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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 does this mean the varios linux distro's will be able to include a dvd player by default? could be a boon to wider acceptance on the desktop, especially at home
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
...whether or not it is by the company that created it, it ceases to be a trade secret in the case of proprietary encryption schemes?
Does this mean that Xine and Mplayer can now be distributed with libdvdcss included.
does that basically kill thier argument about anything that copies DVD because if it is public knowledge anyone can do what they want
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
I've so far avoided getting a dedicated DVD player just because they have region coding, preferring to use a software-based open source dvd player.
But it's sure not as convenient or as pleasant to watch DVDs on my laptop as it would be on my TV with a dedicated player. For one thing, my laptop doesn't have a remote control.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Can't the player key be passed in as a command-line argument, thus making the code fully distributable? As long as they don't automatically configure the key, I don't see the problem.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
This means that the DVD CCA has finally conceded that CSS is no longer a secret
No it doesn't, it means they decided not to pursue this particular case. I dont see where they conceded anything, or shut the door on any future legal action.
Just because the EFF sees it that way doesnt mean it's so, they're a special interest group with an agenda. Agreeing with the agenda doesn't make everything they say/do in pursuit of that agenda right.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
There's still a permanent injunction against them even linking to it. This should be interesting.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Does this mean DeCSS is completely, legally, free software. I'm sure this would be good news to the fine folks from Xine, MPlayer, Ogle, and VLC. They could distribute much more fully featured products in mainstream distros.
Actually, I suspect that the timing of this DVD-CCA decision is completely explained by the fact that Jon won in Norway. If Jon's actions were legal under the laws of his country then Bunner's actions in the US are not traceable to an act of misappropriation.
An article where the corporations AREN'T omnipotent. I agree with above posters: give a few spare clams to the EFF.
Hopefully this is the first event among many where we begin to turn the tide against corporate power. What the Internet gives us is too important to get shackled down by bureaucrats. I want to be able to get news and information from anyone anywhere and with no middlemen but the ones *I* designate. We'll win this war eventually.
It sure needs to, like, oh, shrinkwrap laws.
Why all of the sudden this was dropped? Considering the recent RIAA actions, the second persuit Jon Johannson, the movements to crackdown on bootlegs, etc?
Why drop this? Makes me wonder what is up the sleeves.
It's been on the first page of hits at google for the query content scrambling system for a couple of years now.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
When they dropped the case, did they actually admit that it's no longer a trade secret? The second is much, much stronger than the former. If they admit it's not a trade secret, GNU/Linux DVD players are completely legally in the clear. If they simply stop prosecuting the case, it would certainly weaken the trade secret (since they are required to take active measures to keep it secret under trade secret laws), but they could potentially still prosecute others. It would still have to be struck down as a trade secret in a court of law, or openly admitted to not being one...
It hasn't been a legally enforcable trade secret for a while, but they could still throw enough legal $$$ to harass most people not to distribute it. If they admit it's not one, they won't be able to do that anymore (it'll get struct down in court in 5 minutes and 0 dollars, rather than months or years and hundreds of grand).
It'll also mean they're no longer bad guys, and I'll be able to stop undermining them in every way possible. Or at least with respect to DVDs... I'll have to investigate whether they are doing anything else evil first...
You know why they are conceding, that's because the new HD DVD standard will have a different kind of protection, and this time they will get it "right" by patenting some part of it (hopefully not).
Either it's a Trade Secret and they vigorously pursue the violator- or they completely lose the ability to pursue anyone with regards to the secret in question (as it's no longer one...).
For the DVD CCA to decide to no longer pursue the case means nobody will be harassed by them in this regard- if they do, they can and will face harassment or misuse of procedure countersuits that they'll lose.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You just needed to buy one DVD player per region you wanted to watch.
I don't think any DVD players are incapable of playing DVDs from other regions. They just lock you into a region after certain criteria are met.
So really, this whole exercise didn't prevent anything it was intended to prevent and just lined the pockets of DVD player manufacturers.
With players comming down to $50 or less, there's less and less incentive to not purchase an additional player for other regions.
And there already are DVD players out there that can be hacked to be region free. You just have to hunt for them.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
It's covered for decoding too.
MP3 decoding didn't carry a royalty and thus became popular, but after that happened they became greedy and now want to charge from it.
Most of the people don't care about that, but technically it's still patented.
And the trade secret suit was stupid from the start, anyway. You can't protect trade secrets by slapping a EULA on a piece of software, you have to have real contracts with real signatures. To get around being bound by an EULA, legally, is child's play. They did it by being in a country that didn't allow you ban reverse engineering, but you could have done it by simply having someone else click 'I Agree', or gotten a decompressor for the installer and copied the files out manually to reverse engineer. (And, yes, copying the files manually to install the software is completely legal.) Tada, you're not legally bound by the EULA, even if you would have been normally bound by it, which is itself in question because it's imposing terms after the sale.
And since someone could do that, it's automatically not a trade secret, so even if that's not how they break it, it doesn't matter. If you (on purpose) had your company secrets laying in plain sight from the street on a desk, and I can prove it, I didn't steal your 'trade secrets' even if I, personally, happened to get them by breaking into the building and cracking a safe...because they stopped being trade secrets when you failed to try to protect them.(You can fail to protect them, but you have to at least try for them to remain trade secrets.)
Trade secrets have to be real secrets, and you can't just hand out devices that use them willy-nilly in the store. If you walk into court with a 'trade secret' violation and can't immediately produce a list of people who have had authorized access to it and the contracts they signed, you'll get laughed out of court, and it's really amazing the MPAA was able to drag this out this long, probably by conflating it with the supposed DMCA violations, which are utterly unrelated.
Also, you probably shouldn't patent the damn encoder if you are trying to keep the decoder secret, that really doesn't make any sense either.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Trade secrets are basically anti-patents. (Which is why the term 'intellectual property' is stupid.)
With patents, inventers are screwed even if they reinvent it without knowing about the original.
With trade secrets, not only can invent it myself, but I can do everything in my power to learn it from you as long as I obey the law and don't break any signed NDAs.
If I am, to pick a mostly silly but widely used example trade secret, trying to steal the formula to Coke, I not only can subject the drink to chemical analysis, but I can take a tour of the plant with a hidden high-powered camera, I can rifle through their trash, I can get hired as a employee and attempt to learn it that way, I can get an employee drunk, etc. If I do, I win. (Note all companies make you sign an NDA before learning trade secrets, and in some places it's actually part of your employment contract, so you actually can't sign on with them to learn it.)
Also note that if I trick someone else into telling it, while they may be liable, I am not, and can use my knowledge in any way I want. (Which, BTW, is one of the few forms of legal blackmail...I can offer to sign an NDA if they will pay me X amount of money.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'd still like to know why they thought California state law had jurisdiction over the UK though.
As luck would have it we have a delayed departmental Xmas do tonight (we were all working too hard before xmas to have it then) - look out London, I'm really ready to party now :))
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven