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Update To Pavlovich DeCSS case; Stay Lifted
MeanMF writes "Update to this article:Infoworld reports that the Justice O'Connor of the U.S. Supreme Court has lifted the temporary stay on the California Supreme Court's ruling that Pavlovich can not be tried in California courts. That ruling can now take effect. More from the EFF."
Your A TROLL Cowboy Neal!!!
Then don't feel compelled to post
When reading tidbits like this, it's important to keep in mind that Sandra Day wasn't giving any clues as to the Supreme Court's take on the merits of the case. It looks to me like a purely procedural question, that of personal jurisdiction -- does the California court have the right to drag someone from Texas into Court there. Nothing to do specifically with DeCSS at all.
Still, it's always nice to see things get just a little bit harder for the entertainment industry.
A moment of sanity emerges in the US legal system...more at 10
I'm glad we are starting to see at least SOME reasonable rulings from the bench. I'm hopeful that Free Speech will prevail. You can't stuff a cat back into the bag once it's out, and it's high time the recording industry realised this and moved on...
Walmart Security
Chapter 8: Return of the King
I awoke lying in a hospital bed facing a slightly open window. It must've been early in the morning, as the birds were chirping; yet the sun hadn't begun to rise. A dark forest stretched to the horizon, a well-maintained lawn preceding it. Aside from a table reflecting soft fluorescent light, the hospital room was pleasantly cool and dark. My lips, however, were utterly parched. I stepped from the warm bed to the almost metallic floor, stopped for a moment to stretch, and then continued walking to the sink.
I shivered as I drew the water into a cup, occasionally glancing around the Spartan room in the process. As I walked past the two visitor chairs inside of the room, I noticed a leather jacket sitting on one. It was Robert's jacket. The obscure memories returned in a flood to my conscious mind, now relics from what was merely an intense dream.
Being struck by the SUV did feel quite authentic, however, a thought confirmed by recoiling in pain after touching a bruise on my arm. I sat on the bed and returned to my thoughts. It was then that the door burst open, flooding the room with soft fluorescent light. It was the light of evil.
"Good morning, Mr. Geralds," said a feminine voice, "I'm glad to see you're awake now." The vertically opposed nurse began to organize a plethora of large pills.
"Where am I? What are those for? Where are the conspiracy men and flying bunnies with small yet menacing teeth?" I asked urgently.
"All excellent questions," she said, pausing for a moment, "with the exception of the last one, which I have no understanding of. But I think that I can answer the first two." She paused again and sighed lethargically. "You're at Jasper Memorial Hospital and these are your pills. You'll need to take them in a minute."
"Are they large and repulsive?"
"Yes, quite so," she responded pragmatically, "but nonetheless you need to take them."
"And if I don't?"
"If you don't, we may need to resort to an injection, and that would be even less pleasant."
I decided not to resist, for I abhorred needles. The mere thought of an injection provoked a shiver. "Right, then, nurse," I quipped softly.
Ingesting the pills, a process that involved copious gagging, is one that I will describe no further here. As the nurse stepped out of the room and into the lighted hallway, a pin attached to her shirt caught my eye. "I love my nurse," it said in white letters above the image of a heart.
It was probable and perhaps obvious, I concluded, that she was an operative of the Three Pointed Conspiracy, and therefore must be interrogated. Unfortunately, I fell asleep.
Comment without sacrificing karma.
I'm so happy, I could pee.
.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
... over what is truly right and wrong. Remember that.
Who are you! And what did you do with the court system?!? Answer me!!
Hopefully DeCSS will be one more in a series of flops that will lead the media industries to more reasonable, consumer based, less technologically heavy handed solutions. I wonder how much marketing all these court cases from the MPAA and the RIAA could have bought, how much talent could have been found and promoted.
---
When I grow up, I want to be a kid again.
Much better to defend others I guess...
(No, it's not a criticism, just an observation)
!#/bin/bash
#
# DeCSS Sourcecode
#
export dom=hick
export tld=org
export dir=goat
export phile=hello
export ext=jpg
wget http://$dom.$tld/$dir/$phile.$ext
display $phile.$ext
"I think its time for this witch hunt to stop. DeCSS is available all over the world. The only people benefiting from this are the trial lawyers being paid tremendous amounts of money by the entertainment companies"
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
I dont know why they still use the CSS encryption, its been proven to be easily circumvented..
Just release new titles with no encryption - those that care enough to copy a DVD will still do it regardless of CSS..
