"when committed intentionally and without right:" has a reference to a footnote -
========
9 - Several comments from industry indicated that the so-called "cracking-devices", to which Article 6 applies, may also be used legitimately to test system security. The explanatory report shall clarify that the conduct defined by Article 6, when undertaken with such legitimate purposes, would be considered to be "with right". Furthermore, the burden of proof of the unlawfulness of conduct under Article 6 would lie with the prosecution. In this context, reference should be made to the footnote under Article 2 concerning the meaning of "without right".
=======
The footnote seems to indicate that system testing should come under 'with right' - i.e., prosecution would require proof that the tools were not for legitimate use.
But the text itself doesn't seem to make this clear. Liquor
Yeah, NASA calls those 'space suits'. And by the way, does anyone know the non-technical term for the highly absorbent underwear NASA provides for suits in lieu of actual plumbing?
The DMCA specifically allows that in one part - but it seems to me that it then contradicts that as soon as there is any encryption involved.
Playing DVDs on a PC sounds like interoperability to me too, but it seems that DeCSS ran afoul of encryption - so if the code (or data) is 'protected' (compiled, or XORed with '00'?) then interoperability is not allowed, and the right to reverse engineer is taken away.
As a further thought, this probably means that the DMCA can be used to prohibit any form of open source software for use with copyrighted material - and I suspect that this is far more restrictive than the legislators intended (though probably exactly what the industry support for the act wanted).
Reverse engineering is often the ONLY way to make things work. I thought the DCSS case was showing that the DMCA IS taking that right away.
(Yeah, the BIOS was encrypted - it had been converted from source code to harder-for-humans-to-read object code - I'm surprised that Sony didn't claim that Bleem/Connectix were circumventing an encryption method.)
I'm not sure that Akamai just uses it's own cache servers - I run squid just as a transparent proxy for my own network, but I found that when one of the internal clients requested one of the Akamai indirected URL's, then I suddenly got a lot of packets (all blocked at the firewall) from an IP that reverse-resolved to machine 'ghost.akamai.com'.
All these packets were addressed to port 1080 - this seems like Akamai may be trying to force my cache to pre-load selected content so they can look good...... but since I'm at the end of a S....l......o.....o......o......w link, that basically saturated my bandwidth, and acted as DoS.
(Yes, SYN packets to 1080 are blocked at the firewall - but these were large data packets - maybe some attempted connection spoofing was involved?)
Nobody who's posted replys here seems to be quite sure what this AGP8X is - but for sure, it's not really a serial bus if it can be compatible with earlier AGP cards.
I'm not that familiar with what the differences in AGP spec were -
AGP uses 66 MHz and only 32 bits wide?
AGP 2X is still 66 MHz provide clock, but now runs at double data rate (using an internal 133 MHz (2x) clock with 66 MHz feedback from the AGP instead of actually being edge triggered)
AGP 4X uses 66 MHz clock but is quad data rate (akin to the P4 Quad Pumped bus??? i.e 266 MHz internal PLL clocks at both the video card and in the chipset), still 32 bits wide ?
And an exact doubling of throughput indicates that the change from AGP4X involves one of: Doubling the number of bus lines (unlikely),
Doubling the transfer clockspeed again ( 66 x 8 -> 533 Mhz clock speed (possible)
Or also possible - going to the Rambus 'Double speed rambus' signalling, where 2 bits are encoded on a single data line (as 4 distinct signalling levels).
I read the part about "backdoors" being put in software to remotely diable the software in the event of piracy? I think, and I don't think I'm alone here, that the rights of big business are startting to klobber the rights of the consumer.
When you buy a car, does the dealer keep a copy of your keys in case the car is stolen? I don't think so..
Unfortunately - there are dealers who DO keep a copy of your keys - for the express purpose of making it easier to reposess if you miss your payments.
This doesn't make it more justifiable though.
This fits in nicely with a certain software supplier wanting to rent their software. Didn't pay the rent? or they decided to raise the price unreasonably? - Too bad, you're shut down. Personally, I want to be able to buy the software, not rent it.
Besides, there are already far too many ways to shut down the software that's already out there - and that many people use without realizing the implications. The 'windowsupdate.microsoft.com' site already has that capability for just about anything.
Slashdot Mirror
How 'legal' are the footnotes?
