There are two possibilities: Valenti is a cagey weasel dodging like Bill Gates, or he is a somewhat befuddled, 80-year old man with a headcold. I wonder which? Has anyone seen this guy on TV recently? Does he seem with it?
I thought it was interesting that right after Garbus brought up region codes there was a huge confidential section.
The best countries for a site beyond US government reach are those with bad relations already. For example, how about putting your content that pisses off US corporations in Cuba?
You start up a company that searches the web for stolen intellecutal property. Your customers are MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, games makers, etc. I bet all these guys would pay a pile of money for this service, and it would be cheap to provide. Just get a staff to randomly surf the web 40 hours a week looking for MP3's, DVD's, illicit software copies produced by your customers. If an ISP refuses to remove copyrighted content, your client foots the bill for a lawsuit against the ISP.
BLAM! Overnight you kill the "unstoppable" power of the net to distribute information.
Re:Boy you people like living dangerously
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
People don't like drug laws and such and there have been many, many, many attempts to override them through similar attempts at civil disobedience; however all of these have failed and over 50 years later we still have unpopular drug laws and they are still enforced. Same with these types of things.
People didn't like racially discriminatory laws and there were many, many, many attempts to override them through similar attempts at civil disobience, and... oh look! IT WORKED!
Hey, suppose I run deCSS on all my DVD's. For each movie, I scrunch the video down to smaller size and splice together my own trailer. This trailer could illustrate points I make in an accompanying text review. (I could pull out some stills, too.) Then I post all my reviews + trailers on the web.
Is this legal? Can't I distribute short excerpts from a copyrighted work for review purposes? It think that would make a cool site. Would this make the MPAA throw a fit, ya think?
The public might really be pro-Microsoft. And yet... Microsoft still felt obliged to rig the poll by slanting the questions. The main question was:
QUESTION: Recent press reports suggest that the Justice Department will seek to break-up Microsoft into separate companies. Do you favor efforts by the government to break-up Microsoft,
or do you think a penalty like break-up would be too extreme given what you know about the case?
This is not the natural, neutral yes/no question, "Do you favor efforts by the government to break-up Microsoft?" Instead, it goes on (in the italicized part) to provide a rationale for ONE answer-- the preferred one. If you give the right answer (don't break up Microsoft), the question has a line of reasoning all ready for you (it's just too extreme). Not so if you answer the wrong way.
Here is the second most important question:
As you may know, the case impacts consumers. Some people say that Microsoft has
repeatedly benefited consumers with its products. Others say Microsofts business practices have hurt consumers. Which side do you agree with more?
Again, the extraneous, italicized part cues the correct answer: "repeatedly benefited" vs. "hurt", and not "benefited" vs. "repeatedly hurt".
Historically, many societies regarded middlemen as contemptible: they didn't produce anything, they just got rich shuffling goods around. But however little they were liked, the economic forces of the time dictated their existence.
A modern, digital parallel of the middleman is an outfit like RIAA: they don't make music, they get rich packaging and selling other people's work. We have become so used to such middlemen that we forget that they don't have to exist at all. In fact, we've now come full circle. The internet kills the economic reason for the existence of these dealers in digital media. So-- what a great irony!-- we get laws like DMCA intended to perpetuate these once-reviled institutions, despite the economic forces of our time.
My personal bet for the New Business Model in the music industry is that the corporate part will disintegrate, digital music will be free (or so cheap that pirating isn't worth the trouble), and musicians will make their money from live performances.
Second, even assuming that DeCSS runs under Linux, it concededly runs under Windows---a far more widely used operating system---as well. It therefore cannot reasonably be said that DeCSS was developed "for the sole purpose'' of achieving interoperability between Linux and DVDs.
This statement is so confusing to me. So the intent of the deCSS authors in part determines whether it's creation and distribution is legal? If they developed for the "sole purpose" of achieving interoperability, then we're fine. But if they were eyeing Windows lustily at the time, then we're not? Can I rewrite deCSS muttering "Linux, Linux, Linux" all while and turn this point around?
a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively
controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs...
The more I look at this vital DMCA paragraph, the more I realize that I don't know what the hell it means. The italics part is particularly a mystery to me. Can anyone figure out what situation this could possibly be describing?
Anyway, I wonder what MPAA will do next? Will they send out thousands of threats, pointing to this ruling?
First, if it grows large, it proves that deCSS is already so widely distributed that further legal action is pointless from a practical perspective. This is already blazingly obvious to Slashdotters, but the media, the courts, and MPAA apparently need to be educated. The sooner legal action is recognized as futile, the sooner this sad episode will end.
