Hypothetical question: If I sell/distribute a Linux DVD player program that incorporates DeCSS or similar code, would the DVD-CCA have grounds to sue? If they attempted to stop me from selling my software, could that form part of a basis for an anti-trust or class action lawsuit of DVD (media and/or players) owners against the DVD-CCA and its members? I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I know some do read shashdot so I'm hoping they can shed some light.
Katz, I grew up in Europe, surrounded by the "activists" like Jose Bove. Please get yourself a clue and see through their socialist-hero-glamour.
The guy represents pampered French (and European in general) farmers who are mad because they are likely to have to face reality: Given a choice, most people probably don't want to pay what they charge for their products. It's by no means certain that that *is* going to happen, but that's what they're afraid of.
I've got no more understanding left for thugs like him. He can take his cheese and shove it up his righteous behind. He stands for people who have denied a whole generation (myself included) economic freedom, so why is he whining now? No sympathy here.
This is wide open to DoS (mmm, anonymous 800 lines, mmm...)
With a little organization (along the lines of email lists to distribute the day's bogus reports for each member) it has a fair chance of bringing the system to its knees, if implemented.
"Front" every site in an apparently obscene hostname. www.tits.kernel.org, hotbabes.slashdot.org, cum.aclu.org, sexxx.enlightenedcompany.com, porno.nytimes.com. Make the censorware users realize they have to either lose the software or live in an Internet Disneyland.
It ain't perfect, suggestions welcome. Maybe along the lines of constantly changing the domain under which the content lives, and using redirects (to "obscene" domains) from the "well-known" pages. With a bit of Javascript the page should be able to detect the redirect didn't happen, and ask the user if they're running censorware, maybe under the guise of a "help wizard". If they answer yes, take them to a page that explains why censorware sucks. Of course that page would have to keep moving too, otherwise something tells me it would get blocked soon.
I know it's a silly question, but... When in a conventional cassette player, does it recognize when the tape is "playing", "rewinding", "fast forwarding"?
The romemp3.com site has no contact info so I can't call/email them to ask, I was wondering if any/.ers might know...
If the answers to the above are favorable, one of these will be permanently residing in my car stereo very soon:-)
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm probably preaching to the choir. But here goes anyway:
Someone needs to point out to Congress and the appeals courts where this will surely end up that DMCA allows extreme monopolistic/oligopolistic behaviors unless enforced with extreme care, i.e. not as in this case. It allows monopolists to piggy-back their anti-competitive schemes on the pretext of copyright protection, invoking the law's protection for their monopoly! Here's how:
Let's start with the pure digital content. Wrap around it a weak "scrambling" scheme. This will be our excuse. Mix with it, in a way that can't be separately addressed technically (this is the key point), our monopolistic permissioning scheme. Sound familiar?
Now, everyone who tries to reverse engineer the permissioning scheme (promoting competition) is bound, because of how the system was set up by its monopolistic designers, to defeat the, albeit weak, encryption, triggering a DMCA-based lawsuit.
If the copyright owners want to protect their work in the digital domain, the burden should be on them to separate the copyright protection functionality from any other business rule enforcing functionality.
This law is (should be) there to protect the authors' copyright from pirates, not their business deals with their distribution channel partners from competition. It should force them to make this a technical distinction, by reducing protection when they don't.
In other words, the key point: <B>If you <UL>poison</UL> your copyright protection system with anything that limits competition your copy protection device loses DMCA protection</B>
If you decide to educate any of your representatives on this issue, please consider the above. Thanks for reading.
I am not a lawyer. However if you have a second citizenship through birth (I assume you're a UK citizen by birth) then when you become a US citizen you don't have to give up UK citizenship. I don't know anything about the UK side though, but from what I've seen from friends who have dual UK/* citizenship it doesn't seem to be an issue.
I've danced the H1B and now the green card dance for a few years. I'm happy with the money I'm making, but as someone here said it's about freedom, not money. I've had enough of being anyone's indentured servant, highly paid or not. So I filed for Canadian permanent residency a couple of months ago, and we'll see how it goes. At the very least, having the option makes it easier to live with the crap the INS and my employer (consular processing? don't do that, it's scaaary - yeah, for you you SOBs cause I'd be a free agent a few years earlier) are throwing at me.
