Blogger Threatened For Publishing JS Hack

An anonymous reader writes "Internet radio station Atlanta Blue Skye LLC has warned a Romania-based technology enthusiast that his blog has been 'copied' and turned over to its lawyers. The issue stems from his posting of a widely known workaround for bypassing JavaScript functions that try to disable a mouse's right-click context menu functionality, and the radio stream information gathered from the Properties function of Windows Media Player."

Comments

Lets just hope that

[zappepcs]

the Atlanta Blue Skye LLC company are irreparably harmed financially when they are hit with the clue stick. There is NO way to suppress information on the Internet globally, and those who try to are more ignorant of the facts than should be believable.

Re:Lets just hope that

[rook2pawn]

Suppose the Atlanta blue Skye LLC knew they were launching a claim that ignored basic realities, including basic realities of the internet, that is distribution of information and how-to; If this can be shown to be the case, then the Atlanta Blue Skye LLC should be open to frivoulous lawsuit charges. Here are the merits of such a case: 1) There are 1,420 web pages that include the term "Bypass Javascript" (from google.com) 2) As the other posts have mentioned, even major browsers have ways of disabling script. This clearly represents the realm of basic technical understanding. To not know this, and then suppose that doing so would be illegal, is to ignore what has long been established by the major shapers and designers of the modern internet. This is what counts for frivolousness.

Re:Lets just hope that

[zappepcs]

Absolutely right, and let the courts make them pay the blogger huge sums for their harassment of his legal use of the Internet.

Re:Lets just hope that

[FLEB]

Still, though, just as a crackable WEP WiFi point is no longer a "open invitation", circumventing an access-control device that is easily circumvented does not mean that it was open.

I think a better argument would be that there was no "hacking" of a poorly-made access-control mechanism, because the mechanism was flat-out not an access control device in the first place.

Interpretation and execution of the JavaScript language that the right-click blocking used is an optional browser feature, so the blocking itself is inherently optional. Furthermore, the feature of JS that they were trying to exploit (the modality of the alert() box) is not specified as an access control feature, nor is it specified (and it's certainly not guaranteed) to function in a manner that would control access.

Re:Lets just hope that

[Nandro]

And to think that if this poor blogger didnt post it than someone else would have is ignorant. If anything he pointed out a flaw in their system and should be grateful as he didn't charge them a fee for assessing their site's security. Bunch of ignoramuses!!

Re:Lets just hope that

[Afecks]

There is NO way to suppress information on the Internet globally

Nah, you're just lazy.

Re:Lets just hope that

[Anonymous Coward]

dude. disabling javascript, which is a sound thing to do for security bypasses this.

Anyone that calls the bad hack that disables right click is a incredible moron and needs to be beaten with a 2 by four repeatedly until they either understand it or are rendered unconscious.

Re:Lets just hope that

[cbhacking]

Wellll... he DID offer to provide free IT support and testing for any less-poorly-conceived measures they wanted to come up with for embedding the stream in the ad-riddled web page. Clearly, this is the act of somebody who is just out to get the poor Internet radio station by simultaneously increasing their users and denying them advertising income, while making a personal profit off them!!

Re:Lets just hope that

[MacGyver2210]

Disabling right-clicking isn't a legitimate form of access control, considering it's an option to disable JS in almost(if not) all browsers, and several include it as a default setting. Using a setting on the streaming server they posted on the site that only allows connections by a certain domain(easy in Shoutcast) would be much more effective and would require an actual effort to defeat, making it much more legitimate, and probably succeptable to 'hacking' accusations.

Re:Lets just hope that

[Paradise Pete]

Atlanta Blue Skye LLC should be open to frivoulous lawsuit charges.

They haven't sued and as soon as they get done talking to their lawyers I'm sure they won't be planning on it. All they did was send some (admittedly retarded) emails.

Re:Lets just hope that

[Dhalka226]

"Frivolous lawsuit" does not mean "stupid lawsuit." They are lawsuits that have no basis in the law, where any competent lawyer should know that it has no merit. Sanctions along these lines are levied against the lawyers, not the entity that hired them. (Where those are one in the same--ie eg, corporate litigators--the effect is largely the same, but the distinction remains.)

The fact that "lots of people do it" or "it's easy to do" doesn't mean it's not illegal or tortious. Look at the DMCA, it's anti-circumvention aspects and the way THOSE are being used if you need any proof of that.

I think this is one of the world's stupidest lawsuits, but that doesn't instantly make it frivolous.

Re:Lets just hope that

[644bd346996]

It is also very important to note that this is an obfuscation that can be accidentally cracked by somebody who has that option enabled for other [valid] reasons. If somebody cares about security or just doesn't like the annoyance of sites that change the context menus, they have the right to surf that way. You can hardly sue somebody for circumventing a measure they didn't even notice.

Re:Lets just hope that

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you mean like this code... to prevent Firefox from being able to suppress the script that will override its context menu. Trust me, this works even if you have that little checkbox marked. The only way to stop this is to disable javascript (noscript plugin) (at least as far as I know, I haven't tested this in a long time).

BTW: This code features the ability to disable itself so I'm not one of those idiots that tries to protect content with it... Its actually useful the way I use it... In my opinion...

Eh, its a long script, so I'll pastebin it...
http://pastebin.ca/499577

Don't hate me for my bad coding/documentation technique... its years old...

Re:Lets just hope that

[asamad]

What about the poor corporate user who has his browser set to java script off by his companies security policy - does this mean he is in violation - does it mean his entire company is violation. Did I not read somewhere on slashdot that being able to break copy protection is now a crime.

Re:Lets just hope that

[revengebomber]

Still, though, just as a crackable WEP WiFi point is no longer a "open invitation", circumventing an access-control device that is easily circumvented does not mean that it was open. Lbh whfg unpxrq zl frphevgl flfgrz, lbh vafrafvgvir pybq!

Re:Lets just hope that

[pairo]

Frrzf zbqf ner zvffvat gur wbxr urer. :-)

Re:Lets just hope that

[jasen666]

Oh no! My Firefox NoScript extension makes me a hacker! I'm gonna get sued too.

Re:Lets just hope that

[ls -la]

circumventing an access-control device that is easily circumvented does not mean that it was open. So if I visit a site that uses javascript to disable the right-click menu, and I never know because I have scripts blocked, am I violating the DMCA?

Re:Lets just hope that

[FLEB]

Read on... my point was that right-click-blocking is not and access control, hence no "cracking" took place, and that that argument is more sound (and true) than saying it's fair game to circumvent because it's a trivially-crackable access control.

a javascript hack?

[Anonymous Coward]

or a juice squeeze hack?

Oh noes

[Dachannien]

Maybe they should turn this over to their intrepid band of lawyers.

Re:Oh noes

[arodland]

Or the entire Opera browser, which has a preference (enabled by default) that disallows scripts from handling right-click events.

Re:Oh noes

[duguk]

So does firefox... Tools, Options, Content, Javascript - Advanced

Re:Oh noes

[zobier]

What he said.

Re:Oh noes

[bhtooefr]

Or the entire Internet Explorer browser, which has the ability to disable ALL JavaScript. (And, in fact, I find that it likes to automatically, when troubleshooting IE6+SP2 or IE7.)

I personally use Opera, though. :)

Re:Oh noes

[Anonymous Coward]

...or this.

Re:Oh noes

[CTho9305]

Is it not built in in Firefox? SeaMonkey has that functionality Edit->Preferences, Advanced->Scripts & Plugins, uncheck "Disable or replace context menus".

Re:Oh noes

[proadventurer]

Thanks for the tip!

Re:Oh noes

[Kadin2048]

True. However, it's easy to find out if a user has completely disabled JavaScript -- browsers like Firefox let you selectively disable various "features" of JS, so you can keep doing scripts from annoying things (resizing windows, eliminating the address / tool bars, right-click context menus, etc.) without disabling script behavior. This makes sure that your browser looks like one that's using JS, so it won't fail any "JavaScript is required to view this page!" asshattery, but you'll still be able to retain control of your browser.

Re:Oh noes

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Comment, which we have copied, has been turned over to our lawyers.
You should plan on a response from them shortly and a visit to
Atlanta to be present in court. I am not allowed to make any further
statement regarding this matter at this time.

Re:Oh noes

[Tokerat]

...and Safari. And Explorer. And every single browser that ever implemented JavaScript.

It's like those idiots who try to sue search engines for spidering their sites of exclusive content when they have not set up robots.txt (or adequate user authentication).

Re:Oh noes

[Chris_Mir]

I just tried the site with konqueror. It does give the dialog with the text; 'The Right Mouse Button Is Disabled!', but after clicking OK, I get the context menu nevertheless. And this is default behaviour.

Re:Oh noes

[MooUK]

I've never seen a right-click-disabler actually work in firefox. They create a popup, yes, but then I find the context menu appears anyway.

Re:Oh noes

[mpe]

This makes sure that your browser looks like one that's using JS, so it won't fail any "JavaScript is required to view this page!" asshattery, but you'll still be able to retain control of your browser.

This is the basic paradigm of the web, the browser always has the final say!

Re:Oh noes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the basic paradigm of the web, the browser always has the final say!

Yes, and this is of paramount importance for keeping the web in the hand of users i.e. people. Just as it is in the interest of corporations to wrestle control of the operating system away from us people, so too will they try (and are trying already) to do the same with web browsers.

Open source browser and especially Firefox with its myriad extensions have a large role to play in maintaining control in our hands.

They broke the law

[Anonymous Coward]

They copied his blog? That's copyright infringement - and that's against the law. It's no different to walking into a store and stealing a CD.

Re:They broke the law

[AlgorithMan]

They copied his blog? That's copyright infringement

yes, WE laugh about that joke, because its such a ridiculous idea
but if he did the same thing vice versa, he'd be facing another lawsuit...

Re:They broke the law

[ealex292]

Fair use?

Re:They broke the law

[CaTfiSh]

Really? Looks like web.archive.org is in for some trouble then.

Re:They broke the law

[mpe]

They copied his blog? That's copyright infringement - and that's against the law. It's no different to walking into a store and stealing a CD.

In quite a few places the former is a much more serious crime than the latter. Even to the point where people can get a longer prison sentence for downloading a CD than armed robbery of a CD store.

I'd like to think that's true

[ebbomega]

But the DMCA has other ideas:

http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/

It wasn't Javascript the issue...

[Midnight Thunder]

The fact that he worked out a 'Javascript hack' wasn't the issue. The issue was that people actually wanted to listen to their radio stations ;)

Re:It wasn't Javascript the issue...

[EllynGeek]

Yes, that part seems to have escaped them, just like the bit where their shiny new technology excludes a lot of existing listeners and potential new customers. Dum de dum dum.

Re:It wasn't Javascript the issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

When will companies learn that suing your customers isn't a good business model?

Re:It wasn't Javascript the issue...

[FLEB]

To be clear, though, the way it was set up, the people who dialled in the back door weren't actually customers. They may be receiving the product-- one half of a customer relationship-- but they aren't contributing their ad-views-- the other half of the relationship.

Now, I'm not saying that alternative-platform listeners using this method may actually be able become customers, that the radio station couldn't change their system to allow these people to be customers, or that this whole debacle couldn't cause fallout among paying/ad-viewing customers, just that it isn't actually a case of them "suing the customer".

Re:It wasn't Javascript the issue...

[Soruk]

His final paragraph:

The only good part is that now the stream includes the info on the currently played song, so your media player might be able to display it (Windows Media Player does; the media players I've tried in Linux don't display info about what's currently played, so you'll still have to watch the "Queued for Play" and/or "Played this hour" web pages).

In otherwords, unless you're using WMP to listen to the streams, you still have to have their website open to see the current song information. And the advertisements on that page will be displayed.

Re:It wasn't Javascript the issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

XMMS/BMPx/Audacious don't display the track information, but Zinf/amaroK/Exaile do.

Re:It wasn't Javascript the issue...

[ajs318]

When will companies learn that suing your customers isn't a good business model?

When it stops being a bloody good business model, is when. Companies nowadays tend to view customers in a slightly less favourable light than a dog turd on the sole of the shoe. The Policy Manual is always right. Us poor sods only exist to pay their wages -- and if we are actually satisfied, then that is an unintended bonus.

As far as the telephone companies are concerned, talking to your neighbour over your garden fence is depriving them of revenue. That is the mentality you are up against -- and that's why lawsuits against customers are here to stay.

Any company that sets out with the intention to satisfy their customers is destined ultimately for failure: you simply can't turn enough of a profit that way, and if you do manage to keep it up long enough to get a reputation you will just end up being bought up by one of the incumbent players.

I don't want to license my stuff from anyone.

