And that's exactly what is so fucked up about this whole scenario. The MPAA is using Copyright law. Copyright gives them a temporary monopoly over the reproduction of their works. Copyright was never intended to grant a sweeping monopoly over the use, production, and distribution of copyrighted works. This is exactly the situation the Founding Fathers were afraid of happening.
I'm not going to venture an opinion about the original intent of copyright, because I doubt that the founding fathers expected anything quite like this. But they also realized that they wouldn't be able to expect things like this, so they gave us the ability to make new laws and amend the Constitution. I believe the problem is that we have made a mistake with our new laws, in that the DMCA interferes with the Fair Use clause of the Home Recording Act. That isn't really a Constitutional issue, since the Constitution doesn't give you any particular right to make copies of information that is owned by someone else. The Home Recording Act does grant that right though, under certain circumstances. The legal system needs to sort the issue out, but in the meantime DeCSS is illegal under DMCA, and the judge did the right thing in ruling that it is.
The platform doesn't matter... by buying a DVD I have the legal right to view the DVD, period. They don't mince words about platforms, and I don't care if they happen to have a problem with watching them on Linux.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. You do not have the legal right to view the DVD "period." You only have the right to view it on licensed players. There are two licensed players under developement for Linux, (Sigma Designs and Intervideo) but in the meantime playing it on unlicensed players, on any platform, is illegal.
Read the MPAA Press Releases under the FAQ.
It doesn't matter to me whether it is legal or not. I pay for a DVD, I am going to watch it. Are they going to lock me up for that?
No, I highly doubt it. It sounds very dramatic when you say that, but I suspect the most they would do is fine you. I don't blame you, I just want you to realize that it is illegal. I don't claim that it's immoral.
Me: No, because it doesn't have to say that. Just like guns don't have to say "don't shoot people!" on them, because it's already the law.
EricEldred: So guns are now illegal?
No, just like DVDs aren't illegal, only certain uses of them, like copying them or playing them on un"approved" players. Just like certain uses of guns (like shooting random people on the sidewalk) are illegal, and they're illegal regardless of whether or not the gun packaging says so. Same with DVDs. You aren't allowed to do those things (copy them or play them on unapproved players) even though it doesn't say anything on the DVD packaging about how you can't. It doesn't have to say that on the packaging, because there's already a law out there that says that (DMCA).
Well, I say I did buy it and I claim I have those rights. Show me the piece of paper that proves you are correct. You refer to some "license" I never saw nor heard of, even from Kaplan.
Okay, here's one from the MPAA:
select the FAQ Q: Don't consumers have the right to view their DVDs on the operating system of their choice?
A: Consumers looking for the DVD experience have many options from which to choose. A wide array of DVD players has been licensed for the consumer market. Companies ranging from Sony to Toshiba, Panasonic to Creative Labs, make DVD players that plug into television sets, work on PC or Macintosh platforms, or fit into palmtop devices. These manufacturers all have one thing in common: They applied for and secured a license from DVD-CCA to use the CSS technology.
Buying a DVD does not grant the purchaser the right to violate copyright protections enjoyed by the creators of that work, nor to use software that circumvents copy protection.
The emphasis was mine, but the point is that one of the myriad of ways that the movie industry makes money is by licensing their technology to manufacturers. They can do this, because that technology is their intellectual property, and circumventing it (like by using DeCSS) is illegal.
Me: In the case of VHS, they license you to view it under certain conditions, and if you view it under different conditions (like in a big movie theater with 1000 "friends" who paid to get in) then you are breaking the licensing agreement.
EricEldred: No, you might be breaking copyright law (it depends on what the copyright owner agrees to, when it comes to redistribution--it is not always illegal--look at the GPL for example). However, in some "license" (but not with DVDs) a copyright owner might try to restrict you from making a backup copy. In that case, you need not comply with the license, because that is unconstitutional.
On almost all VHS movies, at the beginning there is a little warning that says "this is for personal use only" and elaborates a bit on that and the illegality of using it for commercial use. Maybe this qualifies as copyright law, not licensing agreement, in which case my terminology was wrong. The case of making a backup copy (of VHS) is allowed under the Home Recording act, provided it fits into that act's definition of Fair Use.
Me: In the case of DVDs, those conditions are a bit stricter, in the sense that they restrict the method of viewing to a licensed viewer.
EricEldred: Who says? I never made a contract or bought a license from the DVD-CCA.
The MPAA and the US Government say. This is referred to in the Q/A I cited from their site. This is where the gun metaphor came in. It doesn't matter if you made a contract or bought a license, because the law is already the law out there, and they don't need you to acknowledge it with your purchase.
There are no "Fair Use" laws,
Oh but there are. The Home Recording act defines what uses of your media classify "Fair Use."
DMCA (not DCMA) doesn't make it illegal to "break that encryption." If that were true, any playing of a DVD in a player would be illegal, because every player has to decrypt the scrambled files.
Yes, it does. That's one of its main functions. It makes it illegal to "circumvent technical protection measures that restrict access to or prevent infringement of copyrighted works." Playing DVDs in players is only legal because those players are specifically licensed to decrypt the scrambled files. They were given explicit authorization to decrypt the information. Without that license, that explicit authorization, you are correct, any playing of DVDs is illegal. I don't like that MPAA does it that way, but they are well within their legal rights to do so.
Me: which protects information owned by the movie studio.
EricEldred: There is no "property owned by the movie studio." The movie studio has certain statutory rights for a limited time.
Not true. There is property owned by the movie studio. They own the information that composes the movie itself, and the DVD-CCA, not the studio itself, owns the encryption methods on the DVDs. The movie studio retains the rights to that information. If you wanted to say, decrypt and copy that information to your hard drive, change it, and resdistributed it, that would be well within your rights, if you owned that information. But you don't. The movie studio does.
But the purchaser of a DVD owns the DVD and can use it, view it, decrypt it, resell it, put it under a scanning electron microscope to examine the pits on the disc, play it on her dishwasher, use it to shingle the roof, or whatever use she wants, after she has bought it. There is no license, no different law for DVDs than for other digital or analog content under copyright law.
