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Wikipedia Moves To Delete the Free Speech Flag
decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."
This is where we are down to, with this copyright/intellectual property shit. i mean, now arrangements of colors are being owned/dominated.
this is ridiculous. someday, someone will be able to claim 'rights' in the arrangement that someone's crap makes when out of their ass.
Read radical news here
This controversy is a metaphor of the beautiful paradox that is the USA.
We have a flag for free speech, yet the flag is legally unavailable unless a contract with the owner of the flag is secured.
This can't be for serious. They're deleting an image that represents free speech because it violates copyright law?
Am I missing something or is this really as stupid as it sounds?
This is on par with that whole debacle of 1984 getting remotely recalled from kindle's.
This thing looks like it was invented by some self-aggrandizing dweeb who is now trying to get a slashdot flash mob to save his "original research."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
In some ways it makes sense, but there needs to be better defined limits.
Everything is representable as a number. Software, this post, a scan of the Mona Lisa. Where do you draw the line?
Fine. I'm patenting "1".
Now you and I can sue everyone who uses a binary computer.
Don't look to wikipedia to challenge corporations. They won't do it.
Well, that's 2 things they're not good for now:
1. Reliable information.
2. Challenging corporations.
However, they do excel at wasting my time and deleting things. So, it does make up for it in some way, I think.
I find it interesting (and maybe a little disturbing) that Wikipedia, which was supposed to be open for everyone, and always seemed to represent freedom, democracy, etc. now has a "secret police" system. There are a group of editors there who can just make pages... disappear. The logs are hidden from everyone (even the admins).
It's like those pages just never existed.
It makes you wonder what else is going on inside Wikipedia.
Wikipedia hasn't been about free speech since about thirty seconds after inception.
It's about control of information by a cabal (admittedly a very LOOSELY affiliated cabal, but a cabal nonetheless) of editors. All of whom have their own particular agendas and axes to grind. And it's not about what you know, but whom.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Isn't Wikipedia that website that deletes knowledge in a time where 2TB drives cost less than 100 bucks?
Super Aspergers who control nothing in real-life but shoot milk out of their male breasts when they can label something they are not interested in "not noteworthy" and delete it then?
That place is an asshole... full of assholes...
This has nothing to do with patents. It has to do with the concept that the key, under the DMCA, "effectively controls access to a protected work".
So you don't even have to spend money on a patent. You just have to use a public domain cryptosystem (or roll your own, if you can avoid the patent minefield) and hand it a frequently-used-on-the-internet number as a symmetric key. Then go around demanding that people remove that number from various websites, because publishing it violates the DMCA.
The courts are going to use "good faith" in determining what violates copyright law. Part of the purpose of this flag is to encode Sony's copyrighted number sequence. The flag is for this reason not in good faith. If I published a list of every possible 10 byte number in a random order the courts would not find it violating copyright law. If however, someone said look at number 78654321 on my list, and it happened to be Sony's number, the courts would find that document, not mine infringing, as it is just encoding the number. If I came up with some interesting math question to which that number was the solution, it would be infringing if displayed by itself. The question is: If someone wanted to read that number, could they use your material to find it any easier than if they didn't have it?
That's not right. While I fail to see how the key itself, as a short sequence of arbitrary numbers, can be copyrighted, the flag is a creative work and is just as eligible for copyright as anything else. The wiki page lists an author who released the image into the public domain.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The key amounts to a "true name", a label which is identical to the natural essence of that which is named. I'd never considered it anything other than an amusing literary device until now. Calling it "the HD-DVD key" is akin to "He Who Must Not Be Named". To state the true name itself - which is the only way to give an accurate reference thereto - is to reveal the great secret (of a now-defunct format - heh) and incur the wrath of the MPAA. To reference it using a peculiar sequence of colors is playing "I'm not saying it" games, akin to trying to tell someone the secret name without actually saying it. You cannot tell someone not to use that sequence of numbers, a short enough sequence that it could in fact be used by accident, without violating the [potential] copyright.
Upshot: the key amounts to a true name, and you can't assert legal right to a name and then prohibit anyone from ever using it (even in appropriate context). It wasn't copyrighted, it can't be copyrighted (heck, the copyright notice would be longer than what's copyrighted), and to ban use of the "free speech flag" is tantamount to fearing the utterance of "Voldemort" - silly. If there is in fact an issue, it need be fixed by means other than fearing a "true name".
