Actually, the company, Fortinet, is looking into the matter. As the article states, they don't sell directly to end users, all sales go through resellers. Their policy with their resellers states that all US export laws must be followed.
So the company apparently does care and it isn't yet clear how this software came to be in use in the embargoed nation. For all anyone knows it was pirated by a Burmese government sympathizer who worked for another company that attained it legally. Let's not pile on this company in undue haste.
So what? Let me guess, we're supposed to get all hauty over this "criminal injustice" of a piece of software being used by an enemy state in a way we wouldn't like. Yet we'll cry "let the information/code/whatever be free" when it comes to encryption software, despite the fact that it is used by criminals, enemy states, and even terrorist groups. Hell, we'll tie ourselves in knots trying to make sure our criminal and military intelligence services can't overcome those encryption tools despite their use by the enemy. Actually, we tie our intelligence services hands behind their back even when they get lucky enough to find a criminal enterprise not using the encryption tools, too.
Let me guess, we're upset now because this software is inherently "evil" whereas encryption software is inherently "good", or at least benign. "Blocking software? Why that's used to stop the flow of information and it's used to oppress. Of course it shouldn't be making it's way from the US into our enemy's hands." Maybe we should throw on a good old, "Damned neocon's!" or "Corporations profiting by their export of legalized digital oppression! Same old story."
Give me break. If we're going to support free use and access for the one (PGP, for instance) aren't we logically bound to support the other, since the basis of the support was that programs are neither good nor bad and that information/code/software yearns to be free? Sure, lament their use for evil purpose, but lets not go all "this shouldn't be allowed to happen" or "there should be a law against it". At least not unless you're willing to split the moral/ethical hairs for all the "good" software too.
Bats? Bats have been considered a source of Ebola, SARS, and other virulent contaigens? But now some scientist types have awaken from their delusional state and remembered their theory from a decade ago that all these diseases are showing up because of man's encroashment on previously untouched parts of the environment... and we're supposed to buy it? After "bats" was put on the table as a serious contender they expect us to accept the takeback and revert to their time tested "human existence is its own worst enemy" fallback position?
Bats?
What the hell? When did this theory start getting serious recognition anyway? I feel like I did 5 or 6 years ago when seemingly out of no where everyone was talking about the theory of the extinction of dinosaurs being caused by an asteroid impact as being more or less fact. When I was in middle school and high school there were a number of theories discussed and no one was given considerably more or less weight than the others. There was the asteroid theory, of course. There was also a climate change theory, a disease theory, a species encroachment theory and probably a couple others I'm not remembering. Then seemingly a few years later I'm reading a web site or a news report or watching TV or something and the death of dinosaurs is attributed to that asteroid, as if it were written on stone and handed down from on high.
I know now that there was the discovery and research of the yuccatan crater, but still it was very disconcerting that something so fundamental in the "modern" history of the planet had gone from multi-theory to essentially a single theory and I hadn't heard anything about it until some time after the fact. Must have missed that all important week the world was abuzz with the massive shift in dinosaur extinction thought.
So anyway...
Bats.
Really? That's just seems loopy. Of course, encroachment on African, Asian, or Central/South American jungles isn't that good of an explanation for SARS or Bird Flu either, but at least it aint bats. Seriously, bats? Who comes up with this stuff?
1 billion pages! Talk about a violation of privacy! The justice department is only asking for a random sample of 1 million addresses and the search results for any 1 week period. This guy gets access to 1 billion pages via the google repository (whatever that is), conducts detailed analysis of the contents of those pages, and nary a word of dissent from the vast Slashdot audience.
I do not understand the overwhelming opposition to this request. They are requesting records of search queries and the results returned along with a random sample of web addresses indexed by the search engine. No identifying information at all. No user IPs, cookies, hashes or anything else. Just the query text and the returned results. What privacy concern is at issue here? Who's privacy is being violated? They aren't interested in linking up people to the searches. In so far as porn and child porn sites are revealed through the search results and are likely to be included in the random sample, that is not a violation of anyone's privacy; the results are of public information.
The opposition to this on user/citizen privacy rights makes no sense at all. Even if you object to the goal of trying to defend the law in question, this particular means violates no one's privacy. Claiming it does only weakens one's credibility when a genuine privacy violation is at issue.
What's more, Google isn't giving up anything of value by complying with this request. The random sample of sites is a drop in the bucket. It reveals nothing of Google's trade secrets (such as web crawling technologies or methodologies or algorithms). The search results are likewise of little worth without having the associated user identifications. Also, the real bread and butter of Google (as with any search engine) is in their advertising links and their search engine's speed and accuracy. Nothing about the technologies behind these will be revealed through the results themselves. At worst a comparitive analysis of the results from the cooperating search engine companies could reveal which is more accurate, which I suspect could only be a win for Google.
Nothing about the opposition to this makes any sense, unless it is just knee jerk reaction to cooperation with a government request of any sort or similar reaction to the goal of resurrecting the law in question... or simple hatred of and/or opposition to this administration.
Oh, for the love of Pete. Those few artists and bands that are lucky enough to get a big label contract get far more exposure than they likely ever would trying to go it alone or signing with a small independent label. They probably already make next to nothing, so they have very little to lose and everything to gain. Many indy label artists actively pursue contracts with bigger labels, using the indy as an incubator. Many indy labels are okay when this happens because they get part of the money in the new contract (especially if they brokered the deal in any way) and they want to preserve their "indy cred" and thus don't want (and quite possibly couldn't afford) to have a big time act on their roster.
Yes, the RIAA and the big labels have been using and lobbying for some pretty dip shit legal tactics and protections. They have been acting very short sightedly. But they are not the root evil that they are made out to be and the artists and bands signed with them have a great deal to be thankful for when it comes to the big labels and the RIAA and other organizations that actively work to protect their rights and business interests.
Did anyone here actually read the article? The Patriot Act is mentioned two times in the whole thing, both in the first two or three paragraphs. Most of the cases disclosed appear to be about FISA related violations, not necessarily violations enabled by the Patriot Act. Most are said to be administrative in nature (late renewal filings, late annual reports, etc.). Some minor types of violations, such as getting information after a warrant had expired. Very few major violations (5 year long spying on an individual without proper oversight notification was mentioned in the article). Also in the article is that these relatively few cases were investigated within the justice department and reviewed at both executive and legislative levels and action has been taken as appropriate. More often than not the solution was simply to update the paperwork and berate the people responsible for missing deadlines. In cases where there were material violations the information attained illegally can not be used in any court proceeding and will be destroyed (yeah... I don't believe that either).
The point is that there is oversight taking place, both internally through justice department investigation and through legislative review of exiting laws and abuses. Also it isn't at all clear from this article that there were any violations that were enabled by the Patriot Act. Regardless of the law or regulation governing law enforcement there will be violations. The question to be asked is if the frequency of these kinds of problems are greater than violations of other regulations and laws, this acticle doesn't touch on that bit of necessary context. This article is talking about a few hundred investigations over a three year period with 13 looking to be worthy of being called violations. This is not government run amok.... I'll rephrase: the government may very well be running amok, but this article and the documents at the center of it are not indication of problems above and beyond any other area of problems in regard to how government is working or even how law enforcement or the justice department is working.
How does education of children stop adults from accessing child porn? Filters to block child porn are not intended to keep children away from it, it is meant to keep the consumers of it (adults and older teens) away from it. I'm all for supervision of one's children, but I don't see how this supervision/education effort that's proposed is going to address the problem that the filters were supposed to.