That is also not true. Once again, refer to both the license I pointed out from the MPAA site, as well as the DMCA's provisions about "circumvent[ing] technical protection measures that restrict access to or prevent infringement of copyrighted works."
Yeah, this is the "crime" that the MPAA accused 15-year-old Jon Johansen of, "breaking into" his own computer and "taking their info" so he could play the DVDs that he purchased on his own computer (GNU/Linux).
So you want to lock this kid up or give him a medal?
Neither. Yes, he commited a crime. No, I don't really want to lock him up, because I think that while his actions were illegal, they weren't particularly immoral. I also don't want to give him a medal, because his actions were not particularly heroic, not were they (I believe) done in any great magnanimous spirit of helping DVD owners everywhere. As the MPAA has gone to great pains to point out, he didn't develop anything for Linux, all he did was develop a Windows-based decoder. I think he decided to break CSS to see if he could do it. It was a challenge. This is the classic spirit of the hacker, and I don't think it's immoral. Nor do I think it is inherently heroic. Many hackers have caused damage in their efforts to "see if they could do it" and many others have lead to great advancements in technology. Their drive to hack is no more moral or immoral than gravity. It's just an impulse they have.
Now I hate to be stuck in the position of defending the MPAA, because I really disagree with most of their decisions, but much of the Slashdot and indeed the entire hacker community has gotten the impression that DeCSS is perfectly legal and that the MPAA is legally in the wrong. This is not true, and that's all I seek to point out here.
That isn't actually a denial of the title "Rise of the Empire"
She just says they are calling it Episode II.
Well I never called Episode I the "Phantom Menace"
I thought that was a stupid name, and like almost everyone else I know, I called it "Episode 1." So the fact that she says they call it Episode 2 doesn't mean it's not titled "Rise of the Empire"
This just in, according to the webpage at www.starwars.com, the title for Episode 2 will be:
1 4m 133t h4X0r, 1 0wn j00 1uc45!
George Lucas was available for comment on the leak, saying:
"You are all morons."
------------------------------------------------ But seriously, who really cares? What difference does it make?
Take it from Juliet, what's in a name? a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
And I agree with you, but only insofar as it makes it illegal to aid or encourage activities that are already declared to be illegal.
If the movie studios want to make it illegal to copy DVDs, or illegal to view them on Linux, then that's their right. They own the movies, and they have a right to license them as they see fit. I disagree with their choice, but I don't think we should legislate against it.
What should be made clear through legislature, is that even if it's illegal to crack the crypto on DVDs, it shouldn't be illegal to make or distribute cracker programs, or to talk about cracking, or speak out against the encryption.
But don't go overboard and convince yourself that you have some legal right as an American citizen to watch DVDs in Linux. You don't.
Now maybe your DVDs are different than mine, but I don't recall seeing anything on them stating I could only play them in an approved player, nor did I sign anything to that affect when I bought any of them. It would be like buying a certian movie on VHS and being allowed only to play it in Brand X VCRS.
No, because it doesn't have to say that. Just like guns don't have to say "don't shoot people!" on them, because it's already the law. You didn't buy a movie, you bought a DVD. Nobody signed over ownership of the information contained on the DVD to you. So you don't have the right to do whatever you want with it.
If they did give you ownership of the information, either on VHS or DVD, you could make however many copies of it you wanted, and distribute it to whoever you wanted, for fun and/or profit. So instead, what they do, is they license you to view the information. In the case of VHS, they license you to view it under certain conditions, and if you view it under different conditions (like in a big movie theater with 1000 "friends" who paid to get in) then you are breaking the licensing agreement.
In the case of DVDs, those conditions are a bit stricter, in the sense that they restrict the method of viewing to a licensed viewer. The legal difference is that for VHS, the conditions are determined by Fair Use laws, which say what conditions you are allowed to copy or view the info. In the case of DVD, Fair Use doesn't even come into play, because the info is encrypted, and DCMA makes it illegal to break that encryption, which protects information owned by the movie studio. Just like the encryption on their email or files, it's protecting their info and it's a crime to break it and take their info.
There were two prices posted for every item on the shelf. There was the regular price, and the loyalty card price. But once you go to the checkout stand, they add on an additional 10% if you refuse to fill out a 4 page application for a loyalty card.
Well ignoring for a moment the absurdity of a four page card app, this is still stupid, probably to the extent that you could sue for false advertising. If they list a price for people with the card and a price for people without it, then they can't charge you more for not having it. That's like saying "Yeah, this costs $2. But there's a $10 'not giving me $5' fee." They are misrepresenting their prices for economic gain.
I agree that posting DeCSS is in violation of the DMCA, and that it is the judge's job to uphold the law.
But there is an exception to that, which is that if a law is unConstitutional, it is the judge's job to say so, and to reject it.
The argument put forth by "certain Slashdot readers" is that DMCA is unConstitutional, which is why the "source code is free speech" argument was made, and that the judge should have ruled in favor of the defendants and declared DMCA to be unConstitutional.
I happen to agree that it should be legal to publish information (like DeCSS) that helps people break the law. Now if they used DeCSS to decode a DVD, and posted the contents of the DVD for free download, this I would disagree with, because they are actually breaking the law.
The "information wants to be free" crowd would disagree with me and go even farther, saying that sharing that DVD is the right thing to do, and the movie studio has no right to control that movie.
DeCCS doesn't "break into...computer systems", it plays back media!
Well, technically it breaks into "data storage media in which [information] is located."
See the whole point of CSS (not CCS) is that it puts a lock on the media, and in theory you are not buying the information in that media. You're just buying the media itself, along with the right to play it on any player that has been properly recgonized and licensed by the industry.
What that means, is that if you decode CSS, you're stealing information that doesn't belong to you. If you play the DVD in an unlicensed player, (like a Linux player written to use DeCSS) you are circumventing licensing agreements.
I disagree with these licensing agreements, and perhaps if they sold unencrypted DVDs I would buy them instead, but legally speaking it's not bullshit, and the judge isn't missing the point. Legally speaking, using DeCSS is wrong. Of course, I still object to the claim that DeCSS itself is wrong, just like Napster, because they "aid or encourage" breaking copyrights or licenses, even if they don't do it themselves.
