Slashdot Mirror
DVD Hearing Today - Are You Ready to Rumble?
Leading up to Today's Hearing
- by Emmett Plant
Emmett Plant is Slashdot's newest author.
Monday, DVD Copy Control Association, Inc. filed for a restraining order in a California court. The targets of this cease-and-desist order were individuals and organizations who had made DVD decryption source code freely available on the net, by hosting the code themselves or linking to a website that did. Commmunity response has been fast and furious, with a deluge of Slashdot comments and submissions, and the immediate organization of Open Source community members to attend the hearing this morning.
Technically, the argument boils down to the issue of reverse engineering. Ideologically, the argument challenges the ideals of free speech, freedom of information, and the ability to innovate on behalf of computer users, hardware engineers and software developers all over the planet.
On Monday night, I spoke to a gentleman who had received the order just minutes prior, and although he didn't want his name mentioned, he provided with me with his thoughts.
"It should be legal when you've got people reverse engineering this kind of stuff. But a small minority in the business community want to lock down the information, citing that it's a trade secret. It's sort of like being busted in math class for passing answers around. [The code] is basically a mathematical equation that decrypts poorly encrypted DVD data. I support the free human right to freedom of thought. That's how civilization has gotten to where it is today, without lawyers heading innovators off at the pass."
Would he be willing to go to court to defend himself?
"Probably not. There are a lot of sites that are mirroring [the code], and they'll keep the program alive. I'll sleep easy at night knowing I did my part."
In many ways, the cease-and-desist only made it easier for people to get their hands on the code. As soon as the community heard about the order, many people posted the code on their websites as a sign of protest. Many community members have made the code available on overseas servers that don't face the possible legal repercussions associated with sites located in the United States.
Another interesting point of this case is that anyone who linked to a site that contained the information is also being held liable in the case. This is particularly frightening. This means that in the spirit of the cease-and-desist order, almost everyone on the web with a site that links to anywhere else falls into the legal maelstrom, as long as it eventually leads to a site with the code posted on it.
The legal ramifications of the case are extremely influential. The DVD CCA lawyers are fighting a battle against reverse engineering, an engineering process that enables the computer industry to utilize powerful tools like the IBM-compatible personal computer and countless hardware device drivers.
The hearing will take place this morning at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California.
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Funny and Sad at the Same Time
- by Hemos
The particularly humorous section of the lawsuit, at least for me, is that what they are trying to do is make linking illegal. That's right. Linking. Is. Illegal. Once we cross the the bridge of dictating what can and cannot be linked to, than we open ourselves up to a world of people being able to sue whenever something they don't want linked is linked. Without linking, the Web is dead.
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Shaky Legal Grounds
- by Michael Sims
The legal standing for the DVD companies is so shaky it's not even funny. The danger is that they can effectively paint the opposition as a bunch of crooks and the judge will feel that *justice* requires a ruling in their favor despite the law - that can be averted if the defense makes a strong competent showing tomorrow, presumably. The second danger is that they will inflict sufficient costs on the defendants that others will be dissuaded from doing even perfectly legal things. That can't be prevented.
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Planning to Join the Protest in Person?
The best source of information on how to help out at the Santa Clara County Courthouse is this page from Chris DiBona's Web site. It tells you where and when to be, what to wear, and what to expect. Worth reading even if you can't make it. Nice to know that Chris and others, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are doing a great job for all of us on this!
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Update by Emmett @ 1:20 p.m. EST:
Chris DiBona called me at 8:30 a.m. PST from right outside the courtroom, letting me in on the scene. The Open Source community has about 25 people there, as well as a lawyer or two of their own. The community members present are busy distributing the DeCSS source code on floppy disk as well as leaflet hard copy. No pictures will be taken of the interior of the courtroom, and there wasn't enough time to apply for the permit to record what happens inside.
Chris will be calling me as soon as they let out with up-to-the-minute information and notes from the community members inside the courtroom.
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Links to Other DVD CCA Stories and Sites
Boston Globe
Washington Post
Wired News
ZDNet
siliconvalley.com
Chris DiBona's excellent page
PZ Communications DeCSS Resource Site
CNN.com
Lemuria.org DeCSS Defense page
Dan Gillmor (SV.com columnist)
Santa Clara County Superior Court info
OpenDVD.org
EFF to the Rescue!
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Please send additional links to roblimo@slashdot.org so we can add them to the list. Thanks.
I can't make it there in person, is there someone I could email to show my support?
The difference between a trade secret and a copyright or patent is that a trade secret is not disclosed to the public -- but if it leaks, the owner is just SOL. If they're taking the position that their decryption is a trade secret, then they have no case.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
i can tell the location of another site to anyone and everyone i want ! I dont want that right to be taken away from me ........
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/363/business/We
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
Do they want this to be some sort of secret forever? Is it some sort of conspiracy? Like the virus in the X - Files movie? Red Team go! Red Team Go!
In my opinion, reading text, reading a book,
reading this web page is the same as reverse
engineering an executable program. Is reading
illegal?
If there was any possible way of gewtting to CA today (short of selling my soul), I would. But, unfortunatly, i am but one of the masses who live nortyh of the US border, yet know and understand that whatever these nimrods accomplish down there will unavoidable have an effect on our simmilar freedoms up here. Where can I contact the numerous organizations figting this sort of thing on a day to daY basis to show my support?
What do you mean?
If the people show up on the court steps and are protesting, then they can get media to show up and get some attention. If they have good spokespeople then they can spin it for the media to show the truth about the whole thing. Hopefully ESR won't show up dressed like Obi-Wan again.
Nascantur in Admiratione. (Let them be born in Wonder)
Way to go guys! I hope to see you on the 6 o'clock news, with a victory.
indierock / punkrock band photos and more... http://www.digitaldefection.net
As for the links, I'd compare that with passing round a list of names of people who pass around lists of pages. I'm sorry, but when you start to get -that- far removed from the source, WHATEVER justification there may have been for the original case is thrown right out the window.
Either that, or I deem the entire Universe guilty of conspiring to cause explosions, as a result of containing links to the Big Bang. If this case ends with sites like Slashdot losing, this case will be precident of links being sufficient to be proof of guilt. More than adequate for me to sue the cosmos for a few trillian dollars.
Anyone want to join in? I don't mind splitting the winnings.
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)
Listening to NPR this morning, I heard a very brief story about "DVD copying software" being posted on the internet and a "lawsuit being brought against dozens of websites". Two points here. First, DeCSS is not "copying software". Second a restraing order is not a "lawsuit". I think it is a pretty crappy tactic to pursuade the news media to report such things. I don't blame NPR, I blame the movie industry for feeding them the story in such a form. BTW, there was now mention of breaking encryption or Linux development, etc. It just sounded like all the posters were a bunch of pirates and thieves.
Criminalize spam and telemarketing!
to have a look at this : http://www.sirius.com/~casp/welcome.html ..it may be possible to get it thrown out without a trial.
SLAPPs -- strategic lawsuits against public participation -- are civil complaints or counterclaims (against either an individual or an organization) in which the alleged injury was the result of
petitioning or free speech activities protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. SLAPPs are often brought by corporations, real estate developers, or government officials and
entities against individuals who oppose them on public issues. Typically, SLAPPs are based on ordinary civil tort claims such as defamation, conspiracy, and interference with prospective
economic advantage.
This is a very frightening case. If this passes through, and reverse engineering is made illegal, then Richard Stallman's story (grrr, cant find
link on Gnu.org! anyone?) about how debuggers
will be allowed only in 'guarded research labs'
will come true alot faster than we'd like.
This is a monumentally important case for our rights to explore and investigate technology, and if we are stopped from doing so, only hackers will be doing it (and if you decide to do it, you are an instant hacker, and now a criminal). [I've given up on cracker/hacker debate, btw. I use words common folk can understand, since thats who Im preaching to.]
Unix and Linux has a long history of being hacked on and taken apart, and if it wasnt for this ability, I dont think we'd be where we are now with Linux.
We should all put in as much effort as possible to make people aware of whats at stake. I can imagine its only a few steps before you're not allowed to fix your own car! THen we'll have the general populace interested.
Math
A copy of the DeCSS software source code for linux and a zip file of the dll's for doze are available here for those interested: http://cubicmetercrystal.com/decss/ Fight for copyright / patent sanity. Perhaps once companies realize that strong arm tactics to silence information will not work on the net, all of these intimidating law suits will stop.
- What if the whole thin is legal in Norway?
- How can a copyright/patent infringement lawsuit issued in the USA can be enforced on a European defendent?
Thanks.why dont they just come out and tell people that
they can no longer be interested in black boxes??
it is in the spirit of the hacker to crave information
about that which escapes his understanding...
in this case, someone wanted to figure out how
the encryption worked, and they DID...whats so
illegal?
i'm so mad i could go in front of that courthouse
and pour hot grits down my pants in protest!
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Any thoughts?
=U= "Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you"
I think that slashdot should put all the information in one handy location, so that we can all mirror it on our personal sites... What are they going to do? Sue the world?
--- eman I don't know what it does, but I like the blinking lights.
If DVD CCA doesn't point the finger at someone, then it must be their fault (which I believe it is). Just because you code and compile something, doesn't make it a trade secret. Someone else mentioned Coca Cola's secret formula. If you figure it out, you can use it. Reverse engineering is the same thing.
Didn't this once come up with a case of Ford against a Nissan or Honda. Where the Japanese company bought a Ford and dismantled it to find out how it worked. When Ford tried to sue, the judge ruled that they didn't do anything wrong. Since they bought the car, it was theirs to do what they pleased. I think this is the same thing.
Now as for linking. That is getting out of hand. If you do business on the Web, you should be prepared to be linked to. Altough, this is slightly different, But as for free speech, not being able to link to something is a definite form of censorship. Yes, you can complain about content, but how can you complain about someone else linking to them. IANAL, but if you hear someone that shows bootlegged movies, and tell someone about it, and if someone asks who is doing it, and you tell them, are you just as guilty at bootlegging the movie. Now you are not related in any way to that bootlegger, and did not profit in telling someone about it. You just shared information that you knew about.
Unfortunately, I'm in NY and won't be able to go. I would love to see this trial!
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Just a query - are they trying to ban mirrors of the actual binary code for DeCSS and the associated links to these sites or is it the underlying algorithm that is the target. If the injunction is against a specific binary application, then would publishing an "abstract" pseudo-code of the core of the binary engine be affected by the ban? If this was done then how long do you think it would be before many, many different implementations of the code in different languages started appearing on the web? Would it be necessary to start a new injunction against each one?
The only Good System is a Sound System
Folks,
I hate to rain on your parade, but if the court rules against the you, it could get very ugly very fast.
I would be very careful in any open comments on this issue, especially since lawyers representating the plaintiffs could be reading Slashdot.org. Any potentially damaging and/or slanderous comments could get the plaintiffs to ask for a court order for NSI to pull the registration of http://slashdot.org, and THAT will obviously have extremely ugly consequences.
In short, hope for the best, but don't do anything online here that will make a bad situation worse.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
...would be to print out the source code to DeCSS (and neatly bind it, if possible) like they did with the PGP code. It might illustrate more clearly to the judge that the censorship of non-copyrighted material is a violation of first amendment rights.
The judge will probably be highly intelligent, but non-technical. Having a concrete, readable example of what they're trying to censor may help put things in perspective, and bring out the first amendment issues (which I'm sure the corporate lawyers are going to try to gloss over).
// TODO: fix sig
There was a post made yesterday that I think sums the whole thing up really well. It said something about only wanting to be able to play a movie on a Linux box. Without the decryption code, we'd never be able to do that. Do you really think those DVD fellas would bother to whip something up for us linux users to use to play our DVDs? Probably not, and then it would cost you something if they did...which isn't quite in the spirit of the Linux movement. Another good point that I think I read was that did CD manufacturers start sueing the general public when CD-Rs came out? Not even that silly music association got involved. What makes the movie industry think its so important it can do whatever it wants? Just another reason to invest wisely on Wallstreet, buy your own island, and start anew. Of course we'd outlaw Microsoft products! =)
As someone else pointed out nobody is going to look good at this hearing and the web as a whole has a lot to lose. The thing that concerns me the most is the judge, most judges that I've seen are middle age or older. How computer literate and familier with the actual issues is the judge, does he even know what a link is? How can someone make a decision on this important an issue if he or she is not fully conversant in the technology involved. This whole thing is really frightening and the implications far too wide ranging.
- Robin
Based on what these lawyers seem to be arguing: If the contents of a link changed to something illegal, all the existing links would become illegal.
Were all search engines with links to challenged sites also mentioned?
How stupid is that? THEY are the ones who implemented a crappy encryption scheme. THEY are the ones who decided to delay DVD audio.
The DVD CCA has caused more harm to consumers than hackers EVER will. If anything, customers have benefited from the hacking of the DVD code.
Technically, the argument boils down to the issue of reverse engineering. :) it.
...without lawyers heading innovators off at the pass."
:) that the "underground" can fight back in this manner - corporate pigs may win the battle, but who is winning the war?
:(
:), I think this may be the chap here...... If it isn't, my apologies... Would the real Emmett Plant stand up...
And still, judges don't really understand this. If a car manufacturer A can take apart say, a competitor B's carburettor, they can reverse engineer it. There's nothing preventing them doing this, in reality, and no judge would hold this case up. Because there are _manufacturing_ considerations to making the carburettor. Exactly the same applies with software- you can see what it does, but you must still figure out how to "make" (pun intended
Ideologically, the argument challenges the ideals of free speech, freedom of information, and the ability to innovate on behalf of computer users, hardware engineers and software developers all over the planet.
Hmm, think you're pushing it a bit there about the whole planet. The USA is mostly a nice place, but there are other continents
Sadly, this is my impression of corporate America these days. If you can't win by market forces, crush them with your legal team.
There are a lot of sites that are mirroring [the code], and they'll keep the program alive. I'll sleep easy at night knowing I did my part."
Yep. And when one gets hit with the Cease & Desist, another will take it's place. I really hope this goes high profile. Once corporations get the message that when it comes to the net, winning in court is not absolute, then they may consider their legal actions more carefully. And I find it heartening (hey, I'm British, I always root for the underdog!
Another interesting point of this case is that anyone who linked to a site that contained the information is also being held liable in the case.
That scares the piss out of me. Where does it end? Say if I link to a site that links to a site with the contentious code, am I liable? Reminds me of a rhyme I was taught as a kid - "Big fleas have little fleas upon their back to bite them, little fleas have tiny fleas, and so ad infinitum...". Surely a judge somewhere _must_ realise the complete and utter stupidity of this... I think it's a plot by the lawyers... If they can sue everybody on the net, then everybody requires a lawyer...
Maybe the soothsayers are right... Maybe this is the armageddon coming for Y2K. A poor decision by the judge here could badly hurt the whole internet...
By the way, if you're wondering who this Emmett Plant bloke is (I doubt he's related to Egg Plant, but I bet he's heard that before...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
i read most of the legalese the other day, but didn't follow the 1000 or so messages here, so i'm wondering if someone can clear this up for me: why aren't the DVD people suing xing? that's where the breakdown in the trade secrets happened (decss supposedly happened because xing was negligent with their key & from my reading of the legalities of trade secrets, they're the ones negligent in letting it slip out -- they're the ones who signed the agreement, etc.) xing should be suing the decss authors because they "broke" the (bogus, imho) "no-reverse engineering" clause in their license. and that doesn't even start to get into the linking legalities issue...
Here are a few interesting links:
Tom Vogt's site - lots of info and links
OpenDVD.org - arguments against CSS
SJ Mercury article by Dave Wilson
Douglas
Excuse me, fellows, but is Slashdot a member of The Press or not? Are these lawyers trying to suppress press activity in bothering Slashdot?
While we're divulging trade secrets, the coke recipe isn't too complicated. The only secret part are the flavors added to it (the "vegetable extracts" as they term it in Europe)...
And those are simple -- they're kola nut extract and coca extract. That's why all the other colas taste like Pepsi, not Coke. Coke is the only company allowed to use the coca plant extract. From my understanding, they purchase it from some company in New Jersey which has an exclusive arrangement with the US Government to import something on the order of 500 tons of coca leaves which are chemically processed to destroy the cocaine. The extract is sold to Coke in some exclusive arrangement.
So there you go, now we all know how to decrypt DVD's and make Coke.
Of course, when you say you can use coke's formula if you figure it out, that's not the case because no one else can import the coca leaves, or you rot in jail for the rest of your life.
And what about the status of reverse enginering. Remember the xing thing was reverse enginered in Norway. Aside from the question whether the reverse enginering of the xing player was legal or not in Norway, certainly (I may hope so) a court in the USA can't decide on that.
