I don't know if this technology would be a candidate for interstellar spacecraft, but if it is, you could always just push off from the destination star to start the trip back.
I wonder what the "terminal velocity" of this system would be? If you start off close to a star and just sail away, how fast would you be going when the acceleration finally peters out?
Somebody had better warn Cameron before he visits next summer. Don't you hate it when you plan a vacation months in advance, and then your hotel gets deorbited?
I always thought that it was illegal to reverse engineer in a "dirty" manner, but that "clean" reverse engineering was not explicitly declared legal. (After all, in the absence of any other laws, you would assume that clean reverse engineering is legal, right?)
Paragraph (f) titled "reverse engineering" seems to explicitly say the opposite (when done for the purpose of functional interoperability):
Like I said, it's more complicated than I made it out to be. My only point was that this case has very little bearing on the DeCSS case, since the entire anti-circumvention law (including what you cite) just didn't apply to Connectix.
Having said that, I don't think that the clause you cite lets DeCSS off the hook. As I read it, it says that it would be legal to use DeCSS to develop a legal program, but DeCSS itself remains illegal. No, it doesn't make any sense... that's why it's a bad law.
The point is that it's stupid to have a law that allows you to reverse engineer for compatibility reasons as long as the original product doesn't encrypt its content (even with trivial encryption), but not allow reverse engineering of those who do, even for fair use purposes.
Oh, absolutely. I was hoping I had made that clear. In fact, part of the reason why I'm arguing that the DMCA does prohibit DeCSS is that I want to see the DMCA on trial here, not DeCSS. If DeCSS gets off on a technicality and the DMCA still stands, then we have accomplished nothing.
I've posted this in reply to another comment here, but that's just going to get buried, and everyone else here seems to be making the same mistake. IANAL.
The Connectix case was about traditional copyright law. Sony said, "Reverse engineering is illegal!" Various judges said, "No, reverse engineering is not illegal."
The DeCSS case is about the DMCA. The MPAA is saying, "Reverse engineering a copyright protection mechanism is illegal!" It remains to be seen what the judges will say to that, but the DMCA seems to be on the MPAA's side.*
Let's try some basic logic here.
"It is not always illegal to reverse engineer."
"It is illegal to reverse engineer a copyright protection system."
Those two statements do not contradict eachother. Consider:
"It is not always illegal to swing a baseball bat."
"It is illegal to swing a baseball bat at someone's head."
Does that help? I'm sorry if this is not the most articulate explanation, but people constantly misunderstand legal issues due to a poor grasp of simple logic. I can't think of a better way to explain it, so I have to settle for speaking slowly and using small words.
* I know, there's a lot of room for argument here, but it's still a very different situation.
Well, the courts seem to be unable to relate their results to each other for some sort of consistency. With this ruling (which is better than Judge Kaplan's against 2600), it can be reasoned that emulating a simple DVD player is as legal as emulating a PlayStation.
Fortunately, the courts are still smarter than most Slashdot posters. (Congress is another story...) They actually read the laws... and they know that the DMCA prohibits reverse engineering of copyright protection technologies. VGS is not designed to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." DeCSS is. (I know, it's a little more complicated than that. I've been through all the arguments.)
So, to answer all those wise asses who ask, "Am I violating the DMCA when I use an emulator? Am I violating the DMCA when I view the source of a web page? Am I violating the DMCA when I wash my socks?": No.
I highly recommend that everyone read the text of the DMCA, as linked above. It's an important issue which will only become more important in the coming years, so it would help if everyone knows what they're arguing about.
Re:[OT Rant] Tea, Earl Grey, Hot
on
3D Printers
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· Score: 1
At the very least, you'd think that a computer of the 24th century could handle "hot Earl Grey tea." Sheesh.
I really hope that the, er, Bar Association does not have the power to remove a constitutionally appointed Supreme Court justice. If they do, then we're in much more trouble than I thought.
Oh, I didn't mean to disagree with the main point... I'm pretty sure that treaties do not supercede the constitution.
