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DeCSS Trade Secret Case Comes to an End - Again
Andrew Bunner writes "We asked the courts to rule on our appeal of the DeCSS preliminary injunction (even though the DVD CCA dropped the case) and... we won! No more preliminary injunction. Here's the official ruling (pdf)." This is the last gasp of this case, which we've been following for some years now. This ruling goes into some depth analyzing the trade secret claim, gets the ruling "right", and should be helpful in future cases on similar topics.
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/002154. html
you must acquit!
that people can press Ctrl when they put their DRM-CDs in now?
Oh I've waited to press that key for sooo long.
/* efdtt.c Author: Charles M. Hannum <root@ihack.net> */
,y,s[2048];main( ,n=2048 ,s,n) )if(s /16%4 ==1 ){int /2^j&1
;}}
/* Thanks to Phil Carmody <fatphil@asdf.org> for additional tweaks. */
/* DVD-logo shaped version by Alex Bowley <alex@hyperspeed.org> */
/* Usage is: cat title-key scrambled.vob | efdtt >clear.vob */
#define m(i)(x[i]^s[i+84])<<
unsigned char x[5]
n){for( read(0,x,5 );read(0,s
); write(1
[y=s [13]%8+20]
i=m( 1)17 ^256 +m(0) 8,k =m(2)
0,j= m(4) 17^ m(3) 9^k* 2-k%8
^8,a =0,c =26;for (s[y] -=16;
--c;j *=2)a= a*2^i& 1,i=i
<<24;for(j= 127; ++j<n;c=c>
y)
c
+=y=i^i/8^i>>4^i>>12,
i=i>>8^y<<17,a^=a>>14,y=a^a*8^a<<6,a=a
&nbs p; >>8^y<<9,k=s[j],k ="7Wo~'G_\216"[k
&7]+2^"cr3sfw6v;*k+>/n."[k>>4]*2^k*257/
  ; 8,s[j]=k^(k&k*2&34)*6^c+~y
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Who would have thought a simple CSS remover would create such news ;)
DeCSS ok, but not DVD X-Copy. Why is that? Because DeCSS doesn't do anything by itself, but having X Copy demonstrates criminal intent?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It seems that back in the late 1800's in America (mentioning this for non-U.S. /.ers) there was this saloon in the West that was kind of a run-down,
ramshackle joint that was frequented by a few loyal patrons and not too many
others. Basically,
while the saloon didn't go out of its way to publicize itself to
out-of-towners (not much point given that it was in a remote area) it managed
to do a fairly steady trade despite the occasional brawl that caused property
damage and the persistent requests from a particular fellow for free drinks.
More nights than not, the proprietor of the saloon would watch this drunk come wandering in through the doors, sit down, and lay a line on him about how he's trying to pull things together and how he'd just make enough to keep himself in beans and couldn't the bartender just pour him a shot or two to fuzz the edges and whatnot. And again, more nights than not, the bartender would take pity on the poor guy and pull out the whiskey.
Now, mind you, this went on for some time, and while the bartender was an easy mark even he had his limit. So one night, after the bartender already gave the fellow three shots on the house, he decides to cut the guy off.
"Look," he says, "while I'm really sorry to hear that things still aren't working out for you I don't think that I can keep giving you free drinks. I've got to make ends meet too, you know."
So the drunk says, "I don't suppose you've got anything I can do to get another drink tonight?"
The proprietor, not particularly wanting this fellow to hang around all night and certainly not expecting him to take him up on his proposition, says "Well, you see that spittoon over there? If you take a swig out of that I suppose I could give you a drink to wash it down."
No sooner did he finish his last sentence than the drunk walked over to the spittoon and hefted it off of the floor. Before the bartender could stop him, the fellow put the rim to his lips, tipped the bottom of the metal container up into the air, and began to swallow. To the bartender's dismay, the guy continued to slowly chug the thick contents of the spittoon. When he had finally gulped the final remnants of the container, he threw it to the ground, wiped off his lips with his shirt cuff, and gagged, "So, do I get the drink?"
"You can have the bottle!" exclaimed the bartender, immediately pouring the first shot. "But tell me, why did you swallow the whole damn thing? You only needed to swig it to earn the drink."
And the drunk replies: "It was all one long string."