Anyways for the time being, my protest (and the DeCSS files) are also here.
How many of you really watch movies on your computer?
Maybe I am weird, but I would much rather have the comfort of my couch.
A quality DVD player is available nowadays at $300 dollars... is that outrageous?
While I fully support and side with the individuals being threatened here, I tend to think both sides are over-reacting. Obviously, pirated DVD's are not the advent of a social apocolypse as the industry claims... but neither is this quite the "fight to save our individual freedoms" as many on this site so loudly proclaim.
As someone pointed out yesterday: We could never watch VHS tapes on our computers... what is the huge deal!?
This is an excellent point - Surely, with all the "investigative work" the DVD CCA Lawyers did, they could have directed there web browsers to www.infoseek.com searched for "DeCSS" and found the same results as I did. Why is Infoseek not being hauled into court?
signature smigmature
- James
Every article I have read about this makes me grind my teeth. The DeCSS is always referred to as either a "DVD Copy Program" or a "DVD Pirating Program". Never is any mention made of the project to bring DVD to Linux. We all come across as a bunch of evil pirates out to destroy the All-American Movie Industry.
Here is a suggestion to put the Slashdot Effect to good use: everyone write your favorite media outlets. Tell them what this is really about. This has nothing to do with piracy, it has everything to do about freedom. The same freedom that allows them to publish their websites and newspapers.
I think the purpose of this legal action is to frighten everyone into submission. I don't think the DVD Consortium knows what they have stepped into, however
I can't be at the courthouse, but I am there in spirit anyway!
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
They are trying to bar sites that publish info about DeCSS? Isn't that suppression of freedom of press and/or freedom of speech (in the US at least)?
Links are the basic structural elements of the Web. No links, no web. So that takes care of the generality. If you publish information on the Web, you must expect to have links pointed at it. So the only remaining action can be for some infringement (copyright??) by the published material on the orginating site or sites. That doesn't look too strong, either, in this case. I hope the DVD manufacturers get nowhere with this -- I still haven't forgiven them for their stupid Region scheme, another utterly pointless piece of technology crippling which is a pain for this Region 1/2 commuter and his laptop.
This is disappointing, if only because it is doomed to fail. How many people here will change their computing habits if a decision were made outlawing DeCSS? Infact, how many people might start a development effort outside this country? The legal system is largely ineffective in dealing with this - witness the huge crypto debate. There is none: the world has crypto, and the US looks like a bunch of jackasses for trying to stop it. They didn't even put a dent in the flow of information out of this country. China isn't doing much better either - and they have thousands of firewalls and even more people dedicated strictly to censoring the internet. Information still gets out. There solution seems to be "kill anyone exhibiting independent thought online!" - history has, and will again, show that such tactics are ineffective.
This trial will be of no consequence to the community at large.... nothing will change except the amount of money exchanged over the matter. however, there is a question of moral obligation: should we help these people? Do we have an obligation to support people who risk their livelyhood to give us our freedom? This is, in my mind, the heart of this matter.
Having read the cover letter and the text of the complaint I was wondering if the DVD CCA peeps have cited themselves in their complaint for producing such an excellent resource for people like us who wish to mirror the source code and other material.
Thank you.
http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/css/
We are not pirates, nor do we encourage the illegal duplication and/or distribution of copyrighted works. We are, however, citizens of a country based on the principles of personal freedom and trust of common man. We believe that it is morally and legally acceptable to have the right to manipulate digital media, media which we have bought and paid for, in the ways we see fit. We believe that it is within our rights, and is morally acceptable, to view and store this media in the ways we choose; be in on a DVD disk, our computer's hard drive or recorded to a VHS tape; from a hardware DVD player, the Windows operating system or the Linux operating system. These are the rights we are fighting for. We believe that the authoritarian acts of the RIAA and DVD CSS should not be stood for, they are immoral and unjust. We do not believe that anyone should be able to tell us that we can only view a movie from a computer which they have choosen, or save that movie only in the way they dictate. We also believe that if there is a tool which allows such freedoms, we should have a right to use it, to tell others about it and to distribute it. We do not believe that someone should be able to command that we cannot tell or distribute this tool simply because it is not within their corporate strategy.
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Well, I have a radio show to do today, and though it is usually a music show, I think I will talke a bit of time out to RANT!
Anyone in the Cleveland area can tune to 91.1FM at noon. Anyone on the net can go to http://radio.cwru.edu/livefeed.html at 12EST.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Do we actually fear speaking out against our government? I think many of us do, but we aren't supposed to.
These issues are vitally important. This is all about your and my *personal* freedom. It is important that we FIGHT if necessary to hold onto the freedom we know is right.
I'll step down from my little soap box for now. Just realize, there are plenty of us willing to get in some trouble for what we believe in.
yeah i know, I can't spell.
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
although i'm sure no one here is running out and buying dvd products, i think a formal boycott of all dvd products (drives/players, discs, and anything else) is called for.
IMHO, one of the lamest pieces of "sci-fi" in existence.
it's ~1400 lines. post it to usenet, put it on guest books, mail a floppy to the court house.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
How many of you really watch movies on your computer?
That is not the issue here. The issues are:
- Can we legitimately try to implement such a player if we want to?
- Can we talk about that implementation?
- Can we link to it?
By posting about it here, by the way, you are covered in the restraining order. You just involved yourself in the legal fight.
Now do you understand why this is so serious?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
The mirror list at http://www.humpin.org/decss/ is about twice the size of when this legal fiasco started.
Consider setting up a mirror! I emailed 'humpin@humpin.org' to tell them of mine. One advantage for me is I included the DVD code & mirror in my online class materials at UNC - hopefully this will be a more defensible position, if the poop hits the fan.
...but I still think it's a bad thing when a man is threatened with death for writing it.
In other words, it's about a point of principle. It's about making sure the precedents go our way. It's about speaking out for the DVD people so they'll be there to speak out for us, and establishing now that we want the freedoms they're trying to take away from us, whether we were going to use them for watching DVD movies or for something else.
In that sense it is precisely a fight to save our individual freedom and no scare quotes are needed. It's a little disturbing to see how rare understanding of the very idea of a point of principle is.
--
Xenu loves you!
No.
They don't have a reasonable case or position. They can threaten - they are threatening, but the threat is much more of a bluff than a threat. If you back down the instant that someone says, "Boo", then what value does your right to speak up have?
Sincerely,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
[I've given up on cracker/hacker debate, btw. I use words common folk can understand, since thats who Im preaching to.]
When I took my present job with a rural law enforcement agency which had basically zero computers and wanted someone to help them implement computerized systems (dispatch, case tracking, etc.), one of my deciding factors was that the newly elected Sheriff (who was, self-admittedly, computer illiterate) told me that he was well aware of the difference between the terms 'Hacker' and 'Cracker' and would do his best to respect the divergent terms and their associated pride/contempt.
If this sort of awareness is occurring in rural, isolated communities, now is NOT the time to 'give up'. Rather, it's the time to rejoice... and put a little more pressure on the media to use the terms properly.
Signed, A. Hacker
But that's pretty unlikely; the corporate takeover hasn't preceded that far yet. Of course, the bastards want us to fear that it could happen. They want us to be afraid to speak against them, lest we be crushed beneath high-powered legal teams.
In fact, this smacks so heavily of FUD I must question the poster's motives. Are you involved with one of the plaintiffs?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Hey, if someone makes Slashdot delete messages, doesn't that mean that they are assuming the role of "editor", and that they then become liable for everything said on Slashdot? Sorry if I sound confused, but I've been trying to actually listen to what the lawyers say...
Like most of the people in the world, I do not live anywhere near California. So I cannot go to the court house to protest it.
So, I want to know: Is there anything the rest of us can do to support the opposition to the repression of the DVD Forum? Can we start an Internet petition to indicate our support? Something along the lines of the Blue Ribbon Campaign of the EFF?
Are people contacting their local news agencies, and explaining why the DVD Forum is in the wrong?
Is there an address (snail mail) at the DVD Forum we can write to complain? (I want snail mail because email is ignored too easily.)
The DVD Forum will only win if this stays small. A hundred thousand angry consumers will fold them right quick.
We need to move on this, people.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Hmmmm. I was wondering when details about what's going on were going to surface.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm seriously sorry that I'm in the wrong country to be able to attend personally. Actually, I've been flicking from news site to news site periodically today and wondering why there's nothing new breaking. Of course, PST is somewhat behind GMT and all the key people were soundly asleep at the time. But I digress.
What I really wanted to chat about was the lack of media coverage so far. Obviously, there'll be details about who and what turn up at the courthouse itself later on, but I've not seen linkage on any front pages of any news sites so far. I'm just hoping that such a fundamental legal battle gets television coverage this evening.
Good luck for the proceedings and hopefully someone will have brought a nokia communicator or somesuch to enable them to give a slightly live feed of their 'notes' from the court room. Or isn't that sort of behaviour allowed over thar.
Cheers,
Dav Stott
I hope everybody realizes that if by some miracle they were to get an injunction the lawyers would be on the phone to ISPs today attempting to shut down the sites, and the linkers. Remember all those stories about ISPs that are easily bullied? Who cares about the jurisdiction of the courts-- if they get an injunction, it strengthens their argument to the ISPs. If they can keep this code in the underground indefinitely you'll never see a Red Hat distribution that includes a DVD player. I sure hope the EFF lawyers know their stuff...
--
314-15-9265
Why do people always start off a statement with IANAL? It seems to me that we as a society have become dependant on lawyers to tell us what is right and what is wrong. When dealing with the very technical, aren't WE the ones who know "right vs. wrong"? WE are the ones who know what is best technically.
Now, imagine a government where all people were created equal. You didn't have a class of citizens that had "special powers" within the power structure that is the government. (talking about the lawyers here)
The internet is equalizing these powers by making information FREE and EASILY ACCESSABLE. There are going to be battles (like this DVD thing) between those who want to keep the freedoms of speech and information exchange we enjoy, and those with money and power who stand to loose it by free exchange of information.
My point? Don't be afraid to learn about, interpret and question law. The lawyers hold special power in government because the citizens let them. If smart people (like us programmers) learn how the system works, there is no reason we cannot deal with the system ourselves, rather than having lawyers as an "intermediary" between us and government.
Thank you, I'll step down now...
An article on this subject at EE Times mentions Slashdot and the debate over this hearing. The article also has some good links to the DVD CCA's arguments. You can read the article here
--
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
I would Guess that that would depend in large part on what context the question was being asked in and which Judge was involved. For example would a site like /. fall under the laws in some states that say reporters don't have turn over names of anon sources? Maybe, It probably depends on which state you asked in.
Part of the problem is that since the web is so new the legal spaces around it have yet to be worked out.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Obviously, the vast majority of /. readers were unable to attend todays legal proceedings. Are there other ways in which we can participate? Basically, I'd like to write a letter to *someone* saying 1) I am a linux user 2) I want the ability to effectively use the DVD medium on my system 3) I feel that the suit being brought forward is wrong (for all the reasons already put forth here...I won't repeat them)
So, is there a person/congresscritter email/mail address that is appropriate? Ordinarily, I would say that letter writing campaigns are a waste, but in this case I think it could provide a show of force.
SuperID
How many of you really watch movies on your computer?...As someone pointed out yesterday: We could never watch VHS tapes on our computers... what is the huge deal!?
I watch movies on my computer. I happen to enjoy this, but that isn't the issue, nor is your point. The original point was, the technology exists to watch DVD movies on some widely used operating systems, and not on other widely used operating systems. Nor was there any indication that the 'authorized' producers of the decryption software were going to make one available for those unfortunates. So, a bunch of people who disagree that the wealthiest corporations (i.e., Microsoft, for a random example) should be given any more of an advantage, found a way to do a service for others like themselves, and decrypted the damn thing. I won't even go into the whole linking issue...anyway, I'm just saying that the fact that you don't watch DVDs on a computer is no reason to deny this to anyone else. Honestly.
------------------------
"Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and
Free speech does NOT mean you are free to say ANYTHING you want, ANYTIME you want, and ANYWHERE you want. There are limits to "free speech."
Slander and libel (forms of speech) are illegal. Perjury is illegal. Each of these term has a clear legal definition. Obscenity (a form of speech) is illegal (the trick here is getting a solid legal definition of what obscenity is). Inciting a riot (a form of speech) is illegal. I could go on.
What Ray said applies to anything you say anywhere, not just to this particular thread on slashdot. If you say something slanderous or print a libelous statement, you could be sued, and all your cries of "free speech" wouldn't mean squat.
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
Are they named? That'd be way too funny. It was only up there for a coupla days, but long enough for a boatload of people to download it.
Ah, CNet, great distributor of contraband.
What you are suggesting is to play right into the hands of the Thought Police and self censor.
NOT WHILE THERE IS BREATH IN MY BODY!
The battle lines are being drawn for the last great struggle for freedom. The genie is out of the bottle, the internet has connected minds in a way that could not have happened previously in the history of humankind, and the Power is feeling very threatened indeed. They are attempting to put the genie back in the bottle, and kill the internet, kill the (dare I say it) freedom to inovate, the freedom to share and the freedom to think.
Use this freedom now to stop this madness from spreading, and start at home now, with your own thoughts.
This attempt, and a whole lot of WIPO must be resisted, and a large dose of Public Disobedience, coupled with strategic law suits, political lobbying and just plain old Writing Code is needed.
Stay strong.
Me, I'm pointing out this stupidity to the film companies. That industry has to realize the waste of effort involved in copy protection...anything science can do, science can duplicate.
It talks about the speed of current laws in relation to the speed of the internet and legal precidents.
Forget about the implementation. Let them shut down CSS. What really matters is the algorithm.
Get the algorithm described in a way that is easily implementable. They can stop one implementation, but they cannot stop everybody
from implementing the algorithm. Create a skeleton around with a clean interface, so anybody can plug-in an implementation of the CSS breaking code. We can then publish and pass around the algorithm. They can stop an implementation, but they cannot stop the distribution of algorithms!
Why don't we all just put DVD decryption documentation on CVS or some more obscure interface that the lawyers are too stupid to figure out?
TFTP comes to mind, but probably most firewall block it.
Maybe some protocol that only has a linux/unix clients. Does CODA allow for global sharing?
That way they can't see it and therefor it must not excist.
209.207.224.41, 209.207.224.42, 209.207.224.40 These three IPs are what I got when I resolved "www.slashdot.org"... Keep them safe, so if the bad people come, everyone can still discuss what to do about them! :-)
IIRC, the complaint talks about "improper" means or motives for the decryption. A trade secret is protected if reasonable measures are taken to protect it.
"The protection accorded the trade secret holder is against the disclosure or unauthorized use of the trade secret by those to whom the secret has been confided under the express or implied restriction of nondisclosure or nonuse. The law also protects the holder of a trade secret against disclosure or use when the knowledge is gained, not by the owner's volition, but by some 'improper means,' Restatement of Torts s 757(a), which may include theft, wiretapping, or even aerial reconnaissance. A trade secret law, however, does not offer protection against discovery by fair and honest means, such as by independent invention, accidental disclosure, or by so-called reverse engineering, that is by starting with the known product and working backward to divine the process which aided in its development or manufacture." (from Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp., a 1974 Supreme Court case.)
Obviously, the DVD brigade wants to make what has been done an "improper means" under the law as opposed to "fair and honest means." (California Law is California Law, and as Professor Froomkin has pointed out, there may be any number of wierdnesses in it. YMMV.)
I don't know very much about DVD at all, but I could imagine that if I was given an audio CD that was encrypted, I could just read off a raw image and burn it to a fresh CD. Are DVD's somehow different?
from the PDF of the request for an injunction(http://www.2600.com/news/1999/1227-mot. pdf)
PDF Page 8
"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 address, which provide "links" to other web sites which disseminate confidential proprietary CSS information:"
doe#60 www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=547600297.
so sense deja is just a web interface for USENET are they in effect trying to control USENET?
i mean deja is the closest thing to a sue able entity related to USENET right?
Who do we contact?
Who do we snail mail or e-mail or phone?
DeCSS is NOT copying software. We need to let people know this. It is the first step in building software to play DVD's on OS's other than Windows.
There is no encryption scheme they can build that can't be undone. Nothing is 'uncopyable'. No code is 'unbreakable'.
Q - Why bother fighting the inevitable?
A - Because the people who developed the DVD Video format lied to 'hollywood' exec's and told them no one would be able to copy their 'oh so precious' DVD movies. Now they have to try to make that lie true.
In trying to make their lies true, they are attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of the world and say they have a right to make sure no one attempts to crack their encryption scheme. For any reason! They also want to be able to collect fees from software companies that wish to make DVD software.