By this precedent, Fight Club should be way illegal. In Fight Club they reveal some simple techniques for making explosives, and they advocate using these explosives. It doesn't actually blow anything up, it's just "speech". More than speech, technically it's information, just as DeCSS is information. Now I doubt the MPAA liked Fight Club, but they let it through, so it's one of their products now.
"I suspect if James got the sort of traffic that Napster got, one of two things would happen. He would either be facing a considerable jail sentence, or he would become one of the most powerful men in America."
And now he's on Slashdot and Wired... heh. He's off to a decent start.
This actually brings to mind a legal question that most posters probably missed. He's a student at RPI, as am I. He runs this site from his public web directory on the RPI server, something all students get.
Now Slashdot has presumably dumped a bunch of traffic on RPI, because lots of people (myself included) checked out his site from the link. The CIS department at RPI is probably looking at their info right now, and noticing an unusual amount of traffic. This will point them to his page, and they'll notice what his doing with it.
That brings up my legal question, which is:
Is he allowed to run this business from RPI's server? I'm pretty sure students aren't allowed to run businesses with their student accounts; does he have special permission because this is a thesis project?
The amateur status issue just turns the Olympics into a joke.
In a country like America, where professional sports are a big business, alomst all of the best athletes at any particular sport are going to try and make money off of their sport. It would be stupid for them not to. They've spent tons of time and money and effort getting to be great at their sport, just like some people spend time and effort to become great at computer programming.
So now the Olympics ask us to send out best athletes. Wait, no, don't send your BEST athletes, because they're professionals. We really meant send the best who aren't good enough to get paid for it.
Now I know that there are athletes who may be the best in the world at what they do, and still amateurs. Maybe they do something that isn't popular enough to make a living at it.
But of course the NBA Dreamteam is going to show up, they're the best basketball players we have. So if you have a competition for best basketball team in the world, it's moronic not to let our best players show up.
There has always been a tradeoff between convenience and security.
You want to make your password your daughter "Liz"?
Go ahead. It will be easy to remember and take little time to type. But if anyone does a little bit of research on you, they'll guess your password, and if they brute-force the login it won't take long. You want to be secure? Make that a 10 digit password with numbers and a mix of upper and lower case letters.
You want your machine to stay perpetually logged in as you? It's certainly convenient. But anyone walking up to your machine can pretend to be you.
You want Amazon and Yahoo to remember who you are and what you like? Fine, let them send you cookies.
And if you want to shop online, you've got to give them some info. Any online shopping by its very nature requires at the very least, a method of payment. This will almost always include lots of personal information. Most of them also require an address to physically ship your stuff to.
So if you want extreme security and privacy, its yours. But don't complain about how inconvenient it is, because that should have occurred to you from the beginning, when you chose not to let people know anything about you.
This isn't just a computer thing; it works like this in the real world. If you don't let anyone get to know you, then you don't have to worry about being emotionally hurt. But you won't have any friends either. So suck it up and take a little risk.
Actually, that store isn't any worse than the others, except their publicity.
All the stores I know of that have "loyalty cards" give a discount for using them.
The difference between discounting loyalty cards and charging a fee for people without loyalty cards is only one of phrasing.
If that store jacked up all their prices by 10% and gave you a discount for the loyalty card, you probably wouldn't have cared. But since they called it a fee, instead of a discount that you were turning down, you got pissed.
Well there was probably a tendency of homosexual men to be a bit more outwardly "festive" than others, and the term eventually stuck. But that's not my question.
He was clearly not using the word "gay" to mean "happy," so why was he using it? Is he genuinely homophobic, and thinks that anything bad or stupid or generally "uncool" is "gay" ?
you actually concern yourself about the moderation system? how unbelievably, fucking gay.
This from someone posting anonymously. If you have a user account, you obviously concern yourself with moderation enough to try and dodge it.
And where exactly does homosexuality come in? Did I miss a poll that linked sexuality with moderation? I seem to see a lot of people using the word "gay" in contexts where it doesn't belong.
Is it just me, or did moderation go astray on this thred?
tealover posts a cynical little one-liner, unsupported by any specifics, and he gets modded up to 3 and "Insightful."
In response, somebody posts some specific examples, which sets off some other specific responses, and they get modded down to 0. Not even an "Off-topic" to explain why.
At first thought, one might think that a forum like Slashdot would attract intelligent, informed individuals (or at least intelligent, informed nerds and geeks;-), but what surprises me are the number of posters who refuse to participate in government in a constructive manner and then wonder why government doesn't represent their views, and then encourage other people not to participate and wonder why the political process is becoming more polarized.
Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder to be informed, no matter how intelligent you are. You can't travel all over the country and see everything yourself. There's just not enough time. You have to rely on the media you are presented with. TV. Radio. Print. It doesn't make you stupid or gullible, it's just a neccessity. Slashdot does attract smarter than average readers, you may think some of them are pretty stupid, but check out the national average) but no matter how intelligent they are, they're still subject to the media they're fed.
And it's specifically because they are intelligent that they don't participate in politics. They realize that their impact will be minimal on the tide of millions of people and billions of dollars that make up the politics of America, and they realize their time is better spent elsewhere.
The problem is that this attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like a prison camp (I know, I posted this metaphor in another comment) with 3 guards and 30,000 prisoners. Each prisoner knows that resistance is futile, and knows that the other prisoners know it, so they don't waste their time trying to start a revolt. But if they were ALL stupid, then they'd revolt without realizing that they'll probably be killed, and they'll win and be free. It's their very intelligence that imprisons them. On the other hand, if ALL of them were smarter, then they'd realize that an organized revolt would succeed and they would launch one and win their freedom. But you can't count on everyone being stupid, or on everyone being smart. So in the meantime you're imprisoned.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -George Bernard Shaw
Any decent campaign finance reform will probably be found unconstitutional. But its still the only chance we have of reforming our system.