I was just pointing out that in the particular clause that was being discussed, the word "constitution" refers to state constitutions, not the U.S. constitution. It would make much sense for it to supercede itself, would it?
1. There is no preferences, and it is not un-particle, but anti-particles.
I made up the word "unparticle". There may be a better term, but I wanted to make it clear that they are not anti-particles. Anti-particles are identical to regular particles, except that they have the "wrong" charge. For example, a positron is an electron with a positive charge. If a positron and an electron were to suddenly appear near a black hole, the universe would object strenuously, because that would violate conservation of energy. However, electrons and "un-electrons", i.e. electrons with negative energy, can come and go as they please, because the sum of their energy is 0.
Does anyone know what the term for a particle with negative energy actually is?
1) how come more negative (un-, if you wish) than positive particles are attracted?
Both particles are equally attracted by the gravity of the hole, but they have different initial velocities. One might exceed escape velocity while the other does not. It takes a lot of luck, but given enough time, it's bound to happen to some particles.
Positive particle do get sucked in just as often as the negative ones. The difference is that normal matter loses potential energy when falling, whereas "negative matter" gains energy as it falls. This is the magic that allows the remaining particle to become "real"... Sounds a little fuzzy, I admit.
1.1) how come gravity works the same on unparticles? Shouldn't they be repelled?
Fair question. I don't know.
2) why does this happen at a faster rate for small black holes (I understand that rate of evaporation is inversely proportional to mass)
The smaller the hole is, the greater the tidal forces at the event horizon. Stronger tidal forces mean that pair of virtual particles is more likely to be ripped apart, just like you'd be ripped apart if you got near the event horizon of small black hole.
Sorry, but that's a little too rough. Particles are not ripped in two. Rather, at the event horizon, just like everywhere else, virtual particle/antiparticle pairs are constantly being formed and annihiliated as allowed by the uncertainty principle (they don't last long enough to be detectable, so they don't violate any conservation laws). However, being at the event horizon, some of these pairs get formed, and then one of the two particles gets trapped by the black hole, and its partner does not annihilate undetectably quickly, but rather sticks around long enough to collide with other matter or decay or both, thus producing Hawking radiation.
... however, Hawking radiation is immeasureably faint, and has nothing to do with how we detect black holes. People spout off about this every time black holes are mentioned on Slashdot, so much so that it makes me wonder if they're just trolling.
Actually, I have one other quibble with your explanation: the virtual particle pairs are not particle/anti-particle pairs. They're more like particle/unparticle pairs. Anti-matter just has a negative charge (relative to normal matter); the stuff that we're talking about actually has negative energy. The difference is that when particles and anti-particles annihilate, they leave a huge amount of energy, whereas when a virtual particle pair annihilates, it leaves absolutely nothing. 1 + (-1) = 0
At least, that's the way I heard it.
Re:I don't want to see the Russki's power supply
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2001: A Space Laptop
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· Score: 3
All I can envision is wrapping wire around your penis and sticking it in and out of a magnet.
Sigh... Figures we'd get a reaction like that from the six-digit-account-number crowd. Slashdot isn't what it used to be.
How could anyone not picture an earnest little space dachshund, plodding away on a treadmill?
Why do I have to pick one? They all serve different purposes.
If I'm looking for a very high-profile site (e.g. "Coca Cola"), or I'm looking for specific information that is likely to be out there somewhere (e.g. "Albert Schweitzer bio"), I use Google.
If I'm looking for a list of sites with a particular topic (e.g. "Everquest"), I use Yahoo.
If I'm looking for any information that is unlikely to actually be out there (e.g. dirt on my ex-girlfriends,) or very specific text that may or may not be out there (e.g. "We've got a gorilla for sale, Magilla gorilla for sale"), I use Altavista, because it seems to do the most exhaustive search.
Of course, having said all that, Google does have the nicest design by far. If Google could give me everything that I need from a search engine, I'd be happy to use it exclusively.