[headkase]

My electricity, my computer, my browser, my choice. If I don't want my browser to disable the context menu then that's my decision. And some company disabling the browser's context menu without Law to back them up really pisses me off. In the IP gold rush the US initiated, people are trying to own every little facet of information that we used to just take for granted being free. Locking everything up may or may-not benefit the economy but it sure-as-hell prunes cultural-enjoyment (ie. a more limited musical taste due to finite resources to acquire content) and development (ie. remixes and interpretations) in the long-term.

Re:I don't want to license my stuff from anyone.

[AlgorithMan]

god, I want modpoints, brother!

Re:I don't want to license my stuff from anyone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the one-liner in your .sig, My Kubuntu box now has a RTFM command. Never thought of that symbolic link :)

Re:I don't want to license my stuff from anyone.

[belmolis]

Exactly. This is like some company selling me a book and then getting pissed off because I ignored the injunction in the book not to read page 22.

Fuck them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if there's anything more annoying then some shitty website that tries to block secondary mouse button clicks (maybe those shitty websites that use the word-highlighting advertising that pops up some fucking shit when your roll over the words). For all the cool stuff that JavaScript can enable, sometimes I think it might be worth it to get rid of it if we could wipe stupid fucking shit like this off the face of the planet.

Re:Fuck them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's one thing that's more annoying, and that is trying to leave one of those browser-sabotaging sites by pasting a new URL into the browser with the middle mouse button. The idiots who implement those "right click disable functons" usually also successfully prevent middle clicks, thus trapping you on their page similar to spyware.

Re:Fuck them.

[DrSkwid]

The browser you use is clearly not written with end users in mind, try a different one. There are plenty to choose from.

Re:Fuck them.

[iminplaya]

[Mr Garrison]
Eric! Did you just say the 'F' word?!

[Cartman]
Jew?

[Kyle]
No, he's talkin' about FUCK. You can't say FUCK in school, you
fuckin' fat ass.

[Mr Garrison]
KYLE!

[Cartman]
Why the fuck not?

[Mr Garrison]
ERIC!

[Stan]
Dude, you just said fuck again!

[Mr Garrison]
STANLEY!

[Kenny]
(muffled) fuck

[Mr Garrison]
KENNY!

[Cartman]
What's the big deal? It doesn't hurt anybody! Fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck!

[Mr Garrison]
How would you like to go see the school councellor?!

[Cartman]
How would you like to suck my balls?

*big gasp from whole class*

[Mr Garrison]
WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?!

[Cartman]
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!
Actually, what I said was,
*pulls out megaphone*
"HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUCK MY BALLS, MR GARRISON?!?!"

Re:Fuck them.

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

There are 11 types of people in the world, those who know binaries and those who don't.

Okay, maybe I'm dense, but where does the third type of person come in? Or is this "binaries" somehow different from the "binary" I'm thinking of?

Re:Fuck them.

[DrSkwid]

DahGhostfacedKiddyFiddlah's almost on to something.

Re:Fuck them.

[Hal_Porter]

DahGhostfacedKiddyFiddlah's almost on to something.

Yeah, but most likely the terrible pain of not knowing will melt his brain before he can figure it out.

Re:Fuck them.

[Nazlfrag]

Should I or shouldn't I give it away? It's a bit of a gray area ;-)

--
There are 0 types of people in the world who understand balanced ternary, those who do and those who don't.

Re:Fuck them.

[damncrackmonkey]

For future reference, 0 in balanced ternary is equal to 0 in decimal. {1,-1} or 11 or +- or any other way you wish to actually denote the decimal 2 in balanced ternary will never manage to confound a normal person as much as the binary 10 (or 11) since it will not appear to them as a familiar number.

(I had to think of a way to underline the -1 in the second representation so I chose to turn it into a link to an article that uses that notation. Why doesn't the forum software allow underlining? The world may never know)

I do like your hint to Ghostfaced though.

BY-NC-SA

[reality-bytes]

Mr Radu-Cristian Fotescu appears to have licensed his work under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license which would allow the radio station to copy his work.

However, it does not allow for commercial exploitation of his work so we enter a grey-area. Is the use of his work to prosecute a lawsuit for monetary damages a commercial exploitation of his work?

Re:BY-NC-SA

[byolinux]

3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:

      1. to reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or more Collective Works, and to reproduce the Work as incorporated in the Collective Works;
      2. to create and reproduce Derivative Works;
      3. to distribute copies or phonorecords of, display publicly, perform publicly, and perform publicly by means of a digital audio transmission the Work including as incorporated in Collective Works;
      4. to distribute copies or phonorecords of, display publicly, perform publicly, and perform publicly by means of a digital audio transmission Derivative Works;

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.

Re:BY-NC-SA

[Anonymous Coward]

So they sue him and get money... He sues them back and gets money.

Some days it seems like americans are trying to create more laws just to keep their lawyers in jobs.

Heres another idea, try shooting them.

Re:BY-NC-SA

[Fordiman]

Dude lives in Romania.

Just sayin.

Re:BY-NC-SA

[Selanit]

That ShareAlike clause is interesting in this context. If the case were to go to court, and the plaintiffs entered their copy of the blog as evidence, would they be legally bound by the ShareAlike clause to release their accompanying court documents under a BY-NC-SA license as well?

Of course, since they're in this to make money, they've already violated the license ...

Re:BY-NC-SA

[blibbler]

However, it does not allow for commercial exploitation of his work so we enter a grey-area. Is the use of his work to prosecute a lawsuit for monetary damages a commercial exploitation of his work?

Of course they can use it in court. Short of one of the various privileges (none of which would apply here) there is no way to keep this kind of evidence out of court... and it shouldn't be kept out of court. Courts demand access to all relevant unprivileged evidence to help achieve the most accurate decision.

Re:BY-NC-SA

[AdamKG]

No. If you're taking someone to court for copyright infringement and you submit a copy of their book as evidence, you do *not* have to license redistribution rights for the book. It's evidence. The same is true with CC - they're not bound to keep it CC, because they're not distributing it, they're submitting it for evidence.

Re:BY-NC-SA

[someone1234]

Yes, it is commercial, yes, it is exploitation.

The web is about the user

[Anonymous Coward]

The user is in control of web content or any code a website decides to run on the client, clueless bullshit like this isn't even funny.

In other news, the recent js dependent google.com facelift is less useful to me because I have javascript disabled. It seems that most sites expect users have javascript enabled these days, sad that google deliberately broke their site. If I don't know if I can even be bothered hacking a functional interface when there are other search engines that work perfectly.

The user is in control of their machine, not the web site!

Re:The web is about the user

[crAckZ]

next thing you know they are going to try to sue mozilla for blocking the ads with its adblock add-on. this also could just be a way to get their name in the news for publicity. any attention is good attention

Re:The web is about the user

[Joe The Dragon]

the spyware people are doing that.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/19/03 51234

Re:The web is about the user

[Anonymous Coward]

Abstraction (v.): The process of removing detail.

So,
web site -> another individual.
So,
you vs. another in context-of who has final choice.

M'Kay?

Re:The web is about the user

[Anonymous Coward]

What did google do? I regularly use google.com with js off...seems to work fine.

Re:The web is about the user

[Tran]

Correct - ther is just additional or other functionality enabled that is not pertinent to the basic functioning of the site and features. Really sweet design approach.

But I do turn JS on in the personalized google page. Using Opera ( i am sure firefox has an extension that can do the same) I have JS disbaled by default, and only selectively enabled on the sites I want it to be enabled. Opera makes that site preference a snap.

Re:The web is about the user

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me about it. What happened to Google's simple design? It's a real PITA! I always run with JS disabled. Noscript is my best friend! :)

Re:The web is about the user

[Anonymous Coward]

They removed normal links for image and news search, replacing them with javascript dependent innerHTML nonsense.

Re:The web is about the user

[FST777]

That is offcourse perfectly true, but watch out for turning the debate the other way around: when I program some functionality into my website which MUST use JavaScript (since there is no other way) I absolutely hate it when people yell at me that I exclude JavaScript blocking visitors. They CHOOSE not to use enhanced functionality for the sake of (fake?) security.

Just the 0.02 of a webdeveloper.

Re:The web is about the user

[CodeBuster]

I absolutely hate it when people yell at me that I exclude JavaScript blocking visitors

Alright, but what is wrong with allowing your site to degrade gracefully instead of simply blocking everyone who doesn't opt for the bells and whistles? It is not a requirement that if I want to drive my Mercedes then I *must* use the navigation system with audio prompts. In the same way your website should not exclude someone simply because your mouseover, or (say it ain't so) mouse button disabling code (there is nothing *special* about your content that thousands of people haven't already done before), will not work if they disable JavaScript. If they do not get the "full" experience then that, as you say, is their choice, but nobody likes "my way or the highway" so why make it an all or nothing deal? If you were visiting someone else's website is that how you would want to be treated as a user? There are plenty of alternatives out their to your site and most people will not give you a second chance after they run into that kind of user experience, they will simply go someplace else...permanently.

Re:The web is about the user

[FST777]

Sure, static content should be accessible. But that is a thing of the past (or will be). I'm building webapps which are all about realtime interacting with the visitor. There is no simple way of doing that without JavaScript, so that is mandatory.
It's not: "Hey! With JavaScript enabled you get to enjoy these cool mouseover effects I just build!"
It's: "With JavaScript enabled you get to experience a whole new way of accessing information and communicating with us."
Completely different story. Now, offcourse that should all be complementary to the basic information on a website, and that information should always be accessible.

Blocking JavaScript is for those that view the web as a giant book, full of text and pictures. Maybe a form here or there, or a decently build webshop. Nothing realtime, nothing changing quickly, nothing fully dynamic. It's the stoneage compared to the Roman civilisation. And I mention ancient times because it is going to be much more intense.

Offcourse, JavaScript can also be blocked to artificially create an illusion of choice (ie, turn it on when you want it). But that carries the risk of missing the choice at all: most of the time you won't even notice that you are missing something.

Re:The web is about the user

[CodeBuster]

Blocking JavaScript is for those that view the web as a giant book, full of text and pictures. Maybe a form here or there, or a decently build webshop. Nothing realtime, nothing changing quickly, nothing fully dynamic.

I might want the more dynamic experience and you certainly would, but not every customer does and if I can still earn money on sales or ad revenue then I don't mind if they don't see my fancy AJAX interface. Perhaps you are one of those creative types who feel strongly about controlling peoples' experience of your work but I, on the other hand, am a pragmatist. If the site earns money then it doesn't matter to me, give the customer what they want...its that simple. So what if they "miss" your AJAX enhanced site experience because they are not aware of the choice if it earns money and the customer is happy?

Oh yea?

[Wonko the Sane]

I have a method for bypassing advertisements on all forms of television currently in existence:

When the commercials start: go to the bathroom, get a snack/drink, perform small errands, talk to other people in the room.

Be careful, not scrupulously watching every single advertisement makes you a criminal pirate thief.

Re:Oh yea?

[wombert]

Just so long as you don't employ any devices for avoiding commercials - they might be in violation of the DMCA!

Re:Oh yea?

[QuantumG]

talk to other people in the room. Be careful, some people get upset and tell you to be quiet, they're watching the ads.

Female people.

Re:Oh yea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should try saying something more interesting

Re:Oh yea?

[QuantumG]

You knew I was boring when you married me.

Now leave the Slashdottin' to me, darlin'.

Re:Oh yea?

[ajs318]

I have a better one. Get Sky Plus or Sky HD installed (I chose the former; my eyesight is so poor, I can barely see 625 lines let alone 1080). Select the station you want to watch, on-time for the programme you want to watch. Allow the programme to run for, say, 10 minutes (enough for all advert breaks in the programme) while you do something else. Rewind to beginning of programme. Fast-forward through advertisements. Enjoy :)

good plan...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont remember the part where it's illegal to prevant javascript from hiding something from you. for that matter, what are they hoping to accomplish with this? the damage is done, unless they want to start driving their listeners away due to their obvious stupidity

"Hacker Calisthenics"

[The Wicked Priest]

Possibly the best thing to come out this will be the complainant's phrase "hacker calisthenics". Let's all use it!

"Enthusiast"

[antic]

"Romania-based technology enthusiast"

Is that what we're calling them now? ;)

Hey, let's all do the time warp...again!

[XahXhaX]

What year is this, 1998? Trying to block right clicking as a means of 'protection'? That puts you on par with Geocities members pre-2000, and about one minor step above using js to spoof the status bar or hide the address bar. I suppose next they'll be petitioning the ISPs for surveillance to see who's been viewing their page source, claiming it as violation of 'trade secrets'.