So, two points for fellow H1B victims: - Investigate Canada - Check out consular processing as an alternative to the adjustment of status hell.
Besides, there arecool employers outside the Silicon Valley:-)
If the blinkered filtering companies don't want to open-source their blacklists, what's to stop their "encrypted" contents from being DVD-CCA'd out in the open?
Presumably the software employs security-through-obscurity to protect the key(s). This means not only that it's possible to decrypt the contents, but also that it is possible to convince any interested party that the decrypted list is, indeed, the one they paid their good money for in order to protect little Johnny from the Internet.
Hey, if the blacklists can be decrypted they can also be patched. "Click here to enlighten your censorware". Cool.
I don't have kids, not yet at least. If censorware is mandated at a national level why should I contribute to the cost, if it's not protecting me from anything?
Can this argument be used against "mass" censorware/rating mandates like what we've been hearing from Australia lately?
ISPs that provide access to kids can have their own rules, thankyouverymuch. I'll just use the ones that cater to grown-ups. Do you see a use for this type of argument in fighting government-imposed censorware moves?
In other words, it's not "the" Internet. Everyone's Internet can be customized/filtered (or not) according to what they or their legal guardians think is appropriate. Do you feel this point should be stressed?
For the non-merkins here, let me add another angle to the discussion.
Canadian immigration procedures seem to be a lot faster, more predictable, and more fair than the US ones.
Using mainstream cases (employment-based, no "exceptional performance" or other "fast" special cases in US green card process) I have the following (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer or a statistician or an immigration specialist, other than about my own case. If you find important errors in the information below do a good deed and let us all know, and please talk to a lawyer before you act):
US green card: Best case start-to-finish is 2 years, assuming you've got that much left in your H-1B to go for consular processing. If you go for adjustment of status right now you'll be in a black hole for an unknown number of years. The INS has stopped processing employment based AOS since last March or so. Remember that during GC processing, you must stay with the sponsoring employer.
Canadian PR: My lawyer claims 5-6 months if no interview is required, 11-12 if an interview is required. Very interested to hear about other peoples' experiences. When applying as an independent immigrant there's no "sponsoring employer".
US GC: Employment-based GC means you make a commitment to stay with sponsoring employer "indefinitely". That means that at the time you get the green card you have that intention, although obviously unexpected changes in circumstances would explain you leaving your sponsoring employer. Again, see a lawyer. But don't think that your company's HR and your boss don't know about this one.
Canadian PR: You're a free agent as soon as you land. Some restrictions do apply re: Quebec vs. non-Quebec residence and you do need to continue to be a professional geek if that's what you promised you'd be. But you wouldn't have a problem with that, would you? Again, see a lawyer for real legal advice.
It was a hard decision and I do love the Bay Area, but I've had it with being an (admittedly well-paid) indentured servant. Freedom is indeed worth quite a bit of money, so if all goes well, next year, Hello Vancouver (or Toronto).
Comments most definitely welcome, especially from Canadians offering free advice:-)
First, let me say I'm clueless when it comes to 3d graphics.
But I have to wonder:
If the graphics calcs are parallelizable (and I thing that solving simultaneous equations is) then why not use a SMP farm as an "accelerator"? How about a large number of 486s or older 586 cores on the same chip or the same board? They should be able to pack these quite nicely these days.
Since most of the hype is around graphics (ie. solving equations) why not just parallelize the damn thing? Any reason other than having to rewrite code so that it's parallelizable? For inherently parallelizable math code this shouldn't be too hard, is it?
I know there has to be a good (technical) reason for the course vendors are taking, and someone here should be able to enlighten me:)
Slashdot Mirror
Hypothetical question: If I sell/distribute a Linux DVD player program that incorporates DeCSS or similar code, would the DVD-CCA have grounds to sue? If they attempted to stop me from selling my software, could that form part of a basis for an anti-trust or class action lawsuit of DVD (media and/or players) owners against the DVD-CCA and its members? I'm obviously not a lawyer, but I know some do read shashdot so I'm hoping they can shed some light.
Katz, I grew up in Europe, surrounded by the "activists" like Jose Bove. Please get yourself a clue and see through their socialist-hero-glamour.
