Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: BBC, Crypto, Dummies [updated]
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.
Your email is still (probably) safe.
Bah! Boring people should stop encrypting things anyway.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Dear Nastard:
Wiley Publishing, Inc. ("Wiley"), formerly Hungry Minds, Inc., publisher of the well-known and well-regarded "? FOR DUMMIES" series of reference books and products has recently become aware of your use of the "? FOR DUMMIES" trademark and trade dress on your webpage www.slackersguild.com in the form of Slacking For Dummies.
As you may know, Wiley has over 100 trademark registrations and applications in the United States, Canada, and other jurisdictions for the trademark "FOR DUMMIES", many "DUMMIES" formatives and the FOR DUMMIES trade dress. The FOR DUMMIES trademark appears not only on our books, but also on CD-ROMs, trade and consumer advertising, in catalogues, point of sale displays, Wiley's websites, and other promotional and licensed material distributed worldwide. This series has been in existence since 1991 and has enjoyed tremendous success.
Since the FOR DUMMIES trademark is a federally registered mark, United States trademark law requires that Wiley take all reasonable steps to prevent others from using its marks, or confusingly similar marks, in such a way so as to "dilute" its distinctiveness as an exclusive designator of Wiley's goods and services. If the mark is used by too many different sources, it becomes a "generic" term, and Wiley may lose its exclusive right to use it. Thus, it is Wiley's responsibility to police for the use of "?. For Dummies" in any manner, and stop all unauthorized use of its trademark. Accordingly, in order to fully protect its valuable trademark, Wiley cannot permit such unauthorized use in connection with your website. Although you may present the defense that your use of the marks is a parody, a parody may still be considered infringing if it results in an increased likelihood of confusion, tarnishment or is disparaging to our reputation. A parody is a literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule. However, unless the trademark is at least in part of the parody, then your work does not qualify as a parody in the legal sense.
In order to resolve this matter quickly and amicably, we request that you:
1. Remove all materials from your website which bear the infringing material; and
2. Provide written confirmation to me by no later than October 3, 2002, that the above steps have been taken and you will refrain from using the "? For Dummies" mark, or any other mark that is confusingly similar to any Wiley mark, in the future.
While we prefer to resolve this matter informally, Wiley will use all legal remedies available to protect its trademark rights. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Kimberly Ward Skeel
Manager, Contracts and Intellectual Property
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
(317) 572-3304
Email: kskeel@wiley.com
(Sorry, I didn't get the response)
[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?
It's insane how litigeous America is nowadays.
For example: There are currently 600,000 lawsuits involving asbestos - alone - in the legal system. Older doctors are retiring sooner because they can't afford malpractice insurance.
The very threat of litigation is enough to shut most people up, especially when you have SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) and when your organization has the obvious ability to win a DSW.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
All the real streaming server does is to puke out bits on an IP pipe. That is not rocket science, but the cost is utterly ridiculous.
I always said that the biggest mistake we made with the Web (apart from makinf the CERNLib license terms require a credit) was not putting an uncompressed audio format in as a default. The point is that nobody pays for the compression, they pay for the ability to make noise. Make the ability to create noise free and the audio codecs become just an optimization.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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
And put some reference like
:)
"It used to be called 'Slacking for Dummies' but since we realized it's a trademark, we renamed it to 'Slacking for Lawyers' just to keep consistent with the original idea..."
I remember seeing this book in bookstores a while back. Anyone else remember this?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Since SlashBack is mostly just disparate posts, I thought I'd post a primer for those unfamiliar with the OGG format.
OGG is a music format created by Jan Vorbis in 1974. (Trivia: It was originally going to be called EGG, but Jan found out 'EGG' was already trademarked by Egg Corp.)
Jan initially developed the format to be a free source (and licence free) version of MP3. Using comp.lang.basic.misc, Jan rallied a large group of QBasic programmers into finalizing the protocol and releasing the first OGG encoder and player as QBasic source code (Trivia: This is why OGG encoding is so slow today as a simple BASIC -> C convertor was used to transvert the code for ports.)
The OGG format has since come on in leaps and bounds and is enjoying a reputation that only Pascal and the original Apple Mac once had.
In conclusion, most OGG users are quiche eating ponytailed geniuses who believe in free speech.
mogorific carpentry experiments
From the /.'ed page......
[quote]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
[/quote]
----- One piece short of Legoland
Well, I guess this explains why I can't ping my server. Hopefully things will be sane again in the relatively near future.
:P
I had considered just giving in and changing it to something like "Slacking for People Who Are As Retarded as Those Dumb Fucks at Wiley Publishing," but I realized I'd been given a chance to stand up for what so many of us spend a good deal complaining about - free speech.
As you can see in my response letter (thanks to those who posted it here), I did decide to stand up for myself. I just hope I did the right thing.
Thanks to those of you who actually managed to get to the site, to those of you who might try back later, and thanks a lot to Blue Aardvark House for GETTING THE FUCKING SERVER SLASHDOTTED.
Since I can pretty much count on my ISP being none-to-thrilled with the traffic, if anyone happens to feel like making a donation towards covering the damage of the slashDoS (or, god forbid, legal costs), we accept Paypal
Let them hear it
To:
Kimberly Ward Skeel
Manager, Contracts and Intellectual Property
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Dear Kimberly,
It recently came to my attention that you are, on behalf of Wiley Publishing Inc. threatening the creator and maintainer of some creative works on a certain website, www.slackersguild.com with legal action due to what you state to be infringing on your "For dummies" trademark.
I can appreciate your company's desire to protect it's intellectual property, but I feel it is also my responsibility to guard my, and others, right to free speech when it is challenged and threatened in a frivolous way by corporations or goverment.
I feel in the case of "Slacking For Dummies", aka "Slacking HOWTO" by Nastard, located at the website www.slackersguild.com, there is no risk of confusing the satiric works with the popular series of books you publish. Therefore your claim that it is infringing on your trademark is, in my eyes, ridiculous.
As a result, I can guarantee that I will not support your company in any way by purchasing your products.as long as you seem intent on persuing this or similar matters by trying to deny the creator his or her right to free speech by frivolous threats of legal action. I will also strongly urge anyone concerned to not purchase any of your products should they value their own, and the right of others, to free speech.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues