Slashdot Mirror
DVD CCA Applies for Restraining Order
Robert Jones writes "I have just received an email which I think will be of interest to many Slashdotters. Apparently, the DVD CCA [Copyright Control Association] has applied for a restraining order against myself and approximately 70 others to keep us from distributing 'any proprietary property or trade secrets relating to the CSS technology'. The hearing will be at 'the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, State of California, on December 29, 1999, at 8:30 a.m.' This will probably result in the bastards silencing us, but what can you do? If this goes through, I will never purchase a DVD player using current technology." Yes, the e-mail is real. Many people sent copies. We'll post an in-depth story within a day or two.
Is something still a trade secret if it has been reverse engineered? I thought this was the trade off between patenting and keeping something a trade secret. Surely they can't have it both ways?
overseas mirrors.
:)
Make the code ubiquitous, and it simply won't matter any more.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
slashdot is also mentioned in the email, which is mirrored here: http://douglas.min.net/~drw/css-auth/legal-info/ ~spot
"and no, im not the spot working for Transmeta, although i wish i was..." -- ~spot "i'm the epitome of public enemy..."
Anybody ever play "whack the mole"? Watching these lawyers try to stop the flood of information is like playing the game - every time you smack one down with your mallet two more pop up.
If anyone wants the source, contact me. Oh yes, and I'm making a dare to any of the lawyers out there - whack this mole.
about the legal merits of the case.
For someting to be a trade secret, you need to take steps to keep it a secret. If the technology is reverse engineered without reference to protected material, I don't think that they have a case.
I guess they realized that they would be really up a creek if they tried copyright law on this one.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The DVD algorithms that were found through some clever hacking were not found by rummaging through propretary documents or other blackops means, but through working with software. The software that they aquired the "method of decryption" from was not found illegally in the country it was found. That technology then was legally exported into the united states. These methods are pretty boring and were quickly incorprated into some nice pieces of software. Wheres the lawsuit, oh yeah, the DVD people DONT WANT YOU TO beable to use the technology yourself. That would give the consumer some rights to a product that could the copied and *gasp* pirated.
Sorry DSS guys, it was too late when you released the format.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
remember the machine-breakers of england?
those were the good old days. if a company tried something like this, their buildings would be burned and the owner tarred and feathered in front of his house. sure it's dangerous, but how dangerous is it to let someone step on your freedom? is it really better to die on your feet than live on your knees?
are these companies paying me to allow their software and data run though MY computer and MY cables in MY house? do I have the right to put a logic analyzer or debugger on my system and look at the registers, memory and I/O or the various hardware and programs? can i use than information in turn for whatever purpose i choose? when will this become a "fair use" issue? reselling someone's app as your own is one issue, but using their protocols and command set should be quite another.
sometimes i think that the only reason corporations get away with this stuff is that we've become so acclimated to greed and selfishness that we have forgotten how to stand together and fight when we see it.
c'mon everyone, join me in a rousing chorus of "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
they will lose in the long run. make it sexy, make it warez.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
With only a couple of days to go, I think that this, more than anything else, personifies and highlights the fight we have ahead of us. Nothing is such a danger to the values that ANYONE who loves the Internet and the Information age holds highly then this fight of stupidity (armed with guns) against the progress of the mind.
I'm pretty much at a lack for words right now, so I will just send my moral support to anyone targeted by this outrage. However, this is a battle we can fight on our turf and they can fight on their's. The courtroom is definitely theirs.
There was never a revolution without somebody going under wheel, and there was never a meme to go under without a fight. And there has never been a fighter like corporate society.
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Look folks, the only way to combat this is for everyone to distribute copies of this software and associated documentation. Go here and download all of the local files and host them in as many locations as you can. If possible mirror the actual page rather than downloading. Just get them in as many public locations as possible any way you can. Lets make 'em play whack-a-mole.
Remember, one ant won't make a bit of difference, nor will two or three, but millions can overcome any obstacle.
Another issue I am reminded of here is that this is a great experiment by the powers that be. It has long been held that you cannot regulate the internet because it is so distributed and decentralized. If they win, it will be proven that it is easier to control the content of the internet than was previously thought...
Good Luck!
-Chuck
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Douglas R. Winslow
Is everyone evil?
--Alain
Item 29 points out that slashdot linked to a site that had the DeCSS, and notes other sites that linked to sites with DeCSS. Is this a threat?
Oh, and get item 32. They're saying that because of DeCSS, the whole DVD industry is going to dry up. What a horrible joke.
Let them try to call a few hundred thousand people into court... I'd like to see that. =)
I cannot be in Santa Clara on that day, but if there are as many activists within reach of this article as one is led to believe, and if they believe so fully in their views, go be heard in the courtroom venue.
If I read on Dec. 29th that the hearing came and went without a standing-room-only courtroom, with all sides of the issue having been clearly heard, I will stop caring about the intellectual property debate.
It's not as if the article was "they applied for AND RECEIVED a restraining order." There is still an opportunity to influence the court. If nothing else, a judge could be made to realize that this matter is not something that should be decided off the cuff, but rather has very significant implications. Simply having a few thousand people on the courthouse steps that day would probably be enough to effect change.
Do I think it will happen? No. Will I be there? No. When the rubber meets the road on these issues, the bottom line is we really don't care. We Email our congress people, but do we snail mail them? Are these issues even worth $.33 to us? Maybe not. History will tell.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
47. On information and belief, this proprietary information was obtained by willfully "hacking" and/or improperly reverse engineering
software created by CSS licensee Xing Technology Corporation ("Xing"). Xing's software is and was licensed to users under a license agreement which
specifically prohibits reverse engineering.
-- The intelligence on this planet is a constant, but the population is growing. --
The main reason this code (DeCCS) is important is it helps for writing DVD software for linux. And to the person who said blame the people who wrote the standards for allowing it to be cracked, as long as there are software players for any standard it will be crackable, without a doubt. For more information see http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-9911.html#D VDEncryptionBroken , on why you will never have secure software.
Trying to get something off the Internet is like trying to get pee out of a swimming pool. Once it's in there, it's in there. The fact that they're trying to proves that they're not evil like I've come to believe, but merely idiots. They think any form of copy is illegal, the only purpose of decrypting a DVD is piracy, and that we apparantly shouldn't be allowed to watch DVD's in the operating system of our choice. (An obvious infringment of fair use)
Will someone ever come along with the money/time to take on these morons? Or will be doomed to be bullied by them? I'm really getting sick of hearing how they're taking away my rights.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Oh so it's okay to create XXX that will cause widespread piracy?
Better ban the photocopier then... those damn copies of books are overflowing my bookcases I tell you...
Those damn pirates! They hijacked my ship, pillaged my treasure, and raped the women! Someone must make a restraining order against them!
cvs -d
That's the command to download from the anonymous CVS repository.
Now of course, the code is out, this is just the mechanical yapping of lawyers. What would really make sense is for these industry organizations to come forth and admit that there's no holding DVD back, and open up the doors. They could release open source DVD code and their sales would rise slightly (as opposed to the doom that they predict). How can I know this? Bacause the pirates already have the code so we know pirating will not be increased.
And the DVD organizations would not slack off on prosecuting pirates just because there's an open source reader. Do book companies fail to sell because I could photo-copy the book and sell it? Of course not (books fail to sell because no one reads, but that's a separate issue).
Will they ever learn?
You have missed the whole point. This has nothing to do with piracy. The whole purpose of the DeCSS code is to give people a way to play the DVDs that they've bought. If you want the technology to prosper, then you should support peoples' right to read and play their DVDs.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
DeCSS can be used to -copy- a DVD. Not all copying is piracy. DVDs can get scratched pretty easily, but if you have a "color corrector box" you can record you DVD onto a high-quality VHS tape, and watch that until it wears out, keeping your DVDs safely in a safe deposit box or something. They're acting as if there's no legitimate reason to even copy a DVD, let alone that DeCSS has applications other than copying them.
Yes, exactly. You have hit the nail on the head. It explicitly falls under fair use to reverse engineer/modify software for the purpose of making it work with your system. This was decided years ago in some of the early computer software copyright lawsuits.
Yes, of course they/we/whomever has an understanding of the real world.
In the real world, there's this new type of media called DVD, and this format in which it is stored, called CSS. CSS is an encryption format; it's not proprietary, really, as they (the creators) have published papers explaining how it works. What they haven't published, however, are the list of keys that can be used with CSS to decrypt DVD movies.
It is a perfectly feasible option to buy a product which will decrypt DVD movies (so they can be played) without having to know any of the keys.
Such products come in two forms: (a) hardware, or actual physical VCR-like devices that connect to a TV, and (b) software, which decodes the DVD format with the aid of a computer.
Although both schemes require a key to operate, the key is embedded - the end user does not need to know what the key is in order to use the product.
This would work well for any standardized environment; from the hardware point of view, as long as you had a standard 60-hz NTSC television, you could use a NTSC DVD decoder; if you had a 50-hz PAL television, like in Europe, you could use a PAL DVD decoder. Here, there are only two major standards that companies need to produce products for.
In the software world, things are much more complicated. Not only are there different standards for how a software product talks to the operating system, but there are different graphical standards, different standards for talking to the DVD drive, etc.
Software companies so far have fulfilled very few niches in terms of all the standards in use. This means that there is still a demand that is unfulfilled, and in the _real world_, demand and supply go together hand-in-hand.
In other words, in the "real world", by not providing enough supply to make everybody happy, you invite competing products.
The only illegal thing done here is to have reverse-engineered a poorly-written software decoder to extract a key. However, it would also have been possible to brute-force test keys until one was found, although it would have taken a while.
So, here (as I see it) are all the things going on here:
In the case of the company with the poorly-written software, negligence.
In the case of the program crackers, reverse engineering. (but is it really illegal to know what the processor knows? I mean, you *own* the damn processor after all!)
Just my $0.02.
--TheOrangeSquid
The fellow sat down at a bar, ordered a drink and asked the bartender if he
wanted to hear a dumb-jock joke.
"Hey, buddy," the bartender replied, "you see those two guys next to
you? They used to be with the Chicago Bears. The two dudes behind you made
the U.S. Olympic wrestling team. And for you information, I used to play
center at Notre Dame."
"Forget it," the customer said. "I don't want to explain it five
times."
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I don't *think* so, it should now be public domain, but I by no means understand the nonsense known as law.
But my bet is that regardless of whether or not it is, these 70-odd people pissed off many very large companies that have vested interestes and lots of money. So they'll be browbeaten into submission. True, they won't have thugs marching up to their door to beat them up like the unionizers had 100 years ago, but is it really all that different to have 100 lawyers march up to your door and give lawsuits, restraining orders, police raids, and such?
Look at eToy/eToys, www.veronica.org, Scientology, or the DVD consortium 2 months ago.
Since my thoughts are shallow today, would someone else wonder about the historical precident of this. Is this deeply similar to the labor leaders from 100 years ago who risked being beaten up, sometimes even killed, for fighting corporations?
I await replies.
"because there was no
DVD support for *n?x operating systems"
When I mentioned that, I got flamed by people saying that there was in fact DVD support for Linux. What I have yet to see, however, is "enough" DVD support to justify it being a bullet point for what's supported by the OS. At best,
playing a DVD on linux seems to require:
1. Willingness to take a risk in a hardware purchase, for equipment that may not be usable on your OS.
2. Technical savvy enough to run a very experimental system (far beyond the usual requirement for the OS).
3. Willingness to be considered part of a criminal conspiracy by the DVD industry (if this court order goes through and follows to its logical conclusion).
That makes Linux a laughable alternative to Windows9x for the application of playing DVD.
Unless you can give me a cookbook solution (what DVD drive to buy, what software to run it on, works with all titles, totally legal to obtain and use in the USA), don't you dare flame me for saying this. Linux remains an unacceptable solution for the DVD player application.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The breaking of CSS encryption has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. Think about it for a second: how feasible is it to move around 5- and 6- gigabyte DVDs? How do you store them? Not on your hard drive, that's for sure! How many people do you think can afford a DVD burner capable creating true dual-layer DVDs (and not DVD-RAM discs, which are something completetly different?) And when DVDs can be bought online by a judicious shopper for as little as $5 per title, do you really think anyone's going to go out of his way to pirate them? It's far easier to hook a VCR to the video output of your DVD decoder card and videotape the damned things! The loss of quality is far less than if one were to recompress an MPEG2 stream using a lossier but higher-compression encoding.
No, the issue at hand here is that of free access to information--an issue that has traditionally been very important to the open-source community and very unimportant to the corporations that write your software and, to an increasing degree, control your life.
