IANALNDIPOOTV (I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV): If something's on the Public Record (which I assume Court Records are) are they also in the Public Domain?
I read an update of the CA case from eff.org in which the judge ruled that posting information on the Internet does not destroy "Trade Secret" status as it would encourage all trade secret thieves to post ASAP.
I called as well and politely told her that I would be avoiding movies, television, music and web sites that are affiliated with members of the MPAA. I also informed her of my intents for a letter writing campaign to advertizers. Finally, I told her that my work has a pending major deal with a few of the members and that I will withdraw my support for the project until a favorable decision is reached for the defendents.
You hit the nail on the head. The uninformed consumer is the problem. That's why I'd like to see folks out at Best Buy handing out flyers about the MPAA's steamrolling of the little guy.
In my world, Slashdotters would participate in a sit-in at Disney World that would prevent visitors from accessing it. Non-violent, of course. Something like getting 20 or so people to lay in the street leading up to DW, preventing cars from entering the parking lot. Or handcuffing themselves to the doors of local theatres. Classic denial of service attacks.
Viva La Revolution!:)
Truly this revolution will not be televised, as the major players control the media.
Perhaps the good folks of Slashdot should organize a boycott of MPAA affiliated companies. I, for one, am willing to avoid films and television shows by these parties (though giving up The Simpsons will be very difficult).
Perhaps we could organize a non-violent attempt to deny movie-goers access (i.e. a sit-in) to "blockbuster" films by these companies.
Something needs to be done to draw *positive* attention to the DeCSS cause.
According to Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/), "In the December 1999 survey we received responses from 9,560,866 sites". If each site has 1000 pages (not terribly unreasonable) we're at 9.5 billion, nearly 10 times more than this PR-plug. And this is only counting static pages; my guess is that auctions on eBay do not count. I wonder if they count Deja - how many pages do you think they have in all those news groups?
1. Obviously no one can be totally impartial. However, the DVD CCA has an uphill battle for a few reasons (I'm sure these have been #ed out before): A. Case Law - By this I mean the whole VCR legal battle (Sony v Universal, I believe), where the judge ruled that VCRs with recording capability would not aid in the violation of copyrights. EFF also lists "Sega v Accolade" and "Chicago Lock v Fanberg" to back up their claim. B. The Trade Secret Argument - The only protection under law that Trade Secrets have is their "improper" disclosure. This generally means a disgruntled (ex-)employee. Reverse Engineering is a viable (and some would argue the only) method of finding out a Trade Secret. C. The Constitution - Free Speech and Free Press.
2. EToys worked NSI, not the public. NSI doesn't give a hoot what the public thinks. Still, much can be learned from Etoy's defense.
3. I have many problems with your arguments here: A. I don't see how an "unpopular DeCSS" would affect (or is it effect, grammarians?) the judge's decision. I would lean towards the MPAA's attitude having more sway as they are the content providers. Even so, it should be enough to show that DeCSS (like the VCR) is useful to consumers because it allows them to access already purchased DVDs under the widely accepted "fair use" of copyrighted materials. B. The algorithm/software/hardware would not fall under "Trademark" (this is reserved for words, such as "Xerox", "Kodak", etc.). DVD CCA would have a case if the encryption scheme were patented as a patent confirs exclusive ownership. DVD CCA has no patent. The most they can claim is trade secret or copyright. Since this was reverse engineered, the copyright argument fails (i.e. the Norwegian did not copy DVD code). See above for why Trade Secret should fail.
This is not to say the case is not important; it is tremedously important in the precedent that it sets. I expect the defense to win. It should be an easy fight (IMO), especially with the aid of the FSF (or is it EFF?), but the defense should fight as though it is a hopeless cause. Bring out all the tricks, I say. Furthermore, with the TRO motion denied, DVD CCA has a tough battle ahead of them.
I'd sure like to see the defense counter-sue for a frivolous lawsuit. I hope eToy does as much against eToys.
I cannot agree with your "[l]aws be damned, history has shown that public opinion often decides cases" statement. The courts have numerous "unpopular" decisions to their credit. Look at Larry Flynt, Brown v Board, Rosa Parks, etc.
I agree with vectro. Handwriting recognition is a substantially more "difficult" and non-obvious field than Amazon's 1-click shopping.