Second, the list is a way to stand up to MPAA's disgusting intimidation campaign. The MPAA's spin is that people associated with deCSS are all shady hacker-types-- digital criminals. I'd like to respond with this list of decent people who are not afraid to publicly state their NAME and LOCATION and the fact that they are DAMN WELL going to exercise their liberties whether the MPAA likes it or not.
The list is growing steadily, but slowly. So far, 10 US states and 5 countries are represented.
But I've made a truly gloomy discovery. I've received numerous comments to the effect, "This is a horrible idea-- now the MPAA will know just who to go after!" I could weep. These comments indicate that with almost no effort, the MPAA has intimidated a great many people into believing that exercising their rights is a bad idea. Freedoms that will exist on the net for decades are being determined now; this is not a good time to scurry off into the shadows whenever some corporation emits a spate of nasty lawyer-letters.
Now this is a list of deCSS holders, not distributors, and to date no one has been threatened for merely possessing deCSS. Still, taking on even minimal risk of a lawsuit-- even a baseless one-- could be unwise for some. This said, I hope that more people will, after considering the pros and cons, sign up.
(Since someone will ask: no, I'm not an MPAA secret agent; here's me, if you want to check.)
The problem is that both NSA and FBI have a history of monitoring domestic communications illegally, without warrants, and without notifying Congress. The illegal FBI wiretap on Martin Luther King is only the most famous.
The country is pretty pacific these days-- no cold war, no red scare, no Vietnam, no civil rights movement-- so there may not be domestic monitoring at the moment. (None of these outfits break the law just for fun or because your life is so damn interesting that they just gotta know what you're up to; they do it to advance their bureaucratic interests.) But you can be sure that with the next nationally divisive issue or paranoid chief executive, there will again be a behind-the-scenes push for illegal, domestic monitoring.
You seem to believe that the intelligence bureaucracies are out there fighting to save us all and will be most effective if we just let them alone.
A priori there is no reason to suppose that secretive agencies like CIA and NSA are more capable of carrying out their mission or more responsible in doing so than other, lackluster government bureaucracies like the EPA or INS. In fact, since they lack broad Congressional and public accountability, one should expect quite the opposite.
Sure enough, the available evidence suggests that the intelligence bureaucracies are frequently more interested in self-preservation than in national security. And, in fact, that primary instinct for self-preservation is often AT ODDS with US national security and protecting citizens.
Let's run right down the line of agencies:
FBI: For years, J. Egdar Hoover grossly exaggerated the power of the dilapidated American Communist Party and denied the very existence of organized crime. Reason? Counterintelligence work brought more power to himself and the agency than fighting crime. Winner: FBI bureaucrats Loser: US public. (I'll pass over the illegal wiretaps on Martin Luther King, extensive dossiers on congressmen, etc.)
CIA: After "successes" in Iran and Guatamala CIA sees overthrowing third-world governments that don't toady to US interests as the key to a new, expanded role for the agency. A gross ignorance of public sentiment in Cuba results in the humiliating Bay of Pigs invasion. The consequent tension escalates ultimately to the Cuban Missle Crisis. A report on the whole mess is highly classified for 30 years-- not because it reveals secrets, but because it makes the CIA look like a bunch of morons. Winner: CIA Loser: US public (I'll skip CIA's practice of censoring books that expose flaws in the agency, it's mistreatment of female agents, etc.)
NSA: Could win influence with the Nixon White House by providing intercepted communications between domestic political groups. Winner: NSA Loser: US public
In short, when "the fucks" are "greedy or crooked", they do not serve "National Security", but rather they serve themselves at the expense of national interests. This is why I think CIA, NSA, FBI need to be kept on a tight leash. The moment they try to stiff-arm the Congress, drastic measures are very much in order.
I'm not compiling a list of self-confessed criminals; I'm making a list of upstanding citizens who are openly excercising what we believe to be a legitimate right, albeit in the face of corporate intimidation tactics.
I do not think that when my rights are threatened by a corporate bully, the proper response is to scuttle down into anonymous skulking until the matter blows over. I do not think this is how personal freedoms are won. Quite the opposite; I think the proper response is to say, "Hi! I'm Eric Lehman, a contributing citizen of the United States residing at 5 Michael Way, Cambridge MA 02141, and I'm not going along with this bullshit." As one person joining the list noted, "Wrong is wrong and doing nothing about the wrong we know about is even MORE wrong..."
That said, I think there are two reasonable objectives:
Disseminate the deCSS code everywhere to defeat the MPAA's crackdown in a practical sense.
