But if the license says you can't reverse-engineer, then you are breaking the license if you do so.
I don't believe that it is legal to prevent reverse engineering via license in the hopes of maintaining a monopoly over something. This has been proved in court before...however, someone else will have to point you to specific cases because I do not remember any of them off the top of my head.
What if the GPL license were violated?
You would be in big trouble for violating it. However, you could reverse engineer the GPL product and make an equivelant one legally. (which is what was done with DeCSS)
Then why don't use use the licensed software you already have?
Not everyone has the licensed software, not everyone has a legal copy of Windows, and not everyone needs any of those things. You have assumed that the MPAA has the right to control what products are allowed to play their media. This is a point of controversy. Most of us believe that the MPAA should have the right to distribute their technology as they see fit. However, if I write an equivelant player, then I should have the right to distribute my technology as I see fit.
The problem is not the licensing, the problem is that someone violated the CVD license by reverse engineering the decryption. The same people who are condemning the MPAA would be the first ones to call for lawsuit if I distributed a Qt front-end to the GPLd DeCSS.
As self-contradictory as this is, I'll stab at it anyway. Reverse engineering is not illegal. And, you don't have to agree to the license to reverse engineer something.
About your point with QT... I believe that would all depend on how you interfaced with DeCSS. If you linked to some GPL'd libraries, then you'd be in big trouble. However, if you used a fork or a pipe...then you'd probably be ok. (IANAL)
Valenti's point is that no one is keeping you from watching the DVD you just bought. That you have chosen to try and play it on a computer running an operating system with no industry-supported play back software is your fault, not the MPAA. That you are using an operating system without a commercial organization behind it to effectively lobby software manufacturers to license and implement a player for your operating system is your fault, not the MPAA's.
Well, you are right that it isn't our fault...but should it be illegal for us to make player that plays their movies? What if Microsoft had written they player for their movies without their approval?
Arguing that you shouldn't have to use their player is like arguing you shouldn't have to have a DSS receiver to watch DirecTV broadcasts or you shouldn't have to buy your cable company's cable modem to hook up to their net.
There is a big difference here. With DirecTV, you don't have rights to the content being broadcast unless you've paid for the service. If you buy or build a custom box that will allow you to watch DSS, there is nothing illegal about it unless you havn't payed your DSS bill. With DVDs, you obviously have rights to view the media...and you own the physical disk. Therefore, reading the media off the disk to do what you see fit with shouldn't be illegal just because doing so would enable you to break some law somewhere. Also, AFAIK, there is nothing preventing you from buying your own cable modem and hooking into the cable service with a modem you own. The only thing illegal about it would be if you didn't pay for the service or if you were disrupting others service.
The bottom line is that no one is forcing you to buy DVDs and the DVD playback software is a licensed product. So don't expect unrestricted access to playback technology. You're misinformed if you think it's your "right" to have it.
It isn't our right to have them provide us with information on how to playback their media. They can control who they give that information to. However, they can not stop us from reverse engineering their product in order to write our own playback software.
I think that Open Source is more about freedom of information and cooperative learning than it is about cooperative service providing.
The open model works much better when tied to a service which is heavily dependant upon information.
Food for thought: Open source development is often similar to any other service. (eg. electic, phone, etc) In one case you have a service provider which you request service from and they come out and turn it on.(charging appropriately for installation) If you have a problem or need, you can often do your own repairs/upgrades (sending the results of your work back to the company in question often does not make sense here). If you don't want to do your own repairs/upgrades, then you must wait for the service provider to either fix your problem or make more services available. In the open source case, you request a service (download a program) and you or a friend installs it.(your friend might make you pay him to setup it up) If you have a problem or need, you can often do your own repairs/upgrades. If you don't want to do your own repairs/upgrades, then you must wait for the service provider to either fix your problem (bug) or make more services (features) available.
I know this is full of holes, but it's interesting that the main difference has to do with money.
Lawyers would need a special status however. (not sure how to verify their lawyer status)
Anyone could suggest a legal question (like "Ask Slashdot") or legal cases to post into a general forum like slashdot's main page.
Then, each lawyer could maintain their personal list of cases that they are working on and receive feedback/. style. If the maintainer of the General forum thought that the case was interesting enough for everyone to see, he could post a general news article for it.
Also lawyers would automatically get a bonus score for new new posts. (maybe a user configurable option like the feature on/. to give long responses extra points)
The/. source code would probably be a very good starting point for this kind of system. We in the Open Source community should write something like this for the Open Law community. Then, if someone could find a host site for it...we'd be in great shape.
I use Win2k on my laptop for work.(Compaq Prosignia 150) Sure it's stable...as long as you consider light usage an indicator of stability.
The UI responsiveness is consistant and livable, but not as good as I'm used to. I think this is because it is bloated with dumb features. Turning off those features doesn't help much.