You see, when the DVD manufacturers came up with CSS, their goal was not to protect the intellectual property contained on DVDs; rather, they were establishing an ironclad grip on the entire DVD market. They control who gets to view DVDs, how, and with what hardware and software. They have accomplished this end through the use of a proprietary encryption scheme (CSS) about which they have released no information. Of course, if they'd bothered to consult with any security professional, they would have been told that security through obscurity simply doesn't work, as has been proven endlessly, usually at the expensive of the implementor of said obscure security.
Now, someone has broken their cute little encryption scheme, which they never patented and never published. In what is basically a panic response, they are wasting millions of dollars and contemplating turning the entire DVD market on its side just so they can maintain total control of the market.
As if this wasn't bad enough, they are threatening legal action against the people who cracked CSS, an activity that never was and still isn't illegal, and they are trying to block them from publishing anything else they find out about the non-patented CSS encryption algorithm. This is a violation of the CSS crackers' right to free speech which, if you'll recall, if a constitutional right.
This is an old story, of course. Those of you who have been around long enough can remember countless other occasions where some company's naive encryption scheme was broken and the corporate response was to attempt a legal assassination of the cracker in order to maintain security.
So, instead of whining irrelevantly about piracy, why don't you boycott DVDs yourself in order to protest the violation of someone's first amendement rights? Somebody might someday do the same thing for you when you find yourself against the wall.
The whole situation reminds me of how companies see emulation. Reverse engineering to the point that you no longer need to use genuine hardware. While this is not piracy, it's seen as a promotor of it.
While I feel this should be legal, if someone could explain just why this should be and lock-picking isn't. its still illegal if you reverse engineer how to make a key that fits, right?
Lycestra
Print the CSS algorithm pseudo-code, and css-auth's code on a series of t-shirts. It's HOPEFULLY covered under the 1st Amendment here in the not so good USA. Anybody willing to do this? Thinkgeek? Copyleft? Anybody with a silk screen...
(apologies for the length of post)
/ index.htm e x.htmlgeocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Cam pus/8877/index.html o m/myband/decss/top.html . htmlfortunecity.com/tinpan/tylerbridge/6 79/dvdcss.html c iphers/decss.tar.gze amciphers/decss.tar.gzp hers/decss.tar.gzi phers/decss.tar.gzp hers/decss.tar.gzp hers/decss.tar.gz. zip m
1. www.free-dvd.org.lu
2.josefine.ben.tuwien.ac.at/~david/dvd
3.rockme.virtualave.net/
4.amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0444t2v
5.www.homestead.com/_ksi0701961562917005/avoid...
6.www.anglefire.com/jazz/avoiderman/
7.www.intelcities.com/Main_Street/Avoiderman/
8.www.members.theglobe.com/avoiderman/dvd.htm
9.members.zoom.com/_XMCM/lkjhgfdsa2/index.html
10.www.vexed.net/CSS/
11.www.unitycode.org/
12.batman.jytol.fi/~vuori/dvd/
13.www.zpok.demon.co.uk/
14.www.dvdlinks.co.uk/css/
15.www.twistedlogic.com/archive/dvd
16.www.capital.net/~wooly/
17.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Campus/8877/ind
18.www.angelfire.com/mt/popefelix/
19.members.tripod.lycos.nl/jvz/
20.tv.acmecity.com/parody/356/index.html
21.cryptome.org/dvd-free.htm
22.altern.org/bettina/0a0a.html
23.www.crosswinds.net/~valo/DeCSS/
24.info.astercity.net/~nicodem/
25.134.100.185.221/decss/
26.www.dvdripper.videopage.de/
27.Crypto.gq.nu
28.www.humpin.org/decss
29.209.132.25.138/~inkk/DVD/
30.members.brabant.chello.nl/~j.vreeken/main.html
31.dirtass.beyatch.net/
32.therapy.endorphin.org/DVD/
33.www.angelfire.com/in2/mirror/
34.sent.freeserve.co.uk/DeCSS
35.members.tripod.co.uk/bap/css/css.html
36.angelfire.com/myband/decss/top.htmlangelfire.c
37.www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/tylerbridge/679/dvd
38.munitions.vipul.net/software/algorithms/stream
39.munitions.polkaroo.net/software/algorithms/str
40.munitions.dyn.org/software/algorithms/streamci
41.munitions.cifs.org/software/algorithms/streamc
42.uk1.munitions.net/software/algorithms/streamci
43.munitions.firenze.linux.it/algorithms/streamci
44.perso.libertysurf.fr/ortal98/dvd_rip/decss_12b
45.users.drak.net/bemann/software/css/
46.www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Port/3224/
47.ftp://alma.dhs.org/pub/DVD/
48.decss.tripod.com/index.html
49.discordia.de/decss/DeCss.zip
50.www.dvd-copy.com/
51.dvdtidbits.com/dvd.shtml
52.www.neophile.net/
53.perso.club-internet.fr/ches/dl/rippers/
54.plato.nebulanet.net:88/css/
55.quintessenzs.at/q/mirrors.html
56.www.ceraton.com/decss/
57.slashdot.org/articles/99/11/09/1342207.shtml
58.cryptome.org/dvd-css.htm
59.ftp://dvd:dvd@206.98.63.136/
60.www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=547600297
61.www.brakton.freeservers.com/#downloads
62.www.remco.xgov.net/dvd/
63.www.dvdcracked.tvheaven.com/index.html
64.dvdsite.homepage.com/
65.www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Derby/2659
66.get.to/dvdsite
67.home.worldonline.dk/~andersa/download/index.ht
68.www.ooze.org/dvd.html
69.start.at/dvdsoft
70.mmadb.no/hwplus/DeCSS/decss.html
71.home.sol.no/~espen-b/dvd/css/decss.html
72.o2.uio.no/dvd
_________________________
Was I not the only one to notice that the email gave a list of 30-odd URL's with CSS stuff? Lets everybody with a good connection start mirroring all the sites they convienently indexed and cataloged for us! :)
:)
Your one stop shop for CSS information: Their court filing.
Several people have already taken on some aspects of this issue. The EFF indicated interest. Hopefully they will have the guts to follow up that interest with action. 2600 magazine are also mirroring all the DVD material and waiting for first amendmant fireworks.
But then the USA is the country that grew copyright laws 20 years because nice Disney asked and one that allowed home video taping by a single vote in the supreme court... thats how close it came to being the only place you couldnt do home taping....
Alan
apparently the lawyers aren't bright enough to figure out who runs /.
/. article, so it's either Hemos or Rob... or maybe the legal guns of Andover.net are going to have to be brought to bear on this one.
Doe 57 is listed as whoever is responsible for this
So, nothing that can be used for a bad purpose should be done at all for any purpose? There goes nearly everything including fire, the wheel, and spears.
CmdrTaco
Hemos
Andover
John
DVD Consortium sux
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Yeah, I recieved one of those lovely letters also... you can read it here. Contrary to what was written in the email, it's perfectly legal to distribute the notice.
I promptly called my lawyer (actually a close friend) after recieving the email and he said I have nothing to worry about. Firstly, such a notice must be mailed to me, not emailed. And even by post is not legally binding. Secondly, if they do get their little restraining order, it must be delivered to me in person... hehe, I'm in germany right now. Based on what I told him he said (gasp) that they're just trying scare tactics. I forwarded the email to him, he will review it and give me more advice tomorrow morning.
This sure is a fun, isn't it?
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
We've heard a lot about CSS, its being cracked, and various vult^h^h^h^hlawyers getting involved. DVD is turing out to be a real mess. So, at the risk of getting sued for talking about another way in which DVD is screwed, here goes...
I got a DVD player for Christmas today. It's the regular console-type thing with composite, digital audio and s-video outputs. I have a somewhat older 27" TV that takes only RF input. So, I hooked the DVD player to my VCR, which takes composite in and emits RF out. Problem solved, I thought... but no. The video goes through a cycle of great->flickery color->crap in color->crap in monochrome->great, repeat. Funny enough, in the troubleshooting section of the manual, under "I can't record DVD video to VHS tape," it pretty much says, "that's right." It seems that they have screwed around with the hsync signal coming out of the box, such that any intermediate device, like a VCR, degrades the video. Short of buying a new TV with s-video or composite inputs, or a timebase corrector (which would probably cost more than a new TV), what can I do? This seems to be a common problem with DVD players. I've got a perfectly legal TV, perfectly legal HiFi VCR, perfectly legal DVD player, and a perfectly legal copy of the Matrix ("DVD killer app"), which I can't use together because of a very stupid, artificial problem. Little help here?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
How can some of the people named in the suite answer the call to court if they aren't even in the State of California? I hope someone in California can show up and represent their interested....
The hearing will be at 'the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, State of California, on December 29, 1999, at 8:30 a.m.'
It is impossible for the hearing to go ahead with fair consideration and representation on this date, on account of all the defendents being fully occupied getting ready to prevent the collapse of western civilization through the millennium bug. And no geeks ever get up before midday anyway.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I was reading through the manual to one of loki's games, and in the end, the authors asked for people to boycott copy-protected software. Their argument was that people had a fixed budget to spend on software, and if no one else was doing copy protection, then the users would pay for the software they liked the best. However if stuff was copy protected, the copy protected stuff would get paid for first.
However one key point is from this is even without copy protection, a good chunk of the population still pays for the digital media that they like.
I suspect that most people would willingly cooperate with a company that shows that it respects and trusts its customers far more than a company who forces everyone to conform through heavy handed power trips.
I guess these corporate types haven't read "The evolution of cooperation" by Robert Axelrod which does a good job of proving that (as long as there's a good chance of a future interaction) the best strategy is to respond in the way that they treated you. On the whole people do tend to respond in the way they're treated... so as the megacorporations continue to try and amass power and exploit the population, eventually the people will get fed up and react. (Think seattle and the WTO)
The only remaining question is how long untill we've been stepped on long enough that we finally act?
So why don't we patent it? After all, it is possible to get a patent on a procedure, such as windowing, that has been in existance long before you claim to have invented it.
Since we are not suppossed to know how this is done we can claim that there is no legitmate way we could have found this as an example of prior art.
Then, one we have the patent we can sue them!
I love America.
No Zen is good zen
I'm sure we could make a legal argument to a jury that this big corporation is out to screw over the little guy and that the only way to keep this from happening more and more often would be to award substantial damages (Say, $500 Million or more) for the misuse of the legal system.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Taken from The Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science:
Seems to me (and I'm NOT a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV) that the programmers were completely within their rights here. What really jumps out at this letter at me is that NOWHERE do they reference an actual patent number that I could look up. If they did, I'd be able to pick it apart a bit more; I can only assume that they intentionally left this out of the document because they're hoping a judge isn't smart enough to ask for it. I would think that if the patent helps their cause, they'd certainly quote it or reference it. My understanding of their letter is that they have their panties in a knot over illegal copying and distribution. The fact is, none of these defendants has been accused of either copying or distributing DVD movies. To quote the letter again:
Two things about this scare the living hell out of me. First, this business about "the DeCSS program allows users to illegally pirate the copyrighted motion pictures contained on DVD videos": Sure, it makes such things possible. At the same time, one can mix fertilizer, black powder and some other goodies together such that one could blow a building to hell. A camera makes it possible for one to observe you in the shower. A photocopy machine makes it possible for one to distribute damn near any document. But nobody's sueing Miracle Grow. Nobody's sueing Kodak. Nobody's sueing Xerox. See, the fact that Product X enables one to achieve a nasty objective DOES NOT make Company X liable. This has been established time and time again in the court system. And it holds, so long as Product X's primary purpose is NOT to assist in achieving the nasty objective. The software in question IS NOT written to aid in copying DVDs. It's NOT written to aid distributing illegal copys. It's primary objective was to make DVD's playable on Linux. Quite legal, if ya ask me.
Now, the second thing that really worries me here is that they're going after people who were NOT distributing the software. There are sites on that list who just LINK to the software, or a site that distributes it. Hasn't at least one prior ruling already said that this is a legal activity? If it's not, God help Google, and any other search engine out there. Or anyone who links to anyone who links to the software. And so on.
I'm also completely unsure if this program is anywhere near the stuff used by the licensed friends of the DVD CCA. If they're totally different, and don't make use of the same proprietary algorithms, etc, the case has just grown exponentially weaker. Me thinks that if these guys get shot down, someone oughta rewrite the program such that it doesn't use anything from Xing except the key - and whoops, that can be brute forced in a matter of weeks once a non-proprietary algorithm implementation is in place (see distributed.net efforts w/weak encryption cracking).