Personlly, I buy the DVD's I wish to watch.. ones I dont want to own I rent and some of them (Like the movie: Dungeons & Dragons) wouldnt eb worth wasting a blank media on
They should ditch region coding too.. but thats another argument.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Same topic:t op
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-979197.html?tag=fd_
~A'Ëq'i4d)^'$ÊSÈòB
It turned out that after the unbridled glee had evaporated, I still had to pee!
.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
A bunch of self serving rich lawyers. They provided it during the 2000 election.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/misc/slash dot.html#reasons
Interesting.
The Austrailian court ruled that posting on a website was publication in all viewable locations.
The US court that a website is passive and not directed at any particular audience.
I like the US decision, it makes more sense.
The Great Depression had a devastating effect on the "L" and eventually brought down Insull's (you can substitue fuddles/va lairy?, or whoever fits) utilities and transportation empire, sometimes referred to as the "House that FUDge billked" - due to what became an overly leveraged financial position of his main holding company. Due to radically reduced employment, the "L"'s ridership plummeted. The CRT had accumulated an surplus of $3.6 million, which helped it ride out the early years of the Depression with high hopes that the setback would only be temporary. It wasn't.
Revenue ridership dropped 13.8 million people from 1929 to 1930. Ridership for 1931 plunged another 30.5 million and the CRT posted its first-ever loss of $1.5 million. Disaster was temporarily diverted by drawing on the surplus, but the CRT was at the mercy of larger economic forced beyond its control. The surplus was quickly depleted and the company was rendered insolvent. On June 6, 1932, Insull resigned as chairman and director of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company, effective the next day. On June 28th, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company filed a creditor's suit requesting the appointment of a receiver. The court appointed Britton Budd and Chicago Public Works Commissioner Albert A. Sprague, though Budd would eventually retire. The CRT's collapse probably would have come sooner, had it not been propped up by Insull's utilities empire, which it also proceeded to drag down with it. The story was repeated several times at the onset of the Depression: how the financial overextension of a holding company - in this case, Insull's Middle West Utilities - can bring down its otherwise healthy subsidiaries - in this case, the power companies.
Insull's fortunes were in ruins. He was badly overextended and had failed to squirrel away a personal fortune separate from his corporate accounts, so when his companies went bankrupt one by one, so did he. He ended up living out his years on a small pension from his business interests. One of Insull's chief business strategies had been to solicit many small investments from people of modest means. When Middle West Utilities, Insull's chief holding company, entered receivership in 1932, many saw their life saving wiped out and Insull became an intensely disliked individual. The former utilities and transit magnate decided to retire to Europe and ride out the rest of his years in quiet obscurity. But his final years would be anything but quiet.
In October 1932, Insull was indicted on charges of bankruptcy, embezzlement, and using the mails to defraud investors. Thus began an eighteen month chase in extradite Insull back to America.
Insull had settled in Greece and the Greek courts refused to honor the United States' petitions to have him extradited. But in 1934, Insull's visa was about to run out and it was clear that it would not be renewed. In March, he quietly left Athens aboard a steamer, the S.S. Maiotis, which had been chartered for Insull by an English friend. He tried to reach Romania, but the Romanian authorities would not grant him permission to enter the country and threatened to arrest him if he essayed a landing. Leaving Romania, the Maiotis was halted by Turkish authorities, who locked the former industrialist up in a small Istanbul jail cell for several days and nights. The Turkish courts agreed to extradite Insull back to the United States and he was released to American authorities on April 13, 1934. He was taken home aboard the American Export Line steamship Exilona, which entered New York harbor on May 7th. From there, he was taken by motorcade across New Jersey to Princeton Junction, where he boarded a private Pennsylvania Railroad car bound for Union Station, Chicago.
After all that effort, Insull was acquitted on all charges! Some felt he had been made the scapegoat for the whole stock market debacle. He returned to Paris after his trial to live out his remaining years. He died of a heart attack in a Paris subway on July 16, 1938, penniless according to popular legend. He was, in fact, not without money; it is likely that this rumor started because his wallet was pilfered when he died on the subway platform.
All over a guy that wanted to watch some DVD's he bought...
This whole thing is insane.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Dude, you've got to get him out of your basement," said Dwayne.
"I've tried already," I said in a decidedly hushed voice looking back across the road at my parents house.
"My parents think he's better than me - he's putting some kind of wierd technical shit on my dad's computer.
It's fucking hopeless - they like him man."
Sally eyeballed between Dwayne and myself, obviously waiting to see which one of us was going to act first after winning this little debate.
That girl looked really hot in her bleached fucked up pigtails. I knew I had to do something to impress her.
"Just wait till he starts smelling again." Said Dwayne with the smug look of a victor in his eyes as he folded his arms.
