The UK is not getting rid of trial by jury. It is simply limiting the right to trial by jury for certain minor offences. Currently, you can demand a trial by jury for any criminal offence including traffic offences (speeding etc.) For those in the US - imagine being able to get a jury trial for parking in front of a hydrant. The government is simply proposing that minor offences (the UK equivalent of misdemenors) can only go for a jury trial with the consent of the magistrates - the 'judges' (actually Justices of the Peace) who try minor offences.
Although, I disagree with the proposal, it is incredibly hypocrtical of Americans to attack them, as they have always had this system - the vast majority of offences in the US are not and cannot be tried by juries.
Either you're trolling or you've got an American geography education. FYI Ireland gained independence from the UK (i.e. Britain) in 1922 (or thereabouts). The UK and Ireland are two entirely seperate countries, both of which are full members of the EU.
Nick
PS Note for pedants: when Ireland gained independence the six predominantly protestant counties in the north remained part of the UK. The geographical entity known as Ireland consists of a sovereign country known as the Republic Of Ireland, and a province of the UK known as Northern Ireland.
I got a bill from MCI for several hundred dollars listing a bunch of calling card calls that I never made. I wrote MCI four times explaining the situation and never got a reply. I replied to every demand they sent me - never got a single reply. I really didn't want to discuss the situation on the phone because a) I work during the day and b) it's usually a good idea to have stuff like this in writing rather than half-remembered phone conversations. Next thing I knew they set a credit collector on me, who also refused to answer the phone or respond to letters. They've given up and I suppose I now have lousy credit - not that I really care as I'm leaving the country soon. However, for anyone who lives here it must be a nightmare.
Nick
PS Yes I did try calling and writing to the state telco regulator - not a single response.
Actually the Digital Millenium Act is even more draconian then the UK new Copyright Act. As you may have noticed from the recent DVD discussions, publishing information on copy-protection systems is tantamount to direct copyright infringement under the UK law, i.e. a civil offence. However under the DMA it will be a criminal offence.
Factor into this the superb health care, education, transport infrastructure and the fact that Switzerland is simply the most beautiful place on the planet and I'd work there for free...
Nick (who can't wait for his mountaineering trip in France/Switzerland/Italy this summer.)
If this was sent to the French dvdutils site it can be safely ignored. Sometimes, the arrogance law firms really not astounds me. Not only do they try and scare someone off with a law that doesn't even apply outside of the US, but they don't even have the common courteousy to translate the cease and disist letter into French!
Derek Fawcus was threatened under UK copyright law, Jon was contacted by a Norwegian firm (Simonsen & Musaus) who I assume threatened him with Norwegian copyright law. Where was there a mention of US law.
Let's get this clear. Copyright infringement is NOT a criminal offence. You do not go to jail for it. You do not get a criminal record. No-one is ever 'guilty' of copyright infringement, they are found liable of copyright infringement in a civil court.
Derek's intent is immaterial - the plaintiff merely has to demonstrate that "a person (i.e. Derek), knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection,"
Firstly, the information Derek published is intended to circumvent copy-protection. It does not play DVDs, it merely unlocks the drive, retrieves the various keys and decrypts the data stream. Secondly, on the balance of probabilities (the burden of proof in a civil court) Derek KNEW that css-auth would be used for making infringing copies, irrespective of whether this is what he intended the software to be used for.
The plaintiff has to prove on the balance of probabilities that:
a) Derek published information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent copy-protection. (yup, he did.)
b) Derek knew or had reason to believe that the information he released would be used to make infringing copies. (yup, no-one but a fool - which Derek is not - would think that css-auth would not be used to copy DVDs.)
Derek's overall intent in releasing the information (enabling playing of DVDs on linux) is irrelevent.
Derek Fawcus, the author of css-auth lives in the UK and Jon Johansen, who had DeCSS on his site, lives in Norway. Both had lawyers set on them. Both have taken their sites down.
Derek was told that he was in violation of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988, Sections 296(1) and (2). These sections read:
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies-
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection,
as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
[(2A) Where the copies being issued to the public as mentioned in subsection (1) are copies of a computer program, subsection (2) applies as if for the words "or advertises for sale or hire" there were substituted "advertises for sale or hire or possesses in the course of a business.]
Clearly, the DVD consortium would try to demonstrate breach of copyright under clause 2(b) as Derek has published information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection. The fact that we are NOT using this information to actually copy DVDs is IRRELEVENT, simply publishing the information is, under this statute, equivalent to infringement of copyright.