Re:Hey, let's all do the time warp...again!

[Ajehals]

I suppose next they'll be petitioning the ISPs for surveillance to see who's been viewing their page source, claiming it as violation of 'trade secrets'. FBI -> ISP: We need information on any individual who has had access to the html or js source of these websites
ISP -> FBI: Well, ahem, everybody who views the site has access to the html or js source
FBI -> ISP: Everyone?
ISP -> FBI: Well yeah, you see when the user visits a site the browser requests the page, and the server hosting the page will send the html source, then the browser will render the source to look nice for the viewer... you can hide some of the logic with php, jsp or asp and other server side...
FBI -> ISP: But if they can see the source then could they make copies...?
ISP -> FBI: Well yes but...
FBI -> ISP: They would know all the secret techniques used to make the site?
ISP -> FBI: Well yes, but as I was going to say...
FBI -> ISP: Well that makes it easier thanks. Bye

1 week later:

'The BBC has learned that a large number of extradition requests from the US government relating to British subjects and other non US-nationals breaching Trade Secret, Copyright and Terrorism laws, this is after it was alleged that people are illegally viewing web pages.

This comes after the US issued Arrest Warrants for 3.7 billion individuals globally on Monday. A Spokesman for the DHS is quoted as saying:

  "Well if everyone can see how stuff works, they could copy it, and if they copy it they could use it, and if they could use it they could mislead people. Misleading people is not nice and causes angst, angst is like fear, and fear is a bit like terror. Terror is caused by terrorists, therefore viewing web pages is terrorism. Also children may be harmed in some way."'

Re:Hey, let's all do the time warp...again!

[cpt_lare]

Shh, don't say that! They're listening for ideas! *puts on tinfoil hat*

Re:Hey, let's all do the time warp...again!

[Belacgod]

Hate leads to anger...anger leads to fear...fear leads to Terrorism... [/yoda]

Sympathetic Defendant?

[EconomyGuy]

It's really too bad the blogger is taking this so personally, continuing to blog about it, and cannot spell. None of these make him a sympathetic defendant... and if it eventually gets to court that's going to matter a good deal. Like it or not, hackers have a bad public reputation, and if this punk gets in front of a jury and spouts off the way he has been on his blog, his case is sunk regardless of whether the written law is on his side. Each time he goes on a rant he gets closer to defamation and now it's a whole new ball game.

Word of advice to those who blog about corporate enterprises... if you get a notice from a company threatening suit for whatever you said, take it seriously and get some legal advice before you try the whole David and Goliath thing. Your conduct after the event in question is just as much at issue as whatever initially upset them. I'm not saying roll over and comply, but figure out how to best manage the situation to protect yourself and convince the corporate bully you're not some 22 year old idiot who is going to make the case ten times easier for them because you can't keep your mouth shut.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[KokorHekkus]

Word of advice to those who blog about corporate enterprises... if you get a notice from a company threatening suit for whatever you said, take it seriously and get some legal advice...

Yeah... like checking if the legal notice actually applies to your jurisdiction. EU laws don't apply to the US and US laws don't apply the the EU.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Blakey Rat]

But both the US and EU copyright laws are supersets of international copyright law. If he's breaking international copyright law, it may not matter which particular country he's in. I'm not a lawyer, needless to say.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[QuoteMstr]

Rude assholes deserve protection of the law as much as anyone else.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[A beautiful mind]

Repeat after me: Romania is not part of the USA. Defamation, jury and other shit like that doesn't apply.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[KokorHekkus]

Any legal notice still needs to be issued within respective jurisdiction. Otherwise it carries no legal weight.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[xigxag]

Just curious, what international copyright law do you think he might be breaking?

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Blakey Rat]

I just said I'm not a lawyer, why would you even ask me?

But since you asked

I don't believe he's breaking any law, but that's not the point. The point isn't what law he IS breaking, but what law the radio station will accuse him of breaking. I doubt Romania would extradite him over this, but that would be the risk.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Menkhaf]

I get your point, but he should have no need to be a sympathetic defendant. Next thing is that people who can't spell will have their rights revoked?

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Anonymous Coward]

if this punk gets in front of a jury and spouts off the way he has been on his blog, his case is sunk

I don't think he's going to be extradited from Romania for teaching people how to right-click, do you?

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. He's a Romanian, in Romania. your fucking Uh-merican laws do not apply. 2. English is not his first language, probably his 3rd. What's your excuse? 3. Your advice is total bullshit. Ridicule is the only way to treat morons.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless he's planning to travel there:
http://www.out-law.com/page-7118

Or unless his country seems to be complicit with others flouting the Geneva Convention:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1792271,00. html

Oops.

To the GP - I will feel able to criticise his lack of fluency in English the as soon as my Romanian is at a similar level. I can't even manage "I'd like a beer please" in Romanian. Can you?

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[EconomyGuy]

In principle I agree. But at the same time, I think there is something both healthy and humane about evaluating the nature of the parties when dealing out justice. If the guy in question really is a jerk, it's going to come across in the court room and people are going to wonder... did he have "jerky" intent when he did whatever it is they accused him of? Context matters, and in the absence of cold hard facts about the context at the time of the act, courts and juries will rely on the context of the present and make certain reasonable assumptions.

I agree, it's not an ideal system. And people game the system by acting all sweet in front of a jury, and that sucks too. But if you're going to write about on going or potential litigation, being a tad thoughtful ahead of time can save you a lot of headache.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[EconomyGuy]

This is an excellent point... I don't know the first thing about Romanian law, so maybe your right. Might not be any juries or defamation issues. Of course, my guess is that there is defamation law there, since it's a pretty universal law these days (although the particulars vary greatly). I'd also bet there is a pretty substantial body of tort law there, which provies all means of avenues to bring suit.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Skapare]

YOU also need to take this case in context. For many other cases, what you say makes sense. For this one, not so much. To start with, what he is "revealing" is already well known. So it could well be argued that the company is specifically targeting him just because he happens to like their music.

But the really big issue here is that so many companies are just so utterly clueless about several things. They are clueless about technology. They are clueless about security. They are clueless about the internet. They are clueless about making workable business models. And a substantial subset of them are clueless about law (including, possibly, this company, depending on the outcome of them consulting a clueful lawyer, if they are smart enough to seek out one).

Once information is out on the net, the genie is out of the bottle forever. There is no putting it back. It cannot be removed, regardless of whether it was right or wrong to have been released. Any subsequent re-releases of the same information are irrelevant, so asking someone to stop means nothing. And threatening a lawsuit, especially an international one, is just going to make the information spread faster, not slower. Any lawyer that doesn't understand that (and unfortunately there are still way too many of them) is in the clueless category.

Of course a lawsuit threat does need to be taken seriously no matter the situation. But, IMHO, any threat, as well as any actual suit even if out of jurisdiction, always deserves to be be published. The reason for this is that the world needs to always know about these things so they can decide of the threat/suit is justified, or if the legal system is being abused.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[EconomyGuy]

Once information is out on the net, the genie is out of the bottle forever. There is no putting it back. It cannot be removed, regardless of whether it was right or wrong to have been released. Any subsequent re-releases of the same information are irrelevant, so asking someone to stop means nothing.

This is 100% true in a global sense. The information is out and there is nothing that can be done about it. But that doesn't mean the initial offenders cannot be punished. Digg will prove an interesting example here, for they may very well be sued for there involvement with that pesky little number and their decision not to comply with the takedown notice. Such lawsuits may not stop the number from being widely known, it may even increase the pool of those that do know it, but it will hurt the pecuniary interests of the company, which is why they tried to take down the number in the first place. Which in turn sets an example to future companies who may consider the same course of action.

Yes, based on the facts so far it doesn't seem like this guy did anything I would consider wrong, and I agree the company in question seems to be making some tall claims about business interests. But none of that will matter if the company can get even one claim to stick in court. You may not be able to stop the stampede, but you sure can shoot down the guy who started it.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[suv4x4]

It's really too bad the blogger is taking this so personally, continuing to blog about it, and cannot spell. None of these make him a sympathetic defendant... and if it eventually gets to court that's going to matter a good deal.

He's in Romania and they are in Atlanta. Where would the court possibly be? Neutral moon territory?

Furthermore, he seems pissed off, but that's his blog. Why are people expected to be all kind and diplomatic all of a sudden, when threatened with a random lawsuit. That's quite sad.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[falconwolf]

It's really too bad the blogger is taking this so personally, continuing to blog about it, and cannot spell.

It is personal and he's letting others know about it. Now see if you can write your post in Romanian with the correct spelling, and grammer.

Falcon

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[cycoj]

It's really too bad the blogger is taking this so personally, continuing to blog about it, and cannot spell. None of these make him a sympathetic defendant... and if it eventually gets to court that's going to matter a good deal. Like it or not, hackers have a bad public reputation, and if this punk gets in front of a jury and spouts off the way he has been on his blog, his case is sunk regardless of whether the written law is on his side. Each time he goes on a rant he gets closer to defamation and now it's a whole new ball game.

First of all maybe you should follow your own advice, you just called him a punk, I'd say that clearly matches the definition of defamation. Second, once you proved that you can spell correctly in Romanian I might accept you critizing his spelling. And finally have you read what these guys have sent to the jem report? Apart from them having absolutely no clue what so ever, they border pretty close on insult and defamation as well.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[EconomyGuy]

Are you kidding me?! He's the one choosing to post in English.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Anonymous Coward]

"his case is sunk regardless of whether the written law is on his side"

that is some serious gourmet shit you're smoking, man. care to share?

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, exactly. Mouthing off about it in public is the best way to give them other complaints to add to the existing ones. And behaviour is important. I've heard of court cases where the 'Goliath' side's case seemed pretty weak, but the 'David' party lost money because they seemed a bit nutty. Basically the Goliath party managed to convince the jury that their reputation had been damaged by the crazy person.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[dbIII]

continuing to blog about it, and cannot spell.

Did a bunch of teachers just turn up on slashdot six months ago? The net is international, writers may have english as their second, third or more language, and US spelling is different to english anyway. Doubleplusgood marketingspeak is doing far more damage to the language anyway.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[raju1kabir]

It's really too bad the blogger is taking this so personally, continuing to blog about it, and cannot spell. None of these make him a sympathetic defendant.

What proportion of lawsuits, in your expert opinion, are decided based on the quality of spelling on the defendant's blog?

Anyway, keep some perspective, there are no lawyers and no court cases here. It's just some moron at a web radio station who doesn't grasp the technology and is trying to frighten reality into conforming with his silly understanding.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[asninn]

if this punk gets in front of a jury and spouts off the way he has been on his blog, his case is sunk regardless of whether the written law is on his side.

Outside of the fact that this is an entirely (a priori) baseless statement, why would he even appear "in front of a jury"? Look at this way: suppose a Romanian company sues you for something you post about in your blog. Would you travel to Romania then to appear in front of a Romanian court? Of course not, so why should he do the same thing when he's sued in the USA?

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[raju1kabir]

But none of that will matter if the company can get even one claim to stick in court.

Atlanta Blue Skye's assets consist of the following:

• One PC
• One office chair, slightly squeaky
• One almost-filled Subway Club card, damn those bastards for discontinuing the card when he was so close
• 79 CDs, 24 of which the president-CEO-CTO-caterer-janitor's ex would like back, thank you very much
• One basement studio, soundproofed with pillows taped to the heating ducts, but that's no help when his mom comes down to do the laundry (coincidentally, that's when those "90-minute no-interruption jazz sets" get played)
• One surplus letter 'e'

There are no lawyers. People with lawyers let their lawyers write the letters so they don't sound so stupid.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[utnapistim]

To the GP - I will feel able to criticise his lack of fluency in English the as soon as my Romanian is at a similar level. I can't even manage "I'd like a beer please" in Romanian. Can you?

That would be: "As vrea o bere va rog". (As vrea - I'd like, o bere - a beer, va rog - please).

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[EconomyGuy]

While it is everyones choice not to appear before a foreign court when summoned, it is a decision one should take pretty seriously. For example, I have every intention of going to the EU at some point in my life, and maybe even visiting Romania. I'm not crazy about the idea of entering the country only to be arrested because on a failure to appear charge. The proper legal action, if I am being sued in a foreign court, is to try to terminate the case for lack of jurisdiction. But that means I at least have to respond to the case, I (or my representatives) have to talk to the judge, etc, etc. Just pretending like it's not happening is generally not a good idea.

More importantly, everyone presumes the radio station will bring suit in the U.S. That seems like a pretty silly assumption on their part. They might try that route, but unless Romania exists in some strange legal nether world, the radio station should have no problem securing local council and bringing the suit right there in his native land.

