Uh, but doesn't that then give you an exact copy of the "protected" CD, with an exact copy of the errors which will be corrected by the CD player's built-in error correction circuits?
No. You have to understand that this macrovision protection does two things. First, it inserts bursts of noise into the signal, then it records incorrect error correction information in the same places where the noise is inserted. This ECC info warns CD players that those samples might be bad, and in response the player will interpolate around those "bad" samples. When you rip such a CD you get all that noise, but you don't have access to the ECC codes (this is a hardware, not a software issue.) So when you burn your copy, you will be reproducing the noise, but the writer will create new ECC codes that match the data it is writing. Thus when you play the copy, your player won't detect any bad ECC codes and won't do any interpolation.
So, to summarize the above, your copy is not an exact copy of the original. The data is the same, but the ECC codes are not.
CDparanoia (the latest version) rips these cd's very well. It just takes more time.
Can anyone confirm this? As I understand the technique, the problem is at the hardware level: the CD-ROM doesn't pass enough information to the software to do the correction (ECC codes aren't sent). So I don't understand how cdparanoia can get around this scheme. Can people confirm that this actually does work? I use cdparanoia all the time anyway, but I haven't yet run across a protected disc.
(It might be useful if someone could compile a list on the web of discs that have been confirmed as protected under this new scheme.)
I see nothing illegal about playing a DVD that was payed for.
What if you are watching that DVD in a location where that same movie has yet to open in the theaters?
Remember, the whole reason for this region coding thing isn't to stick some countries with high prices. It's to allow staggered release times for movies in different parts of the world, in order to reduce the number of prints that have to be made which helps them to lower costs.
If everyone freely defeats the region coding system, then that will thwart studio's ability to stagger release times. That means they have to make more prints which will only be used once, and hence they will cost more. Guess who will be paying that extra cost?
Actually GMT has been around for several years, runs fine on Linux, and is GPL. It includes very detailed coastline data, as well as other geographic data, including political boundaries. A very useful source of freely usable maps. All in all, a really impressive product. I've been using it for a couple of years now.
Ah, but the distinction here is if you are from the UK. It is common practice for countries to have laws restricting what their citizens can do outside their home country. For instance, US citizens living abroad may have to pay tax in the US if they are making more than a certain amount of money, even if they are conducting no business in the US. If I as a non-UK citizen go to Amsterdam and smoke pot and have sex with a 10 year old, and I subsequently travel to the UK, I don't think I would be arrested under that law.
In the case discussed, the company being sued is not Australian, it is American and happens to be doing some business in Australia. I'm not sure what happens in that case, but your analogy isn't a really accurate description of what's going on here.
Richard Stallman was absolutely right when he said that the purpose of GPL was not to promote the free exchange of ideas, but to create a society in which virtually all software must be free. These are two very different things.
I'm afraid that many people who have the former goal (free exchange of ideas, as in academia) apply the GPL to their code without thinking of the ramifications. If you are interested in actually promoting the free exchange of ideas (which GPL doesn't do) then please consider applying the BSD license or a BSD-like license to code you write. In particular, don't use GPL unless you truly understand what it's purpose and ramifications are.
PGP itself isn't the problem, the real problem is the lack of really good hooks for commonly used e-mail applications to use PGP.
Ideal what we probably need, is a really good, full-featured, e-mail client with the capabilities of Communicator or Outlook Express, and PGP built-in.
As long as people have to run PGP as a separate program, and then try to hook it in with their favorite mail-reader, it will never catch on.
What I understood, and I could be wrong, is it's not only the hardware, but the blank media. Consumer blank DVDs have the key area prewritten with zeros, so the keys can't be written, even by a professional-grade recorder.
And are the masters written in the professional grade writers actually playable on consumer DVD players? I don't know, I'm just asking.
can do a bitwise copy of a DVD, *without* cracking the CSS encoding, and still play it back on any DVD player.
Actually, that isn't true. The reason is that part of the decryption key required to play the movie in a licensed player is stored in a special area of the disk itself, dedicated to storing these keys. Blank DVD media has this key region pre-recorded with zeros preventing you from copying these keys. Thus your "bit-for-bit" copy won't play in standard players.
Don't get me wrong, I hope 2600 wins this case. But I thought it important to clear up this factual inaccuracy regarding bit-for-bit copies that has been floating around for quite some time.
