Slashback: BBC, Crypto, Dummies [updated]

Slashback tonight with some rare bits of good news, at least for those who liked BBC Ogg Vorbis streams, or who use AES to protect data. Plus, a (final?) turn in the Greek gaming ban, and another visit to Dummies hell.

Let's get with it on those .ogg portables, OK? rassie writes "Checking back at what used to be one of my most visited sites, I noticed that I might start using it again very soon. The BBC is returning to streaming in ogg format. From the page:
Update (2002-09-24): Yay, the legal issues have been resolved. We now have rights to all the of the BBC's radio output. Hopefully we should start kicking off these streams soon."

Your email is still (probably) safe. BitterOak writes "A recent Slashdot story reported that AES might have been broken by the new XL attack of Courtois and Pieprzyk. However, it appears there aren't enough linearly independent equations for this attack to work against AES. Cryptographer T. Moh has a brief explanation here, and Don Coppersmith posted a comment on the NIST AES discussion forum (under General Cryptanalytic Attacks), which comes to the same conclusion. Coppersmith is one of the world's greatest cryptographers, so it seems safe to assume that AES has not been broken at this point."

Hey, now it's just like most of the U.S.! yoink! writes "The BBC is running the following story detailing the end of the short-lived electronic gaming ban in Greece. The Government realised that (hopefully) relatively little gambling was involved with those playing computer, and console games all over the country. The decision to clarify those games which are, in fact, electronic gambling facilities are the only forms of electronic gaming with which the revised legislation now concerns itself."

The lawyers sound like ... dummies. Blue Aardvark House writes "I am an author for the Slash site Slackers Guild. Recently Nastard, the owner of Slackers Guild received a threatening letter from Wiley Publishing concerning the site's Slacking for Dummies document. Nastard's reply is here."

Update: 09/27 03:31 GMT by T : Note: the Slacker's Guild website seems to have slacked, and the links no longer work. For the text of the letter sent by Wiley to Nastard, search below for comment #4340698 by SiMac; for the response, see comment #4340840 by decaying. Also, the "Slacking for Dummies" document link now points to Google's cache.

It's not the first time that Wiley has hunted down obvious parody works; they've even fired off similar mail because someone used "Dummies" in the subject line of an email.

Comments

Threatening People For Dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

The most annoying thing about this is that practically every one of these books has a title of the form:

[Someone else's trademark] For Dummies

If that's not hypocritial, I don't know what is. They seem to think they can use trademarks they don't own in a title, so why can't we?

Reply to Letter

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Kimberly,

I've given serious thought to your request, and while, as an artist, I can appreciate your company's desire to protect it's intellectual property, I feel it is also my responsibility -- again, as an artist -- to protect my own rights. The work in question is parody, which is considered speech, and is protected by the first amendment. For a parody to be at all effective, it logically must include the name and/or image of the objects or ideas being parodied. Since I am obviously not a corporate entity, and the work in question does not exist for the purpose of generating profit, and since the law offers more protection to non-commercial speech than commercial speech, I feel that I am completely within my rights.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been glad to reach a compromise and alter the work in such a way as to keep both of our interests in mind. However, your first course of action was to imply threat of legal ramifications should I not comply, which tells me that my interests are of no concern to you. Therefore, I believe your interests to be of no concern to me.

Furthermore, your concern that people may be confused by the document on my web site is ridiculous, since, outside of the name and an image that is quite obviously satirical in nature, there is no implied connection to your company. Even the copyright information, which is itself a joke, makes no mention of Wiley Publishing, Inc. It would take a person severely lacking in intellectual capacity to confuse my work for anything your company has published, which is ironic, considering that your books are marketed to people you refer to as "dummies". However, it is my audience that I write for, and for the nearly two years that this item has been available on my site, not one person has contacted me with any degree of confusion on the matter.

I can only assume that your intent was to scare me into complying. Perhaps you assumed that I was not familiar with the law or my rights, and I would simply give in. This is not the case. If you're willing to respect my rights and discontinue your reliance on litigious behavior, it would be both appreciated and noted to other free speech advocates. If not, I have no choice but to defend my rights.

Sincerely,
Nastard

"For Dummies," much ado about nothing.

[Jasn]

Well, that was the most apologetic trademark-related letter I've seen in a while (the one from Wiley). The subtext is definitely "look, this is what the law says to do to keep from being diluted, so we're doing it, and here we go."

Seriously, if people writing trademark letters look like dicks, and thus easy targets, it's because the law says they have to, in much the same way that if a neighbor builds a swingset on part of your property and you don't say anything, eventually that land becomes their property.

So it should be expected that they would send such a letter (and thus shouldn't draw such an injured reply), and it should be expected that SlackersGuild should reply with the (legitimate) response that it is parody. Yawn, on to the next issue. The interest here isn't whether lawyers are asses for sending letters, it's whether Wiley as a company will willingly outspend Nastard for something that's clearly not worth their time to push. But don't call them dicks for sending the letter in the first place; blame the law. And if they bury SlackersGuild in litigation, then call them rapacious bastards.