Slashdot Mirror
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..."
#include6 43034b96de9ed60b4e0e4\8 fca8ac21fd999d1004909419 0d898d001480840913d7d35246\4 75dd9dd5044d0d4594dc9cd4054c0 c449559195180c989c11058185\7 074f92da9ad20f4a0a429f53135b8 6c383cb165e1e568bce8ec61bb\6 abeeaee6fb37773f2267276f723a7 a322f6a2a627fb9f9b1a0e9a9e\d 1d5584cd8dc5145c1c5485cc8cc41 5bdfdb5a4edade5f4bcfcb4a5e\1 703878302168286071b7f7bfa2e7a 7eff2bafab2afeaaae2ff";) ^(lf0>>16 ))b=((lf1\+ 1]]^F[key[tb0[i+1]]]^key [tb0[i]];}void CSStitlekey2\[ i+1]]^F[key[tb0[i+1]]]^key\; i++)im1[i]=dkey[i];l ekey2(tkey,im1);}
typedef unsigned int uint;
char ctb[512]="33733b2663236b763e7e362b6e2e667bd393db0
69b57175f82c787cf125a1a52
d2d65743c7c34256c2c6
081c888c011d797df024
3f3bba6e3a3ebf6befeb
1f0b8f8b0a1e8a8e0f15
cace4f53979312069296
typedef unsigned char uchar;uint tb0[11]={5,0,1,2,3,4,0,1,2,3,4};uchar* F=NULL;
uint lf0,lf1,out;void ReadKey(uchar* key){int i;char hst[3]; hst[2]=0;if(F==\
NULL){F=malloc(256);for(i=0;i>2
>>12)^(lf1>>20)^(lf1>>21)^(lf1&g t;>24))lf0=(lf0>1)\
|(a>1)|(b>8)+x+y;} void \
CSSdescramble(uchar *sec,uchar *key){uint i;uchar *end=sec+0x800;uchar KEY[5];
for(i=0;i=0;\
i--)key[tb0[i+1]]=k[tb0[i
(uchar *key,uchar *im){uchar k[5];int i;ReadKey(im);for(i=0;i=0;i--)key[tb0[i+1]]=k[tb0
[tb0[i]];}void CSSdecrypttitlekey(uchar *tkey,uchar *dkey){int i;uchar im1[6];
uchar im2[6]={0x51,0x67,0x67,0xc5,0xe0,0x00};for(i=0;i6
CSStitlekey1(im1,im2);CSStit
In the brief, the DVD CCA argued that, "neither DeCSS nor Bunner's posting of it on the Internet is pure speech." Instead, the group said, courts have treated computer code as "nonspeech" or "mixed speech and content."
All you l33t h4x0rz out there think you're entitled to free speech. That's just fine and dandy with the MPAA. Just remember that you're not allowed to put content into your speech without a license.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Damn, if they make DeCSS legal, my ownership of a T-Shirt with the DeCSS code written on it will be completely meaningless!
Let's hope that the lower court's decision is quashed.
More importantly, the people need to CARE. The People don't care because this does not concern them (in their eyes). The People can still watch their DVDs, so why should they care if a few people can't copy DVDs?
Michael Loves Me!
Why not put the deCSS program text in your email signature, so everytime you email a friend you 'polute' their spools, servers, backups, with yet another offending copy.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
The 2600 case was in federal court in New York. They lost the trial, and were also shot down by the federal appeals court.
314-15-9265
DeCSS is only going to come under more and more attack. Senator Tom Daschel was already quoted as saying that he would be "behind legislation agaainst any DeCSS propaganda or code whatseover". This apparently was stated after it was rumoured that hos own son had brought the DeCSS song on MP3 to school, where it was confiscated by his teacher. (http://routers.com).
The irony in this is funny, but it is plain to see that this trend will just keep continuing.
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.
My Blog: http://nic.dreamhost.com/
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?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
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.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
"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**.