I agree that it's necessary to reform the system, but I don't think it would have to be unconstitutional to be good. I think violating the Constitution is the worst thing in pretty much all cases. I'd rather have corrupt campaigns than set the precedent of violating the Constitution just because it would help things out.
So how could we reform the system without violating the Constitution? Well the first step is to remove the cap on campaign contributions, because it's easily circumvented by "soft money." (contributions to a party, which is then, via free speech, allowed to pitch their candidate) This would take away the need for candidates to whore themselves out to a political party, at least for money. It still leaves them whoring themselves to the companies with the money though.
So the next, and more significant step, is to provide federal funding for campaigns and advertisements for all candidates who qualify to be on the ballot. Yes, this will cost tax-payers money, but if it costs every single citizen another $500 a year in order to get back our republic, it's worth it.
This is still an incomplete solution. It has problems with it. So solve them. Don't abandon hope.
Because corporations are made up of people. Many people claim tt would be unconstitutional to say "You can't give your money to campaign X."
The government is still elected by the people, they still do the actual voting, but they have to find a candidate to vote for. The majority of the country isn't going to vote for a candidate who has never been mentioned on TV or in a newspaper or on a radio. So it costs LOTS of money to have a reasonable shot at any major elected office.
Where are the candidates going to get that money? People who support them donate it. Sometimes those people happen to own billion dollar corporations. Sometimes those people imply that they'll donate to future campaigns if the elected official does things for them while in office. This is called corruption. The elected official should be acting based on the number of people in favor of something, not by the amount of money that's in it for him. But people vote based on what they see on TV and read in the papers and hear on the radio, and that takes money. So money often translates directly into votes, and it's easier to go after money than to go after people.
There's no easy solution to this, because it's not a simple problem. But something needs to be done.
They might still listen to the letters. They may, in some cases, actually realize that a person willing to write a letter may be much more willing to vote for or against them due to their position compared to the majority of people polled.
Even if you assume that the 5 people who wrote the letters are going to vote against him for passing the law, and that say only 30% of the remaining constituents are going to vote at all, and of them only 1% will vote for him because he passes the law, you're still talking about more than 5 people. The bottom line is that Congressmen only have so much time in their lives to spend reading letters, and it's not enough to make a difference in the percentages of their votes. The only way the letter is going to make a difference is if it says something truly insightful and makes some point about the issue that had never occurred to him before, and he decides to vote his new opinion. This is pretty unlikely, since it's his job to think about these issues, and if he's not corrupt then he does think about them, probably more than you, the letter writer. And if he's corrupt, then he's not going to vote based on an opinion, be it his or yours, he's going to vote what the lobbyists tell him.
As for lobbying and election money, if we stop voting for the politician who manages to bombard us with the most ads, and vote on the issues, we will help fix things. They want money, but if they lose the election because we actually care that they voted to hurt us, it's all over for them.
But they have to know why you voted against them for it to make any difference. Plus, in most races it's accepted that either the Republican or the Democrat are going to win, and both of them will bombard you with ads. So you can't vote against purchased candidates, because both choices are purchased. The problem with the two-party system is that it will never be clear which issues lost or won the race. In order to vote at all, I have to compromise on a whole bunch of issues.
So why not get rid of the two-party thing, have lots of parties. We do, it's just that nobody pays any attention to them. Everyone accepts as fact that either a Republican or a Democrat will win. Why is this? Two reasons:
1. The ads and media. I've seen lots of ads for and articles about Gore and Bush. I've seen an ad for Nader. That's it. There's actually like 10 different party candidates running, but I've heard of three of them. So what about Nader? He's a third-party candidate, why don't I think he'll win? Because:
2. The history. It shows the Republicans and Democrats grabbing a huge chunk of the vote, leaving little for any other candidates. Ross Perot was the most significant third-party candidate we've seen in a long time, and he didn't come anywhere near winning. People remember this, and they consider a vote for anyone other than Republican or Democrat a wasted vote.
Maybe it is. But picture a prison camp with 3 armed guards and 30,000 prisoners. It's not force that keeps the prisoners in line, it's the fact that any one prisoner, even if he has two friends, knows that resistance is futile. If he fought the guards, he would just be wasting his life. So the only way to free the prisoners is to convince them that resistance isn't futile.
Right now, I plan to vote for the leading third-party candidate, (Nader now, I believe) not because I think he'll win, but because I think he won't. If I thought he had a shot at winning, I would consider him as a candidate, and decide whether or not he would be a good President. I don't need to do that, because I'm confident he's going to lose. But I want the nation to see him lose with 20-30% of the vote, and for them to think that maybe in the next election a third-party vote won't be a wasted vote.
I don't buy the "write your congressperson" solution.
They aren't passing laws at random, waiting to receive opinions from their consituents.
Picture this: Congressman Bob is offered $100,000 from a corporation to vote to pass a law. He is shown polls that suggest 70% of his constituents favor this law. He receives a letter from a voter arguing that he should vote against it. What do you think he does?
I find it horribly disturbing that RIAA and MPAA make recommendations to Congress and have them taken as practically law. I don't think it's happening because I'm not writing my congressperson often enough. I think it's happening because under the current laws in this country bribery is basically legal. And because the population has been infected with cynicism, they take this as a given and don't dispute it.
We need campaign finance reform, and we need to pay close attention to the candidates we vote for, rather than not voting, or even worse, voting for a candidate you know little about. We do not live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic. But it's only a Republic if you pay attention to the candidates and care about the issues. Until we all do that, it's a Feudal system. The group with the most money and influence has the control.
It happened to me.
I recently got an itch to play Star Control 2 again (that was such an awesome game) and couldn't find my original floppies. So I bought it for $10 online at some vintage game store. They offered it for download, along with the manual in pdf and a pic of the map, both for reference and copy protection.
There definitely needs to be some sort of archive. The Library of Congress for games. If the manufacturers want to, they can license their stuff to the archive and have it sold for a reasonable price. If a copyright expires, set it to free download. I would love this.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's exactly what is so fucked up about this whole scenario. The MPAA is using Copyright law. Copyright gives them a temporary monopoly over the reproduction of their works. Copyright was never intended to grant a sweeping monopoly over the use, production, and distribution of copyrighted works. This is exactly the situation the Founding Fathers were afraid of happening.
