Clean-Room RTMPE Spec Created From rtmpdump
lkcl writes "A clean-room RTMPE specification has been created using the source code of rtmpdump-v1.6 for guidance. Adobe recently issued a DMCA take-down notice against SourceForge, resulting in copies of rtmpdump hitting quite a few bittorrent sites worldwide."
Quite.
Well, one thing is clean-room IMPLEMENTATION. A very different thing is clean room SPECIFICATION (whatever that's supposed to mean).
The article clearly states that this one's a spec.
Clearly, Slashdot editors are strategically shaved monkeys trained to click "accept" or "reject" in exchange for bananas.
Define obscure acronyms in the articles!
RTMP is the Real Time Messaging Protocol used by Adobe Flash
The developer of the clean implementation does not see one byte of the original code, onnly the reversed specs. This is how the original IBM BIOS was cleaned, allowing the PC explosion.
OK WTF is that all about...
RTMP is the Real Time Messaging Protocol that Adobe has developed for streaming stuff over the Internet.
Red5 is a Free Software (LGPL) implementation of the RTMP.
Cygnal is the Gnash project's RTMP server (also Free Software).
Also see more docs on RTMP on the Gnash wiki, and RTMPE on this other wiki.
... and should I care?
Would you like to have control over the software that you run and use? Are you concerned about your software and/or hardware implementing things like the Broadcast Flag? Do you believe in Free Software because it gives you control over your computer?
If you answered "yes" to any of those questions, then you probably should care, as what's going on right now is making it difficult or impossible for you to run Free Software (or even to pick software) to interact with the RTMP protocol -- a protocol that a given website might require you to use to interact with their media content.
coding is life
Clean room reverse engineering is where you reverse engineer things using no code from the project you are attempting to emulate. This is used to make sure your project is 100% legal.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Here's the DMCA takedown notice issued to the rtmpdump project:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/notice.cgi?NoticeID=25159
Note that they are just claiming the ability to download copyrighted content as the reason for takedown (will we see a DMCA notice for IE and Firefox soon?). They might as easily use the same "reason" to issue notices to projects implementing this clean room specification.