The question of where to send money has come up on quite a few threads now. The/. investigators must be on vacation or something because I haven't seen an address yet. May I suggest that someone gets the address of her congressperson (I'm going to bed so I'm delegating to some other timezone where people are awake still) and posts it so we can send a check with a little note saying "Please give this to the 12 year old I've heard about. BTW, this is what I think of the RIAA....." First, it'll be real hard for them to ignore the letter with the check. Sure, they might just send it back, but it'll get their attention, especially if there's more than a dozen or so of us (come on everyone:) Second, the money might acually get to her and her mom. Anyway, it can't hurt.
There is some intent purchasing such a "glitcher" that comes with the firmware loaded on the chip. What else would you use the unit for?
You're probably right for the majority of cases. To tell the truth, though, if I was figuring out how to program a smartcard, and had no idea what I was doing (which I don't), I would buy one in a second to see how it was done.
These two may have committed a crime or not (I think they may not have). Regardless, the point is that the threat of legal action in this case is being wielded (I know, it's a common issue on/.) as if it really was justice. Which is to say, the potential cost of justice has turned it into a tool for extortion. Now this is the closest thing I've seen (this lawsuit) to saying in all bluntness that threatening legal action on a massive scale is the same as extortion. I honestly believe that it might go somewhere. Many judges and some lawyers, believe it or not, actually care something for justice, and don't like seeing it adulterated. I think that given an opportunity, you'll see the Judicial Branch bite back a bit at greed.
None of the threats make legal sense. If they did, SCO would be able to get an injunction to shut down Linux users. In practice, SCO hasn't even been able to get an injunction against IBM and won't get a court hearing on its request to do that until 2005.
Meanwhile, a German court told SCO in June that it must stop threatening Linux users. And an Australian government agency is looking into charges that SCO is essentially running a shakedown racket by claiming that Linux users must buy a license they don't actually need.
And SCO's tactics don't make business sense, either. SCO is a software company that has slashed its R&D budget, alienated its customers and demolished the value of its brand. That's not the way you build a business.
So, what do you do when you have no real business but your stock price keeps going up? We all learned that lesson during the dot-com bubble: You use that stock as currency.
. . .
Got all that? If it sounds like a shell game, well, that's the way Canopy likes to move its companies around. But in effect, Canopy used SCO's stock price, boosted by SCO's Linux threats, to rake in a couple of million dollars in cash behind the scenes.
And apparently it worked. Which means we can expect that as long as Canopy can find ways of cashing in on SCO's threats against Linux users, those threats will keep coming -- no matter how little sense they make.
...Computerworld recently ran an article detailing how SCO's backers are cashing in its stock in a complex transaction involving purchase of a company owned by the Canopy Group, a Utah investment concern that also owns a big chunk of SCO.
An SCO spokesman said the report's allegations of a "shell game" weren't true, and added that SCO has no control over its stock price.
Or you could make a 20' tall Tux, with an angry look on his face, appear in the road in front of their driveway. That'll spook 'em good.
Perfect. Something to get inside their heads without being too pretentious. It's a good idea even if legal things swing SCO's way for a time. This'll take some planning...
dragoncortez and I live here in Salt Lake and were thinking of going down to Lindon with a big poster or something to... you know... sike them out a little bit. We're thinking a big sign that reads "Ha Ha." or "YHBT" or something. Suggestions? Anyone else want to come along? Nothing illegal or innapropriate or anything- just something to let them know that we here in Utah aren't very pleased with SCO and support the opposition.
I was working at an office in Manila for a while and one day some other guys in the office noticed a man at a table down the street a ways selling papers. When they stopped and looked at the papers, they discovered they were from our office- they had been pulled from the trash and he was selling them for something like 10 pesos a sheet (though it didn't look like he was making much of a killing). Not that they were particularly sensitive, but some of the papers had contact information on them, so we began shredding everything that had names on it.
When I got back home to the states, I was a product development manager, and one of the first things I did was buy a nice shredder for my company. At first everyone laughed- they said I was being paranoid, but it was mostly out of habit. Pretty soon everyone was using it, though. I realized after a while that deep down I hadn't really bought the shredder because I was worried about privacy or anything, but because it's addictive. Sometimes there were lines in front of the shredder. People were shredding notes from the morning's staff meetings. People were shredding poems that they had just printed off the Internet. If anyone were to pay $8,000 to recover one of our documents, the truth is that they'll likely find a page of Holy Grail script. ("Aha! Just as we suspected! This document proves they're doing research on swallows.")