I'm not going to venture an opinion about the original intent of copyright, because I doubt that the founding fathers expected anything quite like this. But they also realized that they wouldn't be able to expect things like this, so they gave us the ability to make new laws and amend the Constitution. I believe the problem is that we have made a mistake with our new laws, in that the DMCA interferes with the Fair Use clause of the Home Recording Act. That isn't really a Constitutional issue, since the Constitution doesn't give you any particular right to make copies of information that is owned by someone else. The Home Recording Act does grant that right though, under certain circumstances. The legal system needs to sort the issue out, but in the meantime DeCSS is illegal under DMCA, and the judge did the right thing in ruling that it is.
The platform doesn't matter... by buying a DVD I have the legal right to view the DVD, period. They don't mince words about platforms, and I don't care if they happen to have a problem with watching them on Linux.
Unfortunately, you're wrong. You do not have the legal right to view the DVD "period." You only have the right to view it on licensed players. There are two licensed players under developement for Linux, (Sigma Designs and Intervideo) but in the meantime playing it on unlicensed players, on any platform, is illegal. Read the MPAA Press Releases under the FAQ.
It doesn't matter to me whether it is legal or not. I pay for a DVD, I am going to watch it. Are they going to lock me up for that?
No, I highly doubt it. It sounds very dramatic when you say that, but I suspect the most they would do is fine you. I don't blame you, I just want you to realize that it is illegal. I don't claim that it's immoral.
Me: No, because it doesn't have to say that. Just like guns don't have to say "don't shoot people!" on them, because it's already the law.
EricEldred: So guns are now illegal?
No, just like DVDs aren't illegal, only certain uses of them, like copying them or playing them on un"approved" players. Just like certain uses of guns (like shooting random people on the sidewalk) are illegal, and they're illegal regardless of whether or not the gun packaging says so. Same with DVDs. You aren't allowed to do those things (copy them or play them on unapproved players) even though it doesn't say anything on the DVD packaging about how you can't. It doesn't have to say that on the packaging, because there's already a law out there that says that (DMCA).
Well, I say I did buy it and I claim I have those rights. Show me the piece of paper that proves you are correct. You refer to some "license" I never saw nor heard of, even from Kaplan.
Okay, here's one from the MPAA: select the FAQ
Q: Don't consumers have the right to view their DVDs on the operating system of their choice?
A: Consumers looking for the DVD experience have many options from which to choose. A wide array of DVD players has been licensed for the consumer market. Companies ranging from Sony to Toshiba, Panasonic to Creative Labs, make DVD players that plug into television sets, work on PC or Macintosh platforms, or fit into palmtop devices. These manufacturers all have one thing in common: They applied for and secured a license from DVD-CCA to use the CSS technology.
Buying a DVD does not grant the purchaser the right to violate copyright protections enjoyed by the creators of that work, nor to use software that circumvents copy protection.
The emphasis was mine, but the point is that one of the myriad of ways that the movie industry makes money is by licensing their technology to manufacturers. They can do this, because that technology is their intellectual property, and circumventing it (like by using DeCSS) is illegal.
Me: In the case of VHS, they license you to view it under certain conditions, and if you view it under different conditions (like in a big movie theater with 1000 "friends" who paid to get in) then you are breaking the licensing agreement.
EricEldred: No, you might be breaking copyright law (it depends on what the copyright owner agrees to, when it comes to redistribution--it is not always illegal--look at the GPL for example). However, in some "license" (but not with DVDs) a copyright owner might try to restrict you from making a backup copy. In that case, you need not comply with the license, because that is unconstitutional.
On almost all VHS movies, at the beginning there is a little warning that says "this is for personal use only" and elaborates a bit on that and the illegality of using it for commercial use. Maybe this qualifies as copyright law, not licensing agreement, in which case my terminology was wrong. The case of making a backup copy (of VHS) is allowed under the Home Recording act, provided it fits into that act's definition of Fair Use.
Me: In the case of DVDs, those conditions are a bit stricter, in the sense that they restrict the method of viewing to a licensed viewer.
EricEldred: Who says? I never made a contract or bought a license from the DVD-CCA.
The MPAA and the US Government say. This is referred to in the Q/A I cited from their site. This is where the gun metaphor came in. It doesn't matter if you made a contract or bought a license, because the law is already the law out there, and they don't need you to acknowledge it with your purchase.
There are no "Fair Use" laws,
Oh but there are. The Home Recording act defines what uses of your media classify "Fair Use."
DMCA (not DCMA) doesn't make it illegal to "break that encryption." If that were true, any playing of a DVD in a player would be illegal, because every player has to decrypt the scrambled files.
Yes, it does. That's one of its main functions. It makes it illegal to "circumvent technical protection measures that restrict access to or prevent infringement of copyrighted works." Playing DVDs in players is only legal because those players are specifically licensed to decrypt the scrambled files. They were given explicit authorization to decrypt the information. Without that license, that explicit authorization, you are correct, any playing of DVDs is illegal. I don't like that MPAA does it that way, but they are well within their legal rights to do so.
Me: which protects information owned by the movie studio.
EricEldred: There is no "property owned by the movie studio." The movie studio has certain statutory rights for a limited time.
Not true. There is property owned by the movie studio. They own the information that composes the movie itself, and the DVD-CCA, not the studio itself, owns the encryption methods on the DVDs. The movie studio retains the rights to that information. If you wanted to say, decrypt and copy that information to your hard drive, change it, and resdistributed it, that would be well within your rights, if you owned that information. But you don't. The movie studio does.
But the purchaser of a DVD owns the DVD and can use it, view it, decrypt it, resell it, put it under a scanning electron microscope to examine the pits on the disc, play it on her dishwasher, use it to shingle the roof, or whatever use she wants, after she has bought it. There is no license, no different law for DVDs than for other digital or analog content under copyright law.
That is also not true. Once again, refer to both the license I pointed out from the MPAA site, as well as the DMCA's provisions about "circumvent[ing] technical protection measures that restrict access to or prevent infringement of copyrighted works."
