Slashdot Mirror
EFF and Dvorak Blame the Digg Revolt On Lawyers
enharmonix writes "A bit of an update on the recent Digg revolt over AACS. The NYTimes has taken notice and written quite a decent article that actually acknowledges that the take-down notices amount to censorship and documents instances of the infamous key appearing in purely expressive form. I was pleased to see the similarity to 2600 and deCSS was not lost on the Times either. More interesting is that the EFF's Fred von Lohmann blames the digg revolt on lawyers. And in an opinion piece, John Dvorak expands on that theme."
esp. the business/IP type.. but don't the EFF have/employ a lot of lawyers?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Blame the lawyers instead of figuring out a reasonable approach to DRM that doesn't burden the consumers while protecting the producers. The worst part is that some of these now blamed lawyers will run for Congress to make a bigger mess.
...that trying to issue a thousands of DMCA take down notices is the fastest way to proliferate something :)
Oh yeah and the fact that DMCA take down notices only apply to servers in the US.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Was Digg ever given a takedown notice? I haven't followed this since the original flap over it, but at the time it seemed like Digg cowered at the idea that maybe they could get in legal trouble (or lose an advertiser).
When Digg changed their tune, some users rejoiced that Digg was now going to fight for them, possibly at the cost of the site. Digg even made a solemn pronouncement that they were taking some brave and bold step. But there was never any evidence of any fight. If there was a threat or takedown notice, Digg should have posted that.
Somebody should write the NYTimes a letter and let them know that the code is just the code you need to play the movies you own and paid for. Piracy doesn't figure into it at all.
Dvorak is making sense.
In situations like this it is not always correct to blame the lawyers and to give the company that hired the lawyers a free pass on the blame. These companies have in house intellectual property divisions charged with protecting the company's assets. Those corporate minions hire the lawyers and give them a job to do. The lawyers are more than happy to do what they have been asked to do, and generally there is not a whole lot of leeway on the implementation of that job. If the company wants to avoid bad press, then it ought to reconsider its options, legal and otherwise, available to it and change its strategy.
I think it is on slashdot because the whole Digg revolt is actually showing a new socio-political form of protest, bringing civil disobedience into the virtual world. Before you would have to show up to a rally, carry a big sign, shout and chant stuff and then get beat up by police with nightsticks, peppersprayed, shot with rubber bullets, tear gassed, ect... but who has the time or energy for that these days.
Sit at home, find a piece of info that some company does not want the world to know and post it onto a site like Digg, Slashdot or some other popular site and kick back and watch the fireworks. The reason it is/was so successful was because of the response it got from AACS-LA, they issued hundreds or thousands of DMCA take-down notices. If it looked like they did not give a crap then odds are high that nothing would have happened.
This is 100% the result of a big bad corporation deciding to try and stomp on the rights of the consumers and citizens and in this case instead of laying down and taking their beating like a good citizen is supposed to they stood up and gave AACS-LA a kick in the balls. Trying to censor something is the quickest way to make sure everyone knows about it.
Plus sometimes it takes a childish tantrum to get people to take a look at a real problem (DMCA)
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
The AACS is not a 'copy prevention' or 'copyright protection' code. It has always been possible to copy a DVD and it still is. The AACS is an 'anti fair use' code. As such, it has *nothing* to do with the DMCA.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's clear what the people want. So why does the law dictate the opposite?
Everyone's so busy looking at copyright and missing the bigger picture! Our 'democracy' doesn't work.
you digg your own grave rather than rob anothers.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
Makes a damn good keyboard layout though
I though it was more along the digg wasn't paid to adjust reality and they are fighting to retain their right to sell the ability to mould their forum posters opinions. Like google they only censor and mod up for profit, never ever for free ;).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Wait a minute - Dvorak says to blame the lawyers??
Oh my... I am so conflicted..... who do I complain about?
Oh, right - Microsoft!
Three Squirrels
This isn't just a matter of one party making a civil threat against another; the government is neck-deep in their involvement. By passing a law as bizarre as DMCA, which the people didn't even ask for, they've outlawed certain types of speech. Argue the merit of censorship, but don't say it's not.