Not everyone in the justice department is focused on terrorism. That would be stupid. In so far as there may be a need for more resources in the terrorism department that doesn't mean that those fighting copyright infringement should be taken off their cases. And all the hyperventilating in the other comments aside (regarding the numbers of songs and petabytes of data and whatnot) it is clear these folks were acting as illegal distribution hubs for gigabytes of copyrighted. We should be applauding the justice department for their work here. It is better than the RIAA going after several hundred teens at a swing and it is better than efforts to outlaw p2p outright. As far as justice department efforts against copyright infringement go this is a very good one.
It isn't clear to me if the AC water is a closed loop system (where a feed and return line would be needed separate from existing water and sewage lines). Perhaps a pseudo closed loop system where a new feed is introduced, but return is through sewage and recycled back into the AC feed system.
Next, and I would think most importantly to us internet tech folk, this system is creating a new single point of failure for AC systems in the buildings of downtown toronto. Currently there is an electrical grid failure point, but by adding this the new AC pumping and heat exchanging facility becomes a failure point. Also, this water needs to be pumped up to the tops of buildings to be integrated into existing AC units, requiring even more pressure and thus electricity use. Likewise this system will be vulnerable to water line breaks (particularly a concern in a cold weather region like Toronto, Rochester, or any other city near lake ontario).
While probably more efficient in terms of electricity use, it is a centralization that would want to be avoided I would think. Even if "backup" AC compressor/exchanger systems were in place, this would only create that much more of a headache in the event of a primary failure. This would trigger a massive spike in the electical grid and likely cause signifcant problems, especially after a few years when the originally "saved" megawatts originally used for AC were gobbled up by housing, comercial, and other such electicity use expansion.
Lastly, linked articles in the other comments show that there is expected to be a 10 degree swing between feed and return lines to the AC water grid. I saw no mention of how much of a raise in potable feed water temperature was desired, though. One would expect a modest increase would be acceptable, but not a 10 degree increase. As such it would seem that water flow in the fresh water side of the exchanger would need to be higher than it is currently, higher than potable water demand. This becomes more true as the system is scaled up to handle more buildings and even some residential units as people want to get in on the cost savings or want to "do their part" for the environment. This water will need to be spilled off from the potable system back into the lake, resulting in greater heated water flow into the lake. This is not to say this is a problem, but to expect that this will result in no net heating of water in the lake, especially water proximate to a city using the technology is thermodynamically impossible. The heat is being transfered into water. That water will end up in the lake (or in the atmosphere or ground water table, but I digress). The lake thermodynamics will be affected (again, especially that area of the lake proximate to the city). Likely ecosystem changes will be in algea formation, currents, and small fish patterns. These lead to more changes, but the impact, on the whole, is probably insignificant so long as we're giving primacy to global warming, air quality, and other such concerns.
On the happy side this will create a hole bunch of new jobs: design, construction, maintenance of the new pumping and exchanger site, new billing staff and meter readers, new opportunities for HVAC repair and installers, a new taxable widget/service for the city, and it is grand enough in scale so as to be completed and used regardless of if it works out as planned or not.
First, the bill states that sentencing will be not more than 3 years, fines, or both for a first conviction under this law. At worst, that means one would probably get out on parole much sooner than the full three years. However 3 years is a max sentence and a judge would have leeway under to be determined sentencing guidelines to sentence for less time. Factors would most certainly include: intent to distribute, on what scale, for profit or not, and estimated financial loss based on those findings. Note also that the bill explicitly states that a judge can simply fine the guilty party, no prison time at all. The bill also includes stiffer max sentencing for 2nd and 3rd time offenders (6 years).
So purpose of making the recording will certainly be part of determining the sentence. Not to mention the justice department is not going to go to town on someone for this unless they can be damned sure they can prove intent to distribute. Besides ending up looking foolish in the media and suffering political fallout as a result of a botched prosecution, the justice department only gets a certain amount each year to prosecute given type of cases. In this bill (which covers several other types of similar copyright infringment, including distribution of pre-commercial release material) there is only $5mil allocated each year. No doubt that can mean 10's of cases each year, but they will still be under pressure to get maximum effect with that money.
Without the proof of intent to distribute, the estimated loss as a result of the recording is essentially zero and the judge would probably make the guilty party pay the price of a ticket as a fine.
You're forgetting the all important third option: Record/Pirate movie for non-personal non-profit distribution. For instance, putting it up on the internet for free download. That can cost a film maker (producers and directors), distributors, actors, and studios much dinero in lost theater, PayPerView, rental, and dvd/VHS sales. And this cost is only likely to increase as the use of high bandwidth internet connections increases. You may not agree with the degree of proposed punishment or the all-things-considered level of damage to the film makers and/or industry, but do not hide from the existence of the problem.
A final note, this bill can change as it goes through the House and back for conference (assuming the House passes a modified version) and before final passage for Presidential signing. *YOU* can make a difference by writing your congressional representatives or perhaps those running against the incumbent of your district in the upcoming elections. Register to vote so you have power. Contribute to campaigns representing your stances on the issues you care about. Involve yourself, no one else can do it for you.
Perhaps, if you think that political experience is something removed from that of life experience you would be correct. Life experience translates into political experience, though. Not necessarily one-to-one, but it certainly counts.
This doesn't mean that she can not be an effective governor. My question merely asked for her to provide some proof that she has the wherewithall to be governor and that she has the necessary ability to choose good advisors, and by implication to delegate responsibilties appropriately.
Bush was (and to some extent continues to be) plagued by people claiming he is dumb, ignorant, too young, and/or not capable of being president of the country. He addressed this during the election, in part, by making it known who a few of his key advisors and cabinet members would be. Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and even his father were floated as being people he would be depending on to help him make his decisions. His selection of Cheney as VP also gave him necessary creadibility and reassured the electing public that he was at least able to see his shortcomings and select people to fill in the holes where it was necessary.
Georgy could do a lot for her cause by taking on a similar strategy and giving people the names of some of the people she will be depending on who carry with them some clout and will allow people to look past her perceived inherent deficiencies as a very young, female, girl-next-door type candidate for the 3rd largest state in the union. Even the most liberally minded will need some kind of reassurance like this before they will be able to vote for her.
Lastly, this isn't some dustbowl state that has a minimal contribution/impact in the nation at large. This state has an economy larger than almost all the countries on the planet. Arguably the US's economy continues a too slow recovery because the California and New York State economies continue to drag.
She seeks to take on a huge responsibility. A 50 year old well versed in the art of economic, social, and security policy making and political machinery would be challenged. Georgy wants people to accept a 26 (almost 27) year old whom has a wopping few post-college years of real world work experience, no husband or children (at least none mentioned on what I've read of the website), and probably still rents (I don't know, but a safe guess) to do it. She has *a lot* to prove, regardless of her ideas on the issues, before she will be considered a leader capable of filling the role she seeks. Arnold and others have varrying degrees of convincing to do too, but Georgy has quite a bit more... and rightly so.
You are 26. I am a couple weeks short of being 26. Most of my friends are about the same age as you and I. What in your 26 years of life makes you think you are qualified to be the governor of the State of California? I can only assume you have never held any elected or appointed office in any segment of government since I didn't see it listed in my reading of your website.
Given your presumed lack of experience and ability to hold the office you are seeking, who will you be appointing as your advisors upon becoming governor and what are their qualifications?