Yeah, this is the "crime" that the MPAA accused 15-year-old Jon Johansen of, "breaking into" his own computer and "taking their info" so he could play the DVDs that he purchased on his own computer (GNU/Linux).
So you want to lock this kid up or give him a medal?
Neither. Yes, he commited a crime. No, I don't really want to lock him up, because I think that while his actions were illegal, they weren't particularly immoral. I also don't want to give him a medal, because his actions were not particularly heroic, not were they (I believe) done in any great magnanimous spirit of helping DVD owners everywhere. As the MPAA has gone to great pains to point out, he didn't develop anything for Linux, all he did was develop a Windows-based decoder. I think he decided to break CSS to see if he could do it. It was a challenge. This is the classic spirit of the hacker, and I don't think it's immoral. Nor do I think it is inherently heroic. Many hackers have caused damage in their efforts to "see if they could do it" and many others have lead to great advancements in technology. Their drive to hack is no more moral or immoral than gravity. It's just an impulse they have.
Now I hate to be stuck in the position of defending the MPAA, because I really disagree with most of their decisions, but much of the Slashdot and indeed the entire hacker community has gotten the impression that DeCSS is perfectly legal and that the MPAA is legally in the wrong. This is not true, and that's all I seek to point out here.
That isn't actually a denial of the title "Rise of the Empire"
She just says they are calling it Episode II.
Well I never called Episode I the "Phantom Menace"
I thought that was a stupid name, and like almost everyone else I know, I called it "Episode 1." So the fact that she says they call it Episode 2 doesn't mean it's not titled "Rise of the Empire"
This just in, according to the webpage at www.starwars.com, the title for Episode 2 will be:
-
1 4m 133t h4X0r, 1 0wn j00 1uc45!
George Lucas was available for comment on the leak, saying:
"You are all morons."
-----------------------------------------------
But seriously, who really cares? What difference does it make?
Take it from Juliet, what's in a name? a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Lastly, I think the DMCA IS unconsitutional
And I agree with you, but only insofar as it makes it illegal to aid or encourage activities that are already declared to be illegal.
If the movie studios want to make it illegal to copy DVDs, or illegal to view them on Linux, then that's their right. They own the movies, and they have a right to license them as they see fit. I disagree with their choice, but I don't think we should legislate against it.
What should be made clear through legislature, is that even if it's illegal to crack the crypto on DVDs, it shouldn't be illegal to make or distribute cracker programs, or to talk about cracking, or speak out against the encryption.
But don't go overboard and convince yourself that you have some legal right as an American citizen to watch DVDs in Linux. You don't.
Now maybe your DVDs are different than mine, but I don't recall seeing anything on them stating I could only play them in an approved player, nor did I sign anything to that affect when I bought any of them. It would be like buying a certian movie on VHS and being allowed only to play it in Brand X VCRS.
No, because it doesn't have to say that. Just like guns don't have to say "don't shoot people!" on them, because it's already the law. You didn't buy a movie, you bought a DVD. Nobody signed over ownership of the information contained on the DVD to you. So you don't have the right to do whatever you want with it.
If they did give you ownership of the information, either on VHS or DVD, you could make however many copies of it you wanted, and distribute it to whoever you wanted, for fun and/or profit. So instead, what they do, is they license you to view the information. In the case of VHS, they license you to view it under certain conditions, and if you view it under different conditions (like in a big movie theater with 1000 "friends" who paid to get in) then you are breaking the licensing agreement.
In the case of DVDs, those conditions are a bit stricter, in the sense that they restrict the method of viewing to a licensed viewer. The legal difference is that for VHS, the conditions are determined by Fair Use laws, which say what conditions you are allowed to copy or view the info. In the case of DVD, Fair Use doesn't even come into play, because the info is encrypted, and DCMA makes it illegal to break that encryption, which protects information owned by the movie studio. Just like the encryption on their email or files, it's protecting their info and it's a crime to break it and take their info.
There were two prices posted for every item on the shelf. There was the regular price, and the loyalty card price. But once you go to the checkout stand, they add on an additional 10% if you refuse to fill out a 4 page application for a loyalty card.
Well ignoring for a moment the absurdity of a four page card app, this is still stupid, probably to the extent that you could sue for false advertising. If they list a price for people with the card and a price for people without it, then they can't charge you more for not having it. That's like saying "Yeah, this costs $2. But there's a $10 'not giving me $5' fee." They are misrepresenting their prices for economic gain.
I agree that posting DeCSS is in violation of the DMCA, and that it is the judge's job to uphold the law.
But there is an exception to that, which is that if a law is unConstitutional, it is the judge's job to say so, and to reject it.
The argument put forth by "certain Slashdot readers" is that DMCA is unConstitutional, which is why the "source code is free speech" argument was made, and that the judge should have ruled in favor of the defendants and declared DMCA to be unConstitutional.
I happen to agree that it should be legal to publish information (like DeCSS) that helps people break the law. Now if they used DeCSS to decode a DVD, and posted the contents of the DVD for free download, this I would disagree with, because they are actually breaking the law.
The "information wants to be free" crowd would disagree with me and go even farther, saying that sharing that DVD is the right thing to do, and the movie studio has no right to control that movie.
DeCCS doesn't "break into...computer systems", it plays back media!
Well, technically it breaks into "data storage media in which [information] is located."
See the whole point of CSS (not CCS) is that it puts a lock on the media, and in theory you are not buying the information in that media. You're just buying the media itself, along with the right to play it on any player that has been properly recgonized and licensed by the industry.
What that means, is that if you decode CSS, you're stealing information that doesn't belong to you. If you play the DVD in an unlicensed player, (like a Linux player written to use DeCSS) you are circumventing licensing agreements.
I disagree with these licensing agreements, and perhaps if they sold unencrypted DVDs I would buy them instead, but legally speaking it's not bullshit, and the judge isn't missing the point. Legally speaking, using DeCSS is wrong. Of course, I still object to the claim that DeCSS itself is wrong, just like Napster, because they "aid or encourage" breaking copyrights or licenses, even if they don't do it themselves.
