[A]re they trying to ban mirrors of the actual binary code for DeCSS and the associated links to these sites or is it the underlying algorithm that is the target.
I think they are assuming that any code is DeCSS derived. The LiVid (Linux Video) site was listed. They have code that is possibly derived from DeCSS, but they also had DeCSS posted on the livid-dev archives for a time. Reading some of the discussion there from October, it seems that the DeCSS guys stole some GPLed code from one of the LiVid developers. That was eventually resolved, but it appears that several people were working on this problem at the same time.
I agree, this will be difficult to defeat, but not nearly impossible.
On the issue of taking steps to preserve the secrecy, the weak nature of the encryption is a contributing factor. They should have used stronger encryption if they wanted to preserve th secrets. They should not have licensed software implementations.
They are also trying to extend an EULA into a requirement to preserve the secrets present in the software. This is another legal stretch.
There are a lot of places that this claim can be legally attacked.
This action has been filed in a state court. Read the filing yourself. A defendant could choose to have it remanded to a Federal Court because of diversity of jurisdiction.
If we had burners of sufficient capacity, we could just burn the raw image to the drive with the encryption entact.
This is not true. The drive will not physically read all of the sectors present on the media until it has been authenticated. The resulting files are encrypted with no means to derive the key necessary to decrypt them.
That's the weird thing. If you type < into the text box and preview, the < gets turned into a < in the text box. You need to use the back key if you want to reedit or submit.
The person who posted the code in Norway was a minor. He's not even competent (in the legal sense) to enter into a contract (such as an EULA). As a result, he can disavow the contract at any time.
No. If they voluntarially take an editorial position, then thay may become liable. A disclaimer "the opinions are not those of the posters and not necessarially those of the management of Slashdot." would provide some legal protection.
I don't think that they can prove that the "hack" was performed by disassembling the Xing player. From my reading of the pages put up by the author of De-CSS, he said "What if one of the keys weren't encrypted?" Trying the values gave an authenticated title key. Knowing the title key, he was able to find several of the encryption keys for several of the other players. He could have found them all.
But even if they can prove that it was reverse engineered in violation of the license agreement, it may well have been legal in Norway. Hell, it may well be legal in the US.
For someting to be a trade secret, you need to take steps to keep it a secret. If the technology is reverse engineered without reference to protected material, I don't think that they have a case.
I guess they realized that they would be really up a creek if they tried copyright law on this one.
Unfortunately, a court has already found enough merit in Amazon's case to slap Barnes & Noble with a restraining order. This means that at least that court felt that there was a good chance that Amazon would prevail.
I think that it just means that the burden of proof is on B&N to show that the patent is invalid.
As I said assuming your license permits this for this = "releasing a derivative version". The BSD and Artistic licences allow this. BSD code has been included in Linux which is under GPL as a whole.
Re: who owns the license to derivative works, it's not as clear cut as you would have it. he original author retains the right to authorize derivative works, but has effectively given that right away by using the BSD, Artistic or GPL licenses.
As I understand the GPL, if I write something and release it under a BSD or Artistic license, and someone comes along and includes my code in a GPL package, all subsequent derived works become automagically GPL'd. This may not have been my original intent. I may _want_ my code (and any derived code) to always be available for commercial, closed, shareware, etc. as well as GPL and other more open projects.
I think that you misunderstand the GPL. If you release source code package A under a non-GPL license and someone writes A2B.diff and releases package B, derived from your package A, under the GPL (assuming that your license permits this), your code (package A) is still under your license. Others can use that code as your license permits. They can not use the code in A2B.diff unless their resulting package in under the GPL. Your code can not be infected against your will by the actions of others. The GPL only affects that fork of the code, not others.
RMS said that the FSF will only defend copyright when it is the FSF that holds copyright on a piece of software.
He could also have said that the FSF can only defend copyright when it is the FSF that holds copyright on a piece of software. One needs standing to sue in court. In the case of copyright violations, only the copyright holder has standing to sue. Other third parties have no such rights.
Everybody put in everything that they own and the ones that don't get raptured get to split the pot.
If you ask me, I'm not gullible enough to believe that all of this is some sort of fantastically remote coincidence. Absolutely not. The end times were prophesied ages ago, and I firmly believe that we are living in them.
Really, people have been convinced that they're in the End Times in every generation for way more than 2,000 years. The "signs" you point to are just coincidences. An arbitrary number of "unusual" events will occur within any arbitrary time span if you have enough potential "unusual" events to choose from. Earthquakes, mudslides and random celestial events happen all of the time. Remember Odd Day?
