cassette for use in my Jeep. And, by preventing me from copying anything, they can insure that I buy them again if I ever damage the copies I have.
Your claims about the validity and legality of shrinkwrap licenses are equally unfounded. Show me a history of court cases that have held shrinkwrap licenses to be binding.
Troll.
one has to winder how this DMCA would affect modchips.. or are they illegal already? i dont know, i have one, i like my burned games ;) all backups of ones i bought, ofcourse *ahem*.
according to an article on the ACLU website, DMCA "prohibits manufacturing or offering technology -- such as DeCSS -- that allows users to bypass measures that protect access to copyrighted works." -- wouldnt a modcip fit this category? and if so, how do they plan to get the thousands of distributors of modchips? should be an interesting battle.
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
If they then turn around and say 'you can't make a DVD player, it can copy _our_ stuff', you say, well, fine. SONY can't make DVD players either - those players can copy _my_ stuff! (A large reason why DVD player manufacturers aren't guilty of breaking the DMCA is that they are 'commercially viable')
Note well that the new ~$3000 PowerMacs from Apple have a DVD-RW, _and_ firewire ports. The $1600 model has DVD-ROM and firewire. And Darwin has the drivers. (Or should anyway.) There's got to be some sort of interesting & useful hardware hacks in there. [Glares at tangled pile of silly analog cables in his entertainment center]
The free speech argument is all well and good, but this seems like a much faster (and clear cut) way of dismantling this hideous law.
The other interesting thing, reading the briefs, is how many different arguments are being made here:
:-).
1) Source code == free speech
2) Restrictions on linking are restraint of free press
3) The DCMA circumvention clauses are not a valid use of constitutional power
Wow, in one case, all three of these (very important) pieces of case law are getting argued. This could set a lot of precedents in all the areas Your Rights Online cares about.
Hell, let's file a Slashdot brief. I want to be in on the action.
But seriously, each of these points is outlined by experts and concerned parties in the area, with relevant citations of law, and (best of all) easy to read explanations of *why* these points are relevant.
Can the MPAA lawyers counter this? Well, they are going to try like hell to do so... and they have every reason to expend a *lot* of money on this case now that the stakes are clear. But for now, I'm encouraged by how support is rallying for the good guys.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Yeah, but I don't think you go far enough.
Imagine you're a musician. You're poor, so you use consumer grade equipment (reasonable now that we have good desktop computers, midi, sound cards and cd burners. Nice as a studio rig is, you can get by)
The *same* mechanisms that 'protect' music from being copied if you don't own the copyright can *also* prevent you from making copies of music for which you *do* own the copyright. And yet breaking those 'protections' is illegal, because you might violate someone else's copyright in order to fully exercise your own.
If someone can defend that, I'd like to hear it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
But try as I might, I can't find anything on their site about privacy. I've joined the EFF only after making sure they weren't going to sell/release my info. It doesn't look like the ACLU has the same types of policies.
Anyone know if it's possible to join organizations like the ACLU or Americans United for the Seperation of Church and State (www.au.org) in such away that privacy is assured? Also, is it generally better to join the national ACLU or a local chapter (both have web sites...)
Believe it or not, I emailed the local ACLU branch and didn't get a decent answer. I'm guess they're pretty busy fighting evil. ;)
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The official privacy policy is here:
j oin.shtml
http://www.aclu.org/privacy.html
it says,
"However, the names and postal addresses of ACLU members, including those who join through the ACLU Freedom Network website, may be exchanged or rented to other organizations or publications under the procedures outlined below.
Members who join through the ACLU Freedom Network website are provided with an opportunity to opt out of this exchange."
but I couldn't find the opt-out button on their signup page (https://secure20.client-mail.com/aclulink/forms/
), just a way to manually request that they opt you out via an email address, which sucks.
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Because, by loosing the previous case, this will allow the case to possible be driven up to the supreme court. If it had been won, then there was a possibility that the MPAA would of just moved on... leaving the DMCA in place.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Of course you can... but here's the catch: there's nowhere you can get the tools to do so. Indeed, as these tools can possibly be used to circumvent, their distribution is forbidden. So, unless you are not only a musicer, but also a good programmer, capable of writing your own tools, you are effectively banned from circumventing the protection mechanism. See this post for more details
Didn't work then. Doesn't work now.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
One of my more paranoid friends pointed out to me the Federalist Society, on the basis that it is an association of judges with their own agenda, and that it is a conservative agenda. If you check out their website, it is quite the sedate affair.
