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

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: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.

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...

[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:Oh noes

[arodland]

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

Attention Americans:

[Rix]

Your laws do not apply outside your borders.

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:

[shellbeach]

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

Re:Oh noes

[duguk]

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

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.

[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:Sympathetic Defendant?

[KokorHekkus]

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

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.