The people downloading the software are not breaking the law, so 2600 is not helping anyone break the law. The sites that are being linked to are not prohibited from distributing the DeCSS software because the MPAA has not gotten an injunction against them. Therefore they can legally distribute the software and the people downloading it are not breaking the law.
DeCSS is not a controlled substance, nor is it considered contraband of any sort. DeCSS was not outlawed by the court. An injunction was obtained against specific individuals and/or entities that prohibits them from distributing DeCSS. Aside from the use of the word "traffic" in the ruling, which I'm still not clear on the meaning of, it doesn't prevent them from telling people where they can go to download the software legally. The sites that are being linked to are not under the injunction and can legally distribute the software.
I think a link is more than 'telling someone where it can be found'.
Actually that is exactly all it is. If the person has the proper tool, in this case a browser, the browser will do the work of making that link a clickable entity and take them to the site where they can download the software, legally I might add, since the sites that 2600 is linking to have not been ordered by the court not to distribute DeCSS. Therefore, they can legally provide the source to anyone who wants it.
Define "traffic" in this case. How does telling someone where they can legally obtain the DeCSS software from a site that is legally allowed to distribute the software constitute trafficking?
I think this is pretty similar to what 2600 was doing. Except that they are linking to sites that are legally distributing DeCSS. It is legal for them to do so until they receive a court order to cease distribution of the code. So, while 2600 is prohibited from distributing the code themselves, there is no reason they can't tell you where you can legally obtain the code. Anyone find fault with this logic or legal guesswork?
Re:Effectively, Micro$oft will not be punished...
on
A Post-Microsoft World
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· Score: 2
You should read the proposed remedies in the DOJ's last settlement proposal. Fines aren't on the list and are very unlikely in this case, simply because they wouldn't do anything to prevent future abuses of power.
Great. How many innocent people have been executed? They just executed a lady here in Texas even after her lawyer was convicted for intentionally losing cases for money. Maybe she was guilty. Maybe she wasn't. The point is, we don't know for sure. The legal system is very imperfect. There are a bunch of ways to get convicted of something you didn't do. They actually accept the testimony of a convicted felon that was given in return for a reduction of sentence. Bought and paid for. And we're supposed to rely on this system to determine whether I should be allowed to live just because I get convicted of something? Screw that. At least someone in prison can be released (and compensated as much as we are able to offer) if we later realize they weren't guilty. Can't do that after you've fried 'em.
More disturbing was "Conveys violence in writings and/or drawings." Lot of room there.
Ack. Glad I'm out of high school now. I used to draw guns and battle scenes all the time. Mostly comic book style stuff, but I wasn't much of an artist. Seems like drawing a picture of a gun would likely get me expelled these days, and I'm most definitely not a violent person.
Fines / breakups wont succeed, and a regulated monopoly is still a monopoly.
Right, MS will still be a monopoly when the whole thing is over. That's not illegal and that wasn't the problem in the first place. The problem was that they were using that monopoly power in order to prevent other companies from competing with their products. That is what the remedy in this case needs to address.
At the moment 'real' solutions take second fiddle to browser and java crap. Focus on the big issue.
While the case focused on the browser and java issues as examples, if you read the FoF and FoL, it looks as though the judge understands that the issue is larger than either of those things. That those are just the most obvious (and provable) examples of Microsofts anti-competitive actions. I think he understands the need to impose a remedy that will prevent them from doing anything similar in he future.
Something that makes end-consumers say 'I dont want windows' has to happen. Support for 3 years for 98 seems shabby, as I use 95 still.
Consumers don't have to abandon WinXX right now. If Microsoft's bullying can be controlled, then something else will have a chance at changing the status quo. Consumers will see this new thing and buy it. Not because they just don't want WinXX, but because they like this new thing even more. That's the way it's supposed to work. Consumers need to see that there is something out there that is better, and they need to feel that the company offering this new thing will be around to support the product. That's been a key problem with Microsoft around to threaten the viability of any competing company. Nobody will buy an OS from anyone but Microsoft because they know that Microsoft can financially and/or litigiously squash any smaller company and leave them with an unsupported OS. Once we do something to make sure Microsoft can't prevent such a product from being brought to market by another company, and that they can't undermine that company's ability to compete by throwing a lot of money around like they did with Netscape and DRDOS, we'll have the kind of open and competitive market that has been absent in the desktop OS arena for so long now.