Re:Sympathetic Defendant?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a lawyer, but I just want to applaud everyone for avoiding the acronym "IANAL" in their posts. What we don't need is three pages of ass jok- Oh shit.

Umm...

[The MAZZTer]

View -> Page Source? I mean, that's the main thing they usually wanna block by blocking the context menu anyways. Or how about CTRL+U? Let's see you block that!

Or how about Tools -> Options -> Content -> JavaScript -> Advanced -> Disable or replace context menus? That's even a more direct way to stop it!

Of course this is Firefox. I'm sure none of the other major browsers such as IE7 (Page -> View Source / View -> Source) or Opera 9 (View -> Source / CTRL+F3) have easy ways around this, thus the cause for concern over the "hack".

Let's also not forget that any JavaScript is essentially open source, since it can't be compiled (obfuscated, maybe, but even then you can usually figure it out) and new JavaScript functionality can be added and existing functionality changed (or "hacked" as it is so ineloquently put) and tweaked to suit a user's needs through tools such as Greasemonkey.

Re:Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera has a specific configuration option for just this. "Allow script to receive right clicks" .. opera:config

Re:Umm...

[partenon]

Let's also not forget that any JavaScript is essentially open source

Hold on, Cowboy... The fact that javascript can easily be viewed doesn't make it open source. Don't mess the things up :-)

Re:Umm...

[evanbd]

The fact that javascript can easily be viewed doesn't make it open source.

Actually, it does. It just doesn't make it Free Software.

Re:Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

*Pow!* Right in the kisser!

Re:Umm...

[coaxial]

Actually, it doesn't.

"Open source" means you have the right to redistrubute the original work, or make derivitive works from the the original and redistribute those. "Free software" is open source software with the additional restriction that you must distribute the source code of any derivitive work made from similarly licensed work.

However, merely possessing, the source code, does not make it open source. It never has, and it never will.

I can make (and actually have made) proprietary Perl scripts. I simply tag them "Copyright 2007 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED." In order to run this code, you must have the source code. (Yeah I could obfuscate it, but let's say I didn't.) While you may have the source code, you are not allowed to redistrbute it, you are not allowed to make derivative works from it (i.e. hack it), and you can not copy portions of it into your own work (another kind of derivative work). Practically speaking, you could, but legally you are not allowed to. And if I found out that you did, I could bring a whole world of legal hurt down upon you.

Since the beginning of UNIX, source code was the prefered distribution method of all software, open and closed. The reason was that each environment was so different, it was simply impossible to distribute binaries for every permutation, so you just sent the source code and compiled it. Open source was just removing the artifical barriers to what many were already doing.

Anyway copyright is on the software itself, not the specific form it takes, source or binary. It's just a like a book. The story is what is copyrighted, not the fact that it's the story packaged in 6" x 7" pages filled with 10 point Times.

Re:Umm...

[sabernet]

Actually, most of the time, right clicking produces an annoying pop-up but still shows the context menu in FF. No extra config required.

Re:Umm...

[SJS]

Or how about CTRL+U? Let's see you block that!

Oh, Firefox already did that. ^U no longer deletes the text in the address bar like it should.

Or how about Tools -> Options -> Content -> JavaScript -> Advanced -> Disable or replace context menus? That's even a more direct way to stop it!

Or better yet, Edit->Preferences->Disable Javascript!

If browsers would ship with Javascript disabled by default, and require a menu-option to enable javascript for each and every page they visited, then the average user would give up on websites that require Javascript. Businesses, such as the radio station engaged in this idiocy, would see less revenue from their javascript-mandatory website than from their competitor's javascript-optional or javascript-free websites...

I remember when shipping a system with "all services enabled" was standard operating procedure. We've gotten away from that now -- but we're back to that same mindset with browsers. You'd think we'd learn to ship products in a locked-down state, and only enable "features" when and if the user explicitly requests it.

Romania?

[z0M6]

Is that like one of those less known states in the USA?

Re:Romania?

[ePlus]

He's Romanian. Good luck in prosecuting him!

Re:Romania?

[Joebert]

Is that like one of those less known states in the USA?

Kinda like Idaho, but with lettuce instead of potatoes.

Re:Romania?

[dkf]

[Romania is] Kinda like Idaho, but with lettuce instead of potatoes.

And with added seaside resorts (and vampire kitsch) too.

Re:Romania?

[teh_chrizzle]

Is that like one of those less known states in the USA?

yeah. it's one of those square ones in the middle, it's between idawa to montakota.

Idiots.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Soooo, lemme get this straight - some stupid radio station in Georgia is freaked out about some kid in Romania piddling with their javascript... And, I am sure the state of Georgia has all kinds of reciprocity agreements for local civil suits with the nation of Romania. Me thinks the icon for this article shouldn't be the black barred censorship guy, but the Monty Python Foot, as this suit is, at best, comical and pathetic. IDIOTS!

[wainwright}
I'm so tired of America...
[/wainwright]

RS

Re:"Romania-based technology enthusiast"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said Mr Cheney.

btw, they have oil.

No shit, this is frivolous

[glomph]

All they have to do is use a URL that changes continuously. This is trivial with the RealServer.
But serving anything except warm air with MS products shows a serious lack of clue. Which is why they sue.

Not reflecting the views of any corporation, solely my personal viewpoint.

Re:No shit, this is frivolous

[figleaf]

A dynamic url is also possible with MS products.
Its also possible to create a static playlist url with the playlist coded in a way to prevent people from bypassing Ads.

Attention Americans:

[Rix]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Joebert]

Dems fightin' words !

Re:Attention Americans:

[trianglman]

Which is why internet law needs to be moved to a more global organization. As it stands now, when you break an American law online, do American laws apply because the law is being broken in America, or not because the person breaking it is out of America? AFAIK, all of Blogger's hosting happens inside the US, which, depending on interpretation, could mean that this blogger committed a crime in the US, and just happens to be currently outside of the country (like if I robbed a bank and ran to Mexico).

Re:Attention Americans:

[dheera]

in this case, though, publishing a javascript hack isn't a crime even in the US. if i'm legally provided with data, i'm free to render the data to myself however i want, and others are free to publish tips on how to render data.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

Natural law applies everywhere.

It's what the U.S. of America was founded on, despite the temporary blip of the current aberrant Republican regime.

Re:Attention Americans:

[trianglman]

depending on the DMCA and how it gets applied, or more appropriately how the lawyers attempt to apply it. IANAL, but it could be argued that the JS protections built into the site to keep this information obfuscated falls under DCMA protections against hacking around protections.

As an aside, I am against the DCMA and think lawsuits like this are complete BS. Unfortunately, I am not in charge and so I have to deal with the laws as is until an appropriate opportunity to really affect change presents itself (those who would yell "Vote!" at me (either with my pocket book or in an election) simplify the issue and don't realize that it goes deeper than that.)

Re:Attention Americans:

[PopeRatzo]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders.

Let me tell you, some laws do not apply inside our borders, either. Not since a certain dim little jackass, his sneering, decaying boss and his pet bully Alberto took office.

Yes, this is flamebait, and it comes from deep in my heart. Sincerely. If you are one of the 26% of Americans to whom this flamebait is addressed, I hope you get the message. I'll lose one kind of karma, but gain another.

Re:Attention Americans:

[madeye the younger]

You would think so, but that doesn't seem to be the way it works these days eh? I can go along with "Your laws SHOULDN'T apply outside your borders"; in current practice that is unfortunately not true.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

Your laws might not apply outside your borders, but mine apply everywhere.

I'm an American. Who the fuck are you?

Re:Attention Americans:

[shellbeach]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders. Actually, they sadly apply within Australian borders, too.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad that you realize it is aberrant. It is neither typical of the US in general or of Republicans specifically. I have been a Republican since I could vote, and have voted for only 1 democrat in all that time (22 years). That would be Kerry, because anyone is better than Bush.... I did vote for him the first time. I'm sorry. How could I have known?

Re:Attention Americans:

[wanderingknight]

Natural law? Get off your high seat of arrogance, thinking your society is the best and the one that everyone should follow. Other cultures are built on different social systems, and that doesn't make them less "natural".

Re:Attention Americans:

[iminplaya]

Tell that to the Iraqis! American law applies wherever they want it to. Most governments are just complying willingly for now. Anyone who resists shall feel the wrong end of the big stick. Just ask the Chileans who remember what happened in 73. Or most anyone south of the Rio Grande all the way to Tierra del Fuego.

Re:Attention Americans:

[falconwolf]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders.

The current US admin certainly seems to think US laws apply everywhere, er make that their idea of what the law should be.

Falcon

Re:Attention Americans:

[iminplaya]

How could I have known?

Oh please! You could have read the business section.

Re:Attention Americans:

[falconwolf]

Just ask the Chileans who remember what happened in 73.

Ah, Chile's September 11.

Falcon

Re:Attention Americans:

[ehrichweiss]

If you think about it, them taking that stance would mean they'd also have to come after those of us who use NoScript, or simply turn off javascript for untrusted sites, or whatever.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

"JS protections built into the site to keep this information obfuscated falls under DCMA protections against hacking around protections."

The critical question is whether the data is actually obfuscated. If all they are doing is preventing a convenient way of accessing the data then it is not obfuscated. If they encrypt it then it is. Here they are just making it inconvenient to access, which is not a protection any more than putting a cookie jar on the refrigerator is protecting it from your children.

"Unfortunately, I am not in charge and so I have to deal with the laws as is until an appropriate opportunity to really affect change presents itself"

To quote Sudo, "If a law is unjust, we owe it to our children to disobey." Or, as the article points out, bypassing the 'protection' without any code can be accomplished through simple keyboard actions or presumably grabbing the content with wget or various other mechanisms (finding the cache of the content on your hard drive and accessing it in a text editor). If the law recognizes this flimsy excuse for annoying users as protection the law is wrong.

As to your good-hearted wish to reform the law I'd suggest that it is more in the content providers' interests to reform the agreement between themselves and the market than it is in our (consumers) interest. (It's in all our interests of course) Consumers currently skirt idiotic laws and stake our claim to watch, listen, and read as we see fit.

The content providers suffer losses because they are busy trying to plug leaks in the dike rather than building a canal that we can all use in return for payment. So short of becoming a shareholder or CEO of a large media company and starting the trend toward renegotiation and better relations with the consuming public there's not much you can do (except advocate the same).

Re:Attention Americans:

[smittyoneeach]

The last declared war was WWII.
If there was actual concern in the corridors of power, they'd have scuttled the War Powers act long, long ago.
The phrase "current aberrant Republican regime" indicates that your research into the topic of How Stuff Gets Done may be incomplete.
Consider that the non-Communist world out-sourced regional stability to the US after WWII, and the rest of the world as well after the fall of the USSR.
The US either takes action, or becomes France, Volume Deux.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Architect_sasyr]

I wonder where "right click -> web developer -> disable javascript" fits into it... or any other method of removing javascript...

Am I hacking because I disable JavaScript by default? That seems like a bit of an outrageous claim to me.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's your walls on the borders are for.

Re:Attention Americans:

[moldor]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders. Unless you live in Australia where little Johnnie Howard (the Prime Minister) has signed a "free trade agreement" that (amongst other things) lets him think her can apply US laws to Australian citizens... I have nothing abainst (most) Americans - some of my best friends live there - but your legal system sucks even worse than ours !

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

When those governed by those cultures have not been given true opportunity to consent, that is unnatural, anywhere such an abomination occurs.

Converting people, forcing yourself on people - are wrong. Period, end of story.

Men in purple dresses are unnatural. Just because such men are your fetish, don't cross the mistaken river and extrapolate that your fetish is true.

Re:Attention Americans:

[init100]

Am I hacking because I disable JavaScript by default? That seems like a bit of an outrageous claim to me.

Especially since there are several kinds of programs that fetch web pages but don't support Javascript. Do they suggest that Lynx or Wget should be illegal, since they do not implement Javascript?

Re:Attention Americans:

[dbIII]

Just ask the Chileans who remember what happened in 73.

The consequences of which included a car bomb going off in Washington D.C. to kill an exiled Chilean. When you prop up a totalitarian regime they may still turn around and bite you.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Grishnakh]

Um, the fact that he spoke with the intelligence of a retarded chimp should have been a clue.

But we'll forgive you this time. Gore wasn't a terribly attractive choice, either.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

"...Consider that the non-Communist world out-sourced regional stability to the US after WWII, and the rest of the world as well after the fall of the USSR..."

Record of the earlier British 'Pax Britannica' - World peace for the century from Napoleonic Wars to Franco-Prussian war and eventual WW1

Record of US attempt to copy this - Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq.

