Cdparanoia predates the copy protection. We could argue that it wasn't designed to be a circumvention tool.
Would we win? By the law as it is, most likely yes(*). With Judge Kaplan? Heck no.
(*) Then again the DMCA is unconstitutional because it destroys the balance between copyright monopolies and fair use, and thus violates the First Amendment. But those with the courts and the guns (the gov't) don't have to follow the First Amendment, because we the people let them get away with violating it.
A website could say that their copyrighted content requires application of a "process" (language from the DMCA) to access the work. The process would be the interpretation and rendering of a work. They could say that only a web browser which fits their criteria (no ad-blocking, etc), is authorized to access the content. Heck they could ban any browsers on a non-Microsoft platform if they wanted to. Just put it in the terms of service. That mgiht not even be necessary - nothing on DVDs mentions any restrictions on what may legally be used to view them.
I know the above is a bogus argument, but it would likely work. If you doubt that, realize that apparently the FBI feels they can charge a Russian who sold Russian software on a Russian website with an offense in Santa Clara California, so anything goes, apparently (if you are the goverment/corporations).
Speaking of the children, there are plans to indoctrinate kids into believing anything a content provider does not like is wrong. It was mentioned back in the days of the IITF white paper/green paper and I believe has been mentioned in the UK now.
They'll think recording a show off TV is as morally wrong as copying CDs or as wrong as stealing cars.
The content owners will have the government issue propaganda in their name. The Department of Justice is biased against DeCSS, yet they are getting sued in the Federal Courts. Conflict of interest bigtime. When the judicial system in which you are being tried issues a brief in favor of the plaintiff, there is no chance at anything even approaching impartiality or a fair trial.
Just wait. One day people will get tried directly by the corporations, and the gov't will enforce it.
Linux hackers getting sued and arrested won't annoy the public much.
People trying to record the Simpsons (and the helpful neighbor with the "Record enabler" (circumvention device) getting sued and arrested for it WILL annoy the average person.
Are you sure you aren't confusing a CIVIL action with a CRIMINAL action of a low enough severity that imprisonment is not allowed. As far as I remember, the Supreme Court said you can arrest even for crimes for which imprisonment is not allowed - that is a far cry from arresting someone for a civil violation.
BTW, speeding is a CRIMINAL offense (as are other traffic violations) in many states. For example, Nevada.
Plus a FINE is only assessed for CRIMINAL offenses, for civil offenses it is a civil penalty.
It is a very important distinction. If you get pulled over for speeding, you are very definitely detained. Would you rather simply be arrested?! Would you like any time a cop stops you for any reason to require an arrest?
Even the most uneconomical solutions become practical when they are mandated by law or when the alternatives are outlawed.
If solar power became mandatory, or if there were legal caps placed on the consumption of pollution and non-renewable resources, then the environmentally correct energy sources would get use.
That's economics too. If there is a demand, it will be satisified by whatever suppliers are (allowed to) exist in the market. Prices could rise, but shortages won't occur unless there are price caps or stupidity involved. Which is usually the case with rolling blackouts - i.e. somebody MAJORLY screwed up - usually including mispredicting demand - rolling blackouts would'nt occur if the demand was forseen in time - then additional resources could be acquired, plants fixed and brough online, etc.
Hardware manufacturers likely do'nt have enoguh clout for that. More likely is that the hardware will be closed, and an extension of the DMCA will make it illegal to hack on any hardware which as been "closed for the benefit of content holders". You wouldn't even have to circumvent or develop a circumvention tool, just do anything that might make circumvention easier down the line.
E.g. opening a case which is designed to destroy the computer when opened, but done it such a way that the computer isn't destroyed. Now it would be easier for people to add "non-secure" (i.e. doesn't restrict fair use) hardware and possibly violate the DMCA.
That is more likely, and even scarier. The MPAA owns way more of Congressional mindshare that the hardware companies. And the hardware companies have been on the side of good quite a bit (often not for noble reasons, but for economics. In a way, that's better because they aren't likely to change their mind unless the economics of the situation changes a lot).
Congress has members who actually believe that if the MPAA makes less money (but still a huge amount) due to priacy, that they'll just stop making movies (and make zero money), and that they won't be able to go to the theater on Saturday night.
Hopefully by the time things get too bad, Linux will be mainstream enough that crushing us will be politically incorrect.
KIllustrator does sound like a KDE version (or clone) of Illustrator. Since it is neither, the name is bad for non-legal reasons too. For example, would you call a KDE solitare name kgcc even if you could?
