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Supremes Grant Stay in Pavlovich DVD CCA Case
endall writes "Sandra Day O'Connor granted a stay last week for DVD Copy Control Association so that the court could gather more information. She requested filings by later this week.
I'm guessing that this delays implimentation of the California Supreme court decision on the matter."
So it's basically a chance for the US SC to decide whether or not they agree with the Australian SC, which seems to feel that jurisdiction is wherever anything is read, not where it is published or intended to be read.
Or are there other issues I haven't mentioned here?
Or how about The Computer Code Hoedown, the DeCSS algorithm in a square dance song? Funniest MP3 ever, end of story.
And what if someone makes an image of the US flag and xors the top line with the zipped file of the perl implementation? Would that image of the US flag be illegal?
From the article on Salon: "Lawyers for the association told the Supreme Court that the stay was needed to keep Pavlovich from reposting the decryption program on the Internet."
... arrogant enough to thing that US law applies to the world, that the constitution doesn't apply to them, and that their parasitical industry's interests should outweigh those of the computer and electronic industries which dwarf theirs, and the interests of the people, which dwarf all of those interests and which the government had better stop ignoring.
Too bad for them the constitution still provides a modicum of protection of my right to write, and publish if I so wish, a novel that just so happens to contain not one, but TWO encodings of DeCSS (including the inspired haiku you point out).
The entire document is shared freely under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, with paper copies having already travelled throughout the world, and digital dissemination even wider.
Cry me a river for the DVD CSS thugs
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I heard Touretzky (the guy who runs that DeCSS library) speak, and he was talking about why he was posting this without much legal risk. Basically, the MPAA doesn't mind prosecuting hacker groups because they have bad PR for "contributing to piracy". But the moment that they prosecute a prominent college professor the press will pick up on a story of a college professor being sued and possibly imprisoned for free speech.
I say that the CSS algorithm is no longer a trade secret and since there is no way they will ever eliminate it from the net, and since they have the knowledge that thousands of people have it online and refuse to sue them, the argument that the other people are contributing to law infringement is absurd. Either sue everyone or sue no one. End of story.
The New York Times violated the DMCA as well. In this article they post a picture of a T-Shirt which contains the DMCA code. If someone looks at the picture closely and then writes the code into the computer they can decrypt DVDs. That's illegal circumvention. Come on MPAA, sue the NYTimes! I dare you!
``The future of digital delivery has been on hold ever since this case first came," said Doherty, head of The Envisioneering Group. ``They need to know it's going to be protected, it's not going to be ripped off seven seconds after being put on the Internet."
First: yes, companies have delayed products and forms of entertainment. Big deal. Companies delay products all the time for reasons that have nothing to do with tech.
Second: If you know your movie is gonna be ripped because you released a DVD, and you don't want that, don't release the movie on DVD. Don't blame someone else for your shortsightedness. There is no law, statute, regulation, or rule in this country entitling the entertainment industry to release XXX on DVD or Britney Spears on CD -- they do it as a calculated business decision. If they choose to release it anyway, they should (and do) expect it to be copied. Yes, it's against the law, but they know it's gonna happen, and so do courts and juries. Once enough people assume copying as a God-given right (and many younger people don't even know ripping nee copyright infringement is illegal), juries will overturn regardless of the law.
Why do they call it 'common sense', when it's so rare these days?
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Why hasn't anyone done a study to see how many potential product-buyers have delayed buying new technology because of digital restrictions? Isn't the negative economic impact ensuing from the introduction of digital restrictions just as important for groups like the FTC to consider as the industry mantra that the lack of DRM is an economic hindrance?
I for one still use analog VCR and audio tapes because I just don't want the digital hassles. To me, the existence of DRM is just as much a drag on the economy as its absence.