"The US either takes action, or becomes France, Volume Deux."

And instead it has become Stalin, BTOPaR KHNRa.

(excuse poor Cyrillic transliteration, but I'm sure you get the point!)

Re:Attention Americans:

[nacturation]

And the fact that they admitted they copied their site and sent it to their lawyers means they are now distributing copyrighted material without authorization and can be sued for that fact. Petard, hoist, etc.

Re:Attention Americans:

[compi]

"(like if I robbed a bank and ran to Mexico)" Err... not exactly. You robbed a bank in LA while you have been in Mexico. Using the same logic, if you commit a crime according the Chinese law (e.g. criticizing the regime on a forum hosted in China) you should be extradited to China to stand a trial there and sent to a Chinese jail for your rest of your life. Are you sure you want international law to work this way?

Re:Attention Americans:

[KDR_11k]

Give it a few years to let China become the new overlord noone welcomes and then you WILL be extradited for criticizing the Chinese govt since that means you're probably with "the terrorists".

Re:Attention Americans:

[KDR_11k]

It's consent if you obey instead of killing as many as you can before they take you down. If enough dissent they'll crush the evil regime.

Re:Attention Americans:

[walt-sjc]

And neither was Kerry. Seriously, we need some good people to step forward. All we've had was horrible alternatives. Anyone somewhat reasonable / moderate can't get elected due to the primary system being dominated by polarized groups.

Re:Attention Americans:

[mabinogi]

which cultures?
Purple dresses?
Fetishes?
WTF?

No one consents to the laws of the country they're born in. So consent has nothing to do with it.
No one said anything about converting people, just that there's nothing about the laws of the USA at any point in history that makes them more or less "natural" then those in any other country or culture.

Re:Attention Americans:

[utnapistim]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders.

True ... Not unless you're Australian, or the laws are in the US (and the later seems to apply here). But then, maybe its also a matter of how big the financial interest is, in backing the laws.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera allows you to disable sending right-clicks to javascript at all. It hasn't interfered with any legitimate use of JS yet.

Re:Attention Americans:

[KudyardRipling]

IF you have a stake in the system, you must NOT be allowed to sit on a jury.

Re:Attention Americans:

[etheranger]

Out...side... America's borders?
I'm sorry, I don't think I grasp the concept.

Re:Attention Americans:

[trianglman]

exactly, which is why I said in my original post that the international law in this needs to be clarified and taken out of any one country's control.

Re:Attention Americans:

[smittyoneeach]

Can't deny some superficial similarities, but I'm not sure that there is a 1:1 mapping between the colonialism of yore and contemporary US policy.
In particular, your argument needs to at least mention globalization before comparing earlier imperialism to what's going on now.

Record of US attempt to copy this - Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq.

Wow, you blended the Cold War, and two notable hot spots therein, with the GWOT. True, lousy US policy following the USSR's Afghan fandango laid the foundation for al Qaeda, but just putting the three incidents together like that omits substantial context.

And instead it has become Stalin

Tripe, stuff, and nonsense. Suggested antidote: http://victorhanson.com/

Re:Attention Americans:

[trianglman]

To quote Sudo, "If a law is unjust, we owe it to our children to disobey."

Personally I would have to disagree with this quote. We don't owe it to our children to disobey a law; we owe it to our children to change unjust laws. Disobedience when it won't effect change will only harm the disobedient. I don't think I owe it to my son to get sued/put in prison, remove the primary source of income from our household, and remove my ability to parent (if I am put in prison).

Re:Attention Americans:

[DaFallus]

Attention Americans: Your laws do not apply outside your borders.

It always irritates me whenever someone says something as idiotically obvious as this and gets modded up for being informative or insightful. Obviously those of us who actually read /. and would see your comment already know this. I highly doubt that anyone who would actually need to be educated in this regard (US Congress/Senate, executive branch, etc) would actually stumble upon your post here. I really don't see how this is informative.

P.S
Attention non-Americans: You are not American
Please mod me informative now.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Business != America ( or more correctly The United States. )

Unfortunatly we are currently experiencing difficulties with Management. Maybe I need to complain to my union rep.

Re:Attention Americans:

[mattpalmer1086]

Exactly, that's obvious. But what everyone seems to have missed is that apparently it is American laws that do not apply inside American borders. As long as it's for your own good, to protect you from bad people and all.

Re:Attention Americans:

[jacksonj04]

A lot of the US laws are built on old English ones. Are they unnatural because they've been 'forced' on you by the original settlers from England?

Re:Attention Americans:

[n00854180t]

You, and these Blue Sky whatever idiots, are forgetting that the technology for copy protection specifically has to be "effective" to be protected by the DMCA. Now, it may come down to the fact that the defense will have no expert testimony, but if they did it would be a pretty safe bet that they could get JS protection thrown out because of this reason (it's *NEVER* been effective, as anyone that's ever circumvented those things knows, it's entirely trivial). Now, IANAL, but with even a fairly slack-jawed judge and a basic expert to explain things, I think this could be shown to be absurd. However, it most likely will end up creating the precedent that the DMCA's actual wording doesn't matter, and even ineffective DRM schemes will be protected fully.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Grishnakh]

This is exactly correct.

Re:Attention Americans:

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

That's possibly safer.

After all, the DMCA made a specific mandate for VCRs to support Macrovision, rather than it being assumed that all protection systems need to be supported by default.

The DMCA itself might be able to be used to prove, by omission, that not supporting a protection system isn't illegal (else the Macrovision clause would be redundant) - one could say there was no legislative intent to make it illegal via the same reasoning.

There is another clause saying things might have to support industry standard protection systems, but using JS as a protection system isn't an industry standard, and a good defendant will have the court wondering why if JS is being used to protect content, it isn't be used to "control access", as the site could have been coded where JS was needed to get the content (even a location.href call would've helped their case).

Let's hope the judge knows what a website is though. :)

Re:Attention Americans:

[mikiN]

More to the point (because some sites require Javascript to function):

In Firefox: Edit -> Preferences -> Content tab -> Advanced (button opposite "Enable Javascript" checkbox) -> Uncheck "Disable or replace context menus"

Install an extension like UnPlug and you're all set.

Re:Attention Americans:

[budgenator]

I would think that the critical questions are
1. does copying in total, a webpage from a blog and sending to it your lawyers and bragging about it in an email constitute admission of copyright infringement,
2. how many lawyers in Atlanta would take the copyright infringement case on contingency,
3. was the comment on the bloger's site stating that the "radio station" ran by Blue Skye didn't even have a licence to play the music correct.

non-news

[quonsar]

this article is stupid. the kid rec'd an unsigned email. the email never uses the word lawsuit. it never uses the term reverse-engineering. nothing to see here folks, beyond the fevered imagination of some romanian kid who invents all manner of supposed motivation, places it in the minds of people he doesn't know for sure exist, and then explodes his own ego in a frenzy of scornful self-important superiority. bzzt. dipshit alert.

Re:non-news

[falconwolf]

the kid rec'd an unsigned email. the email never uses the word lawsuit.

Accept the email he received does say they have contacted their lawyer. Why in the world would they contact a lawyer unless they were thinking of suing?

Falcon

Re:non-news

[raju1kabir]

Accept the email he received does say they have contacted their lawyer. Why in the world would they contact a lawyer unless they were thinking of suing?

Imagine, if you will, a world so topsy-turvy that people would actually claim to have contacted a lawyer when they have done no such thing. Boggles the mind, don't it?

That's a hack?!?

[cbhacking]

bypassing JavaScript functions that try to disable a mouse's right-click context menu functionality

You mean opening Firefox's options, going to Content tab, clicking on Advanced for Javascript, an un-checking the third option (Allow scripts to: Disable or replace context menus)? There's something analogous in Konqueror, and probably lots of other browsers. I don't think IE has the specific feature but it's still damn easy to turn off scripting overall. The only reason people wouldn't do this is if they didn't know that it was a script trapping the right-click, and if people went through and checked all their settings whenever they got a new browser (or many other programs) they would have found the option anyway. Calling that a "hack" is almost worse than calling some script kiddie who breaks into an improperly secured machine a "hacker". I know the general public can't get the terminology right to save their life, but can we at least expect better from Slashdot? PLEASE?!?

Hell, this isn't even an extension like NoScript, let alone going into about:config or any such. Stuff of this nature is built right into the browser options, and anybody who knows about it can, will, and should use it. Suggesting that such knowledge makes makes one a hacker (presumably defined as somebody who hacks) is about as reasonable as trying to suppress the knowledge itself.

Re:That's a hack?!?

[poopdeville]

Stuff of this nature is built right into the browser options, and anybody who knows about it can, will, and should use it.

I don't disagree in this particular case, but consider

ping -f -s 1500 hostname.for.a.site.you.dont.like.com

-f and -s are just as much features of ping as shutting javascript off is a feature of Firefox. But that command is quite abusive, and might even be considered criminal.

Re:That's a hack?!?

[cbhacking]

There's a difference between interpreting what somebody else is serving in your own way, and actively launching an attack on somebody. I'm not entirely sure why the -f option is even there (I needed to read the manpage to find out what it does) but it can't really be compared to electing not to be put off by a script stating that right clicks are disabled. I see the reason behind your response though; I wasn't terribly clear.

I didn't mean to imply that just because software has a feature it's ok to use it, but rather that whatever fool wrote that site apparently thought that A) everybody who wanted to view page properties (or source even?) would do it via right-click, and B) that that little script was even going to stop them. My intent was to point out that it is absurd to complain about somebody reading and posting information which is publicly available from your web server just because they had to use a completely normal browser feature to do it. Unlike using ping flood to DoS attack somebody (which is not it's intended use, though I'm still not sure what is), the blogger was simply using their web server for its intended purpose: transmitting information including the URL of the stream to anybody who wants it.

Side note: I've since learned that the complaint really doesn't seem to be about the workaround, but rather about posting the direct links. Nearly as dumb a complaint, but once again the summary would have you think this was a totally different topic. See previous post about calling this a "hack".

Re:That's a hack?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, the general population doesn't have a remote idea of what the word "Hacker" means. As for trying to block the source through right click, and or browser options is rediculous.. Why not just grab the source from the server response in raw HTML in a simple HTML object writen in any popular programming language... why not use javascript it's self to grab and display the result of what the server spits out to gain access to the "hacked" code. It's an a language the browser reads it's not "hidden" from anyones view nore can it be it's shot right to your computer.. It's just the fact that your normal computer using retard couldn't find his own asshole to shit from let alone read "cryptic" content in the form of raw html.. just cut the browser out of the equation all together.

Re:That's a hack?!?

[Legion303]

"I'm not entirely sure why the -f option is even there"

I'm sure you can see the value in having a "quick glance" method of determining whether a host is dropping packets...

Re:That's a hack?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also a good method to generate lots of unique IV's on a WEP network, in case you have a machine on the network, have the key, and intend to crack it.

whoa

[WannaBeGeekGirl]

I've been out of the loop on web programming too long. I had no idea anyone still used Javascript. I guess I should remove the really dusty first edition O'Reilly JS book from my shelf or use the company funded "Obsolete" stamp.

~sigh~ Let me guess, no one writes html in vi either anymore? This is what happens when you work in offices with no windows or internet connections.

Please someone tell me we're not still using Pascal, Lisp?!? I mean I know there is still Fortran code around that has to be maintained but for the love of John Hughes' films and all that is sacred!1!!

~pulls self back together~

I'm sorry about getting OT, won't happen again. I'm just taking my first vacation in a spell...had forgotten there was sunlight, hawt chicks and stuff.

Re:whoa

[azenpunk]

there are offices with no windows? *jumps for joy* oh, you mean physical windows. *hangs head, puts off updating resume*

Re:whoa

[ajs318]

You can have both. I used to work in an office which was underground (a former railway bonded warehouse) and running close to 100% Open Source.

This is a non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone could have sent that email. From addresses are easy to forge and the message contains no contact information. I doubt the email is really from the company. If it is really from them then it's likely just bullshit. If a lawyer was involved he would have informed them about how to properly notify someone.

Re:This is a non-story

[Grishnakh]

You greatly overestimate the competence of American lawyers.

Re:This is a non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone considered the fact that in web programming, anything that can be done on the user end is considered fair game?

Developers are always working around SQL injection, garbage data, security being compromised by non-standard browsing, etc. If you don't want JavaScript to break the functionality/security of your site, don't rely on it. It's that simple.