This is why the law should embrace both free enterprise and fair use; the average person will draw from both, the average business can profit from both, and the content creators are encouraged financially to continue to create without becoming discouraged financially by 90-year royalties.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
So does this mean Debian can now distribute libdvdcss in main?
I recall a while back about 2600 losing their case on which they were linking to DeCSS, wonder if they can get it overturned by a judge. Probably won't though, knowing the government (after all, they are evil hackers!).
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
Page 7:
"The court stated that trade secret status should not be deemed destroyed merely because the information was posted on the Internet..."
Holy crap, what exactly *would* destroy trade secret status if posting to the internet doesn't do the job?
Do you have ESP?
That joke is older than computers. It's a great one, but very old. Tell your friend to quit stealing credit. That joke is public domain.
Interesting the decision quotes slashdot. Maybe the people that were saying not to joke about MyDoom were right. (or maybe not)
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
It's foolish, of course. Trying to protect silly "trade secrets" behind a poorly conceived law is the worst thing to happen to digital media (and the internet). It's like being a restauranteur and crying "No fair" and refusing to sell desserts to customers who taste a dessert and ask, "Is that cinnamon?"
If people are going to buy your product, and be exposed to it, they will naturally have to gain some familiarity with it. It's silly to want a food critic taste your food so he could publish a glowing review and then get upset when he writes what he (correctly) believes to be your ingredients.
The DVD-CAA wants the DVD format to be adopted and for it to be widespread and popular, but they complain about anything that comes from people using it and that would help distribution.
It's been said, but if they want their DVD encryption to be impenetrable (and hence popular with the MPAA) they should actually try to make it tough to crack instead of hiding behind a flimsy law that has apparently been dismissed in this particular case.
It's just like any software (i.e. IE) being lackadaisical about security and then complaining about people breaking the law by writing viruses. Yeah, it's a law, and people shouldn't do it, but then some people also don't care.
The preliminary injuction fell out of force when the original case that caused the injunction to be issued got dismissed. Afterall, a preliminary injution is a request for the court to implement some of the relief that is going to be the result of winning the trial because its needed right away and can't wait that long. In order to get one, the court has to be convinced that it's pretty likely that the plantiff is going to win. If the case is dismissed, there's no chance left the plantiff can win that case, so the injunction goes away.
But, this issue over whether the injunction should have been granted in the first place got appealed and hadn't been decided yet. Well, actually, it had been already decided that this violated the free speach protections in the US Constitution by the appeals court, but the CA Supreme Court overturned that ruling. However, the CA Supreme Court returned the case to the appeals court to let them rule on the argument that the injunction was an improper use of the CA trade secret laws.
That's where the appeals case was when the DVD CCA abaondoned the original case that generated the injunction and the appeal. Now, normally, such an appeal automatically dies as a moot point when that kind of thing happens, but the appeals court rejected the DVD CCA's request to dismiss because this was such a novel argument, it really needs an appeals ruling to guide future cases.
And here comes that ruling... that the injunction shouldn't have been granted in the first place. That's now on the record as an appeals ruling and can be cited in other future cases.
The DVD CCA balled out of the original lawsuit fearing that they were going to lose, and furthermore lose in a way that'd get them in trouble in future cases. Well, guess what, their worst nightmare came true. A declarative ruling that the preemptive injunction that they got was one they shouldn't have, so that set of legal paper goes in the "Don't try that again" pile. The key arguement to their case has basically been shot down... CSS doesn't appear to be a trade secret anymore in CA.
Can I use Cascading Style Sheets on my websites now?
that debian distros will now be able to include working DVD players?
They have to drink from a spittoon?
"It is important to stress that our conclusion is based upon the appellate record filed in this court. It is not a final adjudication on the merits. The ultimate determination of trade secret status and misappropriation would be subject to proof to be presented at trial." So how does this mean the case is over? It just means the injunction before trial is over, doesn't it?
It depends. If you encrypt them in any way then you'd be violating the DMCA which is really what's at the heart of the matter here.
a. fuck you
b. fuck you one more time for good measure
c. repeat
I have never appreciated this until I met a friend at work. Let's meet "Nikki". She's 21, works in the seafood department of a crappy grocery store (and #%$! makes more money than I do as a cashier) and makes a lot of money on the side selling all of us at work pirated DVD's. This is a Good Thing. She said, when she doesn't make rent, she burns DVD's for kids. What she used to do in the past was buy alcohol for kids under 21.