MS would merely need to convince the appellate court that another remedy would be better.
I understand that the court will not be inclined to go with Microsoft's remedy ideas unless the DOJ really goes overboard, but I'm curious about how things might play out. Could the DOJ hold up the last consent decree and examples of Microsoft's behavior to show that Microsoft cannot be trusted to offer their own remedies? It seems like letting them have a say in it is just begging to get burned again.
A fine isn't a likely remedy. Jackson is supposed to impose remedies that will prevent future abuses by Microsoft, not to punish them. That will be taken care of by the coming flood of civil suits. Should be fun to watch. They've had it coming for a long time now.
because they are so far outside the law in their heads that they can't even comprehend it (something which shocks the hell out of the judges).
I don't know how you and Cringely can believe that Microsoft really thinks this way. I don't believe they are so deluded. They understand the law and the fact that they are breaking it. That's clear as a bell to them, as evidenced by the email and testimony we've seen. The way I see it, Microsoft will repeatedly insist that they are right and declare that the government is unfairly prosecuting them for being successful. They'll say that they even tried to be reasonable, but that the DOJ was making insane demands that no company could ever accept. They'll keep claiming that they're trying to defend the freedom of the entire industry from government regulation of software design. They figure that if they repeat these things enough, they'll eventually get people to believe them. I think they believe that if they can play on people's lack of trust of the government and they're lack of understanding of the issues involved in the case, they'll get out of the whole mess when they appeal. Maybe they're even right.
If it does go to the Supreme Court (which is likely will), I think Microsoft will lose. I think the real problem is that they are so used to being able to manipulate the public and politicians, that they forget that they're not dealing with elected officials anymore. The judges are there for life. Public opinion doesn't matter to them, just the law (I hope).
So, if this product came out and was relatively inexpensive I might buy a DVD player....spurring on to supporting the Open Source DVD software..because it should be free.
Maybe you aren't aware that the MPAA is trying to make sure there IS NO open source dvd software. They have decided that people shouldn't be allowed to view dvds that they've purchased on any software that they aren't making money off of and can't control. If we accept their position and approved software instead of defending our rights to do what we want with the dvds we buy (without breaking traditional copyright law), then we'll end up legitimizing their attempt to take even more control over copyrighted works. Then it will be a simple matter for them to prosecute anyone attempting to make open source dvd software.
I guess I should have said "You seem to see Linux/OSS as a product(s)," my mistake. My point stands though. I don't see any way that having a binary DVD player available under the MPAA's rules is a step towards free open source DVD players. It seems to me that accepting such a player and the MPAA's terms for it's licensing and use is actually a setback rather than an advance. It helps to legitimize the MPAA's position on the matter. Would you care to explain why you see it as step towards a free, open source DVD player?
You're right, but we've been over this before. The DMCA does not allow circumvention of copyright protection. That's the real problem. If the DVD was unencrypted, then you could probably get away with creating a reader to view the contents. Since they put some cheesy encryption on the discs, you can't view them with an unauthorized viewer without illegally circumventing the copyright protection. It's a bunch of BS, but that's why we're writing letters to the Copyright office about it.
No, without copyright laws there would be no proprietary software.
Sure there would. It just wouldn't have legal protection. Companies would use other means, probably including obfuscation (like NVidia's source release) and encryption. Sure, the stuff could eventually be reverse-engineered or otherwise cracked, but it would be a never-ending game of catchup, kind of like the Wine team's predicament.
I didn't say anything about free software. I said "Copyright is the only reason the GPL works." There's a difference, as you apparently noticed, since free software != GPL.
