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News.com Links to DeCSS Program
zorglubxx writes "In less than a week News.com has published 2 articles ([Oct 3] and [Oct 7]) talking about copyright law and the DMCA where they LINK to DeCSS. Not source but compiled Windows version called DeCSS.exe. News.com know that 2600 lost their fight for linking to DeCSS so I wonder why they are doing this. Trying to make a point? Civil disobedience? An honest mistake?" Update: 10/08 02:51 GMT by T : An anonymous reader writes "In the time between when I read the first and second referenced articles, the links were updated to point the DeCSS gallery rather than DeCSS.exe"
if people want to keep them...
a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
MPAA is probably tired of suing people by now.
I wish.:(
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Slashdot links to News.com article that links to DeCSS.
Seriously, if CNN.com would have originally linked to DeCSS do you think it would have gotten sued? (I know, pretend for a moment that it wasn't part of the AOLTimeWarner conglomerate though, and you'll get my point.)
Hopefully, a court case WILL come of this, and maybe we'll get a Judge with a clue that realizes the DMCA restricts your First Amendment rights.
Here in Norway, DeCSS co-author Jon Johansen has become somewhat of an icon in the fight for rights in the digital age. There's an interview with him here, in which he speaks about how he got involved with DeCSS, and the whole thing about the controversion trial. Also, the EFF has supported him tremendously with legal assistance. Their official Jon Johansen page is here.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Because News.com.com has more resources/clout than 2600?
Because the author didn't know better?
Because the author loves freedom? (and will soon be unemployed)
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It is civil disobience, via exercise of the 1st amendment people. Its one publisher supporting another. If every new organization does the same whats gonna happen...I doubt everyone one of them is going to court. /. become an acessory because they link to a story that links to DECSS?
AT least I hope thats what their link is all about. I suppose we shall see if it disappears later or not.
Hey does
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
But given the statement "But when Linux programmers wrote the DeCSS.exe utility to play DVDs on their computers.." with a link to something clearly labelled as a Windows app and the absence of any reference to 2600 or linking, I'd confidently guess that it never occurred to the writer or editor that there could be anything illegal about such a link.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
There is no law in the US against linking to DeCSS. News.com is a news organization and is reporting the news as they see fit. If the DVD-CCA decides to bring suit against News.com and got a judgement forcing them to to stop linking, then they would have to remove the links.
But it is unlikely that the DVD-CCA would try something like that. They already have enough bad press in the tech sector, the last thing they need is bad press in mainstream news channels.
This is the same reason slashdot doesn't get raided by some government agency everytime a poster puts a link to DeCSS in a comment. There is no "don't link DeCSS law" and there is no legal ruling (yet...) preventing slashdot from posting DeCSS links in discussions.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
I won't be happy until they air commercials on the TV of Illegal Prime Numbers
I hear if you use a lossy compression algorithm the number shrinks down to 42.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Perhaps 2600.com could file suit under the 'equal protection under the law' clause. Technically, this sort of double standard is unconstitutional:
Now, a literal reading might allow the federal government to be unfair, while requiring fairness from state governments, but I cannot imagine even our frighteningly corrupt supreme court interpreting the clause in such a fashion.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Its simple: if there are no links to DeCSS, then there is no way to reach it. DeCSS would effectively cease to exist in this universe. (It might still technically exist, like a physical object that falls within the event horizon of a black hole, but that distinction is only of interest to philosophers). Some would argue that you could reach DeCSS via non-hyperlink text URLs. Give me a break - that's comparing apples and oranges. It doesn't count as a valid way to pierce the event horizon.
Now, by placing this valid hyperlink, they've created a huge leak in the carefully constructed containment barrier. We might be back almost to square one.
An honest mistake?
I think it's pretty clear that there is one thing this is not: a mistake. Even if they only did this once, I don't see how it could be a mistake. I mean, when was the last time you saw a news story from a legitimate news outlet that linked DIRECTLY to an executable file?
News.com is, perhaps, setting up for a court battle ('cause they want to challenge the DMCA) or this guy is trying to make some sort of point.
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
I'm willing to bet that the reason news.com linked to a copy of DeCSS is because one would commonly expect that it would be all right to do so. Most laws are based on common sense and common morality. The DMCA goes against these tenants and tries to get one to do things that go against human nature and reasonable expectation of sharing of information.
News.com just did what makes sense. The DMCA doesn't.
This is like the Napster lawsuit. Napster would be alive and thriving today had it been started by Microsoft or AOL rather than by a college student. No court would ever have held that a major corporation was responsible for copyright violations of its customers/users.
News.com is in no real danger because they are part of the "establishment." If sued, they will go to court, wave the flag, use variations of the same arguments that 2600 did, and, unlike 2600, prevail. Although it sucks, I am coming to believe that the judicial branch has been bought off just like the other branches of government -- or have been stocked with appointees that value the interests of major corporations with much higher regard than the rights of individuals and small businesses. Just look at the 180 degree turn the Justice Department did with regards to the Microsoft lawsuit when the Bush administration came into office.