It is buggy...my laptop fails to recover from sleep every time. (However, hibernation works fine)
Another annoyance is that while there are multiple hardware profiles to supposedly help you with the multiple configurations of work/home/on the road, they still do not allow you to set a different network configuration for each.
While Win2k has quite a few new features, they're mostly just bundling what used to be seperate products as one product now. (IIS comes with Win2k)
Not only is Linux taking away market share from other unices, but it is doing it with the help of the companies who wrote those unices. Sun is now shipping their systems optionally with linux. IBM is doing the same. Both of these have unices of their own.
Once all of these companies are trying to get linux to meet their customers needs, NT will have a run for its money!
The DVD thing is not about piracy. Why does anyone think that it is?
Sure, people will pirate DVD's with DeCSS. But, those people can already pirate DVD's without DeCSS. Commercial programs exist to record everything sent to the video card into an AVI or MPG file. The most common use I've seen for them is when a company creates how-to CD's for a product.
Given that, DeCSS is not any more of a pirating tool than those programs you can buy. So, the only use of DeCSS beyond this already possible pirating, is playback of movies you own.
Of course, the judge says something to the effect of "you must have a license...without one you have effectively bypassed a copy protection scheme..." which is illegal by our new Digital Mellinium...etc.
38a. All of the above on login 38b. Round Robin selection at login. 38c. Random at login. 38d. Least used by time at login. 38e. Least used by total distance mouse traveled at login. 38f. Least used by total keys pressed at login.
Or, mine 39g. Random selection of 38a-38f at login.
Now if only everyone would take IBM's lead and start posting links to actual documented research. I was very impressed with IBM's Java/Kernel benchmarking and research.
A computer shop which gives you options to select from and then sends you a custom built computer.
A floral shop which takes orders for custom floral arrangements and then sends it to you.
An online dealer which allows you to select the features in a car that you want and then send it to you.
The only thing I see patentable here is that each of the above methods require a person to actively take the order and put it together where this process seems to be completely autononymous.
Slashdot Mirror
But if the license says you can't reverse-engineer, then you are breaking the license if you do so.
I don't believe that it is legal to prevent reverse engineering via license in the hopes of maintaining a monopoly over something. This has been proved in court before...however, someone else will have to point you to specific cases because I do not remember any of them off the top of my head.
What if the GPL license were violated?
You would be in big trouble for violating it. However, you could reverse engineer the GPL product and make an equivelant one legally. (which is what was done with DeCSS)
Then why don't use use the licensed software you already have?
Not everyone has the licensed software, not everyone has a legal copy of Windows, and not everyone needs any of those things. You have assumed that the MPAA has the right to control what products are allowed to play their media. This is a point of controversy. Most of us believe that the MPAA should have the right to distribute their technology as they see fit. However, if I write an equivelant player, then I should have the right to distribute my technology as I see fit.
The problem is not the licensing, the problem is that someone violated the CVD license by reverse engineering the decryption. The same people who are condemning the MPAA would be the first ones to call for lawsuit if I distributed a Qt front-end to the GPLd DeCSS.
As self-contradictory as this is, I'll stab at it anyway. Reverse engineering is not illegal. And, you don't have to agree to the license to reverse engineer something.
About your point with QT... I believe that would all depend on how you interfaced with DeCSS. If you linked to some GPL'd libraries, then you'd be in big trouble. However, if you used a fork or a pipe...then you'd probably be ok. (IANAL)
Valenti's point is that no one is keeping you from watching the DVD you just bought. That you have chosen to try and play it on a computer running an operating system with no industry-supported play back software is your fault, not the MPAA. That you are using an operating system without a commercial organization behind it to effectively lobby software manufacturers to license and implement a player for your operating system is your fault, not the MPAA's.
Well, you are right that it isn't our fault...but should it be illegal for us to make player that plays their movies? What if Microsoft had written they player for their movies without their approval?
Arguing that you shouldn't have to use their player is like arguing you shouldn't have to have a DSS receiver to watch DirecTV broadcasts or you shouldn't have to buy your cable company's cable modem to hook up to their net.
There is a big difference here. With DirecTV, you don't have rights to the content being broadcast unless you've paid for the service. If you buy or build a custom box that will allow you to watch DSS, there is nothing illegal about it unless you havn't payed your DSS bill. With DVDs, you obviously have rights to view the media...and you own the physical disk. Therefore, reading the media off the disk to do what you see fit with shouldn't be illegal just because doing so would enable you to break some law somewhere. Also, AFAIK, there is nothing preventing you from buying your own cable modem and hooking into the cable service with a modem you own. The only thing illegal about it would be if you didn't pay for the service or if you were disrupting others service.