There's going to be a public hearing on these issues on May 2-4 in DC, and another at Stanford University on May 18-19. Who's going to represent the views of those of us to believe the DMCA is infringing on our rights? This could make all the difference in the world. If the right people speak for us, and enough people show up to support their views, it could make them sit up and notice that we're not going to let them give the corps what they want at the expense of our rights. I'd like to know what to expect. Does anyone know who's planning to attend these hearings?
Does anyone else have some insight into this? I'm going to have to see if I can find some info about it. Could make this whole mess a bit more interesting.
I have a question about this (specific portion is bolded):
It might be possible to use the access system provided by the copyright holder to make infringing use of the copyrighted work, for example printing out 500 copies of an electronic book and distributing them at a profit. This might be authorized by the access system, but would not be illegal. As noted above, there are cases where access to the underlying data (we assume it to be unauthorized) must not be illegal in order to have fair use.
Am I misunderstanding or did you state that distributing 500 copies of an electronic book would not be illegal?
So long as someone's making new ideas, the system is meeting its goals.
There are other goals involved in the copyright and patent systems. For instance, copyright was not intended to provide absolute control to the copyright owner. There is little benefit in that. It therefore explicitly protects "fair use" rights of consumers, so that they may, among other things, quote the copyrighted work for the purposes of comment, criticism, teaching, news reporting, etc. They also have the right to resell what they have purchased, as long as they do not sell duplicates while maintaining a copy for themselves. Additionally, consumers have always had the right to modify their copy of a work in any manner they like. They can tear pages out of a book, highlight passages, make footnotes, etc. Courts have also ruled that consumers have the right to make copies of the work for backup, archival, time-shifting, or space-shifting purposes. Big media companies would like very much to see these rulings viewed in a very narrow way, and have them applied only to the specific technology that the case addressed, rather than taken as a principle of fair use.
Many of these rights are in jeopardy now. The DMCA and UCITA both present a very clear threat to the rights of consumers, as does the lengthening of copyright lifetimes. All this has been done without offering any substantial evidence that the original creators of copyrighted works are in any clear danger of being harmed significantly enough to justify this major rewriting of copyright law to remove many rights of consumers. It seems to be a ploy by the media companies to grant themselves much greater control over the use of copyrighted material, under the guise of fighting copyright infringement, at the expense of consumers' rights, and it still won't do a thing about real commercial copyright infringement by the big "pirate" distributors.
I have to agree with you on this. Copyright is the only reason the GPL works. Without copyright laws, anyone could take any code out there and use it in their own proprietary software and never give anything back (BSD-ish?). The real problem is that the MPAA is trying to take away rights that people have had under copyright law since its inception. They are trying to seriously constrain fair use and reverse engineering in ways that they couldn't do before. They are going about it differently this time though. They aren't attempting to change copyright law directly, they are getting new laws passed that enforce their technological methods of removing your rights (ie. they're making it illegal for you to circumvent their technology, even though you're doing something that would normally be considered fair use).
It seems to me that he did address your point of view. He wrote this:
Now, it is possible (probable) that some recent Linux converts don't care about Free Software, Copyleft, or any of the things that made Linux possible. They just see Linux as a cool OS and they want it to grow. So for these people there is really no difference between Linux and say OS/2 on a philisophical level.
Of course, for people who don't mind the idea of their movie collection existing under Draconian new copyright laws designed to screw them out of their rights under pre-DMCA copyright laws, I suppose it isn't a problem.
You see Linux/OSS as a product(s), whereas he and many others see it as a philosophy that has helped to produce some great software in a way that gives people more freedom rather than seeking to take away people's rights. Coming from that point of view, it's morally indefensible to take a course of action that reinforces the control of an industry group that seeks to take away the rights that OSS/free software propronents seeks to protect. Since you don't seem to hold those same beliefs, it's not a moral issue for you since, as you said, you just want to see more software out there for Linux.
A poster earlier said that Sigma Designs is working on a player, but that it's not available yet. I don't know of any others.
The whole thing makes me wish I lived in DC.. err.. maybe just within driving distance.:)
I'm curious though. How does one "make material relevant to the legislative process?" How do you figure out what the individuals' interests, sympathies, etc are?
