Slashdot Mirror
DMCA 2, Freedom 0
Politech is featuring this press release from EFF stating Judge Garrett Brown of the Federal District Court in Trenton, New Jersey, threw out the EFF-Felten case challenging the DMCA after less than 25 minutes of debate. DoJ and RIAA both made motions to dismiss the case, which the court granted. We'll have a story about what occurred at the hearing tomorrow. EFF plans to appeal. In addition, 2600 is reporting that they've lost their Appeal in the 2nd Circuit court.
I gotz the skillz to make da Benjamins an dose pay da billz.
W3RD UP SLUT MUFFINS.
As seen a few hours ago on Slashdot I wonder if he will even keep his research on the web after this?
??AA: Too many to count.
DMCA: 2
Freedom: 0
The Rest of the World: +2 "Canada Seems Much Better Right Now" bonus.
Great. I thought those DeCSS backup freaks had problems, but I just got out a blank and copied DeCSS, SmartRipper, and FlasK to a CD. It's in a jewel case in the floorboards now.
How can our rights be violated like this? I believe it was T. Jefferson that said every 25 years a revolution is healthy. Well, guys, it's been about TWO HUNDRED and 25.
Donate to the EFF. I can't follow my own advice, as I'm in debt right now. Write to the judge that handed down the motions to dismiss these appeals. Let them know how you feel. Make sure to let them know they won't get your retainer vote.
Being a minor in this country sucks. Looks like by the time I'm an adult (2 yrs) it won't be much better.
Great, just great. This country is going to hell, no one cares, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. If they're going to take my freedoms away and not listen to reason, then I officially refuse to be patriotic about anything.
-- juju
What could make a judge so hostile to clearly valid academic concerns? Pressure from DOJ or other big-buisiness government interests? The knowledge that her decision ultimately didn't mean squat since the decision would get appealed for decades?
But seriously, what judge could turn down an appeal here? The decision was obviously one-sided.
---------
Get back to me when my brain starts working.
They were basically trying to challenege the DCMA based on an empty threat by the RIAA, but because they backed down, and never went any further with, there wasn't any real case.
Tired of the laws your brain-dead politicians keep creating? Consider Canada! Sure the weather is a little colder than California, but the taxes aren't as high as you've heard. I think you'll find that business is better up here.
Ask yourself: What more does the US government have to do before you'll leave? Guess what? They'll do it!
The DMCA is a hassel and should definantelly be considered in the supreme court, why it's still in circut court is far beyound me, I guess EFF is just trying to go through the motions of getting it directly to the supreme court. Why the DoJ would make a motion to dismiss is beyound me though.
The United States division of powers The Legislative Branch is checked by the Judicial Branch THROUGH court rulings, but I guess someone forgot to mention this plain key fact to the DoJ, but wait ... could I be right when I make the assumption that the government is no longer for the people which it represents and more for how well their own pockets can be lined by our fellow extremely wealthy citizens.
Could corperate Kick-Backs be the main case behind why the DMCA was born and is still alive? Of course not, We are Americans in a democracy for the people and by the people with full and equal representation and rights ... *cough* bullshit *cough* ... we're a capitalistic society and I'm ashamed that anything of this nature is going on. I'm also very surprised that like the DECSS the SDMI cracks haven't hit the open source world yet ...
Oh well ... just my opinion I could be wrong.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I'm thinking it's getting near time for me to expatriate to a free country.
Where?
But this case was never really about DeCSS. The MPAA knows they can't put DeCSS back in the bottle. What it is about is open DVD players that contain CSS decoding circuitry without region coding, Macrovision, and licensing from DVDCCA. If DeCSS were declared legal, what would stop a hardware manufacturer from selling DVD players with no licensing from DVDCCA.
Ditto for open source Linux DVD players. They'll be just like encryption software used to be. You'll have to download them from some European country since they'll never be part of Red Hat or Mandrake. This is a big win for the MPAA.
And that's just the tip of the iceburg. The next generation of DVDs which will have high definition video will have a new encryption system, and the MPAA wants to make sure a crack for that is never released.
By the way, this decision doesn't bode well for Sklyarov.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Why didn't the scientists involved just present their research pulicly, and make it a media event? Let the corporate goon squads of the DOJ/FBI prosecute the scientists, in front of the American media, obviously violating their consitutional rights? Or are these scientists willing to go to jail to make a point? Apparently not.
So here I will make an offer: Someone get me a good presentation that violates the DMCA, along with printed handouts, and time at a conference to present it. Inform the media and the DOJ/RIAA/MPAA ahead of time of what I will be dicussing. Have a lawyer ready to represent me. At that time I will pass out printed photocopies of the presentation and give the presentation. I am willing to go to jail over this if someone else is willing to do the preparatory work. If you can get provide the backing, just drop me an email at supabeast AT supabeast DAWT oh-are-gee.
I don't think paper mail is the way to go right now-- there's no guarantee anyone's going to take a chance on opening it. Email also gets the shaft.
A good middle solution is a faxed letter, if you can find a fax number for your Representative.