Yes, you may need to modify the HW to write the key sector (but, since you're wanting to break the law if you're planning to distribute illegal copies, why do you care?)
We're not really disagreeing here...
Actually, we are disagreeing. I misread your post. I still maintain that it is impossible to read the disk keys directly from a DVD. The only way to get a disc key is to provide the hardware with a valid player key.
I still believe that this scheme would have worked. There was only one flaw: the brokenness of the CSS system allowed the DeCSS folks to get at all the player keys once they had a foot in the door. If it were not for that hole, (along with the fact that CSS only uses 40 bit keys,) the DVD CCA could have just revoked each key that was compromised, leaving plenty of keys for future DVDs.
Yes, you may need to modify the HW to write the key sector (but, since you're wanting to break the law if you're planning to distribute illegal copies, why do you care?)
We're not really disagreeing here... I just think you're underestimating the significance of "modifying the hardware". I'm sure the MPAA doesn't feel the need to make it physically impossible to copy DVDs; they only want to make it sufficiently difficult, to prevent a Napster-like situation from arising. (And don't give me that line about how no one will ever trade DVDs online... Bandwidth and HD capacities improve very rapidly, and the DVD format will have to last for many years. You can already find many popular DVDs re-encoded into smaller formats and posted to newsgroups, etc.)
Since at some point, the stream is decrypted (even with legal systems, otherwise they couldn't display the info), you can always tap off the decrypted stream & record. At that point, you then record to an unencrypted disk.
I must say that software decoding is certainly the weakest link in the chain. I think they've done a pretty good job of preventing it so far, though. Also remember that using a hacked software player to "rip" DVDs will inevitably be a messy process. There are a whole lot of folks who would use DeCSS for piracy (when the bandwidth becomes available,) but would draw the line at messing with something like a rigged video driver.
Copyright law contains a lot of broad exceptions for legitimate academic libraries, so that's not really the same thing. I'd give you specific references, but I've forgotten the address of that handy U.S. Code database, and I don't feel like searching for it again right now. (I should probably bookmark it, huh?)
That's not to say that that wasn't a stupid comment, though. I'm sure if the corporate types ever noticed those provisions for libraries, they'd be gone pretty quickly.
Keys don't matter. Read Bruce Schneier's work at counterpane.com
I'm reluctant to argue with Schneier, but I can't find the article you're referring to, so let me repeat what I said in my original post: No legal DVD hardware will read the disc sector that contains the keys, period. If you slurp and pffft, you'll end up with a malformed disc that's missing keys. (There's nothing wrong with a DVD that has no keys if it's not encrypted, mind you, i.e. if it has been DeCSS'ed.)
I know it's hard for hackers to grasp this, but CSS is actually a brilliant attempt to accomplish the impossible task of perfect copy protection. If only they hadn't used a broken encryption algorithm, it would have actually worked. There would have been a few player keys compromised here and there, but they could have always just revoked those keys.
Mind you, I'm not saying that that's the way I'd want it. I'm happy about the way things have turned out, if only because highlights the rapidly erosion of freedom of speech all over the world. I'm beginning to think that our descendants will look back on the DeCSS debacle in much same way that we remember, say, the rebellion at Harper's Ferry. So for god's sake, everybody, look sharp!
This is B.S., and very common B.S. at that. Here's how it works:
In order to play a commercial DVD, you must have a bunch of decryption keys. One of them is the "player key", which is built into the DVD player. Another key is on the disc itself. DVD hardware will not read that key from the disc for you. It will only apply it to the DVD, and return the partially decrypted data. It is impossible to get that key off of the disc without modifying the hardware. Therefore, it is not possible to make a sector-by-sector copy of a DVD on commercially available hardware.
Of course, DVD players decrypt the data completely before they display it. However, you may have noticed that software DVD players always seem to lack a "decode to stdout" option... in fact, they make it effectively impossible to get any access to the stream once it has been decoded.