That being said, I don't think "Illustrator" should have been granted as a trademark. I don't like single, English, normally spelled and capitialized words to be eligible for a trademark monopoly. However the United States Patent and Trademark Office is the one that granted it and thus is at fault for doing so. A company can ask for anything, it is the USPTO job to deny bad requests.
I really didn't like the demands for money and destruction of software, and found asking for the list of people who downloaded it to be somewhat chilling. Were they planning on confiscating it (and everything else nearby) from people's homes by force?!
Actually it is very merchantilist, not capitalist or socialist. Socialism is gov't controlling companies, merchantilism is gov't helping companies and giving them powers that they should not have and that a truly FREE market would not give them.
Of course, a totally free market has problems too.
How does one deal with getting the hardware state restored? If I run a tool which sends a command to a piece of hardware and changes its mode (e.g. hdparm, X), doesn't the kernel need to keep track of this so that if I suspend and then later resume, the resume process can get the hardware back in the state it was at suspend time?
If I suspend with X being displayed, how does the resume get the video card back in the right graphics mode and configured correctly?
This needs to be done for all devices before such a feature is ready for widespread deployment.
Of course, some sites, with the help of Microsoft, might fight back. Such as a proprietary HTTP extension. Perhaps the server sends a key, an offset, and a size when you first open up port 80. Your browser would then have to take the key, append bytes of code from the browser from offset to offset+(size-1), md5 that, and send it to the server or else get an error. Along the lines of the AOL Instant Messenger (TM) fiasco from a little while back.
You'd likely have to violate copyright to fight that.
AOL Instant Messenger is a trademark of America Online.
Linux should have a RED screen of death. More legal and more powerful all at once.
Let's face it, when your machine crashes, a soothing blue will just get you more frustrated and angry. A nice red background would be much easier to relate to.
Set the power button suspend, not power-down You can do it on an Asus P2B motherboard every easily, probably on many others.
Configure the Linux kernel APM support to ignore user suspend.
Problem solved. Very few people know about the 4 second override shutdown or that there still is a switch in the back. (Those that do, hopefully will be clueful enough not to "helpfully" power off your PC.)
Except now, the user may run away screaming from the room, saying your computer is possessed by demons.
Most people that would pay for Steven King, do so OFFLINE to buy a hard copy book. Few people will pay for online content. If they are willing to pay, they will usually go offline for it. Plus the people who are willing to pay are often those who are more interested in offline content anyway...
Yes, when content costs, a lot of people will go back to watching TV and reading the sunday paper at McDonalds. The rest of us
will begrudingly pay a bit more and enjoy all that fast bandwidth now that the spectators are gone.
Some of us will just enjoy the free content that remains. You know, the stuff that existed before (yes, BEFORE) the web became popular and commercialized.
It has certain benefits that PCs do not have (locked hardware, unified memory, etc.)
Locked hardware is a benefit?! For whom? Certainly not for the customer. Maybe for those that love control, such as the MPAA and the RIAA, but not us, the customers.
It seems you have already been assimilated into the Borg.
Anyway, the PS/2 was somewhat of a closed system (IBM had been overly tight-fisted about controlling use of the MCA bus technology - it hurt them and they have learned from their mistake), but it was far more open than the PS2 game machine.
P.S. I am wondering, what benefits can game consoles have over PCs anyway? PCs have TV out for those that want connections to TVs and the frame rates are nowadays faster than human perception and the scan rate of any monitor or TV out there. Please let me know what I am missing. Granted they are cheaper than PCs sometimes, but not by all that much it seems. And anything with a hard drive is getting close to being a PC anyway... Heck, GCC can be made to run on it I heard.
Once fuel gets to be in such short supply that oil costs so much that gasoline is $4 a gallon (will happen eventually) it will become VERY economical to use solar power.
Solar power has low ongoing costs - no refinery workers to pay, no use of fuel to refine fuel (refineries USE quite a bit on energy), just the costs to make them and some occasional maintenance (you would have that with ANY power source).
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Cdparanoia predates the copy protection. We could argue that it wasn't designed to be a circumvention tool.
Would we win? By the law as it is, most likely yes(*). With Judge Kaplan? Heck no.
(*) Then again the DMCA is unconstitutional because it destroys the balance between copyright monopolies and fair use, and thus violates the First Amendment. But those with the courts and the guns (the gov't) don't have to follow the First Amendment, because we the people let them get away with violating it.
