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DVD CCA Drops Case; DeCSS Not a Trade Secret
jon787 writes "EFF is reporting that the DVD CCA is dismissing its case against Andrew Bunner. He was being prosecuted under California's trade secret laws for redistributing DeCSS. This means that the DVD CCA has finally conceded that CSS is no longer a secret, something the rest of us have known for a few years now."
So, if it's no longer a trade secret in the US, does that mean that the Jon Johansen can finally quit worrying about the Norwegian government's appealing the second aquittal? Or can they claim that he's still guilty, if they prove it was a trade secret at the time he "hacked" it?
en francais, aussi...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
If any of you have some spare dollars or Euros lying around, maybe this article and the fact that you're in a relaxed Friday night mood might convince you to make a tax-deductible donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and help save civil liberties in cyberspace.
Andrew Bunner, the man featured on this Slashdot page, was being prosecuted under California's trade secret laws for redistributing DeCSS. If the EFF hadn't stepped in and stood up for his rights (at no cost to him), he very well might be in jail right now.
So please, consider joining or donating right now. It really does make a big difference.
One thing I promised myself back in college was that if I made any money off my computer knowledge gleaned from the Open-Source and computer-loving communities like Slashdot, Freshmeat, SourceForge, etc., I would donate 1% of my salary to various groups such as the EFF. I have kept my word, and I must tell you that it feels great.
I urge you all to think strongly consider it. Who's watching out for us if we don't all chip in?
Thanks for reading this, friends. It means a lot to me.
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Finally, a headline that doesn't make me want to find a rock to hide under.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
They're readying the next format now anyway. They know that DeCSS has made no dent at all in their revenues. But they won't make that mistake (letting the keys out) again.
BC
Trade secrets do not enjoy copyright or patent protection.
I don't know what kind of dope you're smoking, but it must be good stuff. Copyright always applies, published or not.
Does this mean I can finally watch encrypted DVDs on Linux without having the fear of the FBI crashing through my windows?
Who do you think you are? Zero cool?
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
from well, anywhere but the US? :)
I can buy one at the Japanese market down the street from me for $119. They do exist in the US, you just have to know where to look. Of course, a wide variety of web sites sell them too.
It's moot in terms of this discussion, though, because CSS has nothing to do with region coding. My player's region free but it's still CSS-protected - you can't make a digital copy of DVD's even if you could somehow connect a PC to it. My old Apex player would remove the CSS protection but as far as I know there was nothing you could really do with the resulting data (unless someone did eventually invent a cable and connector to do it... but then why not just use a DVD-ROM drive to begin with?).
My point? I have no point. Well, maybe just that we should clarify what CSS really does before talking about what the removal of it can do for us. Using DeCSS is not going to remove region coding on your DVD player (not like you could use it on a standalone player anyway), nor is it going to do it for you on a DVD-ROM drive (though other commonly-available firmware utilities will).
You know it is also wuite possible they could cost more money?
If they cherry pick what proffits (per unit) they can from the poorer areas, by selling them at a price that would not be sustanable if they all cost that, but still make them a few extra dollors. They can use that money to repay some of the overhead of producing a movie.
If the average price was used, the poorer areas could not buy any DVDs, so now we in the affluent areas have the burden of repaying more of the production cost ourselves, which means that the average price would actually have to be higher then what we currently pay.
Of course I live in America and good ald movies are like 10 dollors on DVD. Mediocer just past new release are 12 and new releases rarly break 20 dollors. So compared to Europe our DVD's are cheap.
Of course our CDs are too, even without region locking. Last time I went to Vienna (about 5 years ago (or more)) I bought a new CD for 20-25 dollors (which was about the normal price). In the US I would have expected to pay about 11 or 12 dollors (this was pre-napster, which destroyed our record shops in town. It is a college town so the largest CD buying population all the sudden could get any CD they wanted for free over broadband. Napster may encourage CD sales, but not amongst college students with broadband, now I pay as much as 15 dollors for a CD).