Anyways, I highly encourage these defendants to pull together and find a decent defense attorney (anyone out there who is one, and reads slashdot...?), and make sure that DVD CCA doesn't force them to bend over and take this...
--
--
Just lurking, thanks!
which they either obtained by improper means or knew or should have known was obtained by others by improper means
I'm definitely not a lawyer, but the above quote from the letter is very likely the key to their case. Even those IP cases are now pretty much wars of attrition, where whoever can afford to keep fighting wins, Trade Secrets aren't protected unless you can show that they were obtained from the original company. If I independently discover a method of, e.g., organizing a database, another company can't force me to stop using it unless they can show that I got the idea from them. (Well, unless they patent it).
--Kevin
If need be I will upload as well, so tell them to take my name down as well.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Is this going to affect all implementations of MPEG2 and VOB file formats? Are MPEG2 and VOB decoders forever going to be the sole territory of private corporations? "any proprietary property or trade secrets relating to the CSS technology" is pretty vague.
I posted the css-auth source - sorry. I suppose they better update their list :) css-auth.h ---------- typedef unsigned char byte; struct block { byte b[5]; }; extern void CryptKey1(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key); extern void CryptKey2(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key); extern void CryptBusKey(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key); css-auth.c ---------- /* * Copyright (C) 1999 Derek Fawcus * * This code may be used under the terms of Version 2 of the GPL, * read the file COPYING for details. * */ /* * These routines do some reordering of the supplied data before * calling engine() to do the main work. * * The reordering seems similar to that done by the initial stages of * the DES algorithm, in that it looks like it's just been done to * try and make software decoding slower. I'm not sure that it * actually adds anything to the security. * * The nature of the shuffling is that the bits of the supplied * parameter 'varient' are reorganised (and some inverted), and * the bytes of the parameter 'challenge' are reorganised. * * The reorganisation in each routine is different, and the first * (CryptKey1) does not bother of play with the 'varient' parameter. * * Since this code is only run once per disk change, I've made the * code table driven in order to improve readability. * * Since these routines are so similar to each other, one could even * abstract them all to one routine supplied a parameter determining * the nature of the reordering it has to do. */ #include "css-auth.h" typedef unsigned long u32; static void engine(int varient, byte const *input, struct block *output); void CryptKey1(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key) { static byte perm_challenge[] = {1,3,0,7,5, 2,9,6,4,8}; byte scratch[10]; int i; for (i = 9; i >= 0; --i) scratch[i] = challenge[perm_challenge[i]]; engine(varient, scratch, key); } /* This shuffles the bits in varient to make perm_varient such that * 4 -> !3 * 3 -> 4 * varient bits: 2 -> 0 perm_varient bits * 1 -> 2 * 0 -> !1 */ void CryptKey2(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key) { static byte perm_challenge[] = {6,1,9,3,8, 5,7,4,0,2}; static byte perm_varient[] = { 0x0a, 0x08, 0x0e, 0x0c, 0x0b, 0x09, 0x0f, 0x0d, 0x1a, 0x18, 0x1e, 0x1c, 0x1b, 0x19, 0x1f, 0x1d, 0x02, 0x00, 0x06, 0x04, 0x03, 0x01, 0x07, 0x05, 0x12, 0x10, 0x16, 0x14, 0x13, 0x11, 0x17, 0x15}; byte scratch[10]; int i; for (i = 9; i >= 0; --i) scratch[i] = challenge[perm_challenge[i]]; engine(perm_varient[varient], scratch, key); } /* This shuffles the bits in varient to make perm_varient such that * 4 -> 0 * 3 -> !1 * varient bits: 2 -> !4 perm_varient bits * 1 -> 2 * 0 -> 3 */ void CryptBusKey(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key) { static byte perm_challenge[] = {4,0,3,5,7, 2,8,6,1,9}; static byte perm_varient[] = { 0x12, 0x1a, 0x16, 0x1e, 0x02, 0x0a, 0x06, 0x0e, 0x10, 0x18, 0x14, 0x1c, 0x00, 0x08, 0x04, 0x0c, 0x13, 0x1b, 0x17, 0x1f, 0x03, 0x0b, 0x07, 0x0f, 0x11, 0x19, 0x15, 0x1d, 0x01, 0x09, 0x05, 0x0d}; byte scratch[10]; int i; for (i = 9; i >= 0; --i) scratch[i] = challenge[perm_challenge[i]]; engine(perm_varient[varient], scratch, key); } /* * We use two LFSR's (seeded from some of the input data bytes) to * generate two streams of pseudo-random bits. These two bit streams * are then combined by simply adding with carry to generate a final * sequence of pseudo-random bits which is stored in the buffer that * 'output' points to the end of - len is the size of this buffer. * * The first LFSR is of degree 25, and has a polynomial of: * x^13 + x^5 + x^4 + x^1 + 1 * * The second LSFR is of degree 17, and has a (primitive) polynomial of: * x^15 + x^1 + 1 * * I don't know if these polynomials are primitive modulo 2, and thus * represent maximal-period LFSR's. * * * Note that we take the output of each LFSR from the new shifted in * bit, not the old shifted out bit. Thus for ease of use the LFSR's * are implemented in bit reversed order. * */ static void generate_bits(byte *output, int len, struct block const *s) { u32 lfsr0, lfsr1; byte carry; /* In order to ensure that the LFSR works we need to ensure that the * initial values are non-zero. Thus when we initialise them from * the seed, we ensure that a bit is set. */ lfsr0 = (s->b[0] b[1] b[2] & ~7) b[2] & 7); lfsr1 = (s->b[3] b[4]; ++output; carry = 0; do { int bit; byte val; for (bit = 0, val = 0; bit > 24) ^ (lfsr0 >> 21) ^ (lfsr0 >> 20) ^ (lfsr0 >> 12)) & 1; lfsr0 = (lfsr0 > 16) ^ (lfsr1 >> 2)) & 1; lfsr1 = (lfsr1 > 1) & 1) combined = !o_lfsr1 + carry + !o_lfsr0; carry = BIT1(combined); val |= BIT0(combined) 0); } static byte Secret[]; static byte Varients[]; static byte Table0[]; static byte Table1[]; static byte Table2[]; static byte Table3[]; /* * This encryption engine implements one of 32 variations * one the same theme depending upon the choice in the * varient parameter (0 - 31). * * The algorithm itself manipulates a 40 bit input into * a 40 bit output. * The parameter 'input' is 80 bits. It consists of * the 40 bit input value that is to be encrypted followed * by a 40 bit seed value for the pseudo random number * generators. */ static void engine(int varient, byte const *input, struct block *output) { byte cse, term, index; struct block temp1; struct block temp2; byte bits[30]; int i; /* Feed the secret into the input values such that * we alter the seed to the LFSR's used above, then * generate the bits to play with. */ for (i = 5; --i >= 0; ) temp1.b[i] = input[5 + i] ^ Secret[i] ^ Table2[i]; generate_bits(&bits[29], sizeof bits, &temp1); /* This term is used throughout the following to * select one of 32 different variations on the * algorithm. */ cse = Varients[varient] ^ Table2[varient]; /* Now the actual blocks doing the encryption. Each * of these works on 40 bits at a time and are quite * similar. */ for (i = 5, term = 0; --i >= 0; term = input[i]) { index = bits[25 + i] ^ input[i]; index = Table1[index] ^ ~Table2[index] ^ cse; temp1.b[i] = Table2[index] ^ Table3[index] ^ term; } temp1.b[4] ^= temp1.b[0]; for (i = 5, term = 0; --i >= 0; term = temp1.b[i]) { index = bits[20 + i] ^ temp1.b[i]; index = Table1[index] ^ ~Table2[index] ^ cse; temp2.b[i] = Table2[index] ^ Table3[index] ^ term; } temp2.b[4] ^= temp2.b[0]; for (i = 5, term = 0; --i >= 0; term = temp2.b[i]) { index = bits[15 + i] ^ temp2.b[i]; index = Table1[index] ^ ~Table2[index] ^ cse; index = Table2[index] ^ Table3[index] ^ term; temp1.b[i] = Table0[index] ^ Table2[index]; } temp1.b[4] ^= temp1.b[0]; for (i = 5, term = 0; --i >= 0; term = temp1.b[i]) { index = bits[10 + i] ^ temp1.b[i]; index = Table1[index] ^ ~Table2[index] ^ cse; index = Table2[index] ^ Table3[index] ^ term; temp2.b[i] = Table0[index] ^ Table2[index]; } temp2.b[4] ^= temp2.b[0]; for (i = 5, term = 0; --i >= 0; term = temp2.b[i]) { index = bits[5 + i] ^ temp2.b[i]; index = Table1[index] ^ ~Table2[index] ^ cse; temp1.b[i] = Table2[index] ^ Table3[index] ^ term; } temp1.b[4] ^= temp1.b[0]; for (i = 5, term = 0; --i >= 0; term = temp1.b[i]) { index = bits[i] ^ temp1.b[i]; index = Table1[index] ^ ~Table2[index] ^ cse; output->b[i] = Table2[index] ^ Table3[index] ^ term; } } static byte Varients[] = { 0xB7, 0x74, 0x85, 0xD0, 0xCC, 0xDB, 0xCA, 0x73, 0x03, 0xFE, 0x31, 0x03, 0x52, 0xE0, 0xB7, 0x42, 0x63, 0x16, 0xF2, 0x2A, 0x79, 0x52, 0xFF, 0x1B, 0x7A, 0x11, 0xCA, 0x1A, 0x9B, 0x40, 0xAD, 0x01}; static byte Secret[] = {0x55, 0xD6, 0xC4, 0xC5, 0x28}; static byte Table0[] = { 0xB7, 0xF4, 0x82, 0x57, 0xDA, 0x4D, 0xDB, 0xE2, 0x2F, 0x52, 0x1A, 0xA8, 0x68, 0x5A, 0x8A, 0xFF, 0xFB, 0x0E, 0x6D, 0x35, 0xF7, 0x5C, 0x76, 0x12, 0xCE, 0x25, 0x79, 0x29, 0x39, 0x62, 0x08, 0x24, 0xA5, 0x85, 0x7B, 0x56, 0x01, 0x23, 0x68, 0xCF, 0x0A, 0xE2, 0x5A, 0xED, 0x3D, 0x59, 0xB0, 0xA9, 0xB0, 0x2C, 0xF2, 0xB8, 0xEF, 0x32, 0xA9, 0x40, 0x80, 0x71, 0xAF, 0x1E, 0xDE, 0x8F, 0x58, 0x88, 0xB8, 0x3A, 0xD0, 0xFC, 0xC4, 0x1E, 0xB5, 0xA0, 0xBB, 0x3B, 0x0F, 0x01, 0x7E, 0x1F, 0x9F, 0xD9, 0xAA, 0xB8, 0x3D, 0x9D, 0x74, 0x1E, 0x25, 0xDB, 0x37, 0x56, 0x8F, 0x16, 0xBA, 0x49, 0x2B, 0xAC, 0xD0, 0xBD, 0x95, 0x20, 0xBE, 0x7A, 0x28, 0xD0, 0x51, 0x64, 0x63, 0x1C, 0x7F, 0x66, 0x10, 0xBB, 0xC4, 0x56, 0x1A, 0x04, 0x6E, 0x0A, 0xEC, 0x9C, 0xD6, 0xE8, 0x9A, 0x7A, 0xCF, 0x8C, 0xDB, 0xB1, 0xEF, 0x71, 0xDE, 0x31, 0xFF, 0x54, 0x3E, 0x5E, 0x07, 0x69, 0x96, 0xB0, 0xCF, 0xDD, 0x9E, 0x47, 0xC7, 0x96, 0x8F, 0xE4, 0x2B, 0x59, 0xC6, 0xEE, 0xB9, 0x86, 0x9A, 0x64, 0x84, 0x72, 0xE2, 0x5B, 0xA2, 0x96, 0x58, 0x99, 0x50, 0x03, 0xF5, 0x38, 0x4D, 0x02, 0x7D, 0xE7, 0x7D, 0x75, 0xA7, 0xB8, 0x67, 0x87, 0x84, 0x3F, 0x1D, 0x11, 0xE5, 0xFC, 0x1E, 0xD3, 0x83, 0x16, 0xA5, 0x29, 0xF6, 0xC7, 0x15, 0x61, 0x29, 0x1A, 0x43, 0x4F, 0x9B, 0xAF, 0xC5, 0x87, 0x34, 0x6C, 0x0F, 0x3B, 0xA8, 0x1D, 0x45, 0x58, 0x25, 0xDC, 0xA8, 0xA3, 0x3B, 0xD1, 0x79, 0x1B, 0x48, 0xF2, 0xE9, 0x93, 0x1F, 0xFC, 0xDB, 0x2A, 0x90, 0xA9, 0x8A, 0x3D, 0x39, 0x18, 0xA3, 0x8E, 0x58, 0x6C, 0xE0, 0x12, 0xBB, 0x25, 0xCD, 0x71, 0x22, 0xA2, 0x64, 0xC6, 0xE7, 0xFB, 0xAD, 0x94, 0x77, 0x04, 0x9A, 0x39, 0xCF, 0x7C}; static byte Table1[] = { 0x8C, 0x47, 0xB0, 0xE1, 0xEB, 0xFC, 0xEB, 0x56, 0x10, 0xE5, 0x2C, 0x1A, 0x5D, 0xEF, 0xBE, 0x4F, 0x08, 0x75, 0x97, 0x4B, 0x0E, 0x25, 0x8E, 0x6E, 0x39, 0x5A, 0x87, 0x53, 0xC4, 0x1F, 0xF4, 0x5C, 0x4E, 0xE6, 0x99, 0x30, 0xE0, 0x42, 0x88, 0xAB, 0xE5, 0x85, 0xBC, 0x8F, 0xD8, 0x3C, 0x54, 0xC9, 0x53, 0x47, 0x18, 0xD6, 0x06, 0x5B, 0x41, 0x2C, 0x67, 0x1E, 0x41, 0x74, 0x33, 0xE2, 0xB4, 0xE0, 0x23, 0x29, 0x42, 0xEA, 0x55, 0x0F, 0x25, 0xB4, 0x24, 0x2C, 0x99, 0x13, 0xEB, 0x0A, 0x0B, 0xC9, 0xF9, 0x63, 0x67, 0x43, 0x2D, 0xC7, 0x7D, 0x07, 0x60, 0x89, 0xD1, 0xCC, 0xE7, 0x94, 0x77, 0x74, 0x9B, 0x7E, 0xD7, 0xE6, 0xFF, 0xBB, 0x68, 0x14, 0x1E, 0xA3, 0x25, 0xDE, 0x3A, 0xA3, 0x54, 0x7B, 0x87, 0x9D, 0x50, 0xCA, 0x27, 0xC3, 0xA4, 0x50, 0x91, 0x27, 0xD4, 0xB0, 0x82, 0x41, 0x97, 0x79, 0x94, 0x82, 0xAC, 0xC7, 0x8E, 0xA5, 0x4E, 0xAA, 0x78, 0x9E, 0xE0, 0x42, 0xBA, 0x28, 0xEA, 0xB7, 0x74, 0xAD, 0x35, 0xDA, 0x92, 0x60, 0x7E, 0xD2, 0x0E, 0xB9, 0x24, 0x5E, 0x39, 0x4F, 0x5E, 0x63, 0x09, 0xB5, 0xFA, 0xBF, 0xF1, 0x22, 0x55, 0x1C, 0xE2, 0x25, 0xDB, 0xC5, 0xD8, 0x50, 0x03, 0x98, 0xC4, 0xAC, 0x2E, 0x11, 0xB4, 0x38, 0x4D, 0xD0, 0xB9, 0xFC, 0x2D, 0x3C, 0x08, 0x04, 0x5A, 0xEF, 0xCE, 0x32, 0xFB, 0x4C, 0x92, 0x1E, 0x4B, 0xFB, 0x1A, 0xD0, 0xE2, 0x3E, 0xDA, 0x6E, 0x7C, 0x4D, 0x56, 0xC3, 0x3F, 0x42, 0xB1, 0x3A, 0x23, 0x4D, 0x6E, 0x84, 0x56, 0x68, 0xF4, 0x0E, 0x03, 0x64, 0xD0, 0xA9, 0x92, 0x2F, 0x8B, 0xBC, 0x39, 0x9C, 0xAC, 0x09, 0x5E, 0xEE, 0xE5, 0x97, 0xBF, 0xA5, 0xCE, 0xFA, 0x28, 0x2C, 0x6D, 0x4F, 0xEF, 0x77, 0xAA, 0x1B, 0x79, 0x8E, 0x97, 0xB4, 0xC3, 0xF4}; static byte Table2[] = { 0xB7, 0x75, 0x81, 0xD5, 0xDC, 0xCA, 0xDE, 0x66, 0x23, 0xDF, 0x15, 0x26, 0x62, 0xD1, 0x83, 0x77, 0xE3, 0x97, 0x76, 0xAF, 0xE9, 0xC3, 0x6B, 0x8E, 0xDA, 0xB0, 0x6E, 0xBF, 0x2B, 0xF1, 0x19, 0xB4, 0x95, 0x34, 0x48, 0xE4, 0x37, 0x94, 0x5D, 0x7B, 0x36, 0x5F, 0x65, 0x53, 0x07, 0xE2, 0x89, 0x11, 0x98, 0x85, 0xD9, 0x12, 0xC1, 0x9D, 0x84, 0xEC, 0xA4, 0xD4, 0x88, 0xB8, 0xFC, 0x2C, 0x79, 0x28, 0xD8, 0xDB, 0xB3, 0x1E, 0xA2, 0xF9, 0xD0, 0x44, 0xD7, 0xD6, 0x60, 0xEF, 0x14, 0xF4, 0xF6, 0x31, 0xD2, 0x41, 0x46, 0x67, 0x0A, 0xE1, 0x58, 0x27, 0x43, 0xA3, 0xF8, 0xE0, 0xC8, 0xBA, 0x5A, 0x5C, 0x80, 0x6C, 0xC6, 0xF2, 0xE8, 0xAD, 0x7D, 0x04, 0x0D, 0xB9, 0x3C, 0xC2, 0x25, 0xBD, 0x49, 0x63, 0x8C, 0x9F, 0x51, 0xCE, 0x20, 0xC5, 0xA1, 0x50, 0x92, 0x2D, 0xDD, 0xBC, 0x8D, 0x4F, 0x9A, 0x71, 0x2F, 0x30, 0x1D, 0x73, 0x39, 0x13, 0xFB, 0x1A, 0xCB, 0x24, 0x59, 0xFE, 0x05, 0x96, 0x57, 0x0F, 0x1F, 0xCF, 0x54, 0xBE, 0xF5, 0x06, 0x1B, 0xB2, 0x6D, 0xD3, 0x4D, 0x32, 0x56, 0x21, 0x33, 0x0B, 0x52, 0xE7, 0xAB, 0xEB, 0xA6, 0x74, 0x00, 0x4C, 0xB1, 0x7F, 0x82, 0x99, 0x87, 0x0E, 0x5E, 0xC0, 0x8F, 0xEE, 0x6F, 0x55, 0xF3, 0x7E, 0x08, 0x90, 0xFA, 0xB6, 0x64, 0x70, 0x47, 0x4A, 0x17, 0xA7, 0xB5, 0x40, 0x8A, 0x38, 0xE5, 0x68, 0x3E, 0x8B, 0x69, 0xAA, 0x9B, 0x42, 0xA5, 0x10, 0x01, 0x35, 0xFD, 0x61, 0x9E, 0xE6, 0x16, 0x9C, 0x86, 0xED, 0xCD, 0x2E, 0xFF, 0xC4, 0x5B, 0xA0, 0xAE, 0xCC, 0x4B, 0x3B, 0x03, 0xBB, 0x1C, 0x2A, 0xAC, 0x0C, 0x3F, 0x93, 0xC7, 0x72, 0x7A, 0x09, 0x22, 0x3D, 0x45, 0x78, 0xA9, 0xA8, 0xEA, 0xC9, 0x6A, 0xF7, 0x29, 0x91, 0xF0, 0x02, 0x18, 0x3A, 0x4E, 0x7C}; static byte Table3[] = { 0x73, 0x51, 0x95, 0xE1, 0x12, 0xE4, 0xC0, 0x58, 0xEE, 0xF2, 0x08, 0x1B, 0xA9, 0xFA, 0x98, 0x4C, 0xA7, 0x33, 0xE2, 0x1B, 0xA7, 0x6D, 0xF5, 0x30, 0x97, 0x1D, 0xF3, 0x02, 0x60, 0x5A, 0x82, 0x0F, 0x91, 0xD0, 0x9C, 0x10, 0x39, 0x7A, 0x83, 0x85, 0x3B, 0xB2, 0xB8, 0xAE, 0x0C, 0x09, 0x52, 0xEA, 0x1C, 0xE1, 0x8D, 0x66, 0x4F, 0xF3, 0xDA, 0x92, 0x29, 0xB9, 0xD5, 0xC5, 0x77, 0x47, 0x22, 0x53, 0x14, 0xF7, 0xAF, 0x22, 0x64, 0xDF, 0xC6, 0x72, 0x12, 0xF3, 0x75, 0xDA, 0xD7, 0xD7, 0xE5, 0x02, 0x9E, 0xED, 0xDA, 0xDB, 0x4C, 0x47, 0xCE, 0x91, 0x06, 0x06, 0x6D, 0x55, 0x8B, 0x19, 0xC9, 0xEF, 0x8C, 0x80, 0x1A, 0x0E, 0xEE, 0x4B, 0xAB, 0xF2, 0x08, 0x5C, 0xE9, 0x37, 0x26, 0x5E, 0x9A, 0x90, 0x00, 0xF3, 0x0D, 0xB2, 0xA6, 0xA3, 0xF7, 0x26, 0x17, 0x48, 0x88, 0xC9, 0x0E, 0x2C, 0xC9, 0x02, 0xE7, 0x18, 0x05, 0x4B, 0xF3, 0x39, 0xE1, 0x20, 0x02, 0x0D, 0x40, 0xC7, 0xCA, 0xB9, 0x48, 0x30, 0x57, 0x67, 0xCC, 0x06, 0xBF, 0xAC, 0x81, 0x08, 0x24, 0x7A, 0xD4, 0x8B, 0x19, 0x8E, 0xAC, 0xB4, 0x5A, 0x0F, 0x73, 0x13, 0xAC, 0x9E, 0xDA, 0xB6, 0xB8, 0x96, 0x5B, 0x60, 0x88, 0xE1, 0x81, 0x3F, 0x07, 0x86, 0x37, 0x2D, 0x79, 0x14, 0x52, 0xEA, 0x73, 0xDF, 0x3D, 0x09, 0xC8, 0x25, 0x48, 0xD8, 0x75, 0x60, 0x9A, 0x08, 0x27, 0x4A, 0x2C, 0xB9, 0xA8, 0x8B, 0x8A, 0x73, 0x62, 0x37, 0x16, 0x02, 0xBD, 0xC1, 0x0E, 0x56, 0x54, 0x3E, 0x14, 0x5F, 0x8C, 0x8F, 0x6E, 0x75, 0x1C, 0x07, 0x39, 0x7B, 0x4B, 0xDB, 0xD3, 0x4B, 0x1E, 0xC8, 0x7E, 0xFE, 0x3E, 0x72, 0x16, 0x83, 0x7D, 0xEE, 0xF5, 0xCA, 0xC5, 0x18, 0xF9, 0xD8, 0x68, 0xAB, 0x38, 0x85, 0xA8, 0xF0, 0xA1, 0x73, 0x9F, 0x5D, 0x19, 0x0B, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x33, 0x72, 0x39, 0x25, 0x67, 0x26, 0x6D, 0x71, 0x36, 0x77, 0x3C, 0x20, 0x62, 0x23, 0x68, 0x74, 0xC3, 0x82, 0xC9, 0x15, 0x57, 0x16, 0x5D, 0x81};
The DVD association did not create a Linux client and have no desire to do so. So Linux people set about trying to create a Linux client just like they try to for every other closed-source device out there. Step 1 is to break the encryption so you can read the bloody DVD.
As mentioned by someone else, copying a DVD is not worthwhile at today's storage costs so piracy is hardly an issue (for now).
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Also, I'm guessing they want to collect a token licensing commission for each encoder/decoder. Thus no Linux decoder, as any commission on $0 is zero...
-------------------------
"If you try to own the web, like all things Internet, it will simply route around you."
I have that problem too. It turns out that the X10 DVD-Sender has a coax output, and it uses it beautifuly. I bought mine for the sole purpose of outputting it to an older tv. You also get a nifty RF Remote for controlling your computer from across the house (and freaking out relatives)
.sigs in here
-Tim
.sig: Nobody but us
I suspect the situation is more complicated than that, but IANAL, so I'd appreciate if someone would punch some holes in this particular part of the case.
