CSS is, in fact, a copy prevention system. CSS consists of two parts; the encryption system for the DVD data, and the session keys used to identify the DVD player. A bit-for-bit copy of a CSS-scrambled DVD is useless, as it is impossible to copy the session key tracks without specialised equipment. All this evidence is available in the depositions made to the trial.
My fees are somewhat higher; you owe me $2,000 (sadly, my timesheet does not allow me to bill for increments of less than 1 hour. If you have any further legal questions, please feel free to ask them for the next 58 minutes.
What we have here is a prime example of some depressed hayseed jurisdiction trying to become an "e-commerce" centre to provide a substitute for dope growing, by futzing about with legal principles.
Home truth time, boys: technical questions are not difficult. Read Kaplan's summary of the technical issues in the DeCSS trial (I said read it, not skim a slashdot article about it). Then read the half-assed legal opinions of the crowd of mindless-but-technically-competent IANAL slashbots. Then form your theory according to the evidence, as to whether law or tech is the difficult subject.
A trained legal brain can master any subject in its salient details. Whether it's analogue circuitry, analysis of bullet wounds, office building construction techniques or whatever, a good lawyer picks it up. I myself have learned and understood the TCP specification during a couple of coffee breaks, to a standard where even the expert witness (a professor from Rice) admitted I could pass one of his midterms on it. It's a skill that lawyers happen to have.
Look, kids. Lawyers are the highest paid employees in the country (don't bother me with talk about stock options; that's not real money). Law is the most prestigious job in the country. It's a capitalist economy. Of course lawyers are the smartest people around, on average.
Oh yeh, and for all the people determined to slander Judge Kaplan -- give me just one example of a technical mistake made in his judgement. Not a legal error -- you quite simply are not qualified to argue with me on that subject. Not a statement which you personally believe to be morally wrong; aside from you and your therapist, nobody cares. Just one, single, statement of fact in the judgement, which is not true.
If anything, I've gone back into the closet over time. When "streetlawyer" came out, he was "street", and used to swear incoherently all the time. I kind of lost the fire in my belly for a while (plus I was just getting modded down by people who don't like reading the word "cunt"), so I tried to make it a bit more subtle. There's a bit more information about this on my user page. I've certainly never claimed that this isn't a troll account, though.
No, he's right. Although it's not really taught in American schools (where the curriculum is basically "Are you white? Then hate yourself?", it has been shown, to the embarrassment of the Left, that the "Native Americans" share 95% of their DNA with the inhabitants of the Basque Country, and most probably arrived in the Continental US some time after the Vikings left, but before the English arrived.
Because of this, I'm planning to launch "freeslashdot.net", which is basically the entire slashdot site, but without any of those irritating banner ads. We'll just have a script that regularly sucks all the content off slashdot onto our site. A bit rough on Malda, who won't get paid, but who gives a fuck about that, huh, Npaster-fans? Of course, if we end up getting sued by VA Linux, we'll just move to a Gnutella-like distribution system and get the EFF to defend us. Long Live Free (as in loader) dom!
Imagine a universe where every joe shmoe could sell MP3s legally on his website and give a portion to the artist.
Imagine a universe in which every joe shmoe could sell MP3s on his website and keep the lot. One of us is imagining a real possibility here, one of us is fantasising.
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.....
Nope, you are the one who doesn't understand the nature of capitalism. Since you've agreed that the capitalists own the means of production, they are not obliged to bow to you, me, the market, or Darth Fucking Maul. They own the music; they can do what the hell they like with it and the only sanction you have is not to buy it.
Just mentioning "racketeering" shows that you are not a capitalist; you're in favor of some sort of half-assed "managed competition", whereby technocrats in ivory towers decide what is or isn't "fair" for people to do with their property. The companies own the music, so it is right that the government protects their property rights with guns and police. By copying files on Napster, you are initiating force. That puts you squarely in the wrong. Deal with it.
I'll point out that patents and copyrights are in the US Constitution; the idea that they are the result of "lobbying" is literally ridiculous. Whatever your views on the First Amendment implications of UCITA and DMCA, the fact is that the basic principle is one of the right of the owners of music to be secure in their property. No reform of copyright law would ever make it OK to copy valuable music without paying its creator (or his agent, the record company).
Bottom line: the companies "control technology, channel demand, and delay trends until they have time to address them" not through any special legislation, but because they own the music. And you don't, so you don't get to tell them what to do. The libertarians are squarely on the side of Lars on this one, if they are being consistent.