Welcome to the capitalist machine.
As for their statement that DeCSS is for pirating DVD movies...
Did Einstien figure out atom-splitting so he could blow up Hiroshima?
-C
Here's the funny thing about encryption. People use encryption because they want to put the security of their data in their own hands without having to get uncle scam involved, right? Now if the DVD forum had done their job and had a decent encryption algorithm created for DVDs they wouldn't be in this mess right now. But they used an incredibly poor algorithm, and they got bit. Deal with it. If someone breaks into my house with a lock pick, I'm not going to go after the company that made the lock pick, I'm going to go after the guy who used the lock pick to commit a crime. Also, if my version of a lock is a dead bolt that goes into a weak wooden door frame, it's pretty much my fault when someone kicks my door in.
I really don't see how publishing information on how to bypass any security protection is any different than publishing information in say, a lock smith magazine (I'm sure they must exist somewhere) explaining how to open the latest and greatest lock. Sure the information can be used for criminal purposes, but it can also be used for perfectly legal purposes, such as when you lose the key to your house and you want to get in without having to break a window.
-matt
Trade Group Files Suit Against All Identifiable Posters of or Linkers to
Linux DVD Hack
EFF Assembling Legal Team to Defend Targets
The movie industry, through its recently activiated Digital Video Disc
Content Control Association (DVD CCA), a trade organization
controlling DVD patents, has filed a lawsuit in California against
dozens of people around the world. who have published information, or
links to information, about the DVD Content Scrambling System (CSS),
on the Internet. As many as 500 defendants could eventually be named.
The DVD CCA claims that the defendants are violating the association's
trade secrets and other intellectual property rights by posting the
source code of (or simply having links to other sites with the source
code of) a legally reverse-engineered means of decoding DVD discs. An
important hearing in the case has been scheduled for tomorrow, Wed.,
Dec. 29, 1999.
Tomorrow's hearing is on whether the judge should issue a temporary
restraining order against the defendants, who have been publishing
information about the DVD content scrambling system in various
locations in the US and worldwide. Any such order, if issued, would
only apply for a few weeks, while the parties argued in court about
whether a permanent injunction should restrict these defendants from
publishing this information for the duration of the court case.
It is EFF's opinion that this lawsuit is an attempt to architect law
to favor a particular business model at the expense of free
expression. It is an affront to the First Amendment (and UN human
rights accords) because the information the programmers posted is
legal. EFF also objects to the DVD CCA's attempt to blur the
distinction between posting material on one's own Web site and merely
linking to it (i.e., providing directions to it) elsewhere.
These defendant individuals have been publishing legitimate, protected
speech, including software, textual descriptions, and discussions of
the DVD CSS. This speech is in no way copied or acquired from the DVD
CCA's trade-secret documents. Copyrights do not give anyone any rights
in "ideas", only in the exact form in which they are expressed.
Trade-secret law only controls people who agreed to keep it secret and
have been told the secret; other people remain free to independently
discover the secret. The ideas being discussed and implemented were
apparently extracted by having an engineer study a DVD product
("reverse engineering it"), which is a legal activity that is not
restricted by any laws in most jurisdictions.
The DVD CCA is trying to shut these speakers down by starting with the
false assumption that reverse engineering is illegal. It is not. If,
for example, the DVD reverse engineering had been done in Santa Clara,
it would be legal under the 9th Circuit Court case Sega v. Accolade.
See also the 1998 US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides
specifically in section 1201(f) that reverse engineering of an
copy-protection encryption system is legal for "interoperability",
which is why it was done in this case.
The case itself is organized as a "theft of trade secrets" case; it
doesn't use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and doesn't appear to
rely otherwise on copyright law. The root of the case is their
allegation that the original reverse-engineering of the DVD CSS system
was "improper" (paragraph 18), "unauthorized" (para. 20), "wrongfully
appropriating proprietary trade secrets" (para. 21), "unauthorized use
of proprietary CSS information, which was illegally "hacked" (para.
22). However, they provide no proof of these allegations, and they are
unlikely to be true. If the original reverse-engineering was legal,
which we believe is true, then the subsequent republication of the
information is also legal, and the case is merely a tool to harass
people exercising their legal rights.
EFF's interest in the case is to protect reverse engineering as part
of First Amendment protected speech. EFF legal counsel Robin Gross,
and pro-bono counsel Allonn Levy of Huber, Samuelson will be at Santa
Clara Superior Court tomorrow morning to represent at least two
defendants, Chris DiBona and Andrew Bunner. EFF co-founder John
Gilmore will also attend at the hearing tomorrow. EFF will at minimum
provide "stop-gap" defense to avoid a temporary restraining order
against the defendants. Following the hearing, EFF will assess the
situation and the level of our involvement.
EFF is committed to ensuring that individuals rights are protected,
and free speech is a fundamental right. It would be a poor public
policy to allow intellectual property owners to expand their property
at the expense of free speech -- particularly when the speech in
question elucidates how companies constrain the distribution of other
free expression.
The technology at issue here is the DVD Content Scrambling System
(CSS), a technical effort to prevent people who have legally purchased
a DVD from making completely legal copies of it for their own use. It
is legal ("fair use") for people to make personal copies of
copyrighted material available to them. (See, e.g., the Supreme
Court's 1984 decision in the "Betamax" case, Sony Corp. v. Universal
City Studios. In that case a movie studio was trying to have all VCR's
banned from the United States because of the potential to "pirate"
valuable movies -- just as in the current case they are attempting to
have all reverse-engineered decoders of DVDs banned. The Supreme Court
ruled that if VCR's have even a single non-infringing use, they cannot
be banned. It is clear that the reverse-engineered DVD CSS has a
non-infringing use, the viewing of DVDs on the Linux operating
system.) The underlying technology is for censorship, for control over
who can communicate what to whom. The DVD CSS prevents people from
making illegal copies -- and also prevents them from making LEGAL
copies, by preventing them from making ALL copies. The publishers are
trying to take away, by technical means, the rights guaranteed to
citizens under the copyright laws of many jurisdictions, including the
US.
The decoder source code at the center of the case, called "DeCSS", was
created (by third parties, not the defendants) to enable Linux
computers to utilize DVD drives and content, since the industry itself
failed to produce the necessary drivers for this operating system. DVD
CCA alleges rather unbelievably that the source code's real purpose is
to enable illegal duplication of DVD discs. The industry association
also misleadingly suggests that the DVD medium is simply a vehicle for
commercial content delivery, when in fact it is a read-write medium
intended to be used as computer storage by computer-using consumers,
just like hard drives or writable CDs.
We believe that the industry is mounting this legal attack merely as a
charade to discourage the widespread adoption of the legally
reverse-engineered information into popular open source software
programs. They knew that their "encryption system" was weak and that
it would not withstand scrutiny, so they kept it secret as long as
possible. Now that it's out in the open, they are wielding legal clubs
against anyone who attempts to write about it or use it, to delay the
inevitable. If they wanted to keep their information secret, they
shouldn't have made millions of copies of it and sold them all over
the world. Instead their tactics have been to follow the inevitable
disclosure by swift oppression, using large bankrolls to send lawyers
against little people. But the little people are part of the Linux
community and the Internet community, which have made billions of
dollars recently, and are not kindly disposed toward oppression.
More information, including case documents, is available at Chris
DiBona's site: http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/index.shtml
WHAT YOU CAN DO: Show up!
If you're in the SF Bay Area and can make it to the hearing, consider
it "Netizen's Dress-Up Day" on Wed., Dec. 29. Meet at the front of the
Santa Clara County Superior Court, 191 N. 1st St., San Jose, CA, at
8am PST, dressed sharp, to personally attend the DVD case hearing. It
is important that the judge see an unexpectedly large and intent
attendance. The hearing will begin at 8:30 in one of Departments 2, 9
or 12 (uncertain at this time).
We will follow the hearing with a press conference outside the
courthouse, and many attendees will do a group lunch at nearby Havana
Cuba Restaurant.
Watch the wheels of justice grind! Shake hands with the intrepid
lawyers who are working hard to protect our rights! Meet interesting
defendants risking a lot to excercise their rights!
Please make a positive impression on the judge. Don those expensive,
semi-formal duds. Show the court -- by showing up -- that this case
matters to more people than just the plaintiff and defendants.
Demonstrate that this decision will make a difference to society. That
the public and the press are watching, and really do care that the
issue is handled well.
We'll have to be quiet and orderly while we're in the courthouse.
There will be no questions from the audience (that's us), and no
photography there, but the session will be tape-recorded and
transcribed, and you can take notes if you like. Remember that courts
have strict security these days, so don't bring cameras, or even small
pocket knives unless you want them held by entrance guards while
you're in the courthouse.
We realize this is very short notice, and that only locals are likely
to be able to attend, but this case is moving rapidly toward filing
and there is nothing we can do to delay it.
For more information on this gathering, see:
http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/plan/
DVD Copy Control Association
225 B Cochrane Circle
Morgan Hill CA 95037
EMAIL: john.hoy@lmicp.com
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
The DVD CCA people have picked up one of the best law firms in the business for this kind of thing, from what I have heard. People should not assume that they are stupid or foolish; the default assumption should be that everything is being done for a reason.
;)
Part of this can be seen in the hoops we defendants are having to go through. This sort of temporary restraining order is made to be used in cases where immediate damage is imminent unless the order is passed; this means that it can be rushed through the courts in rapid fashion. The notice of hearing was given only two days before the hearing itself. The hearing was set for 8:30 in the morning there, making it even harder for people acting on short notice to get there in time to defend themselves. This is compounded by the fact that some of the court offices there do not open until 9am; I have been trying all morning to get in touch with the Clerk of Court for reasons which I won't specify here, and have been unable to. Now, I will have to wait to act upon some advice I have received until *after* the hearing has started; and I will not even be allowed to be present in person, because of the short notice given.
Fortunately, we are receiving legal support from numerous people volunteering their services, including one prominent group whom I'll avoid naming here. People are bending over backwards to help us. But it will probably be a long road, as can be seen from the evidence I cite above.
I shall say no more now, to avoid letting something slip that I shouldn't. It's so much fun being under the gun.
I dunno, automotive-grade chips (-40/+105 C temperature range) would handle the steaming part just fine as long as they were cooled with water (and thus wouldn't exceed 100 C device temperature). The effect of bubbling coolant on the lens focus is another matter. ;-)
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If it's illegal to link to places which contain
the code, then don't do that. The code
can be overseas. Links to the code are also
overseas. People in the USA can just link
to overseas pages which contain links to the code.
-- You've got to get a hat if you want to get ahead.
Based on what these lawyers seem to be arguing: If the contents of a link changed to something illegal, all the existing links would become illegal. So, does this mean that I am automatically a narcotics felon if I happen to drive down a street that happens to have drug-dealers selling on the corners? Hrm, so much for "Life, Liberty etc" in the USA.
It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire
or you can be held liable. I suspect this is why people use the acronym.
Some 40 years ago, cigarettes were found to be carcenogous and a label was put on the pack saying they were harmful to your health. People ignored the fact and smoked anyways only later to sue saying they didn't know it was bad for them. They won. States sued saying that it cost billions in health care even though they made billions by taxing cigarettes. They sued. They won.
The Second Ammendment protects the right to ban arms, as in military armaments. After trying to nullify the Second Ammendment and failing, the executive branches, federally and locally, are now trying to sue the manufacturers out of business by claiming they make a defective product even though it does exactly what it was designed to do.
Everyone is now seeking to patent everything in sight regardless of how much it took to actually "innovate" it and blatently lying about how unique and "non-obvious" it was to come up with. Now everyone is sueing everyone else over patent infringement involving patents anyone familiar with the area could have thought up in minutes.
If you can't get your way via conventional methods, arm your lawyers and fire away at everything in sight. After all, what do the companies/government have to fear? All of their lawyers get paid whether they bring a case or not... They risk losing quite little in the hopes of winning big... I can't remember the last time I heard of a corporate lawyer being disbarred for bringing a false/misleading case. The corporations government can control public influence with their marketing budgets or by buying up their favorite media outlet( whether outright buying it or making enticing offers like an exclusive interviews). Not to mention our heading towards a plutocracy
Is this what we've come to? Have we become slaves to our corporate masters only to bow down to their orders? How many average people actually understand the gravity behind serious cases like this? Hell, depending on some polls, 20% more people think Clinton should have been impeached last year. A large part of the problem today is the general apathy of the public towards anything that doesn't affect their daily personal lives and the ignorace that the mass have because of their apathy.
How do we get the public at large to wake up and see what's going on around them if they don't care? How do we stop the lawyers from trampling over everyone's rights in sight? How do we remove the bias that the media inevitably has since they're owned by big corporations? What of the precidents these cases set? While important, protesting this single case is just fixing the symptom and not going after the real problem.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Lets boycott the CCA, the RIAA and the assorted other odious associations with similar names. Let us all agree to refuse to do any work for them and to refuse to hire anyone who ever has worked for them. Lets see how far they get with every tech person on the planet refusing to take a job with them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So decrypting information that a company wants to keep secret is now illegal? If I send information that I've rot13'ed and someone I don't want to read it rot13's it, can I sue them? Does that mean that I can post a zip file to an anonymous ftp site and specify that nobody unzip it and sue them if they do?
Basically, the consortium is trying to sue someone for creating a tool to read information that they own.
did you ask for the colonel?
Well, if you want the source code, you can't just ask for the colonel. Make sure you ask for "The Colonel's Secret Recipe"
The European Union passed laws several years ago that explicitly _allow_ disassembly and reverse-engineering "to ensure interoperability" between systems.
Now, if this weren't a David vs. Goliath issue but a clash between European and American corporate behemoths, this might lead to a nice discussion on restraint of trade for the next GATT talks... -Martin
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
Admittedly, they encoded with a pitifully weak 40bit key, one which anyone, had we but known how pitiful it was, dedicated a few machines to cracking anyway. But in fact, Xing (which is why they keep turning up in the legal docs) left their decoding key accessible in their player software; MoRE didn't even 'reverse engineer' the code or crack the crypto. They just found they key laying around, effectively.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
OK. IANAL, however, as I said yesturday in response to the MP3 linking case on slashdot, here is my opinion:
(Remember to read throught the article on MP3 linking yesturday as that was very relevent to this too)
By uploading some code of some kind, be it mp3 instructions or whatever, I am "creating" content. When someone links to that content they are citing anothers creation or IP. However, it is widely accepted that I can write an article in a journal or newspaper (or whatever) that rerences another persons' work as a "link" - the kind that you would have in an appendix or footnote.
Surely linking is similar to this, I am citing a reference to another's work, just like I would in a book or other similar medium. It is rediculous to not allow *linking*.
Furthermore, if I reverse engineer some code, I am using my own computer and using my legal right to do whatever I want with my own computer. Surely since I bought the computer, it is perfectly acceptable for me to examine its inner functioning to see how it is working. If during this process I learn how a program works, well then that is just a side affect of me using my computer (my property) in a legal manner. This rediculous industry tactic of patenting and squashing all of the good ideas out of existance in favour of the "corporate way" is stifling growth and chocking a once much more open community. If the judge is reading this, for God's sake, have some sense and do the decent thing - don't let the "big boys" with the money take the candy away from the smaller boys just because they want to.
Jon.
http://www.jonmasters.org/
You're absolutely correct. The reason we say it is that lawyers have established for themselves the monopoly on getting paid to give legal advice, so IANAL means "I am not trying to give legal advice".
But, as you eloquently point out, what it REALLY means is "I'm going to let this elite determine the way in which I can express myself, and let them badger me into being timid about discussing fundamental freedoms."
So, as a previous offender, I hereby promise to stand up for my right to speak, and never use IANAL again.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
From the complaint, pps. 45, 46, and 47, , for your convenience: "....The DeCSS program ... is a substantial derivation of confidential proprietary information which DVD CCA licenses pursuant to the CSS Agreement....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."
This case is not fundamentally about DVD, not about CSS, not about linking, not even about reverse engineering. This is really about the legitimacy of "shrinkwrap" software licenses, and IMO it should be treated as such.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
it seems the information age has sparked a tremendous new ideological debate. information wants to be free. the very nature and code of the internet says that information should be free. does art too want to be free? it is narrow minded to see this as simply an issue of open source vs. secrecy. the implications of unlocking music and motion pictures... or even books for that matter would cause a paradigm shift like no other in the world of creative arts. an artist, the creator of art, is and should be entitled to make a decent living if there is demand for her work. css was designed to protect the creative investment of artists, as well as the financial investment of the artists supporters, greedy as they may be. piracy is wrong. piracy cicumvents the means by which someone can make a living as an artist. the real question at hand is, where do we draw the line between art and information. whether he knew it or not, Carmack set the precident with his release of the Q1 source. He asserted that a program itself should be considered information, and the data used by that program is art. Art which should not be used without compensating its' creator for their hard work. a society is judged by the way they value art. the outcome of this lawsuit could very well change the way our culture defines art. brace yourself.
