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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."
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.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Maybe they should turn this over to their intrepid band of lawyers.
But the DMCA has other ideas:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/
Karma: Non-Heinous
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 ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
Shh.
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.
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.
but if he did the same thing vice versa, he'd be facing another lawsuit...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
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 upilex paraguariensis for all
Rude assholes deserve protection of the law as much as anyone else.
Repeat after me: Romania is not part of the USA. Defamation, jury and other shit like that doesn't apply.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Actually, it does. It just doesn't make it Free Software.
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?
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
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.
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.)
Clones are people two.
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.
What?
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.
FalconShould there be a Law?
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.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"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).
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.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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
"(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?
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".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.