He was charged with, willfully and with the intent to profit, selling a program with the primary purpose of circumventing a copyright scheme. Because the company website sold the program in the US the alleged crime did take place in the US.
Perhaps it would be useful to actually read the DMCA. There is a lot of good info in there.
Is there irony in an Adobe PDF version of the DMCA?
Adobe's implementation of the EBook standard allowed publishers to prohibit the printing of validly purchased EBooks. Obviously printing a lawful copy of an EBook for reading while in the bath or on the patio is a Fair Use. Adobe's scheme prohibited that fair use. The Advanced EBook Processor broke Adobe's encryption scheme and allowed lawful owners of EBooks to print them for reading someplace else other than at the computer.
This is not true. See my previous post. Our Constitution protects the rights of all people when dealing with the US Government.
If this was not the case our courts would be able to imprison Sky forever without a trial. After all, it is the US Constitution that secures the right to trial and all the protections that come with it. If that Constitution did not apply in this case then there would be no talk of "prosecuting" him for violating the DMCA. We could simply let him rot in jail forever without a trial.
Perhaps you have never read the Bill of Rights. It sets limits on the behavior of our government to prevent abuses of power which inevitably flow from any form of government. Their is no limit on these protections based on citizenship because the Amendments were meant to proscribe the power of the government over all people.
The First Amendment begins with the words "Congress shall make no law" rather than the words "Citizens shall have the right". The assumption of Our Framers was that such rights were inherant in all human beings and they took steps to prohibit the government from walking all over those rights.
Many/.ers have brought up the possibility of copyright issues involved with altering content. This is a great issue and I certainly hope someone presses the issue in court.
There are, however, other legal questions raised which are more likely to find their way into a court room.
1. Dilution of advertising revenue: Websites who sell advertising space on a per-click basis to companies who's products are related to the page content will have their advertising revenues diluted by additional theme related product links.
2. Breach of Contract: Advertisers who pay for exclusive advertising rights on a site will have their advertising contracts breached by a third party.
These legal issues are more likely to be successful in court because they deal with loss of revenue as opposed to abstract and embattled copyright issues.
Of course, by using the software you are agreeing to the licensing terms and most licenses (whether open source or closed) contain clauses similar to:
EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
I must say that my experience with Telocity was different from what many people are describing. I never subscribed to their service, but I did research their offering while looking for a high speed connection.
It was immediately obvious to me that the Gateway was a loaner and would have to be returned. The wording on the website, the sales people, and the service agreement all made this perfectly clear at the time. This was one of the reasons I chose not to use their service.
Telephone lines are Cat3 cable, which has 3 twists per foot. Ethernet uses Cat5 cable which has 36 twists per foot. There is a huge difference in performance. Here is a good summary.
Furthermore, Gigabit speeds over Cat5 cable degrades after as little as 200 meters. Unless you live within 200 meters of your telco's co this is not of much use.
You misread my post. I never said that the groups were being used only for lawful purposes. I never even suggested that any lawful conduct was occuring. I have personally never been to these groups and do not have a clue what actually goes on there. And that is exactly my point. You cannot determine based on the groups name whether some or all of the postings there are illegal. The only way to determine whether any activity within a group is lawful is to take the facts of each post and poster as they come.
1) The alt.* newsgroups are maintained in a hierarchy where the front elements of the hierarchy categorize what you expect to find in the lower parts.
This is only true if you look at the groups from a distance. The *alt newsgroups are completely controlled by usenet users and their heirarchy is ungoverned. Although many of the groups do follow such a scheme, it is neither required nor neccessarily followed.
2) The alt.binaries.* hierarchy indicates files that have been encoded in such a manner that they are converted from high-ascii to plaintext while retaining their original data.
It is certainly true that most, but not all, of the groups under alt.binaries are used for mime-encoded messages. It is also true that many groups outside of alt.binaries carry a substantial amount of binary traffic. From a free speech or copyright perspective the position of a group within a more-or-less anarchy controlled hierarchy cannot have conclusive effect.
3) @ Home has banned a subset of alt.binaries.* newsgroups, none of which are alt.binaries.*.d
No, what they did was remove access to a few very specific groups. Your argument based on naming schemes is misplaced.
4) Of the newsgroups banned, they are all either geared towards copyrighted magazines, or deal with groups that distribute copyrighted media.
I'll grant that these particular news groups probably do deal primarily though not exclusively with those topics.
Given 1, 2, 3, 4, we can now conclude that these newsgroups were set up to SOLELY facilitate the distribution of these copyrighted items. (Again, no alt.binaries.*.d group was removed).