You are partially right. The $10,000 you mention is for the DVD-Forum specifications. These do not have anything to do with CSS. No where in the specs do they mentions CSS except to note the inclusion of encryption bits in the PES packet headers and some CGMS bits in the IFOs. To license CSS requires going through DVDCCA which is a much higher dollar investment. It also doesn't have per unit royalties associated with players (there are per unit royalties on css encrypted discs, however), but the one time fees for getting CSS licensing for a player are in the area of $1 million last I heard. This is put in escrow/trust, so it isn't money spent so much as money you may lose if you fail to meet the licensing requirements, i.e. your keys are in plaintext in the app someplace.
Many companies have invested in linux DVD player software development, but few have released publicly or have wide use bases. None are free as there are per unit royalities associated with ac-3 and mpeg-2 decoding (Dolby and MPEGLA collecting, respectively).
So it isn't as simple as RedHat and others dropping some money in a bucket. Companies are afraid of their software getting hacked, losing their shirts due to piracy of the non-free software, running into myriad problems with driver and hardware support which they tolerate in Windows (because of the market and OEM demand), having to deal with frequent kernel version changes (thus potential kernel module issues), and in also having to support their product on a historically "difficult" to use and administer OS.
This can not be for real. Tubes tend to draw considerably more current than a darlington pair. They generate much more heat. In a PC case I would think that they would be far more susceptible to RF interference, as well. Not to mention, what would be the possible upside to doing this. There is next to no market for tube amps even in the Hi-fi market. Anything that has then cost a ton of money compared to solid state amps. This just seems really far fetched. Technical issues aside, there must be zero market demand for this. No audiophile would want this and it would appear that would be their only market for this.
Because by examining what would make it a successful move we can see what is truely lacking in Linux. Specifically, Linux is already a well established network OS. It has started making inroads into the embedded market. It has remained outside the mainstream though. While lack of applications is a key reason, it is not the end of the story. One has to look at why there are a lack of applications. Top reasons are a lack of stable and even marginally standard API's for application development. Yes, there is OpenGL, but beyond that there is very little there for game developers. For productivity apps there is X and the various toolkits out there. While each is good in its own right (as well as bad), the fact that there are so many different toolkits leaves companies having to pick sides in what is largely an even divide between Qt and GTK (not to mention all the less popular toolkits available). These toolkits are also still in heavy development leading to unstable API's in some and a lack of features in many. This last point means that a company wanting to get involved in a linux app right now has to keep on the bleeding edge of linux to get the same level of functionality that they are accustomed to in other OS's (windows, BEos, QNX, etc). By examining what makes the pipe dream of BeOS becoming open source (at least in large part, similar to QNX), we can see what Linux needs to provide to really break ground in the mainstream and the industry as a whole. Here we saw one reason, there are obviously more to be recognized and hopefully implemented.
Some will say that looking at BeOS for ideas on what is needed for mainstream acceptance is flawed since BeOS didn't make it to mainstream itself. While there may be merit to this keep in mind that Linux has already gained wider acceptance and industry attention than BeOS ever did, as such those facets of BeOS that we might be able to provide in Linux are likely to make Linux stronger. Also, QNX is quite possibly already where a Linux/BeOS would end up. It is worth looking at that and seeing if it is going to make a difference to have an BeOSified Linux when it would be in direct competition with QNX as well as Windows. Right now Linux enjoys a certain separation with QNX that has allowed it to lag behind QNX (in many regards, if looked at objectively) without drawing large criticism from the small device embedded industry. Can Linux be everything that QNX and BeOS is (it already has the "more" parts, more robust networking, larger device driver support, more configurability, open source, etc)? That is what would be necessary in order to survive the move to that next level of application space friendliness. Don't think that Linux could just blow by QNX at that point. QNX would gain attention as a viable desktop replacement if Linux was touted as such, after such improvements as have been described. That would be a hard choice for many software companies to make, it already is in some segments.
"I don't agree with this. The video card market is all about benchmarks, benchmarks, benchmarks. If your card produces better numbers, you are the market leader."
First, most of my post was speaking in the general case, not necessarily specific to nVidia or even video card market. Although I think many of my points do apply to those two very well.
Yes the video card market is very benchmark centered. Point granted.
"I'd agree that there's potentially problems with this. However, AFAIK, the nVidia drivers are based on the original XFree86 drivers."
Perhaps, but that doesn't change the fact that nVidia is apparently adding support for something that is sublicensed (the AGP/DMA support) and have their hands tied to some extent.
"I find this hard to swallow. Is it really cheaper to hack at something a competitor wrote for completely different hardware than it is to rewrite it yourself ?"
If the thing being hacked is something that the hacker wouldn't have thought of or been able to arrive at without significant time or money investment, yes.
"In any case, they could always use a restrictive license which ties the product to their own hardware."
Doesn't really count as open source then does it? Surely there would be a mountain of backlash for such an obnoxious restriction anyway.
"Of those three, I'd argue that only VA can make good money because they sell hardware. The others are trying to sell tiny little box sets, which isn't very profitable."
Well on a per unit basis maybe those little box sets don't amount to much, but sell a couple million of them and that is a whole pile of money on par or surpassing the sales of VA.:)
"Why spend money on developing drivers when someone else can do a better job for free ?"
Because technological superiority doesn't drive the market. Assuming that kind of superiority is what you meant by "better".
The fact is that most companies can not just simply say "Lets open source our code" without having to take a look at each and every product and make sure that there aren't restrictions on them doing that. Most companies, especially in the hardware business, will run into problems at this point. I say especially in the hardware business because it is by far the most patent encumbered and royalty ladden business to be in. Software companies have it easy at this stage of the game. Not to mention that it is relatively inexpensive to reimplement something that already exists in software from a third party vendor, that isn't the case in hardware.
Next, the companies have to make sure that their in-house developed technologies remain lucrative for them. In many cases this will pose a problem in terms of open sourcing their support software. If a company puts a million (and it's usually muchmuch more) into developing a new technology or at least an improvement on an existing one, then they have to be able to recoup costs and make some profit on it too. This means either patenting/licensing, or simply keeping the information proprietary/secret for a certain amount of time. If they simply open source it, they shoot themselves in the foot in terms of making that investment back because the competing companies (or local linux hacker) can learn of the methods, produce a similar (perhaps "better") version of the product, and effectively cut the orginal company out of the distribution loop. And if the company goes the patent route, they still catch flack from everyone because of the growing tide against software patents and even patents in general.
So if a company wants to support linux and make some money in that market, what are they supposed to do. Most of the money making models around open source software center on profits through support and services. There really isn't a sound business model for making money on open source software in and of itself, if there really isn't a large support structure needed for the software. This is going to be the case for such things as hardware drivers, media playback, and other relative smallish things in terms of functionality and code size. Red Hat, VA, Caldera, etc can make money. There needs to be a large support structure around operating systems, hardware site installations and configuration management, and whatnot. But there is no such need for a media player or a hardware device. So companies involved in these areas need to ensure their investments have time to pay back. Unfortunately this means closed source and/or binary drivers and at least in a products early stages. Two or three years down the lifetime of a product's marketting, things will likely have changed enough so that the companies will be happy to open source and let people have at it with the code.
None of this is to say that open source ideals don't need to be observed from the start. Specifically, open API definitions and frameworks are the most important. These are what is lacking from linux as a whole at this point. The situation is improving steadily. DRI is a good example. The opening up of OpenGL is another great example. But asking a company who is involved in selling software and/or hardware which doesn't have a strong market need for a marketable support structure is unfair and short sighted.
Where do you come off with this analysis? In the OSS arena there is the Livid project which is quite alive and kicking. Taking a more commercial route there is LSDVD (which I'm involved with). I know that you know about the Livid project. You post to their mailing list and have produced Xmovie and LibMPEG2 which, from my understanding, are composed largely of Livid source code. Where do you come off claiming that there is no one creating a practical DVD player for linux?