Actually they could do the same thing the MPAA is doing to stop movies being distributed on Gnutella: they could send letters of complaint to the ISPs whose users are providing the content.
Back in the days when people had dial-up access, that wouldn't have been such a big deal. If your ISP drops you, you just sign up with one of the dozens of other ones in your town. But today, with DSL businesses dropping like flies, and many homes that can't get DSL due to the length of their local loop, many people have just one choice for broadband access: cable modems. Now cable modems are great, but in almost all locations, there is a monopoly. (In my case it's the @HOME service.) So if you get kicked off, you're screwed big time!
This is a big stick the MPAA or RIAA can wave at infringers. They get one warning letter from their ISP and if they offer any more infringing materials subsequent to the warning, they get the boot. It's one thing to lose your Napster account, but quite another to be forced to spend the rest of your days at 56K!
To make matters worse, the MPAA or RIAA doesn't need to prove anything in court. All they have to do is convince your ISP (and @HOME has very strict usage policies) and you're toast.
Roughly the same argument applies for college students with campus access. They could lose their accounts just as easily.
So, Gnutella might not be so invulnerable after all.
I'm not saying whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but something to think about before you conclude that Gnutella can't possibly be touched.
It shouldn't matter if this falls under some technical definition of "derivative work"
I think it matters a lot under U.S. copyright law. People are allowed to set the terms of copyright of their own works or works derived from it, but not other works. So it really hinges on whether or not code that links at runtime to a DLL is derived from the code that produced the DLL. Although in some cases it could, I don't think it generally does.
Suppose I write a book. You buy it and notice in the front cover it says that by reading the book, you agree to transfer the copyright of your first novel to me? Does that sound reasonable?
But the whole question here is whether or not this program is a derivative work because it dynamically links to a GPL library. Personally, I don't see how it is. Some have argued that because some header files may have been used, that makes it derivative, but unless these header files actually contain code that is included in the executable, I don't see how it is.
I said potentially valid. It would depend, I would think, on whether the header files actually included code, or just function prototypes and variable names. It would be a real stretch to call it a "derived" work, if no code actually got included in the executable.
If it is compiled and linked (statically or dynamically) to libc, then hell yes it is a derived work.
In the statically linked case, I would agree with you, not so for the dynamically linked case.
You cannot perform dynamic linking without embedding derived information from the original library into your executable e.g. routine names or offsets etc.
In my particular example, only the routine name "printf" is embedded, and that name was part of an open standard long before Gnu libc. Now in the case before the courts there may well be routine names that were created by the copyright holder, but unless those routine names are trademarks, I don't see how use of the mere names constitues copyright infringement. It is functioning code that is copyrightable under software copyright law, not interfaces or routine names. That's why the original IBM PC BIOS was legally cloned (the clones certainly used the same offsets at least.)
This makes it a derived work under law, and no matter how much you wish it wasn't, it is.
Well, the law doesn't depend on what either of us wishes. The judge will decide.
Yes, I am aware of the existence of the LPGL and the reasons for creating it. But that doesn't make my program a derived work. In fact, that "Hello, world!" example program existed before Gnu libc ever did! So I find it odd that you assert it's a derived work!
Just because someone creates a license like LGPL as a result of a possible interpretation of law, doesn't make that interpretation of law correct.
When you compile a DLL, the linker generates a.dll file and a.lib file. This.lib file is linked during compile time.
Yes, but I don't think they're distributing code statically linked against the lib file. So the fact that the compiler happens to spit one out is irrelevent.
Also, you probably need GPL'ed header files to make use of the library.
This is probably the only potentially valid argument for saying the executable which links the dll is a derived work. But since include files generally don't create code, but only define function prototypes, etc., an argument could be made that it isn't sufficient to make the executable code a derived work. It will be interesting to read the judge's opinion.
IANAL, but I don't think there is anything you can't put in a distribution license.
Sure, you can put anything you want in the license, that doesn't make in enforceable. The Supreme Court decision which established the First Sale Doctrine (in 1905) I believe, established that fact, when a publisher included in the copyright notice the fact that the book can't be resold. The Supreme Court held that the book could in fact be resold, despite the terms of the copyright notice.
They're releasing the code for the dll, but not the program that links to it.
Yes, but remember that linking to a dll occurs at runtime not at compile time, so the people linking to the dll are the end users, not Vidomi. I don't see how Vidomi can be held accountable for actions that end users might take with their program.