BTW, the NY Times writer is an MPAA-apologist:
(And he makes at least two other references to the crypto being an "anti-piracy" measure.) Anti-piracy is very likely a large part of the motivation for the creation of this system, but as it clearly serves the much more general function of "limiting access." To let things like- Preventing many Fair Uses
- Preventing access to the work even after it has entered Public Domain in the future
- Controlling the player market(!)
all fall under the umbrella of "preventing piracy" is a pretty distorted way to report the news. If NYT wants to take sides and promote a certain agenda, that's their right, but they should get called on it.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It couldn't have been a DMCA "we own the copyright, now take it down" takedown notice, because those only apply to copyrightable works.
What probably happened was Digg got a letter saying, "You have posted a DRM circumvention tool. If you don't remove it, we will sue your testicles into the stratosphere."
It's different from a takedown notice, but it had the same effect.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It is clearly a hyporcracy since, for instance blacks were hardly receiving the "liberty and justice for all" until very recently and many people do not at present. Say it enough and you don't doubt it. That those liberties and justice don't exist hardly matters - people still believe they have them.
Sure, USA is better than China etc, but to be the world leader in freedom that USA claims to be it should be ranking a bit higher than 15/11 on http://www.worldaudit.org/press.htm
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Of course there are gray areas in "freedom of speech". For example, the United States has often equated giving money to a candidate as "speech". I personally disagree that the right to give arbitrary money to a candidate is equal to the right of free expression or even association, but it's certainly debatable. There's also the question of intent-- you may be free to say anything and not be locked up for the speech, but be locked up because the speech implied intent or guilt in another matter entirely. Depending on how silly and "thought-crime"esque other laws are, it may seem like it's speech itself that is being impinged.
Anyway, nothing is black and white, and especially not something as rich as speech.
In any case, in case this article leads anyone to any undue optimism, you can go read ABC news' editorial on the matter to bring you back down again (or to make your blood boil, depending on your temperament).
E pluribus unum
Check out this quote:
> Some people believe that such systems unfairly limit their freedom to listen to music and watch movies on whatever devices they choose.
What the is that? Could they maybe cite one of many sources who will freely give that opinion? Fox pioneered this terrible technique of interjecting their own opinion via the construct "Some say...", and it's terrible journalism. I imagine this article was written off the cuff, but just give the EFF or anyone else a buzz for a quick quote.
If someone drops a fort on Will, he makes a reflex save.
The porblem isn't that the lawyers didn't do what they were told, nor even that they did do what they were told. Lawyers have a responsibility to their clients not only to take legal action when required, but also to advise their clients on the likely outcomes of their actions, as well as the likelihood of success. Any halfway honest lawyer should have told their client "You will pay us thousands of hours, You will not acheive your goal, and this will backfire causing yet another in a bad series of negative press about your company". The implication here is that the lawyers did not do this. Given the above statement, I find it hard to beleive that an executive at XYZ company would pursue this approach when a legal professional told them to call it a day and move on.
The lawyers should have known this would happen. Posting a song for others to download requires speical software (e.g. napster, kazaa, bittorrent, etc...), and people still manage to do it on a *massive* scale. Posting a 32 digit number is so easy, any 12 year old kid can post it in thousands of places in the space of a day or so. The lawyers all have plenty of precedent to say that takedown notices are more likely to backfire than to succeed, ergo it is their responsibility to advise their clients against this kind of behavior.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the technology and movie industries to prevent piracy of high-definition movies.
He not only distorts the aim of digital restrictions, he's advertising and promoting newer movie formats. People who use MPAA language aid the MPAA whether they want to or not. The easiest way to foil the "anti-piracy" talk is to point out the failure of DeCSS. Commercial shops will have no problem making and selling exact coppies. Exact coppies can also be made and sent over the internet by normal users. Encryption and restrictions serve only to thwart fair use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
The more they push, the harder we push back.
That summarizes it pretty well too.
They pushed very hard with the thousands of DCMA take downs and we pushed back, taking out a popular site in the process.
>That includes being able to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. If you're not allowed to do that, then you do not truly have
>freedom of speech.
If the theatre happens to be on fire, then you will probably have the gratitude of the people within.
If the theatre happens to NOT be on fire, you may face consequences at the hands of those same people.
In no case was "yelling fire" illegal. However, intentionally causing a panic and creating a public nuisance, *is* illegal.