And in answer to your question: Yes we should be able to "rip" DVDs. This is necessary for fair use rights to be exercised since the word "rip" in this context is synonomous with copy (a necessary step for backups or media/time shifting). One just hopes that people have enough respect for the content, and those who produced it, not to illegally distribute the copied information.
In order for a film producer to make a dvd for retail distribution that is encrypted they need to get a "Process B" CSS license from the DVD CCA. At that point they will either be given the player master keys for inclusion on their disc or they get a license to have the keys put onto the discs (the difference being that they never know the keys, they just get to use them). The content provider also gets the right to use CSS encryption for the VOB data on the disc (where they get the program to scramble the data, I don't know, probably the disc mastering service will have it). DVD CCA then gets a royalty on every disc sold as well as an upfront one time payment for intial licensing.
Paul Volcko LSDVD
PS - The above is en educated guess at the process. The process B license information on DVD CCA's site is sketchy on details beyond interactions with the DVD CCA.
Well, it doesn't say it in so many words. But if you look on the back of the dvd cases, you will find something similar to this wording:
"This disc is compatible with all players displaying these symbols."
And the region and DVD Video symbols are next to this statement. This implies that you have no rights to view this disc on anything that doesn't display these two symbols. You can try to do so if you want, but there is no promise or garentee that you can. As such you're only rights to view the disc are on licensed players for the region depiced on the disc case and compatible with DVD Video standards. It's very subtle and sneaky, but I'm afraid that it would hold up in court.
This doesn't have any bearing on the NY/CT or CA cases, though, since the issue in CA is trade secret violation and the NY case is DMCA clauses regarding reverse engineering and copyright protection.
Perhaps because MPEG-2 is patented and it is really crappy at low bitrates. MPEG-4 is better suited to low bitrates (asf and quicktime are both derivitives of mpeg-4 aren't they?). I'm not sure what kind of patents and royalties are involved with mpeg-4 though. Anyone out there know?
You may be referring to the LSDVD group (of which I'm part of). In order to get the licensing required for a by-the-books player there needs to be a company formed (or backing from an existing company) that has sufficient financial footing so that if the terms of NDAs are broken, they will be able to actually collect something. They also consider a company with a minimum financial foothold to be a safer bet in terms of increasing their market hold and thus worth more of their consideration. (They refers to DVD CCA, DVD Forum, MPAA, as well as Dolby Labs and MPEGLA). LSDVD is not a company yet and to make a company requires some time (to get funding and to setup distribution, etc). We have attempted to get finacial backing, but have been unsuccessful thus far. We intend to keep trying, especially in light of the recent legal battles/losses which will likely keep current open player development out of the hands of the mainstream user and certainly out of commercial linux distributions. Don't read that last line to mean that we are happy to see the court rulings of the last week... in fact we are very unhappy with these developments and the tone they are setting (especially the ruling and how the case was handled in New York). Furthermore, we are in strong support of open development (such as the livid efforts). We have been involved on the design and on a geenral dialog level with the development efforts and plan to continue to. We are also planning to develop or help develop code related to the Livid Media Player and it's support framework, attempting to bring linux media playback (and potentially encoding) abilities up to and beyond that of Windows'. Even in our own player we fully intend to open source as much of it as possible, once we get the funding needed for our own company or get a agreement to produce the code on another company's behalf.
Our site is at: http://www.csh.rit.edu/lsdvd
The site has been slow (content wise) for the last month or two, but rest assured there is work being done. In fact we are hoping to have at least an alpha level version of the player ready in time for LWE in NYC Feb 1-4 so that we might be able to demo it to people and scare up some interest from investors.
So in reference to your post, there are financial requirements that must be met by anyone wanting to get licensing for DVD. As such traditional linux development and software production practices (developed by individuals, for free, in the open) are pretty much locked out of the DVD arena. They will argue that a company (Red Hat, or whoever) could license and produce and player. That kind of product doesn't fit a linux distro company's business model, though, so it is really up to an existing software application development company or an upstart to get a commercial linux dvd player out there. Or perhaps one of the more commercialistic distro companies (such as Corel) could provide this.
Sorry for the long cut and paste, but these sections seem to be paticularly relevant and could be a good jumping point for formulating one's logic on this:
17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(C).
Substantial Effect on Use
It is clear from the legislative history that a determination to exempt a class of works from the prohibition on circumvention must be based on a determination that the prohibition has a substantial adverse effect on noninfringing use of that particular class of works. The Commerce Committee noted that the rulemaking proceeding is to focus on ``distinct, verifiable, and measurable impacts, and should not be based upon de minimis impacts.'' Commerce Comm. Report, at 37. Similarly, the Manager's Report stated that ``[t]he focus of the rulemaking proceeding must remain on whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological protection measures (such as encryption or scrambling) has caused any substantial adverse impact on the ability of users to make non-infringing uses,'' and suggested that ``mere inconveniences, or individual cases * * * do not rise to the level of a substantial adverse impact.''
House Manager's Report, at 6.
Causal Connection
The legislative history also requires the Register and Librarian to disregard any adverse effects that are caused by factors other than the prohibition against circumvention. The House Manager's Report is instructive:
The focus of the rulemaking proceeding must remain on whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological protection measures (such as encryption or scrambling) has caused any substantial adverse impact on the ability of users to make non-infringing uses. Adverse impacts that flow from other sources * * * or that are not clearly attributable to such a prohibition, are outside the scope of the rulemaking.
House Manager's Report, at 6. The House Commerce Committee came to a similar conclusion: ``Adverse impacts that flow from other sources, or that are not clearly attributable to implementation of a technological protection measure, are outside the scope of the rulemaking.'' Commerce Comm. Report, at 37. Some technological protection measures may mitigate adverse effects. Along those lines, the Librarian must also seek information about positive impacts of technological access control measures. The House Manager's Report notes that:
In assessing the impact of the implementation of technological measures, and of the law against their circumvention, the rule-making proceedings should consider the positive as well as the adverse effects of these technologies on the availability of copyrighted materials. The technological measures--such as encryption, scrambling, and electronic envelopes--that this bill protects can be deployed, not only to prevent piracy and other economically harmful unauthorized uses of copyrighted materials, but also to support new ways of disseminating copyrighted materials to users, and to safeguard the availability of legitimate uses of those materials by individuals.
House Manager's Report, at 6. Another mitigating factor may arise when a work as to which the copyright owner has instituted a technological control is also available in formats that are not subject to technological protections. For example, a work may be available in electronic format only in encrypted form, but may also be available in traditional hard copy format which has no such technological restrictions on access. The availability without restriction in the latter format may alleviate any adverse effect that would otherwise result from the technological controls utilized in the electronic format. The Librarian is to consider the availability of works in such other formats. Id. at 7. The requirements that proponents of an exemption demonstrate both causality and substantial adverse effects on noninfringing uses also apply to the determination whether users of works ``are likely to be'' affected adversely in the three years following the conclusion of the rulemaking. Proponents who are unable to satisfy those burdens in the current rulemaking will have the opportunity to make their cases in each of the triennial proceedings that will succeed it.
Obviously CSS infringes on one's ability to exercise fair use of the copyrighted works. Even if CSS is determined to be a copyright protection mechanism for DVD, DVDs should be an example of a class of works exempt from the coverage of the prohibition of circumvention clause in the DMCA. That class of works would be something to the effect of:
Those works protected via a technological means, such as encryption or digital watermarking, that adversely prohibits fair use actions, such as private performance (playing of the medium's content).