A website could say that their copyrighted content requires application of a "process" (language from the DMCA) to access the work. The process would be the interpretation and rendering of a work. They could say that only a web browser which fits their criteria (no ad-blocking, etc), is authorized to access the content. Heck they could ban any browsers on a non-Microsoft platform if they wanted to. Just put it in the terms of service. That mgiht not even be necessary - nothing on DVDs mentions any restrictions on what may legally be used to view them.
I know the above is a bogus argument, but it would likely work. If you doubt that, realize that apparently the FBI feels they can charge a Russian who sold Russian software on a Russian website with an offense in Santa Clara California, so anything goes, apparently (if you are the goverment/corporations).
Umm Judge Kaplan's DeCSS decision DID eliminate fair use.
You only have "fair use" if the content owner and their "protection" racket (pun intended) allow you to have it.
That does defeat the purpose of fair use...
We need to get the DeCSS decision reversed, or else fair use WILL have been legislated and judicially ordered to be illegal.
Speaking of the children, there are plans to indoctrinate kids into believing anything a content provider does not like is wrong. It was mentioned back in the days of the IITF white paper/green paper and I believe has been mentioned in the UK now.
They'll think recording a show off TV is as morally wrong as copying CDs or as wrong as stealing cars.
The content owners will have the government issue propaganda in their name. The Department of Justice is biased against DeCSS, yet they are getting sued in the Federal Courts. Conflict of interest bigtime. When the judicial system in which you are being tried issues a brief in favor of the plaintiff, there is no chance at anything even approaching impartiality or a fair trial.
Just wait. One day people will get tried directly by the corporations, and the gov't will enforce it.
Linux hackers getting sued and arrested won't annoy the public much.
People trying to record the Simpsons (and the helpful neighbor with the "Record enabler" (circumvention device) getting sued and arrested for it WILL annoy the average person.
Are you sure you aren't confusing a CIVIL action with a CRIMINAL action of a low enough severity that imprisonment is not allowed. As far as I remember, the Supreme Court said you can arrest even for crimes for which imprisonment is not allowed - that is a far cry from arresting someone for a civil violation. BTW, speeding is a CRIMINAL offense (as are other traffic violations) in many states. For example, Nevada. Plus a FINE is only assessed for CRIMINAL offenses, for civil offenses it is a civil penalty.
It is a very important distinction. If you get pulled over for speeding, you are very definitely detained. Would you rather simply be arrested?! Would you like any time a cop stops you for any reason to require an arrest?
There is a car called the Ford Contour. Any lawyers care to comment on the implications of Kontour vs Contour? Any risk of a lawsuit?
Even the most uneconomical solutions become practical when they are mandated by law or when the alternatives are outlawed.
If solar power became mandatory, or if there were legal caps placed on the consumption of pollution and non-renewable resources, then the environmentally correct energy sources would get use.
That's economics too. If there is a demand, it will be satisified by whatever suppliers are (allowed to) exist in the market. Prices could rise, but shortages won't occur unless there are price caps or stupidity involved. Which is usually the case with rolling blackouts - i.e. somebody MAJORLY screwed up - usually including mispredicting demand - rolling blackouts would'nt occur if the demand was forseen in time - then additional resources could be acquired, plants fixed and brough online, etc.
Linux kernel 2.4 has /dev/microcode support, so it could actually become possible to extend a CPUs instruction set.
Hardware manufacturers likely do'nt have enoguh clout for that. More likely is that the hardware will be closed, and an extension of the DMCA will make it illegal to hack on any hardware which as been "closed for the benefit of content holders". You wouldn't even have to circumvent or develop a circumvention tool, just do anything that might make circumvention easier down the line.
E.g. opening a case which is designed to destroy the computer when opened, but done it such a way that the computer isn't destroyed. Now it would be easier for people to add "non-secure" (i.e. doesn't restrict fair use) hardware and possibly violate the DMCA.
That is more likely, and even scarier. The MPAA owns way more of Congressional mindshare that the hardware companies. And the hardware companies have been on the side of good quite a bit (often not for noble reasons, but for economics. In a way, that's better because they aren't likely to change their mind unless the economics of the situation changes a lot).
Congress has members who actually believe that if the MPAA makes less money (but still a huge amount) due to priacy, that they'll just stop making movies (and make zero money), and that they won't be able to go to the theater on Saturday night.
Hopefully by the time things get too bad, Linux will be mainstream enough that crushing us will be politically incorrect.
KIllustrator does sound like a KDE version (or clone) of Illustrator. Since it is neither, the name is bad for non-legal reasons too. For example, would you call a KDE solitare name kgcc even if you could?