"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
Later,
Phil
"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.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
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.
Fight Spammers!
Go here: Grab your own text file
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Take a Sharpie marker pen and print one of the CSS descramblers on it. Hey, now you've got a convenient 2-in-1 DCMA infringement device. Somebody get the ThinkGeek product guys on the phone...
try xine and the dvd nav plugin. It works amazingly and I prefer it to my windows dvdplayers. The only dvd It has had problems with was the menus on the futurama disks.
As of last week, this was too close to call. Now the DMCA doesn't have a chance.
Thank you, Sony, for the copy protection scheme that outlawed the sharpie! Humanity can not thank you enough for the amount of wasted time you've saved. Somewhere on Sony's recently pensioned retirement roles I just know there is some Japanese engineer chuckling silently to himself. Too bad he can't tell his countrymen how he saved the U.S. from the corporate media monopolies.
I understand why the MPAA wants to protect its intellectual property, but they need to fight piracy by either making the factory-made products worth buying or prosecute those individuals who pirate them. I want to be able to rip a VOB and play it back on my laptop without having to break the law in the process. I think that the MPAA would rather strip millions of legitimate users of their rights to fair use, rather than spend the money to fight a few individuals who are massively distributing illegal copies of a copyrighted product.
Hasn't DeCSS already experience wide spread disclosure. This is kind of like closing the barn door after the horse has left the building.
It is the RIAA/MPAA that are becoming powerless...
If you have a trade secret, and someone posts it to, e.g., Slashdot, that does not give every /. reader the right to republish it on their personal websites.
Now, if you have 400 trade secrets, and you burn them all onto a shiny metal disk, and you sell 20 million copies of that disk, and someone works out from one of those disks what the secrets are, your case is a lot weaker. Independent discovery is, AFAIK, a defense against trade secret violations (and copyright, too, but not patents or trademarks).
--
E_NOSIG
So this guy says to me "#!/usr/bin/perl :::: qrpff
, _) [20]_=unqb24,qT,@_ ; =73;O=$b[4]>8^(P=(E=255)>12^Q>>4^Q/8^Q ))>8^(E>14=8e val
# 472-byte qrpff, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz
# MPEG 2 PS VOB file -> descrambled output on stdout.
# usage: perl -I
# where k1..k5 are the title key bytes in least to most-significant order
s''$/=\2048;while(){G=29;R=142;if((@a=unqT="C*"
b=map{ord qB8,unqb8,qT,_^$a[--D]}@INC;s/...$/1$Q=unqV,qb25,
)+=P+(~Fs/[D-HO-U_]/\$$s/q/pack+/g;
".
So of course I punched him.
"Then again, Jack Valenti thinks he can have anyone he wants thrown in jail. The man deserves to be set on fire."
I bet if you put that on pay per view it'd be the biggest grossing event of all time........
Not to mention with all the backbiting etc the goes on in hollywierd, that would probably be the biggest paying audience.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
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
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.
But if it's on pay-per-view, you damn well better not invite any of your friends to watch. Unless, of course, each one pays the license fee to watch Jack burn.
How can it be a trade secret if every DVD manufacturer knows it?? Isn't a trade secret is something makes one company more competetive than others in the same or similar field. Even www.dictionary.com (via American Heritage) defines a trade secret as: What is it about the DVD encryption algorithm that gives DVD manufacturers a competitive advantage over, say putting a movie on video tape? If I learn the secret formula for Pepsi, I can make all the Pepsi I want for my own use, and there isn't a damn thing Pepsico can do. But I probably couldn't market a similar brand without paying fees. Isn't using the DeCSS algorithm the same thing?
Now, if I found a secret to making a DVD with less costs or faster, that would be a trade secret. Or if I found a way to improve the quality of the image or put more data on the disk, that would be a trade secret. That is, until everyone found out about it. Then it becomes common knowlege.