We cannot conclude anything from 1,2,3,and 4. I would agree, however, that it is probably a good guess that these groups were "set up" PRIMARILY to facilitate the distribution of certain copyrighted items. However, because the *alt groups are not governed or controlled, the purpose for which a groups was first set up is irrelevant to a discussion about copyright or free speech issues. Only the purpose for which they are actually being used matters.
Furthermore, it is not neccessarily illegal or a violation of copyright to transmit or share copyrighted materials. There are many lawful purposes behind such conduct. Critique and parady are just two of several fair uses of copyrighted material.
Your argument assumes that all activity on a group is illegal based on the name of the group. No court in this country would agree with you. If, on the other hand, specific allegations of infringment were brought into court, the poster of such material could be held liable. The group would not be liable and neither would any ISP who carries the group.
According to the document this is not the case with UI.
Persons using "University Resources Usually and Customarily Provided" which includes "ordinary access to computers and networks" retain copyright in their works.
The university only asserts an interest in these cases when the creation involves "substantial use of specialized or unique facilities and equipment".
You will be hard pressed to find a more ardent supporter of free speech or opponent of copyright and patent abuses than I.
Nevertheless, I must object to anyone who frames this case a free speech issue. Just because an action requires the use of words does not make it speech.
I would fervently defend anyone who used the domain name microsoftsucks.com because they are using the domain name to make a point. That is speech and should be free.
On the other hand, I would not defend a person who registered microsotf.com and used it to pitch ads. Such a person is not using the domain name to express themselves but rather to make a quick buck from the misfortunes of bad typists. That does not constitute speech and should not be framed as a free speech issue.
That said, I do not have an opinion as to whether such actions should be legal, but they certainly should not be protected by the First Amendment.
On the other hand, the guy in this article did something else that I consider a mortal sin: mouse trapping.
I swear they don't come any more liberal than I, but if I had my way there would be a law requiring any business or individual, who uses mouse trapping and pop-up windows, to be banned from the internet forever.
Can you imagine walking into a brick and mortar store and deciding that you did not like the products. You turn to walk out the door and are physically restrained and required to browse the store once more just in case there actually was something you liked. Then when you finally make it out the front door you realize that it is just a worm hole to the back door and you just can't seem to get out!
I am no more or less offended by such virtual product placements than I am by following a news link on/. just to find out that I have to give away personal information to register to read the free article.
I will put my two cents in here because this article, like many here at/. concerns the ever increasing threat created by novel abuses of copyright.
There seems to be a common notion that the purpose of copyright is to vest some special private interest in copyright holders. This could not be farther from the truth.
Article I, 8, of the Constitution provides:
"The Congress shall have Power . . . To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The US Supreme Court (SONY CORP. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)) pointed out that "The monopoly privileges...are not primarily designed to provide a special private benefit. Rather, the limited grant is a means by which an important public purpose may be achieved. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward, and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired.
They go on to point out that "Creative work is to be [464 U.S. 417, 432] encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an `author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good. `The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly,' this Court has said, `lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors."
That's right! Copyright protections granted by the constitutions where not meant to grant special monopolies to the RIAA or the like. Copyright is meant to protect the rights of all of us/.ers to have access to the creative works.
Obviously many copyright holders and legislatures have lost sight of that vision.
We know that the FBI/CIA/NSA are very secretive organizations. We can assume that they keep their secrets very well.
We also know that every so often something leaks (via the FOIA) about Echelon or Clipper Chips and so on. We tend to be alarmed by what we find.
The question then arises: "If the secrets that get out are so alarming, how alarming is the 99% of stuff we don't know?"
What we learn from this is that these organizations obviously have a mighty infrastructure for intercepting communications and spying on what we do. The extreme right would have us believe that either we are paranoid or that any such capabilities have legitimate law enforcement justifications.
STOP THE PRESSES
If these organizations are using all that technology for legitimate law enforcement activities where are the indictments and convictions?
We do know that less than a handful of indictments where handed out last year based on intercepted communications. If these interception technologies exist and are obviously not being used to any great extent for legitimate law enforcement activity exactly what are these guys doing with all of that intercepted information?
How much or how little a politician knows or understands about technical issues is irrelevant.
Where they stand on those issues is the key.
Case in Point
Dick Cheney, our VP for those of you who missed the coup, is very tech saavy. He understands the technical issues surrounding cryptography so well that as Bush Senior's Secretary of Defense he lobbied the congress to outlaw any computer cryptography to which the government did not have a key. This was in the very early 90's before most politicians had even used a computer.
I'd say that puts Dick in the head of the class when it comes to knowledge about technical issues. I'd also say that he is no friend to Slashdotters!
