2600 Appeal Rejected

blankmange writes "Wired is reporting that 2600's appeal has been rejected by a federal appeals court. "The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a one-line ruling that it was not going to revisit an earlier decision in which 2600 was found to be unlawfully distributing a DVD-descrambling utility. In January 2000, eight movie studios sued the legendary hacker quarterly for posting the DeCSS.exe utility, which decodes DVDs and allows them to be viewed on a Linux computer." The magazine now has 90 days to file a Supreme Court appeal." The Appeals court did not have to take the case, and they didn't. 2600 can appeal to the Supreme Court, but they don't have to take the case either - it's looking more and more as though Kaplan's ruling will stand.

Comments

this has been here before

[slaida1]

2600 just should move out of US. Is that so hard and why this has to be said again and again? It's not land of the free anymore (as if it ever was), so flee while you can!

Once highly skilled and educated people start flowing out of the country, it'll make powers-that-be really nervous about future.

Who cares, it's POS for a nation anyway...

Re:No DeCSS?

[BreakWindows]

ok kids, just for review, THIS is legal to write:

" Hrmm...firebombs. MPAA. Judge Kaplan's house... "

And THIS is not:

#!/usr/bin/perl
s''$/=\2048;while(<>){G=29;R=14 2;if((@a=unqT ="C*",_)[20]&48){D=89;_=unqb24,qT,@
b=map{ord qB8,unqb8,qT,_^$a[--D]}@INC;s/...$/1$&/;Q=unqV , b25,_;H=73;O=$b[4]<<9
|256|$b[3];Q=Q>>8^(P=(E=255 )&(Q>>1 2^Q>>4^Q/8^Q))<<17,O=O>>8^(E&amp ; F=(S=O>>14&7^O)
^S*8^S<<6))<<9,_=(map{U=_%16orE^= R^=11 0&(S=(unqT,"\xb\ntd\xbz\x14d")[_/16%8]);E
^=(72,@ z=(64,72,G^=12*(U-2?0:S&17)),H^=_%64?12 : ,@z)[_%8]}(16..271))[_]^((D>>=8
)+=P+(~F&E))for@a [128..$#a]}print+qT,@a}';s/[D -HO-U_]/\$$&/g;s/q/pack+/g;eval

Really puts things in perspective, huh?

Re:Attn. moderators

[Seth Finkelstein]

The above post appears to be nothing more than a personal vendetta.

No. It's in the main part a discussion of personal legal risk, in the context of someone urging me to personally take action similar to the DMCA case which 2600 has done (on-topic!). I could do it (on-topic!), in a censorware context . And I am quite worried about what will happen to me if I do (on-topic! - wow, given this legal appeal failure, is it on-topic!). That's very far from "nothing more".

For background, please read about programmers having been sued for anticensorware work, and even going to jail over the DMCA.

That's not "personal" at all, except in the sense that I don't personally want to go to jail, or get sued. Am I wrong for that? (or is it off-topic?).

"Slashdot editors abusing their privileges" may strike a chord with some, but it is definitely not the case here.

That's not what I said. Quote:

So I feel heavily constrained as to what I can do to fight the DMCA, in large part because I have to worry about a Slashdot editor who has already shown he's extremely willing to abuse power for revenge.

Which part of this do you disagree, purely as a statement of fact? Was Michael Sims correct in the domain hijacking of What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) ? Am I wrong to worry about the potential for him to abuse his power as a Slashdot editor? I am indeed concerned about personal smears, because such attacks, even from Slashdot comments, ended up as DeCSS court evidence! Is this inaccurate? Is this false? Is this even off-topic for this thread, given that it's about the court decision in the 2600 DeCSS case against the DMCA?

I realize people say these Slashdot comments lessen me. What can I tell you? It's very frustrating to contemplate the potential legal consequences of doing something to fight the DMCA. It's one thing to post rah-rah comments in a discussion thread. But when one sits down to real consideration of what's involved, that's far, far, more serious.

Look, you don't have to like me. You don't have to believe that I'm a pleasant person. But I would ask you to respect the severe legal and personal consequences involved in any action against the DMCA.