Maybe we are fighting this, and other things like DCMA, the wrong way. Maybe it is time to bring unfair trade practice laws to bear and be the plaintiff for a change.
The disadvantage of being a monopoly is you have to play even fairer. Well, maybe in theory anyway.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
For those of you who actually care about the article:
The article didn't mention the DMCA. They are trying to protect DeCSS as a 'trade secret.' Now, as I understand trade secret law, it is no longer a trade secret once it has been reverse engineered. So where do they get off making that claim?
This is an issue of linking to someone that posts code
Interesting point. Warning, this is not a troll, this is a legit question that I think is a good analogy here. If sorehands is correct, lets say I have a website that has a link to some kiddie porn. Now I don't host the porn myself, I just knowingly have a link to it. Now is my linking to it illegal? If my site were a kiddie porn search engine, would it make it any more legal since I only provide a service. More interestingly, if my site were a site for parents so they could have a list of kiddie porn sites to say add to their nanny filters, would _that_ be illegal. Does the intent of my site make a difference since the link is there all the same?
One thing I do have a beef about, and that's people who use the "give'em an inch and they'll take a mile" mentality. "the TV news cannot report on the crime", yeah, right. And soon even mentioning crime would be illegal, heck even muttering the word will get you thrown in the slam. Sorry, had to have my little rant there.
So If I use this number to decrypt and
watch lord of the rings, we now get this:
"One Prime to strip them all, One Prime to free them, One Prime to bring them all and on my OS see them."
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
so why should they care if a few people can't copy DVDs?
But for what purpose are you trying to copy the dvd. Only two legit ones come to mind, format shifting and backups (actually a third one also comes to mind, and that's to make an addtional copy for our minivan since it has a dvd player as well). All the publishers have to do is to provide a way to cheaply (i.e. free/
So, other than "just cuz", can you come up with any other compelling reasons why a person would need to be able to copy their dvd's? And if not, why is the industries attempts to prevent people from doing so such a dastardly thing?
Considering that the reporting organization doesn't know that DeCSS gets around the -playback- control mechanism, not the -copy protection- mechanism(since there isn't one), I'd say we're pretty screwed.
The enemies of Democracy are
From the article:
In addition, the court found that DeCSS is "pure speech" for the purposes of First Amendment protection.
Say what you will about CA, our courts get it! This is from the CA State Appeals Court Ruling.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
True, I actually had that in mind. But that has been the case for a VERY long time now, not just since 9/11. But I haven't seen the govt attempt to move that extreme stance on speech to other areas. AFAIK, even in courts of law (in the building, not during a trial) you are free to say whatever you want (i.e. they don't have the same restricitions as airports). Can anyone thing of any other place where ones free speech is similarly restricted (not including of course shouting fire in a movie theatre).
I don't see where linking to anything should make you liable for the contents you link to, especially as an individual. I mean, someone walks up to you and says, "Hey, do you know where I can get a gun?" You say, "Yeah, there's a pawn shop down the street." Then that guy goes there, buys a gun, and proceeds to mow down a schoolyard full of children. Are you an accessory to mass murder, because you disseminated information to him?
If you want to hold someone responsible for breaking laws, go after the person who actually broke the law. I swear, this crap is just another example of how in the United States, we have this need to displace responsibility for a person's actions. A.k.a. the land of the lawsuit.
In this particular type of case, it seems like such an easy line to draw. If anything, the people who are linking to such information are providing a service to the people who want it shut down. The more linking there is, the easier it is to find who they're looking for and go after her.
I won't speak to the legitimacy of actually hosting this data. That's another question entirely. But linking to it? There should be no question about the legitimacy of that.
I'm sorry sandwich! --Brak
Judges have no freakin' clue how dynamic the WWW is.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
OK, time for an philosophical question. Should free speech be considered an absolute right (i.e. no limitations placed on it at all)?
