DeCSS' Continuing Saga

blankmange writes "Newsbytes is carrying a followup on the DeCSS and 2600's court cases: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the First Amendment Project today asked the California Supreme Court to uphold a lower court's decision to permit publication of the source code for DeCSS technology, which circumvents digital copy protection systems." Maybe it's not over yet..."

Comments

Excellent point

[SocialWorm]

The article sayth:

"[This] is not an interest that is 'more fundamental' than the First Amendment right to freedom of speech or even on equal footing with the national security interests or other vital governmental interests that have previously been found insufficient to justify a prior restraint."

Seriously, since when did the ??AA's become more powerful or important than national security? Who put them on their pedestal? Who died and gave them the monarchy?

Just shows you where this country's priorities are. Trading freedom for security is bad enough. Trading freedom for entertainment is disgusting.

proof that DMCA is ambiguous....

[jeffy124]

in NY, 2600 was told to take down DeCSS.

in CA, Brunner was told he was allowed to keep it up.

Anyone catch that? Two similar if not identical cases have different rulings based on the same law.

Questions --
Have there been other sets of cases that have had the same law interpreted in two different directions? What was the outcome? Are such laws considered ambiguous and thus in need of clarification? Who makes taht decision?

Re:DeCSS Should be Free to Distribute.

[malfunct]

The funny part about this (as I understand it) is that its entirely unecessary to have DeCSS to copy a DVD. DeCSS was only to play the dvd.

Not stolen secret!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Historically, the dissemination of stolen trade secrets has not been protected by the First Amendment," the DVD CCA wrote in its brief. It said the injunction, "was not aimed at restricting speech, but was intended solely to protect against the evisceration of trade secrets that are the motion picture industry's critical means of defense against widespread digital pirating of its valuable copyrighted works."

This secret was not stolen, it was reverse-engineered! Their argument is bullsh**.

Abe had it right...

[pstreck]

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.... Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-Abraham Lincoln

No matter how they twist it, it is speech.

[Eric Damron]

"Historically, the dissemination of stolen trade secrets has not been protected by the First Amendment," the DVD CCA wrote in its brief."

This "trade secret" was NOT stolen. No one hacked into anybody's computer or broke into anyone's office to steal anything. The encryption technique was reverse engineered which IS legal. Discussing the reverse engineering process and ones findings with others IS legal and protected by the first amendment.

Re:but its stull sux

[www.sorehands.com]

so why should they care if a few people can't copy DVDs?

That is the problem, and by calling it an issue of DVD copying you further the problem. This is not an issue of being able to copy DVDs or to post code. This is an issue of linking to someone that posts code. The next step is to stop someone from talking about DeCSS. Soon, if there is a crime, the TV news cannot report on the crime -- hearing about the crime might enable someone to commit the crime.

Let's take it to the street

[browser_war_pow]

The CBDTPA is actually very good for the movement to bring about the death of legislation like the DMCA. I saw a review of the CBDTPA in a roanoke paper about 2 weeks ago and it was really cool seeing a common newspaper make a big feature in its op-ed section about the CBDTPA. People trust newspapers a lot more than they trust websites. Newspapers cost money to produce (so do websites), but websites don't in the eyes of John Q. Citizen. Anyone can make a website is the general view, even though hosting a major website requires an assload of money to pay for bandwidth, high end equipment and a full time staff. Using the Internet to propagandize is not as easy as people think.

What we need are Win32 and OS X open source or free as in beer cd/dvd rippers that make defeating copy restrictions as easy as installing a new plugin. We need to force the issue by making the cartels so desparate they call for the complete destruction of individual property rights as they pertain to IP. The CBDTPA wasn't quite that, we need to get them so desparate that they propose something that makes it a felony to own a computer that can copy music and movies. We need to make John Q. Citizen so scared of their proposals that he says, "listen asshole, you have two choices, protect my rights or their bottom line. You know where I'm voting now!!" to their representatives out of anger and sheer rage. Essentially we need to take demagoguery to a new level, if you support these industries you are supporting your child's inevitable felony prison sentence for making a custom workout mix cd.

What we can do are the following

1. Make easily read and intepretted brochures for distribution at elections that say in plain English what copyright laws do and would do if enacted.
2. Tell people where their representatives really stand. In those brochures show how they voted and again, say in plain English what the nastier parts of the law really do
3. Use as many controversial quotes by the RIAA and MPAA's executives whenever possible. Take away the image that they are hard working capitalists, and help make them look like lobbyists for corporate welfare babies.
4. Make these companies look like they have complete and utter contempt (which admittedly a lot of them actually do) for their customers not just as property owners, but as human beings. Make them look like they could give a damn less about individual rights and that they will not stop trying to use the government to violently crush competition until they themselves are crushed by either the government or (preferably) the marketplace.
5. Use industry statistics to show that most artists never get compensated anyway and show that copying cannot be stealing because it creates new property
6. and finally, tell the people that they can make a difference. They can buy music from local bands, buy cds used so they aren't funding their oppressors, allow others to access their mp3s if they have broadband.

We must make these people look like absolute monsters to the public. We must find ways to associate RIAA/MPAA with the same feelings that most people reserve for Fascists and Communists. The average person must start looking at it from this perspective, "he is not advocating compensating people for their work, he is advocating the annihilation of my property rights." Once we have achieved that, we can effectively dismantle modern copywrong law and get it back to being constitutional copyright law.

Re:Will this kill Slashdot?

[DunbarTheInept]

Counting lines is a stupid way to measure code complexity. That 7 (6?) lines of perl is equally complex to the longer C code up above. The only reason you got it to fit in less lines was that you used shorter variable names, and more abbreviated shorthand ways of calling the same kinds of routines. To get a better idea of how complex a snippet of code is, don't count the lines, count the number of language tokens used. For example:

while( )
{ G = 29;
R = 142;
...etc...
is no more amount of code than: while(){G=29;R=142;...etc...
They both have the exact same grammar, and use the same number of tokens. They both take just as long to execute, but the more compact version takes more time for a human being to read. What is it about Perl that tends to make its proponets enjoy making write-only code?