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
And we'll just use a different colorspace. Invent one, if we have to. Scarlet, Orange, Navy, Yellow or something.
It's not the key that lets you sign your own code. It's not the key that lets you decrypt the OS. It's not the key that lets you decrypt games. It doesn't let you do anything interesting. Huh? What? Yes, you heard me.
It's a useless key that is used to authenticate factory service dongles (which will only let you run signed executables anyway, and those signing keys are secure as of the latest firmware and will never be obtained). Its only purpose so far was to perform downgrades (as released in a commercial product using stolen service executables) in order to use another commercial product (by ostensibly the same company) which used an exploit to enable game piracy (using a whole bunch of other methods unrelated to it). All of this predated the 27c3 presentation and geohot's release. It's useless now and has never served any "master" key purpose. It was called the "master key used to generate service dongle keys", then of course the clueless news websites just shortened that to "master key".
The PS3 has tons of keys and you can't "do everything" with one key. You need three or four to run stuff via metldr, that's why geohot released a whole bunch of keys, not just one (none of which are the one that was used here). But if you must pick one "representative" key to obfuscate and post and distribute and make an icon out of, at least pick Da from geohot's keyset (starts with C5). That's the metldr private key, originally stored at some vault at Sony's HQ, calculated thanks to their massive signing screwup, and which can be used to sign code that all existing PS3s will execute, forever (you still need to encrypt it, but signing is ideologically more important). And for fuck's sake, please let go of the "46 DC" dongle key already. Please.
In general, the line is drawn at the threshold of originality.
Just in case anyone's wondering what the fuss is about.
No one bothered to look at the talk page? There are NO arguments for deletion. Meaning that unless things are different now at wiki, this flag isn't going anywhere. There are also some very good points about the relevant (or not) legal standing of the image. In short, wiki has no reason to delete this image, other than fear mongering. That won't actually stop them from doing it, but it's worth noting. OH, and what's to stop the /. community from reinstating the copyright flag in every wiki article on the site? Nothing. Don't mess with free speech modmins, you don't have the balls to play the game. Next thing you know you'll be drowning in Perl shaped like a camel, or ponies or something.
The point is not about the flag, it's about the number that they claim that they own copyright to.
I claim 5. Everyone who wants to use a 5 out there better contact me because I'm taking licensing fees.
Godel's Revenge! Come on kids, let's encode!
Take the 100 million digits of Pi - I bet somewhere in there is the decimal version of the key. Then all you need is a marker and off you go!
Convert it to Base 4 and I garner it's in our genetic code! Can they stop you from having a copy of your genetic code? Or will they make "placeholders" illegal?
Go to a grocery store and buy stuff in a certain order! Can they stop you from shopping for food?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
For all the people who are complaining about the deletionist asshats download Wikipedia and provide a *fork*. Tell people it's better - spread the word.
If you care, make the effort.
You could convert the notes from that song into jump coordinates and find Earth!!
Worse than that... "5" is clearly a derivative work of your product.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
falls on deaf ears when people invest time and knowledge in Wikipedia only to have the content deleted.
-- $G
Come on people. The Wikipedia process provides solutions for situations like this.
1) Find a cell phone. But it's gotta be from 2002/2003. This is a must. Serious business and all.
2) Take a photo of the screen with the Free Speech Flag on it. Make sure you cut off like half the image, blow it out and dutch it too.
3) Delete the image already on Wikipedia
4) Post your new image.
5) Add an anime reference to the bottom of the article.
You should not draw the line. Ever. That's the whole point. Hindering the progress of humanity for selfish or covet means is wrong. Or in the words of Ben Franklin, a genius, founding father of the greatest democracy yet made, prolific inventor, and scientific discoverer, "As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
You can disagree with Ben Franklin if you want to, but you will be an idiot, almost every time.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
This is where we are down to, with this copyright/intellectual property shit.
this is ridiculous. someday, someone will be able to claim 'rights' in the arrangement that someone's crap makes when out of their ass.
Why are the keys copyrighted? Are they an expression of artistic creation?
Aren't they rather a "trade secret"?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.