The lesson is, shred lots of junk while you're at it. It's fun for you, bad for whoever's trying to look at your stuff, and probably fun for the guy with the glue getting paid to recover stuff.
William Safire, a columnist for the NYT, wrote an insightful editorial concerning congress' actions.
Some quotes:
But to everyone's amazement, the networks' power play was foiled. Representative Frank Wolf of Virginia urged his G.O.P. colleagues to vote their consciences, and an amendment to hold the cap on a huge conglomerate's ownership to 35 percent of the national TV audience was passed by a vote of 40 to 25.
...
According to this week's Pew Research poll about the F.C.C. plan (to break the ownership barrier and permit media crossover), "By roughly 10 to one (70%-6%), those who have heard a lot about the rules change say its impact will be negative." Nearly half of those polled had heard about this issue, despite conflicted media coverage.
This growing grass-roots grumbling against giantism is getting through to legislators ordinarily cowed by network-owned station managers or wowed by big-media campaign contributions. Unfortunately, the any-merger-goes F.C.C. chairman, Michael Powell, has derided objections to his diktat as "garbage," and the White House strategist Karl Rove dismisses the depth of voter resentment that Democrats will be able to exploit next year.
In conclusion, Safire seems to think (and he's usually keen on such things from what I can tell) that this might turn into an election issue. Let's make sure it does.
Eco-cons as well as libertarians may snicker, but Republican Representative Richard Burr of North Carolina observed that 26 independent NBC affiliates had recently exercised their right to refuse to telecast "Maxim's Hot 100." If independents are gobbled up with the F.C.C.'s blessing, more decisions affecting local mores will be made in Rockefeller Center. Is that what George Bush stands for?
...public opinion is on the march. Some in-house pollster should awaken President Bush to a bipartisan sleeper issue that could blindside him next year.
I think that it's kind of a wake up call for Americans to see a song made illegal- or _even_ if it only makes big companies like mp3.com think that it _might_ be illegal. That's enough to scare me. Hopefully it will play a small part in scaring the legislators and/or Supreme Court as well.
Here's a way they can make money. You can now find the DeCSS song on mp3.com. When the MPAA sues, mp3.com may just have enough legal resources to win the dumb case, after which they'll sue the MPAA for [put something here]. mp3.com then uses the money awarded them in punitive damages to pay off all the copyright infringement stuff, maybe with some to spare. All us geeks who have worried for so long about these issues can just sit back and watch the ironies flow...
It takes a lot to keep those radio tubes cool. I have a vision of one day being able to fit a whole processor on a silicon wafer no larger than the tip of my pinky finger. You laugh, but just wait...
We'll have to watch closely with what happens w/ copyleft and their t-shirts. The code on the t-shirt isn't enough to actually copy a DVD. It doesn't have any of the tables or anything- yet they're getting sued. We'll see what the MPAA can think up as a case and then you'll have your question answered...
Our ISP was complaining because it was sucking to much bandwidth. Right now we have it so it randomly redirects to one of a number of mirrors. (a cheap PHP load balancing scheme). Anyway, looks like some of the mirrors pulled it. If it doesn't download, keep trying. You'll hit a mirror (or the original there) and you'll get it.
I haven't gotten a letter yet, but I'll keep y'all updated. I've got a number of lawyers from all over the country (even Harvard professors) aching to defend this song if it goes to court.
In the mean time- keep on downloading! You may be among the first Americans to own the very first illegal protest song. That'll be a sad sad day in American history. (I don't think it'll happen though. Frankly, I think the intelligent ones are on our side.)
Here's what the Chicago Tribune had to say about the New York case:
With the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Congress has catered so completely to copyright holders that everyone else must resort to legal loopholes in order to exercise their First Amendment rights.
No, I didn't rehearse it [sg]. (I don't think I even remember the chords- though I know I was planning on using the c-chord a lot. Maybe I could use your services:-)
Yes, I think your perspective hits the issue right on the head. Perhaps the legislators have decided that laws prohibiting the copy of copyrighted materials just weren't being followed, so they'll "nip it in the bud" or something. Accidentally (?) they happened to infringe on our rights. I think they'll get the clue soon.
I have to agree (and not just because I made the song). The point of the song is to (try to) help some of the non-geek types out there realize that the core of the DeCSS issue is source code == free speech. Of course, it can be copyrighted and patented etc.- just like other forms of speech. But (until the DMCA) if it isn't any of the above (unless it's seditious?- I'm not familiar with those laws), it's free. We have an obligation to our children and theirs to educate people as to what the real issue is.
