In your ideal world there would be no communication, since I cannot contact you without seeking your permission. And I can't get that permission since I can't contact you. There we sit shivering in two separate caves
Strawman. This problem, like so many other "online" issues, is obviously analogous to one in traditional property law, which has been solved to everyone's satisfaction.
I hope it can be agreed that the route from the pavement to my front door is my property. But anyone who wants to call on me, and who I have not specifically requested not to, is assumed to have my permission to ring on my doorbell. So it is with email addresses, etc, etc. But if I choose to become a hermit and not allow anyone to contact me, I have that right.
For every piece of information, as well as for every piece of physical good, there is use and abuse. You restrict access to that information and expect only the abuse to be affected.
No, I want to allow every natural individual to decide where they, as individuals, want to draw the line when it comes to public access to their private property. Some people are happy for the neighbourhood softball league to practice in their field, or for the local kids to pick apples off their trees. Some people declare that they will meet all intrusion with deadly force. I want to be able to control what access people have to the online equivalent, and I expect the government I pay for to give me the legal tools I require to enforce my rights
if you could, it would mean that the RIAA et al are right
Maybe they are right. In any case, whether they are or not makes no difference to the question of whether my identity (which is not a creative work) is my property (which it is; it's part of me).
Ah this streetlawyer. One is seldom sure wether he is trolling or not...
So you have to respond to what he actually said, rather than just pigeonholing his arguments and firing off a boilerplate Slashbot auto-reply. How terrible for you. How terrible for you all.
At last, Cato, the worst libertarians to ever take up the name, have stopped pretending to be anything other than a business lobby group.
Any sensible libertarian would realise that my information, about me, is my property, and that it is the proper role of the government to protect my property rights in that information. If I want to sell it to a business, then that's my right, but I sell it under the terms I want, and I don't for example, want to licence them to sell it on to other businesses. Nor do I want my contract with them to be invalidated by their insolvency (no other kind of contract is)
Basically, there is no "fair use" when it comes to my individual information -- unless someone wants to critique my surname, or satirise my telephone number. Nor is there "first sale", because this information isn't copyrighted. It isn't patented. It's just owned. By me. And the law doesn't recognise that.
The Cato Institute wants to prevent me from defending my property against the big banks and companies that pay its bills. This isn't the first time they've been caught out on a personal liberty issue like this. Screw them and their silly strawman "government is worse" arguments. They're not libertarians; they;re corporatarians. If the word "liberty" could be trademarked, they'd be in breach.
And I hope no "information wants to be free" types are fooled by them.
Re:Another good, old book, Soul of a New Machine
on
Hackers
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· Score: 1
Good God! You may have hit on the solution, Watson! Trained enginers working at the patent office??????? At the moment, it's staffed by semi-domesticated parrots, with arts degrees. But your idea might work better.... I'll pass it on to the relevant authorities right away!!!!
Or could it be, that the Patent Office is staffed by people with a very good understanding of both the technology and the law, and that there is more to this case than meets the eye? Did you consider that possibility?
The biggest symmetric key that's been cracked is 64. It took months of work by a bunch of distributed computers. Cracking 128 would take 2^64 times as much effort.
I must now complain in the strongest possible terms about the blatant troll-feeding which is occurring in this thread. Now the mini-trolls placed into my troll post announcing that my previous troll was a troll are getting bitten on! I demand that the UN act to import new supplies of irony to Canada. I appear to have lost the +2 bonus now; thank you.
For God's sake! I can't believe that, despite the number of people who have reacted to this fairly heavy-handed troll, nobody has yet pointed out that neither the silicon chip nor the heart transplant were patented. That was the whole point of the troll! I am utterly disgusted with the standard of kneejerk posters on slashdot today, so in the tradition of mad people everywhere, I am replying to one of my own posts to complain. And abusing the +2 bonus to do so, for God's sake!!
If it's so "obvious" that "anyone" could have invented it, you have to come up with a slick explanation for why there was no undeclared prior art; why nobody did in fact invent it. I've not been impressed by any of the claims made about this patent on Slashdot and indeed, am coming round to the view that it's valid. Think of the example of Post-it notes -- the idea of sticking pieces of paper with messages on them to things is as old as paper, but nobody designed that specific product until 3M. A patent isn't on a general idea, it's on a particular product, and Amazon invented the one-click ordering product. Deal with it. Or at least, come up with some actual, cogent reasons why the product is "lame" instead of just saying it is. Or better still, have the honesty to admit that you hate *all* patents, from the silicon chip to the heart transplant, and that you don't care that we wouldn't have half the "cool stuff" we all crave without 'em.