The guy represents pampered French (and European in general) farmers who are mad because they are likely to have to face reality: Given a choice, most people probably don't want to pay what they charge for their products. It's by no means certain that that *is* going to happen, but that's what they're afraid of.
I've got no more understanding left for thugs like him. He can take his cheese and shove it up his righteous behind. He stands for people who have denied a whole generation (myself included) economic freedom, so why is he whining now? No sympathy here.
Quick! Confiscate my JunkBuster proxy files too, they're evidence! I'm waiting for the ominous call from DoubleClick's lawyers...
This is wide open to DoS (mmm, anonymous 800 lines, mmm...)
With a little organization (along the lines of email lists to distribute the day's bogus reports for each member) it has a fair chance of bringing the system to its knees, if implemented.
Where can I find out what other companies Mattel has a stake in? I'd like my boycott to be as encompassing as possible. Thanks.
"Front" every site in an apparently obscene hostname. www.tits.kernel.org, hotbabes.slashdot.org, cum.aclu.org, sexxx.enlightenedcompany.com, porno.nytimes.com. Make the censorware users realize they have to either lose the software or live in an Internet Disneyland.
It ain't perfect, suggestions welcome. Maybe along the lines of constantly changing the domain under which the content lives, and using redirects (to "obscene" domains) from the "well-known" pages. With a bit of Javascript the page should be able to detect the redirect didn't happen, and ask the user if they're running censorware, maybe under the guise of a "help wizard". If they answer yes, take them to a page that explains why censorware sucks. Of course that page would have to keep moving too, otherwise something tells me it would get blocked soon.
There still are. Check out AntiVir or Sophos. I personally use AntiVir which kicks NAV's ass thoroughly.
I know it's a silly question, but... When in a conventional cassette player, does it recognize when the tape is "playing", "rewinding", "fast forwarding"?
/.ers might know...
:-)
The romemp3.com site has no contact info so I can't call/email them to ask, I was wondering if any
If the answers to the above are favorable, one of these will be permanently residing in my car stereo very soon
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm probably preaching to the choir. But here goes anyway:
Someone needs to point out to Congress and the appeals courts where this will surely end up that DMCA allows extreme monopolistic/oligopolistic behaviors unless enforced with extreme care, i.e. not as in this case. It allows monopolists to piggy-back their anti-competitive schemes on the pretext of copyright protection, invoking the law's protection for their monopoly! Here's how:
Let's start with the pure digital content. Wrap around it a weak "scrambling" scheme. This will be our excuse. Mix with it, in a way that can't be separately addressed technically (this is the key point), our monopolistic permissioning scheme. Sound familiar?
Now, everyone who tries to reverse engineer the permissioning scheme (promoting competition) is bound, because of how the system was set up by its monopolistic designers, to defeat the, albeit weak, encryption, triggering a DMCA-based lawsuit.
If the copyright owners want to protect their work in the digital domain, the burden should be on them to separate the copyright protection functionality from any other business rule enforcing functionality.
This law is (should be) there to protect the authors' copyright from pirates, not their business deals with their distribution channel partners from competition. It should force them to make this a technical distinction, by reducing protection when they don't.
In other words, the key point: <B>If you <UL>poison</UL> your copyright protection system with anything that limits competition your copy protection device loses DMCA protection</B>
If you decide to educate any of your representatives on this issue, please consider the above. Thanks for reading.
I am not a lawyer. However if you have a second citizenship through birth (I assume you're a UK citizen by birth) then when you become a US citizen you don't have to give up UK citizenship. I don't know anything about the UK side though, but from what I've seen from friends who have dual UK/* citizenship it doesn't seem to be an issue.
I've danced the H1B and now the green card dance for a few years. I'm happy with the money I'm making, but as someone here said it's about freedom, not money. I've had enough of being anyone's indentured servant, highly paid or not. So I filed for Canadian permanent residency a couple of months ago, and we'll see how it goes. At the very least, having the option makes it easier to live with the crap the INS and my employer (consular processing? don't do that, it's scaaary - yeah, for you you SOBs cause I'd be a free agent a few years earlier) are throwing at me.
:-)
So, two points for fellow H1B victims:
- Investigate Canada
- Check out consular processing as an alternative to the adjustment of status hell.