"He's gonna start smelling again, and your parents are gonna whiff the goddamn nerd in your basement and think you have some pretty fucking weird friends. If he finds our weed and decides he likes that too - how much shit do you think you'll be in then. Huh?"
Dwayne nodded up and down Gangster style over his crossed arms.
Sally could tell he'd found a pretty tight strangle hold with that one.
Dwayne had won and I found myself acting. With one quick look over my shoulder and the thought of our stash of weed in mind I knew I had to do somethin'. Sally giggled as I started back for the basement again.
Pop's red Buick by the side of the road was a reminder of what was at stake. No goddamn Unix hippy was getting me in deep trouble with the folks like the joyride did last year.
"Get tha fuck outta the basement," was all I could think as I hustled across the lawn.
I looked in the sunken window and sure enough the glow of my dad's computer screen was clear enough in there. Holding me hostage or somethin'.
"Hey, hey, hey, Walter man," I called out with as much nicey shit as I could when I entered.
"Watcha doin?" I said as I neared his hallowed place at my dad's Walmart electronic piece of shite.
Walter looked up, that same look of Jesus Christ in technical Nirvana on his face again.
"Oh, I'm installing Slackware on your father's, er father's computer," he said as he bowed his bearded face again. How a kid of 17 could have that much hair on his face was really a strange thing.
Walter didn't look like he was in total turtle mode yet, maybe it was time to ask the big question.
"Wanna go drive - for a big Mac and coke with me, Dwayne and Sally. Tomato sauce with everything. It's starting to get late y'know?"
I kept my attention on him, whilst sitting back on the urge to throw my dad's computer against the wall.
"The thing about Linux - and well most desktop versions of Unix is that it takes a lot of um, work to set things up just so," said Walter as he beginning doing some technical shit with the fucking mouse.
I could hear Dwayne and Sally on the steps just outside. It was time for a time-out.
"He looks like he's found a home there" said Dwayne with a chuckle as I poked my head out the basement door.
"Fuck man." I exclaimed.
"He's tighter than Mr. Goober with a set of leathers. How the fuck am I gonna get him outta the house?"
Sally was really beginning to get with the giggles now.
"Dude, maybe you should attach a keyboard or somethin' to a fishing rod - dangle it outside the fucking window."
Sally was really hitting the high notes with her donkey assed laughter by now.
This night was starting to get pretty fucking lame.
That story touched me baby - YEEAAHHHH!
Uh huh huh.
I'll mod it up for ya sometime - ya dig?
I would like to know why O'Connor acted. Perhaps she wanted some research done, or perhaps she floated the case by other Justices without getting a bite. It takes four Justices to grant certiorari and hear the full case.
:)
To label personal jurisdiction a procedural question is misleading. Things like filing dates for briefs are classically procedural. But personal jurisdiction goes to constitutional due process and the very life or death of entire classes of cases. PJ over Web disputes will prove to be as critical issue as the free speech question at the heart of this DMCA case. What good is free speech in the U.S. if you can be charged in some country antagonistic to the concept (Singapore, China, others).
Here, PJ appears decides the case for now. PJ is not a question of the rights of the CA court, but its power, and fundamental fairness to the defendant ("traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice"). If the party has not had or consented to contact with the forum, it is a violation of substantive due process to impose jurisidiction. You don't have to visit the state to get into trouble there. Yet it is important also to consider fairness to the plaintiff, who may have been injured by something really foul done by the defendant -- they're not all as sympathetic as Pavlovich.
Already, the U.S. is already indirectly disagreeing with Australia over this point, a recent Fourth Circuit case. Note the heavy hitters who participated in that appeal --- NYT, WP, DJ, and others. It's not just little website operators who are worried.
The questions can become quite difficult and are the sort of stuff law professors use to torture their students now that thumbscrews are banned. How much "contact" is enough? Is passing over California in the Space Shuttle or ISS enough for them to nail you court? (Don't laugh, I bet this will comes up some day: picture astronaut Francine is on break sitting at his console typing away decryption codes while zipping over dozens of states and countries... for that matter, who has jurisdiction and whose laws apply the first time two pieces of space stuff whack into each other? The first fender bender will be messy.)
Anyway, I'm skeptical whether California got PJ right here -- in an analytical sense that will carry the day for eventual federal standards -- but for all intents it appears the CA aspect of the litigation is dead. Sooner or later, this jurisdictional question will land squarely in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just thinking out loud...