The corporate influence is slowly but surely eating away the open nature of the net and replacing it with barbed wire fencing to protect their property. They are claiming "land", dumping property on it and putting up "no trespassing" signs without ever stopping to think whether it would be better to keep their property somewhere else.
The net is in a danger of becoming a desolate, sterilized wasteland
Take a look around the world. As you look, please note which parts of the world have been "colonised" by corporations grabbing land and "putting up 'no trespassing' signs without ever stopping to think whether it would be better to keep their property somewhere else". In other words, which parts of the world have been developed under the normal, capitalist, Western mode of production.
Then note which parts of the world remain "free" and uncolonised, without the plague of that cursed private property.
Then see which of the two categories contains most of the world's "desolate, sterilized wastelands".
In light of this, I certainly don't feel inclined to accept Katz' summary as authoritative.
Very sensible, he certainly fucked up the translation of "flaneur". In English criticism, its sense is extended beyond the literal translation you get in a French dictionary, and carries the sense of a wanderer on the edges of performance. It's a term from Walter Benjamin.
And yes, as a modern languages graduate, you'll be relieved to know that I am partial to the occasional hairy ass.
Nowhere did the web site directly incite violence against the doctors
This is false; it crossed their names off and appended a gloating commentary each time a doctor was killed. The court decided that this was incitement, which seems reasonable.
The only way to achieve true search engine accuracy is to have an actual person search for pages on request. Why no company has thought of this, I'm not sure
As far as I can tell, this feature has been implemented under the name "Ask Slashdot".
They cannot copy DVDs without circumventing copy protection. The copy protection on DVDs (CSS) consists of two elements; the encryption which DeCSS broke and the physical separation of the session keys and their readers from the content stream. There are twin points of vulnerability, both of which have the protection of the DMCA. You are mistaken if you think that the MPAA does not spend a great deal of time and effort fighting physical attacks on its copyright protection.
That is not a statement of fact; it is a comment and would clearly be found to be such in any libel or slander hearing. And it is hard to read a few issues of 2600 and not come away with the opinion that Kaplan was right on the money.
The keys are on separate tracks of the DVD, which are read separately from the reading of the output. It is not possible to "Physically copy" the key tracks without licensing a special piece of equipment, or without reverse engineering a DVD player to gain access to the read signal from the key tracks. This second activity also counts as "circumventing a copy protection device".
I never claimed that US laws were enforceable outside the USA, and none of my argument depends on this point. I might as well turn the question around; how can what Hong Kong pirates are doing be relevant to an American court case?
So long as Hong Kong pirateskeep their activities and pirated DVDs in Hong Kong, they are beyond the reach of US law; however, these DVDs are contraband and subject to confiscation and penalty by US Customs.
No; you can obtain access to the decryption keys for the CSS encryption, but not the session keys which are encoded on the key tracks of an official disk. A DVD player can distinguish between the two; a copy does not have the session key tracks and is unplayable. The reasonableness or otherwise of the CSS copy protection scheme is not relevant to the question of whether it is a copy protection scheme; and in any case, the issue has been decided in court, making "it seems to me" arguments otiose.
A bitwise copy of the DVD would be playable in a standard DVD player.
Bzzzt, wrong, thanks for playing. A bitwise copy (in the normal sense) would not include the session key tracks, and would not be playable on a normal DVD player (or for that matter, any DVD player). CSS controls copying by placing the keys in a separate place from the encrypted data, and preventing straightforward access to the key tracks. It is both a playback control and a copy protection device, and the distinction is unimportant for the purposes of the DMCA in any case.
the bits have indeed been copied, but the data is inaccessible.
Hence, there has been no copying of the protected content under the DMCA. Look, are we going to have to go through the whole Act here?
You said that this discussion is to be limited to technical questions. Which is it?
No, I was simply pointing out that I was billing you for an hour of my time, so you might as well use it. A reference to your own attempt to bill me. A joke. Laugh.
All this is perfectly true, and I never denied it. However, you appear to have missed two points:
1. The fact that the CSS standard is anticompetitive and leads to player lock-in is irrelevant to the DeCSS case. Contrary to what you might think, monopolistic behaviour is not illegal per se, and it certainly doesn't nullify your rights to have your copyrights respected -- including the protections of the DMCA, which whatever you might think of it, was passed by both House and Senate.
2. The Hong Kong pirates, and anyone else carrying out the piece of reverse engineering you describe, are committing an offense under the DMCA, as they are circumventing a copy protection device. CSS consists of the hardware and the encryption; an attack on either is an attack on the whole, and illegal.
Hence my point; it's much easier for a lawyer to understand the technical issues than a techie to understand the law. Lawyers don't get emotional and lose their objectivity over technical issues; the vice versa doesn't hold.