Besides, there are cool employers outside the Silicon Valley
If the blinkered filtering companies don't want to open-source their blacklists, what's to stop their "encrypted" contents from being DVD-CCA'd out in the open?
Presumably the software employs security-through-obscurity to protect the key(s). This means not only that it's possible to decrypt the contents, but also that it is possible to convince any interested party that the decrypted list is, indeed, the one they paid their good money for in order to protect little Johnny from the Internet.
Hey, if the blacklists can be decrypted they can also be patched. "Click here to enlighten your censorware". Cool.
This has been compressed somewhat but here goes anyway:
I need politicos to stay away from my freedom (no stupid crypto laws) more than I need them to protect my privacy. I can do that with JunkBuster.
Whose quote is the one about "those who want to trade freedom from security deserve neither"?
I'm glad you brought this up.
They don't have any valid concerns, IMHO. _Individuals_ have concerns, needs, values, rights, obligations. Groups are only that, groups.
Using the "rights" of groups has been the standard-issue way to oppress/rob/kill people in most if not all of history.
Seen in a slightly different light:
I don't have kids, not yet at least. If censorware is mandated at a national level why should I contribute to the cost, if it's not protecting me from anything?
Can this argument be used against "mass" censorware/rating mandates like what we've been hearing from Australia lately?
ISPs that provide access to kids can have their own rules, thankyouverymuch. I'll just use the ones that cater to grown-ups. Do you see a use for this type of argument in fighting government-imposed censorware moves?
In other words, it's not "the" Internet. Everyone's Internet can be customized/filtered (or not) according to what they or their legal guardians think is appropriate. Do you feel this point should be stressed?
For the non-merkins here, let me add another angle to the discussion.
:-)
Canadian immigration procedures seem to be a lot faster, more predictable, and more fair than the US ones.
Using mainstream cases (employment-based, no "exceptional performance" or other "fast" special cases in US green card process) I have the following (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer or a statistician or an immigration specialist, other than about my own case. If you find important errors in the information below do a good deed and let us all know, and please talk to a lawyer before you act):
US green card: Best case start-to-finish is 2 years, assuming you've got that much left in your H-1B to go for consular processing. If you go for adjustment of status right now you'll be in a black hole for an unknown number of years. The INS has stopped processing employment based AOS since last March or so. Remember that during GC processing, you must stay with the sponsoring employer.
Canadian PR: My lawyer claims 5-6 months if no interview is required, 11-12 if an interview is required. Very interested to hear about other peoples' experiences. When applying as an independent immigrant there's no "sponsoring employer".
US GC: Employment-based GC means you make a commitment to stay with sponsoring employer "indefinitely". That means that at the time you get the green card you have that intention, although obviously unexpected changes in circumstances would explain you leaving your sponsoring employer. Again, see a lawyer. But don't think that your company's HR and your boss don't know about this one.
Canadian PR: You're a free agent as soon as you land. Some restrictions do apply re: Quebec vs. non-Quebec residence and you do need to continue to be a professional geek if that's what you promised you'd be. But you wouldn't have a problem with that, would you? Again, see a lawyer for real legal advice.
It was a hard decision and I do love the Bay Area, but I've had it with being an (admittedly well-paid) indentured servant. Freedom is indeed worth quite a bit of money, so if all goes well, next year, Hello Vancouver (or Toronto).
Comments most definitely welcome, especially from Canadians offering free advice
Sounds like Copenhagen airport lounges may become a convenient place to run one's decompilers. I hope they have ample AC outlets :-)
First, let me say I'm clueless when it comes to 3d graphics.
:)
But I have to wonder:
If the graphics calcs are parallelizable (and I thing that solving simultaneous equations is) then why not use a SMP farm as an "accelerator"? How about a large number of 486s or older 586 cores on the same chip or the same board? They should be able to pack these quite nicely these days.
Since most of the hype is around graphics (ie. solving equations) why not just parallelize the damn thing? Any reason other than having to rewrite code so that it's parallelizable? For inherently parallelizable math code this shouldn't be too hard, is it?
I know there has to be a good (technical) reason for the course vendors are taking, and someone here should be able to enlighten me