Make the absurdity of the crackdown apparent to the media and courts by showing that deCSS is now everywhere.
I think that the first objective is already achieved-- deCSS is too widely distributed to stamp out. But this achievement came at a price: several people are being sued and hundreds are under threat. These people will remain in jeopardy until the second objective is achieved, until the media, courts, and MPAA understand that continuing legal harassment is utterly pointless because deCSS is everywhere. Only then will the people who already stood up to the MPAA-- and paid a price-- be in the clear.
I find it difficult to believe that people on the list could be sued for merely *possessing a copy* of deCSS, as opposed to distributing it. Well, it's crazy, but I guess anything is possible. Of course, I hope your post advocating proliferation of the code doesn't get you sued!
If you feel that joining the list is unwise given your particular life circumstances, I respect your judgement. But I don't think you should mock people who decide to take a little personal risk to oppose the MPAA in an open, forthright way. In fact, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the people who have done so. I hope enough others will sign up to make a real impact.
I'm starting up a list of people holding copies of DeCSS, and I want everyone to sign up!
Here's why this is important:
Nerds know that the legal proceedings are farcical. MPAA is spawning emergency court proceedings, preliminary injunctions, and police raids. But no judge, no lawyers, no Norwegian police can make DeCSS go away, because thousands of decent foks are fuming and patting personal copies of the code.
But the media and the courts don't know that litigation is only a black comedy; they don't understand that DeCSS is *out of the bag* for good.
So I want to unambiguously *PROVE* that DeCSS is so widely distributed that further legal action is silly. I want to give the media hard numbers on DeCSS proliferation.
That's why I'm starting up a list of people holding copies of DeCSS. You can help stop the MPAA rampage. If you hold a copy of DeCSS, please sign up and get your friends to as well.
Append a * if and only if you would like to express interest in a mass, simultaneous web-posting of DeCSS at some future date, should the MPAA prove relentless.
If the list grows to thousands, this negates the MPAA lawsuit in practical terms. Go ahead, sue 3 guys: there are thousands more where they came from.
Furthermore, we can make an important point that everyone-- not just geeks-- should understand in this case and for the future: bulldog lawyers, lobbyist-written laws, and PR goons can't prevent decent people from distributing decent stuff via the net.
Not worth your time to defend freedom of speech on the net? Take a look at Option B.
The individual liberties that will exist on the net for decades to come are being hashed out NOW. A lot of posters are clearly struggling to fairly balance copyright, trade secret, and patent issues against free speech on the net. This is certainly commendable, but anyone think the MPAA will temper their position one iota out of deference to free speech? I don't think so. This is a major, precendent-setting case, so let's win.
I've created a web page to make a practical point: DeCSS is now so widely distributed that further legal action by the MPAA is silly. I think that the sooner the media, the courts, and the MPAA understand this point, the sooner this sorry episode will end. (Though MPAA's motives are so murky-- who knows?)
The page will simply list people who hold copies of DeCSS. If the list becomes large enough, I will try to notify the media, so that the absurdity of trying to stamp out DeCSS through legal bludgeoning becomes apparent to all.
Feel free to check out the site and join the effort. (As of this posting, I'm the only one listed!:) )
Slashdot Mirror
There are two possibilities: Valenti is a cagey weasel dodging like Bill Gates, or he is a somewhat befuddled, 80-year old man with a headcold. I wonder which? Has anyone seen this guy on TV recently? Does he seem with it?
I thought it was interesting that right after Garbus brought up region codes there was a huge confidential section.
The best countries for a site beyond US government reach are those with bad relations already. For example, how about putting your content that pisses off US corporations in Cuba?
Now, wouldn't that be ironic?
Isn't it funny how every single time some corporation wants to trample free speech, it trots out a spokesman to say, "This isn't about free speech?"
Hey, here's a scary thought:
You start up a company that searches the web for stolen intellecutal property. Your customers are MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, games makers, etc. I bet all these guys would pay a pile of money for this service, and it would be cheap to provide. Just get a staff to randomly surf the web 40 hours a week looking for MP3's, DVD's, illicit software copies produced by your customers. If an ISP refuses to remove copyrighted content, your client foots the bill for a lawsuit against the ISP.
BLAM! Overnight you kill the "unstoppable" power of the net to distribute information.
People didn't like racially discriminatory laws and there were many, many, many attempts to override them through similar attempts at civil disobience, and... oh look! IT WORKED!
Anyone worried about Tempest wouldn't use 56 bit encryption.