Simply put, by supporting CSS, you support underage drinking.
Mod "Overrated" instead of replying "I disagree with you," you coward.
You just wanted to write (i.e. IE), didn't you?
It's been said, but if they want their DVD encryption to be impenetrable (and hence popular with the MPAA) they should actually try to make it tough to crack instead of hiding behind a flimsy law that has apparently been dismissed in this particular case.
Except, that is theoretically impossible, which is the whole point of the DCMA. Since bullet proof DRM impossible, just make it illegal to create device that doesn't honor DRM, then the average user will never be able to break it, and the minority of people that do, will be small enough to ignore or sue. Well that was the theory until p2p showed that it was possible for the minority to anonymously distribute their cracked works to the majority.
Of course, all this DRM is completely unnecissary, just look at the software industry's experiance with it.
Note that it was written by Andrew Bunner himself (at least supposedly). So HE really did win.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
This DeCSS case is a trade secret case. The court said that no trade secrets were illegally obtained.
The DVD X-Copy case is a DMCA case. The court said that fair use may exist and user's have a right to it, but they can't actually exercise it in practice.
You may be thinking of another DeCSS case which was about DMCA takedown notices and prior restraint of speech. The court said that linking or even posting a list of sites to download DeCSS was a violation of the DMCA.
What makes you think that being against bad law is anti-capitalist? Freedom isn't anti-capitalist, protectionism is. Using bad law to shore up weak enterprise weakens the capitalist experiment.
Pierre
Of course, and that's not what this decision was about. This was about *De*CSS, which means that you can now *remove* the style sheets from your website.
I bet there are a lot of web sites where people tried style sheets once but then realized it was illegal to remove them.
How many of those judges use Linux / some DeCSS derivative to play their DVDs at home and don't want to see that go away?
Hmmmm.
Did nobody read the comments the last time this story was announced (I mean the good comments not the ones saying this meant they could distribute DeCSS). This just clears it from trade secret problems, not DMCA problems or (possibly) patent problems.
The DMCA is still in effect people!
Maybe a statement along the lines of "This information is believed to have been legally obtained by means of reverse engineering." could take away much of the uncertainty in future cases.
Combined with rapid internet wide distribution, this seems a solid way to publish information obtained through reverse engineering in the public domain.
It seems my report and analysis from August 2001 was closer to the mark than I dared believe. To wit:
I essentially said the same thing in my analysis: That DVD CCA's entire case hinged on whether the end-user "license" was valid and binding.
My opinion remains unchanged: end-user "licenses" are unethical, and should not be allowed to stand. See my old-ish editorial on the subject for more detail.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I really don't think its necessary to respond to you, but I'll take the bait anyway. Debian's developers don't make the decision as to whether or not to package libcss. Usually, it's their lawyers.
Futhermore, those that do make the decision have enough balls to do what's right by (firstly) staying true to their founding idealogies and (secondly) keeping the distribution spottless from a legal standpoint. I for one am glad they've made the hard decisions like these -- and I'm VERY glad that YOU weren't the one making the decisions.
Perhaps you should watch who you accuse of not having balls Coward.
can i touch you?
I'm also developing an enormous amount of respect for those judges whose opinions manage to be very readable, even when discussing arcane technicalities of law (and, in this case, technology) -- many of us engineers could learn a thing or three from these folks about clear writing.
-Brian
Lesson: next time this happens, *everyone* post the code on their website
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
n/t
He got it wrong anyway.
The correct grammar would be "(i.e., IE)". Furthermore, he used "i.e." errantly. "i.e." (Latin: id est), is used in modern English to abbreviate "that is". What he should have used is "e.g.", the abbreviation of (for) example.
I wonder if there would be anything of value here that 321 Studios, the makers of DVDXcopy could use in thier defense. It apears the ruling made what i think could be usefull especialy since they are going after them from the dmca standpoint. maybe the difference is the actual distrobution?
On the other hand maybe this would open another can of worms and possibly alow another set of attacks on the Decss teknoligy?