Alright, I'm pissed.
My name is splashed over a 20 page legal document stating this and that and that and a whole load of bullshit. DVD cracking will not cause a significant financial burden onto the consortium. They must think these underground crackers have immense resources to market and inform the average consumer of their ability to copy DVDs. Oh wait. People are already doing it anyway. It's called a VHS VCR and an RCA jack. Record -> Play.
What's worse is that since the letter was sent so late (2 days before the legal date!), I was financially unable to travel to Santa Clara, CA to attend said hearing. How the hell am I supposed to get to Santa Clara, CA in 2 DAYS?!!?!? FLy?!? and pay $700 for one-way since it is so close to the day I want to fly??
Second, I never received any hard-copy confirmation of my legal travesty. Hello? Isn't this law somewhere? What if my e-mail account was shut off for the duration of winter vacation? I probably would've had no idea that I might get a TRO against me. They're supposed to send this stuff through the USPS!!!!
Thirdly, I don't know WTF to do! I've removed the files off of my school's site per advice from a friend. And apparently, on the final draft, my name is still on the list of defendants.
Section 2 of DVD CCA vs. McLaughlin, et al. states : "2. The named defendants, and certain Doe defendants, continue their unauthorized posting of proprietary information -- which they either obtained by improper means or knew or should have known was obtained by others by improper means -- despite the fact that cease and desist letters were sent to their web sites demanding that such proprietary information be taken down from their sites..." If this was filed half an hour ago today, and I've had my site down since Tuesday, shouldn't I be exempt from the action?
I don't know what to do. Can someone with a legal background tell me what I _can_ do?
-- adraken
There is no way in hell this will happen.
Someone should get a hold of the ACLU. These people want to tear apart the constitution in order to protect their precious DVD encryption.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free excercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of, the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of greviances"
This is, essentially, people excersising their freedom of speech, their first ammendment right.
I think a stronger argument is that you really don't need DeCSS to copy DVD's. This is what they are aledging by calling DeCSS "DVD Copying/Pirating Software".
You can copy the DVD by downloading the raw data from the drive to the hard disk. Don't need DeCSS for that. Need DeCSS to read the file.
If we had burners of sufficient capacity, we could just burn the raw image to the drive with the encryption entact.
What with Linux now being the official OS of the
People's Republic of China, and with DeCSS being
important to Linux, and with this case possibly
setting precedents that can figuratively
buttscrew the Open Source community...
How long is it until "Red China" starts
protesting these awful human rights abuses taking
place in the US of A? >:->
Heh heh heh heh heh...
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Just thought I'd pass the following info along i found at
http://www.newswire.com.au/9908/copyri.htm
The passage of the Copyright Amendment (Computer Programs) Bill 1999
yesterday will allow software developers to reverse-engineer software
code in order to develop interoperable products, if the original developer
doesn't make interface information available. In passing the law, the
Federal Government has argued that making such activities illegal is an
impediment to Australian software developers.
Looks like what ever happens in the US, the code
would still be legal in Australia provided your allowed to link to it.
Just my $0.02
the coke recipe isn't too complicated. The only secret part are the flavors added to it (the "vegetable extracts" as they term it in Europe)... And those are simple -- they're kola nut extract and coca extract.
You forgot neroli oil. Can't forget the neroli oil, as it has a subtle citrus(orange) flavor that is EASILY missed, unless you know that it's supposed to be there and you pay close attention to it.
It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire
YAMS (yet another mirror site). http://everest.debian.net/dvd. Get the bits while they're hot. I'm not afraid of lawyers.
Andrew G. Feinberg
AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN, Netscape, Excite, and of course AOL all have links to this. All of these guys have money, and it's very probable that at least one of them won't obey this court order through sheer carelessness. Let's get ready to Sue!
--------------------
Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
To me the most important part of this case is that if the DVD CCA wins, then no official linux distribution will ever contain an open source DVD implementation. This could possibly be a major blow for opensource, with the claim that Windows has DVD support, out of the box. (While it really doesn't, but still it is easy to come by.) I would love to DVD fully supported in RedHat or Debian, but none of the distributions want to deal with DVD because of its legal implications. Already the dxr2 mailing list has had posts saying that RedHat will most likely not include the drivers due to their legal implications.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
Not this debate again...
In the coder community, hacker means "one who codes in an excellent fashion", and a cracker is one who breaks security.
In the security community, a cracker is one who breaks copy protection, and a hacker is one who breaks into networked computers.
In the engineer community, a hacker is one who does crappy work.
While I respect ESR, but I believe that in banging his jargon on the heads of everyone else because that's the way he likes it he is just being stubborn.
He is a VERY smart guy, but not everything that comes out of his mouth is gospel...
Different groups have used different jargon. All are useful. Get over it.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
I understand that there are agreements on such issues between countries, however, I can imagine that they must include provisions for fairness of trials. And how can it be fair when the suing party files the suit in California, for example, and the defending party is in Austria? Besides, in criminal cases, I know that most countries won't extrade (sp?) the convict if he's a national.
This appears to primarily be about violations of the Digital Media Copyright Act, which makes it illegal to distribute, sell, or create software which breaks copy protection.
The arguments I see here don't seem to take that into consideration.
I get an itchy feeling at the base of my skull every time I see trade secrets mentioned in these discussions.
I went to look at The EFF's Announcement and they, too say that "The DVD CCA claims that the defendants are violating the association's trade secrets and other intellectual property rights...".
The distinguishing characteristic of a "trade secret" is that it is a secret! The only protections for trade secrets are that a company may require the signing of a non-disclosure agreement before giving someone access to information that contains trade secrets. All this does is provide a mechanism to penalise that signatory if by overt act or negligence on his/her/its part the information is disclosed and therefore no longer secret.
The "owner" of the secret information has a cause of action in this case against the party who violated the NDA, but it ends there. There are other mechanisms (copyright, patent) designed to allow information to be publicly disclosed but still protected. Once a company chooses to go the route of trade secrets, they have to accept that in the case of breech, they have no lasting claim on exclusive use of the information.
So, if the DVD CCA pushes this aspect of their case, they should fail miserably. As to their "other IP rights," they'd better have patents or be able to demonstrate copyright violation if they want to get traction.
A failure of the judicial system to uphold the partitioning of IP protection schemes that has been put in place (as would be the case if the DVD CCA prevails) would be a serious breech of public trust, and would have far-reaching implications for IP in the USA in general. Since much of law is based on precedent-guided interpretation, a judgement in favor of the DVD CCA would essentially destroy the old meaning of trade secret and install in its place a new tool that behaves like a trade secret until/unless illegally disclosed and then behaves like a combination of copyright/patent thereafter. Very dangerous, indeed!
I believe it was said elsewhere on Slashdot, but it bears repeating here: The only trade secret defendant the DVD CCA should be permitted to pursue is the company that did not take reasonable steps to keep the information secret (presuming that can be demonstrated).
perl -e 'srand(-2091643526); print chr rand 90 for (0..4)'
DISCLAIMER
. . . Some of the articles on this World Wide Web site contain links to other resources on the Internet. Those links are provided as citations and aids to help you identify and locate other Internet resources that may be of interest, and are not intended to state or imply that WG&M sponsors, is affiliated or associated with, or is legally authorized to use any trade name, registered trademark, logo, legal or official seal, or copyrighted symbol that may be reflected in the links. . . .
jeff_C
What really pisses me off is that all of the articles linked to say it's about piracy. Now, sure DeCSS has made it much easier to make copies, but the main thing is I want to watch Matrix in linux, as do many others. This just another sign that patents are a Bad Thing. All patents should do is require atribution of original authors. Then we don't have to GPL programs anymore :) They all will be open source (unless they're kept secret and not patented). I have much more to say about my fully groked wrongness of patents, but i'm tired and recovering from a nasty cold.. so someone jump in :P
-- d'arcy poirot
Has anyone noticed that the media keeps referring to those who wrote this software as "hackers?" Yes, this does meet our definition of hacker, but at the same time portrays them in a bad light. Last night I spoke to Mike Mussgrove, the Washington Post reporter linked above. His article is no better than any of them, even after we discussed the whole reason for the software existing. Even after we agreed that it was not for piracy but for watching DVDs with Linux, he only stated that at the end of his story after numerous references to "allowing people to copy DVDs" and "cracking the encryption that prevents piracy". How can we trust the media if they always spin the story against us?
Andrew G. Feinberg
The underlying problem isn't in the laws that are currently on the books, if the laws were enforced with common sense things would work well. Lawyers on the other hand, their sole job and existance is to bend those laws or cloud the truth/law to the point that it is in their favor. and Alas, the seats our judges set on are filled with .... Lawyers! take a really close look at out judical/law system... it is nothing but an exclusive club for the furthering of corruption and thievery. The judges help the lawyers, the lawyers help the judges... Try and go into a court without a Lawyer... the judge will be instantly predejuce against you. (dont even try to tell me otherwise... I studied this closely at local and state levels)
if you're in a court, the highest bidder get's to buy the judge.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I do. I have a 12" TV, and a 21" monitor. Guess which one I use to whatch movies? By the way, 21", fixed sync, monitors are really cheap. My second hand one costed about 600 swedish crowns (1kr = 1/8 euro, I think)... A new "normal" 21" monitor costs about 8000 crowns. And of course, I can not afford a 21" TV!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
And if you've bought a new car recently, you hear such things as "You have to have the oil changed here, because the local grease monkey can't do it right without our company training" and "don't be tempted to give anyone a jumpstart - a power surge could destroy all your onboard computers causing thousands of dollars of damage".
Soon you won't even be able to lift the hood without the special company certified and distributed key. Reminds me of the special "case-cracking tool" Apple/Mac repair shops had to use to open the one piece beige toasters of yesteryear.
http://www.2600.com/news/1999/1227.html
If you lika me like I lika you...
How they would prosecute that?
Moderate this down (-1, It's Too Late, Go Home)
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
This needs to be moderated up, and I don't have the points to do it right now...
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
The Courts need to be made aware of the true motivation behind this lawsuit, which seems to me to be about protecting the regionalization of DVD, and keeping a stranglehold on who is allowed to manufacture a DVD Player, and not about copying at all. After all, all it takes to copy a DVD is to burn the exact same bits onto another disk. But, then you'd need an approved player for it to do you any good. What DeCSS is doing is allowing anyone to manufacture a DVD player (most specifically in software, for Linux) without the permission of the Powers That Be.
This needs to be made clear. The reason that DeCSS is being targetted, is that it would destroy the monopoly on DVD playback Hardware and allow people to obtain DVD players that would play back DVDs made for any Region. This would, of course, force down DVD prices, as cross-region competition would be possible.
Had to comment...
This isnt the first time someone's been legally threatened for linking (actually that case in sweden was just thrown out) and im sure someone's brought this up before, but couldnt an unfavorable ruling here lead to some vicuously evil legal hacks? I mean, a recording industry exc with an ax to grind could then just go onto a site he doesnt like, anonymously post a link to DeCSS or pirated music or whatever, then sue the site for linking to it.
Of course, they could do that already- sure it prolly wouldnt have any legal standing, but the victimized site would prolly run out of money before they could convince a judge of this.
Anyway, is there anyone out there fighting for -sensible- net and IP laws in an organized way?
IMHO, IANAL, I Dont Really Know What Im Taking About So Just Ignore Me Please, The era of web anarchy seems to be coming to a close, or at least being pushed horribly deep underground, and the legal system thats shaping up right now doesnt look to be good for anyone (worth under 100 mil that is).. who out there is working not just to hold off the advance of ridiculous lawsuits, but advocate reform to ensure our liberties on the net, and perhaps simplify things a bit? I mean, issues of juristiction alone.. in a realm where physical location doesnt matter, what is legal depends on what country the server's in? geez.
three posts for the price of one!
wisconsin does not exist.
People will only wake up, I'm afraid, when it's far too late to do anything. It may be past that point now. Big business has such a foothold in government (even on the international level -- look at Chevron) and is so, so good at manipulation of the public, the media, and public officials now that the situation seems almost hopeless. How can people be made to know of what's really happening when they're conditioned to accept as canon what they read in the newspaper and see on the local and national news programs? Will they really believe the ramblings of some kooks on the internet, no matter how many of us there are? Hell, even I take everything on the Web with a grain of salt, and I consider myself an open-minded person. What the vast majority of people that will only ever put their faith the old-fashioned media?
The revolution will not be televised, because it isn't going to occur.
- 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?"
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Just to be different I thought I'd server up a tarball of the soruce via finger. Just finger css@darkcorner.net, pipe it to a file, edit out the top few lines, and untar it. Does that count as mirroring it?
-chris (gandalf@darkcorner.net)
...The DeCSS program ... is a substantial derivation of confidential proprietary information which DVD CCA licenses pursuant to the CSS Agreement....
This is why DVD CCA cares about DeCSS. They don't really care about copies of DVDs, or whether a few Linux geeks meddle with DVD content. They care that DeCSS hits them where they live: their licensing fees.
Admittedly I'm speculating here, since I have no particular knowledge of how the DVDCCA licenses that weak cryptosystem to the DVD player manufacturers and DVD content providers. But let's assume that they get some (per copy?) royalty - or certainly at least some annual licensing fee - from the manufacturers and media companies. Now appears on the scene compatible encrypting/decrypting software that is free of DVDCCA's encumbrances. Kiss those licensing fees goodbye.
The company is going after the hackers, web site owners, et alia now because (a) they're seen as a softer target and (b) to preempt any abandonment of licensing by their existing customers. You can bet that if they waited until clients started switching to DeCSS code to sue (possibly for violation of contract terms?) they'd have a much tougher time of it (or think they would -- I don't think this is going to be as easy as they thought).
I don't know if this angle has been considered by anyone yet, and the hearing is going on right now, but it helps to have a good idea of your opponents real goals when getting involved in something like this.
-- Alastair
OK, I'm going to stay out of the "linking" issue.
I had a long discussion with my dad on this subject, who works in the field of intellectual property. (Not a patent lawyer, but he deals closely with them and knows the laws.)
With respect to reverse engineering: Any reverse engineering of something obtained legally is legal, UNLESS you sign or otherwsie accept a contract saying you will not do so. Most likely the Xing player had such a clause in its shrinkwrap license.
Hence, the authors of DeCSS's actions were illegal.
Hence, anything resulting from their actions is tainted.
Still, the CCA's strongest case is against Xing for violation of an NDA. Two problems with this: Xing doesn't have much money, for one.
The second is that the law covers measurable damages (Xing pays $x, where x is the amount of damage the release of the information did.), AND it covers what are called "irreparable damages" - As to what they can do to Xing if Xing is found to have caused irreparable damage, I don't know. But if the CCA shows DeCSS as an example of Xing causing such damage (CCA tried to repair it with this order and it didn't work), Xing's ass is grass.
As to the naming of foreign nationals in the suit: It is legal. You can sue someone in absentia for breaking one of your laws. There may not be anything you can do to punish said person, but you can do it. (Note: Your'e toast if you lose such a case and later set foot in the States. Of course, the CCA probably won't notice your entry for a case like this.)
How to get DVD under Linux, if all the information is legally tainted, then?
It depends on the wording of the CSS NDAs. NDAs often have a clause that disclosure is allowed once the information becomes public knowledge, even if the existing knowledge is tainted. So there's a chance that another company can legally release CSS information now. (In fact, Creative may have done this. I know their Dxr2 drivers had some CSS-related files - did these include the full algorithm, and did they originate in any way from DeCSS? I'm pretty sure the Dxr2 does CSS in software...)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"Good" has connotations that are inaccurate in this context. "Good lawyers" do pro bono work for EFF. :-)
Directive 91/250/EEC approved May 14, 1991 contains explicit provisions (look for "Decompilation 1", the document isn't formatted nicely) stating that reverse engineering is absolutely legal when done:
So, it seems that reverse engineering that XING player in order to ensure interoperability with Linux was perfectly legal (in EU), and all the obscurity called for by DVD CCA was just a means to make it difficult for anyone to exercise this right.
As for all European Directives, 91/250 had to be accepted by the various national parliaments before becoming effective. The Italian variant of the directive, D.Lgs. 29/12/92 n. 518, is quite explicit on this respect (see Art. 5, modifications to Art. 64-quater -- in Italian!); I don't know about Norway, though.
