You know, there are a number of arguments that have already been stated against this hacking contest, and I am sure more arguments that will be stated against it in the future.
Personally, I don't think that any of this actually matters. I don't really care whether the RIAA gains industry credibility for the SDMI - if recording companies want to use it then more power to them. I also don't care if the current SDMI implementations are 'proven' to be un-crackable during the artificially restricted cracking period of three weeks - the only thing that this will cause is more trumpet-blowing by the RIAA.
The beautiful thing about the 'net and the hacker community is that I can guarantee at least a 1000:1 ratio of 'smart, motivated hackers' to 'mediocre corporate software engineers' on this one. Whatever the RIAA end up thrusting upon the industry and the unsuspecting public, it'll end up being cracked within the month. End of story.
Let them waste cash developing this white-elephant of a protection mechanism. Whatever they spend here won't be available for them to pay lawyers with:)
Readng this review brought to mind an anecdote shared by an old professor of mine in a class discussing the need for completeness testing and mathematical proof of algorithms.
The incident related was to do with the testing of a new auto-pilot/terrain following system being installed on the Tornado fighter-bomber (the British air-to-ground attack aircraft). All was going well with the test flight until the aircraft dipped into a valley. Shortly after entering the valley the aircraft inverted and performed the classic 'lawn dart' manouver.
There was of course an insuing investigation and analysis of the auto-pilot software during which it was found that this exact behaviour would occur if the altimeter returned a negative value.
How could this happen? The valley was below sea level.
The strangest thing I ever found in a keyboard was a dead mouse (the biological kind, not the peripheral kind). It was an old Apple IIe, one of those machines with the keyboard and motherboard all in the same box. It was used for stock control in a factory in the South East of England. The nearest we could guess was that the mouse had crawled in through one of the unused connector holes at the back of the machine.
The worst aspect of this incident was the fact that I only found the mouse due to the smell. It appeared that it had become lodged between the keyboard PCB and the casing. This had obviously caused it some distress, as it had apparently urinated before expiring. Beats the hell out of the usual Coke stains for both odour AND durability, I can tell you!
Thank you for your recent purchase. As you are aware, our Market-droids recently came up a plan for ripping-off our customers without them being aware of it. As we are desperately out of touch with public opinion, and woefully ignorant of illegal trading practices, we decided to implement their plan. Unfortunately someone spotted this and we're now in some really deep shit.
In an effort to place some spin on this situation, we're refunding the money that we ripped you off for. Not only that, but we promise that if you notice us ripping you off in the future, we'll refund that money too.
We value your business and appreciate your trust; after all, without your complete and total trust we'd never have a hope of pulling off anything as underhanded as this. We hope that you will continue shopping with us. Really. We need your business, 'cos we're hemorrhaging cash faster than we can possibly hope to sustain and sooner or later our Venture Capitalists are going to notice.
Hugs and kisses, Amazon.con
P.S. You're not using any '1-Click' technology in any of your software, are you?
can anyone explain what makes corporations do stupid things like this? I mean, we have had the marketing fiasco, the open source code used and then close soured until people screamed (that may have been an honest mistake, but who knows).
They do things like this because this is business. They're not in the game to be nice to people. They're in it to make gigantic-piles-of-cash (tm). This patent infringement suit is a very effective way of helping to maintain their market dominance and at the same time damage their main competitor, both of which will contribute to making their gigantic-piles-of-cash (tm) even larger.
Can regular courts rule a law unconstitutional? I thought that only the Supreme Court could do that? This is an honest question coming from a Limey living in the U.S.A.
They picked on DeCSS because the DCMA says that technology designed to circumvent copy protection encryption is now illegal. DeCSS is designed to break the encryption and decode the data. Therefore DeCSS is the illegal component.
But VCR copying is currently protected under fair use doctrine. Digital technologies have just had that right revoked by Congress through the DMCA. Hence, VCR technologies and the like now have no bearing on this case.
Indeed, Judge Kaplan clarifies his position with the following statement:
"The policy concerns raised by defendants were considered by Congress. Having considered them, Congress crafted a statute that, so far as the applicability of the fair use defense to Section 1201(a) claims is concerned, is crystal clear. In such circumstances, courts may not undo what Congress so plainly has done by "construing" the words of a statute to accomplish a result that Congress rejected. The fact that Congress elected to leave technologically unsophisticated persons who wish to make fair use of encrypted copyrighted works without the technical means of doing so is a matter for Congress unless Congress' decision contravenes the Constitution"
The lawyer representing their clients did not make their case well enough to overcome the misstaken assumtion that reverse engineering has malicious intent.