Handwriting recognition (and speech recognition) are Holy Grails in the computer industry. Instead of taking the (NP-)hard problem of differentiating 'r' from 'v' amongst sloppy writers, they shifted the focus to one of training the writer to make a stroke that the device *can* differentiate. Thus, they did not patent a language. They defined a method of relating stylus strokes to alphanumberic symbols.
I agree that if we have software patents then they should have a short lifetime. Perhaps if a second agency could be created that would award a lifetime to patents. This would create some balance to the current system as well as allow some discretion.
As an aside, what patented technology has kept Microsoft a software monopoly? DOS "technology" (snicker, did I just write that?) would fall under copyright or trade secret status.
The point of a patent is not to get to market, but to prevent someone from reverse-engineering your invention.
Don't think of everything in terms of software, though you say you're not, I think you are. Take something as simple as velcro. Why would the inventor of velcro take a product to market that anyone could reverse engineer? His patent shook an entire industry and did not "browbeat" competitors out of market. Had there been no patents, I am convinced he would have been "browbeaten" by established businesses.
What about a drug company that developes a drug over the course of years (spending millions on it). Should every other drug company be able to simply reverse engineer the drug and make its own version? The first company would lose it's shirt, since it invest orders of magnitude more on the drug.
I'm not saying anyone can cut the "techie" mustard, I'm saying that anyone can call themselves a "techie". We see IANAL all the time here, when was the last time you say IANAT?
As for the Software Engineer exam, look at the dolts who pass MSCE or the Lotus Certification Exams. 30 multiple choice questions - pffsh, a monkey could pass them. I doubt a monkey could pass the bar.
How does one become an "expert witness"? Do you need to know a lawyer who is involved in a case? Can any Joe-Off-The-Streets file one of those "Friend of the Court" papers? How can a techie find out more about the intracacies of the legal system (aside from Law School)?
Your subject line says it all. To be a lawyer, one must (at least) pass the State's Bar Exam. Note: After passing the "Bar", one is licensed to practice law only in that state. Furthermore, after passing the Bar, one must be accepted into the State Bar Association. (I recall some white supremist who passed the Bar but could not find sponsorship into the Bar Association without going to the ACLU).
As I see it, the "barrier to entry" to Law is much higher than Techie. Who teaches at law school? Who creates bar exams? Who passes laws? Who interprets those laws in court? If you answered Lawyers to all the above, give yourself a Gold Star. What barriers are there to the Land of the Techie? Read an Animal Book and you're pretty much set.
I'll flaunt my ignorance here, but the stakes get even worse in IP Law. By Law, only Patent Attorneys are permitted to tread the law of Patents. If I (a non-lawyer) were to claim that XYZ Company's 2-click shopping method did not violate Amazon's patented 1-click shopping, Bad Things could happen to XYZ and me.
Here's a serious question: Is it possible to become a lawyer without going to law school? For example, could I plop down my money and take the Illinois State Bar exam, and, assuming I pass, be able to practice law in Illinois?
While you paint a wide swathe with your comments, I'd like to take a closer look at the issue at stake here. The etoy/etoys claim/counter-claim of trademark-bearing web-sites.
Actually, the better example is the one over at www.ajax.org where Colgate (I believe) wanted NSI to shut down ajax.org as it (Colgate) owns the Ajax Trademark. The crux of the matter, is that Trademarks are *not* broadly based. Colgate may hold the Trademark on Ajax for drain cleaners (or whatever their product claims to do), but that can not stop me (or anyone else) from getting a rocket fuel Trademarked as "Ajax".
Which leads me to the crux of the current problem. The Internet is a HUGE namespace collision. Take Ajax. Suppose Boeing (or some other large, old) company holds a valid (worldwide) trademark on Ajax in rocket fuel (sidebar: Company names and product categories are being used as examples). Who has "ownership" over the ajax.com domain now? According to NSI, if Colgate registered the domain first, Boeing could come in and file for injunction, as it is a valid trademark owner of the name in question. If "ownership" is then awarded to Boeing for the ajax.org domain, then, Colgate becomes free to pursue the same action - and we're in for a nasty "while true;"-loop.
