Obviously, the next step They will have to take is to make it illegal to search for DeCSS (today, DeCSS, tomorrow, ?). A simple modification to Carnivore, and everybody who searches for XXXX will get a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Going off topic, but......
If I link to the New York Times, that's no big deal, because when somebody follows the link, the NYT page comes up, full-screen. A problem area comes when, as MSFT did to a travel site a few years back (or the other way around), you frame your pages so that their content comes up surrounded by your identity.
Somewhere Out There (I lost the link, but somebody 'll find it) is a guy who posted on his site a song about DeCSS (containing the algorithm). Give me a couple of days and I'll write a poem including it.
Somebody tried putting it on a t-shirt, but They caught on real quick and made him take them all back.
A song or a poem would get a lot farther. (The only hard parts are the data statements. (Maybe you could make those the chorus.
Base 256 isn't all that different than any other base - you just need 256 different symbols to write numbers in it. So you can see right away that it just isn't practical. The guy who made that statement obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.
To say that anything on a computer is "just numbers" is dumb: of course it's "just numbers", but that's like saying that you're "just a number" - your social security number. Or like saying that you can't copyright a book because it's "just letters".
Of course, if you believe that copyrights are immoral or stupid (and therefore, that nobody has any right to get paid for what they might write), then the whole argument is moot. And people like that aren't likely to write anything useful anyway. (Here's hoping Eric Raymond isn't listening.)
Slashdot Mirror
"What *about* those search engines?"
Obviously, the next step They will have to take is to make it illegal to search for DeCSS (today, DeCSS, tomorrow, ?). A simple modification to Carnivore, and everybody who searches for XXXX will get a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Going off topic, but...... If I link to the New York Times, that's no big deal, because when somebody follows the link, the NYT page comes up, full-screen. A problem area comes when, as MSFT did to a travel site a few years back (or the other way around), you frame your pages so that their content comes up surrounded by your identity.
Great idea! Everybody make a file (say, a jpg of a flower) somewhere on their site and call it DeCSS (and link to it).
Somewhere Out There (I lost the link, but somebody 'll find it) is a guy who posted on his site a song about DeCSS (containing the algorithm). Give me a couple of days and I'll write a poem including it.
Somebody tried putting it on a t-shirt, but They caught on real quick and made him take them all back.
A song or a poem would get a lot farther. (The only hard parts are the data statements. (Maybe you could make those the chorus.
Base 256 isn't all that different than any other base - you just need 256 different symbols to write numbers in it. So you can see right away that it just isn't practical. The guy who made that statement obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.
To say that anything on a computer is "just numbers" is dumb: of course it's "just numbers", but that's like saying that you're "just a number" - your social security number. Or like saying that you can't copyright a book because it's "just letters".
Of course, if you believe that copyrights are immoral or stupid (and therefore, that nobody has any right to get paid for what they might write), then the whole argument is moot. And people like that aren't likely to write anything useful anyway. (Here's hoping Eric Raymond isn't listening.)