"Telecommunications" and "telecommunications service" mean any service lawfully provided for a charge or compensation to facilitate the origination, transmission, retransmission, emission, or reception of signs, data... over any telecommunications system by any method...
A caller (the origin) is not "providing for a charge" to the callee to either call him or block his number. The telco, while blocking the number, doesn't typically charge for this (at least SBC doesn't).
Regardless, concealing the identity of the caller is not concealing the origin of the service: the service originates at the telco's CO switch. The caller is not providing a service (for a charge or otherwise) to the callee.
And if that weren't enough, the text of section 540c starts as:
A person shall not assemble, develop, manufacture, possess,...
Right. So when the law says "A or otherwise B", it means that for purposes of the law, A is a kind of B, even if that definition flies in the face of conventional usage.
Wrong. "A or otherwise B" means "A in the context of or intent to do B." Are you a native English speaker? Regardless, I give up. Keep your misinterpretation.
Sigh... I never claimed that 'A' by itself isn't legal. I'm saying that you're misinterpreting what 'A' means. From The Merriam-Webster dictionary:
manufacture
to make into a product suitable for use.
That's the primary definition. "Product" implies that which is made to be sold to a market, with marketers, sales people, distribution channels, etc., not kept for personal use in one's basement.
And if it's said A, B, C, or otherwise D, that means that A, B, and C are forms of D and the D is there as a catch-all.
Again, the key phrase is "... or otherwise traffic." It's manufacture with the intent to traffic or manufacture as in mass product and distribute to the public, i.e., manufacture on the assembly line. It's the "otherwise" that imparts "traffic" to "manufacture." I may make things in my basement, but I don't "manufacture" them in the sense for sale as a product.
That's my interpretation. I'm entitled to have it. You're entitled to have yours.
There would be no RFC. For anyone to use it, they'd have to download a signed driver from the inventor, and examining this software to learn how it decrypts would be a DMCA crime.
But that assumes that the inventor chose to keep it secret. I can invent any encryption techinique I choose, document it, give it away, and allow anybody to use it. The DMCA doesn't come in to play. Why did you assume that anything encrypted must be proprietary? I made no such assumption.
The DMCA outlaws even the creation of tools that might be used to circumvent those things.
No. Go read the text of the law. I'll give you a hint: the key word is "trafficing." I can sit in my basement and do as I please with anything I buy using any tools, procedures, or techniques of my design to reverse engineer or circumvent anything. As long as what I do remains in my basement, I'm fine.
So laws like DMCA, which is supposedly meant to protect copyrights, shouldn't apply at all.
I never said it should. Yet again, my original comment was in response to somebody claiming that everything needs to be published for peer review. I rebutted only that statement in isolation. The DMCA never entered into what I wrote.
The reality is that the secret formula for Coke has no value to anyone save for Coca Cola and counterfeiters. To everyone else, it is a curiousity.
So what's your point? Whatever secrets the software company's protocols contain have no value to anyone but them and their competitors. To everyone else, it's boring.
If TCP/IP were invented today it would end up having some built-in feature to encrypt your data stream if you so choose.
Yes? So? And for anybody to use it, they'd have to know how to decrypt it. In fact precisely how to do that would be in the RFC. Hence, it wouldn't violate the DMCA.
You must have been sleeping and not noticed how if a company (or cartel as in the case of the MPAA) wants to make it illegal for anyone to publish information on how to use their products, all they have to do is add some encryption and then you aren't capable of producing information legally on how to view it.
I noticed just fine, but this (as is typical of people who respond to me) has nothing to do with what I wrote. What I wrote was only and narrowly tailored in response to the guy complaining that he can't figure out how something he owns works. Again, he's free to do that. He's even free to publish his findings if the thing he figured out how to do wasn't designed specifically to prevent unauthorized copying.
That's kind of the whole idea behind the market. People BUY based on others recomendations and others REVIEWS. When more and more negative reviews are being limited how does the market know when/how to react to a product?
