This reply is a real non-sequitor. The Federal government can regulate interstate commerce under the "commerce clause" which you have so thoughtfully reproduced.
UCITA is a state law. It can not regulate interstate commerce. That is usually taken to mean that as long as a law deals with out of state parites in the same way that it deals with instate parties, it is not considered a regulation of interstate commerge.
When I pay for my software, I am paying for my physical copy of it, not for the right to use it. That's how I see it. That's how the majority of Americans will see it.
Bullshit. The average American dosn't see it that way today. I don't see it that way today. If you were a software producer and tried to make that case in court, you would be laughed out of the courtroom. The software is worthless without the right to use it. It would be fraudulent to charge for it.
You in fact have the right to use software under ordinary Federal Copyright law. You do not need a license to use it.
Most ordinary people I talk to think that when they buy a product, they are a PURCHASING a copy of the program, with full rights to do whatever they want with it. What they are really buying is a license, and the UCITA legitimizes this practice.
Actually you are buying a copy of a program. The software vendors don't want you to think so. Federal law gives you certain rights as a purchaser of a copyrighted work and a state law can not take those rights away. I expect that if it ever comes to it, most of the egregous provisions like reverse engineering and bad-publicity clauses will be found to be unenforcable.
I don't know what you mean by a loophole. I can contract you to make for me a "work for hire". You may only distribute that work to me. Copyright for the work (i.e the.diff files) resides with me. An external license like the GPL does not restrict us from contracting this way.
Your presence will be felt by the judge, the plaintif, and us frightened (angry?) defendants.
I think that several of your codefendants have reason to be very angry. Contained in this page, I found a deposition by Harvey Shapiro, one of the plaintiff's weasel^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers, in which nearly every defendant (but not you, I see) is described as having "offered to sell unauthorized DVD copies of my clients' motion pictures".
One such site so described was http://openprojects.net where the Livid CVS and developers list archive were hosted. Now I've read nearly every post to that list since sometime in October and I've never seen anyone offer to sell any copyrighted material. I wonder if someone making a false accusation of this sort constitutes slander or libel.
I am very confident. I spent about an hour and a half yesterday reading all of the material on the EFF site quoted in the article. I found not a single statement there that I considered unfactual. The set of precedents quoted, the set of afadavits and the pleadings make what looks like a very strong case.
Actually several strong cases. Argument 1: code is speech (site Bernstein), California law (this is a California court, not a federal court) specifically takes a dim view to prior restraint on speech.
Argument 2: objections to the trade secret case made in the pleadings. Several key objections to the DVD CCA's central claim (improper misappropriation of trade secrets) are presented. There is no evidence presented that the reverse engineers ever agreed to a license agreenment. Even if they did, if it was reverse engineered in Norway, Norwegian law specifically allows for reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability. Several sources were quoted that provided key pieces of information to the DeCSS effort. One was an anonymous poster to the livid-dev list. The weakness of the encryption only made it a matter of time before the keys were exposed. The trade secret case is a weak one even if it didn't involve prior restraint on speech.
I'm going to see if I can hack E into supporting gravity, momentum, Newton's Laws and the Laws of Conservation of Energy and Momentum,
Just be careful. The general, three-body gravitation problem is unstable. Your vim session might be expelled at high speed to a remote corner of the Internet.
They are arguing that code is free speech (repeating the precedent in two Bernstein cases). They are also arguing that discussions of cryptography schemes are an academic persuit and are also protected. The only discussion of reverse engineering is a notice of the Norwegian law on the legality of reverse engineering. I believe that California law already recognizes that reverse engineering does not constitute misappropriation of trade secrets.
Consumer DVD drives will not read all of the data physically on the disk without doing at least part of the CSS dance. The title key is present (encrypted with each of the 408 player keys and in a hashed form)in a special location on the disk. This area is not read by requesting the contents of sector X, but rather by issuing an IOCTL to the drive. The drive will then send some data that needs to be passed through a (once secret) hash function. If the software returns the correct hash, the disk is said to be "authenticated" and another IOCTL will return the 2k-bit special sector.
I think that someone who could reprogram the firmware in a consumer DVD drive, could redesign it to return this segment without going through the CSS dance. Then they could extract all of the information on a DVD.
But currently available writable DVDs won't help them make copies because the drives can't write the special sector. I've heard that it is because the sector is burnt out on blank media. Another difficulty is that currently available DVD writers can only write on a single layer which limits the capacity to an amount less than most DVD movies.
I'm less concerned about spin doctoring than about laywering. I wouldn't be surprised if the DVD CCA paid more for public relations than legal advise.
Spin doctors can make a good smokescreen, but all it takes is a good stiff wind to make all their efforts for naught. When the legal ruling (which, in principle, should not be influenced by public opinion) comes down, the ruling will speak for itself. I just don't see the DVD CCA making any headway with this court.