On the other hand, the allusion to yelling fire was meant to illustrate the basis for a doctrine that a compelling state interest existed that could justify the suppression of certain activities that would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. In particular, "yelling fire" was an example used in a case that ruled it illegal to distribute flyers opposing the military draft during WWI. I think it is also important to understand that this ruling was overturned, which probably means it *is* legal to protest against a draft during wartime.
If you experiment with "yelling fire", you will probably find that no law actively suppresses your right to do it, and you will also almost certainly find that no law protects you from the ass kicking you receive as a result -- or from the harsh manner in which you are removed from the theatre by its proprietor or the police.
Oliver Wendell Holmes was helping to establish what rights were, and to what extent the expression of one's rights were allowed to abridge the rights of others.
Today, the test for whether first amendment protections my be abridged on any activity, is if the state can argue that it is intended to, and will likely incite "imminent lawless action", a stricter standard than the "clear and present danger" which had existed before 1969. Essentially the government may "place time, place and manner" restrictions on First Amendment activities, if it can argue that the activities are likely to cause a riot.
For what it's worth, I do believe the Federal Government has clearly failed to adhere to this standard on numerous occasions.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Threatening to file a lawsuit sometimes works, and even if it doesn't there's no law that says you have to file that suit you threatened someone with.
It only works when you are sending one or two notices to people who are doing things that are *clearly* going to get them in trouble. In these kinds of cases, you would have a very hard time pinning anything on the original posters, and they know it, so they continue posting anywhere and everywhere just to spite the company using the heavy handed tactics. The balance of power is shifting back into the hands of the masses, and the masses know it.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
>Suppose, for example, that someone's Valuable Intellectual Property were, through pure coincidence, protected by the key
>"sony.com", by the contents of http://www.riaa.com/ or by the image of Mickey Mouse?
I think the only successful attack against the **AA will come from within. One of its own members will see the light, recognize the organization as competition, and destroy it.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
There's nothing hypocritical about this.
This is about a secret number. This number is, well, a number. You can't own a number. No number is a secret unto itself. That they use it as the key for their cryptography, that's the secret they want to keep private. Unfortunately for them, the number was available to anyone with a disk, a drive, and the right software. Someone was bound to tell. They tried to un-share the secret by squelching the mention of the number, not the association with their cryptography. That's censorship.
It's a popular topic here for a number of reasons, including:
There's a bunch more reasons, but you get the idea.
Frankly I think this whole protect-the-media-empire-profits mode the government has gotten into lately is treason against the people and the Republic. It's an example of legislation for hire. It's an erosion of civil rights to protect the unearned profits on Steamboat Willie. It is vile. But that's just my opinion.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Um, in what way is AACS maintaining private information? AACS is a flawed encryption scheme applied to information sold to the public. It's only real-world purpose is to remove rights that traditional copyright law wouldn't touch. Without AACS, I'd be able to watch movies in my choice of player, make backups before my kids scratch the disk, or upload them to my private LAN for easier management of my collection. I would argue that it also prevents the material from entering the public domain. However, considering nothing recorded using a vinyl, magnetic, or laser disc medium has ever entered the public domain, current copyright law also prevents that.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
It's a classic case of inmates running the asylum.
All I see is lawyers generating more work for lawyers. They are not stupid - of course they know that there is no way anyone can keep the lid on this, which suits them perfectly.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
Prior (oldest known) professions of:
- congressmen: lawyers
- women: whores
seems right.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Ah, yes, "The music industry is decimated". LOL.
Now I know that it meant something different back in the Roman times, from which we inherited the word, but nowadays "decimated" means something a lot more drastic. You know, massive destruction. As in, "the population of Europe was decimated by the plague in the late middle ages." (When some documented outbreaks wiped out as much as 80% of a city's population, and, as statistics flukes often work, some smaller villages saw 100% deaths and became ghost villages.)
Did the music industry suffer anything even remotely callable "decimation". On what data do you or Dvorak base such statements? All the sales data I've seen indicated a steady, but relatively unspectacular decline in number of CDs sold, not some devastating dive at the end of Napster. And it becomes even less so when you consider how many people bought at least one track from an album on, say, iTunes, as basically the equivalent of one CD sale lost. Those people poached the one track that interested them, and are not gonna buy the whole CD now.