At first blush it may seem as though this fellow was remarkably accurate in some aspects. While is it true that some of his predictions have come true, it is hardly remarkable.
Consider, for example, science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein who was pumping out novel after novel during the same time period. A rather high percentage of the things he wrote about have come to fruition.
It is important to note, however, that Heinlein did not predict these things. They came to fruition because scientists were inspired by the possibilities dreamed up in the mind of the science fiction writers.
What is amazing here is that some ideas can be so far ahead of their time that it takes the motivation and imagination of several generations to bring them to reality. We live in a time where technological leaps seem to happen every 18 months and we tend to forget that some very worth while advances take decades or centuries from the time they are first dreamed up to the time they become common place.
It is a tribute to the human spirit that dreams can persist beyond the dreamer and become reality long after the dreamer has passed on.
To that end, I would like to thank Doulas Adams (who passed away yesterday) for instilling his dream into so many of us. I wonder which of his many wacky dreams will seem common place to my grandchildren?
Unfortunately, people are convicted on nothing but circumstantial evidence often in the US. The justice system has degraded slowly over many years to the point where getting a conviction is more important to getting at the truth. It has become so engrained in the system that it would be impossible to change.
Fortunately, the creators of this country foresaw that power can corrupt and instituted checks and balances to keep such things from happening. One of the things they did was create (via Amendments 4,6 and 14) a right of privacy.
With the advent of computers and the Internet that right is being taken away.
If we cannot change the nature of the justice system, we can at least fight to protect those rights which mediate such abuses.
I am going to ass-u-me that you are being honest about your feelings and beliefs and not just trolling. I will also ass-u-me for the purpose of this post that the government is not broken and corrupt, but just trying to do their best job to fight crime.
With those assumptions in mind, here is why you should be worried:
You wake up one morning and click on the TV to catch the morning news. The headline story is that a local business has been bombed. Your first thought: "Hmm, thats odd, I just posted a message to/. yesterday about how much I dislike that company."
On the way to work you here that a video camera captured a blurry picture of the primary suspect just before the bomb went off. Odd, the suspect has the same color, hair, height and weight as you. But you are not worried, because you have nothing to hide. Besides, there must be a million people in the area with that description.
By the time you get home to catch the evening news the police have discovered a piece of evidence; it appears that the bomber smoked a certain brand of cigaretts. Now this is getting wierd; that just happens to be the same brand you smoke.
No worries, you go to bed confident that the bomber will be brought to justice. As you sleep the police are warming up their mega database to narrow their search for the bomber.
First they access a motor vehicles database to generate a list of all people matching the suspects description. Your name is amoung millions of names. The police then cross reference those names with the names of people who bought that brand of smokes with their handy discount grocery card. Now your name is in a list of several thousand.
You dream quietly as the police search the internet communications database of each person on the list for suspiscious words. Bingo. Your scathing review of the bombed company sends lights blinking and sirens screaming.
The cops have got their guy!
You wake up to shouting police men taking you into custody. You were at home sleeping alone when the bomb went off, and have no alibi.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it would be useful to actually read the DMCA. There is a lot of good info in there.
Is there irony in an Adobe PDF version of the DMCA?
Adobe's implementation of the EBook standard allowed publishers to prohibit the printing of validly purchased EBooks. Obviously printing a lawful copy of an EBook for reading while in the bath or on the patio is a Fair Use. Adobe's scheme prohibited that fair use. The Advanced EBook Processor broke Adobe's encryption scheme and allowed lawful owners of EBooks to print them for reading someplace else other than at the computer.
If this was not the case our courts would be able to imprison Sky forever without a trial. After all, it is the US Constitution that secures the right to trial and all the protections that come with it. If that Constitution did not apply in this case then there would be no talk of "prosecuting" him for violating the DMCA. We could simply let him rot in jail forever without a trial.
The First Amendment begins with the words "Congress shall make no law" rather than the words "Citizens shall have the right". The assumption of Our Framers was that such rights were inherant in all human beings and they took steps to prohibit the government from walking all over those rights.
There are, however, other legal questions raised which are more likely to find their way into a court room.
1. Dilution of advertising revenue: Websites who sell advertising space on a per-click basis to companies who's products are related to the page content will have their advertising revenues diluted by additional theme related product links.
2. Breach of Contract: Advertisers who pay for exclusive advertising rights on a site will have their advertising contracts breached by a third party.
These legal issues are more likely to be successful in court because they deal with loss of revenue as opposed to abstract and embattled copyright issues.
EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
It was immediately obvious to me that the Gateway was a loaner and would have to be returned. The wording on the website, the sales people, and the service agreement all made this perfectly clear at the time. This was one of the reasons I chose not to use their service.
1. Same day install versus many months on a waiting list for fiber install.
2. It is much cheeper for the service provider to install and maintain.
Furthermore, Gigabit speeds over Cat5 cable degrades after as little as 200 meters. Unless you live within 200 meters of your telco's co this is not of much use.
Perhaps you missed the /. article about all the backbone fiber that is being unused because there is not enough bandwidth on the last mile.
The only thing worse than misleading headlines on slashdot is slashdotters who refuse to follow the link and read the original article before posting.
You misread my post. I never said that the groups were being used only for lawful purposes. I never even suggested that any lawful conduct was occuring. I have personally never been to these groups and do not have a clue what actually goes on there. And that is exactly my point. You cannot determine based on the groups name whether some or all of the postings there are illegal. The only way to determine whether any activity within a group is lawful is to take the facts of each post and poster as they come.
This is only true if you look at the groups from a distance. The *alt newsgroups are completely controlled by usenet users and their heirarchy is ungoverned. Although many of the groups do follow such a scheme, it is neither required nor neccessarily followed.
2) The alt.binaries.* hierarchy indicates files that have been encoded in such a manner that they are converted from high-ascii to plaintext while retaining their original data.
It is certainly true that most, but not all, of the groups under alt.binaries are used for mime-encoded messages. It is also true that many groups outside of alt.binaries carry a substantial amount of binary traffic. From a free speech or copyright perspective the position of a group within a more-or-less anarchy controlled hierarchy cannot have conclusive effect.
3) @ Home has banned a subset of alt.binaries.* newsgroups, none of which are alt.binaries.*.d
No, what they did was remove access to a few very specific groups. Your argument based on naming schemes is misplaced.
4) Of the newsgroups banned, they are all either geared towards copyrighted magazines, or deal with groups that distribute copyrighted media.
I'll grant that these particular news groups probably do deal primarily though not exclusively with those topics.
Given 1, 2, 3, 4, we can now conclude that these newsgroups were set up to SOLELY facilitate the distribution of these copyrighted items. (Again, no alt.binaries.*.d group was removed).
We cannot conclude anything from 1,2,3,and 4. I would agree, however, that it is probably a good guess that these groups were "set up" PRIMARILY to facilitate the distribution of certain copyrighted items. However, because the *alt groups are not governed or controlled, the purpose for which a groups was first set up is irrelevant to a discussion about copyright or free speech issues. Only the purpose for which they are actually being used matters.
Furthermore, it is not neccessarily illegal or a violation of copyright to transmit or share copyrighted materials. There are many lawful purposes behind such conduct. Critique and parady are just two of several fair uses of copyrighted material.
Your argument assumes that all activity on a group is illegal based on the name of the group. No court in this country would agree with you. If, on the other hand, specific allegations of infringment were brought into court, the poster of such material could be held liable. The group would not be liable and neither would any ISP who carries the group.
Persons using "University Resources Usually and Customarily Provided" which includes "ordinary access to computers and networks" retain copyright in their works.
The university only asserts an interest in these cases when the creation involves "substantial use of specialized or unique facilities and equipment".
Nevertheless, I must object to anyone who frames this case a free speech issue. Just because an action requires the use of words does not make it speech.
I would fervently defend anyone who used the domain name microsoftsucks.com because they are using the domain name to make a point. That is speech and should be free.
On the other hand, I would not defend a person who registered microsotf.com and used it to pitch ads. Such a person is not using the domain name to express themselves but rather to make a quick buck from the misfortunes of bad typists. That does not constitute speech and should not be framed as a free speech issue.
That said, I do not have an opinion as to whether such actions should be legal, but they certainly should not be protected by the First Amendment.
On the other hand, the guy in this article did something else that I consider a mortal sin: mouse trapping.
I swear they don't come any more liberal than I, but if I had my way there would be a law requiring any business or individual, who uses mouse trapping and pop-up windows, to be banned from the internet forever.
Can you imagine walking into a brick and mortar store and deciding that you did not like the products. You turn to walk out the door and are physically restrained and required to browse the store once more just in case there actually was something you liked. Then when you finally make it out the front door you realize that it is just a worm hole to the back door and you just can't seem to get out!
If anyone actually gets to this slashdotted site please mirror it so that the rest of us can read it.
Excuse me?
He who prefers comfort to freedom deserves neither comfort nor freedom.
I am no more or less offended by such virtual product placements than I am by following a news link on /. just to find out that I have to give away personal information to register to read the free article.