In the SOF case, did they "knowingly" publish the ad, i.e. was it reviewed by editors, was it "endorsed" by the magazine. Or was it just a classified kind of thing? Generally speaking, if they knew the ad existed, and the ad was for "hitman" services, this goes to what responsibility a publication has to monitor any potential illegal activity through it's publication. Again, if the ad were for child porn, should it not be considered illegal for them to knowingly carry the ad (assuming they did know).
But we are talking about the law and what "should" be illegal or legal. The question is if you knowingly (and I think that's an important, though admittidly fuzzy, key term) link to a site that has illegal contents, should that be illegal. Note that I am NOT talking about it breaking the SAME law as the content itself, but just that it is illegal.
"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."
Perhaps it should read...
"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 informs technically capable people how DVDs are encrypted."
Clarification... DeCSS by itself does not circumvent copy protection!!! Only the *abuse* of DeCSS during application does.
Technically inept people shouldn't be making decisions about technology they don't understand. For example, would I, a computer programmer, make critical decisions about launching the space shuttle? Probably not.
Go 2600 and stick it to 'em!
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
An ad for hitman services would be commercal speech, and therefore more regulated than private speech.
How can it be a trade secret if every DVD manufacturer knows it??
...
It's a trade secret of an organization called the "DVD Copy Control Association" - or, the DVDCCA.
They license the trade secret to all of the player manufacturers, and in return, the player manufacturers sign a contract that, among other things, forbids them from building DVD players with unencrypted digital outputs, and requires them to include Macrovision distortion in the analog output signal. The contract also forbids the disclosure of the CSS algorithm.
The result is that, prior to DeCSS, if you wanted to manufacture DVD players, you needed to sign the contract and agree to the terms in order to obtain the necessary technology to decode DVDs.
Now, the CSS algorithm is cracked.
The danger that the industry is facing is this. If CSS is deemed, by the courts, to be a legitimately reverse-engineered trade secret, then the CSS decoding process would enter the public domain. If that were to happen, it would clear the way for the manufacture of DVDs without having to obey the restrictions of the CSS contract.
In other words, it would allow companies to start manufacturing DVD players with such desirable features as no Macrovision, and digital MPEG outputs. But it wouldn't allow all companies to do so
... only those companies that had not signed a contract with the DVDCAA. In other words, the entire current player industry would be shut out -- they would be still required, by their DVDCCA contracts, to install Macrovision, and not offer digital outputs. This would be a disaster for the current crop of player manufacturers.
There's a reason that they are fighting so hard to force CSS into the category of "stolen trade secret" -- by sheer force of will, apparently. If DeCSS were to be ruled a stolen trade secret, then the courts would prevent anyone else from making commercial use of the algorithm.
This would be an incredible win for the movie industry -- they would receive what would be in effect a perpetual patent -- the right to exclude others from employing a process.
Note that they are fighting this battle on different fronts -- the DMCA case is to try and outlaw the dissemination of the algorithm. The Trade Secret case is to try and outlaw the implementation of the algorithm. They are fighting tooth and nail to control not the right to manufacture DVD players, but the right to dictate what features may and may not be included in DVD players.
I thought DeCSS was a clean room reverse engineering job.
Actualy the program itself was reverse engineered. However the encryption key was not. Keys are lisenced to publishers and hardware manufactures. Xing slipped and did not encrypt the key in one of their products. The key was lifted from the product. So in a nutshell, the key was not properly protected by one of the lisencees and is now widely published. Sorry for the lack of a link. I'm too busy reading slashdot to hunt up a link to the original article. It is only one of several keys that has been compromised. It may be possible in the future to release DVD's that do not use the key used by the Xing product. That would break DECSS and all Xing products.
The truth shall set you free!
The real problem, I think, lies with the inability of business to reconcile itself with an information economy. Groups like the MPAA (and Unisys, and RSA Data Sec.) want to provide information as a product. To do so, they have to control the availability of this 'product' to the end user.