And let's be serious for a minute. If you think teenagers will start protesting DMCA en masse instead of trying to be fashionable among their peers, I have a nice waterfront property in Sahara to sell. Are you interested? I mean, heh, seriously, 90% of the high school population lives, dresses, eats and buys music based 100% on peer tastes. Even if they go for the rebellious independent teenager image, it's the exact image that their peers want to see. If among their peers it's fashionable to be a Britney Spears fan and have all her albums, that's what they'll do.
"There is no data that says otherwise"... actually, there is plenty.
1. Even if Napster went down, other P2P networks exist and existed. And by all estimates I've seen, the usage is rising steadily. Plus both pre- and post-napster there were pirate websites, ftp sites, binaries newsgroups, etc. What was so special about Napster among them? Why would piracy on Napster improve sales, but piracy on other networks cause sales to drop? Because that's what you're asking me to believe there, if Napster's death was single-handedly responsible for decimating the music business.
2. Last I've heard, most of the decline pre- or post-Napster also suspiciously correlated for a long while with a decline in the number of albums published. You don't need a conspiracy to start wondering about cause and effect there. Let's say Moraelin Music Inc publishes 20 albums in one year, and rakes 20 million dollars in sales. Then next year it publishes 19 albums and the sales dip to 19 million dollars. Hmm... Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?
3. How about the correlation with iTunes and the other online music shops that I've mentioned earlier? Unlike pirating a song, which makes most people feel slightly guilty, this time it's an officially bought song. No reason to go buy the CD too. And it went a long way towards killing the album. While previously the music companies would sell you a whole CD, now you can poach individual tracks, for a tenth of the cost. Do you see how that would cause a loss of $$ in sales? And then there were sites like Allofmp3, which didn't even pay the music companies a cent, but allowed some people to put a "well, then copyright is their problem, not mine, I bought the song" blanket over their conscience anyway.
Or in other words, Dvorak is, as usual, talking out the ass. His job as a tech pundit is to sound all smart, and tell the readers what they want to hear. Or at least some outlandish prediction. It's a short-story writer job, not some real all-knowing oracle. And if you've read some of his other pieces (e.g., the now infamous whine about how the Windows idle process is eating up 99% of his CPU power), he's... a helluval less than all-knowing. In fact, he's an outright idiot.
So be a smart guy and don't base your understanding of the world on his clueless rants. I'm sure you can find better sources of information.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Are those lawyers still working? It won't last too long.
Exactly. Big corporations that want to censor some piece of information should really read up on the Streisand Effect.
The reason this is not an issue of free expression is that the number, in itself, is meaningless. It has not intellectual or expressive content. It is merely a secret, and nothing more. Most people advocating the spreading of this number acknowledge the right of private parties to have secrets. They are mortified when sloppy IT practices expose social security numbers.
Does it make a difference why we say the takedown efforts are bad? I think it does. Framing the issue this way claims too much and too little. It claims a right to publish secrets that come into our hands, an idea most of us don't endorse. It claims too little, because the it obscures what is at stake: preventing private industry from taking control of cultural and political discourse using laws designed to encourage expression.
In other words, we must not allow the consortium to confuse the means and ends here. The average person will see clearly enough that the number is merely a secret, and secrets are legally protected as part of our right of privacy. It is the use to which the secret is put that is pernicious to individual freedom. The industry cannot assert it has suffered a loss of privacy with "clean hands". The takedowns are not censorship, they are protecting the means of censorship. The publications are not free expression, they are protecting the means of free expression.
Publishing the number is an act of civil disobedience. Again Thoreau has something important to say here:
This is marvelously apt to the issue of copy protection. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. The injury that AACS does to individual freedom comes from the power of the state. Furthermore, it prevents the public from experiencing and therefore understanding their rights of free use. Ultimately, it may cripple free political discourse itself, as the machinery of control becomes ubiquitous, and the means for evading control remain illegal.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Maybe h*s keyboard *s broke.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The humorous part of the whole takedown notice thing, was the list of pages to be taken down...one of which was /09-9f.....html
So, then, they have to issue a takedown notice for the takedown notice...which I gather they didn't bother to do.