So, given the above, it should be impossible to make a digital copy of a DVD. However, DeCSS changes that. DeCSS reads data from a DVD normally, and then makes it available to the user, to play it, or save it to disc, or reencode it and burn it onto a thousand VCDs. DeCSS can do this because its authors did not license any technology from the DVD people, so they have no contractual obligation to prevent copying.
As I've said many times here, DeCSS is legal, because the DMCA is flagrantly anti-constitutional. But it does make it possible to copy DVDs; the MPAA wouldn't be putting as much weight on it if that weren't the case.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if this technology would be a candidate for interstellar spacecraft, but if it is, you could always just push off from the destination star to start the trip back.
I wonder what the "terminal velocity" of this system would be? If you start off close to a star and just sail away, how fast would you be going when the acceleration finally peters out?
Somebody had better warn Cameron before he visits next summer. Don't you hate it when you plan a vacation months in advance, and then your hotel gets deorbited?
I always thought that it was illegal to reverse engineer in a "dirty" manner, but that "clean" reverse engineering was not explicitly declared legal. (After all, in the absence of any other laws, you would assume that clean reverse engineering is legal, right?)
Having said that, I don't think that the clause you cite lets DeCSS off the hook. As I read it, it says that it would be legal to use DeCSS to develop a legal program, but DeCSS itself remains illegal. No, it doesn't make any sense... that's why it's a bad law.
I've posted this in reply to another comment here, but that's just going to get buried, and everyone else here seems to be making the same mistake. IANAL.
The Connectix case was about traditional copyright law. Sony said, "Reverse engineering is illegal!" Various judges said, "No, reverse engineering is not illegal."
The DeCSS case is about the DMCA. The MPAA is saying, "Reverse engineering a copyright protection mechanism is illegal!" It remains to be seen what the judges will say to that, but the DMCA seems to be on the MPAA's side.*
Let's try some basic logic here.
"It is not always illegal to reverse engineer."
"It is illegal to reverse engineer a copyright protection system."
Those two statements do not contradict eachother. Consider:
"It is not always illegal to swing a baseball bat."
"It is illegal to swing a baseball bat at someone's head."
Does that help? I'm sorry if this is not the most articulate explanation, but people constantly misunderstand legal issues due to a poor grasp of simple logic. I can't think of a better way to explain it, so I have to settle for speaking slowly and using small words.
* I know, there's a lot of room for argument here, but it's still a very different situation.
So, to answer all those wise asses who ask, "Am I violating the DMCA when I use an emulator? Am I violating the DMCA when I view the source of a web page? Am I violating the DMCA when I wash my socks?": No.
I highly recommend that everyone read the text of the DMCA, as linked above. It's an important issue which will only become more important in the coming years, so it would help if everyone knows what they're arguing about.
At the very least, you'd think that a computer of the 24th century could handle "hot Earl Grey tea." Sheesh.
Oh, I didn't mean to disagree with the main point... I'm pretty sure that treaties do not supercede the constitution.
I was just pointing out that in the particular clause that was being discussed, the word "constitution" refers to state constitutions, not the U.S. constitution. It would make much sense for it to supercede itself, would it?
Come on guys, I know the style is a little archaic, but it's not like it's Middle English...
If MS were the only supplier of gasoline, or the only bank, or even the only airline, I'm sure the Court would be much more eager to resolve the case.
That's what nymservers are for.
Hmmm... I wanted to include a link to some nymserver information, but I can't find any more recent than 1998. Don't nymservers still exist?
Does anyone know what the term for a particle with negative energy actually is?
Positive particle do get sucked in just as often as the negative ones. The difference is that normal matter loses potential energy when falling, whereas "negative matter" gains energy as it falls. This is the magic that allows the remaining particle to become "real"... Sounds a little fuzzy, I admit.Fair question. I don't know.The smaller the hole is, the greater the tidal forces at the event horizon. Stronger tidal forces mean that pair of virtual particles is more likely to be ripped apart, just like you'd be ripped apart if you got near the event horizon of small black hole.