The bottom line is that no one is forcing you to buy DVDs and the DVD playback software is a licensed product. So don't expect unrestricted access to playback technology. You're misinformed if you think it's your "right" to have it.
It isn't our right to have them provide us with information on how to playback their media. They can control who they give that information to. However, they can not stop us from reverse engineering their product in order to write our own playback software.
I think that Open Source is more about freedom of information and cooperative learning than it is about cooperative service providing.
The open model works much better when tied to a service which is heavily dependant upon information.
Food for thought: Open source development is often similar to any other service. (eg. electic, phone, etc)
In one case you have a service provider which you request service from and they come out and turn it on.(charging appropriately for installation) If you have a problem or need, you can often do your own repairs/upgrades (sending the results of your work back to the company in question often does not make sense here). If you don't want to do your own repairs/upgrades, then you must wait for the service provider to either fix your problem or make more services available.
In the open source case, you request a service (download a program) and you or a friend installs it.(your friend might make you pay him to setup it up) If you have a problem or need, you can often do your own repairs/upgrades. If you don't want to do your own repairs/upgrades, then you must wait for the service provider to either fix your problem (bug) or make more services (features) available.
I know this is full of holes, but it's interesting that the main difference has to do with money.
I think a /. style forum would be great for this.
/. style. If the maintainer of the General forum thought that the case was interesting enough for everyone to see, he could post a general news article for it.
/. to give long responses extra points)
/. source code would probably be a very good starting point for this kind of system. We in the Open Source community should write something like this for the Open Law community. Then, if someone could find a host site for it...we'd be in great shape.
Lawyers would need a special status however. (not sure how to verify their lawyer status)
Anyone could suggest a legal question (like "Ask Slashdot") or legal cases to post into a general forum like slashdot's main page.
Then, each lawyer could maintain their personal list of cases that they are working on and receive feedback
Also lawyers would automatically get a bonus score for new new posts. (maybe a user configurable option like the feature on
The
I agree...this should be reworded....I'm sending my email now. Of course I will be nice about it.
Don't try to tell me what I don't own!
I use Win2k on my laptop for work.(Compaq Prosignia 150) Sure it's stable...as long as you consider light usage an indicator of stability.
The UI responsiveness is consistant and livable, but not as good as I'm used to. I think this is because it is bloated with dumb features. Turning off those features doesn't help much.
It is buggy...my laptop fails to recover from sleep every time. (However, hibernation works fine)
Another annoyance is that while there are multiple hardware profiles to supposedly help you with the multiple configurations of work/home/on the road, they still do not allow you to set a different network configuration for each.
While Win2k has quite a few new features, they're mostly just bundling what used to be seperate products as one product now. (IIS comes with Win2k)
I can think of more if needed.
Josh
Not only is Linux taking away market share from other unices, but it is doing it with the help of the companies who wrote those unices. Sun is now shipping their systems optionally with linux. IBM is doing the same. Both of these have unices of their own.
Once all of these companies are trying to get linux to meet their customers needs, NT will have a run for its money!
The DVD thing is not about piracy. Why does anyone think that it is?
Sure, people will pirate DVD's with DeCSS. But, those people can already pirate DVD's without DeCSS. Commercial programs exist to record everything sent to the video card into an AVI or MPG file. The most common use I've seen for them is when a company creates how-to CD's for a product.
Given that, DeCSS is not any more of a pirating tool than those programs you can buy. So, the only use of DeCSS beyond this already possible pirating, is playback of movies you own.
Of course, the judge says something to the effect of "you must have a license...without one you have effectively bypassed a copy protection scheme..." which is illegal by our new Digital Mellinium...etc.
So, what we should be fighting are the new laws!
38a. All of the above on login
38b. Round Robin selection at login.
38c. Random at login.
38d. Least used by time at login.
38e. Least used by total distance mouse traveled at login.
38f. Least used by total keys pressed at login.
Or, mine
39g. Random selection of 38a-38f at login.
No, the WinNT 4.0 Telnet is the same one.
W2k comes with a fully functional one IMO.
Now if only everyone would take IBM's lead and start posting links to actual documented research. I was very impressed with IBM's Java/Kernel benchmarking and research.
But there was an "Other" category. If it's big enough, then they would start to wonder what they missed.
Maybe this is much bigger than we're thinking. How about an entire wearable computer?
Josh
This is very simular to the following:
A computer shop which gives you options to select from and then sends you a custom built computer.
A floral shop which takes orders for custom floral arrangements and then sends it to you.
An online dealer which allows you to select the features in a car that you want and then send it to you.
The only thing I see patentable here is that each of the above methods require a person to actively take the order and put it together where this process seems to be completely autononymous.
Just my thoughts...
Why would we someone open source something that they did not want everyone to see? This is why the current process needs to be demolished.