(posted under Anonymous because I don't intend to read back later, sorry -- call me what you like)

Might not even be a legitimate email

[Evets]

The original email message is posted here. The message headers are as follows:

X-Originating-IP: [209.86.89.64]
Return-Path:
Received: from 209.86.89.64 (EHLO elasmtp-curtail.atl.sa.earthlink.net)
  (209.86.89.64)
by mta103.mail.re3.yahoo.com with SMTP; Mon, 14 May 2007 05:09:00 -0700
Received: from [65.37.133.42] (helo=NewLaptop.eathlink.net)
by elasmtp-curtail.atl.sa.earthlink.net with asmtp (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256)
(Exim 4.34) id 1HnZMJ-0001Gv-Hd for xxxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.ca;
Mon, 14 May 2007 08:08:59 -0400
Message-Id:
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.0.1.0
Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 08:08:58 -0400
From: "Jazz Colors"

The Text of the message:

Your Blog, which we have copied, has been turned over to our lawyers.
You should plan on a response from them shortly and a visit to
Atlanta to be present in court. I am not allowed to make any further
statement regarding this matter at this time.

This doesn't look like a legitimate email to me in the least - from the earthlink origination to the cheesy wording of the message. Sounds like Slashdot has either been blog-spammed, or this guy is another chicken little.

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[Blackknight]

Looks legit to me. It came from somebody's laptop on an Earthlink connection in Atlanta.

Received: from [65.37.133.42] (helo=NewLaptop.eathlink.net)
by elasmtp-curtail.atl.sa.earthlink.net with asmtp (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256)

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[Podcaster]

Is the parent post related to the Atlanta based 'Jazz Colors' internet radio website here? I didn't RTFA.

-P

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[revengebomber]

Your Blog, which we have copied, has been turned over to our lawyers.
You should plan on a response from them shortly and a visit to
Atlanta to be present in court. I am not allowed to make any further
statement regarding this matter at this time. For immediate payment please contact our gracious us heirs for receipt of your cheques of value $10,000,000 ten-million usdollars.

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[Legion303]

Actually it was sent to an Atlanta Earthlink relay from Mindspring. Either way, the radio station just got lots of free publicity.

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[Evets]

I haven't run into a company yet that is standardized on a Eudora mail client, nor one that would send official e-mail through an ISP.

You should plan on a response from them shortly and a visit to
Atlanta to be present in court.

No legal department would put their stamp of approval on such a statement - especially preceded by

Your Blog, which we have copied, has been turned over to our lawyers.

And the last part -

I am not allowed to make any further
statement regarding this matter at this time.

implies that this message has been reviewed and approved.

They fail to mention the actual offending page, the offending text on the offending page, nor the action they would like to see taken. The message is a vague and baseless and includes a threat of legal action which in and of itself is illegal if there is no intent to pursue legal action.

If this email were legitimate - it implies that there is no IT department (no IT department issues computers with systemnames like "NewLaptop", no legal department, no internal email servers, and no direct connectivity to the internet from within the business (if they had, the e-mail would not have come through a dialup account). That's doubtful, since they actually broadcast shows over the web.

Further, the e-mail also implies that there is no way to verify the authenticity of the message AND leaves no contact information for clarification of the message. There is also no signature or even a name of the individual that sent the message.

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[raju1kabir]

No legal department would put their stamp of approval on such a statement

There is no legal department. You think this is TimeWarner?

I haven't run into a company yet that is standardized on a Eudora mail client, nor one that would send official e-mail through an ISP.

Then you haven't been around much. Most companies use their ISPs' SMTP servers and have no policies about software. Remember that most companies are small businesses, and if they're online at all, it's with ADSL or AOL or some such thing.

and no direct connectivity to the internet from within the business (if they had, the e-mail would not have come through a dialup account). That's doubtful, since they actually broadcast shows over the web.

Upload your songs to the colo or streaming service, and broadcast. Far cheaper and more reliable than trying to do it directly over your own pipe.

And who says it's dialup? There's no relevant information about 65.37.133.42 in DNS or at rwhois.sys.atl.earthlink.net, and I can't traceroute it to see the latency (at least not at the moment). Can you?

There is also no signature or even a name of the individual that sent the message.

That's because there's just one person and a bunch of sock puppet email addresses. At least he has the pride not to invent fake names for himself.

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[raju1kabir]

Actually it was sent to an Atlanta Earthlink relay from Mindspring.

Earthlink == Mindspring... for at least ten years now. Surely a hotshot email header private dick would know that.

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[Sam H]

Looks legit to me. It came from somebody's laptop on an Earthlink connection in Atlanta.

Received: from [65.37.133.42] (helo=NewLaptop.eathlink.net)

Sir, if you look at the HELO argument to tell whether an email looks legit or not, you are terribly mistaken about how email works. Besides, the typo in "eathlink.net" certainly does not make it look "legit".

Re:Might not even be a legitimate email

[kchrist]

Well, as you point out, the info in the HELO/EHLO is user-supplied, so typos, or the absence of, in this information doesn't really have anything to do with how "legit" something is. Someone who names their Windows laptop "NewLapTop" is likely someone who would mistype "earthlink.net".

Anyway, I don't think he was claiming that the HELO info made it look legit, but was simply using that as a reference (ie, to note that it was probably someone's laptop). The IP addressing and SMTP server identified the source of the message as an Earthlink/Mindspring business customer (42.133.37.65.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer user-10ib19a.biz.mindspring.com.).

here you go

[Anonymous Coward]

Country
http://abs.egihosting.com/southco128?MSWMExt=.asf
http://216.66.69.106/southco128?MSWMExt=.asf

Jazz
http://abs.egihosting.com/southjz128?MSWMExt=.asf
http://216.66.69.106/southjz128?MSWMExt=.asf

dont be using wget -O /dev/null now will you

Advertisement

[Anonymous Coward]

When will these people learn... we dont want advertisements, and as long as there are advertisements, there will be workarounds to get rid of them.

What the... heck?

[ZorinLynx]

You'd think a station would be all for something that brings it more listeners and thus more advertising revenue.

Are they completely out of their minds? If someone told me that the way my site is implemented prevented some people from listening, the FIRST thing I would do would be to fix my site, and the second would be to thank the person for getting me more listeners!

Idiots. Yet I'm still listening to their station, on my Mac, because they're actually playing pretty good music. :)

-Z

Re:What the... heck?

[dwarfsoft]

You think this "lawsuit" thing isn't brining them publicity. Maybe now everybody will go to their site using this JS hack to see what they play...

Maybe they are doing this whole thing on purpose :D... Probably not though

Re:What the... heck?

[d3ac0n]

Maybe now everybody will go to their site using this JS hack to see what they play...

I know I did. I've been listening to ad-free jazz music for several hours now! I even bookmarked the URL in Winamp, so now I can listen to their station ad-free whenever I want!

(I love irony, don't you?)

Re:First post

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail it!

You fail it long, you fail it hard, you fail it like a little japanese schoolgirl.

If that's a hack...

[Anonymous Coward]

...then they must tremble before my 1337 skillz. I use menus and settings with wild abandon, and have even been known to download... *drumroll*... firefox extensions! There's this one tha... brb, there's someone hammering at the door.

Well...

[ePlus]

In Soviet Romania, JS hack SUES you! Oh, wait...

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm turning you over to the shut the fuck up lawyers for that retarded post.

Re:Well...

[gerrysteele]

that stopped being funny a looooooooong time ago big guy

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

He has a 1,000,000+ UID. I bet he thinks goatse is a cool new way to freak out his IM buddies.
br,>

[offtopic] Lisp

[QuoteMstr]

Lisp is actually doing quite well -- check out cliki.org, as well as the SBCL project.

It's not so obsolete a language as you seem to imply.

Re:[offtopic] Lisp

[Refenestrator]

I think he was referring to the language called "Lisp" from 1958. You're talking about Common Lisp, which is much more recent.

Re:[offtopic] Lisp

[Actually, I do RTFA]

On the off chance that you really don't understand the modding system and I can be of help I shall respond.

• Your karma does not control your mod points, at least not to the degree that high karma -> mod points. A positive karma score makes you eligible to recieve mod points randomly.
• You cannot both post and mod one topic.
• Humor no longer nets you karma. This was rmoved for some reason.
• Your off-topic post was at the root-level, and his response was actually topical because it related to your original post.
• The inital rating of your posts is not determined by how much karma you burn, etc. It is determined by whether you are logged in, your current karma level's sign (positive or negative), and a special karma bonus, which I don't understand. But it is outside of your control. People who are not posting modify that level.

The FAQ actually is quite detailed.

Re:[offtopic] Lisp

[Anonymous Coward]

Humor no longer nets you karma. This was rmoved for some reason.
thanks, i see the entire karmatic process has changed underneath and the FAQ has been updated to state that clearly. i hadn't RTFF in the few years or so I've been away from /.. i appreciate the help without the attitude. You've created one less annoyed and therefore annoying poster.

apologies.

sue 'em back

[Urza9814]

I do believe they've just admitted to copyright infringement, did they not?

In further idiocy...

[cbhacking]

They at least hid the actual embed in an iframe, so you can't just see the stream URL by selecting View Source (which doesn't need right-click at all!). Of course, the iframe URL is in the page source, so you can navigate to that page DIRECTLY and voila! there is your player (without any ads) and, of course, you can view source that page and see the embedded player's URL (again, without right-click, which is still disabled in IE). The URL for the player (128kbps) is http://www.atlantabluesky.com/jazz/DISPLAYS.html.

Ironically, the whole reason for the blogger posting this workaround and the URL streams in the first place is because he wasn't able to listen to them anymore in Linux/BSD, or in any browser except IE. I've confirmed that EVEN WITH the Windows Media Player extension for Firefox installed, the stream can't be played (haven't booted into Linux to try that, I'll take his word for it though). Ironically however, the right-click capture doesn't even work in Firefox, so you can right-click on the (non-connecting) player, select properties, and view the stream URL to your heart's content (and yes, this is with the ability for javascript to catch right-click enabled... their scripting is just that bad, I guess).

Right mouse button?

[noidentity]

What's this "right mouse button" you speak of?

Sincerely,
Mac user

Re:Right mouse button?

[Skapare]

It's an illegal anti-DRM device outlawed by the DMCA. If you ever see one, be sure to stay far far away.

Re:Right mouse button?

[drapeau06]

It's a configurable, vestigial mouse button. For example, I have mine set to "religious" so that I can do a "religious right-click" (that's a bit like an exorcism) on headlines and pictures in my web browser that give me an irrational feeling of faith-based moral outrage.

Re:Right mouse button?

[Cliff.Braun]

That'd be control click to you.

Um, isn't javascript optional?

[Ninety-9 SE-L]

My browser by default blocks all scrips unless I tell it to unblock one in particular. By default, this 'feature' would be disabled and I could right-click all I wanted to. Additionally, disabling the right click feature is as old as the internet and I've been able to work around it since I was 12 years old.

The ability to suppress a script is common knowledge and easy to do. I can view a page however I see fit, not only that, if I truly wanted a piece of content off that page, I wouldn't even need my right mouse button to save that content right to my computer. Once the page is loaded and content cached, it is part of my computer and I may do with it as I please, despite whatever copyright has been placed on it.

Next up

[illuminatedwax]

When are they going to sue the wget developers?

just because

[Anonymous Coward]

just because they don't have a programmer to put in stream firewall a connect only from redirect ip for the stream all the fuss...

really waist of paper&ink

oh, wait they don't have a firewall, then put the thing in the damn router ...

just another waisted line...

Judge

[Mazin07]

Atlanta Blue Skye LLC: "Your honor, we respectfully await your verdict." Judge: "After reviewing the evidence involved, I rule this case EL-OH-EL."

i do something similar

[Squeezer]

a radio station I listen to, the "play audio" link opens up a popup that uses a custom plugin to stream .wma files (windows media audio) and has a banner on the bottom. you couldn't right click either. but I just used wget to get the main page, looked at the source, saw the link to the .html page that loaded the stream plugin/popup thing, wget that, looked at the source for the link to the .wma file, and then just saved the .wma file w/ wget and opened it up and in it was the direct link to the .wmv stream, so I just pasted that into windows media player, and viola! no more ad banner, just the straight radio stream.

Re:i do something similar

[cbhacking]

You do know you can access the HTML Source from the View menu in both Firefox and IE (also Page command bar button on IE7), right? I mean, I commend you for finding this, but really wasn't it just a *bit* of an extreme measure to go wget-ing all that?

Of course, this just makes the whole thing much more ironic... you were using a third party tool, the blogger used a workaround for a poorly conceived script (which some are calling a "hack" for reasons completely unknown to me), when all that was neccessary was a simple menu option, a trivial amount of HTML reading ability, and enough sense to look inside an iframe (in this specific case, that's where the embed object is) by copy-pasting its URL into the address bar before repeating parts one and two.