So, I guess I am saying I deffinatly benifit from region coding prices, and possibly you are too, but I doubt it, you are probably helping to subsidize my low cost, just as you were in non-region encoded CDs.
Also, there is very little competition in the DVD market region encoding or no. That is what copyright means. You get a monopoly on your product.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Probably not. CSS may not be a trade secret any longer, but there's also the problem that under the DMCA any open source DVD player could be considered a circumvention device and thus illegal.
The DVD CCA and motion picture studios were separately suing (or threatening to sue) people over both issues: the trade secret and the redistribution of a circumvention device. I got a C&D letter about the later myself. 2600 magazine was sued on grounds of the later also. Unfortunately 2600 lost, and they lost on appeal too. But no circumvention case has gone to the supreme court yet.
You can't be prosecuted under the DMCA for having Ogle or DeCSS or the like on your computer, and using the program to play DVDs that you have obtained legally. The DMCA only forbids "trafficking" in technology that circumvents copyright protection measures, not use of such technology.
You could still theoretically be at risk for use of software that infringes patents, but that's a civil matter (the patent holder might be able to sue you), not a criminal matter (no one can arrest you).
In essence, it all comes down to the EULA that accompanied the software that Jon Johansen reverse engineered in the first place.
The DVD CCA was succesful in the Supreme Court of California in establishing that the provisions of the EULA that prohibited reverse engineering were enforceable and constituted discovery by "improper means".
There are other serious precedents, namely that no one may reverse engineer a software product for the purpose of interoptability where the EULA strictly forbids it, that the EULA of any software product is enforcable and most distressing of of all, that trade secret law trumps the First Amendment (under very narrow circumstances, granted).
Even with the case dismissed, these precedents stand in the State of California, do they not?
Niether of you are right. Software clouds the issue, software should not be patentable at all, it doesn't fit in with the scheme of things.
Patent's are to cover IMPLEMENTATIONS of physical things, a specific way of making a steam engine, a certain weight shape and size of hammer for a specific purpose, etc.
Copyrights are to cover ACTUAL creations of non-tangible things, source code, books, writting in general, artwork, etc.
NIETHER is to cover ideas which are in themselves not SUPPOSED to be ownable. Patents are dangerous because if overly broad they can effectively protect an idea instead of an implementation.
Software is copyrightable, it should not be patentable. The things which software patents are issued for are ideas and that is why software patents should not be considered truely valid.
How exactly does one steal an idea? There are currently over 30 different companies manufacturing DVD players. Did they steal the idea? Did they all steal the idea to play movies to begin with?
Ideas are NOT property, they can't be stolen. You don't own ideas you have, there is nothing exclusive about an idea. Most people go their entire lives without having any truely ORIGINAL educated idea.
Idea's today are based on hundreds or even thousands of "stolen" ideas that came before them.
Once long ago someone had the idea of mathmatics, does that mean that nobody else should be performing calculations or expanding that idea and improving upon it? Someone once thought of the a device that calculates, lots of people took the idea of the abucus and made other devices which calculate, leading eventually to modern day calculators and computers.
When you write a program you are "stealing" ideas, lots of people have these ideas. Ideas float all over the place, there are THIS VERY MOMENT billions of people on earth, all of them having ideas. Belive it or not, the odds of there being a chain of logic which is not followed by two of them without knowledge of the other at some point in their lives is pretty slim. At a billion to one odds of someone else thinking of the same thing you did that yields 3 who *gasp* stole your idea without ever even knowing it existed!
Ideas are NOT property. They cannot be stolen. You don't even own something copyrighted or patented. You own the copyright or the patent, but the not the thing to which it pertains. Mankind owns the thing, and has granted you certain limited controls of that thing for a limited term in exchange for expressing your idea so the rest of mankind can possibly benefit from it. The ideas you have don't belong to you, they belong to the human race.