I can review a product based on its performance and how it lives up to its manufacturers claims. I don't need to reverse engineer anything to do that. I simply have to use the product as a typical user, not a geek trying to figure out how it works.
Its illegal to talk about how it doesnt work, because you are defeating their encryption in order to prove that it doesnt work.
Irrelevant. If I buy a car that uses dozens of encrypted protocols as part of its on-board computer systems and the manufacturer claims the car can go 500 MPH, and people discover merely by driving it that it can't go 500 MPH or not even close, they discovered that fact by empiral observation alone and didn't need to reverse engineer anything.
So too with a software product: if the end result doesn't do what the vendor claims, what protocols it does or doesn't use are irrelevant.
I pay taxes which are used to keep me from understanding the things I own.
The DMCA does nothing to prevent you from doing anything you want with anything you own. It comes into play only if (a) what you did circumvented a copy protection scheme and (b) you publish your findings.
Merely reverse engineering an arbitrary protocol that was never meant to be secret in the first place is just fine. For example, if TCP/IP were invented today, nothing would prevent you from anaylizing the bits and publishing your findings.
Now for the case at hand, did it ever occur to you that the judge was just plain wrong? As somebody else pointed out, just because there are abuses and misinterpretations of the DMCA doesn't mean that the DMCA is bad.
Now since so many people seem to infer what I do not write, do not infer that I think the DMCA is good. I'm just saying that you can't correctly draw the conclusion that it is bad based on those abusing it. It's the same as concluding that all guns are bad just because there are those who misuse them.
And, before somebody (mis)infers that I support the NRA, no, I don't.
In my experience with Linksys wireless access points, they suck. We had no end of trouble with them. We switched to an Apple Airport base station and it's rock solid. I also have an Airport at home. It's been running for 2 years.
I would only buy Linksys products as a last resort.
Copyright was never meant to be a way to prevent people from learning secrets. It was meant to prevent people from redistributing copies of others' work without their permission. The fact that the DMCA is being used in this way shows how overbroad and ill-advised the DMCA is.
I don't disagree, but this had nothing to do with my post. My post was only in direct respose to the parent poster's silly statement about society, science, and disclosure independent of the context of this Slashdot story.
Suppose that you want to show the success or failure of a product who's maker claims the extraordinary.
Irrelevant. Who appointed you gaurdian of the public? If the product doesn't meet its extraodinary claims, the market will know soon enough and react accordingly. It doesn't need you to do it a favor.
Coca-Cola has no grounds for filing a lawsuit against you if you...
Irrelevant to my point. My very narrow point was in direct rebuttal to the erroneous statement that a company can't expect to sell something publicly and keep something secret. That's all. Any other inferences you draw from my statement are entirely your doing.
I doubt Coca-Cola would bring a lawsuit against you if you analyzed the product in a lab.
But that's not what this guy did. He asked for permission beforehand. The judge said no. If you asked a judge whether you could analyze coca-cola in a lab, what do you think the answer would be?
If the guy wanted just to analyze the protocol, he should have did so and shut up about it. Try actually reading the language of the DMCA. While I'm not fan of it, it doesn't preclude somebody from tinkering all by themselves with no intention of actually doing anything with the information learned.
Only if you think computer science isn't really science.
If you think reverse engineering protocols is computer science, you don't know what computer science is. Try proving P = NP. Now that's computer science.
Without the right to reverse engineer we wouldn't have these nice PCs were are talking on right now.
Reverse engineering hardware where no encryption or protocols is involved is different from looking at what chips a computer is made of. The latter doesn't violate the DMCA.
Except that when they sell those products in a retail marketplace, they no longer can reasonably expect to maintain any secrets those products may contain
... scientific and technical progress depends on public disclosure and peer review
Agreed, but that's got nothing to do with this story. Reverse engineering a company's software or protocols isn't scientific nor does it advance science.
A free society depends on public disclosure and peer-review.
What society are you living in? No society depends on disclosure or peer review of trade secrets. Every company is entitled to keep trade secrets. It either that or they must patent their inventions. Patents require disclosure. So take your pick.