Indeed, the Internet violates trademark assumptions. Why should McDonalds Corporation be allowed to reverse-hijack mcdonalds.com away from a Family McDonalds-owned bar? Because the Corporation has better lawyers/more money/more "brand" recognition? Should the family be able to keep the domain because it had it first? What if the Family McDonald set up some kind of e-commerce site and obtained Trademark on "McDonalds" within the e-commerce sphere?
Frankly, I abhore the idea that a Trademark in one domain (drain cleaner) automagically applies to another (domain-names). I do not believe that is the intent behind Trademark. I'm sure we all remember Apple's "handling" of the imac.com situation. What if imac.com turned out to be some parody site by Intel? What if the site bordered on "bad-taste" (avoiding the issue of defining "bad-taste")? What if imac.com was a porn-site with 3 months prior history? With 2 years prior history? What if the "imac.com" string were a Trademark itself?
As a (US) Civil War general once said, "The key to victory is to get there first-est, with the most-est". I'm all for cyber-squatting. Before the flame-throwers come out, I'll qualify that by saying that cyber-squatters should not blackmail or threaten their targets.
Perhaps I'm wrong here, but while this DNA computer (very) arguably may solve some TSP problems in polynomial time, it does so in exponential space. That is to say, if a given DNA computer can solve an n-node TSP problem in, say O(n^2) (or some other polynomial) time it probably requires O(e^n) space to achieve it.
This doesn't even address the question of whether or not the DNA computer is deterministic. In other words, given the same input, will it always produce the same output in the same (exact) running time? For example, I could claim that this message is encrypted with the only provably secure encryption algorithm - a 1-time pad. The fact that you are reading it means that you broke my code in not just polynomial but constant time by guessing the correct key (a string of 0s, as it turns out) does not make the 1-time pad encryption scheme (in general) insecure. I happened to have choosen a cryptographically crappy key.
To continue my rant, the factoring is not "obscure". RSA would be "obscure" if it relied on some "magic" number - that is, in finding this single "magic" number, one could decode *all* messages encrypted with RSA. Since the public key is, well, public, the strength of the algorithm lies in the difficulty of factoring an arbitrary large composite number that has only 4 factors.
I'm just getting warmed up here - the author's example of using social engineering to compromise Verisign's key is invalid. In this case, the underlying cryptographic systemwas not compromised. To turn the argument, I could just have easily socially-engineered any STO-based system just as easily affecting the same results. The reason that STO is bad is that this is not the only option. For systems using strong (non-STO) crypto, the only option to breaking it is through social engineering.
The quote: "The widely made claim that public-key cryptography is 'real' security and completely unrelated to 'false' STO delivers a more powerful illusion of security than anything an XOR'd password file can provide." particularly ires me. The fact that a cracker knows exactly how a password is encrypted and still can't extract it is a secure system. A password "encrypted" (and I use the term loosely) through an obscure algorithm (that is, once you know the algorithm - not the key - you can get any password) is not secure. Offline, I can reverse-engineer your algorithm and run you SOL.
Next, the example of the Swedish (ObEd: shouldn't that be Swiss?) bank account is totally misrepresented. In an STO system, a cracker would only need to run through the contents of the drive. That is, if the drive were size n, he (and it's always a "he", isn't it?) would take time t. If the drive were size 2*n, he would take time 2*t. If the author has no understanding of the difference between a linear scan of an array and the exponential search required to go through all possible keys of, say DES, then he's a moron. If he stores his Swedish bank account PIN somewhere on a 2^56 bit hard drive, than yes, he has the same security as someone encrypting the PIN with 56-bit DES. The difference of course, is that someone has to "remember" 2^56 bits (plus some to "remember" the offset) to find his PIN, while the other has to "remember" merely 56. That, is the power of strong encryption.
Even if this guy weren't from microsoft, he'd still be an idiot!
Cheers, Slak -------------------------------------------- It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another - but which one? Differences are crucial. -- Lazarus Long
Now the feedback page is saying that the comments field is required. Duh; where do you think I typed in my comments. M$ doesn't know HTML or validation, methinks.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps those postings by the Anonymous Drones were really postings by the DVD association. :)
I like the "state of mind" reference as well. Perhaps we should introduce the complete harmony of thought amongst RMS, Perens, et. al.