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The people downloading the software are not breaking the law, so 2600 is not helping anyone break the law. The sites that are being linked to are not prohibited from distributing the DeCSS software because the MPAA has not gotten an injunction against them. Therefore they can legally distribute the software and the people downloading it are not breaking the law.
DeCSS is not a controlled substance, nor is it considered contraband of any sort. DeCSS was not outlawed by the court. An injunction was obtained against specific individuals and/or entities that prohibits them from distributing DeCSS. Aside from the use of the word "traffic" in the ruling, which I'm still not clear on the meaning of, it doesn't prevent them from telling people where they can go to download the software legally. The sites that are being linked to are not under the injunction and can legally distribute the software.
I think a link is more than 'telling someone where it can be found'.
Actually that is exactly all it is. If the person has the proper tool, in this case a browser, the browser will do the work of making that link a clickable entity and take them to the site where they can download the software, legally I might add, since the sites that 2600 is linking to have not been ordered by the court not to distribute DeCSS. Therefore, they can legally provide the source to anyone who wants it.
Define "traffic" in this case. How does telling someone where they can legally obtain the DeCSS software from a site that is legally allowed to distribute the software constitute trafficking?
I think this is pretty similar to what 2600 was doing. Except that they are linking to sites that are legally distributing DeCSS. It is legal for them to do so until they receive a court order to cease distribution of the code. So, while 2600 is prohibited from distributing the code themselves, there is no reason they can't tell you where you can legally obtain the code. Anyone find fault with this logic or legal guesswork?
You should read the proposed remedies in the DOJ's last settlement proposal. Fines aren't on the list and are very unlikely in this case, simply because they wouldn't do anything to prevent future abuses of power.
Great. How many innocent people have been executed? They just executed a lady here in Texas even after her lawyer was convicted for intentionally losing cases for money. Maybe she was guilty. Maybe she wasn't. The point is, we don't know for sure. The legal system is very imperfect. There are a bunch of ways to get convicted of something you didn't do. They actually accept the testimony of a convicted felon that was given in return for a reduction of sentence. Bought and paid for. And we're supposed to rely on this system to determine whether I should be allowed to live just because I get convicted of something? Screw that. At least someone in prison can be released (and compensated as much as we are able to offer) if we later realize they weren't guilty. Can't do that after you've fried 'em.
More disturbing was "Conveys violence in writings and/or drawings." Lot of room there.
Ack. Glad I'm out of high school now. I used to draw guns and battle scenes all the time. Mostly comic book style stuff, but I wasn't much of an artist. Seems like drawing a picture of a gun would likely get me expelled these days, and I'm most definitely not a violent person.
Fines / breakups wont succeed, and a regulated monopoly is still a monopoly.
Right, MS will still be a monopoly when the whole thing is over. That's not illegal and that wasn't the problem in the first place. The problem was that they were using that monopoly power in order to prevent other companies from competing with their products. That is what the remedy in this case needs to address.
At the moment 'real' solutions take second fiddle to browser and java crap. Focus on the big issue.
While the case focused on the browser and java issues as examples, if you read the FoF and FoL, it looks as though the judge understands that the issue is larger than either of those things. That those are just the most obvious (and provable) examples of Microsofts anti-competitive actions. I think he understands the need to impose a remedy that will prevent them from doing anything similar in he future.
Something that makes end-consumers say 'I dont want windows' has to happen. Support for 3 years for 98 seems shabby, as I use 95 still.
Consumers don't have to abandon WinXX right now. If Microsoft's bullying can be controlled, then something else will have a chance at changing the status quo. Consumers will see this new thing and buy it. Not because they just don't want WinXX, but because they like this new thing even more. That's the way it's supposed to work. Consumers need to see that there is something out there that is better, and they need to feel that the company offering this new thing will be around to support the product. That's been a key problem with Microsoft around to threaten the viability of any competing company. Nobody will buy an OS from anyone but Microsoft because they know that Microsoft can financially and/or litigiously squash any smaller company and leave them with an unsupported OS. Once we do something to make sure Microsoft can't prevent such a product from being brought to market by another company, and that they can't undermine that company's ability to compete by throwing a lot of money around like they did with Netscape and DRDOS, we'll have the kind of open and competitive market that has been absent in the desktop OS arena for so long now.