Re:i do something similar

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Slashdot post, which we have copied, has been turned over to our lawyers.
You should plan on a response from them shortly and a visit to
Atlanta to be present in court. I am not allowed to make any further
statement regarding this matter at this time.

Re:i do something similar

[DjRenigade]

StreamboxVCR used to do the same thing only it would download the file instead of listening to it. it still works well with a few "streamming" stations...

Small internet radio station....

[proadventurer]

Ah, does anyone else think "the small radio" station does not have even one lawyer on staff?

I call bullshit

[luckymutt]

C'mon, man, this is a marketing ploy be Atlanta Blue Sky.
Look at the time his first blog was posted.
Look at the time stamp on the email he gets threatening a lawsuit.
Your gonna tell me that some relatively obscure blog is gonna be noticed THAT quickly? about a commonly known workaround? And lawsuit being threated????

Sheeesh, ABS is getting paind by adverts.
what better way to boost your unique hits than by having a reference on /. ?

Re:I call bullshit

[Tran]

COuld be - but he got the nasty response after sending them an e-mail expalining that they recently broke their playability on other platforms and expalined to them why... ( including a link to his blog highlighting the situation prior to the "threatening" email)

Re:I call bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

He actually sent them an email complaining about the change to their site that made the work around necessary, and he linked back to his blog. So it is not surprising they noticed so fast.

They're idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess next they're going threaten everyone who uses the NoScript plug-in for Firefox. Also have they never thought to include ads in the actual stream. It wouldn't be too hard to make pre-roll ad before the music stream starts. Or they could easily insert them every couple songs. Seriously, I wonder about the people running Atlanta Blue Skye LLC.

Re:Goatse!

[mrsteveman1]

Now that I've seen goatSHE i wish people would use it instead.

Chick just ain't too bad :D

yes yes i know the point was to be annoying but hey i can dream

Isn't Australia an American colony?

[Rix]

It certainly behaves that way.

Re:Isn't Australia an American colony?

[spyder-implee]

Hahahahaha, American colony. "the mainland was claimed by the British in 1770 and officially settled through penal transportation as the colony of New South Wales on 26 January 1788" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia

Re:Isn't Australia an American colony?

[Ash Vince]

I can see how you would think that, both are a bunch of criminals. :)

I copied it too

[iminplaya]

In case it gets taken down :-) The "I want you..." poster is great. Lots of truth in that.

Re:"Romania-based technology enthusiast"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Go eat a dick

Stealing!!!!

[bill_mcgonigle]

When the commercials start: go to the bathroom, get a snack/drink, perform small errands, talk to other people in the room.

You're violating your contract, don'cha know?

Re:Stealing!!!!

[notabaggins]

When the commercials start: go to the bathroom, get a snack/drink, perform small errands, talk to other people in the room. You're violating your contract, don'cha know?

And doncha just love this part?

"When asked if he considers people who go to the bathroom during a commercial to be thieves, he responded: 'I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom.'"

He guesses? A certain amount of tolerance?

Next up: motion senors in TVs!

FBI Warning: Leaving your seat during this commercial break is a federal crime!

Re:Stealing!!!!

[bill_mcgonigle]

He guesses? A certain amount of tolerance?

There's a saying in politics - when your opponent is self-imploding - GET OUT OF THE WAY! :)

Compare and Contrast

[bill_mcgonigle]

I can make (and actually have made) proprietary Perl scripts. I simply tag them "Copyright 2007 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED." In order to run this code, you must have the source code. (Yeah I could obfuscate it, but let's say I didn't.) While you may have the source code, you are not allowed to redistrbute it, you are not allowed to make derivative works from it (i.e. hack it), and you can not copy portions of it into your own work (another kind of derivative work). Practically speaking, you could, but legally you are not allowed to. And if I found out that you did, I could bring a whole world of legal hurt down upon you.

What am I allowed to do with your perl code then? Where do you specify that?

Where is it specified what I'm allowed to do with a piece of JavaScript stored on a publicly accessible HTTP server? At what point am I in violation of any inferred license? When I tune about:config to make the script less obnoxious? Running NoScript?

I'll grant you the redistribution aspect, because Copyright protects that, but Copyright doesn't say I can't add words to my copy of Alice in Wonderland. It doesn't say I can't add an extra control knob to my toaster.

Clearly you can negotiate a separate license for all of those things, but I think you have to do that in order to acquire the protections you're assuming.

Re:Compare and Contrast

[coaxial]

What am I allowed to do with your perl code then? Where do you specify that?

You may run it. That's it. You have no other rights. I do not have specify that you have no other rights, since this is default position under the law. No other rights were explcitly granted, and no other rights may be infered. The right of execution can be reasonably infered, if it's not explcitly granted, because why would someone purchase a piece of software if they may not execute it? Collectors' value? I don't think so.

Where is it specified what I'm allowed to do with a piece of JavaScript stored on a publicly accessible HTTP server? At what point am I in violation of any inferred license? When I tune about:config to make the script less obnoxious? Running NoScript?

Legally, you must default to believing that the entire work is owned by the person/group running the website, and that they have full rights to their work and that you have none. They may grant you additional rights, but it's only prudent to take the most conservative posture when approaching a new work.

In your examples, you're not violating the copyright of the script, because you're not modifying the script itself. You're modifying the environment that the script executes in. The script owner has no rights over the execution environment. That is your domain. While you may not go through the code and remove all calls to "alert()", since that's modifying the code, you can simply disable the alert() call so that it doesn't actually do anything. The end effect is the same, alert boxes don't display, but technically, and, more importantly, legally they are distinctly different.

I'll grant you the redistribution aspect, because Copyright protects that, but Copyright doesn't say I can't add words to my copy of Alice in Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland is in the public domain. You can do anything you want to it.

I suspect that you were actually trying to pick a famous work that is still under copyright protection for your point. So let's assume that you want to add words to your copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In this case it matters what the nature of the addition is. If you're simply writing "Trillian is teh hotness" in the margins, then that's fine. You're not modifying the work (i.e. the story) but rather the presentation (i.e. the physical book). "Trillian is teh hotness" would be your intellectual property, since you created it. Additionally, in the United States at least, it is automatically copyrighted to you upon its creation. You do not have to register this copyright at the US Copyright Office to enjoy protection of this work under the law. However, failure to register copyright may prevent you from receiving restitution if your copyright on "Trillian is teh hotness" is infringed. (i.e. You can sue to cease and desist the person making "Trillian is teh hotness" t-shirts, but you can't sue for money. (The money from the t-shirt sales probably would be forfitted to the government's general fund, but I don't know.)) Furthermore, you can even quote a small portion of the HGTTG as evidence of Trillian's "hotness." This is protected under fair use, since 1) it's a small amount, and 2) it's for commentary on an existing work.

Now, if you say changed Ford Prefect's name to "Ford Escort," you'd be violating the copyright. You have created a derivitive work, and that is explicitly forbidden under copyright law. Now, I'll grant you that if you're just marking up your own paperback copy of the book, no one will notice, and no one will care, but as a matter of law, you've commited a criminal act. The moment you attempt to distribute "Bill McGonigle's Edition" of HTTG, you've violated copyright three times. Once because you've created a derivative work without permission. Second, you're distributing a copyrighted work without permission. Third, you've created a "confusingly similar" work, which is

Re:Compare and Contrast

[orclevegam]

Now, if you say changed Ford Prefect's name to "Ford Escort," you'd be violating the copyright. You have created a derivitive work, and that is explicitly forbidden under copyright law.

Actually you can do anything you want all the way up to ripping out every other page and your still perfectly fine. Where the line is drawn is if you then subsequently attempt to resell the work either as the original, or as a new work of your own. Copyright does not say anything at all about what I can do to a work (except for visual arts which prevent me from altering them and then saying their the original in such a way as to damage the reputation of the author), it only restricts how the work can be redistributed.

Atlanta Blue Sky...

[CmdrPorno]

...used to be a good radio station that played stuff that you didn't hear on mainstream radio. That said, I hate that stupid anti-right-click Javascript code, and think that its use is the last refuge of scoundrels. I often use the right click context menu to go back or forward, and the stupid Javascript code impedes efficient navigation of a website.

If someone wants to copy your photos, HTML source code, or whatever, that won't stop them.

Message Not Required

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yes, this is flamebait, and it comes from deep in my heart. Sincerely. If you are one of the 26% of Americans to whom this flamebait is addressed, I hope you get the message. I'll lose one kind of karma, but gain another.

You're playing right into their hands. Think about it.

Besides, now US laws apply everywhere.

Re:Message Not Required

[Short Circuit]

Intellectual Property: The American Empire

Like father, like son?

Shift key DMCA strikes again?

[Aereus]

Isn't this kinda equivilent to the guy who received a DMCA notice for holding down the shift key while inserting a CD in order to not load the DRM installed on it?

Re:Free trip to Atlanta

[gekoscan]

Can't beat that...

LOL hacking javascript lmao.. there are a billion different ways to do what he posted on his blog but somehow he winds
up getting a free trip to Atlanta, shit they would fly me around the world for what i know :)

I hate unintelligent ignorance by companies pushing around the little guy. Just wait till I am done with their servers LOL.

Re:Goatse!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that I've seen goatSHE i wish people would use it instead.

Damn you! You had me fooled! Goat SHE ... it's not a woman! ;__;

Fraud hotspot

[Anonymous Coward]

Romania is one of the 'big 3' fraud locations, the other two being China and Nigeria. The largest portion of account takeovers (hotmail, yahoo, ebay, gmail, amazon, anything else that 'clients' may modify a small portion of a larger companies site (comment fields on blogs etc) etc) is caused by these countries or people relaying through them. So if a user from one of these countries is fiddling with the javascript, it is no surprise to treat it as highly suspicous and dangerous, since it may be part of a site spoof for phishing or XSS attack to gain client credentials and persue criminal acts.

That said, anti-right-click scripts, anti-view source, hiding menu bars and and such are a pain in the behind for administration of such web 2.0 sites when the client stuffs this crap into the browser. I have no qualms about finding any reason to terminate an account that engages in javascript tricks.

I can see another lesson is in order

[cdrguru]

1. The Romainian government doesn't give a hoot about what some court in the US says. So, the ability of a company in the US to sue someone is Romainia is limited to the extent of that person coming to the US. Until then, they can forget about it.
   
2. Unless they know the name and address of the person in Romainia, they aren't even going to be able to file a suit. An IP address isn't going to be useful because the Romainian ISP isn't going to give up their customer and nothing is going to change that.
   
3. Proving who was on the other side of the keyboard from an IP address is also impossible. It could have been anyone claiming to be someone else.
   

Basically, there are no consequences to any action on the Internet. About time people understand that. If you don't like it, change it. Until it changes and every country on the planet signs on to that, you can't prosecute someone for something they did on the Internet.

Re:I can see another lesson is in order

[Anonymous Coward]

1. the Romanian government will do WHATEVER a US authority will ask them to do - including but not limited to extradite people for dubious or frivolous charges.

2. with $100 to the right ISP drone in Romania you can obtain whatever 'confidential' information you want.

3. after 5 minutes at a Romanian police station he will confess *everything*, I can guarantee you that :-)

You'll change your mind

[HangingChad]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders.

You'll change your mind when our fully operational Death Star is orbiting over your crapass country. Lord Cheney will deal with you personally with his Light Shotgun.

It's as if thousands of people cried out all at once...but since they don't speak English we didn't understand a word they said. They're fereners anyway. It's the price of Democracy.

Re:You'll change your mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the US can't even beat a bunch of fig-eaters trying to find reverse on a Soviet tank. What makes you think they can beat a real country?

universal tourist translator

[Anonymous Coward]

that's an easy one!

"I'd like a beer please"

US tourist translator

"I'D LIKE A BEER, PLEASE!"

Now if the barkeep is really deaf and dense, and you need the official US tourist sign language translator, you pull out your .45, point at a beer bottle at a neighboring table, make a drinking motion with your other hand, then point the .45 at the bartender

Re:universal tourist translator

[Grishnakh]

This is really exaggerated and silly.

In reality, US tourists have a very effective method of breaking through language barriers. When the locals, who don't understand English, fail to understand an English statement or question spoken by a US tourist, the tourist simply says it LOUDER until the local understands.

Why the rest of the world hasn't figured out that just speaking LOUDER to people will make them understand a foreign language is beyond me.

Did anyone RTFA?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "lawsuit" threat is not about a JS workaround post, but about posting the direct URLs to the audio streams. That he used a "circumvention device" like Windows Media Player's File->Properties, and the uber-hack for bypassing the JS disable right-click only shows what a criminal he is! Hopefully, they will crush this foul creature before anyone with a braincell gets involved (i.e. - with a "settlement" out of court).

it is no longer a hack,

[Pirulo]

now that it's documented, becomes a feature.