Actually, I have one other quibble with your explanation: the virtual particle pairs are not particle/anti-particle pairs. They're more like particle/unparticle pairs. Anti-matter just has a negative charge (relative to normal matter); the stuff that we're talking about actually has negative energy. The difference is that when particles and anti-particles annihilate, they leave a huge amount of energy, whereas when a virtual particle pair annihilates, it leaves absolutely nothing. 1 + (-1) = 0
At least, that's the way I heard it.
How could anyone not picture an earnest little space dachshund, plodding away on a treadmill?
Considering that Yahoo! is compiled by humans, not robots, it would be kind of insulting to expect them all to "parse" robots.txt.
Why do I have to pick one? They all serve different purposes.
If I'm looking for a very high-profile site (e.g. "Coca Cola"), or I'm looking for specific information that is likely to be out there somewhere (e.g. "Albert Schweitzer bio"), I use Google.
If I'm looking for a list of sites with a particular topic (e.g. "Everquest"), I use Yahoo.
If I'm looking for any information that is unlikely to actually be out there (e.g. dirt on my ex-girlfriends,) or very specific text that may or may not be out there (e.g. "We've got a gorilla for sale, Magilla gorilla for sale"), I use Altavista, because it seems to do the most exhaustive search.
Of course, having said all that, Google does have the nicest design by far. If Google could give me everything that I need from a search engine, I'd be happy to use it exclusively.
I still believe that this scheme would have worked. There was only one flaw: the brokenness of the CSS system allowed the DeCSS folks to get at all the player keys once they had a foot in the door. If it were not for that hole, (along with the fact that CSS only uses 40 bit keys,) the DVD CCA could have just revoked each key that was compromised, leaving plenty of keys for future DVDs.
Copyright law contains a lot of broad exceptions for legitimate academic libraries, so that's not really the same thing. I'd give you specific references, but I've forgotten the address of that handy U.S. Code database, and I don't feel like searching for it again right now. (I should probably bookmark it, huh?)
That's not to say that that wasn't a stupid comment, though. I'm sure if the corporate types ever noticed those provisions for libraries, they'd be gone pretty quickly.
I know it's hard for hackers to grasp this, but CSS is actually a brilliant attempt to accomplish the impossible task of perfect copy protection. If only they hadn't used a broken encryption algorithm, it would have actually worked. There would have been a few player keys compromised here and there, but they could have always just revoked those keys.
Mind you, I'm not saying that that's the way I'd want it. I'm happy about the way things have turned out, if only because highlights the rapidly erosion of freedom of speech all over the world. I'm beginning to think that our descendants will look back on the DeCSS debacle in much same way that we remember, say, the rebellion at Harper's Ferry. So for god's sake, everybody, look sharp!
In order to play a commercial DVD, you must have a bunch of decryption keys. One of them is the "player key", which is built into the DVD player. Another key is on the disc itself. DVD hardware will not read that key from the disc for you. It will only apply it to the DVD, and return the partially decrypted data. It is impossible to get that key off of the disc without modifying the hardware. Therefore, it is not possible to make a sector-by-sector copy of a DVD on commercially available hardware.
Of course, DVD players decrypt the data completely before they display it. However, you may have noticed that software DVD players always seem to lack a "decode to stdout" option... in fact, they make it effectively impossible to get any access to the stream once it has been decoded.
So, given the above, it should be impossible to make a digital copy of a DVD. However, DeCSS changes that. DeCSS reads data from a DVD normally, and then makes it available to the user, to play it, or save it to disc, or reencode it and burn it onto a thousand VCDs. DeCSS can do this because its authors did not license any technology from the DVD people, so they have no contractual obligation to prevent copying.
As I've said many times here, DeCSS is legal, because the DMCA is flagrantly anti-constitutional. But it does make it possible to copy DVDs; the MPAA wouldn't be putting as much weight on it if that weren't the case.