MS would merely need to convince the appellate court that another remedy would be better.
I understand that the court will not be inclined to go with Microsoft's remedy ideas unless the DOJ really goes overboard, but I'm curious about how things might play out. Could the DOJ hold up the last consent decree and examples of Microsoft's behavior to show that Microsoft cannot be trusted to offer their own remedies? It seems like letting them have a say in it is just begging to get burned again.
A fine isn't a likely remedy. Jackson is supposed to impose remedies that will prevent future abuses by Microsoft, not to punish them. That will be taken care of by the coming flood of civil suits. Should be fun to watch. They've had it coming for a long time now.
because they are so far outside the law in their heads that they can't even comprehend it (something which shocks the hell out of the judges).
I don't know how you and Cringely can believe that Microsoft really thinks this way. I don't believe they are so deluded. They understand the law and the fact that they are breaking it. That's clear as a bell to them, as evidenced by the email and testimony we've seen. The way I see it, Microsoft will repeatedly insist that they are right and declare that the government is unfairly prosecuting them for being successful. They'll say that they even tried to be reasonable, but that the DOJ was making insane demands that no company could ever accept. They'll keep claiming that they're trying to defend the freedom of the entire industry from government regulation of software design. They figure that if they repeat these things enough, they'll eventually get people to believe them. I think they believe that if they can play on people's lack of trust of the government and they're lack of understanding of the issues involved in the case, they'll get out of the whole mess when they appeal. Maybe they're even right.
If it does go to the Supreme Court (which is likely will), I think Microsoft will lose. I think the real problem is that they are so used to being able to manipulate the public and politicians, that they forget that they're not dealing with elected officials anymore. The judges are there for life. Public opinion doesn't matter to them, just the law (I hope).
So, if this product came out and was relatively inexpensive I might buy a DVD player....spurring on to supporting the Open Source DVD software..because it should be free.
Maybe you aren't aware that the MPAA is trying to make sure there IS NO open source dvd software. They have decided that people shouldn't be allowed to view dvds that they've purchased on any software that they aren't making money off of and can't control. If we accept their position and approved software instead of defending our rights to do what we want with the dvds we buy (without breaking traditional copyright law), then we'll end up legitimizing their attempt to take even more control over copyrighted works. Then it will be a simple matter for them to prosecute anyone attempting to make open source dvd software.
Thanks for telling me what I think and believe.
I guess I should have said "You seem to see Linux/OSS as a product(s)," my mistake. My point stands though. I don't see any way that having a binary DVD player available under the MPAA's rules is a step towards free open source DVD players. It seems to me that accepting such a player and the MPAA's terms for it's licensing and use is actually a setback rather than an advance. It helps to legitimize the MPAA's position on the matter. Would you care to explain why you see it as step towards a free, open source DVD player?
You're right, but we've been over this before. The DMCA does not allow circumvention of copyright protection. That's the real problem. If the DVD was unencrypted, then you could probably get away with creating a reader to view the contents. Since they put some cheesy encryption on the discs, you can't view them with an unauthorized viewer without illegally circumventing the copyright protection. It's a bunch of BS, but that's why we're writing letters to the Copyright office about it.
No, without copyright laws there would be no proprietary software.
Sure there would. It just wouldn't have legal protection. Companies would use other means, probably including obfuscation (like NVidia's source release) and encryption. Sure, the stuff could eventually be reverse-engineered or otherwise cracked, but it would be a never-ending game of catchup, kind of like the Wine team's predicament.
I didn't say anything about free software. I said "Copyright is the only reason the GPL works." There's a difference, as you apparently noticed, since free software != GPL.
There's going to be a public hearing on these issues on May 2-4 in DC, and another at Stanford University on May 18-19. Who's going to represent the views of those of us to believe the DMCA is infringing on our rights? This could make all the difference in the world. If the right people speak for us, and enough people show up to support their views, it could make them sit up and notice that we're not going to let them give the corps what they want at the expense of our rights. I'd like to know what to expect. Does anyone know who's planning to attend these hearings?