(It occurs to me as I write this that a violation of Xing's license agreement is Xing's business, not DVD CCA's, so they might not have standing. Is that how it works?)
MSK
here , here, here , here , here
here , here , here , here , here , here (not source, just a readme), here , here , and here , Not to mention the mirror lists here , and here
Now, am I breaking the law by pointing to them? ;)
_________________________
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If /. is already mentioned in the email, then why doesn't it go a step further and also mirror the source code? I'm sure that Andover.net is *much* better equipped to fight a legal battle than these individuals are :-)
/. many people, myself included, wouldn't know what was going on re. this issue at all...)
(Note: this is NOT meant in a negative way. If it wasn't for
Wow. Now where, oh where are all those web pages going to find lawyers. Especially the /. article at #57... Should I worry? I read it, am I an accomplice?
Let's all make like the Navaho code talkers or the Homeric poets and memorize the source code. Come on everyone, grab a hald dozen lines and a sequence number.
Seriously though, what on Earth will these poor lawyers do about all the over-seas defendants?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
As i remember, Download.com had a copy of this software on their website. I wonder why they haven't been added to the list of "Defendants". Kind of makes you wonder what's going on here.
.sig
-Tim
.Sig: Bah, no
There are technological solutions to these attempts at bullying. See http://www.cypherspace.org/~adam/eternit y/, for example.
[
Chris Dibona and myself (and hopefully others!) are planning to meet at the courthouse at 8am. Chris' page for this is at: http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/index.shtml ... Hope to see you there! D
Folks who got the letter might want to take a look at this. It isn't pretty.
Ah yes... Retardovision. THIS IS RETARDED! I have to now go blow $30 to $60 to make this DVD player work with my older -- but otherwise perfectly ok --television!
They should provide a Macrovision neutralizer, or RF converter, with every box, on request. Of course, the RF conversion reduces the quality of the video signal. And people buy DVD for the... better video and sound quality (among other things).
On another note... Best Buy really, actually sells a Macrovision defeater?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Chris DiBOna
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
29. DVD CCA is informed and believes, and based thereon alleges, that each of the Doe defendants 55 through 72 operate Internet web sites, at the below addresses, which provide "links" to other web sites which disseminate confidential proprietary CSS information:
disseminate information.
Interesting words those.
analogus with teaching? free speech?
If I am typing a message and say:
"I heard someone made a linux DVD player"!=disseminating information
but if I say:
"I heard someone made a linux DVD player"==disseminating information
Looks like they're outlawing linking. Someone better call Tim Berners Lee.
_________________________
The relevant software has almost certainly already been released as a shell archive in one of the binary newsgroups on Internet news. This offers an interesting little technicality: currently the list of defendents is biased, unfair and discriminatory by virtue of being incomplete by several dozen million names (all those potentially in possession of the software). Quite apart from such failings, the prosecution is utterly misrepresenting the extent and scope of its case; if the true scope were to become clear, the case would almost certainly collapse instantly.
Furthermore, to present a non-discriminatory action, the real list of applicable defendents would have to be read out in full (that's the procedural step that would make a restraining order apply to the people in question). And if the complete list were to be read out in court, it would take years to do so, so this is going nowhere fast.
How hilarious.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Is there someone in the Bay Area (I don't live there, otherwise I would) who can organize a presence at this hearing?
32. Without the commercial music companies' copyrighted content for music recordings, there would be no viable market for computer CD drives and CD players, as well as the related computer chips and software necessary to run these devices and, thus, there would be no CD music industry.
Gee, if music CDs ever could be copied then the music CD industry would just fall apart. Oh, wait. We're doing that. Companies are even selling consumer CD copiers. Did the music industry fall apart and I didn't notice?
Well, based on what's on MTV right now I guess it did fall apart. :-)
I was around when Gibson released the deliberately-overpriced objet d'art from whence sprang the term "information wants to be free". (And I got my copy of the poem within two days, woo-hoo!)
But speaking of source... Having seen the Gibsonian maxim utterly devastate the Cult of $cientology - an "all balls, no brains" dinosaur which was designed in the 1950s in such a way that it could never have the capacity to adapt to changes in its informational environment, I'm looking forward to seeing it wreak similar havoc on those who wish to shut down distribution of DeCSS.
You see, unlike the Co$, the DVD CCA just might be smart enough to come up with a way around what they perceive as "the problem of free information" that doesn't involve the futile game of whack-a-mole that so characterized the Co$ battle.
Whatever they come up with, I doubt they'll succeed. But how the DVD CCA fails to control the spread of DeCSS could well be as instructional for those of us who study memetics as the failure of the Co$ to control its sekrit skript00res.
(Of course, for sheer entertainment value, nothing could equal watching the Co$ repeatedly bash its head against the non-levitating brick ashtray of the Internet, but hey, I'm trying to learn about information warfare, not just laugh at organizations that Just Don't Get It :-)
- Hemos linked to an
- announcement about Derek Fawcus ending his involvement with DeCSS (itself a dynamically generated, user-content discussion forum)!
In neither place is or ever was DeCSS available. Neither place is or ever was a list of mirrors where DeCSS could be obtained!The second link is another discussion thread where Jon Johansen says that he has taken the source down!
Never mind the issue of copyright... look on the bottom of any Slashdot page:
- "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
- Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-99 Andover.Net."
Slashdot is the only instance I've bothered to look into in depth, but even this one is a gross waste of the court's time and resources. It's harrassment of a community, and I wish we -- as an entire community -- could get up in arms and have a 'DVD refund day.' Like that's going to happen any time soon!(The highlight is obviously mine. I felt it necessary for the short-attention-span lawyers' benefit.)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
This is from: http://www.2600.com/news/1999/1112-files/crypto.gq .nu/ Even if the *can* get all the copies of the sourcecode (not bloody likely) off the net... below is the general crypto system used... Vengence. 0 General disclaimer. This information is provided as is, with no warranties on its accuracy or usability. It is based on a piece of source code claiming to be the css algorithms, and which have since been confirmed to interoperate with the CSS system. The author has not read any official CSS documentation, and any errors in the terminology is a result of this. This information has not to the knowledge of the author been made available through breaches of the DVD consortium Non Disclosure Agreement. 1 System overview. Every DVD player is equipped with a small set of player keys. When presented with a new disc, the player will attempt to decrypt the contents with the set of keys it possesses. Every disk has a disk key data block that is organized as follows: 5 bytes hash of decrypted disk key ( hash ) disk key encrypted with player key 1 (dk1 ) disk key encrypted with player key 2 (dk2 ) ... disk key encrypted with player key 409 (dk409) Suppose the player has a valid key for slot 213, it will calculate (1) Kd = DA( dk213 , Kp213 ) To verify that Kd is correct, the following check is done, if the check fails, it will try the next player key. (2) Kd = DA( hash , Kd ) An obvious weakness stems from this check, by trying all 240 possible Kd, disk key can be deduced without knowing any valid player key. As will be shown later, this attack can be carried out with a complexity of 225, making such an attack feasible in runtime applications. Another obvious attack is that by having 1 working player key, other player keys can be derived through a similar search. This can be done offline, also keys obtained from the former attack can be used as a starting point. To decrypt the contents an additional key tk - the title key is decrypted with the now decrypted and verified disk key. (3) Kt = DB( tk, Kd) Each sector of the data files is the optionally encrypted by a key that is derived from Kt by exclusive or of specified bytes from the unencrypted first 128 bytes of the 2048 bytes sector. The decryption is done with the CSS stream cipher primitive described in section II. 2 CSS streamcipher primitive: The CSS streamcipher is a very simplistic one, based on 2 LFSRs being added together to produce output bytes. There is no truncation, both LFSR are clocked 8 times for every byte output, and there are 4 ways of combining the output of the LFSRs to an output byte. These four modes are just settings on 2 inverter switches, and the modes operation are used for the following purposes. 1.Authentication to DVD drive ( not discussed ) 2.Decryption of Disk key (DA) 3.Decryption of Title key (DB) 4.Decryption of data blocks. LFSR1: 17 bits ? taps, and is initialized by the 2 first bytes of key, and setting the most significant bit to 1 to prevent null cycling. LFSR2: 25 bits 4 taps, is initialized with byte 3,4,5 of the key shifting all but the 3 least significant bits up 1 position, and setting bit 4 to prevent null cycling. As new bits are clocked into the LFSRs, the same bits are clocked in with reversed order to the two LFSRs output bytes. ( With optional inversion of bits. ) The output of LFSR1 is O1(1), O1(2), O1(3) ... Likewise LFSR2 produces O2(1), O2(2), O2(3) ... These two streams are combined through 8 bits addition with carry carried over to the next output. The carry bit is zero at start of stream. (4) O(i) = O1(i) + O2(i) + c where c is carry bit from O(i-1) This streamcipher is very weak, a trivial 216 attack is possible with output bytes known for i = {1,2,3,4,5,6}. Guess the initial state of LFSR1, and clock out 4 bytes. O2(1), O2(2), O2(3), O2(4) can then be uniquely determined, and from them the state at i=4 is fully known. The guess on LFSR1 can then be verified by clocking out 2 or more bytes of the cipher and comparing the result. Another important attack is the case when only O(i) for i = {1,2,3,4,5} is known. Guess the initial state of LFSR1, and clock out 3 bytes. Now O2(1), O2(2) and O2(3) can be found as in the above attack. This will reveal all but the most significant bit of LFSR2s state at i=3. If both possible settings for MSB is tried, and LFSR2 is clocked backwards 24 steps, a state where bit 4 is set at i=1 can always be found. ( This is stated without proof ). Select the setting of the most significant bit for LFSR2 such that LFSR2 is in a legal state at i=1, and clock out two more bytes to verify the guess of LFSR1. For some values of O( i = {1,2,3,4,5} ) multiple start states can be found, and for others none. Selecting the correct start state is not a problem, as this attack is used in situations where only the first five output bytes are of significance ( encryption of keys ). 3 CSS mangling step: When the CSS streamcipher is used to encrypt keys such as in DA(data,key) and DB(data,key), an additional mangling step is performed on the data. This cipher is best illustrated with the following block diagram: A(1,2,3,4,5) are the input bytes (data) C(1,2,3,4,5) are the output bytes (data) ki = O(i) where O(i={1,2,3,4,5}) is streamcipher output from key B(1,2,3,4,5) are temporary stages The cipher is evaluated top down, with exceptions indicated by an arrow.
Whenever I see the term 'reverse-engineering' I think of the talking paperclip, the mdi interface, and are-you-really-really-sure dialog boxes. These misfeatures illustrate real reverse engineering.
RYan
Thanks to previous warnings in this forum, I can say that I have both decss.zip and livid_tar.gs on my home and work systems. Take those two away and they can be found elsewhere as well. I can guarantee that even if my pseudonym is discovered, there will be other copies where "I don't seem to remeber..." would take effect (if Reagan can use that, so can anyone). Multiply this by the thousands and anyone can see the futility of what they are trying to do.
No legal proceedings can ever put the cat back in the bag now that its out.
This is absolutely incorrect. In many countries, including the US, reverse engineering is explicitly protected as legal.
Ever heard of Compaq?
Remember this comment from the holloween document?
I'm not paranoid. I do not think it likely that MS is directly behind the CCS mess as an attack against Open Source projects. On the other hand, I doubt MS is unhappy to see our struggling with DVD.
I would have bought a DVD drive a while ago, but I refuse to let windows touch my hard drive again.
Kubrick's 'Dr. Strangelove' is under 4GB. Don't get pissed at the CCA, fighting this kind of thing is their job, their only job. Rates of increase in average available bandwidth and available storage will make DVD pirating plausible in a few years. Remember back when CDs came out? Who's got room to copy a WHOLE CD? If you can watch it, you can copy it. The best they can hope for is to give you a quality trade off, but don't bet on that lasting long either.
See that "Preview" button?
>>THE FACT THAT INFORMATION IS JUST AN INANIMATE CONCEPT ELUDES ME APPARENTLY
Apparantly that's not all the eludes you.
1. It's always been possible for pirates to do a bit by bit copy of DVD media. However DVD-RW and DVD-RAM media are too expensive to make DVDs worth pirating. A DVD movie sells for $20, DVD-RAM & DVD-RW media is in the neighborhood of $30 (US) and it's a losing proposition to make copies that cost more than the originals.