How much different is that from our government issuing patents on "one-click" technology?
There seems to be a common notion that the purpose of copyright is to vest some special private interest in copyright holders. This could not be farther from the truth.
Article I, 8, of the Constitution provides:
"The Congress shall have Power . . . To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The US Supreme Court (SONY CORP. v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)) pointed out that "The monopoly privileges...are not primarily designed to provide a special private benefit. Rather, the limited grant is a means by which an important public purpose may be achieved. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward, and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired.
They go on to point out that "Creative work is to be [464 U.S. 417, 432] encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an `author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good. `The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly,' this Court has said, `lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors."
That's right! Copyright protections granted by the constitutions where not meant to grant special monopolies to the RIAA or the like. Copyright is meant to protect the rights of all of us /.ers to have access to the creative works.
Obviously many copyright holders and legislatures have lost sight of that vision.
We also know that every so often something leaks (via the FOIA) about Echelon or Clipper Chips and so on. We tend to be alarmed by what we find.
The question then arises: "If the secrets that get out are so alarming, how alarming is the 99% of stuff we don't know?"
What we learn from this is that these organizations obviously have a mighty infrastructure for intercepting communications and spying on what we do. The extreme right would have us believe that either we are paranoid or that any such capabilities have legitimate law enforcement justifications.
STOP THE PRESSES
If these organizations are using all that technology for legitimate law enforcement activities where are the indictments and convictions?
We do know that less than a handful of indictments where handed out last year based on intercepted communications. If these interception technologies exist and are obviously not being used to any great extent for legitimate law enforcement activity exactly what are these guys doing with all of that intercepted information?
Where they stand on those issues is the key.
Case in Point
Dick Cheney, our VP for those of you who missed the coup, is very tech saavy. He understands the technical issues surrounding cryptography so well that as Bush Senior's Secretary of Defense he lobbied the congress to outlaw any computer cryptography to which the government did not have a key. This was in the very early 90's before most politicians had even used a computer.
I'd say that puts Dick in the head of the class when it comes to knowledge about technical issues. I'd also say that he is no friend to Slashdotters!
Consider, for example, science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein who was pumping out novel after novel during the same time period. A rather high percentage of the things he wrote about have come to fruition.
It is important to note, however, that Heinlein did not predict these things. They came to fruition because scientists were inspired by the possibilities dreamed up in the mind of the science fiction writers.
What is amazing here is that some ideas can be so far ahead of their time that it takes the motivation and imagination of several generations to bring them to reality. We live in a time where technological leaps seem to happen every 18 months and we tend to forget that some very worth while advances take decades or centuries from the time they are first dreamed up to the time they become common place.
It is a tribute to the human spirit that dreams can persist beyond the dreamer and become reality long after the dreamer has passed on.
To that end, I would like to thank Doulas Adams (who passed away yesterday) for instilling his dream into so many of us. I wonder which of his many wacky dreams will seem common place to my grandchildren?
Fortunately, the creators of this country foresaw that power can corrupt and instituted checks and balances to keep such things from happening. One of the things they did was create (via Amendments 4,6 and 14) a right of privacy.
With the advent of computers and the Internet that right is being taken away.
If we cannot change the nature of the justice system, we can at least fight to protect those rights which mediate such abuses.
With those assumptions in mind, here is why you should be worried:
You wake up one morning and click on the TV to catch the morning news. The headline story is that a local business has been bombed. Your first thought: "Hmm, thats odd, I just posted a message to /. yesterday about how much I dislike that company."
On the way to work you here that a video camera captured a blurry picture of the primary suspect just before the bomb went off. Odd, the suspect has the same color, hair, height and weight as you. But you are not worried, because you have nothing to hide. Besides, there must be a million people in the area with that description.
By the time you get home to catch the evening news the police have discovered a piece of evidence; it appears that the bomber smoked a certain brand of cigaretts. Now this is getting wierd; that just happens to be the same brand you smoke.
No worries, you go to bed confident that the bomber will be brought to justice. As you sleep the police are warming up their mega database to narrow their search for the bomber.
First they access a motor vehicles database to generate a list of all people matching the suspects description. Your name is amoung millions of names. The police then cross reference those names with the names of people who bought that brand of smokes with their handy discount grocery card. Now your name is in a list of several thousand.
You dream quietly as the police search the internet communications database of each person on the list for suspiscious words. Bingo. Your scathing review of the bombed company sends lights blinking and sirens screaming.
The cops have got their guy!
You wake up to shouting police men taking you into custody. You were at home sleeping alone when the bomb went off, and have no alibi.
In this country that is plenty for a conviction.
Just think about it.