No, you can use a bit-for-bit copy if you can find some way of generating the session keys. The scrambling of the content, plus the inaccessibility of the session keys, together, go to make up CSS.
I don't think you could "easily" emulate the DVD session keys just by "writing a driver". Unless you have a specialised piece of equipment, or unless you can steal them by hacking a DVD-player (this, btw, would also count as "circumventing a copy protection device" under the DMCA). What kind of technique do you have in mind? (BTW, feel free; general discussion of techniques, as opposed to the creation of tools, is very definitely protected speech for which the strict test applies.)
Slashdot Mirror
Strawman. This problem, like so many other "online" issues, is obviously analogous to one in traditional property law, which has been solved to everyone's satisfaction.
I hope it can be agreed that the route from the pavement to my front door is my property. But anyone who wants to call on me, and who I have not specifically requested not to, is assumed to have my permission to ring on my doorbell. So it is with email addresses, etc, etc. But if I choose to become a hermit and not allow anyone to contact me, I have that right.
For every piece of information, as well as for every piece of physical good, there is use and abuse. You restrict access to that information and expect only the abuse to be affected.
No, I want to allow every natural individual to decide where they, as individuals, want to draw the line when it comes to public access to their private property. Some people are happy for the neighbourhood softball league to practice in their field, or for the local kids to pick apples off their trees. Some people declare that they will meet all intrusion with deadly force. I want to be able to control what access people have to the online equivalent, and I expect the government I pay for to give me the legal tools I require to enforce my rights
if you could, it would mean that the RIAA et al are right
Maybe they are right. In any case, whether they are or not makes no difference to the question of whether my identity (which is not a creative work) is my property (which it is; it's part of me).
Ah this streetlawyer. One is seldom sure wether he is trolling or not...
So you have to respond to what he actually said, rather than just pigeonholing his arguments and firing off a boilerplate Slashbot auto-reply. How terrible for you. How terrible for you all.
Any sensible libertarian would realise that my information, about me, is my property, and that it is the proper role of the government to protect my property rights in that information. If I want to sell it to a business, then that's my right, but I sell it under the terms I want, and I don't for example, want to licence them to sell it on to other businesses. Nor do I want my contract with them to be invalidated by their insolvency (no other kind of contract is)
Basically, there is no "fair use" when it comes to my individual information -- unless someone wants to critique my surname, or satirise my telephone number. Nor is there "first sale", because this information isn't copyrighted. It isn't patented. It's just owned. By me. And the law doesn't recognise that.
The Cato Institute wants to prevent me from defending my property against the big banks and companies that pay its bills. This isn't the first time they've been caught out on a personal liberty issue like this. Screw them and their silly strawman "government is worse" arguments. They're not libertarians; they;re corporatarians. If the word "liberty" could be trademarked, they'd be in breach.
And I hope no "information wants to be free" types are fooled by them.
No need to repeat yourself.
Or could it be, that the Patent Office is staffed by people with a very good understanding of both the technology and the law, and that there is more to this case than meets the eye? Did you consider that possibility?
if the damn universities had done their job and audited Carnivore in the first place.
2^63, I think -- you've got an off-by-one error.
I must now complain in the strongest possible terms about the blatant troll-feeding which is occurring in this thread. Now the mini-trolls placed into my troll post announcing that my previous troll was a troll are getting bitten on! I demand that the UN act to import new supplies of irony to Canada. I appear to have lost the +2 bonus now; thank you.
For God's sake! I can't believe that, despite the number of people who have reacted to this fairly heavy-handed troll, nobody has yet pointed out that neither the silicon chip nor the heart transplant were patented. That was the whole point of the troll! I am utterly disgusted with the standard of kneejerk posters on slashdot today, so in the tradition of mad people everywhere, I am replying to one of my own posts to complain. And abusing the +2 bonus to do so, for God's sake!!
If it's so "obvious" that "anyone" could have invented it, you have to come up with a slick explanation for why there was no undeclared prior art; why nobody did in fact invent it. I've not been impressed by any of the claims made about this patent on Slashdot and indeed, am coming round to the view that it's valid. Think of the example of Post-it notes -- the idea of sticking pieces of paper with messages on them to things is as old as paper, but nobody designed that specific product until 3M. A patent isn't on a general idea, it's on a particular product, and Amazon invented the one-click ordering product. Deal with it. Or at least, come up with some actual, cogent reasons why the product is "lame" instead of just saying it is. Or better still, have the honesty to admit that you hate *all* patents, from the silicon chip to the heart transplant, and that you don't care that we wouldn't have half the "cool stuff" we all crave without 'em.