2. Hydrogen is just as inanimate as information, however it too wants to be free. Have you ever heard of hydrogen "creeping"? If not look it up.
Come on AC, don't disappoint me come back with a "Don't try to confuse me with the facts, I know what I know" arguement.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Ah ha...elsewhere in this massive thread, it looks like Chris DiBona is meeting with others at 8 AM tomorrow. Here's more info.
I'm not aware of any recognition of a "legal notice" being able to be delivered by email. Has anyone verified that this is not a forgery?
It looks like we could make two points at once here if we could win the case. Several people have pointed out the the blowhards case rest on the fact that Xing software was hacked in opposition to the license agreement. Well is that license agreement worth the paper its printed on?
Really, a piece paper with illegibly small print is stuck somewhere between the pages of a manual within a shrinkwrapped box. I pay for a box of software, and thus conclude an agreement. I get software, you get money. I get home and low, you have decided that I also must stand on my head and clap three times. Balderdash. After you have my money, you can't make any more stipulations to the contract.
They claim that the hacker knew or should've known that they were prohibited from reverse engineering Xing's software. The hackers should just say, "Nobody said anything about this restriction before I paid for the software." Case closed.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
There is no obligation on plaintiffs to be "non-discriminatory" in who they sue. It suffices that they sue wrongdoers. If there are more who are left out who owed duties to the sued defendants, they can implead them (defendants turn around and force others in to the case). But if you are part of a gang that beats up Bob, and Bob sues just you, it's no defense to your liability to say that you were part of a gang.
Of course, suing people who are not guilty is a big no-no: "If a claim of misappropriation is made in bad faith, a motion to terminate an injunction is made or resisted in bad faith, or willful and malicious misappropriation exists, the court may award reasonable attorneys' fees to the prevailing party." Cal. Civ.Code 3426.4.
I'm not a California lawyer, and california law has all sorts of strange wrinkles. Plus, the complaint raises a claim for "misappropriation of trade secrets" which sounds like it may have some common law component as wall as a statutory aspect(??). But here, in any case, is an arguably relevant statute, Cal Civil Code sec. 3426.1:
If the above is the law that applies, and if the person who reverse engineered and disclosed had a contractual obligation NOT to, and if the named defendants knew or should have known these facts and if the court has jurisdiction over them, then and only then this statute suggests the judge may grant the injunction.Please don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that outcome, just reporting. I should also note that sec. 3426.2(a) says that injunctions must be lifted if someone demonstrates that the "trade secret has ceased to exist" and that sec. 3426.2(b) says that "If the court determines that it would be unreasonable to prohibit future use, an injunction may condition future use upon payment of a reasonable royalty for no longer than the period of time the use could have been prohibited."
All that aside, an injuction against "linkers" as opposed to posters would seem to me to be outrageous. But there is a little bit of (ugly) precedent floating around....
Final point: while showing up in numbers can't hurt, it would be a lot better if one of the free software groups could get a lawyer down there and attempt to appear either as an intervenor or as a friend of the court. Much more likely to have some effect. Spectators are not allowed to talk in court.
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.
You're right, a good reading of the injunction makes clear that they're not defending the terrible copy protection in the dvd mechanism. However, this has a lot to do with recent changes in the U.S. copyright laws, I recommend that folks read H.R. 2281 - The Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The Library of Congress has an easier to read summary online.
What it really comes down to is that the defendants were informed that they should have removed the offending materials and refused to do so (it's right at the top... of the injunction right beneath the 69K of MS-XML.) They can't touch the guy who wrote DeCSS because he complied upon notification of transgression.
If you haven't yet actually read anything about the DMCA, you'll find the WIPO/Title I sections useful in understanding what they new laws have to say about reverse engineering of the sort used in DeCSS. WIPO is the World Intellectual Property Organization, and Title I is the U.S. Congress ratifying general new international agreements about intellectual property. Read Educause's summary, particularly the section on: "Prohibitions on Circumvention of Technological Protection Measures ."
Pratik Dave .edu sites. Since we're (academic sites == service providers) monetarily culpable if we don't take "prompt" action upon notification, seems like someone at rpi dropped the ball.
ps: Given the specific burden of proof placed upon service providers and their DMCA agents given by the DMCA, I'm especially shocked that some of the defending sites were
This part doesn't take effect for a few months, but see if you don't find it the slightest bit relevant (and frightening):
''(b) ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS.--(1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
''(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;
''(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or
''(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.
60.www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=547600297
They can't be serious.
See http://www.hrrc.org/betamax.html
That covers the entire decision. The rest of the
site has a lot of related material to home recording, although not to fair use of DVD's you bought.
Geeze... slashdot.org/articles/99/11/09/ 1342207.shtml is on the list too...
With all the millions of dollars Redhat and VALinux have received from going public, maybe it would be a good idea if they started to step behind developers in things like this. They have the money. Maybe they could help the people who have the brains, but not the money to help improve things like DVD in Linux? I think it would be a great idea if these companies could help out projects that are being burdened like this.
Please dont ... Slashdot is a great place for bouncing around headlines of 'news for nerds' and for associated discussion (though that part is slowly falling to pieces), but as far as 'reporting' you suck more than Commodore's marketing department.
Anyone one who has even the remotest connection with any conventional news media should be discusted at the stuff that you guys come up with - I would be very supprised if the combined tallents of the slashdot crew could pass an Introduction To Responsible News Gathering and Production.
Please dont even bother trying to pass off as reporters, or as news generators. You have a great medium - the editorial remarks included in your main page will take away from any content you may produce and any illconceeved content you may produce will take away from ligitimate focus of this site.
If you want to hire an /experienced/ reporter to do this kind of stuff please do - but the drivle youve so far demonstrated you produce is crap. There is more to news production that you have yet grasped.
I am the original poster of this story; what I had originally done was to remove those files from my website pending the outcome of the hearing. Due to the mammoth support here, I have put them back and put a notice on the front page of my website informing all visitors of what is going on. I urge you to visit my site at http://www.devzero.org now and get the software while you still can. Like someone said in a previous comment, it's like playing bop-a-mole. They may get me and 70 others, but hundreds more will be distributing by then.
And yes, I am on the East coast, and will not be able to be at the hearing. Anyone and everyone who is within range, GO, please, and make your voice heard.
This is about intellectual freedom, not "copyright infringement" or violation of trade secrets.
You may recall that as part of the treaty implementation, Congress outlawed "circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected [under U.S. Copyright laws]". (This was H.R. 2281, passed at the end of the last Congress, now Public Law 105-304.) Specifically, Congress added Sections 1201-1205 to Title 17 of the U.S. Code (the title generally dealing with copyrights). Section 1201(a)(1)(A) contains the general prohibition quoted above; it won't take effect until next year.
Much of the debate about copyright protection systems, and when it would still be legal to circumvent them, centered on interoperability and encryption research. In fact, there are carve-outs for both activities within Section 1201:
Finally, perhaps some of the lawyers can comment as to the differences between this situation and the "release" of other proprietary crypto algorithms, such as RC4. Wasn't RSADSI (holding the proprietary/trade secret RC4 algorithm) in the same situation when "Alleged-RC4" was posted to the net as DVD CCA finds itself now with CSS?
--bal
I believe that the views expressed on Slashdot deserve more of a voice than the archives of a web site... here is their chance. The following are the articles which I have found on Slashdot which go along this theme:
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
The best way to do this would be to prey upon these lawyers' apparent willingness to name Doe parties who they do not know to positively be actual, descrete, US-law-bound human beings. If one were to set up an autonomous agent which would open free website accounts (a la geocities, angelfire, etc.)and set up download sites featuring the LiVid and DeCSS source code . . . Well, you could certainly tie the lawyers up, trying to hunt down and sue a John Doe which just ends up being a lone perl script running from a free shell account.
Again, food for thought, snacks for synapses.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
This is a REALLY cool idea that deserves more discussion. Show up with a duffle bag full of floppies with the DeCSS source code.
Be prepared for some VERY pissed off lawyers.
Unfortunately, I am nowhere near California. Otherwise, I would be cranking out floppies right now.
You see, when the DVD manufacturers came up with CSS, their goal was not to protect the intellectual property contained on DVDs; rather, they were establishing an ironclad grip on the entire DVD market.
This debate is rightly focused on issues of free speech and openess of hardware specifications, but there is another BIG issue that isn't getting much air time: how the heck did we get into a situation where our mass removable storage systems are being designed by the recording industry and movie industry? What is all that encryption hardware doing in there and why does it make my computer work better? To put this another way, why are we being served up hardware that was designed in the best interests of people who aren't us, and why do we accept that?
This kind of market inversion is the same thing that has forced the spectaular rise of the open source movement. Owners of proprietray, closed source, defacto standard software systems ground us under their foot for so long that we had to react. Now what we need is a similar, open hardware movement. Sure, there are problems that are harder - designing hardware requires expensive equipment. Manufacturing it requires even more expensive equipment. But it's not like it used to be - prices are coming down. Money for open projects is abundant. So please, lets have a high-density ROM disk design that's designed according to our needs, not those of the RIA.
I want it to be a smaller format - 5 1/4 should have gone out with 5 1/4 disks, sucks for laptops and won't fit in your pocket. I want it to have current densities - in other words, even higher than what DVD offers. I want it to be completely free of any hardware that isn't directly connected with making it work better and/or cost less.
Who will design my dream ROM disk for me? Who will bankroll them? Who will manufacture it? How would we make it hit critical mass so laptop manufacturers will use it? (hint: make it cheap)
DVD was a bad idea right from the start and still is. Take out the "V", all I want is the Digigital and Disk
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
31. [...] the motion picture companies insisted on a viable copy protection system
:-) Oh wait, maybe it's the lawyers who form the viable copy protection scheme.
:-) The DVD audio delay smells like a deliberate over-reaction, and one with little economic cost to either the industry or consumers. If the industry is truly worried, they should discontinue new video releases until a (what do they call it? Oh yeah, here are the words) "viable copy protection system" is in place.
Demonstrably false, if they're referring to CSS.
32. Without the motion picture companies' copyrighted content for DVD video, there would be no viable market for computer DVD drives and
DVD players [...]
I'll give them this one. DVD without motion pictures would be like the Internet without Al Gore.
50. Information posted on Defendants' web sites establishes that they are fully aware that, in posting or 'linking' to the DeCSS program, they
are wrongfully appropriating proprietary trade secrets. For example:
[...]
(b) Defendant Baugh acknowledges that 'I may very well be sued'.
(c) Doe defendant 14 challenges: 'I have the money to go to court. Your call[;]'
[...]
(e) similarly, defendant Jones explains 'Listen, lawyers, and those you represent: This is none of your concern. The horse has been let out[;]' mocking the 'trained weasels you call lawyers[;]'
In other words, the following actions are admissions of guilt:
- 50(b) you write that someone may sue you
- 50(c) once sued, you are willing and able to defend yourself
- 50(e) you point out the obvious
54. [...] the 'hack' [...] has already had a very serious adverse effect on consumers [...] in that the introduction of [DVD audio] has been delayed.
Well yes. I had planned to phase out my CD collection by January, and now that won't happen.
On October 11, 1996, President Clinton signed "The Economic Espionage Act of 1996" into law. The theft of trade secrets is now a federal criminal offense. This is a major development in the law of trade secrets in the United States and internationally. The Department of Justice now has sweeping authority to prosecute trade secret theft whether it is in the United States, via the Internet, or outside the United States.
/. could orgranize a protest and some smart people are trying to do so, the date is far too late for anything major to be planned. I only can hope that they lose this case...
Section 1832 of the Act makes it a federal criminal act for any person to convert a trade secret to his own benefit or the benefit of others intending or knowing that the offense will injure any owner of the trade secret. The conversion of a trade secret is defined broadly to cover every conceivable act of trade secret misappropriation including theft, appropriation without authorization, concealment, fraud artifice, deception, copying without authorization, duplication, sketches, drawings, photographs, downloads, uploads, alterations, destruction, photocopies, transmissions, deliveries, mail, communications, or other transfers or conveyances of such trade secrets without authorization.
The Act also makes it a federal criminal offense to receive, buy or possess the trade secret information of another person knowing the same to have been stolen, appropriated, obtained or converted without the trade secret owner's authorization.The definition of a "trade secret" in the Act generally tracks the definition of a trade secret in the Uniform Trade Secrets Act but expands the definition of a trade secret to include the new technological ways that trade secrets are created and stored.
The term "trade secret" means all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and (B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by the public.