Would that have actually had a bearing on the case, I wonder? What is being claimed is that DeCSS is in violation of the DMCA. As far as I understand it, the DMCA states that any method of circumventing a commercial encryption scheme is illegal. It doesn't make provision as to whether the circumvention was malicious or not.
The only problem with releasing 'just a DVD player' within the Linux/Open Source community is that it IS an Open Source community. People would just download the source of your player, modify it to allow saving of the unencrypted movie, and re-release it back to the community again.
Either way this argument is moot. The DeCSS source was already released to the community.
If you read the entire judgement rather than just the conclusion, you will find that DeCSS allows an encrypted DVD to be turned into an unencrypted data file. This unencrypted data file can be compressed using DivX to a file size small enough to fit onto a writeable CD. It was shown that these unencrypted and compressed files were already being openly traded over the 'net. This unfortunately lumps DeCSS into the heading of 'piracy-assisting technology', rathern than what I truly believe it was developed for - just a method of extracting fair use from a product whose manufacturers were trying to unfairly control and extort their market.
Distributed OS's typically refer to Operating Systems that run on more than one discrete processing system. These systems typically provide a transparent process space across all processors, often allowing processes to assign/migrate across processors transparently.
Just because your video card/hard drive/printer/whatever has a CPU and/or RAM inside it doesn't mean that the Operating System is running on it. These are just instances of a Standalone Operating System interfacing with peripherals containing processing power. Inter-process communication does not a Distributed Operating System make!
I can't imagine that it's going to be good! My digital camera will already chew up 4 AA batteries and spit out the pieces every time use it. Battery technology is lagging behind all others these days - we're going to have to wait for this type of technology before all this funky new portable technology becomes really useful.
I wonder if we could create a 'Napster-like' service along these lines. The client application on each users machine would act as a web-server which would provide links to the music files on their machines. When doing a search for music files, the client application would act only as a browser displaying hyper-links to 'pages' hosted by others client apps?
Wonder if the distribution mechanism could avoid litigation in this manner (I'm not saying that it would legalise piracy, just that the person 'hosting' the pirated material would become the target for litigation rather than the distribution mechanism).
If somebody else hacks into your system and takes a copy of your music then they are breaking the law by committing unauthorized access to your account or hardware.
If you place the music on the net and say to people 'take a copy if you want' then you are breaking the law due to copyright infringement.
Fair use allows us to 'space shift' (i.e. duplicate for the sake of changing the playback format/medium) works purchased by us for our own personal use. I don't believe than anything in Judge Rakoff's summarization contradicts that on a personal use basis.
I think what has caused the adverse ruling against MP3.com is that they had effectively duplicated and broadcast the artists IP without the artists or recording label's permission. We're not talking fair use, we're talking re-broadcasting. Ultimately this is all coming down to the fact that mp3.com were extracting value from the artists IP without being under license (how many extra CD sales did MP3.com process due to this / how many extra site-hits did they score?)
What? You mean you used that nefarious program WinZip to circumvent a content encryption scheme put in place to both protect copyright AND trade secrets? That's it! Under the DMCA all traces of WinZip must now be removed from the Internet! Anyone caught using WinZip from now on will have seven grades of shite kicked out of him/her by large men wearing big boots, sent round to your house by the MPAA.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, there are a number of arguments that have already been stated against this hacking contest, and I am sure more arguments that will be stated against it in the future.
:)
Personally, I don't think that any of this actually matters. I don't really care whether the RIAA gains industry credibility for the SDMI - if recording companies want to use it then more power to them. I also don't care if the current SDMI implementations are 'proven' to be un-crackable during the artificially restricted cracking period of three weeks - the only thing that this will cause is more trumpet-blowing by the RIAA.
The beautiful thing about the 'net and the hacker community is that I can guarantee at least a 1000:1 ratio of 'smart, motivated hackers' to 'mediocre corporate software engineers' on this one. Whatever the RIAA end up thrusting upon the industry and the unsuspecting public, it'll end up being cracked within the month. End of story.