Hey, suppose I run deCSS on all my DVD's. For each movie, I scrunch the video down to smaller size and splice together my own trailer. This trailer could illustrate points I make in an accompanying text review. (I could pull out some stills, too.) Then I post all my reviews + trailers on the web.
Is this legal? Can't I distribute short excerpts from a copyrighted work for review purposes? It think that would make a cool site. Would this make the MPAA throw a fit, ya think?
The public might really be pro-Microsoft. And yet... Microsoft still felt obliged to rig the poll by slanting the questions. The main question was:
This is not the natural, neutral yes/no question, "Do you favor efforts by the government to break-up Microsoft?" Instead, it goes on (in the italicized part) to provide a rationale for ONE answer-- the preferred one. If you give the right answer (don't break up Microsoft), the question has a line of reasoning all ready for you (it's just too extreme). Not so if you answer the wrong way.
Here is the second most important question:
Again, the extraneous, italicized part cues the correct answer: "repeatedly benefited" vs. "hurt", and not "benefited" vs. "repeatedly hurt".
Conclusion: BOGUS POLL
Historically, many societies regarded middlemen as contemptible: they didn't produce anything, they just got rich shuffling goods around. But however little they were liked, the economic forces of the time dictated their existence.
A modern, digital parallel of the middleman is an outfit like RIAA: they don't make music, they get rich packaging and selling other people's work. We have become so used to such middlemen that we forget that they don't have to exist at all. In fact, we've now come full circle. The internet kills the economic reason for the existence of these dealers in digital media. So-- what a great irony!-- we get laws like DMCA intended to perpetuate these once-reviled institutions, despite the economic forces of our time.
My personal bet for the New Business Model in the music industry is that the corporate part will disintegrate, digital music will be free (or so cheap that pirating isn't worth the trouble), and musicians will make their money from live performances.
This statement is so confusing to me. So the intent of the deCSS authors in part determines whether it's creation and distribution is legal? If they developed for the "sole purpose" of achieving interoperability, then we're fine. But if they were eyeing Windows lustily at the time, then we're not? Can I rewrite deCSS muttering "Linux, Linux, Linux" all while and turn this point around?
The more I look at this vital DMCA paragraph, the more I realize that I don't know what the hell it means. The italics part is particularly a mystery to me. Can anyone figure out what situation this could possibly be describing?
Anyway, I wonder what MPAA will do next? Will they send out thousands of threats, pointing to this ruling?
Unfair, since INS has many obligations, but STILL.
I've been building a public list of people who hold copies of deCSS and aren't afraid to announce this fact. The list serves two purposes:
The list is growing steadily, but slowly. So far, 10 US states and 5 countries are represented.
But I've made a truly gloomy discovery. I've received numerous comments to the effect, "This is a horrible idea-- now the MPAA will know just who to go after!" I could weep. These comments indicate that with almost no effort, the MPAA has intimidated a great many people into believing that exercising their rights is a bad idea. Freedoms that will exist on the net for decades are being determined now; this is not a good time to scurry off into the shadows whenever some corporation emits a spate of nasty lawyer-letters.
Now this is a list of deCSS holders, not distributors, and to date no one has been threatened for merely possessing deCSS. Still, taking on even minimal risk of a lawsuit-- even a baseless one-- could be unwise for some. This said, I hope that more people will, after considering the pros and cons, sign up .
(Since someone will ask: no, I'm not an MPAA secret agent; here's me, if you want to check.)
The problem is that both NSA and FBI have a history of monitoring domestic communications illegally, without warrants, and without notifying Congress. The illegal FBI wiretap on Martin Luther King is only the most famous.
The country is pretty pacific these days-- no cold war, no red scare, no Vietnam, no civil rights movement-- so there may not be domestic monitoring at the moment. (None of these outfits break the law just for fun or because your life is so damn interesting that they just gotta know what you're up to; they do it to advance their bureaucratic interests.) But you can be sure that with the next nationally divisive issue or paranoid chief executive, there will again be a behind-the-scenes push for illegal, domestic monitoring.
You seem to believe that the intelligence bureaucracies are out there fighting to save us all and will be most effective if we just let them alone.
A priori there is no reason to suppose that secretive agencies like CIA and NSA are more capable of carrying out their mission or more responsible in doing so than other, lackluster government bureaucracies like the EPA or INS. In fact, since they lack broad Congressional and public accountability, one should expect quite the opposite.
Sure enough, the available evidence suggests that the intelligence bureaucracies are frequently more interested in self-preservation than in national security. And, in fact, that primary instinct for self-preservation is often AT ODDS with US national security and protecting citizens.