IANAL and MY OPINION
After reading the decision, it seems that the appeal court considers that decss is not pure speech like a recipe or a engineering blueprint because decss can instruct a computer to execute some functions without the instructor's understanding of what the code does, while recipe and blueprint can't. Therefore, there is more of a functional aspect to decss than the speech aspect.
Base on this critical point and other more accepted arguments, the appeal court upheld Kaplan's ruling.
IANAL, but why is code being considered less of a speech just because a stupid machine is able to interprete the code automatically?
If i create a machine that can automatically cook me a meal by reading recipes, will the free speech protection of those recipes become less?
I have the sinking feeling that political means won't solve this problem when the two "major" parties fight each other only for show and become instant allies whenever a promising adversary appears. Yet any attempt to apply non-political means would only get the Communists rounded up and killed just like after the Reichstag fire. It appears the most reliable way to be free of the socialist overclass enforcing capitalism for the underclass is to pollute ourselves into infirmity as the Romans did, and wait a couple hundred years for the Visigoths to take Rome again.
I'm starting to doubt the New Agers' fawning over the Age of Aquarius. Technological feudalism is every bit as comfortable under Aquarius as the socialist collective.
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
I'm reading through the 2600 ruling, and there's a section on here about the DMCA's constitutionality. The court says that because the DMCA deals with only the "functional" aspect of speech, it's "content-neutral". Since it's content neutral, it is therefore (this is the part I don't get) okay under the First Amendment.
How does this work? Does this apply to other types of speech as well, or are they just making this stuff up as they go?
The DMCA only covers copyrighted material, not material which is in the public domain.
This is not true. The anticircumvention portions talk about devices and technologies which are used to protect access to copyrighted works--- it is the technology itself which is illegal. It doesn't matter whether DeCSS is used to access copyrighted or non-copyrighted works, the "device" itself is still illegal. (The judge in the 2600 case said that this issue wasn't yet "ripe" because nobody's tried to prevent access to non-copyrighted works yet.)
Interestingly, a tool which is legal today (say, a DES cracker) might become illegal tomorrow if somebody starts using a content protection scheme which it defeats.
Absolutely in agreement.
At work, we make DVDs. But we don't make MPAA-style DVDs. We told Macrovision that we weren't interested. We don't even use CSS. Our DVD guy wears a DeCSS shirt to work, for goodness sake!
We've done everything that we can to make sure that people can play our discs on whatever platform they like. We don't believe in taking away rights from the user in order to protect ourselves from piracy, because it's rude AND it's ineffective. We go into forums to ask people how to improve our products, and then we go back and make changes. Our production department goes around marketing to find out what people want. We're putting more product per package with a lower price.
And then people go pirate our shows? And say that they're justified, because they're just screwing it to "the Man" before they get screwed themselves? That we're such a corporate monolith that we won't even notice or care?
"We'll pirate what we want until you change your evil, corporate ways" doesn't work when there aren't evil ways to protest against. At that point, you're just making it difficult for me to pay my rent...
Well, I just about agree with you.
Only problem is, I always thought libertarians were rational minarchists(which is what I am). This means only the government that's necessary. I'd say if there's a rampant piracy problem, something to stop it is certainly necessary. You can't pass a law that says no jaywalking then have cops look the other way and expect people to follow it.
The problem is the DMCA is tantamount to making sidewalks illegal instead of policing for jaywalkers. But by your arguement, if we'd all quit jaywalking we could have sidewalks again. Personnally I feel I deserve sidewalks no matter how they are abused. It's up to the government to enforce the jaywalking(and copyright) rule if they think it's important enough to be worth the trouble. Anything less (like the DMCA) disrespects those of us who follow the rules.
It's important to question the concept of copyright, because once you do, you realize it's wonderful as a delicate balance. Anything else is... less wonderful.
This whole line of thought gets me thinking of high school and the childish adults who always asked us to "act grown up". If I'd acted like an adult, I would have walked out of the place and never come back long before graduation.
As for cable and satellite video feeds... One more arguement against copyright. They couldn't exist without it!
The great-grandchildren of the author don't make any money. The great-grandchildren of the executives of the publishing company who extorted the rights from the author make the money. IIRC, the rights do have to eventually revert back to the author, so if there is still any money to be made the author's great-granchildren will get their share. Unfortunately, the creator's share has generally be 10% or less, and there is no sign that this share is increasing at all as technology drives the physical cost of publication to essentially zero (for music and software).
The exception to the rule that rights revert to the creator is "work for hire". That's fair enough when the work is essentially a corporate creation. There was one underhanded attempt to change this; a Congressional staffer, at the end of a session when nobody was reading what they were voting for, snuck in an amendment that made all musical recordings work for hire. (You get one guess as to what industry that guy is now working for.) When the musicians noticed it, they went to Congress and got it overturned. At the hearing, no one at all dared show up and try to defend this change, and certainly no Congressman wants to have 100 rock stars campaigning against him. But it took time, and so the record companies own outright most of the recordings made that year...