That being said, I don't think "Illustrator" should have been granted as a trademark. I don't like single, English, normally spelled and capitialized words to be eligible for a trademark monopoly. However the United States Patent and Trademark Office is the one that granted it and thus is at fault for doing so. A company can ask for anything, it is the USPTO job to deny bad requests.
I really didn't like the demands for money and destruction of software, and found asking for the list of people who downloaded it to be somewhat chilling. Were they planning on confiscating it (and everything else nearby) from people's homes by force?!
I am glad things ended okay.
Of course, a totally free market has problems too.
How does one deal with getting the hardware state restored? If I run a tool which sends a command to a piece of hardware and changes its mode (e.g. hdparm, X), doesn't the kernel need to keep track of this so that if I suspend and then later resume, the resume process can get the hardware back in the state it was at suspend time?
If I suspend with X being displayed, how does the resume get the video card back in the right graphics mode and configured correctly?
This needs to be done for all devices before such a feature is ready for widespread deployment.
Of course, some sites, with the help of Microsoft, might fight back. Such as a proprietary HTTP extension. Perhaps the server sends a key, an offset, and a size when you first open up port 80. Your browser would then have to take the key, append bytes of code from the browser from offset to offset+(size-1), md5 that, and send it to the server or else get an error. Along the lines of the AOL Instant Messenger (TM) fiasco from a little while back.
You'd likely have to violate copyright to fight that.
AOL Instant Messenger is a trademark of America Online.
Linux should have a RED screen of death. More legal and more powerful all at once.
Let's face it, when your machine crashes, a soothing blue will just get you more frustrated and angry. A nice red background would be much easier to relate to.
Set the power button suspend, not power-down You can do it on an Asus P2B motherboard every easily, probably on many others.
Configure the Linux kernel APM support to ignore user suspend.
Problem solved. Very few people know about the 4 second override shutdown or that there still is a switch in the back. (Those that do, hopefully will be clueful enough not to "helpfully" power off your PC.)
Except now, the user may run away screaming from the room, saying your computer is possessed by demons.
Most people that would pay for Steven King, do so OFFLINE to buy a hard copy book. Few people will pay for online content. If they are willing to pay, they will usually go offline for it. Plus the people who are willing to pay are often those who are more interested in offline content anyway...
Yes, when content costs, a lot of people will go back to watching TV and reading the sunday paper at McDonalds. The rest of us will begrudingly pay a bit more and enjoy all that fast bandwidth now that the spectators are gone.
Some of us will just enjoy the free content that remains. You know, the stuff that existed before (yes, BEFORE) the web became popular and commercialized.
What would be the proper way for that person to cover his/her ass?
Move to Mexico
It has certain benefits that PCs do not have (locked hardware, unified memory, etc.)
Locked hardware is a benefit?! For whom? Certainly not for the customer. Maybe for those that love control, such as the MPAA and the RIAA, but not us, the customers.
It seems you have already been assimilated into the Borg.
Makes me long for the day when PS2 meant PS/2 and not PlayStation 2. (Maybe we shouldn't abbreviate PlayStation 2 like that, look at CSS, is it Cascading Style Sheets, Content Scrambling System or C Styled Script?).
Anyway, the PS/2 was somewhat of a closed system (IBM had been overly tight-fisted about controlling use of the MCA bus technology - it hurt them and they have learned from their mistake), but it was far more open than the PS2 game machine.
P.S. I am wondering, what benefits can game consoles have over PCs anyway? PCs have TV out for those that want connections to TVs and the frame rates are nowadays faster than human perception and the scan rate of any monitor or TV out there. Please let me know what I am missing. Granted they are cheaper than PCs sometimes, but not by all that much it seems. And anything with a hard drive is getting close to being a PC anyway... Heck, GCC can be made to run on it I heard.
PS1='\! ($?): \t: \w: \h\$ '
Gives the history number, last exit status, time, directory, hostname and a $ for users and a # for root.
Very useful.
Looks like this:
116 (0): 19:17:25: ~: pc$
Once fuel gets to be in such short supply that oil costs so much that gasoline is $4 a gallon (will happen eventually) it will become VERY economical to use solar power.
Solar power has low ongoing costs - no refinery workers to pay, no use of fuel to refine fuel (refineries USE quite a bit on energy), just the costs to make them and some occasional maintenance (you would have that with ANY power source).
And all this time I thought he wouldn't release movies on DVD because of DeCSS and how poor it was making everyone in Hollywood.
;)
Thanks for enlightening me.
I don't think many car owners would be very trusting of purple motor oil ;)