By this precedent, Fight Club should be way illegal. In Fight Club they reveal some simple techniques for making explosives, and they advocate using these explosives. It doesn't actually blow anything up, it's just "speech". More than speech, technically it's information, just as DeCSS is information. Now I doubt the MPAA liked Fight Club, but they let it through, so it's one of their products now.
aahhh, the atmosphere. aahhh.
"I suspect if James got the sort of traffic that Napster got, one of two things would happen. He would either be facing a considerable jail sentence, or he would become one of the most powerful men in America."
And now he's on Slashdot and Wired... heh. He's off to a decent start.
This actually brings to mind a legal question that most posters probably missed. He's a student at RPI, as am I. He runs this site from his public web directory on the RPI server, something all students get.
Now Slashdot has presumably dumped a bunch of traffic on RPI, because lots of people (myself included) checked out his site from the link. The CIS department at RPI is probably looking at their info right now, and noticing an unusual amount of traffic. This will point them to his page, and they'll notice what his doing with it.
That brings up my legal question, which is:
Is he allowed to run this business from RPI's server? I'm pretty sure students aren't allowed to run businesses with their student accounts; does he have special permission because this is a thesis project?
The amateur status issue just turns the Olympics into a joke.
In a country like America, where professional sports are a big business, alomst all of the best athletes at any particular sport are going to try and make money off of their sport. It would be stupid for them not to. They've spent tons of time and money and effort getting to be great at their sport, just like some people spend time and effort to become great at computer programming.
So now the Olympics ask us to send out best athletes. Wait, no, don't send your BEST athletes, because they're professionals. We really meant send the best who aren't good enough to get paid for it.
Now I know that there are athletes who may be the best in the world at what they do, and still amateurs. Maybe they do something that isn't popular enough to make a living at it.
But of course the NBA Dreamteam is going to show up, they're the best basketball players we have. So if you have a competition for best basketball team in the world, it's moronic not to let our best players show up.
quite possibly the first time a human being will be slashdotted...
People get slashdotted all the time. Imagine reading the Inbox for a congressman or RIAA or MPAA...
There has always been a tradeoff between convenience and security.
You want to make your password your daughter "Liz"?
Go ahead. It will be easy to remember and take little time to type. But if anyone does a little bit of research on you, they'll guess your password, and if they brute-force the login it won't take long. You want to be secure? Make that a 10 digit password with numbers and a mix of upper and lower case letters.
You want your machine to stay perpetually logged in as you? It's certainly convenient. But anyone walking up to your machine can pretend to be you.
You want Amazon and Yahoo to remember who you are and what you like? Fine, let them send you cookies.
And if you want to shop online, you've got to give them some info. Any online shopping by its very nature requires at the very least, a method of payment. This will almost always include lots of personal information. Most of them also require an address to physically ship your stuff to.
So if you want extreme security and privacy, its yours. But don't complain about how inconvenient it is, because that should have occurred to you from the beginning, when you chose not to let people know anything about you.
This isn't just a computer thing; it works like this in the real world. If you don't let anyone get to know you, then you don't have to worry about being emotionally hurt. But you won't have any friends either. So suck it up and take a little risk.
Actually, that store isn't any worse than the others, except their publicity.
All the stores I know of that have "loyalty cards" give a discount for using them.
The difference between discounting loyalty cards and charging a fee for people without loyalty cards is only one of phrasing.
If that store jacked up all their prices by 10% and gave you a discount for the loyalty card, you probably wouldn't have cared. But since they called it a fee, instead of a discount that you were turning down, you got pissed.
It's all about how you market it.
Well there was probably a tendency of homosexual men to be a bit more outwardly "festive" than others, and the term eventually stuck. But that's not my question.
He was clearly not using the word "gay" to mean "happy," so why was he using it? Is he genuinely homophobic, and thinks that anything bad or stupid or generally "uncool" is "gay" ?
you actually concern yourself about the moderation system? how unbelievably, fucking gay.
This from someone posting anonymously. If you have a user account, you obviously concern yourself with moderation enough to try and dodge it.
And where exactly does homosexuality come in? Did I miss a poll that linked sexuality with moderation? I seem to see a lot of people using the word "gay" in contexts where it doesn't belong.
Nettwerk. Like Sarah McLachlan and Tara McLean's record company, right?
That's kind of rock music...
;)
Is it just me, or did moderation go astray on this thred?
tealover posts a cynical little one-liner, unsupported by any specifics, and he gets modded up to 3 and "Insightful."
In response, somebody posts some specific examples, which sets off some other specific responses, and they get modded down to 0. Not even an "Off-topic" to explain why.
Could someone explain this to me?
At first thought, one might think that a forum like Slashdot would attract intelligent, informed individuals (or at least intelligent, informed nerds and geeks ;-), but what surprises me are the number of posters who refuse to participate in government in a constructive manner and then wonder why government doesn't represent their views, and then encourage other people not to participate and wonder why the political process is becoming more polarized.
Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder to be informed, no matter how intelligent you are. You can't travel all over the country and see everything yourself. There's just not enough time. You have to rely on the media you are presented with. TV. Radio. Print. It doesn't make you stupid or gullible, it's just a neccessity. Slashdot does attract smarter than average readers, you may think some of them are pretty stupid, but check out the national average) but no matter how intelligent they are, they're still subject to the media they're fed.
And it's specifically because they are intelligent that they don't participate in politics. They realize that their impact will be minimal on the tide of millions of people and billions of dollars that make up the politics of America, and they realize their time is better spent elsewhere.
The problem is that this attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like a prison camp (I know, I posted this metaphor in another comment) with 3 guards and 30,000 prisoners. Each prisoner knows that resistance is futile, and knows that the other prisoners know it, so they don't waste their time trying to start a revolt. But if they were ALL stupid, then they'd revolt without realizing that they'll probably be killed, and they'll win and be free. It's their very intelligence that imprisons them. On the other hand, if ALL of them were smarter, then they'd realize that an organized revolt would succeed and they would launch one and win their freedom. But you can't count on everyone being stupid, or on everyone being smart. So in the meantime you're imprisoned.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, while the unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -George Bernard Shaw
Any decent campaign finance reform will probably be found unconstitutional. But its still the only chance we have of reforming our system.