The issue is the DMCA took copyrights one step further and not only addressed illegal copying, but made technologies that could possibly lead to copying illegal. [analogy]In other words, not only is it illegal to copy that copyrighted poem, it's now illegal to tell someone how to build a xerox machine[/analogy]!
We were going through a phase in this country where we realized there needed to be some legislation addressing the new technologies, our legislating bodies were a little inexperienced and made some mistakes, and now we're bringing them (or the MPAA is:-) into the open so that they get fixed. I think that as soon as they realize the current legislation went a bit to far, or as soon as the Supreme Court does, we'll see some things turn against corporate entities and turn for the good of the little people (us geeks).
Re:Just how ridiculous is this case?
on
DeCSS Source Song
·
· Score: 1
Something upstream from us was down, sorry. It should be better now. It's mirrored here just in case.
As is often noted, "one who intentionally shoots a bullet into a state is as subject to the judicial jurisdiction of [that] state... as if he had actually fired the bullet in the state."
So, when issues arise with the Internet (a bullet that can be fired from anywhere to anywhere), be they regarding censorship or DeCSS or whatever, jurisdiction isn't even an issue? And off-shore firms doing funny stuff (that I wouldn't advocate)? Automatically in the US's jurisdiction? Or, I guess, automatically in California's jurisdiction (the bullets are flying into every ISP in CA!)? I guess California can bring litigation against anyone in the world! (I guess we already knew California would try this eventually:-)
Thanks! I have to admit it was pretty improved. I've kept it that way, though. Kind of gives it a 70's protest song feel. The real monster is memorizing the lyrics for when we play it live...
No problem. We'll probably write a better version of DeCSS as soon as I can get together with the rest of the band and get a good recording- you know- something that's a political statement _and_ ready for MTV:-) I'm just waiting for the feds to break into one of our concerts and say "I'm sorry, but you can't sing that song here. The MPAA would like to speak to you."
Wait- better idea- we'll make a rock video of it and distribute it on DVD!
Maybe if we confuse the issue well enough, they'll actually start appointing judges who are actually competent enough to sort through it effectively. Come to think of it- why don't some of you MIT graduates reading get into law and politics? That would give us hope for some meaningful legislation (not to mention a chance to "nanner nanner nanner":-P~ they law students at Harvard:-)
Someone hook up that implant that allows you to move the mouse-cursor by thinking about it so that the person can think of the DeCSS algorithm and have it come up. What'll the judges do with that?
What about this? It's link to a song with the code for descramble.c (the same as on the back of the t-shirts) as the lyrics (only englisised a bit) that I wrote. The originally written DeCSS was GPL'ed. I would encourage everyone to download the song and swap it around on Napster. Maybe we can merge these two cases into one- so/. can post half as many articles regarding the two subjects. "Update on the MPAA vs. Napster proceedings"...
Slashdot Mirror
The question of where to send money has come up on quite a few threads now. The /. investigators must be on vacation or something because I haven't seen an address yet. May I suggest that someone gets the address of her congressperson (I'm going to bed so I'm delegating to some other timezone where people are awake still) and posts it so we can send a check with a little note saying "Please give this to the 12 year old I've heard about. BTW, this is what I think of the RIAA....." First, it'll be real hard for them to ignore the letter with the check. Sure, they might just send it back, but it'll get their attention, especially if there's more than a dozen or so of us (come on everyone :) Second, the money might acually get to her and her mom. Anyway, it can't hurt.
There is some intent purchasing such a "glitcher" that comes with the firmware loaded on the chip. What else would you use the unit for?
/.) as if it really was justice. Which is to say, the potential cost of justice has turned it into a tool for extortion. Now this is the closest thing I've seen (this lawsuit) to saying in all bluntness that threatening legal action on a massive scale is the same as extortion. I honestly believe that it might go somewhere. Many judges and some lawyers, believe it or not, actually care something for justice, and don't like seeing it adulterated. I think that given an opportunity, you'll see the Judicial Branch bite back a bit at greed.
You're probably right for the majority of cases. To tell the truth, though, if I was figuring out how to program a smartcard, and had no idea what I was doing (which I don't), I would buy one in a second to see how it was done.