Moreover, any contractual clause seeking to limit the rights to "observe, study, and test the software in order to understand its working principles" are deemed void by the law, so even calling that the original license agreement prohibited reverse engineering should not be a valid defense line. This, obviously, holds for Europe. I doubt an US court has any jurisdiction on the people writing DeCSS...
CNN Link: /TECH/ptech/12/28/dvd.crack/index.html
t ml?chkpt=zdnntop
http://www.cnn.com/1999
ZDNet:
http://ww w.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2414488,00.h
These actually are not bad stories.. They don't say what NPR did (that DeCSS is a means of "copying" DVD's and so on). Instead, mostly they say that the suit is BS, since they're nailing sites that reported the news. Not bad reads.
---
- 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.
This is what had to be done with SSH. Why not make this the de-facto standard way of handling crap like this?
My point being: it's not illegal, apparently, to *download* the software in the U.S.
- 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 imagine if ppl can write DVD drivers they will add options that the company doesn't want them to have. Oh well. They are buying acess to the info on the disk. As long as they do not copy and redistribute the copy, or brodcast it, or pirate it, i see no harm. Since DVDs do hold such massive amounts of data and there are other ways to pirate movies already, I assume this lawsuit is not about fear of a DVD piracy movement. I think it must be about being able to use DVD's in some manner that the ppl making the DVD players and DVD's don't like. What way is that?
Hmm, I have noticed a striking resemblance of this fight to the fight against MP3's. Here is a thought. One reason I like MP3's is that I can hear my music in a new way from a form that I chose without repurchasing the same music over and over again. It was tiring buying the CD of the tape of my favorite LP. I legitmately own at least 3 copies of some songs. I had a few cassette tapes break and had to buy second copies. I hated that.
But, if i duplicate my CD's, I have a backup in case one is scratched. I can also use my computer to transform the music into the format du jour. I don't pirate. I do have MP3's of songs on CD's that I own. I make certain those CD's and those MP3's are not playing at the same time. Nothing illegal about what i do, but it does keep some of my money in my pockets and out of the makers of CD's and tapes, etc.
As it stands now, If companies quit producing players and drivers for Windows, DVD's could become as useless as an 8 track tape without a player. I am sure at one point Windows will change enough that the current players/drivers won't work. They can then sell us our old favorites again if they choose. They can also choose to not sell us those favorites so that we are prompted to look into the new offerings.
If however, we know the algorithm, we can make new players and we can change the format to suit the current formats, whatever they may be. We don't have to repurchase what we already have bought rights to. There is a strong motivation to have DVDs instead of VHS tapes. DVDs have more info and less degradation over time, like CDs. But how much better can the next format really be? I doubt it will be good enough to make me shell out another $10-$30. Not if i can still play what i have.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
> Now if the DVD forum had done their job
...
This is another bit of disinformation that the media has bought into, and now Slashdotters as well.
Go back and reread Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram discussing this issue. Trying to control the end-user's use of content *with software* is fundamentally impossible. No matter how smart the DVD people were, they were doomed when the first player was released that did decryption in software.
It's just like software copy protection in the 80s: a patient, skilled hacker/cracker will be able to break whatever you come up with. Then they can package the crack in a program that anyone can download and run. Empirical evidence shows that this process is usually much easier than you'd think. Xing may have screwed up by not putting in as much obfuscation as other people, but they can't really be blamed.
Anyone (e.g. Intertrust) who tells you that they have a secure solution, that does not involve tamper-resistant hardware, is simply lying.
Movie? What's that? Haven't seen a movie in 5.5 years (coincidentally, when our first daughter was born.)
:-)
Just have young kids.
Just how big are the core bits of DeCSS? I remember when the "Munitions T-shirts" with a perl implimentation of DSS came out (Still have mine) some guy went so far as to tatoo the code on his body.
:)
I'd love to see them put a restraining order against someone's tatoo
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
ABC News has a similarly slanted story on the DVD lawsuit.
Read the article, and then go complain about it.
Finding God in a Dog
What if I had a link to a page that changed the content of that page to include a link to the DeCSS. Would that include me as a defendant in this case also.
Any search engine that had a link to a page with this content also would be considered a defendant also right?
So theroetically pretty much everyone can be a defendant in this case if you keep tracing back to everyone who links to your page and then links to that page and the page that brought you there etc.
So if linking is illegal then the whole concept of the internet must be illegal so I say go right to the start of the pesky internet and sue Al Gore, inventor of the internet.
----------------
Read the complaint carefully - it tries to get around the "it's a trade secret once it's out you're SOL" argumnet by claiming that the defendants were under a license from Xing (presumably a shrink-wrap) that included a clause prohibiting reverse engineering - thus they attempt toextend the trade secret to at least one of the named defendants - presumably all the rest are 'criminal conspirators'
I know it's been done alot already, and I'm probably to late to make a difference, but you can find decss here, tastefully mirrored from cubicmetercrystal.com.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
"UNLESS you sign or otherwsie accept a contract saying you will not do so" ...except that clause is probably not valid in Norway. Most countries in the EU explicitly permit reverse-engineering for compatibility purposes. So if it's illegal in Norway than somebody just needs to re-reverse-engineer it somewhere else.
For instance lawyers cannot be made to testify about conversations with their clients. That is not generally true. For instance a number of priests are today in jail because they refused to repeat what was said in confession.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Let's see if we can wrap up the essential arguments.
Here's what the DVD CCA claims:
The DeCSS writers used Xing drivers, thus agreeing to a license agreement that specifically forbids reverse engineering, to illegally break into the encryption scheme, thus making DVDs copyable. Since the only reasonable use of DeCSS would be to copy DVDs, they have acted against the DMCA prohibition on devices that circumvent copyright protection. Further, the defendants that provided sites and links were providing those sites and links for the sole purpose of encouraging the circumvention of copyright protection, also in violation of the DMCA.
Did I miss anything? Does the DMCA also stipulate situations under which TROs must be issued on *suspicion* of violation?
Here's the defense argument:
1. The Xing license agreement is not enforceable, as it asks every member of the general public to effectively participate in a non-disclosure agreement, as it was not explicitly negotiated during the purchase, and as it consigns rights one-sidedly to Xing. This license should thus not prohibit reverse engineering.
2. The action of cracking the encryption scheme is reverse engineering, not theft of trade secrets, as the DeCSS writers were not privy to any information not available to any consumer of the DVD player. Reverse engineering has been repeatedly upheld as a fundamental means of ensuring competition, and as inducement to patent.
3. Once the reverse engineering had been accomplished, the trade secret had been revealed, and any claim to ownership of that secret forfeited, so no one who disseminates DeCSS is guilty of industrial espionage, either.
4. Although DeCSS itself was written for copying DVDs in Windows, the secrets obtained (the cracked encryption scheme) and disseminated (as source?) by the DeCSS writers, makes it possible for the first time to *use* DVDs under Linux, which is a legitimate, non-copying use of the technology. Thus, any TRO should not prohibit use of the encryption scheme for driving DVD players in Linux.
5. Most of the defendants were largely interested in the legitimate Linux-player use of the technology, as the logistics of storing, trading, and "printing" DVD images currently makes it inconvenient for a casual copier, and unprofitable for any would-be pirate. Thus, these defendants should not be punished or restrained from disseminating the technology.
6. The untested DMCA prohibition on creation of a copyright-circumvention device is a breach of the precedents of fair use, which allow copying for purposes of backup and convenient use, and should not be enforced.
7. Some defendants only reported on these technologies and the means to obtain them. As these defendants' acts were in keeping with their broader editorial goals, any restrictions on their actions would constitute undue restraint on press activity.
8. Some defendants only provided an unedited public forum for discussion of these technologies, and cannot be held accountable for the expressions of participants in the forum.
In short, the DeCSS authors had the right to reverse engineer, the right to make a copying device, the right to make it possible to create a Linux-based player, and the other defendants had the right to disseminate these technologies, derive other technologies from them, provide infomation about them, and harbor discussions of them.
Did I miss any arguments here?
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Do you plan to set up IP blockades of whole nations (an act of war)?
I am not a prolific poster, or very eloquent when I type, but I would have to say that we need a new web. We need to return to the days when corporations and businesses had a minimal prescence on the net. Something that US Law cannot touch or any other country for that matter.
I don't think that it would be to challenging to create a new set of protocals and browsers that are technically superior to the html protocol and somehow limit corporate prescence. Corporations deserve a voice but they have to much control and power over the government (USA, specifically).
They don't have encryption on VHS. I can copy any movie that I rent (I don't though). This legal action is a blatent power move to gain more control over people and what the watch and when. If the US government sides with the DVD group, I would say that we (those in the US) live in a Fascist nation. Putting the rights of corporations before citizens, is just that. Fascism. This is not democracy.
Corporations have too much power.
So it's not about trade secrets, but about a government approved monopoly?
But even then, I'm in the Netherlands. This US law doesn't apply to me. Then Coca Cola is shit outta luck if I use their recipe and become a big softdrink manufacturer?
That's the problem with the internet right now. It's anarchy. There's no limitations and only a few minor laws. Who said linking is illegal? Absolutely no one. So, they shouldn't have a case, right? Wrong.
First of all, they must legally prove that DeCSS is a direct infringement on their trade secret rights. If they can't prove that, then there's no case as far as linking goes. But what if the the case goes in favor of CSS?
From a judicial point of view, this is the United States, and the United States has a right to regulate commerce (Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 3). Guess what? The judicial branch is meant to uphold the laws created by the Legislative branch, and believe me, if they find an infringement, they're going to put an end to it ASAP.
As Hemos said,
Once we cross the the bridge of dictating what can and cannot be linked to, than we open ourselves up to a world of people being able to sue whenever something they don't want linked is linked. Without linking, the Web is dead.
Well, the judiciaries are going to picture the internet just like the regular world (even though it's not). And they're going to see it like this: perhaps you're driving a car, and you drive your friend who's planning on robbing a 7-11 to the 7-11 store. Legally, it's aiding in a crime, and is subject to punishment. If someone is the "middleman" between a drug purchase, even if the middleman only directs the buyer to the seller, it's still aiding in the purchase of illegal substances. Case in point: if you're aiding a crime, you're part of the crime.
So, the true question is...is it a crime?
I recall a case here in Finland that ruled the 'void warranty if opened' labels useless on computer cases, because it is required from the end user to open the case in order to install new hardware.
//ville
As I see it, this argument is analogous to saying "Tough shit that person X got their house broken in to. They put locks on their door, but the door didn't hold, so it's their fault that the burglar stole their stuff."
While I think that it's good that people take responsibility for protecting their property, I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to use every possible defense to protect it. Society exists to protect humans from their neighbors so they can expend their energy on more useful things (like writing linux code).
Is it okay to import coca leaves to Holland?
Do not meddle in the affairs of literary critics, for they are boring and quick to verbosity.
I'd like to first say that Stallman makes some excellent points in the essay section of this web page. Freedom of information is important, and present copyright laws appear to be curtailing that freedom. However, the fiction portion of this web page is, at best, drivel.
Fiction, by definition, does not require a plot, but it usually helps. Stallman has chosen the genre, yet takes advantage of none of the benefits of fiction, namely: emotional interest in the characters, and tension as those characters struggle. Instead we are treated to what is almost a laundry list of potential crimes and their consequences, all leading up to the glorious "Tycho Uprising" and the ensuing freedom of information. Because, as we all know, information wants to be free. (Sorry, I had to work that in somewhere.)
Dan solves his problem with a little mini-revolution, freeing a tiny portion of information to be shared between himself and his future wife. Touching, but we'll never know. Stallman moves on to the next item on the list. FBI, Microsoft Support, Central Licensing, now on to "the administrators" and potential expulsion. But the punishment is fitting for the crime, or rather the society. Lissa and Dan will not be expelled, but denied access to the information they need to graduate. This is a nice touch. Our future society recognizes the importance of access to information, yet, paradoxically hoardes it where it cannot be used.
In this single detail, Stallman underscores the dilemma society has long been faced with: the interests of the individual at the expense of the society. Nameless faceless corporation (hint: M$) and its fat cat CEO (hint: BG) get rich by hiding information and selling it back to us in cheap (as in quality) maintenance releases. Long suffering society pays this extortion fee just to be able to write emails to Grandma.
The fiction, sadly, is not faithful to the complex reality it attempts to abstract. Stallman reduces the problem to simple black and white. He paints a dismal picture of life in 2047 (and with the robots taking over the world in 2084, there isn't much time!) and then offers the nice pat happy solution of the Tycho Uprising. (I like the name he chose. The data from Tycho Brahe's work allowed other astronomers to draw conclusions about our solar system before the invention of the telescope. An excellent case history of free information benefitting society at large. Though Tycho didn't exactly suffer.)
He hits on some interesting points, but the stilted attempt at science fiction masks the logic and insight. Nothing is lost (and much gained) by skipping the "story" altogether in favor of the Author's Note
I don't know about Trillian's monetary status, but I don't think she'd appreciate having any of her money taken as the result of a law suit. So, I'll take no part of that. However, maybe a few Altairian dollars....
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
But I'm not sure this would matter, as far as the trade secrets issue is concerned. Do programmers have a right to hack into proprietary code in order to create an open source version? It's far from obvious that any such right exists. If, say, Microsoft chooses not to port Office to Linux, do you have a right to hack into it in order to do the port yourself? Don't see how...
Hiawatha Bray
Tech Reporter
Boston Globe
People are politically inactive because they are lulled into a false sense of security. Our economy is great, etc. The corporations that make all the money don't give a shit who or what they hurting as long it is making their wallets fat.
All of these produce the same effect; however, only type two is a direct link. The others will ultimately result in you having the same information. So, how do we decide which of these functionally equivalent forms is the illegal one?
And to ask a broader question, where the hell do they get off trying to ban reverse engineering anyway? If it weren't for the reverse engineering of computer technologies, the California economy would still be where it was was in in 1977.
--
This is not my sandwich.
one man says:
I'm new here but I hear you've got a big crack problem.
second man:
Yeah, It's all over. There's a lot sold around 12th and Main.
first man:
You're busted.
1000 SlashDot sigs
That is a very frightening belief, my friend. If I don't have the right to determine whether something is wrong, who does? Do you hold that power? Does some sleepy official in a courtroom somewhere who does not really care about the piece of paper he/she is reviewing? Is it an international forum of philosphers? Is this solely in the hands of a divine entity whom I apparently cannot understand? I don't know, so I believe I have the right to find out. Explain to me why I don't, please.
Number two, your comparison between "Nazi" Germany and DVDs is not only stupid, it's in incredibly bad taste.
That is your opinion, and I respect it. However, my opinion is that it is a bad idea for legal bodies to set precedents along these lines. Denying me the ability to find out about this DeCSS tool infringes on the right I believe I have. The fascist government of Germany prevented the vast majority of its citizens from determining the truth of what was going on with its treatment of people who were Jewish. I believe that treatment was wrong and I would have liked to be able to investigate it, had I been a German citizen at that time. This is an extreme example of what could happen if the "right" I illustrated was taken away.
No one has the "right" to watch DVDs on Linux.
According to the U.S. law I am familiar with, they do, if they can reverse engineer it. I wouldn't call it a fundamental right of being human, though.
True enough. Let me add two more for the record: (c) People would not leap to conclusions based on a small amount of information and (d) people would grasp that "moderation" concept.
As the .sig says, feel free to ignore my opinions if you don't like them.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
CNN has set up one of their polls. Let them know what you think.
http://www.cnn.com/19 99/TECH/ptech/12/28/dvd.crack/index.html
Pork is not a verb
I propose a new acronym:
IANASM
I am not a smart man.
eg.
IANASM, but I do know what love is.
IANASM, but maybe Bill Gates isn't so bad.
IANASM, but I prefer the GPL because I don't want this software I've created to ever becom proprietary.
IANASM, but I believe the benifits of BONOBO (sic? IANASM) are worth the extra wait.
IANASM, and therefor, I still use Windows exclusively.
An alternative would be TWBMDB.
This Will Be Moderated Down But
TWBMDB I prefer the BSD license. It's more free.
TWBMDB I like KDE. I prefer the OO approach to the desktop.
TWBMDB I like karma and I don't care if you don't.
an internet petition is pointless. Who are you going to be petitioning? The DVD forum? the film association? why would they care? any petition would be operated and signedby consumers. The DVD forum and the film association have made it abundantly clear by everything they do that what consumers want does not matter one iota to them. And why should it? They have a monopoly. If the consumer wants a decent-quality copy of The matrix, there is no alternate source. Therefore whether the consumer likes or is directly hurt by any actions of the DVD forum is completely irrelivant.