I agree that it's necessary to reform the system, but I don't think it would have to be unconstitutional to be good. I think violating the Constitution is the worst thing in pretty much all cases. I'd rather have corrupt campaigns than set the precedent of violating the Constitution just because it would help things out.
So how could we reform the system without violating the Constitution? Well the first step is to remove the cap on campaign contributions, because it's easily circumvented by "soft money." (contributions to a party, which is then, via free speech, allowed to pitch their candidate) This would take away the need for candidates to whore themselves out to a political party, at least for money. It still leaves them whoring themselves to the companies with the money though.
So the next, and more significant step, is to provide federal funding for campaigns and advertisements for all candidates who qualify to be on the ballot. Yes, this will cost tax-payers money, but if it costs every single citizen another $500 a year in order to get back our republic, it's worth it.
This is still an incomplete solution. It has problems with it. So solve them. Don't abandon hope.
Because corporations are made up of people. Many people claim tt would be unconstitutional to say "You can't give your money to campaign X."
The government is still elected by the people, they still do the actual voting, but they have to find a candidate to vote for. The majority of the country isn't going to vote for a candidate who has never been mentioned on TV or in a newspaper or on a radio. So it costs LOTS of money to have a reasonable shot at any major elected office.
Where are the candidates going to get that money? People who support them donate it. Sometimes those people happen to own billion dollar corporations. Sometimes those people imply that they'll donate to future campaigns if the elected official does things for them while in office. This is called corruption. The elected official should be acting based on the number of people in favor of something, not by the amount of money that's in it for him. But people vote based on what they see on TV and read in the papers and hear on the radio, and that takes money. So money often translates directly into votes, and it's easier to go after money than to go after people.
There's no easy solution to this, because it's not a simple problem. But something needs to be done.
They might still listen to the letters. They may, in some cases, actually realize that a person willing to write a letter may be much more willing to vote for or against them due to their position compared to the majority of people polled.
Even if you assume that the 5 people who wrote the letters are going to vote against him for passing the law, and that say only 30% of the remaining constituents are going to vote at all, and of them only 1% will vote for him because he passes the law, you're still talking about more than 5 people. The bottom line is that Congressmen only have so much time in their lives to spend reading letters, and it's not enough to make a difference in the percentages of their votes. The only way the letter is going to make a difference is if it says something truly insightful and makes some point about the issue that had never occurred to him before, and he decides to vote his new opinion. This is pretty unlikely, since it's his job to think about these issues, and if he's not corrupt then he does think about them, probably more than you, the letter writer. And if he's corrupt, then he's not going to vote based on an opinion, be it his or yours, he's going to vote what the lobbyists tell him.
As for lobbying and election money, if we stop voting for the politician who manages to bombard us with the most ads, and vote on the issues, we will help fix things. They want money, but if they lose the election because we actually care that they voted to hurt us, it's all over for them.
But they have to know why you voted against them for it to make any difference. Plus, in most races it's accepted that either the Republican or the Democrat are going to win, and both of them will bombard you with ads. So you can't vote against purchased candidates, because both choices are purchased. The problem with the two-party system is that it will never be clear which issues lost or won the race. In order to vote at all, I have to compromise on a whole bunch of issues.
So why not get rid of the two-party thing, have lots of parties. We do, it's just that nobody pays any attention to them. Everyone accepts as fact that either a Republican or a Democrat will win. Why is this? Two reasons:
1. The ads and media. I've seen lots of ads for and articles about Gore and Bush. I've seen an ad for Nader. That's it. There's actually like 10 different party candidates running, but I've heard of three of them. So what about Nader? He's a third-party candidate, why don't I think he'll win? Because:
2. The history. It shows the Republicans and Democrats grabbing a huge chunk of the vote, leaving little for any other candidates. Ross Perot was the most significant third-party candidate we've seen in a long time, and he didn't come anywhere near winning. People remember this, and they consider a vote for anyone other than Republican or Democrat a wasted vote.
Maybe it is. But picture a prison camp with 3 armed guards and 30,000 prisoners. It's not force that keeps the prisoners in line, it's the fact that any one prisoner, even if he has two friends, knows that resistance is futile. If he fought the guards, he would just be wasting his life. So the only way to free the prisoners is to convince them that resistance isn't futile.
Right now, I plan to vote for the leading third-party candidate, (Nader now, I believe) not because I think he'll win, but because I think he won't. If I thought he had a shot at winning, I would consider him as a candidate, and decide whether or not he would be a good President. I don't need to do that, because I'm confident he's going to lose. But I want the nation to see him lose with 20-30% of the vote, and for them to think that maybe in the next election a third-party vote won't be a wasted vote.
I don't buy the "write your congressperson" solution.
They aren't passing laws at random, waiting to receive opinions from their consituents.
Picture this: Congressman Bob is offered $100,000 from a corporation to vote to pass a law. He is shown polls that suggest 70% of his constituents favor this law. He receives a letter from a voter arguing that he should vote against it. What do you think he does?
I find it horribly disturbing that RIAA and MPAA make recommendations to Congress and have them taken as practically law. I don't think it's happening because I'm not writing my congressperson often enough. I think it's happening because under the current laws in this country bribery is basically legal. And because the population has been infected with cynicism, they take this as a given and don't dispute it.
We need campaign finance reform, and we need to pay close attention to the candidates we vote for, rather than not voting, or even worse, voting for a candidate you know little about. We do not live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic. But it's only a Republic if you pay attention to the candidates and care about the issues. Until we all do that, it's a Feudal system. The group with the most money and influence has the control.
It happened to me.
I recently got an itch to play Star Control 2 again (that was such an awesome game) and couldn't find my original floppies. So I bought it for $10 online at some vintage game store. They offered it for download, along with the manual in pdf and a pic of the map, both for reference and copy protection.
There definitely needs to be some sort of archive. The Library of Congress for games. If the manufacturers want to, they can license their stuff to the archive and have it sold for a reasonable price. If a copyright expires, set it to free download. I would love this.