Let them waste cash developing this white-elephant of a protection mechanism. Whatever they spend here won't be available for them to pay lawyers with
--
Readng this review brought to mind an anecdote shared by an old professor of mine in a class discussing the need for completeness testing and mathematical proof of algorithms.
The incident related was to do with the testing of a new auto-pilot/terrain following system being installed on the Tornado fighter-bomber (the British air-to-ground attack aircraft). All was going well with the test flight until the aircraft dipped into a valley. Shortly after entering the valley the aircraft inverted and performed the classic 'lawn dart' manouver.
There was of course an insuing investigation and analysis of the auto-pilot software during which it was found that this exact behaviour would occur if the altimeter returned a negative value.
How could this happen? The valley was below sea level.
--
Tttthhheeerreeeessss nnnooottthhhhiiinngggg wwwrrrroooonnnngggg wwwiittthhhh ccccaaaffffffeeeeiiinneee uuuunnntttiiilllll yyyyoooouuuu hhhhiiiittttt yyyooouuuuurrrr tttwwweeneennnnntttiiieeeeetthhhhhh cccuuuupppp oooorrrrrrr ssoooooooo.. Ttttttrrrruuusssttt mmmeeeee ooonnnnnnnn ttthhhiisssss ooonnneeeee!!!
--
The strangest thing I ever found in a keyboard was a dead mouse (the biological kind, not the peripheral kind). It was an old Apple IIe, one of those machines with the keyboard and motherboard all in the same box. It was used for stock control in a factory in the South East of England. The nearest we could guess was that the mouse had crawled in through one of the unused connector holes at the back of the machine.
The worst aspect of this incident was the fact that I only found the mouse due to the smell. It appeared that it had become lodged between the keyboard PCB and the casing. This had obviously caused it some distress, as it had apparently urinated before expiring. Beats the hell out of the usual Coke stains for both odour AND durability, I can tell you!
--
Dear potential Class Action Lawsuit participant,
Thank you for your recent purchase. As you are aware, our Market-droids recently came up a plan for ripping-off our customers without them being aware of it. As we are desperately out of touch with public opinion, and woefully ignorant of illegal trading practices, we decided to implement their plan. Unfortunately someone spotted this and we're now in some really deep shit.
In an effort to place some spin on this situation, we're refunding the money that we ripped you off for. Not only that, but we promise that if you notice us ripping you off in the future, we'll refund that money too.
We value your business and appreciate your trust; after all, without your complete and total trust we'd never have a hope of pulling off anything as underhanded as this. We hope that you will continue shopping with us. Really. We need your business, 'cos we're hemorrhaging cash faster than we can possibly hope to sustain and sooner or later our Venture Capitalists are going to notice.
Hugs and kisses, Amazon.con
P.S. You're not using any '1-Click' technology in any of your software, are you?
--
login: barney_rubble0
passwd: bedrock
--
can anyone explain what makes corporations do stupid things like this? I mean, we have had the marketing fiasco, the open source code used and then close soured until people screamed (that may have been an honest mistake, but who knows).
They do things like this because this is business. They're not in the game to be nice to people. They're in it to make gigantic-piles-of-cash (tm). This patent infringement suit is a very effective way of helping to maintain their market dominance and at the same time damage their main competitor, both of which will contribute to making their gigantic-piles-of-cash (tm) even larger.
--
Can regular courts rule a law unconstitutional? I thought that only the Supreme Court could do that? This is an honest question coming from a Limey living in the U.S.A.
--
They picked on DeCSS because the DCMA says that technology designed to circumvent copy protection encryption is now illegal. DeCSS is designed to break the encryption and decode the data. Therefore DeCSS is the illegal component.
--
But VCR copying is currently protected under fair use doctrine. Digital technologies have just had that right revoked by Congress through the DMCA. Hence, VCR technologies and the like now have no bearing on this case.
--
Indeed, Judge Kaplan clarifies his position with the following statement:
"The policy concerns raised by defendants were considered by Congress. Having considered them, Congress crafted a statute that, so far as the applicability of the fair use defense to Section 1201(a) claims is concerned, is crystal clear. In such circumstances, courts may not undo what Congress so plainly has done by "construing" the words of a statute to accomplish a result that Congress rejected. The fact that Congress elected to leave technologically unsophisticated persons who wish to make fair use of encrypted copyrighted works without the technical means of doing so is a matter for Congress unless Congress' decision contravenes the Constitution"
--
The lawyer representing their clients did not make their case well enough to overcome the misstaken assumtion that reverse engineering has malicious intent.