There's a larger issue here too. Can the terms of a license agreement require that licensees give up arbitrary rights pertaining to things other than the licensed code? Suppose you buy a piece of software and after installing and using it for a while, you decide to read the shrinkwrap agreement. You discover to your horror, that by running the software you agree to give your first-born son to the software company. They sue to get your son. Would the judge hand him over?
My point is there are limits to what rights must be relinquised as part of a software licensing agreement. I predict, as I have for a long time, that the GPL under this interpretation will be unenforceable.
Do you have any idea the amount of time/money those students who had to take summer
school lost?
Er, did you read the article? The students wrongfully sent to summer school were in grades 3 and 6. I don't know too many third or sixth graders who have summer jobs! Sure, it would still be a nuisance to be wrongfully sent to summer school, but this and several other posts, talking about students missing out on a summer job, where they might be earning college tuition are really an exaggeration.
Because if you run a gateway of any sort (in the US) and you don't log, you're held liable for the actions of anyone using the gateway. That
means, in the eyes of the government, if someone threatents the president from your anonymizer, and you don't keep logs, it's just as though
*you* threatened the president from your own machine.
REALLY??? I wasn't aware of any such law. Could you quote the statute and or precidents please?
I know that law enforcement has been trying to get something like this passed, but I was unaware that they had succeeded yet. Please tell me more.
Actually this is not correct. Nothing is being tranmitted.
Actually, I believe that's exactly what I said. Information is NOT being transmitted faster than light.
This is the hardest part of quantum entanglement to understand. As I said, what the
whole thing means is that there is no space.
I don't see how the second sentence follows from pevious statements.
The universe, as its name implies is ONE. Distance or space is an illusion that emerges from the
intrinsic properties properties of particles.
Not true at all. Special relativity (and even more so, general relativity) suggest that spacetime is very real in that the relative positions of two events in spacetime alone can determine whether or not one can possibly affect the other. Gravity itself is a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime. So spacetime is as real as gravity.
In fact, as weird as quantum entanglement and the EPR paradoxes are, they do not allow for us to transmit any information faster than light. It appears to be a non-local phenomenon at first glance, but no matter how hard you try, you just can't figure out a way to transmit information faster than light. To do so would prove basic quantum mechanics to be incompatible with relativity, and they've already shown to be compatible.
If two particles are entangled, they will instantly change state even if they are billions of miles apart. There is absolutely no way to intercept
this form of communication because no signal is broadcast from source to receiver.
But for two particles to become entangled, they must be created or interact at the same point. They can then be moved great distances apart and they remain entangled. So no information can really be transmitted from A to B by means of making measurements on the particles. To do so would violate causality (i.e. you'd be transmitting information faster than light.)
The same two parties when they were together could just as easily have agreed on a one-time pad, and simultaneously opened them after they have travelled a great distance apart, and have perfect security.
The advantage of quantum cryptography is that these entangled photons can be sent from A to B along an optical fiber (or even through the air possibly) and any attempt to measure the polarization state while they are in transit would destroy the entanglement and hence be detected. So two people can securely negotiate a key while they are separated, but there's no faster-than-light information transfer.
This still requires, however, that any two parties who wish to communicate need an optical path, such as a dedicated fiber connecting them. Repeaters and routers and such would destroy the entanglement, as they would have to make measurements, so I don't see how quantum crypto will ever to useful for encrypting e-mail to be sent over the Internet. It will be more useful for large institutions who can afford dedicated fibers to send info securely between branch offices.
Slashdot Mirror
No. You have to understand that this macrovision protection does two things. First, it inserts bursts of noise into the signal, then it records incorrect error correction information in the same places where the noise is inserted. This ECC info warns CD players that those samples might be bad, and in response the player will interpolate around those "bad" samples. When you rip such a CD you get all that noise, but you don't have access to the ECC codes (this is a hardware, not a software issue.) So when you burn your copy, you will be reproducing the noise, but the writer will create new ECC codes that match the data it is writing. Thus when you play the copy, your player won't detect any bad ECC codes and won't do any interpolation.
So, to summarize the above, your copy is not an exact copy of the original. The data is the same, but the ECC codes are not.
I can think of no way to defeat this in software.
Can anyone confirm this? As I understand the technique, the problem is at the hardware level: the CD-ROM doesn't pass enough information to the software to do the correction (ECC codes aren't sent). So I don't understand how cdparanoia can get around this scheme. Can people confirm that this actually does work? I use cdparanoia all the time anyway, but I haven't yet run across a protected disc.