Awaiting further directive from the Slashdot Collective.....
-Slak
IANALNDIPOOTV (I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV): If something's on the Public Record (which I assume Court Records are) are they also in the Public Domain?
I read an update of the CA case from eff.org in which the judge ruled that posting information on the Internet does not destroy "Trade Secret" status as it would encourage all trade secret thieves to post ASAP.
Cheers,
Slak
I called as well and politely told her that I would be avoiding movies, television, music and web sites that are affiliated with members of the MPAA. I also informed her of my intents for a letter writing campaign to advertizers. Finally, I told her that my work has a pending major deal with a few of the members and that I will withdraw my support for the project until a favorable decision is reached for the defendents.
Is your sig an intentionally cognative dissonance?
You hit the nail on the head. The uninformed consumer is the problem. That's why I'd like to see folks out at Best Buy handing out flyers about the MPAA's steamrolling of the little guy.
:)
In my world, Slashdotters would participate in a sit-in at Disney World that would prevent visitors from accessing it. Non-violent, of course. Something like getting 20 or so people to lay in the street leading up to DW, preventing cars from entering the parking lot. Or handcuffing themselves to the doors of local theatres. Classic denial of service attacks.
Viva La Revolution!
Truly this revolution will not be televised, as the major players control the media.
Cheers,
Slak
Perhaps the good folks of Slashdot should organize a boycott of MPAA affiliated companies. I, for one, am willing to avoid films and television shows by these parties (though giving up The Simpsons will be very difficult).
Perhaps we could organize a non-violent attempt to deny movie-goers access (i.e. a sit-in) to "blockbuster" films by these companies.
Something needs to be done to draw *positive* attention to the DeCSS cause.
Cheers,
Slak
According to Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/), "In the December 1999 survey we received responses from 9,560,866 sites". If each site has 1000 pages (not terribly unreasonable) we're at 9.5 billion, nearly 10 times more than this PR-plug. And this is only counting static pages; my guess is that auctions on eBay do not count. I wonder if they count Deja - how many pages do you think they have in all those news groups?
The Internet is large. Leave it at that.
Cheers,
Slak
To address your points (IANAL):
1. Obviously no one can be totally impartial. However, the DVD CCA has an uphill battle for a few reasons (I'm sure these have been #ed out before):
A. Case Law - By this I mean the whole VCR legal battle (Sony v Universal, I believe), where the judge ruled that VCRs with recording capability would not aid in the violation of copyrights. EFF also lists "Sega v Accolade" and "Chicago Lock v Fanberg" to back up their claim.
B. The Trade Secret Argument - The only protection under law that Trade Secrets have is their "improper" disclosure. This generally means a disgruntled (ex-)employee. Reverse Engineering is a viable (and some would argue the only) method of finding out a Trade Secret.
C. The Constitution - Free Speech and Free Press.
2. EToys worked NSI, not the public. NSI doesn't give a hoot what the public thinks. Still, much can be learned from Etoy's defense.
3. I have many problems with your arguments here:
A. I don't see how an "unpopular DeCSS" would affect (or is it effect, grammarians?) the judge's decision. I would lean towards the MPAA's attitude having more sway as they are the content providers. Even so, it should be enough to show that DeCSS (like the VCR) is useful to consumers because it allows them to access already purchased DVDs under the widely accepted "fair use" of copyrighted materials.
B. The algorithm/software/hardware would not fall under "Trademark" (this is reserved for words, such as "Xerox", "Kodak", etc.). DVD CCA would have a case if the encryption scheme were patented as a patent confirs exclusive ownership. DVD CCA has no patent. The most they can claim is trade secret or copyright. Since this was reverse engineered, the copyright argument fails (i.e. the Norwegian did not copy DVD code). See above for why Trade Secret should fail.
This is not to say the case is not important; it is tremedously important in the precedent that it sets. I expect the defense to win. It should be an easy fight (IMO), especially with the aid of the FSF (or is it EFF?), but the defense should fight as though it is a hopeless cause. Bring out all the tricks, I say. Furthermore, with the TRO motion denied, DVD CCA has a tough battle ahead of them.
I'd sure like to see the defense counter-sue for a frivolous lawsuit. I hope eToy does as much against eToys.