This is contrasted with the very unsedate anti-federalist sites like this one, which are all a hoot, and read *every* thing the federal government does as a con, a gype, and a fake..
However there is a point here which is well made, given broader evidence by our experiences of the past few months.
There are many judges that tend to lean one way or another. Judges do NOT live in a vacuum. Commercial interests, via their lawyers and bean counters, are out for the maximum number of beans in the pot.
Aside from the obvious joke on the effects of eating too many beans (combined with lawyers, etc.), I would want to know more of the possible conflicts of interests of the judge(s) involved. You can bet that the corporate interests choose a judge that they thought would be the most sympathetic to their cause. They would be stupid to do anything else
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"faith-based" charity federal funding
Just a note about this:
There are lots of doling-outs of federal money that are of a dubious nature. And even more uses of federal money by organizations that somebody could object to. Anybody could probably come up with 10 examples of groups receiving federal funding whose idealogies -- whether "religious" or not (and most all of them are in some sense or another) -- are objectionable in some way. We could start with the Republican and Democratic parties, if you like.
Rather than being worried that the feds are giving religious organizations money, we should be sure that no organization is favored over another trying to do the same thing -- except, perhaps, on bases that we can agree upon, such as effeciency, desired results, etc.
Bottom line: don't make it so religious organizations can never receive public funding for projects the public would approve of. Just hold them to the same standards of accountability you'd hold any other organization to.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
One <a> tag nexts inside another <a> tag. Causing everthing to be screwed up. Please review html code before submitting.
Trust the source!
It is good that they are attacking the very constitutionality of the DMCA, as it does very clearly violate our rights as given by the first amendment. If they can successfully prove the DMCA is in violation of the first amendment, and therefore the supremacy clause of the Constitution, then it is an issue that will be forever buried -- no court in the future (no U.S. court, anyways) would be dumb enough to try and overturn that. If it's constitutionality was not tried, then future copyright laws might give the DMCA an additional inroad into law.
That, and the Supreme Court typically only votes on major cases involving constitutional law. This is a good way to make sure it ends up high on the priorities list.
--
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I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
We've "known all along" that the challenged DMCA provisions won't survive Supreme Court scrutiny. At least some people at the MPAA and RIAA are at least as smart as we are. So it's safe to assume that they have already begun a fallback plan in case of defeat. And it doesn't take a lot of observation to figure out a major part of it: Shift the arena of conflict from criminal to civil law. That way if you don't do what they want, they can sue your ass for violating a contract that you agreed to.
Here's how they're doing it:
(1) Make shrink-wrap and click-through EULAs enforcable. Anybody remember UCITA? Well how about this: You buy their DVD. By purchasing it you agree to only play it on approved hardware. And you agree not to copy any material from it for any reason. Even after the statutory copyright period expires (goodbye public domain and fair use). Oh yes, and you agree to never loan it or give it to anyone who might do these things. And to be subject to damages if they do so. And let's have no sniveling about rights. You gave up your rights, remember. You agreed.
(2) Get vendors to build in hardware-level limits on what you can do. Hello IBM, Intel, and the NCTIS T.13 Committee! Why, it looks like the proposed CPRM standard! Gee, this is neat: If you can't buy a digital player with a digital output, or you can't buy a hard drive that will store a watermarked music file, problem is solved. And don't think you'll get around this by finding some vendor whose gear doesn't include the restrictions. Because, even if you do, you agreed not to use it (see para.1 above).
And the diabolical thing about all of this is that, once it's in place, all a content-provider has to do is haul you into civil court for violating the EULA. And if they do, you'd better be totally clean, because item one on their list will be a motion for "discovery," which will mean getting a court order to search your home, your office, and especially your computer and its drives for any incriminating material. Due process? Hey, it's a civil case... contract violation. Criminal rules don't apply. And, oh, what if you win, but go bankrupt defending yourself? Well, that's tough... you might sue for malicious prosecution-- oh, that's right, you agreed that you wouldn't...
It's already happening!
What do you do when the law fails you?
Ignore it.
--
Traditionally, US law has considered the first two levels of direct/indirect action to be unlawful:
- 1. Direct copyright infringement -- you copy CD's and sell them in Hong Kong
That seems pretty kosher. But then DMCA added two more levels of indirection:2. First level of indirect infringement - contributory and vicarious liability -- you sell someone a box whose only conceivable purpose is copying CD's, and you know what the buyer is intending to do with it.