"when committed intentionally and without right:" has a reference to a footnote -
========
9 - Several comments from industry indicated that the so-called "cracking-devices", to which Article 6 applies, may also be used legitimately to test system security. The explanatory report shall clarify that the conduct defined by Article 6, when undertaken with such legitimate purposes, would be considered to be "with right". Furthermore, the burden of proof of the unlawfulness of conduct under Article 6 would lie with the prosecution. In this context, reference should be made to the footnote under Article 2 concerning the meaning of "without right".
=======
The footnote seems to indicate that system testing should come under 'with right' - i.e., prosecution would require proof that the tools were not for legitimate use.
But the text itself doesn't seem to make this clear.
Liquor
Next thing you know, you'll want us to RTFM!
Nahh - with new releases, it's not RTFM, it's RTFS
Liquor
Yeah, NASA calls those 'space suits'. And by the way, does anyone know the non-technical term for the highly absorbent underwear NASA provides for suits in lieu of actual plumbing?
Liquor
The DMCA specifically allows that in one part - but it seems to me that it then contradicts that as soon as there is any encryption involved.
Playing DVDs on a PC sounds like interoperability to me too, but it seems that DeCSS ran afoul of encryption - so if the code (or data) is 'protected' (compiled, or XORed with '00'?) then interoperability is not allowed, and the right to reverse engineer is taken away.
As a further thought, this probably means that the DMCA can be used to prohibit any form of open source software for use with copyrighted material - and I suspect that this is far more restrictive than the legislators intended (though probably exactly what the industry support for the act wanted).
Liquor
Reverse engineering is often the ONLY way to make things work. I thought the DCSS case was showing that the DMCA IS taking that right away.
(Yeah, the BIOS was encrypted - it had been converted from source code to harder-for-humans-to-read object code - I'm surprised that Sony didn't claim that Bleem/Connectix were circumventing an encryption method.)
Liquor
I'm not sure that Akamai just uses it's own cache servers - I run squid just as a transparent proxy for my own network, but I found that when one of the internal clients requested one of the Akamai indirected URL's, then I suddenly got a lot of packets (all blocked at the firewall) from an IP that reverse-resolved to machine 'ghost.akamai.com'.
All these packets were addressed to port 1080 - this seems like Akamai may be trying to force my cache to pre-load selected content so they can look good...... but since I'm at the end of a S....l......o.....o......o......w link, that basically saturated my bandwidth, and acted as DoS.
(Yes, SYN packets to 1080 are blocked at the firewall - but these were large data packets - maybe some attempted connection spoofing was involved?)
Liquor
Nobody who's posted replys here seems to be quite sure what this AGP8X is - but for sure, it's not really a serial bus if it can be compatible with earlier AGP cards.
I'm not that familiar with what the differences in AGP spec were -
AGP uses 66 MHz and only 32 bits wide?
AGP 2X is still 66 MHz provide clock, but now runs at double data rate (using an internal 133 MHz (2x) clock with 66 MHz feedback from the AGP instead of actually being edge triggered)
AGP 4X uses 66 MHz clock but is quad data rate (akin to the P4 Quad Pumped bus??? i.e 266 MHz internal PLL clocks at both the video card and in the chipset), still 32 bits wide ?
And an exact doubling of throughput indicates that the change from AGP4X involves one of: Doubling the number of bus lines (unlikely),
Doubling the transfer clockspeed again ( 66 x 8 -> 533 Mhz clock speed (possible)
Or also possible - going to the Rambus 'Double speed rambus' signalling, where 2 bits are encoded on a single data line (as 4 distinct signalling levels).
Errr,,, this doesn't sound at all serial to me.
I read the part about "backdoors" being
put in software to remotely diable the
software in the event of piracy? I think, and
I don't think I'm alone here, that the rights
of big business are startting to klobber the
rights of the consumer.
When you buy a car, does the dealer keep a
copy of your keys in case the car is stolen? I
don't think so..
Unfortunately - there are dealers who DO keep a copy of your keys - for the express purpose of making it easier to reposess if you miss your payments.
This doesn't make it more justifiable though.
This fits in nicely with a certain software supplier wanting to rent their software. Didn't pay the rent? or they decided to raise the price unreasonably? - Too bad, you're shut down. Personally, I want to be able to buy the software, not rent it.
Besides, there are already far too many ways to shut down the software that's already out there - and that many people use without realizing the implications. The 'windowsupdate.microsoft.com' site already has that capability for just about anything.