I read through most of the documents at the site that Ms. Gross gives a pointer to. This is an excellent preparation that brings in the appropriate law and facts and testimony as we understand them. It looks like a very strong case to this non-lawyer.
How can you equate labelling with censorship? Labelling provides information so that people can make informed choices. Censorship takes choices away from people.
Can you imagine the problems of trying to do a 'live' Discworld film. Trying to get people who have never read one of the books to understand the concept of a planet on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle...
It sounds like it would make an excellent title sequence -- problem solved. Begin in the eye of the turtle pan out to the head and then up to the shell and the foot of one of the elephants. Pan across the four elephants and up to the disk with the water running off the edge and some stars passing in the background. Zoom down into the disk. There's a lot of CGI there, but it's a concept that can be explained visually and that is where movies excel.
Movies are a different medium than books, so you can't expect a movie to be much like a book unless the book relies on some of the things that movies do well. There are several good visual aspects to Good Omens that would translate well into film -- the "four horsemen", the action. The characters are fairly straightforward to develop. It has a lot of potential. Gillian did 12 Monkeys, so he's capable of doing some very subtle work. I'd say the chances for the movie not being an embarassment are pretty good.
He is and I am too. Copying all of the VOB files does not copy the (hidden) area of the disk where the CSS keys are stored. The resulting disk is not usable as described.
Copying DVDs is more than just dd if=/dev/dvd of=/dev/dvdrw count=BIGNUM
Thanks for the link. The various documents posted on the parent site provide what appears to be an air-tight defense. The EFF lawyers have done an marvelous job with this.
The single member of the board of directors has aready wet his feet with an earlier IPO that sunk like a stone. The guys who will be promoting this are going to be the penny stock pushers in the boilerrooms.
Yes, Bilbo, there is a Linux Community. It exists as certainly as freedom and generosity and Source Code exist, and you know that they abound and give to your computer its most reliable operating system. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Linux Community! It would be as dreary as if there were no Slashdot.
I am a member of any number of "communities" and I'm happy to say that in none of them is everyone all the same. We share the defining characteristic, but often little else.
Getting the truth out about LinuxOne is a real sucess story for the Linux Community. It has happened because Bruce Perens put information on technocrat.net and in large part because there were discussions here.
If we can't show that pirating doesn't rely on DeCSS (or other use of the encryption algorithm), then we've got an uphill battle.
I don't think so. The landmark VCR case (sorry I don't have a link or even a proper reference to it) seems to say that any non-infringing use means that it can't be banned. We need to demonstrate a non-infringing use much more than demonstrate alternative pirating schemes.
The weakest part of the case is that it all depends on trade secrets. It's a real stretch to infer that the writers of CSS had any kind of a duty to maintain the trade secret as it can not be shown that they were ever contractually required to maintain the secret. Once it fails to be kept a secret, all protection is lost. The DVD CCA would have to show that each and every one of the 500 defendants either knew or should have known that the material was a protected trade secret -- a nearly impossible task --especially considering the substancial doubt surrounding that claim in the case of the writers of CCS.
Their failure to receive a preliminary ruling should be a big clue to them of the fundamental weakness of their case. A preliminary ruling is fairly easy to get. You need to show a prima facie case and substancial harm in the lack of a ruling. The temporary nature of a TRO tends to lessen the burden of proof to the plaintiff. They had no problem showing potential harm, but the judge obviously felt that their claim was something of a stretch in the first place.
/. posters don't seem to understand the difficulties with bit-for-bit copying of DVDs. It can't be done with consumer hardware and without CSS. A consumer DVD drive will not read all of the sectors physically present on a DVD without doing part of the CSS dance.
I've heard speculation that equipment is available to read and write these sectors without a CSS hack, but I'm still skeptical. Perhaps professional equipment exists to do this, but I don't see the need or for it to exist. If it does, it's likely custom engineered hardware that would not be available to the defense without out them building it themselves. People speculate that the firmware could be reprogrammed on consumer DVD drives to skip the CSS steps, but I've yet to see anyone claim to be able to do that. On the write side, DVD disks are mass produced, not written in drives.
Notwithstanding the cost and difficulty of obtaining the requisite hardware, demonstrating the means and ability to pirate DVDs is not really where this case needs to go.
The demo which is needed is to show a non-infringing use such as playing a legally purchased DVD on a laptop running Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
This reply is a real non-sequitor. The Federal government can regulate interstate commerce under the "commerce clause" which you have so thoughtfully reproduced.
UCITA is a state law. It can not regulate interstate commerce. That is usually taken to mean that as long as a law deals with out of state parites in the same way that it deals with instate parties, it is not considered a regulation of interstate commerge.
Now, what was your point?
When I pay for my software, I am paying for my physical copy of it, not for the right to use it. That's how I see it. That's how the majority of Americans will see it.