I cannot agree with your "[l]aws be damned, history has shown that public opinion often decides cases" statement. The courts have numerous "unpopular" decisions to their credit. Look at Larry Flynt, Brown v Board, Rosa Parks, etc.
Cheers,
Slak
I agree with vectro. Handwriting recognition is a substantially more "difficult" and non-obvious field than Amazon's 1-click shopping.
Handwriting recognition (and speech recognition) are Holy Grails in the computer industry. Instead of taking the (NP-)hard problem of differentiating 'r' from 'v' amongst sloppy writers, they shifted the focus to one of training the writer to make a stroke that the device *can* differentiate. Thus, they did not patent a language. They defined a method of relating stylus strokes to alphanumberic symbols.
Cheers,
Slak
I agree that if we have software patents then they should have a short lifetime. Perhaps if a second agency could be created that would award a lifetime to patents. This would create some balance to the current system as well as allow some discretion.
As an aside, what patented technology has kept Microsoft a software monopoly? DOS "technology" (snicker, did I just write that?) would fall under copyright or trade secret status.
The point of a patent is not to get to market, but to prevent someone from reverse-engineering your invention.
Don't think of everything in terms of software, though you say you're not, I think you are. Take something as simple as velcro. Why would the inventor of velcro take a product to market that anyone could reverse engineer? His patent shook an entire industry and did not "browbeat" competitors out of market. Had there been no patents, I am convinced he would have been "browbeaten" by established businesses.
What about a drug company that developes a drug over the course of years (spending millions on it). Should every other drug company be able to simply reverse engineer the drug and make its own version? The first company would lose it's shirt, since it invest orders of magnitude more on the drug.
Reward the developer, don't punish her.
Cheers,
Slak
I'm not saying anyone can cut the "techie" mustard, I'm saying that anyone can call themselves a "techie". We see IANAL all the time here, when was the last time you say IANAT?
As for the Software Engineer exam, look at the dolts who pass MSCE or the Lotus Certification Exams. 30 multiple choice questions - pffsh, a monkey could pass them. I doubt a monkey could pass the bar.
Cheers,
Slak
Good post!
How does one become an "expert witness"? Do you need to know a lawyer who is involved in a case? Can any Joe-Off-The-Streets file one of those "Friend of the Court" papers? How can a techie find out more about the intracacies of the legal system (aside from Law School)?
Cheers,
Slak
Your subject line says it all. To be a lawyer, one must (at least) pass the State's Bar Exam. Note: After passing the "Bar", one is licensed to practice law only in that state. Furthermore, after passing the Bar, one must be accepted into the State Bar Association. (I recall some white supremist who passed the Bar but could not find sponsorship into the Bar Association without going to the ACLU).
As I see it, the "barrier to entry" to Law is much higher than Techie. Who teaches at law school? Who creates bar exams? Who passes laws? Who interprets those laws in court? If you answered Lawyers to all the above, give yourself a Gold Star. What barriers are there to the Land of the Techie? Read an Animal Book and you're pretty much set.
I'll flaunt my ignorance here, but the stakes get even worse in IP Law. By Law, only Patent Attorneys are permitted to tread the law of Patents. If I (a non-lawyer) were to claim that XYZ Company's 2-click shopping method did not violate Amazon's patented 1-click shopping, Bad Things could happen to XYZ and me.
Here's a serious question: Is it possible to become a lawyer without going to law school? For example, could I plop down my money and take the Illinois State Bar exam, and, assuming I pass, be able to practice law in Illinois?
Cheers,
Slak
Actually, the better example is the one over at www.ajax.org where Colgate (I believe) wanted NSI to shut down ajax.org as it (Colgate) owns the Ajax Trademark. The crux of the matter, is that Trademarks are *not* broadly based. Colgate may hold the Trademark on Ajax for drain cleaners (or whatever their product claims to do), but that can not stop me (or anyone else) from getting a rocket fuel Trademarked as "Ajax".