Copyright on games (of all sorts) is a bit funny. Basically, sets of rules for games can be copyrighted, and the name of the game is to decide whether a clone has copied substantially all of the "rules" of a video game. Unsurprisingly, the only real specialists in this arcane area of copyright work for games companies, which is why it's best not to litigate against them.
Back in the days before copyrights and patents (and we're talking a *very* long time ago here; the principle of copyright predates the printing press), the pace of inventions was far slower, because all important inventions were made the property of guilds, and closely, jealously guarded to avoid the secret ever getting out. The patent system was a response to this, to allow people to profit from their inventions and creations while still having them in the public domain. Hence the "in order to promote the useful arts..." language in the US Constitution.
It always makes you think when you see the words "ego-free" and "Eric Raymond" in consecutive paragraphs. And indeed, this article is a complete piece of boosterism, thin on facts and think on rhetoric.
Doublespeak: Adding more programmers fragments the knowledge, but not if they're open source programmers, because they have the magic ability to "review each others' code", which is impossible if you have the wrong kind of license. And Brooks' Law doesn't hold because Eric Raymond said so. Better still, he quoted someone else saying so.
The initial premise is dodgy too; to support the thesis that the component model is to blame, he uses the example of Brown Orifice which comes about because of three things: Java, the Java Core and the Netscape JVM. That's one thing, in my book. Why stop at three? The Netscape JVM is coded in C, so that's a fourth "component". And the Brown Orifice hole serves your files via IP, so that's a fifth. Bollocks.
The outright lie; Mozilla has been coded "from the ground up". Like hell. If this is the case, why does it have anything to do with Netscape at all? Why, indeed, did the OPen Source Community need to wait for Netscape to open the code base, if there were all these people around who could code a browser "from the ground up". Mozilla has been coded, at best, from the scaffolding.
And then we get told that all problems will be sorted out in 6.0, for that is based on Open Source. Great. If, say, ZDnet put out an article on Microsoft security and concluded it with "But the next piece of vaporware coming out will surely solve all of these problems", they would be castigated to hell and rightly so.
at last, intent is hard to prove and even harder to define.
I beg you please, do not ever go into a courtroom under this dangerous delusion. A court will not try to read your mind, fail and then shrug its shoulders and say "well, we can't prove intent". The standard of proof is "reasonable doubt", and there is no reasonable doubt that someone posting copyrighted music on the Web intends to aid and abet copyright violation. A reasonable person would not carry out the action unless they had this intent, and you are assumed to be reasonable unless there is powerful reason to suppose you are not.
I've had enough of paying $16.95 for a CD which has only one track that I like on it -- I'd much rather download that track directly and pay the artists $0.50
This is not a moral view; what you want has no moral relevance when we're talking about someone else's rights.
rather than on the basis of bland, vulgar, corporate propaganda.
Oh fuck off. There is no huge corporate conspiracy to keep whatever shit home-town folk band you like off the airwaves. The reason that the music you like is not popular is that it is shit. The record companies have no secret mind control formula which is not accessible to anyone else; what they do have is a skill in producing a product (the "marketing" is part of the product; people like to have "stars" rather than bearded recorder playing granolas). Your music is shit. Deal with it.
Locke specfically points out that labour only creates property if "as much and as good" is left for others, which would definitely rule out artificially created monopolies.
Please learn what you're talking about yourself before you patronise others.
see what I mean, only certifiable compulsive responders post to me these days, along with "valued members of the community" [copyright that pothead bloke off smokedot and kuro5hin]
This is my potential, these days. I'm all but trolled out. The character has completely lost continuity; half my posts don't even contain any swearing and I just don't seem to be able to get responses from anyone but the dregs of the fuckhead gutter on slashdot.
My only function these days is to serve as the attack dog and flame artist for the troll bunds -- without that slight ability, I'd most likely be kicked off the troll sids.
For one thing, dope, it may have escaped your notice, but it is, in fact, possible to get a job and get rich without having gone to Oxford. Indeed, some people have achieved it without a university degree at all!
And on the other hand, you might want to do a web search on the subject of "alumni preferences" before you assume that having generations of forebears at the same school doesn't matter in the American meritocracy. Three words: George Dubya Bush.
Here's the "Trollbuster Mini-FAQ", to help you in your tireless efforts:
Check the troll sids for announcements of trolls.
Post your "This is a TROLL!!" message as early as possible.