These two may have committed a crime or not (I think they may not have). Regardless, the point is that the threat of legal action in this case is being wielded (I know, it's a common issue on
I posted this in a thread yesterday, but it got sort of buried and I think /.ers ought to keep it in mind:
SCO's Shell Game
Some quotes:
None of the threats make legal sense. If they did, SCO would be able to get an injunction to shut down Linux users. In practice, SCO hasn't even been able to get an injunction against IBM and won't get a court hearing on its request to do that until 2005.
Meanwhile, a German court told SCO in June that it must stop threatening Linux users. And an Australian government agency is looking into charges that SCO is essentially running a shakedown racket by claiming that Linux users must buy a license they don't actually need.
And SCO's tactics don't make business sense, either. SCO is a software company that has slashed its R&D budget, alienated its customers and demolished the value of its brand. That's not the way you build a business.
So, what do you do when you have no real business but your stock price keeps going up? We all learned that lesson during the dot-com bubble: You use that stock as currency.
. . .
Got all that? If it sounds like a shell game, well, that's the way Canopy likes to move its companies around. But in effect, Canopy used SCO's stock price, boosted by SCO's Linux threats, to rake in a couple of million dollars in cash behind the scenes.
And apparently it worked. Which means we can expect that as long as Canopy can find ways of cashing in on SCO's threats against Linux users, those threats will keep coming -- no matter how little sense they make.
From the SL Trib:
...Computerworld recently ran an article detailing how SCO's backers are cashing in its stock in a complex transaction involving purchase of a company owned by the Canopy Group, a Utah investment concern that also owns a big chunk of SCO.
a gement/story/0,10801,83452,00.html
An SCO spokesman said the report's allegations of a "shell game" weren't true, and added that SCO has no control over its stock price.
Here's (I'm pretty sure) the article mentioned:
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/man
Or you could make a 20' tall Tux, with an angry look on his face, appear in the road in front of their driveway. That'll spook 'em good.
Perfect. Something to get inside their heads without being too pretentious. It's a good idea even if legal things swing SCO's way for a time. This'll take some planning...
dragoncortez and I live here in Salt Lake and were thinking of going down to Lindon with a big poster or something to... you know... sike them out a little bit. We're thinking a big sign that reads "Ha Ha." or "YHBT" or something. Suggestions? Anyone else want to come along? Nothing illegal or innapropriate or anything- just something to let them know that we here in Utah aren't very pleased with SCO and support the opposition.
I was working at an office in Manila for a while and one day some other guys in the office noticed a man at a table down the street a ways selling papers. When they stopped and looked at the papers, they discovered they were from our office- they had been pulled from the trash and he was selling them for something like 10 pesos a sheet (though it didn't look like he was making much of a killing). Not that they were particularly sensitive, but some of the papers had contact information on them, so we began shredding everything that had names on it.
When I got back home to the states, I was a product development manager, and one of the first things I did was buy a nice shredder for my company. At first everyone laughed- they said I was being paranoid, but it was mostly out of habit. Pretty soon everyone was using it, though. I realized after a while that deep down I hadn't really bought the shredder because I was worried about privacy or anything, but because it's addictive. Sometimes there were lines in front of the shredder. People were shredding notes from the morning's staff meetings. People were shredding poems that they had just printed off the Internet. If anyone were to pay $8,000 to recover one of our documents, the truth is that they'll likely find a page of Holy Grail script. ("Aha! Just as we suspected! This document proves they're doing research on swallows.")
The lesson is, shred lots of junk while you're at it. It's fun for you, bad for whoever's trying to look at your stuff, and probably fun for the guy with the glue getting paid to recover stuff.
Some quotes:
Well mr. +5 Insightful, it looks like you just answered your own question.
I think that it's kind of a wake up call for Americans to see a song made illegal- or _even_ if it only makes big companies like mp3.com think that it _might_ be illegal. That's enough to scare me. Hopefully it will play a small part in scaring the legislators and/or Supreme Court as well.
Here's a way they can make money. You can now find the DeCSS song on mp3.com. When the MPAA sues, mp3.com may just have enough legal resources to win the dumb case, after which they'll sue the MPAA for [put something here]. mp3.com then uses the money awarded them in punitive damages to pay off all the copyright infringement stuff, maybe with some to spare. All us geeks who have worried for so long about these issues can just sit back and watch the ironies flow...
It takes a lot to keep those radio tubes cool. I have a vision of one day being able to fit a whole processor on a silicon wafer no larger than the tip of my pinky finger. You laugh, but just wait...