Which leads me to the crux of the current problem. The Internet is a HUGE namespace collision. Take Ajax. Suppose Boeing (or some other large, old) company holds a valid (worldwide) trademark on Ajax in rocket fuel (sidebar: Company names and product categories are being used as examples). Who has "ownership" over the ajax.com domain now? According to NSI, if Colgate registered the domain first, Boeing could come in and file for injunction, as it is a valid trademark owner of the name in question. If "ownership" is then awarded to Boeing for the ajax.org domain, then, Colgate becomes free to pursue the same action - and we're in for a nasty "while true;"-loop.
Indeed, the Internet violates trademark assumptions. Why should McDonalds Corporation be allowed to reverse-hijack mcdonalds.com away from a Family McDonalds-owned bar? Because the Corporation has better lawyers/more money/more "brand" recognition? Should the family be able to keep the domain because it had it first? What if the Family McDonald set up some kind of e-commerce site and obtained Trademark on "McDonalds" within the e-commerce sphere?
Frankly, I abhore the idea that a Trademark in one domain (drain cleaner) automagically applies to another (domain-names). I do not believe that is the intent behind Trademark. I'm sure we all remember Apple's "handling" of the imac.com situation. What if imac.com turned out to be some parody site by Intel? What if the site bordered on "bad-taste" (avoiding the issue of defining "bad-taste")? What if imac.com was a porn-site with 3 months prior history? With 2 years prior history? What if the "imac.com" string were a Trademark itself?
As a (US) Civil War general once said, "The key to victory is to get there first-est, with the most-est". I'm all for cyber-squatting. Before the flame-throwers come out, I'll qualify that by saying that cyber-squatters should not blackmail or threaten their targets.
Cheers,
Slak
This doesn't even address the question of whether or not the DNA computer is deterministic. In other words, given the same input, will it always produce the same output in the same (exact) running time? For example, I could claim that this message is encrypted with the only provably secure encryption algorithm - a 1-time pad. The fact that you are reading it means that you broke my code in not just polynomial but constant time by guessing the correct key (a string of 0s, as it turns out) does not make the 1-time pad encryption scheme (in general) insecure. I happened to have choosen a cryptographically crappy key.
To continue my rant, the factoring is not "obscure". RSA would be "obscure" if it relied on some "magic" number - that is, in finding this single "magic" number, one could decode *all* messages encrypted with RSA. Since the public key is, well, public, the strength of the algorithm lies in the difficulty of factoring an arbitrary large composite number that has only 4 factors.
I'm just getting warmed up here - the author's example of using social engineering to compromise Verisign's key is invalid. In this case, the underlying cryptographic system was not compromised . To turn the argument, I could just have easily socially-engineered any STO-based system just as easily affecting the same results. The reason that STO is bad is that this is not the only option. For systems using strong (non-STO) crypto, the only option to breaking it is through social engineering.
The quote: "The widely made claim that public-key cryptography is 'real' security and completely unrelated to 'false' STO delivers a more powerful illusion of security than anything an XOR'd password file can provide." particularly ires me. The fact that a cracker knows exactly how a password is encrypted and still can't extract it is a secure system. A password "encrypted" (and I use the term loosely) through an obscure algorithm (that is, once you know the algorithm - not the key - you can get any password) is not secure. Offline, I can reverse-engineer your algorithm and run you SOL.
Next, the example of the Swedish (ObEd: shouldn't that be Swiss?) bank account is totally misrepresented. In an STO system, a cracker would only need to run through the contents of the drive. That is, if the drive were size n, he (and it's always a "he", isn't it?) would take time t. If the drive were size 2*n, he would take time 2*t. If the author has no understanding of the difference between a linear scan of an array and the exponential search required to go through all possible keys of, say DES, then he's a moron. If he stores his Swedish bank account PIN somewhere on a 2^56 bit hard drive, than yes, he has the same security as someone encrypting the PIN with 56-bit DES. The difference of course, is that someone has to "remember" 2^56 bits (plus some to "remember" the offset) to find his PIN, while the other has to "remember" merely 56. That, is the power of strong encryption.
Even if this guy weren't from microsoft, he'd still be an idiot!
Cheers,
Slak
--------------------------------------------
It has long been known that one horse can run
faster than another - but which one?
Differences are crucial. -- Lazarus Long
Now the feedback page is saying that the comments field is required. Duh; where do you think I typed in my comments. M$ doesn't know HTML or validation, methinks.