In my opinion Derek would be found liable by the court as this statute stands. Derek is a scapegoat - the DVD consortium have not gone after others who have worked on cracking CSS because they reside in coutries that do not have such a law on the books. Unfortunately, the UK parliament passed this law (no doubt after considerable lobbying by industry groups) and Derek is a UK resident so they went after him.
EVEN if the DVD Consortium was on shaky legal grounds, the cost in time and money of fighting a copyright infringement case is astronomical and I think most people in Derek's position would have done the same thing.
There is no point in arguing over whether reverse engineering is legal, whether this is a breach of free speech; as the statute stands, publishing details on how to circumvent copyright prevention is itself an infringement of copyright, pure and simple.
Paying for things using wireless phones started off as a gimmink in Scandanavian countries but is starting to spread all over Europe - I've seen the vending machines in the UK. BTW, it's done using GSM phones, PCS is just a North American thing - they don't work anywhere else.
I doubt if he used MSWord - most lawyers use Wordperfect and if you look at the official site the text of the ruling is available as HTML, PDF and WordPerfect 6.
This is UK law - Derek is in the UK. I imagine UK law has similar clauses - trademarks and copyright law around the world is mostly based on the Berne convention. Of course it doesn't violate the 1st amendment (if it was in the US). The 1st amendment prevents government from stifling free expression - it does not prevent a company or individual from seeking redress if you attempt to bypass their copy protection.
I hate replying to my own posts but forgot to post my thoughts on this. IANAL but Derek may have real problems with clause 2b. The plaintiff will try to prove that he "publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection". Clause 2a shouldn't be less of a problem (the keyphrase is "specifically designed.")
296 Devices designed to circumvent copy-protection
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies-
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection, as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
[(2A) Where the copies being issued to the public as mentioned in subsection (1) are copies of a computer program, subsection (2) applies as if for the words "or advertises for sale or hire" there were substituted "advertises for sale or hire or possesses in the course of a business.]
How come he was jailed for 5 days without charge? I don't know much about Texas laws but in most civilised countries you must be charged within 24 or 48 hours of arrest or let go. In this story I see absolutely no mention of charges - merely that a judege "ordered detention." I know things like this go on in fun places like China and Sierre Leone, but the US? Or perhaps internment is the next big thing in law enforcement. Hell, let's get rid of all those other liberal pinko aspects of the common law tradition like assumption of innocence, burden of proof and trial by jury.
Umm, what have topless beaches to do with pornography? In most western countries 'topless' beaches are the norm - I think it's only Americans and Brits who think there is something titillating about them.
Libel is NOT a criminal offence therefore it is absolutely false to say that UK libel laws 'ban' free speech. I'm always amazed by the number of Americans who believe that libel is an erosion of free speech rights. The 1st amendment prevents the government from abridging freedom of speech. It says absolutely nothing about me taking YOUR ass to court for saying untrue things about ME.
If I say Bill Gates is a fraudulent monkey-fister with links to the mob and can't defend that statement with evidence in court - I'm going to be found liable (not 'guilty' - it's not a crime) in a libel action, 1st amendment or no. I fail to see how the US and UK differ in this.
When you consider that all universities in the UK are public institutions, and combine this with the widespread use of linux in government (if open.gov.uk is anything to go by), the UK government must be one of the largest institutional linux and OSS users in the world. Presumably there is similar use of linux and OSS at the local government level.
Is there any coordination of linux and OSS use across the public sector or has use developed in a haphazard way across the government and educational sectors?
Would the public sector community benefit from some form of centralised co-ordination (distributions, patch repositories, support, listservs) or do you see the organic model as being more useful?
Great idea - the French government gives a preference to OSS but guess what will happen?
Microsoft et al will go whining to Uncle Sam who will give his bitch the WTO a slap and the next thing you know France will be ordered to open up their government procurement market to non-OSS software. Same thing happened with bananas (EU countries giving preference to ex-colonies) and beef (EU countries trying to ban hormone-treated meat.)
This is happening within the US even - witness the government of Massachussetts being dragged up before the WTO for refusing to deal with companies that deal with Burma.
This is important and not many people know about it - an unelected, supranational body, which holds all it's deliberations in absolute secrecy - is taking away YOUR country's sovereignty and it's right to pass legislation based on health and safety, human rights whatever.
What's real science? Real science to me means peer-reviewed journal articles, not rantings on a newsgroup. As an active researcher in climate modelling (we produce land surface albedo and BRDF datasets, currently from AVHRR in future from TERRA) I disagree.