They're making threats over this one-liner?

[Anonymous Coward]

document.onmousedown = null;

Give me a break.

They aren't broadcastinglegally anyway!

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't seem to have ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and SoundExchange licenses for the music they're broadcasting either. If you're broadcasting copyrighted music in the US, you have to be licensed by those guys.

hold left button and right click

[Anonymous Coward]

here is one way:

while holding down the left mouse button, just right click and the menu will show up...
it is our mouse buttons, and you or javascript don't get to tell us what we do with it

kthx,bye

Wow

[Rix]

You're an idiot.

How about this angle?

[Whuffo]

Since this website was hosting JS code that was intended to be executed on users machines - with no notification that this code would be run or what it did - then this starts to look a little different, don't you think?

And for a user to take action to prevent unwanted programs from being executed on his machine; nothing wrong with that, is there?

I don't think any website that expects me to download and run code from their website has anything to complain about if I choose not to run their code.

Javascript? What about File - Save As

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the right click javascript thing for live journal using teenage girls? I can just save any page and have the entire HTML page at my disposal. Then I can do whatever I'd like with the links. Maybe this person should sue for allowing web pages to be saved?

Oh No!

[Arancaytar]

I must have explained that disabling Javascript removes the right-click block many times in public (whoops, again just now), and have told it individually in chat even more often! I'm so screwed!

And lynx is obviously contraband software as it bypasses all Javascript or Flash "protection" of websites.

Or, to put it more succinctly, OMFG MORONS!

Re:Oh No!

[alexgieg]

And lynx is obviously contraband software as it bypasses all Javascript or Flash "protection" of websites.

Actually, you probably have a point here. Can someone confirm whether, under the DMCA, disabling JavaScript, or even explaining how to do it, might be considered "a device that bypasses content protection"? If it is, I wonder how much time it'll take for JavaScript to be mandatorily (?) both enabled and undisableable (?) in web browsers...

Re:Oh No!

[Arancaytar]

I should think it has approximately the same legal weight as a disclaimer saying "Using the right mouse button while reading this page is prohibited," or the logical extension, "changing the TV channel while ads are being displayed is a violation of our terms of service."

Now comes the scary question: What *is* that legal weight going to be, in the near future?

Blue Sky(e) didn't do much to protect itself...

[macraig]

... or clarify its service. Most significant, and luckily for Radu, is the fact that nowhere, on no page nor at any point in the process, do they warn or advise customers that their service will only function AS INTENDED from the Internet Explorer browser, and thus also by extension only from Windows. Further, the site also fails to clearly state what the actual intended method of use of their service is; nowhere is there any declaration prohibiting people from accessing or using the site in the manner(s) Radu has documented. None of that qualifying information is present anywhere on their site as of the date of this posting, 2007/05/21, 00:27 PDT. If I were Radu (or his lawyer), I would be archiving a current notarized copy of their site's relevant pages to document this fact.

IANAL, but I believe this might be a legal ace in the hole for Radu.

Why should they be tried in absentia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they are going to pay for him to stay in the US to defend himself, why should he be looking at jail time for contempt of court whenever he tries to go to "the land of the free (tm)(c)(r)(pat pending) just because he could not reasonably be expected to turn up to court?

Mod parent insightful!

[Viraptor]

Zbq cnerag vafvtugshy!

compared to analog radio this is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... like demanding that you buy a radio from company A because companies B, C and D's radio's are not using their favourite transistors to amplify the signal ...

me thinks...

[rarel]

... Someone should redirect the radio station to the ID protection act, paragraph 10, section T... the ID-10-T section.

How to get back at them...

[ArsenneLupin]

Quoting from their streamhoster's billing rules:

Live Streaming is billed based on total monthly maximum concurrent users and selected bitrate.

Slashdotters, you know what you do.

Alternatively, you may send egihosting.com some DMCA takedown notices to have that stream pulled altogether. If they want their stream to be inaccessible, let's help them doing so! There's no excuse in teaming up with a monopoly in such a way.

Message is a fake

[knarf]

Check the Received: header and see for yourselves:

Received: from 209.86.89.64 (EHLO elasmtp-curtail.atl.sa.earthlink.net) (209.86.89.64)
by mta103.mail.re3.yahoo.com with SMTP; Mon, 14 May 2007 05:09:00 -0700
Received: from [65.37.133.42] (helo=NewLaptop.eathlink.net)
by elasmtp-curtail.atl.sa.earthlink.net with asmtp (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256)
(Exim 4.34) id 1HnZMJ-0001Gv-Hd for xxxxxxxxxxx@yahoo.ca;

A lawsuit announced through an earthlink account? With a typo in the domain name? helo=NewLaptop.eathlink.net? Eathlink?

Sure. Nice try. Next time don't be so gullible.

Re:Message is a fake

[terom]

The eathlink.net is from the helo, which might be typed out by hand and not actually validated for anything. Plus, there's evidence that it's valid. He states that the email that he received was in reply to an email he sent them. If he means that they quoted his email, that means something. Secondly, The Jem Report contacted the radio station on the matter, and received a verbose reply (in the article: "The full text of the message follows:").

Re:Jack calls Kate in flash-forwards off the islan

[lightversusdark]

If it's true, I'll thank you right now.
Bloody trolls.

Dear Atlanta Stupid Sky

[Mateo_LeFou]

I really enjoy your jazz station. The second song I heard was Brad Mehldau's rendition of "Monk's Dream" -- one of my all time favorite songs. I looked this up on the "played this hour" page because I am not yet adept at recognizing Mehldau's signature attack style.

At the bottom of that page was an ad for theyellowtags.com, a site that offers great deals on instruments with *no *shipping (even for a cello, which is what I'm in the market for). I'm emailing them right now.

If you could spend a few seconds removing your head from your ass, please contemplate whether it's a good idea to sue/threaten bloggers for *introducing *me to your *advertisers. Were it not for the blog you're attacking, I never would have heard your stream or bought this cello.

what's needed...

[Anonymous Coward]

is the extension of the 2nd amendment into the 21st century:

"the right of the PEOPLE to keep & bear compilers, linkers, browsers, shall not be infringed."

in brief

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm an attention whore.

I like whining about how "open source" isn't the
best thing since sliced bread. And linux 2.6.x
is an unstable piece of shit.

I know javascript tricks. The "rednecks"
are sending me unsigned messages with legal threats.

Now give me 15 minutes of fame on slashdot.
Please. I need your love.

PUBLIC WWW

[mcarp]

When will people learn that when you put stuff on a public network that it's public?

Also, advertising is GAMBLING. As an advertiser your HOPE that people will watch/listen/read the ads. You cant force them to do it. The primis of advertising is that some percentage of people will pay attention to the ads and buy the products.

Advertising is not a guarenteed source of income people! Take your income from your gambling and accept it.

That's not a valid email

[Vaxgod]

65.37.133.42] (helo=NewLaptop.eathlink.net

65.37.133.42 resolves to
"user-10ib19a.biz.mindspring.com"
Top Level Domain: "mindspring.com"

Why is a joke email on the front page of Slashdot?

Re:That's not a valid email

[kchrist]

What's wrong with that?

A) HELO/EHLO information is user-defined and therefore doesn't need to match anything else in the header.
B) Earthlink bought Mindspring nearly ten years ago. They are the same company. (hint: try 'whois mindspring.com')
C) Even if the HELO information could be trusted, and Earthlink and Mindspring were not affiliated, there's still nothing wrong with what you're seeing here. Why couldn't a laptop that normally uses one service send an e-mail from another service?

"All Rights Reserved" in a copyright notice

[becker]

This phrase is one of my pet peeves. Almost every time I see the phrase, it has been used incorrectly.

If you are granting any non-statutory rights at all you should be using "all other rights reserved".

It's pretty much like public presentations and white papers having "proprietary and confidential" in fine print at the bottom. It's obviously put on the documents without through or deliberation. If the person or company has freely distributed copies of white papers, or given presentations open to the public, I can only assume that the phrase does not have the plain meaning and ignore it every time and place I see you use it.

Again, if you are granting any non-statutory rights at all, you should list those right and use "all other rights reserved". Or just skip the latter phrase, since it's implied.

In the specific case here, if your web site instructs my browser to automatically get and execute a script, that's the normal and expected action (i.e. as described with formal or de facto standards), and it's published/served without password protection, I expect that I have the right to execute it. Thus your "all rights reserved" notice contradicts your explicit actions.

Re:"All Rights Reserved" in a copyright notice

[coaxial]

Well in the pendaanic sense it does, but as you said right of execution is implied and through the affirmative action of distributing the code in a manner that it would be immediately and automaticly executed.

Attention non-Americans:

[budgenator]

Whether a law in the United States applies to you or even an American outside the country or not depends predominately in how the law is worded; if the law is worded like "It is illegal for anyone in the United States to ..." you are probably ok to ignore the US law, if the law is worded "It is illegal for anyone to ..." (NOTE: the missing "in the United States" part) you should probably consider yourself fair game to the USG if you break the law and consider very carefull how much effort the US would put into running your sorry ass down, how much effort your willing to put into avoiding the run-down.

Unfortunately...

[Rix]

There are a lot of people quoting American laws and the American constitution in regard to matters that have nothing to do with the US. I wish you were right, but you're not.

Re:Unfortunately...

[DaFallus]

My point is that it isn't just the Americans who need to be told that American laws do not apply in other countries. It is the leaders of other countries who allow American officials to impose their will that need to be reminded as well.

You have no idea how the law works

[Rix]

Please stop pretending you do.

International law

[Rix]

Applies almost exclusively to interactions between states, not individuals, and for very good reason. We're not in any foreseeable future going to be able to agree to laws governing all people. Nor should we, such a monoculture would necessarily stagnate.

It would make far more sense to declare the internet as a form of "international waters", where only a few basic laws that everyone can agree upon apply.

Right of the people to keep and bear...code?

[Kadin2048]

A while (several years) ago, I wrote a post about how I think there are many parallels between firearms in the physical world, and circumventive/disruptive technologies in the informational world.

If you look at what the Second Amendment does, I don't think it's really that far of a leap. The function of the Second Amendment is to give people a powerful tool -- namely, weapons -- which can be used for good or ill, with the unspoken premise and assumption [1] that most people will use them responsibly. (And also that some people will use them irresponsibly, but that this is a fair price to pay, similar to the hypothetical 'guilty man' that you must let go free in order to ensure you're not condemning innocent ones by mistake.)

Similarly, there are many software tools which can be used in a variety of ways, many of them unproductively or outright harmfully. I don't think that the Constitution prohibits the Government from regulating actions, but I think there's ample evidence that there's a difference between making an action illegal, and making the tools which might be used to accomplish that action illegal. When you ban a tool, you're implicitly stating that you think people aren't responsible enough to be trusted with it, when I think it's clear that our country was supposed to operate -- succeed or fail -- on the opposite assumption.

Over the years, I think that this premise has been chipped away at to the point where it's virtually gone from our law or jurisprudence. [2] Perhaps such a culture of personal responsibility wouldn't have worked in the long run; maybe it would have proved impossible to scale. But if that's true, then I think it's ultimately a pretty damning indictment of democracy in general. If we're not ready to throw away the whole concept, I think you have to accept the number of people who will misuse tools when they are made freely available (despite whatever punishments you set out for the misuse; i.e. they are acting irrationally) as simply the cost of living in a free society. Personally, I think it's a small price to pay, given the alternative.

[1] I think you can argue quite readily that this assumption is pervasive in most, if not all, democratic systems: if you don't think that the majority of people are inherently good and responsible, then democracy in general just wouldn't seem like a very good idea.

[2] In addition to laws concerning weapons, which are the obvious example, you also have some of the broader "burglar's tools" laws that cover simple possession, or their extension to cans of paint, etc.; more recently you have the series of laws and regulations that led up to the DMCA, which began with satellite TV anti-descrambling laws and pretty much proceeded in a straight path from there to the disgrace we're currently dealing with.

Bypassing Javascript

[phorm]

In firefox (don't have an IE to test it on at the moment)

Edit-->Preferences
Content
[ ] Enable JavaScript (uncheck)

Right-click allowed!

I wonder if there's a toolbar for firefox allowing you to disable/enable JS on certain sites, or perhaps one that allows you to disable certain JS calls (like the mouse-disabling ones). If not, maybe I'll write one.

Irony of it is...

[ebbomega]

I'm Canadian.

I know they don't apply here. From what I understood this is an American company, wherein American law does apply.