In every other part of the Universe, it is the specific product which is patented. If you make a carbon copy of a Honda Accord, then you'll get sued. If you make a vehicle with four wheels, four doors and an engine, you won't. In academia, if you make a discovery, then some time later another person claims to have made the same discovery, that person -- except in rare cases -- you will be laughed out of town, but reproducing the same result via independent work is okay.
So, reproducing the DeCSS algorithm via independent work is okay via logical extension. As for breaking copyright protection, this is really governed by two laws: the so called "Betamax decision" from which the fair-use concept is derived, and by the DMCA. Although I don't know much about the DMCA, fair-use says that any particular consumer of media content can copy it limitlessly for backup, personal storage, alternate viewing, or whatever. Ripping a DVD to DIVX is perfectly legal, as long as you don't redistribute it and merely use it for personal viewing.
Click here or here.
As pointed out by Seth Finkelstein in comments a few days ago (and another comment)
Comments, like this one, are ripe for quotes to be taken out of context. ARE BEING USED IN TESTIMONY FOR THE MPAA . Why give them bullets to shoot us with? Especially bullets that are inapplicable. (And you gave a great quote that can be taken out of context: ``Even if DeCSS was "reverse-engineered" from this purloined key, it would not really be reverse-engineered because of the method that the key was obtained from.
There are no Miranda rights. Anything said on slashdot is being held as an opinion of our community. What is said is being held against 2600, me, and the ideals EFF stands for. Our community isn't homogeneous, but what you say in the future may be used against me, personally, because the views you espouse will be put into our mouths, purportedly proving that we knew what we were doing was illegal, which it isn't.
Either reverse engineering is legal or it isn't. If it is, then, I don't know what the legal implications may be. (Reverse engineering being classified as illegal would be such a radical departure, I can't envision it. But if you feel it is, ignore what I have to say below which rests on the assumption that a shrink/click-wrap prohibition on reverse engineering sold goods is legal.)
Assuming reverse engineering is legal, any trade secret derived from Xing's player loses its protected status. IE, anything learned from Xing's player, including the algorithms and keys it uses are now public. Remember, trade secret protections are designed prevent ill-gotten gains from industrial espionage. Which is why they don't apply if they, for example, accidently publish the trade secret, or it gets reverse engineered, thats legitimate.
Anyhoo.. Next time, please be a little more careful in what you say, and how it may be misquoted. Actually, this applies to everyone.
Free speach doesn't mean the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
Disseminating some information is actually harmful to others (for example, a web page of credit card numbers). The harm caused by the dissemination must be considered.
In the SOF case, there's a secondary consideration, after determining that the ad was harmful information, and that the harm was sufficient to warrent not printing it, then you need to prove that SOF knew (or should have known) that the ad was harmful, and printed it anyway.
-- this is not a
This sort of mistake could have been avoided if they had open-sourced the alogirithm (though not the keys). I think somebody would have analyzed it and pointed out the defect.
Then they could have stopped that one key.
However I'm not sure if the plan, even if correctly implemented, is all that good. If a key is compromised and they stop using it, they prevent not only the programs with that key, but also any players that use that key. Forcing everybody who owns such a player to buy a new one may not be the best public relations, and I would expect some DVD publishers to just give up and even advertise their disks "works on older Kenwood DVD players" (or whatever was compromised). Possibly even the publishers have signed contracts saying they won't do this, but I still see an enormous public-relations backlash.
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.
Well, to set the record straight, this is not entirely correct.
First of all, you _can_ copy a DVD if it is not CSS encrypted.
If a DVD is CSS encrypted, you can still copy the data, but it will remain CSS encrypted, and thus useless (e.g. it won't play normally) unless you have the keys to decrypt the data.
These keys are stored on the DVD disk, but are NOT directly accesible to the software (consider it a 'hidden' part on the disk). You need to enter into a dialog with the DVD player hardware, which requires the ability to crypt CSS data (aka DeCSS).