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Actually, the company, Fortinet, is looking into the matter. As the article states, they don't sell directly to end users, all sales go through resellers. Their policy with their resellers states that all US export laws must be followed.
So the company apparently does care and it isn't yet clear how this software came to be in use in the embargoed nation. For all anyone knows it was pirated by a Burmese government sympathizer who worked for another company that attained it legally. Let's not pile on this company in undue haste.
So what? Let me guess, we're supposed to get all hauty over this "criminal injustice" of a piece of software being used by an enemy state in a way we wouldn't like. Yet we'll cry "let the information/code/whatever be free" when it comes to encryption software, despite the fact that it is used by criminals, enemy states, and even terrorist groups. Hell, we'll tie ourselves in knots trying to make sure our criminal and military intelligence services can't overcome those encryption tools despite their use by the enemy. Actually, we tie our intelligence services hands behind their back even when they get lucky enough to find a criminal enterprise not using the encryption tools, too.
Let me guess, we're upset now because this software is inherently "evil" whereas encryption software is inherently "good", or at least benign. "Blocking software? Why that's used to stop the flow of information and it's used to oppress. Of course it shouldn't be making it's way from the US into our enemy's hands." Maybe we should throw on a good old, "Damned neocon's!" or "Corporations profiting by their export of legalized digital oppression! Same old story."
Give me break. If we're going to support free use and access for the one (PGP, for instance) aren't we logically bound to support the other, since the basis of the support was that programs are neither good nor bad and that information/code/software yearns to be free? Sure, lament their use for evil purpose, but lets not go all "this shouldn't be allowed to happen" or "there should be a law against it". At least not unless you're willing to split the moral/ethical hairs for all the "good" software too.
Bats? Bats have been considered a source of Ebola, SARS, and other virulent contaigens? But now some scientist types have awaken from their delusional state and remembered their theory from a decade ago that all these diseases are showing up because of man's encroashment on previously untouched parts of the environment... and we're supposed to buy it? After "bats" was put on the table as a serious contender they expect us to accept the takeback and revert to their time tested "human existence is its own worst enemy" fallback position?
Bats?
What the hell? When did this theory start getting serious recognition anyway? I feel like I did 5 or 6 years ago when seemingly out of no where everyone was talking about the theory of the extinction of dinosaurs being caused by an asteroid impact as being more or less fact. When I was in middle school and high school there were a number of theories discussed and no one was given considerably more or less weight than the others. There was the asteroid theory, of course. There was also a climate change theory, a disease theory, a species encroachment theory and probably a couple others I'm not remembering. Then seemingly a few years later I'm reading a web site or a news report or watching TV or something and the death of dinosaurs is attributed to that asteroid, as if it were written on stone and handed down from on high.
I know now that there was the discovery and research of the yuccatan crater, but still it was very disconcerting that something so fundamental in the "modern" history of the planet had gone from multi-theory to essentially a single theory and I hadn't heard anything about it until some time after the fact. Must have missed that all important week the world was abuzz with the massive shift in dinosaur extinction thought.
So anyway...
Bats.
Really? That's just seems loopy. Of course, encroachment on African, Asian, or Central/South American jungles isn't that good of an explanation for SARS or Bird Flu either, but at least it aint bats. Seriously, bats? Who comes up with this stuff?
1 billion pages! Talk about a violation of privacy! The justice department is only asking for a random sample of 1 million addresses and the search results for any 1 week period. This guy gets access to 1 billion pages via the google repository (whatever that is), conducts detailed analysis of the contents of those pages, and nary a word of dissent from the vast Slashdot audience.
I do not understand the overwhelming opposition to this request. They are requesting records of search queries and the results returned along with a random sample of web addresses indexed by the search engine. No identifying information at all. No user IPs, cookies, hashes or anything else. Just the query text and the returned results. What privacy concern is at issue here? Who's privacy is being violated? They aren't interested in linking up people to the searches. In so far as porn and child porn sites are revealed through the search results and are likely to be included in the random sample, that is not a violation of anyone's privacy; the results are of public information.
The opposition to this on user/citizen privacy rights makes no sense at all. Even if you object to the goal of trying to defend the law in question, this particular means violates no one's privacy. Claiming it does only weakens one's credibility when a genuine privacy violation is at issue.
What's more, Google isn't giving up anything of value by complying with this request. The random sample of sites is a drop in the bucket. It reveals nothing of Google's trade secrets (such as web crawling technologies or methodologies or algorithms). The search results are likewise of little worth without having the associated user identifications. Also, the real bread and butter of Google (as with any search engine) is in their advertising links and their search engine's speed and accuracy. Nothing about the technologies behind these will be revealed through the results themselves. At worst a comparitive analysis of the results from the cooperating search engine companies could reveal which is more accurate, which I suspect could only be a win for Google.
Nothing about the opposition to this makes any sense, unless it is just knee jerk reaction to cooperation with a government request of any sort or similar reaction to the goal of resurrecting the law in question... or simple hatred of and/or opposition to this administration.
Oh, for the love of Pete. Those few artists and bands that are lucky enough to get a big label contract get far more exposure than they likely ever would trying to go it alone or signing with a small independent label. They probably already make next to nothing, so they have very little to lose and everything to gain. Many indy label artists actively pursue contracts with bigger labels, using the indy as an incubator. Many indy labels are okay when this happens because they get part of the money in the new contract (especially if they brokered the deal in any way) and they want to preserve their "indy cred" and thus don't want (and quite possibly couldn't afford) to have a big time act on their roster.
Yes, the RIAA and the big labels have been using and lobbying for some pretty dip shit legal tactics and protections. They have been acting very short sightedly. But they are not the root evil that they are made out to be and the artists and bands signed with them have a great deal to be thankful for when it comes to the big labels and the RIAA and other organizations that actively work to protect their rights and business interests.
Did anyone here actually read the article? The Patriot Act is mentioned two times in the whole thing, both in the first two or three paragraphs. Most of the cases disclosed appear to be about FISA related violations, not necessarily violations enabled by the Patriot Act. Most are said to be administrative in nature (late renewal filings, late annual reports, etc.). Some minor types of violations, such as getting information after a warrant had expired. Very few major violations (5 year long spying on an individual without proper oversight notification was mentioned in the article). Also in the article is that these relatively few cases were investigated within the justice department and reviewed at both executive and legislative levels and action has been taken as appropriate. More often than not the solution was simply to update the paperwork and berate the people responsible for missing deadlines. In cases where there were material violations the information attained illegally can not be used in any court proceeding and will be destroyed (yeah... I don't believe that either).
... I'll rephrase: the government may very well be running amok, but this article and the documents at the center of it are not indication of problems above and beyond any other area of problems in regard to how government is working or even how law enforcement or the justice department is working.
The point is that there is oversight taking place, both internally through justice department investigation and through legislative review of exiting laws and abuses. Also it isn't at all clear from this article that there were any violations that were enabled by the Patriot Act. Regardless of the law or regulation governing law enforcement there will be violations. The question to be asked is if the frequency of these kinds of problems are greater than violations of other regulations and laws, this acticle doesn't touch on that bit of necessary context. This article is talking about a few hundred investigations over a three year period with 13 looking to be worthy of being called violations. This is not government run amok.
How does education of children stop adults from accessing child porn? Filters to block child porn are not intended to keep children away from it, it is meant to keep the consumers of it (adults and older teens) away from it. I'm all for supervision of one's children, but I don't see how this supervision/education effort that's proposed is going to address the problem that the filters were supposed to.