We'll have to watch closely with what happens w/ copyleft and their t-shirts. The code on the t-shirt isn't enough to actually copy a DVD. It doesn't have any of the tables or anything- yet they're getting sued. We'll see what the MPAA can think up as a case and then you'll have your question answered...
I got the quote from here. I don't know where he got it..
Our ISP was complaining because it was sucking to much bandwidth. Right now we have it so it randomly redirects to one of a number of mirrors. (a cheap PHP load balancing scheme). Anyway, looks like some of the mirrors pulled it. If it doesn't download, keep trying. You'll hit a mirror (or the original there) and you'll get it.
I haven't gotten a letter yet, but I'll keep y'all updated. I've got a number of lawyers from all over the country (even Harvard professors) aching to defend this song if it goes to court.
In the mean time- keep on downloading! You may be among the first Americans to own the very first illegal protest song. That'll be a sad sad day in American history. (I don't think it'll happen though. Frankly, I think the intelligent ones are on our side.)
No, I didn't rehearse it [sg]. (I don't think I even remember the chords- though I know I was planning on using the c-chord a lot. Maybe I could use your services :-)
Yes, I think your perspective hits the issue right on the head. Perhaps the legislators have decided that laws prohibiting the copy of copyrighted materials just weren't being followed, so they'll "nip it in the bud" or something. Accidentally (?) they happened to infringe on our rights. I think they'll get the clue soon.
I have to agree (and not just because I made the song). The point of the song is to (try to) help some of the non-geek types out there realize that the core of the DeCSS issue is source code == free speech. Of course, it can be copyrighted and patented etc.- just like other forms of speech. But (until the DMCA) if it isn't any of the above (unless it's seditious?- I'm not familiar with those laws), it's free. We have an obligation to our children and theirs to educate people as to what the real issue is. :-) into the open so that they get fixed. I think that as soon as they realize the current legislation went a bit to far, or as soon as the Supreme Court does, we'll see some things turn against corporate entities and turn for the good of the little people (us geeks).
The issue is the DMCA took copyrights one step further and not only addressed illegal copying, but made technologies that could possibly lead to copying illegal. [analogy]In other words, not only is it illegal to copy that copyrighted poem, it's now illegal to tell someone how to build a xerox machine[/analogy]!
We were going through a phase in this country where we realized there needed to be some legislation addressing the new technologies, our legislating bodies were a little inexperienced and made some mistakes, and now we're bringing them (or the MPAA is
Something upstream from us was down, sorry. It should be better now. It's mirrored here just in case.
So, when issues arise with the Internet (a bullet that can be fired from anywhere to anywhere), be they regarding censorship or DeCSS or whatever, jurisdiction isn't even an issue? And off-shore firms doing funny stuff (that I wouldn't advocate)? Automatically in the US's jurisdiction? Or, I guess, automatically in California's jurisdiction (the bullets are flying into every ISP in CA!)? I guess California can bring litigation against anyone in the world! (I guess we already knew California would try this eventually
Joe
(get my song- descramble)
Thanks! I have to admit it was pretty improved. I've kept it that way, though. Kind of gives it a 70's protest song feel. The real monster is memorizing the lyrics for when we play it live...
Sheet music's not ready yet, but rest assured that it makes heavy use of the "c" chord :-)
No problem. We'll probably write a better version of DeCSS as soon as I can get together with the rest of the band and get a good recording- you know- something that's a political statement _and_ ready for MTV :-) I'm just waiting for the feds to break into one of our concerts and say "I'm sorry, but you can't sing that song here. The MPAA would like to speak to you." :-P~ they law students at Harvard :-)
Wait- better idea- we'll make a rock video of it and distribute it on DVD!
Maybe if we confuse the issue well enough, they'll actually start appointing judges who are actually competent enough to sort through it effectively. Come to think of it- why don't some of you MIT graduates reading get into law and politics? That would give us hope for some meaningful legislation (not to mention a chance to "nanner nanner nanner"
Someone hook up that implant that allows you to move the mouse-cursor by thinking about it so that the person can think of the DeCSS algorithm and have it come up. What'll the judges do with that?
What about this? It's link to a song with the code for descramble.c (the same as on the back of the t-shirts) as the lyrics (only englisised a bit) that I wrote. The originally written DeCSS was GPL'ed. I would encourage everyone to download the song and swap it around on Napster. Maybe we can merge these two cases into one- so /. can post half as many articles regarding the two subjects. "Update on the MPAA vs. Napster proceedings"...
Whoops, bad url. Try this