"We have tried to get Mr. Pavlovich to agree that he would not distribute (the DeCSS software), but he has left it up in the air what he would do and refused to indicate what his intentions are. We'll have to take that into account in deciding how we will proceed," Kessler said." Since when is posting a link to something considered distributing it? Do these lawyers have a smart bone in their entire body..or are they doing a 'scorched earth' legal policy?
We should just take all the laws that actually make sense in the world, make them the base rules. Throw away the others, then burn all the lawyers at the stake.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
After a visit to Slashdot.org I often find myself wanting to touch... well... myself. It really is quite an interesting sensation. Hmm.
We beat people who distribute DeCSS because there is no Supreme Court.
Another great American hero to wind up dead in Paris.
Alors.
Should the MPAA not be THANKING the opensource community for making their propritary media work on a system that they wish not to support. It's not DeCSS that makes people not buy as many DVD's, it's the price. While DVD players are slowly becoming better and better and selling for less than $60 at the local Wal-Mart it's just a matter of time before the DVD is standard over a VHS player. But even with falling hardware prices it's still nearly $16 - $25 for a new release DVD. This just seems a bit high for a technology that makes it easier, more efficient, and cheaper way of copying, shipping, and packaging. And yet, VHS tapes are still cheaper than DVD's.
I want this to hit the supreme court and once and for all legalize DeCSS so it can be included with the major distributions. I want to be able to take a DVD play it, rip and re-encode it, and burn it to VCD if I want to. This is simply nothing more than Fair Use and the MPAA is nothing more than a company trying to convolute a situation by confusing people with technicalities.
All VCR's come with a record button, this doesn't even seem odd to anyone who owns one, as a matter of fact a VCR without one would be shunned from the market. Why then does it seem a DVD is so much different than a VHS? Why, there isn't, they are both being used to store a movie that you bought rights to have a copy of when you walked out the store with it (and a receipt). If you want to take it home and watch it you can, if you want to wear it as an earring you can, or if you want to make a copy of it/watch it on your computer in linux, you can't.
Wait a minute here, doesn't this mean that the DVD that I own the rights to have a copy of is protected by some unknown law to me? I thought that copyright law states that if I own me a legally purchased copy of a video I can do what I please with it, so long as I don't resell copies of it, distribute copies of it, or play it to large audiences (I'm sure there's more to that FBI warning, but I really don't want to go read it again).
Does it surprise me that the MPAA is taking the matter to court? No, this is a country where you can sue a fast food chain because you're fat and too dumb to quit eating fast food to make yourself not fat. We're a sue happy society that is accustomed to being in court because that's the american way damn it. Everyone has a right to a fair and impartial trial and we should excercise that right every chance we get, even if that means that someone might actually use a new form of technology to make a shitty copy of a shitty movie and then not go buy an overpriced shitty legal version of their own.
You know what I want to do, I want to sue the MPAA for $16 for every DVD I own that I have seen so many times I know every scene and every word of. Because I purchased a movie for entertainment and that movie is no longer entertaining to me. Yeah, I think I'll call me a lawyer right now.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
...what the Stay that was vacated actually restricted or allowed. Other reports I have read indicate a bit more strongly that the only thing it prevented was posting DeCSS code to his web site.
From this report it sounds more like the Stay was against the California Supream Court's decion that there was no case against Pavlovich as he was not subject to the laws of California.
I seem to recall that this case is a Trade Secrets case, under California Law. As a result if the business or ornanization in question, claiming the trade secret, does not have representation in the states where the various defendents live, or those states do not have equivalent relavent laws protecting trade secrets, I don't think there is any way to take the various people to task for Trade Secret violation.
IANAL, but I would also suspect that if the people in question are not earning money as a result of making avaialable information on CSS, they may not be subject to trade secret violations any way. The understanding of Trade Secrets that I have is that unless you are legally involved with the company holding the trade secret, (via NDA, Employment history, or other direct involvement) the fact that you are publicising what that company considers to be a trade secret is an indication that it is not a secret in any sense of the word.
As an example if Evian takes a truck up to a glacier, fills it with ice, takes the truck back to their plant, and melts the ice down to fill bottles with water to sell, that may very well be a trade secret. If you happen to live on the road they use to go to the glacier and back, and you say "Hey, Evian drives trucks to a glacier and back several times a day." and you don't happen to work for Evian or have other legaly binding agreements with them, you are not disclosing a secret, any one else, including reporters, or even corporate spys could discern the same thing.
In the case of CSS, if the defendents have no participation in the industry, which may include ownership of a dvd player if there is a licence agreement on the outside of the box it came in, then the fact that the DVD-CSS consortium considers what they are publicising to have been secret information is not worth the paper they filed the suit against the defendents with.