Not everyone in the justice department is focused on terrorism. That would be stupid. In so far as there may be a need for more resources in the terrorism department that doesn't mean that those fighting copyright infringement should be taken off their cases. And all the hyperventilating in the other comments aside (regarding the numbers of songs and petabytes of data and whatnot) it is clear these folks were acting as illegal distribution hubs for gigabytes of copyrighted. We should be applauding the justice department for their work here. It is better than the RIAA going after several hundred teens at a swing and it is better than efforts to outlaw p2p outright. As far as justice department efforts against copyright infringement go this is a very good one.
It isn't clear to me if the AC water is a closed loop system (where a feed and return line would be needed separate from existing water and sewage lines). Perhaps a pseudo closed loop system where a new feed is introduced, but return is through sewage and recycled back into the AC feed system.
Next, and I would think most importantly to us internet tech folk, this system is creating a new single point of failure for AC systems in the buildings of downtown toronto. Currently there is an electrical grid failure point, but by adding this the new AC pumping and heat exchanging facility becomes a failure point. Also, this water needs to be pumped up to the tops of buildings to be integrated into existing AC units, requiring even more pressure and thus electricity use. Likewise this system will be vulnerable to water line breaks (particularly a concern in a cold weather region like Toronto, Rochester, or any other city near lake ontario).
While probably more efficient in terms of electricity use, it is a centralization that would want to be avoided I would think. Even if "backup" AC compressor/exchanger systems were in place, this would only create that much more of a headache in the event of a primary failure. This would trigger a massive spike in the electical grid and likely cause signifcant problems, especially after a few years when the originally "saved" megawatts originally used for AC were gobbled up by housing, comercial, and other such electicity use expansion.
Lastly, linked articles in the other comments show that there is expected to be a 10 degree swing between feed and return lines to the AC water grid. I saw no mention of how much of a raise in potable feed water temperature was desired, though. One would expect a modest increase would be acceptable, but not a 10 degree increase. As such it would seem that water flow in the fresh water side of the exchanger would need to be higher than it is currently, higher than potable water demand. This becomes more true as the system is scaled up to handle more buildings and even some residential units as people want to get in on the cost savings or want to "do their part" for the environment. This water will need to be spilled off from the potable system back into the lake, resulting in greater heated water flow into the lake. This is not to say this is a problem, but to expect that this will result in no net heating of water in the lake, especially water proximate to a city using the technology is thermodynamically impossible. The heat is being transfered into water. That water will end up in the lake (or in the atmosphere or ground water table, but I digress). The lake thermodynamics will be affected (again, especially that area of the lake proximate to the city). Likely ecosystem changes will be in algea formation, currents, and small fish patterns. These lead to more changes, but the impact, on the whole, is probably insignificant so long as we're giving primacy to global warming, air quality, and other such concerns.
On the happy side this will create a hole bunch of new jobs: design, construction, maintenance of the new pumping and exchanger site, new billing staff and meter readers, new opportunities for HVAC repair and installers, a new taxable widget/service for the city, and it is grand enough in scale so as to be completed and used regardless of if it works out as planned or not.
First, the bill states that sentencing will be not more than 3 years, fines, or both for a first conviction under this law. At worst, that means one would probably get out on parole much sooner than the full three years. However 3 years is a max sentence and a judge would have leeway under to be determined sentencing guidelines to sentence for less time. Factors would most certainly include: intent to distribute, on what scale, for profit or not, and estimated financial loss based on those findings. Note also that the bill explicitly states that a judge can simply fine the guilty party, no prison time at all. The bill also includes stiffer max sentencing for 2nd and 3rd time offenders (6 years).
So purpose of making the recording will certainly be part of determining the sentence. Not to mention the justice department is not going to go to town on someone for this unless they can be damned sure they can prove intent to distribute. Besides ending up looking foolish in the media and suffering political fallout as a result of a botched prosecution, the justice department only gets a certain amount each year to prosecute given type of cases. In this bill (which covers several other types of similar copyright infringment, including distribution of pre-commercial release material) there is only $5mil allocated each year. No doubt that can mean 10's of cases each year, but they will still be under pressure to get maximum effect with that money.
Without the proof of intent to distribute, the estimated loss as a result of the recording is essentially zero and the judge would probably make the guilty party pay the price of a ticket as a fine.
You're forgetting the all important third option: Record/Pirate movie for non-personal non-profit distribution. For instance, putting it up on the internet for free download. That can cost a film maker (producers and directors), distributors, actors, and studios much dinero in lost theater, PayPerView, rental, and dvd/VHS sales. And this cost is only likely to increase as the use of high bandwidth internet connections increases. You may not agree with the degree of proposed punishment or the all-things-considered level of damage to the film makers and/or industry, but do not hide from the existence of the problem.
A final note, this bill can change as it goes through the House and back for conference (assuming the House passes a modified version) and before final passage for Presidential signing. *YOU* can make a difference by writing your congressional representatives or perhaps those running against the incumbent of your district in the upcoming elections. Register to vote so you have power. Contribute to campaigns representing your stances on the issues you care about. Involve yourself, no one else can do it for you.
Perhaps, if you think that political experience is something removed from that of life experience you would be correct. Life experience translates into political experience, though. Not necessarily one-to-one, but it certainly counts.
This doesn't mean that she can not be an effective governor. My question merely asked for her to provide some proof that she has the wherewithall to be governor and that she has the necessary ability to choose good advisors, and by implication to delegate responsibilties appropriately.
Bush was (and to some extent continues to be) plagued by people claiming he is dumb, ignorant, too young, and/or not capable of being president of the country. He addressed this during the election, in part, by making it known who a few of his key advisors and cabinet members would be. Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and even his father were floated as being people he would be depending on to help him make his decisions. His selection of Cheney as VP also gave him necessary creadibility and reassured the electing public that he was at least able to see his shortcomings and select people to fill in the holes where it was necessary.
Georgy could do a lot for her cause by taking on a similar strategy and giving people the names of some of the people she will be depending on who carry with them some clout and will allow people to look past her perceived inherent deficiencies as a very young, female, girl-next-door type candidate for the 3rd largest state in the union. Even the most liberally minded will need some kind of reassurance like this before they will be able to vote for her.
Lastly, this isn't some dustbowl state that has a minimal contribution/impact in the nation at large. This state has an economy larger than almost all the countries on the planet. Arguably the US's economy continues a too slow recovery because the California and New York State economies continue to drag.
She seeks to take on a huge responsibility. A 50 year old well versed in the art of economic, social, and security policy making and political machinery would be challenged. Georgy wants people to accept a 26 (almost 27) year old whom has a wopping few post-college years of real world work experience, no husband or children (at least none mentioned on what I've read of the website), and probably still rents (I don't know, but a safe guess) to do it. She has *a lot* to prove, regardless of her ideas on the issues, before she will be considered a leader capable of filling the role she seeks. Arnold and others have varrying degrees of convincing to do too, but Georgy has quite a bit more... and rightly so.
You are 26. I am a couple weeks short of being 26. Most of my friends are about the same age as you and I. What in your 26 years of life makes you think you are qualified to be the governor of the State of California? I can only assume you have never held any elected or appointed office in any segment of government since I didn't see it listed in my reading of your website.
Given your presumed lack of experience and ability to hold the office you are seeking, who will you be appointing as your advisors upon becoming governor and what are their qualifications?