The error occurred in the 6th Century. Calendar research was done by the Church to solve the practical problem of calculating the beginning (and end) of Lent. Easter was celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the equinox. Because the season of Lent began 45 days before Easter, they needed to know this in advance. This mixing of solar and lunar calendars makes the calculation difficult. A 532 year cycle made the calculation easier. The year 532 A.D. was set at the end of such a cycle and the year 1 A.D. was inferred. It took several hundred years before the system was widely adopted. The Venerable Bede (8th c.) knew that the system did not give the right date for the birth of Christ, but thought that trying to fix it wold cause more problems than letting it slide.
There is more in the Brittanica article on the calendar.
The true end of "the millennium" really depends on which millennium is "the" millennium. Any period of 1,000 years is a millennium. The 2nd millennium A.D. ends on 12/31/2000. The millennium of four year dates beginning with 1 ends on 12/31/1999.
Are you for real? The article quotes at least three people: Posner, a named NYPD spokesman and a named MS spokesperson. Granted, the NY Times occasionlly makes a factual error, but they do not make up stories from whole cloth.
Yes, some people celebrate Hannukah by exchanging presents. I've known women who have been confined to bed for weeks before delivery. There are many reasons why. There are also reasons why ordinary people are leery of opening their door to the police. I am also quite willing to believe that MS told the NYPD that it was worth $1 million in order to recover it whether or not you accept that valution.
A little healthy skepticism is a good thing, just don't overdo it.
Coincidence? I think not. Sounds like M$ are "innovating" their way into a sweeter deal.
The guy's father's name was Samuel Posner and he lived in New York not Chicago. You should really do some rudimentay research before inventing implausible conspiracy theories.
Slashdot Mirror
[A]re they trying to ban mirrors of the actual binary code for DeCSS and the associated links to these sites or is it the underlying algorithm that is the target.
I think they are assuming that any code is DeCSS derived. The LiVid (Linux Video) site was listed. They have code that is possibly derived from DeCSS, but they also had DeCSS posted on the livid-dev archives for a time. Reading some of the discussion there from October, it seems that the DeCSS guys stole some GPLed code from one of the LiVid developers. That was eventually resolved, but it appears that several people were working on this problem at the same time.
I agree, this will be difficult to defeat, but not nearly impossible.
On the issue of taking steps to preserve the secrecy, the weak nature of the encryption is a contributing factor. They should have used stronger encryption if they wanted to preserve th secrets. They should not have licensed software implementations.
They are also trying to extend an EULA into a requirement to preserve the secrets present in the software. This is another legal stretch.
There are a lot of places that this claim can be legally attacked.
This action has been filed in a state court. Read the filing yourself. A defendant could choose to have it remanded to a Federal Court because of diversity of jurisdiction.
If we had burners of sufficient capacity, we could just burn the raw image to the drive with the encryption entact.
This is not true. The drive will not physically read all of the sectors present on the media until it has been authenticated. The resulting files are encrypted with no means to derive the key necessary to decrypt them.
That's the weird thing. If you type < into the text box and preview, the < gets turned into a < in the text box. You need to use the back key if you want to reedit or submit.
The person who posted the code in Norway was a minor. He's not even competent (in the legal sense) to enter into a contract (such as an EULA). As a result, he can disavow the contract at any time.
No. If they voluntarially take an editorial position, then thay may become liable. A disclaimer "the opinions are not those of the posters and not necessarially those of the management of Slashdot." would provide some legal protection.
If you are a named defendant or one of the Does and are in a different jurisdiction, it behooves you to get good legal advise in your jurisdiction.
Remember, it was a US judge that ordered eToy to stop using the domain name.
In a billion years, do you think there will still be C programmers?
No, but there still will be COBOL progrmmers.
Anonymous Coward
to the list.
I don't think that they can prove that the "hack" was performed by disassembling the Xing player. From my reading of the pages put up by the author of De-CSS, he said "What if one of the keys weren't encrypted?" Trying the values gave an authenticated title key. Knowing the title key, he was able to find several of the encryption keys for several of the other players. He could have found them all.
But even if they can prove that it was reverse engineered in violation of the license agreement, it may well have been legal in Norway. Hell, it may well be legal in the US.
CmdrTaco
Hemos
Andover
John
DVD Consortium sux
about the legal merits of the case.