Let's run right down the line of agencies:
In short, when "the fucks" are "greedy or crooked", they do not serve "National Security", but rather they serve themselves at the expense of national interests. This is why I think CIA, NSA, FBI need to be kept on a tight leash. The moment they try to stiff-arm the Congress, drastic measures are very much in order.
Here is why we know about the failure:
This is "Sources" slimey way of demanding a bigger budget from Congress.
Personally, I suggest a budget of $0 until NSA fully informs the Congress about Echelon.
I'm not compiling a list of self-confessed criminals; I'm making a list of upstanding citizens who are openly excercising what we believe to be a legitimate right, albeit in the face of corporate intimidation tactics.
I do not think that when my rights are threatened by a corporate bully, the proper response is to scuttle down into anonymous skulking until the matter blows over. I do not think this is how personal freedoms are won. Quite the opposite; I think the proper response is to say, "Hi! I'm Eric Lehman, a contributing citizen of the United States residing at 5 Michael Way, Cambridge MA 02141, and I'm not going along with this bullshit." As one person joining the list noted, "Wrong is wrong and doing nothing about the wrong we know about is even MORE wrong..."
That said, I think there are two reasonable objectives:
I think that the first objective is already achieved-- deCSS is too widely distributed to stamp out. But this achievement came at a price: several people are being sued and hundreds are under threat. These people will remain in jeopardy until the second objective is achieved, until the media, courts, and MPAA understand that continuing legal harassment is utterly pointless because deCSS is everywhere. Only then will the people who already stood up to the MPAA-- and paid a price-- be in the clear.
I find it difficult to believe that people on the list could be sued for merely *possessing a copy* of deCSS, as opposed to distributing it. Well, it's crazy, but I guess anything is possible. Of course, I hope your post advocating proliferation of the code doesn't get you sued!
If you feel that joining the list is unwise given your particular life circumstances, I respect your judgement. But I don't think you should mock people who decide to take a little personal risk to oppose the MPAA in an open, forthright way. In fact, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the people who have done so. I hope enough others will sign up to make a real impact.
I'm starting up a list of people holding copies of DeCSS, and I want everyone to sign up!
Here's why this is important:
Nerds know that the legal proceedings are farcical. MPAA is spawning emergency court proceedings, preliminary injunctions, and police raids. But no judge, no lawyers, no Norwegian police can make DeCSS go away, because thousands of decent foks are fuming and patting personal copies of the code.
But the media and the courts don't know that litigation is only a black comedy; they don't understand that DeCSS is *out of the bag* for good.
So I want to unambiguously *PROVE* that DeCSS is so widely distributed that further legal action is silly. I want to give the media hard numbers on DeCSS proliferation.
That's why I'm starting up a list of people holding copies of DeCSS. You can help stop the MPAA rampage. If you hold a copy of DeCSS, please sign up and get your friends to as well.
Let's prove to the outside world that DeCSS has "gone mainstream".
Join my list of people holding copies of DeCSS.
If you hold a copy of DeCSS, email the following info on the subject line to e_lehman@mit.edu:
Append a * if and only if you would like to express interest in a mass, simultaneous web-posting of DeCSS at some future date, should the MPAA prove relentless.
If the list grows to thousands, this negates the MPAA lawsuit in practical terms. Go ahead, sue 3 guys: there are thousands more where they came from.
Furthermore, we can make an important point that everyone-- not just geeks-- should understand in this case and for the future: bulldog lawyers, lobbyist-written laws, and PR goons can't prevent decent people from distributing decent stuff via the net.
Not worth your time to defend freedom of speech on the net? Take a look at Option B.
The individual liberties that will exist on the net for decades to come are being hashed out NOW. A lot of posters are clearly struggling to fairly balance copyright, trade secret, and patent issues against free speech on the net. This is certainly commendable, but anyone think the MPAA will temper their position one iota out of deference to free speech? I don't think so. This is a major, precendent-setting case, so let's win.
I've created a web page to make a practical point: DeCSS is now so widely distributed that further legal action by the MPAA is silly. I think that the sooner the media, the courts, and the MPAA understand this point, the sooner this sorry episode will end. (Though MPAA's motives are so murky-- who knows?)
:) )
The page will simply list people who hold copies of DeCSS. If the list becomes large enough, I will try to notify the media, so that the absurdity of trying to stamp out DeCSS through legal bludgeoning becomes apparent to all.
Feel free to check out the site and join the effort. (As of this posting, I'm the only one listed!