You are partially right. The $10,000 you mention is for the DVD-Forum specifications. These do not have anything to do with CSS. No where in the specs do they mentions CSS except to note the inclusion of encryption bits in the PES packet headers and some CGMS bits in the IFOs. To license CSS requires going through DVDCCA which is a much higher dollar investment. It also doesn't have per unit royalties associated with players (there are per unit royalties on css encrypted discs, however), but the one time fees for getting CSS licensing for a player are in the area of $1 million last I heard. This is put in escrow/trust, so it isn't money spent so much as money you may lose if you fail to meet the licensing requirements, i.e. your keys are in plaintext in the app someplace.
Many companies have invested in linux DVD player software development, but few have released publicly or have wide use bases. None are free as there are per unit royalities associated with ac-3 and mpeg-2 decoding (Dolby and MPEGLA collecting, respectively).
So it isn't as simple as RedHat and others dropping some money in a bucket. Companies are afraid of their software getting hacked, losing their shirts due to piracy of the non-free software, running into myriad problems with driver and hardware support which they tolerate in Windows (because of the market and OEM demand), having to deal with frequent kernel version changes (thus potential kernel module issues), and in also having to support their product on a historically "difficult" to use and administer OS.
This can not be for real. Tubes tend to draw considerably more current than a darlington pair. They generate much more heat. In a PC case I would think that they would be far more susceptible to RF interference, as well. Not to mention, what would be the possible upside to doing this. There is next to no market for tube amps even in the Hi-fi market. Anything that has then cost a ton of money compared to solid state amps. This just seems really far fetched. Technical issues aside, there must be zero market demand for this. No audiophile would want this and it would appear that would be their only market for this.
Because by examining what would make it a successful move we can see what is truely lacking in Linux. Specifically, Linux is already a well established network OS. It has started making inroads into the embedded market. It has remained outside the mainstream though. While lack of applications is a key reason, it is not the end of the story. One has to look at why there are a lack of applications. Top reasons are a lack of stable and even marginally standard API's for application development. Yes, there is OpenGL, but beyond that there is very little there for game developers. For productivity apps there is X and the various toolkits out there. While each is good in its own right (as well as bad), the fact that there are so many different toolkits leaves companies having to pick sides in what is largely an even divide between Qt and GTK (not to mention all the less popular toolkits available). These toolkits are also still in heavy development leading to unstable API's in some and a lack of features in many. This last point means that a company wanting to get involved in a linux app right now has to keep on the bleeding edge of linux to get the same level of functionality that they are accustomed to in other OS's (windows, BEos, QNX, etc). By examining what makes the pipe dream of BeOS becoming open source (at least in large part, similar to QNX), we can see what Linux needs to provide to really break ground in the mainstream and the industry as a whole. Here we saw one reason, there are obviously more to be recognized and hopefully implemented.
Some will say that looking at BeOS for ideas on what is needed for mainstream acceptance is flawed since BeOS didn't make it to mainstream itself. While there may be merit to this keep in mind that Linux has already gained wider acceptance and industry attention than BeOS ever did, as such those facets of BeOS that we might be able to provide in Linux are likely to make Linux stronger. Also, QNX is quite possibly already where a Linux/BeOS would end up. It is worth looking at that and seeing if it is going to make a difference to have an BeOSified Linux when it would be in direct competition with QNX as well as Windows. Right now Linux enjoys a certain separation with QNX that has allowed it to lag behind QNX (in many regards, if looked at objectively) without drawing large criticism from the small device embedded industry. Can Linux be everything that QNX and BeOS is (it already has the "more" parts, more robust networking, larger device driver support, more configurability, open source, etc)? That is what would be necessary in order to survive the move to that next level of application space friendliness. Don't think that Linux could just blow by QNX at that point. QNX would gain attention as a viable desktop replacement if Linux was touted as such, after such improvements as have been described. That would be a hard choice for many software companies to make, it already is in some segments.
"I don't agree with this. The video card market is all about benchmarks, benchmarks, benchmarks. If your card produces better numbers, you are the market leader."
:)
First, most of my post was speaking in the general case, not necessarily specific to nVidia or even video card market. Although I think many of my points do apply to those two very well.
Yes the video card market is very benchmark centered. Point granted.
"I'd agree that there's potentially problems with
this. However, AFAIK, the nVidia drivers are based on the original XFree86 drivers."
Perhaps, but that doesn't change the fact that nVidia is apparently adding support for something that is sublicensed (the AGP/DMA support) and have their hands tied to some extent.
"I find this hard to swallow. Is it really cheaper to hack at something a competitor wrote for completely different hardware than it is to rewrite it yourself ?"
If the thing being hacked is something that the hacker wouldn't have thought of or been able to arrive at without significant time or money investment, yes.
"In any case, they could always use a restrictive license which ties the product to their own hardware."
Doesn't really count as open source then does it? Surely there would be a mountain of backlash for such an obnoxious restriction anyway.
"Of those three, I'd argue that only VA can make good money because they sell hardware. The others are trying to sell tiny little box sets, which isn't very profitable."
Well on a per unit basis maybe those little box sets don't amount to much, but sell a couple million of them and that is a whole pile of money on par or surpassing the sales of VA.
"Why spend money on developing drivers when someone else can do a better job for free ?"
Because technological superiority doesn't drive the market. Assuming that kind of superiority is what you meant by "better".
The fact is that most companies can not just simply say "Lets open source our code" without having to take a look at each and every product and make sure that there aren't restrictions on them doing that. Most companies, especially in the hardware business, will run into problems at this point. I say especially in the hardware business because it is by far the most patent encumbered and royalty ladden business to be in. Software companies have it easy at this stage of the game. Not to mention that it is relatively inexpensive to reimplement something that already exists in software from a third party vendor, that isn't the case in hardware.
Next, the companies have to make sure that their in-house developed technologies remain lucrative for them. In many cases this will pose a problem in terms of open sourcing their support software. If a company puts a million (and it's usually muchmuch more) into developing a new technology or at least an improvement on an existing one, then they have to be able to recoup costs and make some profit on it too. This means either patenting/licensing, or simply keeping the information proprietary/secret for a certain amount of time. If they simply open source it, they shoot themselves in the foot in terms of making that investment back because the competing companies (or local linux hacker) can learn of the methods, produce a similar (perhaps "better") version of the product, and effectively cut the orginal company out of the distribution loop. And if the company goes the patent route, they still catch flack from everyone because of the growing tide against software patents and even patents in general.
So if a company wants to support linux and make some money in that market, what are they supposed to do. Most of the money making models around open source software center on profits through support and services. There really isn't a sound business model for making money on open source software in and of itself, if there really isn't a large support structure needed for the software. This is going to be the case for such things as hardware drivers, media playback, and other relative smallish things in terms of functionality and code size. Red Hat, VA, Caldera, etc can make money. There needs to be a large support structure around operating systems, hardware site installations and configuration management, and whatnot. But there is no such need for a media player or a hardware device. So companies involved in these areas need to ensure their investments have time to pay back. Unfortunately this means closed source and/or binary drivers and at least in a products early stages. Two or three years down the lifetime of a product's marketting, things will likely have changed enough so that the companies will be happy to open source and let people have at it with the code.
None of this is to say that open source ideals don't need to be observed from the start. Specifically, open API definitions and frameworks are the most important. These are what is lacking from linux as a whole at this point. The situation is improving steadily. DRI is a good example. The opening up of OpenGL is another great example. But asking a company who is involved in selling software and/or hardware which doesn't have a strong market need for a marketable support structure is unfair and short sighted.