Watch everyone ignore you and post replies anyway.
Feel worthless.
Y'see, trolls aren't there for the kind of person who reads "This is a troll" posts before replying. They're not there for the kind of person who reads anything before replying. They're there for the trigger-happy, compulsively responding types who form the overwhelming majority of slashbots.
You may also be pleased to know that responses to a troll dated after the first "It's a troll" post get double troll points; you've boosted Dan's score substantially in this thread.
Ironically, this important discovery (or possible discovery) comes weeks before the collider used to make it is scheduled to be shut down
Can you say "last gasp Hail Mary gamble for redemption?" Never believe fantastic "initial" results from a project about to be cancelled which need "just a bit" more government money in order to "confirm" them.
Slashdot Mirror
My fees are somewhat higher; you owe me $2,000 (sadly, my timesheet does not allow me to bill for increments of less than 1 hour. If you have any further legal questions, please feel free to ask them for the next 58 minutes.
Home truth time, boys: technical questions are not difficult. Read Kaplan's summary of the technical issues in the DeCSS trial (I said read it, not skim a slashdot article about it). Then read the half-assed legal opinions of the crowd of mindless-but-technically-competent IANAL slashbots. Then form your theory according to the evidence, as to whether law or tech is the difficult subject.
A trained legal brain can master any subject in its salient details. Whether it's analogue circuitry, analysis of bullet wounds, office building construction techniques or whatever, a good lawyer picks it up. I myself have learned and understood the TCP specification during a couple of coffee breaks, to a standard where even the expert witness (a professor from Rice) admitted I could pass one of his midterms on it. It's a skill that lawyers happen to have.
Look, kids. Lawyers are the highest paid employees in the country (don't bother me with talk about stock options; that's not real money). Law is the most prestigious job in the country. It's a capitalist economy. Of course lawyers are the smartest people around, on average.
Oh yeh, and for all the people determined to slander Judge Kaplan -- give me just one example of a technical mistake made in his judgement. Not a legal error -- you quite simply are not qualified to argue with me on that subject. Not a statement which you personally believe to be morally wrong; aside from you and your therapist, nobody cares. Just one, single, statement of fact in the judgement, which is not true.
Come on, slashdot. Put up or shut up.
Now that, my man, is a sweet troll. Much better than my effort below. Watch 'em flock to it. Mad props.
If anything, I've gone back into the closet over time. When "streetlawyer" came out, he was "street", and used to swear incoherently all the time. I kind of lost the fire in my belly for a while (plus I was just getting modded down by people who don't like reading the word "cunt"), so I tried to make it a bit more subtle. There's a bit more information about this on my user page. I've certainly never claimed that this isn't a troll account, though.
Nope, it succeeds, because you replied. Twice. That's the name of the game. Which is an ABBA song probably available on Napster.
No, he's right. Although it's not really taught in American schools (where the curriculum is basically "Are you white? Then hate yourself?", it has been shown, to the embarrassment of the Left, that the "Native Americans" share 95% of their DNA with the inhabitants of the Basque Country, and most probably arrived in the Continental US some time after the Vikings left, but before the English arrived.
Nahhh, it's okay, this guy called Lars told me he'd pick up the bill "just to see the look on their faces".
Because of this, I'm planning to launch "freeslashdot.net", which is basically the entire slashdot site, but without any of those irritating banner ads. We'll just have a script that regularly sucks all the content off slashdot onto our site. A bit rough on Malda, who won't get paid, but who gives a fuck about that, huh, Npaster-fans? Of course, if we end up getting sued by VA Linux, we'll just move to a Gnutella-like distribution system and get the EFF to defend us. Long Live Free (as in loader) dom!
Imagine a universe in which every joe shmoe could sell MP3s on his website and keep the lot. One of us is imagining a real possibility here, one of us is fantasising.
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world .....
completely wrong, as a quick perusal of "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill will reveal. Or, for that matter a decent dictionary.
Just mentioning "racketeering" shows that you are not a capitalist; you're in favor of some sort of half-assed "managed competition", whereby technocrats in ivory towers decide what is or isn't "fair" for people to do with their property. The companies own the music, so it is right that the government protects their property rights with guns and police. By copying files on Napster, you are initiating force. That puts you squarely in the wrong. Deal with it.