Following the blue ribbon campaign is a _much_ better idea, but should be done along slightly different lines: instead of placing a simple GIF image on all pages, place the GIF image _and_ a copy of the DeCSS source on all pages. Think about it. Set up the "ribbon" so that underneath it is a link "download DeCSS from this mirror location", and have it mirrored on that server along with the webpage.
If this got any amount of support, it would make the efforts of the DVD forum to prevent people from having the right to the free speech (source code) of _describing_ how to go about performing the action of decoding CSS-- not doing it themselves, not distributing a tool to do so, but _describing_ the method-- pointless. If a sufficiently large number of people are mirroring the CSS code in an organized manner- and in the process linking back to some page explaining _why_ the DVD forum has no right to complain-- they will be powerless.
The DVD forums only weapon is to put people in court knowing that the other side cannot afford the expense of hiring a lawyer and being placed in court, that simply being sued is more effective than losing a lawsuit. But if the number of defendants is sufficiently huge, then the DVD forum will be unable themselves to handle doing this to all of them.
What this problem needs is visibility to the general public, not a large show of support. People-- people in general, not just slashdot readers-- need to know _what_ the DVD forum is doing and _why_ it is wrong. If we as a community do _anything_ about this, it must be something to get this issue into the light, to make it visible so that the legal system cannot any longer ignore the ability of corporations to win any battle simply by threat of lawsuit.
start shit.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
guys, /. but if any of the guys concerned want to send me a copy of the injunction (restraining order) I'd be interested to see how shaky their legal grounds are. It is not as clear cut as some people here think, the issues are broad and revolve around the extent to which an innocent third party can be restrained from publishing research.
/. or net!)
for the most part I lurk on
The position in the UK is different to an extent in the US from the UK but I may be able to provide some input/advice.
Any takers?
(sorry if the info is already published - I dont have time to rest of
Dave
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
I had a friend who owned a body shop and he was bitching about this.
Basically they are trying to make it so expansive to gather all the tools that even smaller body shop / mechanic shop owners cannot fix your car (forcing us to use the manufacturer's licensed body shops/ mechanics).
Whatever happened to companies like Harley. All you needed to fix anything on one was a pair of pliers and an allen wrench.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
"Do programmers have a right to hack into proprietary code in order to create an open source version?"
Yes, which is why we have IBM compatable computers today. It's called reverse engineering. And the example you give is the EXACT reason it is legal. Interoperability.
We're not talking about copying a physical software package. We're talking about using the same "idea" or "method" for CSS decryption as the DVD CCA uses.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
For those of us who can't be there in person, does somebody have the number of a San Jose radio station (Preferably one covering the protests) we could call to show our support.
lsmvcprm.com, Tools for geek power
MoRE doesn't exist in the USA. The DVD CCA isn't really worries about the reverse engineering if they can completly block the ACT of COPYING or VIEWING on unapproved systems.
In other words, they want to make Fair Use - illegal.
Roger
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
News.com has a particularly poor story here. I sent this e-mail to the writer of the story, the department editor and the editor-in-chief:
I have to say I'm extremely disappointed in the one-sided, prejudicial nature of the story run on News.com today, "Coalition sues to bar distribution of DVD cracking tool" Did you do any research aside from ripping from the DVD CCA's materials? Ordinarily I respect your site as a source of reliable news, but the treatment of this story makes me doubt your credibility as an unbiased source of information.
I would point out particularly the paragraph where you state:
"The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to stop the sites from providing access to DeCSS, which the lawsuit alleges relies on proprietary information extracted from the DVD Content Scrambling System. Based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which passed last October, it is a crime to create, sell or distribute technology that could be used to break copyright-protection devices."
Note, however, that in your own story on the DMCA linked to in the paragraph above, it is stated that:
"The law does permit cracking copyright protection devices in order to conduct encryption research, for the purpose of product interoperability, and to test computer security systems."
Is News.com aware that the software at issue is claimed to be the result of a reverse-engineering project to allow DVD players to be developed for the Linux operating system, which falls under "the purpose of product interoperbility", and not, as your story wonderfully implies, for the wholesale piracy of DVDs? Don't you think that such a claim warrants coverage in what is claimed to be a "news" story, and not just the wholesale copying of a press release from the DVD CCA?
Please try to at least make an attempt to get the other side of the story:a in
http://eff.org/effector/HTML/effect12.04.html#m
Sincerely,
Michael Knepher
I got an auto-respond e-mail from the writer saying she was on vacation, but the department editor e-mailed me a message saying, "We're updating the story." So don't be shy about contacting news outlets and pointing them to resources like the EFF statement. Be reasonably polite and stick to the point.
Simple senario:
Some guy's standing outside a bank, saying he'll tell you (if you want) the combination to the safe in the bank. You say you want it, and he gives you the combination. You go inside the bank, use the combination to open the safe, and you take the money. Who's at fault?
First of all, the guy stealed from the bank (obviously). He's definately at fault. Now, the big question is what about the guy who had the combo to the safe?
Here's the legal standpoint: if the guy passed around the combination with knowfull intent that it would be used to rob the bank, he is involved in the crime and is therefore part of the guilty party.
So, was the crypto found with knowfull intent that it would be used for illegal purposes? I don't know, but in most hacks, that's the case, especially when the key is made public and passed around the internet.
Yes, it was quite ignorant that the key was left open with very light encryption, but even so, the fact that the key was encrypted means that CSS had no intent of showing this off to the public, aka, a trade secret. Legally, forcefully breaking an encryption is the same as theft (aka breaking into) when it comes to trade secrets, patents, and copywrites. I'm sorry, but it looks as if things are weighing towards CSS.
Hehe, I get it.. we're playing AvroMania now!
IANAL
I'm Another Nearly Annoyed Lemming
Play Avro At OpenVerse
You are a threat to free speach and must be SILENCED!
Fish! LipHo
I've watched DVD on TVs and on computer monitors.
It seems to me that the resolution and colour on computer monitors is better. Anyone have statistics to back this up?
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
The person who posted the code in Norway was a minor. He's not even competent (in the legal sense) to enter into a contract (such as an EULA). As a result, he can disavow the contract at any time.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The usual industry solution to muddled claims of "trade secrets" (and copyright, BTW) is to run a clean-room exercise. Now, as I understand it, CSS is so insecure that a brute-force crack based entirely on published (as in indisputably legit hardcopy) data would only take hours to days on modest hardware, and once one key is available all keys are readily obtained.
Kewl.
What say someone undertakes exactly that? Work up the brute-force crack code in a clean room, then be prepared to actually crack the sucker right in open court or at least before witnesses. Publish the keyfinding code right in the Court's own transcript. Let 'em censor that!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Actually, I didn't even know about it. I just thought the whole coca leaves thing was interesting... and a very non-widely-known fact.
So now we're even closer to the recipe... Pretty soon even the soft drink companies will quake at the mention of Slashdot!
Under some conditions, federal courts can resolve these cases, but state courts generally have jurisdiction as well. To get into federal court, none of the defendants can be in the same state as any of the plaintiffs, and the amount of the controversy must exceed $75,000. I don't know about the latter here, but if they're naming "Does 1-500" in the complaint, it's a fair bet that they don't meet the first requirement.
As to your first question, yes, such a person could be subject to the injunction, depending on other factors.
and
Case Hinges on Reverse Hack
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
This is not a case of reverse engineering! Reverse engineering is where you take something created and break it apart to find what it's made out of. If I owned a Pizza shop and had a recipe for a pizza of mine, and someone from another company ordered my pizza, found out the ingredients, and made his own pizza with the same ingredients, that's reverse engineering.
The key was encrypted. It was forcefully broken. Encryption is just like a safe. If it's broken into, it's forceful intrusion, not "reverse engineering".
Quit whining about "but it's like making a math problem illegal!" That's a bunch of bullshit. Encryption isn't a simple "math problem." If someone broke into a bank safe by logically figuring out the combination, can he say it's just a simple "math problem" and walk away scott free?
You will not find the spin you want from the TimeWarnerTurners, ABCDisneys, and Viacoms of the world because they are precisely the people behind the DVD consortium. They are content producers on a mammoth scale, and they control the major news outlets. Conflict of interest? Sure, but you'll never see THAT reported.
/. so regularly - even the narrow demographic it attracts provides a greater spectrum of opinion (via the comments) than one EVER sees from the traditional "media outlets" (hence the term, OUTLET).
This doesn't excuse the Washington Post or NPR getting it wrong (given that they're both quasi-independent newsgathering organizations, not owned by the same parent companies as the large studios), but how often do you see them seriously take a different viewpoint on a given story vis-a-vis CNN or ABCNews or MSNBC?
That's why I come to
I wonder what Noam Chomsky would have to say about this...
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Please just remember, that all material you send to them can and WILL be used against us - if possible! During the $cientology wars the $cn-lawyers have used many time for their benefit Usenet flame-messages with rather vulgar language which looked very bad in courtroom...
Scn court file archive
"$cn vs. Net"
How to support the fight
V, just my 2 euro-cents..
.signature not found
It is quite humorous to me that the injunction has the URL of all the links they could find. The injunction itself is guilty of linking to CSS source-code. Am I (or whoever drw is) guilty because I linked the injunction, which links to many mirrors? Is Alta-vista, yahoo, or the search engine of your choice guilty for linking the mirrors OR injunction? Are slashdot and other news sites guilty of linking? This is so funny! If you need to find a mirror, the first site I picked out of the injunction was still up and running. Injunction
If we had burners of sufficient capacity, we could just burn the raw image to the drive with the encryption entact.
This is not true. The drive will not physically read all of the sectors present on the media until it has been authenticated. The resulting files are encrypted with no means to derive the key necessary to decrypt them.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I had the fortune to talk to Chris DiBona through email the other day. I feel confident that nothing harmful will come out of this case. After the overwhelming support these people have seen come out of the open source community and especially Slashdot in general, it seems hard to fathom how we can - through normal logic - lose this one.
:\. :-)
Date sent: Mon, 27 Dec 1999 22:07:42 -0800 (PST)
From: "Chris J. DiBona"
To: Nick Disabato
Subject: Re: DVD ordeal
Logic has little to do with the Law. That said, it's probably on our
side this time. This is just very expensive lawyers who are used to going
after idiots and getting thier way. I'll make them eat thier words.
chris
On Mon, 27 Dec 1999, Nick Disabato wrote:
> I'm sure you got emails like this from a lot of people today, but you and all
> the other people who have been targetted like this have my full support. I
> have DeCSS on my hard drive currently and I'm pondering posting it on my
> site, nickd.org. Unfortunately, I don't want to get into any major legal battles
> at the moment (hey, who does?)
> I, like what seems to be all of slashdot *g*, find this entirely out of line on
> the part of the movie industry. If this case is won by them, it very well could
> represent a major step back in the advancement of open source and it also
> could set a precedent for major corporations to rule our lives even further.
>
> I found this little tidbit of info on 2600.com's site today and I thought it was
> a very sensible explanation of what's going on. You can find the full
> statement at http://www.2600.com/news/1999/1227.html . Best of luck at
> the courthouse. Us geeks are rooting for you.
>
> "It never ceases to amaze us how those supposedly in command of
> technology are hopelessly lost when it comes to real world correlation. Or
> maybe it's more sinister - perhaps they are counting on a court system
> which will buy into their corporate slant and hang the rest of us out to dry
> without stopping to realize that none of it makes any sense.
>
> "DVD encryption was cracked. That is a fact. And all of the legal papers in
> the world will not erase that fact. But the DVD industry believes they can do
> exactly that, through intimidation and wasting valuable court time and
> probably millions of dollars that will be paid by the consumer in the end. If
> they get their way, they will actually continue to use an encryption
> algorithm that has been proven inferior. Where is the logic in this?"
> --
> Nick
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
I'll bet their lawyers will likely use it to contrast the concept of linking to a DeCSS-hosting address as legal but wrong and actually hosting the link, which they'll try to fashion as less legal and more wrong.
I'm surprised they're trying this in liberal California, I can only assume that their law interpreters have found an exploitable loophole in CA law.
I think this would be more akin to the concept of reverse engineering a word processor to replicate *features* of the program without actually duplicating the program's code (it's not about "porting" software). Non-MS office suites provide filters to open and save MS file formats. Because I can use WordPerfect or StarOffice to read and write MS Word files does not make those programs "ports" of MS Office.
First of all, I think a petition would be useful as a PR attack.
.gif in every cache of every browser that saw it would provide the DVD CCA with another defendant to worry about.
But more importantly, IIRC, the deCSS source is pretty tiny. GIFs have those fantastic comment blocks available through any decent editing software. So why not start distributing gif files with the deCSS source code stuck in them? Half the people who possessed the GIF would be unaware, and every
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
"There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone. "
"Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them. "
Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships."
"Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets."
"By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant, they build walls to keep markets at bay. "
"Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce. "
"Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies. "
"As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language. "
"Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing Wall Street. You're not impressing us."
"If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a bath. Don't they understand this? If they did, they wouldn't let you talk that way."
"We have better things to do than worry about whether you'll change in time to get our business. Business is only a part of our lives. It seems to be all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?"
No Zen is good zen
The source code has already hit the worlds USENET groups. Are they going to file charges against EVERY SINGLE USENET SERVER carying alt.*???
(See the link under recently completed)
ufdraco
Heres two.
This puts slashdot at three (or more)
Come get me DVD.
Come get H L Mencken too.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
Yes, this is perfectly true, but it would allow DCCA (or whoever the appropriate entity is) to sue Xing for not protecting the information given to them as required by the license. I don't believe it would apply to the people who read and reverse-engineered Xing's unprotected CSS implementation.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
I think their efforts backfired big time. Instead of scaring the daylights out of anyone even thinking of posting and/or distributing the "crack", there seems to be MORE people willing to distribute it now. :)
At least, that's how I feel. I'm setting up a site now that will host the program. I'm sure there's a lot more people out there who are doing the same.
And the nice thing is, the more people who do it, the harder it will be to stop all of them.
BTW, if anyone is having problems finding a site to download it from, email me and I'd be more than happy to provide you with it
I don't know if it's legal, but that's not the point. The point is that if it's only legal for Coca Cola then that's stupid. I thought law was supposed to be equal for everyone.
So if I want to start a cola company in the USA and I want to use this particular recipe that uses coca leaves, I can't because only CocaCola is allowed by law to do that?
Here the link to that article.
Good point...
OTOH, a contract is a contract, no matter where it is signed or who signed it. It's kind of iffy in this case...
Now if someone goes and reverse engineers a hardware DVD player (it might be possible...) - THAT would be legal.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
If someone broke into a bank safe by logically figuring out the combination, can he say it's just a simple "math problem" and walk away scott free?
That is a terrible analogy, in order to 'break into' a bank, requires physical trespass. Cracking an encryption code does not require any sort of physical entry. Despite all of the mumbo-jumbo on license agreements, most people who buy CD's, videotapes, DVD's, etc, believe that they physically own the media when they buy it. Telling people they can't do a brute force crack of encryption keys on a DVD they own is like telling someone who buys a bank building that they can't open up the bank vault.
Your analogy is also weak by the point that if someone physically removes valuables from a vault, the owner physically loses them. In the case of DVDs, if someone cracks the code on a DVD they own so that they can view the contents, it is not denying the owner of anything. The owner would only lose if someone who owned a DVD gave a copy of the contents to someone who would otherwise have paid for them. While cracking DVD encryption may technically make that easier, it certainly is not a necessary outcome of it, nor is it the only way that such a 'theft' can occur.
I think that's closer to what the DVD hackers are attempting to do. AFAIK, they're not copying or altering licensed Windows players; they're creating their own from scratch, using decryption keys obtained by other people who looked at the Xing player for Windows.
To clarify what was brought up earlier. Compaq reverse engineered the BIOS of IBM PC's to make a compatible product. The BIOS is software.
The fact is that lawyers do have special powers within the structure of the US government. I gave one example of a right that lawyers have. And this right is fundamental - you won't see Congress lightly trying to repeal this right. In fact the right is (unlike your other examples) not even an explicit law - instead it comes from centuries of common law. In other words lawyers have a right here that is granted to lawyers by the practice of law outside of the normal legislative channels that are responsible for the other rights you list. Isn't that special?
Incidentally law is one of three basic branches of the government of the USA. Therefore special rights with regards to the law are special rights with respect to the mechanisms of government. The operation of the law *is* part of the action of the government.
So you can continue your list if you wish, but I don't think a single element on there is in the same ballpark as client-attorney privilege.
Cheers,
Ben
PS +1 given up because this is getting off topic.