- 3. Creating a device that can be used for circumvention of a technical measures for protecting copyright -- you figure out how to make a key.
But then this specific case tries to allege that one further level of indirection should also be illegal:4. Marketing/selling the circumvention devices -- you promote and sell the key.
- 5. URL linking to circumvention devices -- you tell someone where a key is.
when only #1 and #2 are widely considered constitutional.--
The interesting thing in reading the briefs (I skimmed most of them just now) is how high they aim. The law professors brief cuts to the chase -- they encourage the DCMA to be ruled unconstitutional, and they have plenty of cites to bolster the opinion.
:-). I guess 2600 is smarter than you think ("See, we get them to sue us... then we can bring the DCMA to court! Yeah, great idea!").
Is this the case that will nix this darn thing? God, I hope so. The DCMA is so clearly overbroad -- and that is obvious to any number of people in a variety of fields (CS, IP law, consumer protection). Now, with this case, it seems these very knowledgable people have an opportunity to make these opinions known and specifically target a court that may be able to rule on the bigger issue (not just DeCSS, but the DCMA).
gee, it's almost like this was planned...
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
The DMCA essentially allows corporations to create new laws on their own.
I think there are two major points that most desperately need to be pushed in attacking the DMCA:
First, it is vital to make the logical connection between banning the means to do something and outlawing the action itself. As I recall from reading the law (IANAL and I am not looking at the text right now, but I read it fairly carefully a while back), the prohibition against circumventing access controls does explicitly provide an exception for circumvention to enable non-infringing uses, i.e., "fair use" rights specifically override it. However, the prohibition against distributing circumvention devices recognizes no such exception, leaving the average would-be exerciser of "fair-use" rights in the Kafka-esque situation of being allowed to do something but not capable of it.
"They" are trying to get away with making the action effectively, but not technically, illegal. The point that needs to be made is the effect of the following logical progression:
- If an action is possible only through the use of a certain tool, then only people who possess such a tool can do it.
- If only a very few people have the skills to create such a tool, then the only way anybody outside that group can do it is by getting the tool from someone else.
- Hence, if distributing the tool is illegal, then the action itself becomes effectively illegal for all but that small group of people.
The point is that the exception for non-infringing uses needs to be extended to distribution (which I guess would be meaningless, since Eric Corley has no control over what I do with DeCSS after he gives it to me), or, conversely, to show that the exception where it is (presumably put there as a concession to Constitutionality) is "effectively" useless.This is all regarding the question of distributing vs. possessing something like DeCSS. From what I've gathered, nobody is being sued for possessing it, because they know as well as we do that that is not illegal, even if they try to spin it that way in the media. The other point is the observation that, if allowed to stand as is, the law, as you said, essentially allows content providers to write their own laws. As we've already established that the "fair-use" exception is no help for practical purposes, the effect is clearly to make it so that the technical measures that the provider implements (which, worse yet, are not even bound by any pretense of Constitutional limits) dictate what a user can and cannot do -- the fact that he may circumvent the controls under certain circumstances makes no difference unless he is capable of doing so, or unless Kafka is making the rules. By a similar line of reasoning as above, this means that the provider's decrees effectively become law. Since corporations are not part of the elected government, they should not be given legislative powers.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
The Intellectual Property Clause ... permits grants of exclusive protection only for those "discoveries" in the "useful arts" that would not have been obvious to one reasonably skilled in the art, Graham, 383 U.S. at 6, and only for those "writings" that constitute original expression, Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 349-50 (1991). Congress may not extend protection to unoriginal subject matter, nor to ideas, processes, methods of operation, and the like unless the threshold for patentability is met. Feist, 499 U.S. at 349-50; Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 103-04 (1879). Nor may it grant protection for proper subject matter in perpetuity. A law that protects informational goods without regard for these limitations cannot claim the Intellectual Property Clause as its authority. The Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. at 93-94 (holding that Intellectual Property Clause could not authorize law protecting trademarks regardless of "novelty, invention, discovery, or any work of the brain" or of "fancy or imagination").
The anti-device provisions do not meet this exacting standard. They operate regardless of whether the device is used to access information that is a constitutionally protectable writing, regardless of whether the work so accessed has passed into the public domain, and regardless of whether the desired use of the work would infringe copyright.
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