(It might be useful if someone could compile a list on the web of discs that have been confirmed as protected under this new scheme.)
What if you are watching that DVD in a location where that same movie has yet to open in the theaters?
Remember, the whole reason for this region coding thing isn't to stick some countries with high prices. It's to allow staggered release times for movies in different parts of the world, in order to reduce the number of prints that have to be made which helps them to lower costs.
If everyone freely defeats the region coding system, then that will thwart studio's ability to stagger release times. That means they have to make more prints which will only be used once, and hence they will cost more. Guess who will be paying that extra cost?
Actually GMT has been around for several years, runs fine on Linux, and is GPL. It includes very detailed coastline data, as well as other geographic data, including political boundaries. A very useful source of freely usable maps. All in all, a really impressive product. I've been using it for a couple of years now.
In the case discussed, the company being sued is not Australian, it is American and happens to be doing some business in Australia. I'm not sure what happens in that case, but your analogy isn't a really accurate description of what's going on here.
Richard Stallman was absolutely right when he said that the purpose of GPL was not to promote the free exchange of ideas, but to create a society in which virtually all software must be free. These are two very different things.
I'm afraid that many people who have the former goal (free exchange of ideas, as in academia) apply the GPL to their code without thinking of the ramifications. If you are interested in actually promoting the free exchange of ideas (which GPL doesn't do) then please consider applying the BSD license or a BSD-like license to code you write. In particular, don't use GPL unless you truly understand what it's purpose and ramifications are.
Ideal what we probably need, is a really good, full-featured, e-mail client with the capabilities of Communicator or Outlook Express, and PGP built-in.
As long as people have to run PGP as a separate program, and then try to hook it in with their favorite mail-reader, it will never catch on.
And are the masters written in the professional grade writers actually playable on consumer DVD players? I don't know, I'm just asking.
Actually, that isn't true. The reason is that part of the decryption key required to play the movie in a licensed player is stored in a special area of the disk itself, dedicated to storing these keys. Blank DVD media has this key region pre-recorded with zeros preventing you from copying these keys. Thus your "bit-for-bit" copy won't play in standard players.
Don't get me wrong, I hope 2600 wins this case. But I thought it important to clear up this factual inaccuracy regarding bit-for-bit copies that has been floating around for quite some time.
Back in the days when people had dial-up access, that wouldn't have been such a big deal. If your ISP drops you, you just sign up with one of the dozens of other ones in your town. But today, with DSL businesses dropping like flies, and many homes that can't get DSL due to the length of their local loop, many people have just one choice for broadband access: cable modems. Now cable modems are great, but in almost all locations, there is a monopoly. (In my case it's the @HOME service.) So if you get kicked off, you're screwed big time!
This is a big stick the MPAA or RIAA can wave at infringers. They get one warning letter from their ISP and if they offer any more infringing materials subsequent to the warning, they get the boot. It's one thing to lose your Napster account, but quite another to be forced to spend the rest of your days at 56K!
To make matters worse, the MPAA or RIAA doesn't need to prove anything in court. All they have to do is convince your ISP (and @HOME has very strict usage policies) and you're toast.
Roughly the same argument applies for college students with campus access. They could lose their accounts just as easily.
So, Gnutella might not be so invulnerable after all.
I'm not saying whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but something to think about before you conclude that Gnutella can't possibly be touched.
I think it matters a lot under U.S. copyright law. People are allowed to set the terms of copyright of their own works or works derived from it, but not other works. So it really hinges on whether or not code that links at runtime to a DLL is derived from the code that produced the DLL. Although in some cases it could, I don't think it generally does.
Suppose I write a book. You buy it and notice in the front cover it says that by reading the book, you agree to transfer the copyright of your first novel to me? Does that sound reasonable?
In the statically linked case, I would agree with you, not so for the dynamically linked case.
You cannot perform dynamic linking without embedding derived information from the original library into your executable e.g. routine names or offsets etc.
In my particular example, only the routine name "printf" is embedded, and that name was part of an open standard long before Gnu libc. Now in the case before the courts there may well be routine names that were created by the copyright holder, but unless those routine names are trademarks, I don't see how use of the mere names constitues copyright infringement. It is functioning code that is copyrightable under software copyright law, not interfaces or routine names. That's why the original IBM PC BIOS was legally cloned (the clones certainly used the same offsets at least.)