If I move to Sweden, I'm going to expect to speak Swedish. If I move to Outer-friggin'-Mongolia, I'm going to study Mongolian.
Hands up who believes this!?!!
that's no hands, ladies and gentlemen.
The net is in a danger of becoming a desolate, sterilized wasteland Take a look around the world. As you look, please note which parts of the world have been "colonised" by corporations grabbing land and "putting up 'no trespassing' signs without ever stopping to think whether it would be better to keep their property somewhere else". In other words, which parts of the world have been developed under the normal, capitalist, Western mode of production.
Then note which parts of the world remain "free" and uncolonised, without the plague of that cursed private property.
Then see which of the two categories contains most of the world's "desolate, sterilized wastelands".
You may be surprised.
Very sensible, he certainly fucked up the translation of "flaneur". In English criticism, its sense is extended beyond the literal translation you get in a French dictionary, and carries the sense of a wanderer on the edges of performance. It's a term from Walter Benjamin.
And yes, as a modern languages graduate, you'll be relieved to know that I am partial to the occasional hairy ass.
This is false; it crossed their names off and appended a gloating commentary each time a doctor was killed. The court decided that this was incitement, which seems reasonable.
Well why don't you just buzz on over to kuro5hin and tell them that .....
As far as I can tell, this feature has been implemented under the name "Ask Slashdot".
They cannot copy DVDs without circumventing copy protection. The copy protection on DVDs (CSS) consists of two elements; the encryption which DeCSS broke and the physical separation of the session keys and their readers from the content stream. There are twin points of vulnerability, both of which have the protection of the DMCA. You are mistaken if you think that the MPAA does not spend a great deal of time and effort fighting physical attacks on its copyright protection.
That is not a statement of fact; it is a comment and would clearly be found to be such in any libel or slander hearing. And it is hard to read a few issues of 2600 and not come away with the opinion that Kaplan was right on the money.
The keys are on separate tracks of the DVD, which are read separately from the reading of the output. It is not possible to "Physically copy" the key tracks without licensing a special piece of equipment, or without reverse engineering a DVD player to gain access to the read signal from the key tracks. This second activity also counts as "circumventing a copy protection device".
So long as Hong Kong pirateskeep their activities and pirated DVDs in Hong Kong, they are beyond the reach of US law; however, these DVDs are contraband and subject to confiscation and penalty by US Customs.
No; you can obtain access to the decryption keys for the CSS encryption, but not the session keys which are encoded on the key tracks of an official disk. A DVD player can distinguish between the two; a copy does not have the session key tracks and is unplayable. The reasonableness or otherwise of the CSS copy protection scheme is not relevant to the question of whether it is a copy protection scheme; and in any case, the issue has been decided in court, making "it seems to me" arguments otiose.
Bzzzt, wrong, thanks for playing. A bitwise copy (in the normal sense) would not include the session key tracks, and would not be playable on a normal DVD player (or for that matter, any DVD player). CSS controls copying by placing the keys in a separate place from the encrypted data, and preventing straightforward access to the key tracks. It is both a playback control and a copy protection device, and the distinction is unimportant for the purposes of the DMCA in any case.
Hence, there has been no copying of the protected content under the DMCA. Look, are we going to have to go through the whole Act here?
You said that this discussion is to be limited to technical questions. Which is it?
No, I was simply pointing out that I was billing you for an hour of my time, so you might as well use it. A reference to your own attempt to bill me. A joke. Laugh.
1. The fact that the CSS standard is anticompetitive and leads to player lock-in is irrelevant to the DeCSS case. Contrary to what you might think, monopolistic behaviour is not illegal per se, and it certainly doesn't nullify your rights to have your copyrights respected -- including the protections of the DMCA, which whatever you might think of it, was passed by both House and Senate.
2. The Hong Kong pirates, and anyone else carrying out the piece of reverse engineering you describe, are committing an offense under the DMCA, as they are circumventing a copy protection device. CSS consists of the hardware and the encryption; an attack on either is an attack on the whole, and illegal.
Hence my point; it's much easier for a lawyer to understand the technical issues than a techie to understand the law. Lawyers don't get emotional and lose their objectivity over technical issues; the vice versa doesn't hold.
I don't think you could "easily" emulate the DVD session keys just by "writing a driver". Unless you have a specialised piece of equipment, or unless you can steal them by hacking a DVD-player (this, btw, would also count as "circumventing a copy protection device" under the DMCA). What kind of technique do you have in mind? (BTW, feel free; general discussion of techniques, as opposed to the creation of tools, is very definitely protected speech for which the strict test applies.)
I have on occasion worked for Intel; what on earth does that have to do with anything?