Bullshit. The average American dosn't see it that way today. I don't see it that way today. If you were a software producer and tried to make that case in court, you would be laughed out of the courtroom. The software is worthless without the right to use it. It would be fraudulent to charge for it.
You in fact have the right to use software under ordinary Federal Copyright law. You do not need a license to use it.
Most ordinary people I talk to think that when they buy a product, they are a PURCHASING a copy of the program, with full rights to do whatever they want with it. What they are really buying is a license, and the UCITA legitimizes this practice.
Actually you are buying a copy of a program. The software vendors don't want you to think so. Federal law gives you certain rights as a purchaser of a copyrighted work and a state law can not take those rights away. I expect that if it ever comes to it, most of the egregous provisions like reverse engineering and bad-publicity clauses will be found to be unenforcable.
I don't know what you mean by a loophole. I can contract you to make for me a "work for hire". You may only distribute that work to me. Copyright for the work (i.e the .diff files) resides with me. An external license like the GPL does not restrict us from contracting this way.
Your presence will be felt by the judge, the plaintif, and us frightened (angry?) defendants.
I think that several of your codefendants have reason to be very angry. Contained in this page, I found a deposition by Harvey Shapiro, one of the plaintiff's weasel^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers, in which nearly every defendant (but not you, I see) is described as having "offered to sell unauthorized DVD copies of my clients' motion pictures".
One such site so described was http://openprojects.net where the Livid CVS and developers list archive were hosted. Now I've read nearly every post to that list since sometime in October and I've never seen anyone offer to sell any copyrighted material. I wonder if someone making a false accusation of this sort constitutes slander or libel.
The sector needs to be encoded with the encrypted title key, data which varies for each disk.
I am very confident. I spent about an hour and a half yesterday reading all of the material on the EFF site quoted in the article. I found not a single statement there that I considered unfactual. The set of precedents quoted, the set of afadavits and the pleadings make what looks like a very strong case.
Actually several strong cases. Argument 1: code is speech (site Bernstein), California law (this is a California court, not a federal court) specifically takes a dim view to prior restraint on speech.
Argument 2: objections to the trade secret case made in the pleadings. Several key objections to the DVD CCA's central claim (improper misappropriation of trade secrets) are presented. There is no evidence presented that the reverse engineers ever agreed to a license agreenment. Even if they did, if it was reverse engineered in Norway, Norwegian law specifically allows for reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability. Several sources were quoted that provided key pieces of information to the DeCSS effort. One was an anonymous poster to the livid-dev list. The weakness of the encryption only made it a matter of time before the keys were exposed. The trade secret case is a weak one even if it didn't involve prior restraint on speech.
I'm going to see if I can hack E into supporting gravity, momentum, Newton's Laws and the Laws of Conservation of Energy and Momentum,
Just be careful. The general, three-body gravitation problem is unstable. Your vim session might be expelled at high speed to a remote corner of the Internet.
The big question is what can one do on linux that you can't do on windows?
Enjoy the time you spend computing.
They are arguing that code is free speech (repeating the precedent in two Bernstein cases). They are also arguing that discussions of cryptography schemes are an academic persuit and are also protected. The only discussion of reverse engineering is a notice of the Norwegian law on the legality of reverse engineering. I believe that California law already recognizes that reverse engineering does not constitute misappropriation of trade secrets.
Consumer DVD drives will not read all of the data physically on the disk without doing at least part of the CSS dance. The title key is present (encrypted with each of the 408 player keys and in a hashed form)in a special location on the disk. This area is not read by requesting the contents of sector X, but rather by issuing an IOCTL to the drive. The drive will then send some data that needs to be passed through a (once secret) hash function. If the software returns the correct hash, the disk is said to be "authenticated" and another IOCTL will return the 2k-bit special sector.
I think that someone who could reprogram the firmware in a consumer DVD drive, could redesign it to return this segment without going through the CSS dance. Then they could extract all of the information on a DVD.
But currently available writable DVDs won't help them make copies because the drives can't write the special sector. I've heard that it is because the sector is burnt out on blank media.
Another difficulty is that currently available DVD writers can only write on a single layer which limits the capacity to an amount less than most DVD movies.
I'm less concerned about spin doctoring than about laywering. I wouldn't be surprised if the DVD CCA paid more for public relations than legal advise.
Spin doctors can make a good smokescreen, but all it takes is a good stiff wind to make all their efforts for naught. When the legal ruling (which, in principle, should not be influenced by public opinion) comes down, the ruling will speak for itself. I just don't see the DVD CCA making any headway with this court.
I read through most of the documents at the site that Ms. Gross gives a pointer to. This is an excellent preparation that brings in the appropriate law and facts and testimony as we understand them. It looks like a very strong case to this non-lawyer.
How can you equate labelling with censorship? Labelling provides information so that people can make informed choices. Censorship takes choices away from people.