I am not a lawyer and have no plans to be one, but reading the above and doing some research seems to me that the DVD makers can screw the defendants that are in the US partially. Yes, DVD is wrong on this, but they can still kill the people that tried to make Linux support for DVD.
IMO DVD is going to lose a lot of potential customers and hopefully get bad publicity. What should be done is someone that knows a columist/newsman at a major station is to give this case publicity. If CNN were to get the info for a story on this from us rather than the DVD people they might actually get thier story right (see etoy vs etoys fiasco)
We also ought to patent the decrypter programs or GPL them if they are not already. DVD does not have a patent on its encryption algorithm as far as I am aware. Could some one reply with the feasibility of this option. As for me, I will be busy distributing the decoder via Hotline (www.bigredh.com - if its warez, its hotline) and uploading it to every webserver I find. (I have a far amount of spare time on my hands... so alot of people gonna get deCSS). While
Once I was a drone - Now I am an Engineer
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I got your dvd hack right here
Enjoy all.
By visiting the above link, you affirm that you will use the information contained within to the best of your ability for any purpose you see fit. Violators will be shot.
Finkployd
Try Activestate for your download. The clipboard module can easily be used to write a convenient utility to demoronize your html.
:-)
Oh right, and take a look at The Perl Power Tools. Put a few of those in your path and it may do something for your sanity.
OTOH you could just install Linux and look innocent...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Hey everybody, name your mirror directory structure such that when they summon you they have to put:
m ent/and/we-have-no-legal-grounds-to-do-t his-to-these-people/dvd-source.txt
... and operates an Internet Web Site addressed as http://domain.com/lawyers-suck/and/this-is-harras
How does Creative get around the encryption issue with the DVD people?
dxr2 implements encryption in hardware, so it's OS-independent, and drivers don't contain any code related to it. The problem is, dxr2 is already an obsolete model, and later one -- dxr3 -- has software CSS. Creative refuses to provide any drivers or documentation for it citing "secret" nature of CSS as the reason.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I mean, many of us actually went so far as to provide real websites, email addresses, and other identifiers. Guess we wanted to be really hard to identify.
/. to identify, for instance, Chris Dibona. Oops, I just posted a link to a link, perhaps I should link the code directly. Ack, perhaps an email would help them. Whoops, that is an anonymous address, ah well, if they ask me at that address I will be willing to give them a more direct contact. (Hint, I live in New York City.)
I somehow don't think that any questions need to be asked of
My point? The USA was founded on the idea that citizens have the right to protest unfair legal actions. Posting code and links here is a form of protest. Protesters usually don't mind being identified, after all if they cannot be identified, what is the point of having protested?
Right.
They can claim the law is on their side. They can claim that the algorithm was secure. They can claim that what I did is unfair to them.
That doesn't make them right.
Another example. Sign a lease for an apartment in New York City. It says that your landlord can enter any time. In fact that is false, no matter what the paper says, that is a right you cannot sign away. But they are allowed to try to convince you that you have signed away that right, even though you have not. And you are free to tell them to get lost.
Well guess what?
I don't think they have a case.
Even if they did, I do not agree with the substance of their position and would not agree with the laws that they could possibly have the case under.
And if forcing the point brings DVDs to Linux sooner, well so much the better.
Regards,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Somehow, the clams' (Church of Scientology's) "secret" scriptures ended up posted on the Web. Eventually they sued. Result: the court filings became the prime source for their super sekrit scriptures...
Silly me, I always heard DVD stood for Digital Versatile disc.
Pinheads.
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
from the complaint: This proprietary technology, including trade secrets, is currently being licensed by DVD CCA, as the sole duly authorized licensing entity for the CSS technology.
Is this "technology" patented? Nobody stole the code itself. They just re-implemented the algorithm, so copyright isn't an issue (not directly anyway). Every DVD on earth contains the keys, no trade secrets there. If no patents are involved, what need is there for licensing?
The list of "defendants" fills me with pride to be an american. Call out the honor roll!
California!
Dundas Valley, Australia!
Georgia!
Somewhere, Germany!
Indiana!
Kansas!
Maryland!
Minnesota!
New York!
Oklahoma!
Oxford, England!
Pennsylvania!
South Carolina!
Val de Marne, France!
Wedel, Denmark!
and last but not least, the cheese capitol of the world, Wisconsin!
There are some states in the list that I don't recognize, but I'm sure they're swell!
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
First of all the software first reverse-engineered was not encrypted.
Secondly the encryption algorithm they were supposed to use was weak. If they don't use a strong encryption algorithm, then how ascertainable is it?
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Deja.com is Doe #60. Seriously. Read the cease&desist letter.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
My suggestion to Chris DiBona:
If indeed there is a rally tomorrow at the Santa Clara Courthouse, print the sourcecode for DeCSS on a few thousand flyers and hand them out. (Gotta love that First Amendment!) --unx
entering a temporary restraining order and preliminary and permanent injunctions, enjoining and restraining Defendants, their officers, directors, principals, agents, servants,employees, attorneys, successors and assigns, and all those acting in concert, combination or participation with any of them either directly or indirectly, singly or together, from making any further use or otherwise disclosing or distributing, on their web sites or elsewhere, or "linking" to other web sites which disclose, distribute, or "link" to any proprietary property or trade secrets relating to the CSS technology ... (my emphasis)
IANAL - but they want to try an nip any widespread mirroring in the bud before they lose control (I think they have already) - however this pretty much includes anyone in the US who might want to set up a mirror. I suggest that offshore mirrors pop up in as many different places as possible - this forces their lawyers to have to work on many many fronts (very expensive) - and whan/if they come after you raise a public stink and quietly shut your site - if for every site they shut 10 more rise up in protest they can't win. I've watched the same techniques used successfully with the scientology vs. the net brush war over the past few years.
I nominate the broom from the sorcerer's apprentice as the official team mascot.
Reading the complaint I think that it's going to be VERY important to impress on the judge at the very beginning that NONE of the defendants were bound by the trade secret because they were not lisencees of it in fact you need to pull into court the people who did license it and put it out in such a format that it was easy to crack.
I beleive the thing will play out (my guess): an attempt for a temporary restraining order this week (something the judge is probably inclined to grant if he sees probably cause - raising 1st ammendment concerns might derail this) followed by an attempt at a judgement that the alleged trade secret theft occured (might take a year or more and could result in the temporary injunction being made permanent) followed by a penalty phase to assess any damages. A jury trial in Silicon Valley on this issue could be a real hoot (to get a jury the defendants will have to prove that there is some matter of fact in the complaint that must be decided - if it's just arguing about the law then the judge will decide)
As a (somewhat silly) aside - given that info about DeCSS was posted to slashdot this injunction might be read as prohibiting anyone from linking to slashdot at all .... depends on how vindictive the lawyers on the other side are.
I would love to see a test case for linking as a 1st amendment right - this might make a wonderfull test case (or maybe not given that the other side probably has way too many lawyers).
It's not that I disagree with your point... it's just that I think you forgot the Linux and the BSD communities (which there is heavy overlap between the two) are fighting on the same side here. DVD support for both OS's are lacking, thanks to the short-sightedness of some "industry leaders". Complaining that BSD isn't mentioned here says that the complainer is more concerned about getting air-time for [insert favorite OS here] than the actual issue involved.
Instead of venting here, why not channel that energy to a positive direction? E-mail the DVD CCA and let them know what you think. If you want the voice of BSD heard, then speak up and let them know that you don't like their policies. Write the message from the perspective of a potential customer. Money does talk, you know. There are probably quite a few Linux "bigots" screaming bloody murder over this. Good for them. The great news is that The BSD folks can do the same. This has the side benefit of helping tip the scales of justice towards good (open hardware specifications) rather than evil (copyright laws that hinder rather than spur innovation) by providing a united front between the different OS's.
Go out there! Do something! Being bitter helps no one.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
51. [...] Without such copy protection, the motion picture companies would not have allowed their copyrighted motion pictures to be available in this new digital video format. [...]
Hey, does this mean that future digital media will not carry movies unless they also have shoddy protection schemes? (-:
Analogue media have no serious protection schemes, so I guess movies can't be made available on those, either. It's not terribly difficult to do a digital statistical analysis on multiple playings of an analogue medium (e.g. VHS tape(s)) and closely approach the quality of DVD.
I think what should be really frightening for the movie people is that the price per meg of hard drives is steadily and inevitably dropping to the point where it is becoming cost effective to copy four or five DVD-quality movies onto a sub-20GB hard drive rather than buying originals.
As storage technology breakthroughs like the 140GB multi-layer multi-wavelength CDs become cheaply writeable, the cost per meg is going to get ridiculously low. This taken together with oddments like removable caddies for standard hard drives is probably what the movie people really have in mind, so they're frantically trying to stomp out leaks in their system now.
Sadly for their cause, stomping hard and thoughtlessly on a fire often spreads the fire rather than extinguishing it. Read a few of the messages above, if you don't think this is happening to DVD rippers while you wait.
OTOH, and in practical terms, if they had bothered to release software (a black box tool that could be used by applications as mpg123 is by many MP3 players) to do the actual decoding on a wide variety of systems (Linux, Solaris, *BSD, BeOS, who else?) there would have been much less incentive to to break their scheme.
Instead, they were stingy, hoping to only put in the effort to cover the one or two most popular systems thus making their cries of "pirate" seem rather pathetic and self-serving.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
What has struck me as a little odd from the beginning of the DVD encryption thingy, is that (at least in some country's) you have, as the buyer of a audio or video carrier like a VHS tape or an audio CD, the right to make 1 copy of it for your own puposes (like backup in case of your original going bad). Just like all that software CD-ROMS that try to keep you from making a copy, isn't the fact that they use encryption on that DVD illegal? Now I can't make a backup for my own purposes !!!
One question - no matter it is trade secret or patent, how effective will the court be, if they have to silence the ENTIRE WORLD?
Some people may have been served court-papers designed to seal-their-lips, but think of this - we are all in the Net, and the more the court tries to seal-lips, the more of us will TALK TO OTHERS about the matter, and the more injunctions handed down by the court, the LOUDER we will talk about it.
Can the court punishes THE WHOLE WORLD?
Of course not.
Let them try, and let them find out that they can no longer use the same-old-routine to step on other people anymore.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
DeCSS is simply a way to either view or copy DVD. The only reason DVD was delayed is the industry.
It's like the torturer telling his/her victim: confess.. if you do, we let you go.. it's all in your hands, the only one keeping you here is you.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The reason Slashdot works so well as it does lies in its democratic ways:
* People send in suggestions to stories.
* People choose to respond to stories and other posts.
* People are given temporary moderator access.
* People choose to moderate posts.
All this means freedom to the people. Slashdot is a medium by the people for the people. But you have some "proprietary" chains in the string too:
* Creators
* Story posters
* Permanent moderators
For Slashdot these are the weakest links in the chain. That doesn't mean they haven't done a good job, but they can't compete with the rest of the world. (As a side-note, very few people can. Kasparov obviously can.)
But they are nonetheless important, since they keep Slashdot from drifting off course. Even though we have to tolerate mistakes and ego-trips from their part from time to time.
News from Slashdot is extremely biased and put on the "edge" at times. But at least there's a proper system (karma) on here to rectify the situation when it occur, putting matters in balance. This lacks in professional media, thus obscuring such "problems".
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Oooohhh, you could hand them out like party favors... Meanwhile, I'm going to try to get a chain mail started about a boy whose dying wish is to watch DVD's on Linux. All he needs is for you to forward this source code to 10 of your friends. Bill "MoneyBags" Gates will then use his email tracking program to award you with $10,000, and donate large sums of money to LiViD, to help them in their task, and to make that little boy's dreams come true...
/*
css-auth.h
----------
typedef unsigned char byte;
struct block {
byte b[5];
};
extern void CryptKey1(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key);
extern void CryptKey2(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key);
extern void CryptBusKey(int varient, byte const *challenge, struct block *key);
css-auth.c
----------
* Copyright (C) 1999 Derek Fawcus
*
* This code may be used under the terms of Version 2 of the GPL,
* read the file COPYING for details.
*
*/
|
| Etc.
|
Time flies like an arrow;
Time flies like an arrow;
Fruit flies like a bananna
... provided they have agreed to keep the secret. If somebody who has NOT entered such a contract with the secret's owner figures out the secret (by himself, with no "guilty knowlege" obtained from someone else who violate such a contract), he is under no obligation to remain silent.
Patents give a government-enforced limited-time monopoly in return for disclosure of the invention. (They exist to encourage the development and disclosure of such ideas.)