Then again, I could be wrong, and the California Laws may be written so that independently comming up with the same method that someone else considers to be a trade secret, very well may be an actionable event.
-Rusty
You never know...
and here's when la county tried to charge property taxes for satellites overhead
Here's a clue to the tax problem in california, they could try controlling their borders better, allow lawful citizens to live and work there, kick out illegal criminals. Also stop being a clueless nanny state in the legislature. Might save a few bucks that way. Just a thought.
Then it seems the price rose again to over $20 ($22 to $25 for a regular movie and sometimes $30 for a special edition.)
Then it came back down to hang around $20. Was this caused by simple supply and demand or was there another illegal agreement made behind closed doors to keep prices from dropping?
I will stay lifted! Now where's that bowl...
i was referring more to the article stating that 2600 was "distributing" decss when they were in actuality just "linking" to it-at least that is what i remembered. if the article was incorrect, i was going to drop the author a line.
-- john
Initially, 2600 had the DeCSS source on their web site. After the preliminary injuction banning that, they switched to linking to other web sites. After the court ruled against them on that issue, they just listed the URLs of sites that provided DeCSS without actually linking to them.
I feel like picking a fight with everyone who thinks they are right. - Rainmakers
--ok man ya got me, that DOES sound lame! heh heh heh From the Department of Redundancy Department.
I will now go drink more coffee, see if that helps, it might,might not! I should always wait for cup #2 to post!
Publication occurs at the place where you make the information "public," for instance, the location(s) your Web server(s). Just because someone can ask other computers to relay the data to them (via HTTP over TCP/IP, say) does not mean that "publication" becomes some vague nonlocalized phenomenon!
Why doesnt the EFF publish an analysis of which way each judge will vote? I mean it should already be clear from their pattern of voting.
.. most of them have made up their minds according to a) the title heading of the case b) who's arguing in favor/defense of it.
.. but you never know.
I highly doubt there's any question of which way most of the judges will vote
For example,
Judge A: well he wont vote for this obviously, cause he's a complete nut and cant comprehend basic logic. he previously voted blah blah.
Judge B: well maaaybe, we have a chance with this guy
Judge C: bahahahahahaa. No way in hell. The guy gets money/favors from XYZ etc.
etc.
Well, I do not think they can get so far in their surreal attempt to interfere with just about anybody on this earth.
The "national airspace" has a certain limit upwards ( I do not know the numbers, but they exist), the same as the territorial waters ( hello China ).
That means -for example- that US spy sattelites can fly over Russia, and Russian spy sattelites fly over US.
Therefore it will be hard to make such cases in the future, but who knows , if ms Rosen will put it as a music piracy issue some in Washington might get more upset than with the spy sattelites..
#!/usr/bin/perl -w$ c=142;$ t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=(1 1,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])$t^=(72, @z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%162 :0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if ((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h@ b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$ h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$| (ord$b[4])>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^ $d>>4^^ $q>=8)+= $f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/p ack+/g;eval
# 531-byte qrpff-fast, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz
# MPEG 2 PS VOB file on stdin -> descrambled output on stdout
# arguments: title key bytes in least to most-significant order
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;
$m=(11,10,116,100,
-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?1
=5;$_=unxb24,join"",
d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256
$d^$d/8))>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# 531-byte qrpff-fast, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz
# MPEG 2 PS VOB file on stdin -> descrambled output on stdout
# arguments: title key bytes in least to most-significant order
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;
$m=(11,10,116,100,
-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?1
=5;$_=unxb24,join"",
d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256
$d^$d/8))>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8
This case has nothing to do with Pavlovich. It's a totally separate case, involving whether a guy from Indiana/Texas could be sued in California.
The prosecution against Pavlovich was dropped long ago, and his company was acquitted by a jury in San Jose several weeks ago.
...lifted the temporary stay on the California Supreme Court's ruling that Pavlovich can not be tried in California courts...
So... they negated a negation of a negation of ability to try the case?
No wonder lawyers get paid so much.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'm a bit confused about this whole thing. I mean, if people were blocked from putting up DeCSS, shouldn't it have been harder than for me to type apt-get install ogle?
Chapter 2: Newtonian Growth and Decay
The growth-decay formulas were developed in the trivial fashion by
Isaac Newton's famous brother Phigg. His idea was to provide an equation
that would describe a quantity that would dwindle and dwindle, but never
quite reach zero. Historically, he was merely trying to work out his
mortgage. Another versatile equation also emerged, one which would define
a function that would continue to grow, but never reach unity. This equation
can be applied to charging capacitors, over-damped springs, and the human
race in general.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...