In my (informed) opinion the overwelming consesus amongst climatologists and biogeographers is that climate change is real - and this is backed up by both modelled and experimental data - see Myneni et al, Nature 386 (1997) for some convincing evidence from our group.
You don't know what the f*** you're talking about and I claim my free cigar, troll!
FYI, ALL current climate/NWP (that's numerical weather prediction to you) models use radiative transfer models - yup, using numerical quadrature to solve scattering and absorbtion models (Rahman et al.) You'd be mental to do ray-tracing (i.e. Monte Carlo) on an entire atmosphere. Anyway, the radiation bit is only one part of a GCM - there's atmos circulation, ocean circulation and SVAT (soil-veg-atmos transfer). If you wanna run your own GCM on your home machine (providing it's a UNIX/Linux box) check out CCM3.
Many countries encourage early specialisation and I'm in two minds as to whether it is useful. For example in the UK you study 8-11 subjects from ages 11 to 15 narrowing down to only 3 (5-6 in Scotland) from 15-17. At university you typically study one subject only. For example from ages 11 to 15 I studied the full gamut of english lit/lang, french, history, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, maths, latin etc., narrowed down to physics, chemistry and maths at A-level (15-17) and took a degree in Physics at uni. Note this was not a "major" in Physics - all I studied for 3 years was physics and the required maths and computational stuff to be able to get through the physics.
Is this useful? Sure, after only three years I knew a lot more physics then a US four-year college physics major, but I had not taken a single course in languages, writing, philosophy or any of the other subjects that are useful in a well-rounded education. Didn't really bother me as I come from an artsy family and have always had my own interest in the arts and philosophy. But looking at other people graduating (and even more so those graduating from Eng courses) and a lot of them were complete philistines, many with a very unattractive disdain for the humanities that verged on almost fascist anti-intellectualism.
In contrast, many of my 'merkin friends, most of whom are from physical science/eng/CS backgrounds seem to have a much more well-balanced background - and are just as likely to have a conversation about Impressionism as about Romberg quadrature.
Now think what would happen if you went to single-subject teaching at an even earlier age. Sure, we'd probably get great programmers - but can you imagine holding a conversation with them at a party?
And as for the comment that people should rent the movie rather than reading the book - I can only assume this is a troll.
The sister of a friend of mine is also studying Elementary education at a prestigious Boston-area university and is likewise on the honor roll. She too pesters her family to do all her work for her (and of course they do) - her best line, after getting her sister to prepare a presentation on native Americans for her was 'Oh, I never knew that native Americans and Red Indians (sic) were the same thing...' Gonna be teaching your kids, folks...
Slashdot Mirror
Although, I disagree with the proposal, it is incredibly hypocrtical of Americans to attack them, as they have always had this system - the vast majority of offences in the US are not and cannot be tried by juries.
Nick
Nick
PS Note for pedants: when Ireland gained independence the six predominantly protestant counties in the north remained part of the UK. The geographical entity known as Ireland consists of a sovereign country known as the Republic Of Ireland, and a province of the UK known as Northern Ireland.
Nick
PS Yes I did try calling and writing to the state telco regulator - not a single response.
Nick
Nick (who can't wait for his mountaineering trip in France/Switzerland/Italy this summer.)
Nick
Nick
Derek's intent is immaterial - the plaintiff merely has to demonstrate that "a person (i.e. Derek), knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection,"
Firstly, the information Derek published is intended to circumvent copy-protection. It does not play DVDs, it merely unlocks the drive, retrieves the various keys and decrypts the data stream. Secondly, on the balance of probabilities (the burden of proof in a civil court) Derek KNEW that css-auth would be used for making infringing copies, irrespective of whether this is what he intended the software to be used for.
The plaintiff has to prove on the balance of probabilities that:
a) Derek published information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent copy-protection. (yup, he did.)
b) Derek knew or had reason to believe that the information he released would be used to make infringing copies. (yup, no-one but a fool - which Derek is not - would think that css-auth would not be used to copy DVDs.)
Derek's overall intent in releasing the information (enabling playing of DVDs on linux) is irrelevent.
Nick
Nick
Derek was told that he was in violation of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988, Sections 296(1) and (2). These sections read:
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies-
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection,
as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
[(2A) Where the copies being issued to the public as mentioned in subsection (1) are copies of a computer program, subsection (2) applies as if for the words "or advertises for sale or hire" there were substituted "advertises for sale or hire or possesses in the course of a business.]
