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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.
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...
I doubt that News.com encourages their writers to break laws, even stupid ones like the DMCA. No company wants a writer who is a liability.
I think it's most likely that the author didn't know better. I mean- hey. How many people can keep up with what is and is not a permissable link? You'd think that an author writing about something like that would know, but... Stranger things have happened.
Another possibility is that Author emails article in to work, article is handed off to low-level drudge HTML markup person who enters it into the system and link-ifies anything that looks like it could be a link. Sees "DeCSS.exe" and thinks "Oh. what's that?" does a search for it on Google, finds a link, and enters the link.
I mean... Most authors can't even handle their own proofreading. Who says they create their own links?
-Sara
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.
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.
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.
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