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Interesting thoughts. But, there are a few problems. First and foremost, your methods seem to be aimed at creating an unencrypted (sp?) copy of the movie to distribute. That's not what this is all about. We're trying to get a simple DVD player for alternative OS's.
"Even if the software/hardware players don't let you grab the images at a higher software level, it's very easy to write a new graphic card driver, or change an existing one, and use it to store direct video streams to a file. "
You're right, it most certainly would have to be implemented at a lower level. Hardware decoders overlay the images directly from the video cards signal, and all the software players I've seen also rely on the video card capable of supporting hardware overlay. Notice when you are playing a DVD that you cannot freeze-frame capture the image on most players (if anyone knows how, PLEASE let me know. There are a few stills of 'The Matrix' I would LOVE as a desktop wallpaper). But, there aren't any players for Linux (if there were, this would all be a moot point), you'd have to somehow modify the Windows (or Mac, whatever) drivers. Most of the video drivers I've seen for Windows are closed-source. So, then we'd have to reverse-engineer the drivers. Video drivers are a delicate thing (especially with the high performance 3dfx and Nvidia drivers). Notice how small tweaks by Nvidia and 3dfx on their drivers produces markedly better performance. Reverse engineering the drivers and making them 100% as good as the originals + adding the ability to "intercept" the hardware overlay features is quite a daunting task, to say the least (not to mention, if you could write drivers like that, geez you should be helping Nvidia port their TNT/TNT2/GeForce drivers to Linux!)
Finally, all this work would have to be done on a Windows box (because we don't have any players for Linux). So, you'd end up with a plain MPEG instead of the encrypted DVD that you could play the movie from. Nice, but I think the goal is to be able to simply drop a plain DVD in the drive on a Linux box and off we go.
Like I said, interesting ideas, but unfortunately I don't think they are practical.
Number one, you don't have a "right" to determine whether something is wrong.
That is a very frightening belief, my friend. If I don't have the right to determine whether something is wrong, who does? Do you hold that power?
Bravo! Absolutely. I always have to right to determine if I believe something is wrong or not. That is one of the core principals of being an adult is about. Children are told what is right and wrong. Adults reason out why something is wrong or not. I don't know about you, but I'm an adult. Anyone who tries to tell you you can't decide for yourself what's right and wrong is deranged, stupid, or selling you something.
is there a link to a picture of him dressed as Obi-Wan? I hadn't heard about this..
I just got back from the hearing. During the hearing I did a head count. There were 40 individuals in the spectator area of the court-room, and it appeared (from conversations, T-shirts, etc.) that all were showing support for the good guys. In addition, there were a gaggle of lawyers for the DVD-CCA (I counted five, but they were flitting about so much it is hard to be sure), two lawyers for the defendants (one from the EFF), and one named defendant.
The judge said he'd try to make his decision by this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed.
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
As is just about every other country with an intelligence agency. Why should it be legal for our country to break encryption anytime they darn well please? Why are "they the people" better than "we the people"?
Digital Wokan, Tribal mage of the electronics age
One of the most amusing assertions from the plaintiff's lawyers was that DeCSS could only be used for copying -- of course, we use cp for copying, not DeCSS. ;)
_Deirdre
From http://marc.merlins.org/linux/refundday/ Eric "Obi-Wan" Raymond
UPS Sucks
If the encryption is in the CPU, the key would have to be tied to the processor.
Some 'Smart Card' processors do exactly that now. It's done so that nobody can read it's data/keys off by probing the data lines on the bus while using the card. They could get around the upgrade issue by having a couple of generations of keys stored in the CPU.
In the case of the smart card, it's justifiable for security reasons, but if a CPU manufacturer comes out with such crap in a general purpose CPU, I sincerely hope that marketing and sheeple can't overcome sane resistance.
If I read the injunction correctly, some of the defendants are not US Citizens, nor US residents...
How can this filing be relevent to them? Surely there should be a filing in each defendants own country?
This sig left unintentionally blank.
The drive will not physically read all of the sectors present on the media until it has been authenticated.
That is only true for consumer units. Professional units can read/write anywhere on the disk. The content had to be put there somehow in the first place.
The upshot is, the consumer gets no fair use, and the professional pirate just has to be sure to sell enough bootleg copies to make back the $30,000 cost of a professional unit (unless it's stolen).
Sosumi. just kidding. DONT!
Sorry to say, it may be as bad as you say. Just the passing of the DMCA, the allowance of software patents, and the auctioning of the wireless spectrum speak to that.
But...
Actually, I think there's a race going on, and it's quite an interesting one, between the free and nimble and the big and powerful:
Access to global communications has made it possible to disseminate information, evade censorship, and achieve impressive results with decentralized orgnizations, but...
That same technology has made it possible to send a unified message to everyone in the world, to wield power with greater reach, to consolidate power more thoroughly, to deliver the resources of power to tackle greater obstacles and enemies, and it has allowed the well-situated providers and enablers of the technology to become the most powerful.
Access to capital markets and market information has empowered individuals to hold greater sway over corporations, and has made it possible to directly translate damage to a company's reputation into financial damage. Also, concerns over profitability and growth potential has caused large companies to shatter themselves into networks of independent, competitive suppliers. But...
The leveling of barriers to foreign ownership and investment have made creation of worldwide conglomerates possible, and the capital market's demand for market share has driven unprecedented acquisition. And the development of the virtual corporation has made intellectual property the most vital, all-powerful, asset of large corporations.
Global trade provides unprecedented access to markets by the smallest companies, but it allows unprecedented abuses by the largest.
It's an odd paradox: the awesome potential unleashed by decentralized cooperation and communication is making powerful central institutions even more powerful and centralized.
The question is: will the most powerful use their power to change the rules in the middle of the game, or will they refrain from killing the goose that lays the golden egg long enough to become powerless?
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I too am sick of the erroneous stories in the mainstreem media, so I went back to CNN and found a link to post a reply to their story. I selected "Error" as the type of reply, to indicate that their article contained incorrect information, it is below:
Your online story titled "Hundreds of defendants named in lawsuit over DVD hacking" contains erroneous statements.
The first, and most important, is that the DeCSS program does NOT "break the encryption on almost any DVD and allow users to copy the contents of a DVD onto the user's hard drive". Any user can copy the contents of any DVD onto a hard drive. The DeCSS program allows the user to READ the encrypted DVD data. The purpose of this program is to allow OpenSource DVD software players to be written. Just as the fact that 'some' people may drive drunk and kill innocent pedestrians, doesn't mean that all drivers should have their cars taken away - just because 'some' people may use the DeCSS program along with others to illegally duplicate DVD movies, does NOT mean that all users should have the ability to view a DVD on the computer of their choice removed/restricted.
Second, it should be noted in the story that reverse engineering both hardware and software are considered perfectly legel in many instances. In fact, the CSS encryption was done so in Norway, where this practice is currently legal. This makes the CDA statement that the encryption was cracked via "improper means" rest solely on the validity of the Xing Player's license agreement. The validity of which must be argued in Norway, not California, USA.
The story as written, grossly misrepresents the facts of this matter, and leaves readers under the false impression that it is a bunch of Video Pirates being sued. This is clearly NOT the case, and should NOT be inferred in a story on any reputable news site.
Thank you for your attention,
Michael S. Oski
I would encourage all others to send similar, polite and consice, responses to any media outlet they find misrepresenting the facts of this case.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Regardless of the number of laws and restraining orders and judgements one acquires. The item in question will still be legal somewhere on the planet. Can we agree on this? And since a site in Brasil/Taiwan/Nauru whatever is *just* *as* *readily* *accessible* as any other, how can the DVD consortium have any *reasonable expectation* of stopping distribution of DeCSS and its ilk?
/. posting can prevent the extraterritorial application of IP law where permitted. Conduct, even though it may have been legal abroad, may result in an action or criminal cause domestically in many cases. This is a deep and complex body of law -- do not try to do this at home. Though the data may live abroad, always ask this question, where's the beef?
No number of asterisks in a
At the end of the day, you can move your data anywhere in an instant, and serve it from anywhere you like. Nevertheless, serving that data into (or exporting it from) the U.S. (and its damned hard to avoid doing that) creates a basis for liability if jurisdiction can be obtained, whether by treaty or otherwise. If any of your property or body (the beef) lives in the U.S., they'll have you for lunch.
There is quite a bit of case law in copyrightland, in particular, concerning whether a defendant can be liable for authorizing infringing activity abroad from some transaction (like a phone call) made from inside the U.S.
EVERY scenario in this arena is highly law- and fact-dependent, and there are some things that can be done that may avoid liability or criminal responsibility. But most people don't want to export their meat (and any property they'd want to keep) as well as their data. Failing to do at least that, it would be highly foolish to undertake any such conduct without solid advice of counsel. And even if you did, it would still be a fine idea to get advice to make sure you are liability- and responsibility-clear.
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Well how about this...
All the sites that are hosting it can encrypt
the deCSS with strong crypto
Since its encrypted they cant prove its the deCSS.
If the lawyers crack the crypto (well, steal the key), sue them for reverse engineering
Sigh.
I wasn't talking about legislative rights. I was talking about being a functioning human being. Sure if I decide killing people is a great idea, and go on a killing spree. That's a 'Bad Thing'. And since it against the law, you will be locked up/executed/whatever for it. But I have the right to do this anyway, no one can take it away, and no one can grant it. There is a large difference between making a decision in my mind about how I feel about something, and picking up a gun and blowing away.
Every day you make moral judgements all by your lonesome. Some people get all there rules by adhering to a religious code, other's read kant, whatever.
There is no "right" written anywhere that says you have a "right" to play DVDs on Linux.
Actually it would seem to me that the fair use clause would apply here. I own the disk, no one said I had to use their exclusive players to look at it. Of course there's no constitutionally protected right to 'watch dvd's on linux'. But there is no damn reason I should not be able to (except corporate greed/stupidity).
Amoung people close to me, I tend to give a lot of medical advice. They take it as useful because I was a bio major in college, worked with a vet for a while and have had enough health problems of my own. But they also know that I'm not a doctor, or even a med student and take what I say under that advisement. When I give any advice or claim any info which falls under what I think of as "trade knowlege" I either explain why I'm qualified to say it, or make it clear that it is only meant to stimulate discussion, not as solid fact.
...will work for Chick tracts...
This reminds me of a quote from "Easy Rider":
"Don't ever let people know that they aren't free, or they'll have to go around killing and maming to prove that they are."
You have freewill. You were born with it. We are the only species on the planet who feels a moral obligation to sacrifice our freewill to a government. Don't feel obligated to let someone else make your decisions for you, when you have the natural awareness to make them yourself. Nuf said.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
DeCSS, though, does not contain any copyrighted code - it contains an independently developed implementation of CSS, and a 40-bit key that unlocks current DVDs. You can't copyright those five bytes.
The situation here is analogous to that faced by the developers of Wine - they aren't hacking individual applications, they're reverse engineering the overall system in order to bring about interoperability. The difference is that the CSS code can also be used to facilitate piracy (though DVD piracy is uneconomical). It has a legitimate use, though, and is therefore IMHO legally protected.
Yes, this is perfectly true, but it would allow DCCA (or whoever the appropriate entity is) to sue Xing for not protecting the information given to them as required by the license. I don't believe it would apply to the people who read and reverse-engineered Xing's unprotected CSS implementation.
"A trade secret law, however, does not offer protection against discovery by fair and honest means, such as by independent invention, accidental disclosure, or by so-called reverse engineering, that is by starting with the known product and working backward to divine the process which aided in its development or manufacture."
Xing accidentally disclosed the trade secret by not properly securing it. The cat's out of the bag. True DCCA may be able to sue Xing for allowing it to happen, but do you really think that Xing intentionally made those mistakes? Besides the courts can't really stuff the trade secret back into the bag and make everyone forget what they know. They are screwed (DCCA). If they wanted real protection they should have used a real encryption protocol and patented it. That would have given them what, 17 years, of protection where they had a real legal basis for bringing suit against those that illegally used it. NOT that I support software patents at all, but that gives you an idea of how idiotic I think DCCA is.
"I have a right to determine what is wrong."
No one gives you a "right" to this. You're *free* to determine (for yourself) what's right and what's wrong.
Ah! So that is the nature of your distinction! I don't place that much symantic difference between rights and freedoms, so I misinterpreted your statements. I gather that you regard rights to be granted by an entity such as a government, whereas I regard them as stated in the Declaration of Independance: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Free Advice #7: You have to be very patient with "morons" and explain thoroughly what you are talking about, or they start calling you names and miss the point of everything you just told them. I try to follow my own advice, but sometimes I fail.
In light of your symantic scrutiny, I amend my comments about rights to freedoms for you. People are *free* to reverse-engineer DVD for Linux if they want. People are *VERY FREE* to determine for themselves the differences between right and wrong.
But if you decide killing people is not wrong -- and you go ahead and kill someone because, well, you're an adult and you exercised your freedom to kill someone, well, you're gonna face the consequences, period.
Precisely. I never said that actions were without consequences.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
My thought is this, If the DVD CCA has a web site, they would have to have alink on it somewhere. Maybe it would lead to a deCSS site?
DeCSS 1.21b and a livid snapshot available here.
Heck, you could just use your TV-out port on your video card and record it directly to VHS. Are we going to make coaxial cable illegal, then, too?
Isn't it funny how a year ago we were all shunning DIVX and praising DVD as the almighty movie format? Funny how things have changed in recent times.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
I think I agree. They accessed the crypto key somehow, and most licence agreements disallow disassembly, which I presume was used at some stage in the process. Anyone using the crypto key could therefore be handling stolen intellectual property, so they may be able to make a case. Telling someone where drugs can be acquired has many precedents for convicton, so if all the above are true, then slashdot may have a lot of maintenance work to do.
The key was encrypted. It was forcefully broken.
No, I don't think it was, someone forgot to encrypt their key.
So there's a chance that another company can legally release CSS information now. (In fact, Creative may have done this. I know their Dxr2 drivers had some CSS-related files - did these include the full algorithm, and did they originate in any way from DeCSS? I'm pretty sure the Dxr2 does CSS in software...)
Apparently Creative hasn't released the same DVD decryption algorithms or keys. I found this in the "css.h" file in Creative's source code:
"And now, a quick note about CSS and this software: Although this program permits playing of encrypted DVDs, there are no "CSS secrets" contained in it, and none were used in it's construction. No decrypted keys/data are handled by this program AT ANY TIME. The DXR2 card does all the CSS decryption on-board, in hardware. All this program does is permit the exchange of *encrypted* keys and *encrypted* data between the drive and DXR2 card's hardware. The authors are NOT connected, in any way, with any of the "software CSS decryption" programs out there, and *DO NOT* endorse their use in any way. Piracy is a crime! Just wanted to make that ABSOLUTELY CLEAR."
Good thought, though.
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
Remember that DIVX was a even worse format! Although I am certian that if it had succeded there would be a DeDIVX decoder available now or soon. The fatal flaw of the DVD CCA was in not providing a solution that was truly cross platform and needed to be broken to make a Linux DVD player.
<This .sig left intentionally blank>
The sheer irony will be if the gov lets this thing slide, making decryption illegal. After all, this is the same government that is whining and complaining that they need a way to break our encryption, remember?
You assert an Internet petition to show support would be worthless. I don't agree. Now, I don't think a simple petition is going to make all our problems go away. But it will serve to do a number of things. For starters, it will give *us* an idea of just how many people actually do care. Such a number is useful in discussions and debates. Any movement to sign a petition will likely raise public awareness -- always a good thing.
Furthermore, a strong showing of support through such a petition might help our cause. It would be useful evidence if "harm to consumers" is a factor in the court, as it sometimes is. If we get a large enough response, it may get some attention in the industry. Large companies do not like to lose customers, and if they see a large amount of consumer awareness and concern, they may reconsider things. You raise the point that the DVD Forum holds a monopoly; a large consumer movement may bring anti-trust scrutiny to bear on the DVD Forum, and that is the *last* thing they want.
Do I know for sure that a petition will cause these things to happen? Of course not. But I think such a petition gives you a good return on very little investment, and would be worth trying.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
This is irrelevent, because 1) that's not what it's about; and 2) if the US government makes exceptions for big corporations, so could the Dutch. Not that I think they should...
--
Linux user since early January 1992.
a contract is a contract, no matter where it is signed or who signed it
If it is an EULA accepted by a minor, it is voidable by the minor or his/her parents/guardians. I note that the person to first post DeCSS was a minor.
