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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.
This is complete and utter crap.... DeCSS should not be illegal... grr... I am glad I have my copy :)
2600,
Your fight on this case has brought more attention to the issue than any publicity campaign could have ever raised! You more than caried your share of the load for us all. Someone will pick up the fight from here, because our rights are still there, no matter what stupid act, or congress idiot thinks about taking them away, and calling it a Patriot Act.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR EFFORTS.
PS: The only Patriot Act that should have passed was the one in the Superbowl! Go Pats, do it again!
Google readily finds a number of sites, some clearly in the US, with code executables. Are these legal or just not sued yet?
It's simply amazing that this got them in trouble.
:-)
Google Search Engine
Yahoo has blocked the search of DeCSS
Lycos
Altavista
MetaCrawler
Go. Now Overture. Owned By Disney/ABC
CNet (Search.com)
Add Any I left out
So we're buying something that we don't own. Right. My favorite way to spend money.
Don't like that model? Don't spend your money that way. See, this is how capitalism works - people and companies that provide goods and services are given money in exchange for the use of those goods and services. If people don't like the terms, they don't spend the money, and the terms change.
Obviously, a lot of people don't mind not owning the copyright on the media they purchase. They're perfectly content to just watch the movie, and those few who want to copy the content without paying for the privilege are left up shit creek.
Again, you don't like it, don't buy it, or create something better. That's capitalism. Capitalism works. Whining doesn't. Deal.
Kaplan's findings of fact begin on page 32 of:
. pd f
http://www.2600.com/dvd/docs/2000/0817-decision
I don't understand why 2600 attempted to argue the definition of "effectively" as the layman's definition, instead of arguing that the ability to play DVD's on computers at all, with other software permitted by the Plaintiffs, means that CSS does not effectively control the ability to copy (etc.) the material.
I also don't understand why they did not argue this on the basis of the existance of the ability to make verbatim copies of DVD discs indicates that the CSS mechanism is in fact flawed by design, and therefore does not effectively control (etc.).
Finally, I don't understand that they did not argue that the keys used by DeCSS were in fact the important part of the equation, and the DeCSS itself was not therefore a mechanism, without the keys, and that it was the keys, not the scrambling mechanism itself, which constitute the disclosure. That would imply that the keys were trade secrets... and anyone who followed the USL vs. BSDI and UC Berkeley case back in the early 1990's should be able to tell you that, once disclosed, a trade secret is no longer a trade secret.
Can someone shed some light on this for me?
-- Terry