Does anyone else have some insight into this? I'm going to have to see if I can find some info about it. Could make this whole mess a bit more interesting.
I have a question about this (specific portion is bolded):
It might be possible to use the access system provided by the copyright holder to make infringing use of the copyrighted work, for example printing out 500 copies of an electronic book and distributing them at a profit. This might be authorized by the access system, but would not be illegal. As noted above, there are cases where access to the underlying data (we assume it to be unauthorized) must not be illegal in order to have fair use.
Am I misunderstanding or did you state that distributing 500 copies of an electronic book would not be illegal?
So long as someone's making new ideas, the system is meeting its goals.
There are other goals involved in the copyright and patent systems. For instance, copyright was not intended to provide absolute control to the copyright owner. There is little benefit in that. It therefore explicitly protects "fair use" rights of consumers, so that they may, among other things, quote the copyrighted work for the purposes of comment, criticism, teaching, news reporting, etc. They also have the right to resell what they have purchased, as long as they do not sell duplicates while maintaining a copy for themselves. Additionally, consumers have always had the right to modify their copy of a work in any manner they like. They can tear pages out of a book, highlight passages, make footnotes, etc. Courts have also ruled that consumers have the right to make copies of the work for backup, archival, time-shifting, or space-shifting purposes. Big media companies would like very much to see these rulings viewed in a very narrow way, and have them applied only to the specific technology that the case addressed, rather than taken as a principle of fair use.
Many of these rights are in jeopardy now. The DMCA and UCITA both present a very clear threat to the rights of consumers, as does the lengthening of copyright lifetimes. All this has been done without offering any substantial evidence that the original creators of copyrighted works are in any clear danger of being harmed significantly enough to justify this major rewriting of copyright law to remove many rights of consumers. It seems to be a ploy by the media companies to grant themselves much greater control over the use of copyrighted material, under the guise of fighting copyright infringement, at the expense of consumers' rights, and it still won't do a thing about real commercial copyright infringement by the big "pirate" distributors.
I have to agree with you on this. Copyright is the only reason the GPL works. Without copyright laws, anyone could take any code out there and use it in their own proprietary software and never give anything back (BSD-ish?). The real problem is that the MPAA is trying to take away rights that people have had under copyright law since its inception. They are trying to seriously constrain fair use and reverse engineering in ways that they couldn't do before. They are going about it differently this time though. They aren't attempting to change copyright law directly, they are getting new laws passed that enforce their technological methods of removing your rights (ie. they're making it illegal for you to circumvent their technology, even though you're doing something that would normally be considered fair use).
It seems to me that he did address your point of view. He wrote this:
Now, it is possible (probable) that some recent Linux converts don't care about Free Software, Copyleft, or any of the things that made Linux possible. They just see Linux as a cool OS and they want it to grow. So for these people there is really no difference between Linux and say OS/2 on a philisophical level.
Of course, for people who don't mind the idea of their movie collection existing under Draconian new copyright laws designed to screw them out of their rights under pre-DMCA copyright laws, I suppose it isn't a problem.
You see Linux/OSS as a product(s), whereas he and many others see it as a philosophy that has helped to produce some great software in a way that gives people more freedom rather than seeking to take away people's rights. Coming from that point of view, it's morally indefensible to take a course of action that reinforces the control of an industry group that seeks to take away the rights that OSS/free software propronents seeks to protect. Since you don't seem to hold those same beliefs, it's not a moral issue for you since, as you said, you just want to see more software out there for Linux.
Big difference. Many kids in school were inclined to snitch. Offer them incentives and you'll have a full-fledged snitching army at your service.
A poster earlier said that Sigma Designs is working on a player, but that it's not available yet. I don't know of any others.
The whole thing makes me wish I lived in DC.. err.. maybe just within driving distance. :)
I'm curious though. How does one "make material relevant to the legislative process?" How do you figure out what the individuals' interests, sympathies, etc are?