Slashdot Mirror
2600 Drops DeCSS Appeal
Slashdot Chaplain writes "At the 2600 site, you can see today's details about why 2600 is withdrawing from taking their suit to the Supreme Court." So let's recap the case: 2600 published the DeCSS utility on their website. The movie studios filed suit, and the EFF agreed to assist 2600 with their case. 2600 lost the case in District Court, receiving a tongue-lashing from Judge Kaplan, which ordered them not to post or even link to DeCSS. 2600 appealed. They lost. They attempted to have their case heard again, by the full Appeals court rather than a three-judge panel, and were rejected. And although they have the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, they are saying today that they will not: so Judge Kaplan's decision stands. The case in California is still ongoing. No doubt this will be discussed at H2K2 next week.
I hope that nobody blames 2600 Magazine for their decision not to appeal. It's plain that now is not the time for such appeals, particularly given how strongly that they've been rebuffed thus far. Perhaps most importantly, Emmanuel lacks the funds (I assume) to take a case to the Supreme Court. Such things involve a tremendous amount of money.
Given the recent 2600-related news (recall that Ford dropped the suit against them over FuckGeneralMotors.com last week), I should point out that 2600 Magazine relies on merchandise sales and magazine subscriptions to stay afloat. For those that haven't heard of 2600 Magazine, I recommend that you check it out. I've subscribed since the early '90s, though it's been published continuously (every quarter) for over a decade now. Whether you want to support 2600's legal work or you'd simply like to keep current on hacker news and culture, I recommend that you subscribe.
-Waldo Jaquith
I use dvd2svcd.org all the time to irp SVCDs and VCDs. I suppose the only thing possibly illegal is the included auth.dll which allows you to rip it to your drive.
Perhaps in the future a year from now it won't come with auth.dll and another version will be created. In the meantime download away!
I used to work with Andrew a while back in SF and around that time, he had a temporary win which was covered in Slashdot and other media. I have since lost touch with him, but I would like to know what has happened to that case. I dont know what stage it is in (I believe it was High court).
Although 2600 has lost this battle, I wish Andrew would have better luck.
Rapid Nirvana
Morals don't define what is made legal... Money does.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
could you provide the link please ?
Here it is:
http://cnndecss.0catch.com/
sorry about the lame banners & schitt, but I am not going to slashdot my own damn servers...
ps this free host says they give you "unlimited bandwidth"... LOL.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Does anyone know what the Canadian stance is on the DeCSS issue?
As of right now, there is nothing "official" about it.
The Canadian Copyright board is considering legislation similar to the DMCA, and (for the past year, give or take) has issued a request for public comments, and held public hearings about what should or shouldn't be included in such legislation.
The RFC elicted over 600 comments, all of which were published at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp00007e.html. A (very informative) summary of these responses is available at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/rp00842e.html (Interesting to note that our government considers copyright infringement and "piracy" to be two different things.)
I attented the last day of hearings, held in Edmonton, and I must say that things looked hopeful. There was one guy, who owned a publishing house, who was pro-playback protection, and everyone else (approx 50 or so, including a police officer, teachers, librarians, and even the president of a crypto company) was opposed.