I'm also not sure that it can be proved that the code was derived by disassembling the Xing driver.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I was at the hearing this morning but I had to return to the office. It's possible that the judge may have issued his decision on the TRO by now but I'll hear the results online like the rest of you. The EFF made a much stronger-sounding case as far as I could tell - citing precedents and pointing out that it's an issue of reverse engineering and freedom of speech, not a trade secret case. (Of course, DVD CCA says it's entirely a trade secret issue and nothing else.) EFF also pointed out how the DVD CCA's claims were *all* hearsay with no first-person confirmations, which was not challenged (nor conceded) by DVD CCA.
At least on those grounds alone, I think there was not a sufficient case made for a temporary restraining order. But it's hard to know how a judge is going to think. People were sounding pretty upbeat when we went to lunch. Andy Bunner thanked the people who showed up for their support.
Reporters were present from EE Times, Wired, KCBS Radio (SF) and probably others. About 40 geeks were present, many/most of whom undoubtedly wouldn't even be up at 8AM much less arriving in downtown SJ if it weren't this important.
Software is worthless if the traditional value system is used. Cost is determined by supply and demand. With digital information, supply is practically limitless, and therefore no matter how much demand there is, the cost becomes zero.
Software licenses are a completely artificial means of keeping the equation balanced. Since you need a license to use the software, and the producer controls the supply of licenses, there is now a non-infinite supply.
There are many problems with software licenses, however.
* Is the producer guilty of price fixing, since they are manipulating supply in order to control the price to the consumer? (Rhetorical question. There've been specific laws to allow software licenses)
* Does a mouse click on a button that says "yes", witnessed by nobody, have the same legal ramifications as a signature by that person or even handwritten initials? Furthermore, the boxes to read the license are often much too small to comfortably read anyhow. Does that invalidate them? Americans with Disabilities Act anyone?
* If you hack the binary install script to change the license before ever running the install script, and agree to a license that you wrote that says "You may do whatever you want with this software", are you still bound by the original license? It is possible to do this without even reading the license.
* Then there's the whole thing about licenses being too broad and one sided, like
"You may not let anyone else ever even think about using your licensed copy of this software. This software comes with no gaurantee that it will work at all. If it doesn't even come close to doing what it's supposed to do, tough luck! We reserve the right to terminate your license at any time for any reason we deem necessary and not refund your money. By using this software, you agree that we own your eternal soul, even if you're an atheist."
* What if I use my friend's computer to reverse engineer some software he installed? I never agreed to the license agreement. What if I did it without even asking him?
* Isn't it impossible to prohibit reverse engineering? It's a natural human thought process. It's part of our survival instinct to try and figure out how things work. "Hmmm, that little rock seems to be holding that big boulder in place. I better not pull that little rock out or the big boulder will crush me."
I wish Dave Barry was technical. He could have a field day with this issue (and he's got lots of readers).
I'm sure there are many other legal quandries surrounding software patents. IANAL.
So, if you didn't use software licenses, you'd need some other way to make money from the software. The natural reason to pay for software (with coding/debugging help in the case of Open Source software) is to reward the devloper(s) and encourage them to keep up the good work.
The judge understood EFF's objections on ground that it's already all over the Net but agreed to have it sealed at least temporarily. Some people in the gallery thought that showed favoritism but I think it was the only decision he could make that wouldn't immediately result in an appeal by the DVD CCA. Judges try to be cautious about "reversible" decisions.
At the bottom of this page is the set of three DVD files. Note the .au domain. Nothing in the US. Enjoy. (Please ignore the rubble, this copy was put up rather hastily.)
If Microsoft does not port Office to Linux, we have every right to investigate the Office file format so that we can write our own software to read it. We have every right to write our own software for linux that accomplishes all the same functions as Office does.
If in 20 years, gasoline is no longer sold, do you have a right to convert your '59 Corvette to a fuel cell engine? You betcha.
If I've purchased something, I have a right to use it (not to redistribute or do anything illegal with it). Just because the shrink-wrap license on the inside of the box in very small print says that they own my eternal soul doesn't make it true.
CCA is trying to prevent making any copies of DVDs, legal or illegal.
;). Besides that, she would be able to take her movies on tape with her anywhere (DVD players aren't ubiquitous yet, VCRs are.) We'd have a perfect digital "source" so that if a tape is broken or wears out (when you have kids this happens all of the time), all we have to do is buy another blank tape and make another copy.
I thought it was interesting that on the EFF web site (http://eff.org/effector/HTML/effect12.04.html) they noted that the CSS also prevented making perfectly legal "fair use" copies of DVD's. Could the DVD CCA itself be sued (class action suit?) for infringing on consumers' right to make "fair use" copies?
I should be able to to make copies of DVD's to videotape so that my 4 year old daughter can use the tapes (no way am I going to let her near a DVD disk/player--and we don't call her little brother Bam Bam for nothing
I would even pay a few extra bucks for DVD over VHS for kids movies just to be able to do this. But if the DVD industry decides they want to be hard-assed about it and not allow consumers to make perfectly legal "fair use" copies, I would not feel bad at all using a DeCSS or a similar tool to make legal fair use copies.
Why arn't they named in the suit? They are linking as well.
Ohh.. i forgot.. they have money.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
AFter watching the EFF for a while, I have finally decided to join based on this case. They seem to have decent insight into what cases are important in setting policy, and have a very good response time to such cases. If nothing else, I just spent $35 in the hope of DVD software for Linux ;-)
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Early news, but nothing substantial. See: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,33336, 00.html
Hi all. I just got back from the hearing in San Jose. There were about 35 of us in a courtroom with 56 seats. The dvd lawyers seemed quite suprised by the turnout. I brought a bag of 60 floppies which included decss, the source, the letter, and pointers to various online news articles (including /.). Everyone got a floppy (or three), including the dvd guys. The dvd lawyers got a few laughs when they requested that one of the floppies be entered in to evidence, SEALED. Apparently they didn't want copies of the floppy available from the county clerk, as that would surely bring about the ruination of the movie industry. Paper printouts were also circulated and were entered as evidence, again sealed.
The judge said almost nothing during the hearing once the procedural bits were taken care of. He'll send his ruling to the lawyers on both sides sometime this afternoon.
There were a couple reporters at the hearing. Chris Oakes from Wired showed up early and sat through the hearing. His story is here. He misspelled my name though, it's Salsbury. I also chatted for some length with Deborah Kong from the San Jose Mercury. I explained the difference between bit-for-bit copying and decryption and why decryption is not necessary for piracy. Her article will probably be in tomorrow's paper.
There was also a reporter from kcbs 740, I don't remember his name.
After dinner we had lunch at the Habana Cuba. Mmmm, bananas and sheep.
##############################
BTW: I forgot my bag of floppies and a blue jacket in the back of someone's car when we went to Habana. If you find it, please email me at stickman AT altavista DOT net. We can arrange a mutually convienent place to meet, like the hearing on the 14th.
##############################
Ryan
This is the letter I sent. And yeah, after I wrote it I realized it was a Reuters wire story, but maybe they'll keep it in mind regardless.
The article is long on the viewpoint of the DVD industry, but makes little attempt to cover the side of the defendants in this case and paints the authors of "DeCSS" as criminals knowingly attempting to "destroy the market for DVD-based products". And, considering the quotes from some of the intellectual-property lawyers in your article, I'm wondering how much some of your sources actually know about the facts of the case.
-----
"Their unchecked illegal activities will chill future technological innovation in the motion picture, consumer electronics and computer industries and discourage other industries from making their content available to the public in new formats," the [filing for an injunction]said.
-----
The DVD CCA's complaint is rather ironic, considering that similar technology breakthroughs in the past have not "chill[ed] future technological innovation in the motion picture [and] consumer electronics [...] industries". How much has the motion picture industry been harmed by the relatively easy ability to copy VHS videocassettes? (A technology, incidentally, that was similarly attacked in the past as allowing for widespread pirating of movies. Judging from record sales of the movie "Titanic" on videocassette, I have to wonder just how many pirated movies the average American has on his video shelf?)
-----
"There's a lot of issues that go into something like this, like freedom of speech and all that, but those freedoms are limited when you know what you are doing is wrong and you're hurting people," said Ronald Coolley [...]
-----
Why does Mr. Coolley believe the authors have intentionally harmed the DVD industry? The authors never stated that their intent to facilitate pirating; the "DecSS" program was written to allow computers running the Linux operating system to be able to play DVD movie discs.
The ability to reverse-engineer technology (analyze or disassemble technology to determine how it works) is not illegal in the U.S., if the reverse engineering is being done to insure product compatibility. This ability is even protected in recently-passed Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
-----
"They have to make a statement," said Claude Stern, an intellectual property attorney with Fenwick & West. "All those companies that have major amounts of content can't afford to have some moron hacker post something because he thinks it's cool."
-----
Assuming that Mr. Stern is using the term "hacker" to describe someone who breaks into computer systems (a term many computer professionals and enthusiasts have replaced with the term "cracker") potentially to steal confidential information, then he also misunderstands the situation -- although he unintentionally got the term right for what the authors actually did do.
The authors did not steal any proprietary information from Xing Technologies or anyone else; they analyzed and attacked the encryption on the disk itself. Even if Xing Technologies had not erroneously left their key unencrypted, the weak encryption used meant that it was only a matter of time before the authors found a valid key by brute-force checking every possible combination. (The authors stated that, once they found a valid key, they had enough information to find several dozen others.)
It is my hope that your reporters will, in the future, make a better effort to discover and accurately report the facts.
Jay (=
Hot off the press (from Robin Gross, the EFF's counsel on the case):
The judge has denied the motion for a temporary restraining order. More to come soon.
> And guess what? The contents on a DVD are private property!
That's right. They are *YOUR* private property when you buy the DVD. Only the right to make copies is the private property of the studios.
Someone had suggested Slashdot might have their
registration pulled as a result of court action.
I think the geeks among us with control over
their own name servers could easily remedy that.
How? Point your DNS servers to ns1.andover.net,
ns2.andover.net, and ns3.andover.net. Make your
server a secondary for slashdot.org, pulling
updates from those servers. No court or corporation could then prevent you from having
access to Slashdot!
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
It's on dibona.com's front page.. He says he's gonna have his notes up soon.. But WE WON!
Now, looking forward to the 14th...
So much money to earn in courts :) I wish I was a lawyer :)
If linking to illegal content was truly illegal, then couldn't the laywers that are prosecuting these people be held accountable for providing information to getting DeCSS? After all, in their cease and desist (sp?) notice, they were linking. If you read their notice, it clearly states that some of the later web sites are linking to other websites that had it... hrm! Let's sue these bastards!
The bigger issue is who is defending these guys?
With all of the lawsuits floating around these days, we're yet again faced with THE major dilemma for open source projects - inadequate legal representation.
It doesn't matter what is right and what is wrong.
If the open source community does not have the ability to defend itself against the myriad of legal attacks that it is bound to face in the near future - then open source is already dead as a mainstream development environment.
The court systems of most countries, not just the US, will never be technically adept enough to make informed decisions by themselves. The plaintiff makes a legal argument as to why a particular decision should be made, the defendant provides the counter argument, and the judge makes a decision based upon the facts before him/her and prior rulings of court.
Can this happen where open source developers are the defendants? I just can't see a situation at the moment where open source developers can adequately state their case against large well-funded companies and organisations...
From all of the comments here, I can only assume that this case SHOULD be thrown out immediately, and yet there is still a large amount of doubt about the outcome... what will happen with those cases where the plaintiffs case, while wrong, actually contains an ounce of merit?
And further, what of the situations where the plaintiff NEEDS to be the open-source developer/project etc.
Any thoughts?
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
So, what if we lose? Is what comes next a boycott on DVDs in the Linux community? I think this would be hypocritical. I'm in no mood to dump my DVDs. I say lets fight till we're the last men standing!
Somebody needs to send a barrage of e-mail to ABCNews letting them know that they got the story all wrong about the DVD trial today.
Many organizations are running into this problem, through the Internet there are no borders. What may be a death sentence in one country may be perfectly legal in another. National Laws are being laughed at. And it is the whole globalization challenge again. Organizations, companies and nations have to realize there is a big blue planet we all live in, and that in the end, unless something must remain secret for the public good, it is going to come out...no encryption is unbreakable, esp. when the human factor comes into play. All it takes is one lone protestor in a government or company that feels that something shouldn't be secret, and suddenly, it is in the public domain.
All groups must consider how their actions will be interpreted in other countries, esp in regards to electronic information. And we need watchdogs to prevent others from hiding vital information from us.
That is the challeng ofthe next 20 years...and it may come down to the old Cyberpunk battle of Hackers on one side, and MegaCorps on the other.
I hope not. But then again, I retain some sense of optimizism about the highest primate inhabitants of this planet.
ttyl
Farrell
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Chris DiBona just posted to the SVLUG mailing list that the TRO has been rejected:
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 17:14:19 -0800 (PST)
From: "Chris J. DiBona" <chris@dibona.com>
To: "Derek J. Balling" <dballing@yahoo-inc.com>
cc: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: [svlug] Re: DVD
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Just heard that the TRO was quashed. PAss it on!
Chris
--
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http://www.dibona.com
On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Derek J. Balling wrote:
> Have you heard anything about what, if anything, the judge decided?
> What
> happened after court was adjourned, since I had to head off to work? I
> saw
> KCBS there interviewing Rick, et al, out front, but was in too much of
> a
> hurry to get to the office to really stick around...
>
> D
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Derek Balling
> 408-530-5062
> Technical Yahoo Do You
> Yahoo!?
>
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What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
IIRC, you can produce an unecrypted DVD and it'll play anywhere -- no CSS needed.
...
... but what makes them think the hackers agreed to the EULA??
But, CSS'less DVDs will lead to completely-CSS'less DVD-players. And last time I checked, the industry doesn't want that to happen. After all, if people stopped needing CSS decryption ability, then the DVD consortium wouldn't be getting their fees from members.
Obviously they have no legal standing for that though
But, back on topic -- it seems like the DVD people are saying the hackers improperly got their IP. Why is reverse engineering imporper? Because Xing's EULA said so
If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to *run* the software, but does it say anything about not reverse-engineering it??
Or more generally, what happens when you don't agree to an EULA??
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
And in golfing circles, a hacker is someone who aerates the fairways with his iron, cuts his ball to ribbons and scores in triple digits.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
How about the DVD DeCCS articals that appeared on slashdot, and the slashdot articals on the movie industry's responce?
Linux DVD One Step Closer
DVD for Linux: an Interview With the Developers
LinuxDVD CSS Decrypt - Source Available
Watching DVDs in Linux HOWTO
Why DVD Encryption Crack was a Cinch
Post-Hacked DVD: Where to Go?
Legal Actions Against Linux-DVD authors
Activist Defends DVD Hack
DVD Hack Delays DVD Audio
Pioneer Releases DVD Audio Sans New Encryption
DVD CCA Applies for Restraining Order
And, for good measure, this one:
DVD Hearing Today - Are You Ready to Rumble?
The answer to the first question depends substantially on the particulars of each circumstance. There are complex issues of conflicts of law, jurisdiction, applications of treaties and conventions and the like that cannot be summarized quickly or answered in the abstract.
In partial answer to your second question, WIPO's home page has a list of WIPO-administered treaties, including Paris and Berne, and seperately a very up-to-date list of ratification status of such treaties. Regrettably, these lists include just about every place where you might want to locate the beef.
You may be in the wrong here on two points:
1. The content was not decrypted in the ordinary sense, but it was assisted by the fact that one of the player makers forgot to encrypt their key. So it was partly negligence on the side of that maker, who did sign an NDA.
2. This is NOT like breaking into a bank's safe. The data is right there on a CD you have purchased with your money and which you now own. This is more like a safe company installing a safe in your house, and you opening it and fiddling with the lock in order to change the key, then publish the knowledghe which may or may not also be used to break into those safes. Point is, you didn't break into anyone's property, not in the physical nor in the "site cracker" sense. You broke into your own property.
I think the private safe analogy is a better one to be using when discussing the issue, and when explaining it to others.
Remember the hostage that was killed in Kandahar lately? all he did was 'look at the terrorists'. If it anything you don't want anyone to look at, with naked eye, spyglass or gdb, don't show it, don't let it out, don't use it in anything publicly available such as DVDs.
Then again, the licence agreement may never have been part of the equation. If I buy a CD, and just start dumping it out as hex and/or disassembling the contents, have i broken the licence agreement that I haven't read yet? I am not making a copy for backup purposes, but I am copying their copyrighted material. Then again, reverse engineering for interoperability purposes is allowed. Oh well, the DVD lawyers semed to be floundering, and the EFF (which i just joined) lawyers seemed to know their stuff. Go to it, EFF!