Can you imagine the problems of trying to do a 'live' Discworld film. Trying to get people who have never read one of the books to understand the concept of a planet on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle...
It sounds like it would make an excellent title sequence -- problem solved. Begin in the eye of the turtle pan out to the head and then up to the shell and the foot of one of the elephants. Pan across the four elephants and up to the disk with the water running off the edge and some stars passing in the background. Zoom down into the disk. There's a lot of CGI there, but it's a concept that can be explained visually and that is where movies excel.
Movies are a different medium than books, so you can't expect a movie to be much like a book unless the book relies on some of the things that movies do well. There are several good visual aspects to Good Omens that would translate well into film -- the "four horsemen", the action. The characters are fairly straightforward to develop. It has a lot of potential. Gillian did 12 Monkeys, so he's capable of doing some very subtle work. I'd say the chances for the movie not being an embarassment are pretty good.
Yes, Yes, No, Yes.
He is and I am too. Copying all of the VOB files does not copy the (hidden) area of the disk where the CSS keys are stored. The resulting disk is not usable as described.
Copying DVDs is more than just dd if=/dev/dvd of=/dev/dvdrw count=BIGNUM
Thanks for the link. The various documents posted on the parent site provide what appears to be an air-tight defense. The EFF lawyers have done an marvelous job with this.
CSS is dead.
You CANNOT install RedHat without installing X-windows and at least the VGA-16 server; this is, IMO, VERY BROKEN!!
/rc.d/ in between /etc and all the SysV stuff should be shot.
Bullshit. I did exactly that with RH 6.0 for my firewall machine.
And whoever stuck that extra
That would be Sun who did it first. Frankly I prefer it that way.
Just what the hell am I supposed to do with a simulation? I know what to do if I want to watch the bubbles in a Guinness!
Well, if it were an Open Source simulation, you could adapt the code for an X screensaver.
This proves that free as in freedom is better than free as in free beer.
Rumour has it, that the fine in the DVD contract is one million dollars.
Why do I hear Dr. Evil as I read that sentance?
The single member of the board of directors has aready wet his feet with an earlier IPO that sunk like a stone. The guys who will be promoting this are going to be the penny stock pushers in the boilerrooms.
Yes, Bilbo, there is a Linux Community. It exists as certainly as freedom and generosity and
Source Code exist, and you know that they abound and give to your computer its most reliable operating system. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Linux Community! It would be as dreary as if there were no Slashdot.
I am a member of any number of "communities" and I'm happy to say that in none of them is everyone all the same. We share the defining characteristic, but often little else.
Getting the truth out about LinuxOne is a real sucess story for the Linux Community. It has happened because Bruce Perens put information on technocrat.net and in large part because there were discussions here.
If we can't show that pirating doesn't rely on DeCSS (or other use of the encryption algorithm), then we've got an uphill battle.
I don't think so. The landmark VCR case (sorry I don't have a link or even a proper reference to it) seems to say that any non-infringing use means that it can't be banned. We need to demonstrate a non-infringing use much more than demonstrate alternative pirating schemes.
The weakest part of the case is that it all depends on trade secrets. It's a real stretch to infer that the writers of CSS had any kind of a duty to maintain the trade secret as it can not be shown that they were ever contractually required to maintain the secret. Once it fails to be kept a secret, all protection is lost. The DVD CCA would have to show that each and every one of the 500 defendants either knew or should have known that the material was a protected trade secret -- a nearly impossible task --especially considering the substancial doubt surrounding that claim in the case of the writers of CCS.
Their failure to receive a preliminary ruling should be a big clue to them of the fundamental weakness of their case. A preliminary ruling is fairly easy to get. You need to show a prima facie case and substancial harm in the lack of a ruling. The temporary nature of a TRO tends to lessen the burden of proof to the plaintiff. They had no problem showing potential harm, but the judge obviously felt that their claim was something of a stretch in the first place.
/. posters don't seem to understand the difficulties with bit-for-bit copying of DVDs. It can't be done with consumer hardware and without CSS. A consumer DVD drive will not read all of the sectors physically present on a DVD without doing part of the CSS dance.
I've heard speculation that equipment is available to read and write these sectors without a CSS hack, but I'm still skeptical. Perhaps professional equipment exists to do this, but I don't see the need or for it to exist. If it does, it's likely custom engineered hardware that would not be available to the defense without out them building it themselves. People speculate that the firmware could be reprogrammed on consumer DVD drives to skip the CSS steps, but I've yet to see anyone claim to be able to do that. On the write side, DVD disks are mass produced, not written in drives.
Notwithstanding the cost and difficulty of obtaining the requisite hardware, demonstrating the means and ability to pirate DVDs is not really where this case needs to go.
The demo which is needed is to show a non-infringing use such as playing a legally purchased DVD on a laptop running Linux.