For someting to be a trade secret, you need to take steps to keep it a secret. If the technology is reverse engineered without reference to protected material, I don't think that they have a case.
I guess they realized that they would be really up a creek if they tried copyright law on this one.
Unfortunately, a court has already found enough merit in Amazon's case to slap Barnes & Noble with a restraining order. This means that at least that court felt that there was a good chance that Amazon would prevail.
I think that it just means that the burden of proof is on B&N to show that the patent is invalid.
As I said assuming your license permits this for this = "releasing a derivative version". The BSD and Artistic licences allow this. BSD code has been included in Linux which is under GPL as a whole.
Re: who owns the license to derivative works, it's not as clear cut as you would have it. he original author retains the right to authorize derivative works, but has effectively given that right away by using the BSD, Artistic or GPL licenses.
As I understand the GPL, if I write something and release it under a BSD or Artistic license, and someone comes along and includes my code in a GPL package, all subsequent derived works become automagically GPL'd. This may not have been my original intent. I may _want_ my code (and any derived code) to always be available for commercial, closed, shareware, etc. as well as GPL and other more open projects.
I think that you misunderstand the GPL. If you release source code package A under a non-GPL license and someone writes A2B.diff and releases package B, derived from your package A, under the GPL (assuming that your license permits this),
your code (package A) is still under your license. Others can use that code as your license permits. They can not use the code in A2B.diff unless their resulting package in under the GPL. Your code can not be infected against your will by the actions of others. The GPL only affects that fork of the code, not others.
RMS said that the FSF will only defend copyright when it is the FSF that holds copyright on a piece of software.
He could also have said that the FSF can only defend copyright when it is the FSF that holds copyright on a piece of software. One needs standing to sue in court. In the case of copyright violations, only the copyright holder has standing to sue. Other third parties have no such rights.
whether the programs are compliant, because the humans using them are not!"
A quote from the Perl Y2K Statement.
Everybody put in everything that they own and the ones that don't get raptured get to split the pot.
If you ask me, I'm not gullible enough to believe that all of this is some sort of fantastically remote coincidence. Absolutely not. The end times were prophesied ages ago, and I firmly believe that we are living in them.
Really, people have been convinced that they're in the End Times in every generation for way more than 2,000 years. The "signs" you point to are just coincidences. An arbitrary number of "unusual" events will occur within any arbitrary time span if you have enough potential "unusual" events to choose from. Earthquakes, mudslides and random celestial events happen all of the time. Remember Odd Day?
The error occurred in the 6th Century. Calendar research was done by the Church to solve the practical problem of calculating the beginning (and end) of Lent. Easter was celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the equinox. Because the season of Lent began 45 days before Easter, they needed to know this in advance. This mixing of solar and lunar calendars makes the calculation difficult. A 532 year cycle made the calculation easier. The year 532 A.D. was set at the end of such a cycle and the year 1 A.D. was inferred. It took several hundred years before the system was widely adopted. The Venerable Bede (8th c.) knew that the system did not give the right date for the birth of Christ, but thought that trying to fix it wold cause more problems than letting it slide.
There is more in the Brittanica article on the calendar.
The true end of "the millennium" really depends on which millennium is "the" millennium. Any period of 1,000 years is a millennium. The 2nd millennium A.D. ends on 12/31/2000. The millennium of four year dates beginning with 1 ends on 12/31/1999.
on Dharma & Greg, of course.
Well, it is hard to tell cluelessness from subtle irony sometimes. Just pass me another egg nog and I'll try to relay. Don't skimp on the rum. Cheers!
Are you for real? The article quotes at least three people: Posner, a named NYPD spokesman and a named MS spokesperson. Granted, the NY Times occasionlly makes a factual error, but they do not make up stories from whole cloth.
Yes, some people celebrate Hannukah by exchanging presents. I've known women who have been confined to bed for weeks before delivery. There are many reasons why. There are also reasons why ordinary people are leery of opening their door to the police. I am also quite willing to believe that MS told the NYPD that it was worth $1 million in order to recover it whether or not you accept that valution.
A little healthy skepticism is a good thing, just don't overdo it.
Coincidence? I think not. Sounds like M$ are "innovating" their way into a sweeter deal.
The guy's father's name was Samuel Posner and he lived in New York not Chicago. You should really do some rudimentay research before inventing implausible conspiracy theories.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/ articles/18tv.html
requires free_registration.pl