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.
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.
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.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
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?
Excuse me, fellows, but is Slashdot a member of The Press or not? Are these lawyers trying to suppress press activity in bothering Slashdot?
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.)
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
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.
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
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.
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...
The bit that gets my attention is the continued, relentless emphasis on authorization. I mean, in some articles (typically on mp3, naturally) you'll see terms like 'authorized music'! I'm in the process of upgrading my recording studio to record a new album, and at that point I've been planning to release an older album as well, plus some experimental music here and there. I'm more and more convinced I should call the newer album 'Unauthorized Music'! Probably will- there are actually topical songs that would be of interest to slashdotgeeks in there, but more significantly, my releasing this stuff is directly opposed to what the entertainment industry would allow...
And that is where I fit in this equation. It's not about being able to make a backup copy of the matrix (yeesh, as if you can't spring for another copy years down the line if the first one breaks). That's a total smokescreen. What's going on here is a powerplay to control the media, as in physical media. We already pay record industry taxes on blank tapes- purportedly because of copying, but it just so happens that if you're some smalltime musician trying to promote your own music, you're going to pay taxes to the music industry for the privilege of competing with them. Part of your expenditure for tapes goes to the same people you're up against.
This isn't good enough? Apparently not. What I'm seeing with mp3 and the wish for a 'secure' format (and who, pray tell, is to feel this sense of security?) and DVD and the struggles over that 'secure' format (and how secure are they entitled to feel?), is the powerful desire to entirely withhold access to the (hoped-for) mainstream physical media by the 'unauthorized'.
That's me. I am unauthorized.
There was a time when access to the media (vinyl records, reel-to-reel tape recorders) was pretty costly and inaccessible, but it was strictly a matter of price- if you bought the gear, you were good to go, you could try wrestling with other players for distribution and sales just like you were an equal citizen.
Then it was cassette multitracks and the Philips cassette taking over from records. Suddenly, every musician in the world was flooding record company agents with tapes. Most were ignored- but I'll tell you, I've walked down the street and heard a random car drive by with a tape I've produced blaring out the windows. It's a hell of a feeling, that is. You get to produce art that is _used_ and enjoyed by people. At the same time, if you get tapes from stores, they are taxed and the industry's cheap bulk tape is not- below a certain level, you'd have the deck stacked against you financially.
Then it was the CD. At first this was just as forbidding as the vinyl record to produce- you'd pay a lot to get digital mastering done, you'd have to buy CD pressings in lots of 500 or 1000: but startlingly, the technology advanced to where we can now press CDs on our computers just like making cassette tapes one at a time. Anybody who's had a dual cassette deck running for days making 20 copies of their album will recognize what this means. And again, there's the desire by the industry to tax this- purportedly to recoup losses from not selling you the same music 6 times, but also effectively handicapping 'unauthorized' artists and putting a spoke in the wheels of anyone trying to get a competing organisation started. We've come a long way from when you could save up to get an LP mastering lathe and try to be a record company, haven't we?
And now we have DVD. Now we have an increasing emphasis on 'security'. Whose? Well, considering that the direction is toward a world where script kiddies can still copy anything they want, but you can't legitimately start a record company and distribute media without either coughing up millions to a conglomerate for a 'security key', or pirating one for original material and being liable for stealing that key, we are talking about security for monopolists.
We're not talking about the script kiddie being unable to copy the Matrix and never have been- who will prosecute, the same ones who arrested you for making a mix tape for the car? Instead we're talking about a very intentional spoke in the wheels of anyone who wants to be in the business of media. It doesn't affect you, the script kiddy- or even you, the consumer. (you're out maybe 20 bucks in the worst case, having to buy an extra copy of the Matrix. Oh horrors, call Reuters and MSNBC.) It affects anyone who wants to produce original content, or distribute it, or help people do that. It's a roadblock- the ideal end situation here is to have all the DVD players require truly uncrackable encodings that only licensees have access to.
People hear things like that, follow the logic, and then mysteriously can only see how it affects them as consumers. But the direction is clear as day, and there are certain implications I'm spelling out here.
My question is, what exactly gives the recording/movie/etc industry (who are not a government the last I heard) the right to openly, upfront and with the approval of society, set up a situation where anyone wishing to make media for the public can only go through them, or be forced to become a licensor by spending a comparable amount of money for a security key normally sold to huge corporate conglomerates?
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.
Just link to the court documents! Let their lawyers do your legwork for you. They cannot make it illegal for you to post a public document of the court!
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.
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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.
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Ryan
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.