Clearly, the DVD consortium would try to demonstrate breach of copyright under clause 2(b) as Derek has published information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection. The fact that we are NOT using this information to actually copy DVDs is IRRELEVENT, simply publishing the information is, under this statute, equivalent to infringement of copyright.
In my opinion Derek would be found liable by the court as this statute stands. Derek is a scapegoat - the DVD consortium have not gone after others who have worked on cracking CSS because they reside in coutries that do not have such a law on the books. Unfortunately, the UK parliament passed this law (no doubt after considerable lobbying by industry groups) and Derek is a UK resident so they went after him.
EVEN if the DVD Consortium was on shaky legal grounds, the cost in time and money of fighting a copyright infringement case is astronomical and I think most people in Derek's position would have done the same thing.
There is no point in arguing over whether reverse engineering is legal, whether this is a breach of free speech; as the statute stands, publishing details on how to circumvent copyright prevention is itself an infringement of copyright, pure and simple.
Nick
Nick
Nick
Nick
Nick
296 Devices designed to circumvent copy-protection
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies-
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection, as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
[(2A) Where the copies being issued to the public as mentioned in subsection (1) are copies of a computer program, subsection (2) applies as if for the words "or advertises for sale or hire" there were substituted "advertises for sale or hire or possesses in the course of a business.]
Nick
Nick
Nick
If I say Bill Gates is a fraudulent monkey-fister with links to the mob and can't defend that statement with evidence in court - I'm going to be found liable (not 'guilty' - it's not a crime) in a libel action, 1st amendment or no. I fail to see how the US and UK differ in this.
Nick
Nick
Is there any coordination of linux and OSS use across the public sector or has use developed in a haphazard way across the government and educational sectors?
Would the public sector community benefit from some form of centralised co-ordination (distributions, patch repositories, support, listservs) or do you see the organic model as being more useful?
Nick
Microsoft et al will go whining to Uncle Sam who will give his bitch the WTO a slap and the next thing you know France will be ordered to open up their government procurement market to non-OSS software. Same thing happened with bananas (EU countries giving preference to ex-colonies) and beef (EU countries trying to ban hormone-treated meat.)
This is happening within the US even - witness the government of Massachussetts being dragged up before the WTO for refusing to deal with companies that deal with Burma.
This is important and not many people know about it - an unelected, supranational body, which holds all it's deliberations in absolute secrecy - is taking away YOUR country's sovereignty and it's right to pass legislation based on health and safety, human rights whatever.
Nick
In my (informed) opinion the overwelming consesus amongst climatologists and biogeographers is that climate change is real - and this is backed up by both modelled and experimental data - see Myneni et al, Nature 386 (1997) for some convincing evidence from our group.
Of course, you are perfectly welcome to download a GCM such as CCM3 and go through it line by line to see whether it is "real science" or not.
If you want to discuss what is "real science" or not email me or if you're in the Boston area, come round - my work address is on my web page.
Nick
FYI, ALL current climate/NWP (that's numerical weather prediction to you) models use radiative transfer models - yup, using numerical quadrature to solve scattering and absorbtion models (Rahman et al.) You'd be mental to do ray-tracing (i.e. Monte Carlo) on an entire atmosphere. Anyway, the radiation bit is only one part of a GCM - there's atmos circulation, ocean circulation and SVAT (soil-veg-atmos transfer). If you wanna run your own GCM on your home machine (providing it's a UNIX/Linux box) check out CCM3.
Nick
Is this useful? Sure, after only three years I knew a lot more physics then a US four-year college physics major, but I had not taken a single course in languages, writing, philosophy or any of the other subjects that are useful in a well-rounded education. Didn't really bother me as I come from an artsy family and have always had my own interest in the arts and philosophy. But looking at other people graduating (and even more so those graduating from Eng courses) and a lot of them were complete philistines, many with a very unattractive disdain for the humanities that verged on almost fascist anti-intellectualism.
In contrast, many of my 'merkin friends, most of whom are from physical science/eng/CS backgrounds seem to have a much more well-balanced background - and are just as likely to have a conversation about Impressionism as about Romberg quadrature.
Now think what would happen if you went to single-subject teaching at an even earlier age. Sure, we'd probably get great programmers - but can you imagine holding a conversation with them at a party?
And as for the comment that people should rent the movie rather than reading the book - I can only assume this is a troll.
Nick
Nick