Would that have actually had a bearing on the case, I wonder? What is being claimed is that DeCSS is in violation of the DMCA. As far as I understand it, the DMCA states that any method of circumventing a commercial encryption scheme is illegal. It doesn't make provision as to whether the circumvention was malicious or not.
--
The only problem with releasing 'just a DVD player' within the Linux/Open Source community is that it IS an Open Source community. People would just download the source of your player, modify it to allow saving of the unencrypted movie, and re-release it back to the community again.
Either way this argument is moot. The DeCSS source was already released to the community.
--
If you read the entire judgement rather than just the conclusion, you will find that DeCSS allows an encrypted DVD to be turned into an unencrypted data file. This unencrypted data file can be compressed using DivX to a file size small enough to fit onto a writeable CD. It was shown that these unencrypted and compressed files were already being openly traded over the 'net. This unfortunately lumps DeCSS into the heading of 'piracy-assisting technology', rathern than what I truly believe it was developed for - just a method of extracting fair use from a product whose manufacturers were trying to unfairly control and extort their market.
--
Point taken.
--
...become project managers!
--
Distributed OS's typically refer to Operating Systems that run on more than one discrete processing system. These systems typically provide a transparent process space across all processors, often allowing processes to assign/migrate across processors transparently.
Just because your video card/hard drive/printer/whatever has a CPU and/or RAM inside it doesn't mean that the Operating System is running on it. These are just instances of a Standalone Operating System interfacing with peripherals containing processing power. Inter-process communication does not a Distributed Operating System make!
As you said, know your buzzwords.
--
The UK Defence Office states that to truly erase data from a hard drive you need to:
1) Crack the hard drive case open
2) Strip the magnetic oxide from the disk platter with acid
3) Shred the substrate that the oxide coated.
Allegedly with sophisticated enough equipment you can salvage data from the substrate even once the oxide has been stripped.
--
Hmmm... I wonder what will happen when there are common handheld batteries that could easily electrocute you...
:)
We'll have plenty more candidates for the Darwin awards
--
Nope - I know enough about batteries to be using good quality NiMH batteries, thank you very much :)
I think my problem is that I'm using an old Kodak DC210. They have a vicious reputation for devouring any and all batteries fed to them.
--
I can't imagine that it's going to be good! My digital camera will already chew up 4 AA batteries and spit out the pieces every time use it. Battery technology is lagging behind all others these days - we're going to have to wait for this type of technology before all this funky new portable technology becomes really useful.
--
I wonder if we could create a 'Napster-like' service along these lines. The client application on each users machine would act as a web-server which would provide links to the music files on their machines. When doing a search for music files, the client application would act only as a browser displaying hyper-links to 'pages' hosted by others client apps?
Wonder if the distribution mechanism could avoid litigation in this manner (I'm not saying that it would legalise piracy, just that the person 'hosting' the pirated material would become the target for litigation rather than the distribution mechanism).
--
If somebody else hacks into your system and takes a copy of your music then they are breaking the law by committing unauthorized access to your account or hardware.
If you place the music on the net and say to people 'take a copy if you want' then you are breaking the law due to copyright infringement.
--
OK, first off IANAL.
Now that's out of the way...
Fair use allows us to 'space shift' (i.e. duplicate for the sake of changing the playback format/medium) works purchased by us for our own personal use. I don't believe than anything in Judge Rakoff's summarization contradicts that on a personal use basis.
I think what has caused the adverse ruling against MP3.com is that they had effectively duplicated and broadcast the artists IP without the artists or recording label's permission. We're not talking fair use, we're talking re-broadcasting. Ultimately this is all coming down to the fact that mp3.com were extracting value from the artists IP without being under license (how many extra CD sales did MP3.com process due to this / how many extra site-hits did they score?)
Just my take...
--
What? You mean you used that nefarious program WinZip to circumvent a content encryption scheme put in place to both protect copyright AND trade secrets? That's it! Under the DMCA all traces of WinZip must now be removed from the Internet! Anyone caught using WinZip from now on will have seven grades of shite kicked out of him/her by large men wearing big boots, sent round to your house by the MPAA.
;-)
--