Hopkins & Carley, Arthur V. Plank,
Allonn E. Levy, San Jose;
First Amendment Project, Oakland,
James R. Wheaton, David A. Greene;
Tomlinson Zisko Morosoli & Maser,
Thomas E. Moore III, Palo Alto;
Electronic Frontier Foundation, San
Francisco, Cindy A. Cohn
You are now on the protected list.
(IANAL but)
As stated at the end of the PDF:
It is not a final adjudication on the merits
As far as I understand, this decision doesn't mean anything about DeCSS being legal or not, it is just about the fact that the injuction for stopping publication on Bunner's site was an abuse of the trial's court discretion.
It doesn't even say that distributing it is legal. As I understand, it does just say "Bunner distributed that when it was already public knowledge, so an injunction against that was innapropriate".
Now, he could be sued for distributing it, no?
-- No signature yet.
How can something that an -entire industry- uses be a trade secret? It doesn't sound like much of a secret to me...
Jason Faulkner
Old Os Administrator
jason@oldos.org
oldos.
What'd really be useful is that the person who did the reverse engineering publishes a log of their experience. Therefore, unless that log can be shown as a total forgery... it's pretty clear reverse engineering rather than a secret leak happened.
I have come to know on a first-hand basis what effects that ordinary people here on /. can have.
/. community would go with this, but on the whole I'm fairly pleased with what has happened. It has helped to define the attitudes of a whole generation of programmers and set legal precedence that I hope is going to, in the long run make it easier to freely express myself in software. Yeah, my part was real tiny but it doesn't take much to get everything moving. I also deliberately tried to lay low during this entire controversy because I already saw the legal mess that everybody who came in contact with this whole affair went through. I made it through without one single problem.
I posted the original story about deCSS back in November of 1999. It probabally would have been brought up eventually here on Slashdot, but it was amazing to me to see just how quickly this legal action (originally against Jon Johansen) spawned a whole battle cry from readers here on this site. I was an active participant on the LiVID discussion group back then and this was one situation where I knew that this really needed to be seen by a much larger audience. I had absolutely no idea just how far the
My only regret is that similar actions haven't happened against the DVD Consortium (formerly DVD Forum and prior to that... well, does it really matter?) in regards to the DVD-Video specification. Although some of it is patented (mainly the MPEG-2 portions), for the most part that DVD-Video spec is protected by the same trade secret laws that the CSS algorithms were also protected by. The only problem is that the DVD-Video spec is much more complicated and won't simply fit on the back of a T-shirt.
I had the good fortune of actually being able to read the formal DVD-Video specs (as an employee), and implemented a multiplexor/authoring system following those specs. It is from this experience that I am absolutely committed to open specifications. There was so much I wanted to disclose to the other LiVID members information I knew about those specs, but I deliberately stayed on the sidelines and simply said "Yeah you are going in the right direction" or "No, I think you got that model wrong. Try something else."
The full potential of utilizing the DVD-Video still has yet to be realized, and unfortunately I don't think it ever will be. I'm talking a genuine "hacking" of the capabilities of a standard DVD-Video player like you have in your home entertainment system, not just the Linux box that you also want to play some DVD movies on (although knowledge of the spec can also help that effort). The DVD/optical disc format is a totally different medium of delivery from video tape, but unfortunately most movie studios simply treat it as only a glorified version of a VHS cassette (DVD extras on a typical release not withstanding). Worse yet, people who consider DVDs to be just another version of VCDs.
I also wouldn't mind trying to put something together right now, as I'm currently unemployed, but that is another story altogether. I can't afford the current specs even if I was fully employed right now.
Adding Sheetrock to list of foes for wasting my time, encourage others to follow suit.
That case wasn't about trade secrets, it was about DMCA takedown notices and a little bit about DMCA circumvention devices. So this case has little or no effect on the case law that was created in the 2600 case. And they certainly aren't going to go back and change it. At best the EFF might want to take it to the Supreme Court but it's probably too late to appeal.
Buying a DVD is like buying a book locked in a safe, where the seller won't give you the combination unless you pay him additional money.
(Parent comment is almost as strange as the utterly pointless spitoon comment earlier...)
If you bought a book locked in a safe to which you did not have the combination you would not be able to read it. So the only way this analogy makes sense is if the "additional money" you speak of is the money the DVD forum collects from manufacturers who create DVD playback systems and then presumably pass the cost along to consumers.