This makes it a derived work under law, and no matter how much you wish it wasn't, it is.
Well, the law doesn't depend on what either of us wishes. The judge will decide.
Just because someone creates a license like LGPL as a result of a possible interpretation of law, doesn't make that interpretation of law correct.
Yes, but I don't think they're distributing code statically linked against the lib file. So the fact that the compiler happens to spit one out is irrelevent.
Also, you probably need GPL'ed header files to make use of the library.
This is probably the only potentially valid argument for saying the executable which links the dll is a derived work. But since include files generally don't create code, but only define function prototypes, etc., an argument could be made that it isn't sufficient to make the executable code a derived work. It will be interesting to read the judge's opinion.
Sure, you can put anything you want in the license, that doesn't make in enforceable. The Supreme Court decision which established the First Sale Doctrine (in 1905) I believe, established that fact, when a publisher included in the copyright notice the fact that the book can't be resold. The Supreme Court held that the book could in fact be resold, despite the terms of the copyright notice.
Vidomis modified version of the library is certainly a derived work and they've released the full source code for it.
They also release a program which when run happens to link to the dll. Please explain to me exactly how that program is a derived work.
Is the following program a derived work of libc?
main() { printf("Hello world!\n"); exit(0); }
Yes, but remember that linking to a dll occurs at runtime not at compile time, so the people linking to the dll are the end users, not Vidomi. I don't see how Vidomi can be held accountable for actions that end users might take with their program.
There's a larger issue here too. Can the terms of a license agreement require that licensees give up arbitrary rights pertaining to things other than the licensed code? Suppose you buy a piece of software and after installing and using it for a while, you decide to read the shrinkwrap agreement. You discover to your horror, that by running the software you agree to give your first-born son to the software company. They sue to get your son. Would the judge hand him over?
My point is there are limits to what rights must be relinquised as part of a software licensing agreement. I predict, as I have for a long time, that the GPL under this interpretation will be unenforceable.
Er, did you read the article? The students wrongfully sent to summer school were in grades 3 and 6. I don't know too many third or sixth graders who have summer jobs! Sure, it would still be a nuisance to be wrongfully sent to summer school, but this and several other posts, talking about students missing out on a summer job, where they might be earning college tuition are really an exaggeration.
REALLY??? I wasn't aware of any such law. Could you quote the statute and or precidents please?
I know that law enforcement has been trying to get something like this passed, but I was unaware that they had succeeded yet. Please tell me more.
Actually, I believe that's exactly what I said. Information is NOT being transmitted faster than light.
This is the hardest part of quantum entanglement to understand. As I said, what the whole thing means is that there is no space.
I don't see how the second sentence follows from pevious statements.
The universe, as its name implies is ONE. Distance or space is an illusion that emerges from the intrinsic properties properties of particles.
Not true at all. Special relativity (and even more so, general relativity) suggest that spacetime is very real in that the relative positions of two events in spacetime alone can determine whether or not one can possibly affect the other. Gravity itself is a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime. So spacetime is as real as gravity.
In fact, as weird as quantum entanglement and the EPR paradoxes are, they do not allow for us to transmit any information faster than light. It appears to be a non-local phenomenon at first glance, but no matter how hard you try, you just can't figure out a way to transmit information faster than light. To do so would prove basic quantum mechanics to be incompatible with relativity, and they've already shown to be compatible.
But for two particles to become entangled, they must be created or interact at the same point. They can then be moved great distances apart and they remain entangled. So no information can really be transmitted from A to B by means of making measurements on the particles. To do so would violate causality (i.e. you'd be transmitting information faster than light.)
The same two parties when they were together could just as easily have agreed on a one-time pad, and simultaneously opened them after they have travelled a great distance apart, and have perfect security.
The advantage of quantum cryptography is that these entangled photons can be sent from A to B along an optical fiber (or even through the air possibly) and any attempt to measure the polarization state while they are in transit would destroy the entanglement and hence be detected. So two people can securely negotiate a key while they are separated, but there's no faster-than-light information transfer.
This still requires, however, that any two parties who wish to communicate need an optical path, such as a dedicated fiber connecting them. Repeaters and routers and such would destroy the entanglement, as they would have to make measurements, so I don't see how quantum crypto will ever to useful for encrypting e-mail to be sent over the Internet. It will be more useful for large institutions who can afford dedicated fibers to send info securely between branch offices.