I'll point out that patents and copyrights are in the US Constitution; the idea that they are the result of "lobbying" is literally ridiculous. Whatever your views on the First Amendment implications of UCITA and DMCA, the fact is that the basic principle is one of the right of the owners of music to be secure in their property. No reform of copyright law would ever make it OK to copy valuable music without paying its creator (or his agent, the record company).
Bottom line: the companies "control technology, channel demand, and delay trends until they have time to address them" not through any special legislation, but because they own the music. And you don't, so you don't get to tell them what to do. The libertarians are squarely on the side of Lars on this one, if they are being consistent.
Copyright on games (of all sorts) is a bit funny. Basically, sets of rules for games can be copyrighted, and the name of the game is to decide whether a clone has copied substantially all of the "rules" of a video game. Unsurprisingly, the only real specialists in this arcane area of copyright work for games companies, which is why it's best not to litigate against them.
Doublespeak: Adding more programmers fragments the knowledge, but not if they're open source programmers, because they have the magic ability to "review each others' code", which is impossible if you have the wrong kind of license. And Brooks' Law doesn't hold because Eric Raymond said so. Better still, he quoted someone else saying so.
The initial premise is dodgy too; to support the thesis that the component model is to blame, he uses the example of Brown Orifice which comes about because of three things: Java, the Java Core and the Netscape JVM. That's one thing, in my book. Why stop at three? The Netscape JVM is coded in C, so that's a fourth "component". And the Brown Orifice hole serves your files via IP, so that's a fifth. Bollocks.
The outright lie; Mozilla has been coded "from the ground up". Like hell. If this is the case, why does it have anything to do with Netscape at all? Why, indeed, did the OPen Source Community need to wait for Netscape to open the code base, if there were all these people around who could code a browser "from the ground up". Mozilla has been coded, at best, from the scaffolding.
And then we get told that all problems will be sorted out in 6.0, for that is based on Open Source. Great. If, say, ZDnet put out an article on Microsoft security and concluded it with "But the next piece of vaporware coming out will surely solve all of these problems", they would be castigated to hell and rightly so.
A serious lack of critical judgement.
I beg you please, do not ever go into a courtroom under this dangerous delusion. A court will not try to read your mind, fail and then shrug its shoulders and say "well, we can't prove intent". The standard of proof is "reasonable doubt", and there is no reasonable doubt that someone posting copyrighted music on the Web intends to aid and abet copyright violation. A reasonable person would not carry out the action unless they had this intent, and you are assumed to be reasonable unless there is powerful reason to suppose you are not.
This is not a moral view; what you want has no moral relevance when we're talking about someone else's rights.
rather than on the basis of bland, vulgar, corporate propaganda.
Oh fuck off. There is no huge corporate conspiracy to keep whatever shit home-town folk band you like off the airwaves. The reason that the music you like is not popular is that it is shit. The record companies have no secret mind control formula which is not accessible to anyone else; what they do have is a skill in producing a product (the "marketing" is part of the product; people like to have "stars" rather than bearded recorder playing granolas). Your music is shit. Deal with it.
Please learn what you're talking about yourself before you patronise others.
I've got a ten year bond in my account. It's my property. After ten years, it doesn't exist anymore. Case closed.
:)
jsm
My only function these days is to serve as the attack dog and flame artist for the troll bunds -- without that slight ability, I'd most likely be kicked off the troll sids.
It's quite sad really.
If you hadn't spent all that time having your head bashed about on the football field, you'd be able to do your own math.
well done my boy, that's the spirit.
For one thing, dope, it may have escaped your notice, but it is, in fact, possible to get a job and get rich without having gone to Oxford. Indeed, some people have achieved it without a university degree at all!
And on the other hand, you might want to do a web search on the subject of "alumni preferences" before you assume that having generations of forebears at the same school doesn't matter in the American meritocracy. Three words: George Dubya Bush.
- Check the troll sids for announcements of trolls.
- Post your "This is a TROLL!!" message as early as possible.
- Watch everyone ignore you and post replies anyway.
- Feel worthless.
Y'see, trolls aren't there for the kind of person who reads "This is a troll" posts before replying. They're not there for the kind of person who reads anything before replying. They're there for the trigger-happy, compulsively responding types who form the overwhelming majority of slashbots.You may also be pleased to know that responses to a troll dated after the first "It's a troll" post get double troll points; you've boosted Dan's score substantially in this thread.
Can you say "last gasp Hail Mary gamble for redemption?" Never believe fantastic "initial" results from a project about to be cancelled which need "just a bit" more government money in order to "confirm" them.