In dash or firmly attached to dashboard aren't really far off.
Irrelevant. In-dash is my requirement. I'm entitled to have any requirements I please as are you. If I want is-dash, then, damn it, that's what I want: no compromises.
Who the fuck, besides bearded fags like yourself,
Ah, an ad-homenim remark: truly the first resort of an mature person. (In case you couldn't tell, that was sarcasm.)
would replace his in-dash stereo with a proprietary iPod player?
Newsflash: the factory stereo that came with my car is also proprietary (of Ford Motor Company) as is the Kenwood unit I replaced it with (of Kenwood, obviosuly). Hence, I don't see what difference the iPod makes in terms of being proprietary.
You're halucinaing, if you think there is a market for such an 'invention'.
I never said there was or ever would be a market for such a thing. Again, it is a wish. I'm entitled to wish for anything I want as are you.
That aside, there's potentially as much of a market for this as there is for a custom jacket with embedded iPod controls, to wit all iPod owners.
and there is absolutely no wire clutter.
While true, it instead has a big, honking shaft that plugs into the cigarette lighter. Yeah, that's a real improvement (not).
rather than insult them over something so insignificant.
Go reread my post: there is not one insulting word there. All I said was to stop wasting my time. Here's a clue: thats not an insult. It's not calling you any name, insulting your intelligence, or anything of the sort. The fact that you apparantly misinterpreted it as an insult is entirely your doing.
No there isn't. It's not in-dash as I specifically stated. It uses FM as I specifically stated I did not want. It has a wire plugged into the cigarette lighter: ugh. Stop wasting my time.
Slashdot Mirror
Regardless, concealing the identity of the caller is not concealing the origin of the service: the service originates at the telco's CO switch. The caller is not providing a service (for a charge or otherwise) to the callee.
And if that weren't enough, the text of section 540c starts as:
A telco is not a person.manufacture
- to make into a product suitable for use.
That's the primary definition. "Product" implies that which is made to be sold to a market, with marketers, sales people, distribution channels, etc., not kept for personal use in one's basement.And if it's said A, B, C, or otherwise D, that means that A, B, and C are forms of D and the D is there as a catch-all.
That's my interpretation. I'm entitled to have it. You're entitled to have yours.
So too with a software product: if the end result doesn't do what the vendor claims, what protocols it does or doesn't use are irrelevant.
Producing better products may be good for the economy, but the USA is pretty darn good without the assitance of having good products.
Merely reverse engineering an arbitrary protocol that was never meant to be secret in the first place is just fine. For example, if TCP/IP were invented today, nothing would prevent you from anaylizing the bits and publishing your findings.
Now for the case at hand, did it ever occur to you that the judge was just plain wrong? As somebody else pointed out, just because there are abuses and misinterpretations of the DMCA doesn't mean that the DMCA is bad.
Now since so many people seem to infer what I do not write, do not infer that I think the DMCA is good. I'm just saying that you can't correctly draw the conclusion that it is bad based on those abusing it. It's the same as concluding that all guns are bad just because there are those who misuse them.
And, before somebody (mis)infers that I support the NRA, no, I don't.
I would only buy Linksys products as a last resort.
If the guy wanted just to analyze the protocol, he should have did so and shut up about it. Try actually reading the language of the DMCA. While I'm not fan of it, it doesn't preclude somebody from tinkering all by themselves with no intention of actually doing anything with the information learned.
- I never said there was or ever would be a market for such a thing. Again, it is a wish. I'm entitled to wish for anything I want as are you.
- That aside, there's potentially as much of a market for this as there is for a custom jacket with embedded iPod controls, to wit all iPod owners.
While true, it instead has a big, honking shaft that plugs into the cigarette lighter. Yeah, that's a real improvement (not). Go reread my post: there is not one insulting word there. All I said was to stop wasting my time. Here's a clue: thats not an insult. It's not calling you any name, insulting your intelligence, or anything of the sort. The fact that you apparantly misinterpreted it as an insult is entirely your doing.