Trade secrets can last longer, but they last only as long as the secret is kept. After that they pop like a bubble. The only thing left once the cat is out of the bag is a legal claim against the person who let it out - IF he obtained the secret in violation of an agreement or from an agreement violator.
Caveat: I'm not a lawyer yadda yadda...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But did they reverse engineer the Xing player in order to retrieve that first key? I would argue that they did NOT, since the key was plainly obvious in the first place.
Whether a judge would buy that or not... well, your guess is as good as mine. But in any case, I think the attack against DECSS is out of line. If these lawyers want to use Xing's license agreement as the focal point of their attack, then I think it could very well backfire on them.
Best regards,
SEAL
But it is! Why is RIAA partnering with college campuses to increase punishment for students with MP3s? Why are they paying well known artists to sign their name on anti-piracy propaganda? Why do they even bother shutting down MP3 sites? Why do we have SDMI? Why do we have WMA? Obviously, not because they are bored. RIAA knows that MP3 does and will contintue to represent a very real threat to the record companies' bottom lines. 'mp3' is one of the most searched for words on the internet. The argument could be made that they're more interested in preserving a distribution paradigm where one has to use a record company to be discovered, but they also know that the more MP3s people get, the fewer CDs this will buy. Sure, this may be a drop in the bucket now, but ten years down the road, when pretty much every popular single in recent memory is freely available online, it's easy to see them losing a lot of money. This is about piracy as much as it is control.
Take a look at your list, by the way. You'll notice that of all the media pirated, software by far comes in first, with literally billions of dollars lost each year. Digital audio comes in second for sure. Piracy for the other two has been a complete non issue, which are analog formats with no good medium of distribution. The internet has enabled widespread piracy of digital audio and software simply because they were digtal, and it will do the same with digital video.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Well, yes and no. Licensed dvd decoders force Macrovision on you, so recording the output from your dvd decoder doesn't work any better than recording the output of another VCR. In other words, they thought of that.
Remote Selector et al will disable Macrovision and allow you to do precisely what you describe, but I imagine the DVD CCA has the same complaints about disabling Macrovision as it has about cracking CSS.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
If you're not, there's always a bed here in if you need to flee the country.
Of course, here is Australia, so it's probably not the best place to come, but the offers there, anyway.
from the summons:
A good set of facts, thanks.
What you didn't mention though was how the court would view an attempted action where the number of restrained defendents would have to be in the millions to achieve the desired effect. Isn't the law sensible enough to note that, on this basis alone, the action is pointless?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Give this idea a couple of points.
Flyers, T-Shirts - hell, hire an airplane to write the code in the sky with smoke.
Once the knowledge protected by a trade secret becomes public (by legal or even illegal means) it is no longer a trade secret. This fact has been verified by a respected patent lawyer with a JD. Therefore, the only way that a trade secret remains intact is by it truly remaining secret. If by any means (including reverse engineering) it becomes public knowledge, then the trade secret ceases to exist.
For a good primer on current US intellectual property laws, head over to my old EE professor's web site at:
http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~kort um/ee302/lecture/IP/
The PDF version of the lecture is available at:
http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~k ortum/ee302/lecture/IP.pdf
This lecture was recently written by a patent lawyer, so I would definitely assume that it is timely and accurate.
How would this work? BTTV cards ($80?) receive television signals, rescale them, and stuff them into a window in real time with little intervention by the CPU. A DVD decoder card could do the exact same thing.
News is the right forum for this kind of thing. Periodically send the code out in a shell archive to a binaries newsgroup, and the lawyers won't have any fixed point at which to aim their actions.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You never know... if you look you might even find a copy of the source code there, too..... VBG.... I do like the "Page Title", though!
Perhaps they should summon themselves?
Only send nice, well reasoned letters, of course:
DVD Copy Control Association
225 B Cochrane Circle
Morgan Hill CA 95037
EMAIL: john.hoy@lmicp.com
From: http://www.dvdcca.org/contact.html
So that's okay, right?
What are you, some kind of lawyer?
If I recall correctly, the EFF is looking for a plaintiff specifically on the DVD reverse engineering issue. I suggest those involved get in touch with them and look into the possibility of coordinating a counter attack on the DVD Forum. I suspect if this ever went to trial with a reasonably well financed plaintiff, the DVD Forum would stand to lose allot of clout when their licensing terms become unenforcable.
This is about intimidation -- the DVD Forum has allot more to lose in a trial than a plaintiff does.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
They gona try to hit you up for httpd logs? To bad crond cleans them once a week...right? :)
Not for my "small" ISP. My ISP rotates the httpd logs every 3 to 6 hours, due to the sheer size. Several megabytes per log is a lot of grepping.
"The Letter" refers to Digital Video Disk, whereas it was made clear a million times while DVD was being popularized that DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disk.
Doesn't this squash their first-round application on a technicality? (I bet the law firm made the cockup.)
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.
And I also can't really speak to the merits of the charge of misappropriation of trade secrets. Note that trade secrets as an area of law is largely defined at the state level, so you'll need to look into California law.
Having said that, there is some case law in the 9th circuit (which includes California) that may be positive.
Although the charge is misappropriation of trade secrets, it seems that the underlying complaint is an enablement of violation of copyright. If this underlying complaint can be answered then the misappropriation is harmless.
I argue that the defendants have a right to possession of the DeCSS software under section 117(a) of Title 17 of the US Code. Briefly, that section of law limits the exclusive right of copyright holders of software; owners have the explicit right to make backup copies for their own archival purposes.
This was has been tested in case law, and unfortunately I don't have my law books handy, but a case in the mid-eighties concerned a maker of a disk-copying software sued by a maker of copy-protection software. The defendant successfully argued that since owners have a right to back up software, and they could not do so without his (or similar) product, his product was legal.
This is the tricky step: DVDs contain software and data. I argue that the right to backup software extends to the entire disk, including data. As a broader claim, we can fall back on fair use; since DSS stops us from fair use of the movie, we have a right to employ software that gives us back those rights.
This theory is discussed in Lessig's excellent book _Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace_. A legal theorist (not related) named Cohen says that we have the right to hack copy-protection schemes that violate fair use. This is known as the Cohen Doctine.
No, what's even more entertaining is that, according to the document itself, posting of the document is an indictable offense since it contains all those handy url's. :-)
Also, they obviously just typed CSS into a good search engine.. A Slashdot discussion is Doe #57, a post on dejanews is #60... Gimme a break..
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So, let us summarize this:
This is just too obviously bogus. Evidently they are only trying to spread FUD.
They might have had a case against Derek Fawcus, although even that seems dubious. Now that he retracted, they have no case against anyone.
E pur si muove!
http://domain.com/any.lawyer.who/quotes.this.url/g ives.permission/for.his.residence.to.be. searched/any.bootleg.audio/video/tape.found/nullif ies.legal.and.moral.standing/dvd-source. txt
plato.nebulanet.net:88/css/
hmmm I dunno....
As a person whose Tax dollars pay for the US
government to research things...I have no problem
with it.
In fact...I am pissed that the technology wasn't
released to the public. Afterall...we paid for
the research, we should get to know about it and
all of how it works.
Secrets are for private individuals and corrupt
regeimes.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The only stipulation is that you give the opposing party 24 hours notice so that they have a chance to come in to speak on their own behalf. The clerk thought that parhaps any John Does (or named defendants) could walk in on some later day and ask for an emergency lifting of whatever order what granted in this first meeting.
Paragraph 21 seems to be another case where our own bad manners cause us trouble:
Energy: time to change the picture.
2. Try to get help from the ACLU, PEN, and other free-speech organizations. (EFF is probably a non-starter nowadays.)
3. Someone who understands the algorithm, but hasn't looked at the Xing code, should write up how DVD encryption works and publish it. Write a good journal article, submit it to Cryptologia and maybe some IEEE or ACM journal. Include enough detail to implement the algorithm. Critique it. Send the article to USENET sci.crypt as well. That should deal with the trade secret issue.
If we don't deal with this crap, we're going to end up with machines as closed as a Nintendo. That's what the SMDI coalition wants, as discussed on Slashdot a few weeks back. Already, to get the Windows logo on PC hardware, the manufacturer has to have a "licensed DVD decoder". If this doesn't get dealt with, it could kill Linux on the desktop, because Linux won't be allowed to play audio or video media.
Not so with VHS, either. VHS was developed by JVC in reponse to Sony's refusal to license the Beta format in an effort to keep the home video market to itself. Like Beta, there is a set of specifications that a manufacturer must license from JVC and meet before selling VCRs bearing the VHS mark.
VHS is so ubiquitous because unlike Sony, JVC understood that inexpensive licensing on a large scale was the key to making the format the success that it is. It's for that reason the (technically superior) Beta format is now used exclusively by the broadcast and video production industries.
From The Letter:
"Defendants' actions threaten the financial stability of this new digital video format for viewing movies and other images -- which has thus far been well received by the consuming public."
- Seems to me that enabling the use of DVD with Linux would _increase_ the DVD market - since now more of us would be able to view them. We'd end up buying _more_ DVDs.
Also, from paragraph 38 - "The CSS Agreement mandates that licensees provide the proprietary CSS technology at issue only to the strictest minimum number of licensee's employees who require access to the information, beginning with only three employees and expanding beyond three only upon notification to the licensor of the names of the additional employees. Licensees who violate these requirements are subject to liquidated damages in the amount of $1 million per violation (with a cap based on profits made from the sale of licensed products). "
- This sounds like they should be going after the company who didn't encrypt their key properly (Xing), rather than the people who cracked it.
And even scarier is paragraph 47 - "On information and belief, this proprietary information was obtained by willfully "hacking" and/or improperly reverse engineering software created by CSS licensee Xing Technology Corporation ("Xing"). Xing's software is and was licensed to users under a license agreement which specifically prohibits reverse engineering. "
- The last sentence says it all. "Xing's software is and was licensed to users under a license agreement which specifically prohibits reverse engineering."
Let's read that again "...licensed to users under a license agreement..."
I don't know about the specific DVD disk they used, but none of the DVDs _I_ bought ever had an EULA.
It sounds to me as if CCA are trying to nail people for violating a nonexistant license agreement.
|0|4
=====
Does steel wool come from iron sheep?
reverend lola
the titanium sheep
provider of steel wool
proprietary information ... which they either obtained by improper means or knew or should have known was obtained by others by improper means
I hope they can prove this allegation of "improper means" in court. Now tell me, if these claims are proven to be false, do the defendants have a case for a suit against the organisation for defamation?
Defendants' posting of the proprietary information licensed by DVD CCA on their web sites has caused the illegal pirating of the motion picture industry's copyrighted content contained on DVDs. Defendants' actions threaten the financial stability of this new digital video format for viewing movies and other images.
I hope they can prove these allegations as well.
The "caused the illegal pirating" allegation could be difficult for the plaintiffs to prove if the defendants have a good lawyer. This charge is the online equivalent of suing a handgun manufacturer for injuries caused by the handguns they make - the toolmaker is not liable for harm caused by the tools they make because they have no control over how the tool is used.
The "financial stability" bit is also interesting. Businesses in general fail to grasp one simple fact: making a profit yesterday and making a profit today does not give a business the right to expect to make a profit tomorrow.
I hope that those involved can pool their resources and hire someone in California to represent them. I also hope that the lawyers for the plaintiffs have proof of valid service for each of the defendants. Is service by e-mail treated as valid service by the courts in various countries these days, considering that it is really easy to forge e-mail? I thought that all legal documents of this kind still had to be sent by registered mail or served by some sort of process server or similar person.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, etc etc etc.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
http://everest.yooniks.org/dvd. come on, sue me.
Andrew G. Feinberg
This e-mail is not legally binding, as the legal authorities in many countries (including the US) do not recognise e-mails as legal documents. The e-mails contain demands (the withdrawl of information on the web) with mennaces (the threat of legal action).
"Demands with Menaces" (the legal term for blackmail) is a very definite crime. If the co-defendents were to jointly file a counter-suit, what would the odds of winning be?
(IAMAL, but it seems to me that proving both the demands and the menaces, outside of any recognised legal framework, can be easily shown.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Again, keep in mind I'm not a California lawyer, so this is quite suspect, but...
I read it to mean that mere reverse engineering of a legally acquired copy, e.g. on the open market, is not actionable. The "extra" bit that might make the suit potentially valid is if there was a direct contractual obligation not to disclose on the part of the recipient.
Which makes you wonder what happens when states start passing laws like former-UCC 2B-now-UCITA which (last time I checked) lets them impose no-reverse-engineering clauses on consumers...
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
I have a blog.