This reasoning holds about as much water as complaining that Sega Dreamcast discs can only be played on a Sega Dreamcast. How dare they charge you for the game and the tools to play it!
If you don't like it, then by all means, go back to your books.
That requires eyes. A few days ago a friend sent me this mp3 (dunno where he found it) You can *listen* to someone sing the decss code, and its not richard stallman style either! Check it out at http://macwhore.net/the_computer_code_hoedown_.mp3
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
I got it wrong.
...
So sue me.
Wait, I shouldn't have said that
Last I checked distributing public knowledge wasn't illegal. But ultimately we will have to wait for the decision, which at this point seems to favor the defendant.
Of course, DeCSS lets you copy DVDs. But on the other hand, DeCSS lets those with bad support for DVD-playback view them in their favourite OS.
DeCSS can be compared to this:
If you use a lamp to light through the mail, and see the contents.. is that illegal? yes!
But what if it is your own mail? still illegal? No!
Too many focus on the anti-piracy concept of CSS, but it seems to me that nobody (atleast not many enhough) even conciders that CSS locks out some of the potential users of DVD.
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
...and a click click here and a click click there
ie IE. Oh!
The court interpret that as "yes, you still have fair use, too bad you can't use it without bypassing that copy control mechanism". Yes, it's stupid.
It's like saying you have the right to free speech but you can only excercise it if you can climb to the top of that tower over there. And by the way it's illegal to climb the tower and we have armed guards waiting if you try it.
The court in Norway said Johansen acted legally so the information was obtained without breaking the law. As such it's no longer a trade secret. If a trade secret becomes public knowledge or is obtained legally by a person they have free use of that information.
So it wasn't even a trade secret at the time of publication on the Internet.
Did they call the trial judge a moron who should be sent back to grammar school, or did I read too much in this (p7):
The court pointed out: "once this information gets into the hands of an innocent party, the Plaintiff loses their [sic] ability to enjoin the use of their [sic] trade secret.
When I was taking courses in the mid 70s, our Cobol instructor, I believe it was a Mr. Grice (who was also a presbyterian minister), told that very same disgusting story. This is the first time I've heard it repeated since (and hopefully not again for at least another 30 years). I can't recall exactly what his point was either, maybe a lead up to discussing string variables.
While this decision is a very good thing, it's important to recognize that this was a case in a state, not federal, court involving specifically California's Uniform Trade Secrets Act and as such the decision isn't binding on other jurisdictions.
One dumb court case down, SCO to go.
Did you also mean "trade secrets" like pressing the shift key?
But I thought reverse engineering is illegal under the DMCA?
I think we should take the "defective product" tack.
I can't make fair use of this product because it has such a defect: It would make me a dangerous criminal in the eyes of the state were I to use the product.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Admit it, you were just trolling about this description of a gross event having smth. to do with the DECSS case, you just wanted us to read about some guy drinking a long string of slimy spit, didn't ya?
You can't handle the truth.
At least kernel updates.
Unlike with Windows, applying a security patch for anything other than the kernel usually does not usually require a reboot of UNIX-like systems.
It might be a good idea for this guy to patch for the do_brk() privalege escalation bug which appears in linux = 2.4.22.
I think the point of writing their own proprietary algorithm was so they could patent it, and license the algorithm to people who wish to make DVD players and sell them.
:)
You can't patent a decoding key, but you can patent the method for using a key.
It's a revenue stream, really. It's not about security, or piracy, or anything like that.
To use something like AES to encrypt the DVDs wouldn't cost them a dime, but it doesn't earn them more bucks either, so it would never happen.
So, why try to protect the algorithm at all? Patents only last 17 years, right? DVDs might last much longer than that. It might become legal to make "after market" (invent your own term) DVD players (aka: xine) and sell them for profit when the patent runs up, and that gives whoever does it access to a tremendous library of media, which they didn't fork out a dime for.
Which means, round about 2010 we should see a DVD2 standard, with a whole new algorithm, and a whole new patent, and a whole new trip around the merry-go-round.
Not that I'm cynical.
-ave
...or maybe not.
In a bizarre incident, the entire US Congress has been found asphixiated in their seats. C-SPAN viewers reported seeing a collective gasp upon passing of the anti-smoking bill. Commentators note that the bill's opponents successfully defended the anti-respiration clause in an effort to satisfy the tobacco lobby.