DeCSS is just proof of concept code. libdvdcss accomplishes the same end-result, and it actually works. It's embarassing how many people involved in the DeCSS issue don't realize this fact. libdvdcss is just as illegal (according to the MPAA's gestapo) as DeCSS was/is. Maybe it's a good thing that nobody realizes it...
Yes and no. Often laws work if a small amount of people with a lot of money want to keep them and are willing to fight with high-priced lawyers to keep them around. The laws may be tossed in the end, but the pricey lawyers can manage to keep them around and kicking for quite a few years.
If we could get this is enough "physical" magazines or newspapers it would be a lot more effective. I know some magazines do provide URL's, I'm not sure about newspapers. If the RIAA sends them a "cease and desist" then what? They can stop printing, perhaps even pull copies of the article, but by then it's already out. It's a lot harder to stop something in live print than in online news, too bad it's probably not going to happen.
Every time an article mentions RIAA it should be linked, slashdot them every chance we get! - phorm
And how many degrees of separation is this from Kevin Bacon?
Back in 1999, a whole bunch record companies(including sony, virgin, warner etc.(their Danish departments)) sued two Danish guys for maintaining a list of links to MP3 files from their web site.
The weird thing about this case was that all the focus was on the guys maintaining a link list, none of the sites who actually committed the crimes was sued(meaning the sites who actually did the ripping and hosting of the music).
I can understand why they sued the linking guys, BUT(huuuuge but) they should have went for a site shutdown plus maybe a minor fine. They didn't, they sued them for lost profit. Which is the exact same paragraphs that you would get sued by if you copied/ripped the music.
The whole case was build around they where linking directly to the mp3 files(hosted on various warez sites), and they eventually got them convicted(to pay 100000 DKr(roughly 12500$)) on this fact. This of course, effectively meaning that linking directly to illegal files is, here in little old Denmark, considered as serious a offences as making the files available.
So if CNET was doing this in Denmark, they could be in trouble.
If any of you read Danish, you can find the complete court transcript here:
http://sql.dklaw.dk/vl-dom/
First, the Corely DeCSS injunction is limited to the plaintiffs in that case. Second, the author of both articles is none other than the EFF's Declan McCullagh. How much you wanna bet he's itching to become a name defendant . . . ?
If Hillary Rosen ever reads this, she's gonna be pissed.
>
Almost, but not quite.
/.ed regularily. Very clever.
News.com does a whole lot better if there's controversy happening somewhere in the IT world. IOW, if it's getting boring, nothing new happening, same run-o-the-mill Microsoft announcements on the front page, most people spend less thatn 30 seconds looking at it. Now, if they get sued, they get to play hero to the geeks and "stand up for user's rights", and in doing so become the centre themselves of a big (they hope) news story. Traffic galore - including getting
IMHO, it's a case of the news reporters manufacturing news. I say let them whore all they want. I'm sure they can bring some bigger legal artillery to a court case - hopefully thier journalistic bretheren. I'll be happy when the DMCA is smacked down no matter who, what or how it's done.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I mean... Most authors can't even handle their own proofreading. Who says they create their own links?
Actually, most authors do handle their own proofreading. Editors (whose time is usually spent doing far more administration than "galley slavery") love writers who submit clean copy. It saves them time, and it makes the author in question look like a real pro who actually knows what they're doing, instead of yet another no-neck yahoo who thinks they can write.
Likewise, a lot of authors can and do create their own links. I should think that Declan McCullagh, with his tech-related tearsheets as thick as the average encyclopedia, would be better-suited to defending his ability to write a simple hyperlink (and to opine on the deliberateness -- or not -- of the DeCSS link) than I, but I'm here.
Also, low level process note: For any web-based print medium for which I've written (several, by now), the author generally includes his or her own hyperlinks, if not actual markup. Editorial commentary and/or low-level drudgery only come into it if the links don't work for some reason, in which case the author usually gets an e-mail from the editor advising him or her to change the link and resubmit the revised version. YMMV, especially if the link leads to actionable content...
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
A .EXE file *is* source code - for the language known as "Intel x86 machine code" (linked to a Win32 library). Sure, it's a bitch of a language to understand by just reading it, but it still IS a langauge. So exactly what definition are they using of "source code" when they say you can't post DeCSS source code? Did they ever bother getting a legal definition so you can tell, because after all, the algoirithm implemented in Intel x86 machine source code is distributed all over the place in DvD software. My PC from IBM came with a tool that had DeCSS in x86 machine code inside. Most PC's sold today do. Is the definition that the code must be in it's executable form to not be "source"? Then what about Perl, or python, or any other such interpeted language where the human readable source code IS the executable form?
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.