There are algorithms that brute-force find the keys, but in my experience they don't always work that well and are rather slow.
If you are thinking about copying DVDs with a DVD recorder, forget about it. a) the DVD keys will NOT be copied, so you end up with a useless DVD and b) a lot of DVDs are > 4.7GB (look at the spec for DVD recorders to see why that is a problem).
Of course what some people do is use a licensed software DVD decoder and pipe the output to an MPEG-4 encoder, but this is not a 100% accurate copy by any means.
So, esentially, to copy a DVD, DeCSS (or a derivative) is still very helpful.
Regarding playback: If you copied data from a CSS encrypted DVD to your harddrive, even a licensed DVD player will not play it back properly, because it would not be able to obtain the keys. The only way to do that is to decrypt the data before you run the licensed software player.
Some idiots don't know the reason behind this other DECSS program. If so many MPAA droids are pouring over web-sites trying to decide where to launch their next legal salvo at, it kind of gets interesting when there is a totally 100% legal program also called DECSS out there as well.
While everyone was discussing the tautology of newspapers, including the Wash. Post being full of shit...
The report from Mitre Corp. discussed in Thursday's thread on the Washington Post's article contained one very interesting point regarding Assuring the Safety and Security of COTS Software Products very relevant to the DMCA:
So ideally, the government needs to be able to either read the source (i.e. some form of Open Source) or be able to reverse engineer the product (i.e. no DMCA). Obviously the former is more efficient. Either way brings attention to the practical problems caused by the DMCA.Awareness of the DMCA is creeping in to more trade journals. The February 2002 issue of Scientific Computing & Instrumentation features a special report on the DMCA (page 54 of the dead tree version):
The 1700's saw a serious of protections from governmental abuses, it looks like the 2000's will see a series of protections against similar corporate abuses. It'll happen sooner than later if Europe decides to learn from the U.S.'s mistakes this time rather than emulated them.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
You might be suprised to hear that. But consider what the point of the structure of patents is set up for - if you invent something, and you disclose your invention to the patent office, with instructions clear enough that someone "skilled in the art" can reproduce your invention, then you can be granted a patent.
Part of the idea is that once the patent expires, it goes into the public domain, along with explicit instructions for how to make your invention. Thus society as a whole ultimately benefits from the granting of a temporary monopoly.
Trade secrets are not legally protected monopolies, specifically because they don't provide the public benefit of putting the invention into the public domain.
What protection trade secrets have is a matter of keeping people honest. Someone who has signed a nondisclosure agreement is not allowed to disclose the invention, you can't steal it or bribe someone who knows it or whatever.
But reverse engineering is specifically allowed by california state law, and the law of all the other states as far as I know, in part because it provides a reason for inventors to patent stuff rather than keeping it secret - because that's the only way they can be granted a legal monopoly, and there is no protection from reverse engineering.
At least there wasn't before the DMCA, and I would argue the constitution makes the DMCA illegal, because it only allows for monopolies to be granted by the patent system. Copyrights are a form of monopoly too, but the constitution doesn't provide legal ground for maintaining copyrights by forbidding devices that can copy, it only forbids actually making copies without permission.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Commercial interests < public interests
Free Speech > Financial welfare of any company/industry
Sorry the companies made a bad deal, but it isn't my problem and it isn't 2600's problem. It was reverse-engineered; no one is disputing this. It was poorly conceived, and now several companies will suffer for it. Better luck next time, but this is capitalism - the government isn't supposed to save your ass when you screw up. Take a look at Enron if you doubt me, or any other business that has ever gone under. Just because you're a large industry with alot of money doesn't mean you get to circumvent all of society because you banked on a flawed technology. If code is not free speech, and can be a trade secret, then I'm going to start a company that does nothing but encode famous speeches and quotes into c, and then have protection granted to them as my trade secret.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
One nice thing about APL is that a piece of tight APL code is equally incomprehensible in any human language.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.