Where do you come off with this analysis? In the OSS arena there is the Livid project which is quite alive and kicking. Taking a more commercial route there is LSDVD (which I'm involved with). I know that you know about the Livid project. You post to their mailing list and have produced Xmovie and LibMPEG2 which, from my understanding, are composed largely of Livid source code. Where do you come off claiming that there is no one creating a practical DVD player for linux?
And in answer to your question: Yes we should be able to "rip" DVDs. This is necessary for fair use rights to be exercised since the word "rip" in this context is synonomous with copy (a necessary step for backups or media/time shifting). One just hopes that people have enough respect for the content, and those who produced it, not to illegally distribute the copied information.
Paul Volcko
LSDVD
In order for a film producer to make a dvd for retail distribution that is encrypted they need to get a "Process B" CSS license from the DVD CCA. At that point they will either be given the player master keys for inclusion on their disc or they get a license to have the keys put onto the discs (the difference being that they never know the keys, they just get to use them). The content provider also gets the right to use CSS encryption for the VOB data on the disc (where they get the program to scramble the data, I don't know, probably the disc mastering service will have it). DVD CCA then gets a royalty on every disc sold as well as an upfront one time payment for intial licensing.
Paul Volcko
LSDVD
PS - The above is en educated guess at the process. The process B license information on DVD CCA's site is sketchy on details beyond interactions with the DVD CCA.
Well, it doesn't say it in so many words. But if you look on the back of the dvd cases, you will find something similar to this wording:
"This disc is compatible with all players displaying these symbols."
And the region and DVD Video symbols are next to this statement. This implies that you have no rights to view this disc on anything that doesn't display these two symbols. You can try to do so if you want, but there is no promise or garentee that you can. As such you're only rights to view the disc are on licensed players for the region depiced on the disc case and compatible with DVD Video standards. It's very subtle and sneaky, but I'm afraid that it would hold up in court.
This doesn't have any bearing on the NY/CT or CA cases, though, since the issue in CA is trade secret violation and the NY case is DMCA clauses regarding reverse engineering and copyright protection.
Paul Volcko
LSDVD
Perhaps because MPEG-2 is patented and it is really crappy at low bitrates. MPEG-4 is better suited to low bitrates (asf and quicktime are both derivitives of mpeg-4 aren't they?). I'm not sure what kind of patents and royalties are involved with mpeg-4 though. Anyone out there know?
You may be referring to the LSDVD group (of which I'm part of). In order to get the licensing required for a by-the-books player there needs to be a company formed (or backing from an existing company) that has sufficient financial footing so that if the terms of NDAs are broken, they will be able to actually collect something. They also consider a company with a minimum financial foothold to be a safer bet in terms of increasing their market hold and thus worth more of their consideration. (They refers to DVD CCA, DVD Forum, MPAA, as well as Dolby Labs and MPEGLA). LSDVD is not a company yet and to make a company requires some time (to get funding and to setup distribution, etc). We have attempted to get finacial backing, but have been unsuccessful thus far. We intend to keep trying, especially in light of the recent legal battles/losses which will likely keep current open player development out of the hands of the mainstream user and certainly out of commercial linux distributions. Don't read that last line to mean that we are happy to see the court rulings of the last week... in fact we are very unhappy with these developments and the tone they are setting (especially the ruling and how the case was handled in New York). Furthermore, we are in strong support of open development (such as the livid efforts). We have been involved on the design and on a geenral dialog level with the development efforts and plan to continue to. We are also planning to develop or help develop code related to the Livid Media Player and it's support framework, attempting to bring linux media playback (and potentially encoding) abilities up to and beyond that of Windows'. Even in our own player we fully intend to open source as much of it as possible, once we get the funding needed for our own company or get a agreement to produce the code on another company's behalf.
Our site is at:
http://www.csh.rit.edu/lsdvd
The site has been slow (content wise) for the last month or two, but rest assured there is work being done. In fact we are hoping to have at least an alpha level version of the player ready in time for LWE in NYC Feb 1-4 so that we might be able to demo it to people and scare up some interest from investors.
So in reference to your post, there are financial requirements that must be met by anyone wanting to get licensing for DVD. As such traditional linux development and software production practices (developed by individuals, for free, in the open) are pretty much locked out of the DVD arena. They will argue that a company (Red Hat, or whoever) could license and produce and player. That kind of product doesn't fit a linux distro company's business model, though, so it is really up to an existing software application development company or an upstart to get a commercial linux dvd player out there. Or perhaps one of the more commercialistic distro companies (such as Corel) could provide this.
Paul Volcko
LSDVD
Sorry for the long cut and paste, but these sections seem to be paticularly relevant and could be a good jumping point for formulating one's logic on this:
17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(C).
Substantial Effect on Use
It is clear from the legislative history that a determination to exempt a class of works from the prohibition on circumvention must be based on a determination that the prohibition has a substantial adverse effect on noninfringing use of that particular class of works. The Commerce Committee noted that the rulemaking proceeding is to focus on ``distinct, verifiable, and measurable impacts, and should not be based upon de minimis impacts.'' Commerce Comm. Report, at 37. Similarly, the Manager's Report stated that ``[t]he focus of the rulemaking proceeding
must remain on whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological protection measures (such as encryption or scrambling) has caused any substantial adverse impact on the ability of users to make non-infringing uses,'' and suggested that ``mere inconveniences, or individual cases * * * do not rise to the level of a substantial adverse impact.''
House Manager's Report, at 6.
Causal Connection
The legislative history also requires the Register and Librarian to disregard any adverse effects that are caused by factors other than the
prohibition against circumvention. The House Manager's Report is instructive:
The focus of the rulemaking proceeding must remain on whether the prohibition on circumvention of technological protection measures (such as encryption or scrambling) has caused any substantial adverse impact on the ability of users to make non-infringing uses. Adverse impacts that flow from other sources * * * or that are not clearly attributable to such a prohibition, are
outside the scope of the rulemaking.
House Manager's Report, at 6. The House Commerce Committee came to a similar conclusion: ``Adverse impacts that flow from other sources, or that are not clearly attributable to implementation of a technological protection measure, are outside the scope of the rulemaking.'' Commerce Comm. Report, at 37.
Some technological protection measures may mitigate adverse effects. Along those lines, the Librarian must also seek information about positive impacts of technological access control measures. The House Manager's Report notes that:
In assessing the impact of the implementation of technological measures, and of the law against their circumvention, the rule-making proceedings should consider the positive as well as the
adverse effects of these technologies on the availability of copyrighted materials. The technological measures--such as encryption, scrambling, and electronic envelopes--that this bill protects can be deployed, not only to prevent piracy and other economically harmful unauthorized uses of copyrighted materials, but also to support new ways of disseminating copyrighted materials to
users, and to safeguard the availability of legitimate uses of those materials by individuals.
House Manager's Report, at 6.
Another mitigating factor may arise when a work as to which the copyright owner has instituted a technological control is also
available in formats that are not subject to technological protections. For example, a work may be available in electronic format only in encrypted form, but may also be available in traditional hard copy format which has no such technological restrictions on access. The
availability without restriction in the latter format may alleviate any adverse effect that would otherwise result from the technological
controls utilized in the electronic format. The Librarian is to consider the availability of works in such other formats. Id. at 7.
The requirements that proponents of an exemption demonstrate both causality and substantial adverse effects on noninfringing uses also apply to the determination whether users of works ``are likely to be'' affected adversely in the three years following the conclusion of the
rulemaking. Proponents who are unable to satisfy those burdens in the current rulemaking will have the opportunity to make their cases in each of the triennial proceedings that will succeed it.
Obviously CSS infringes on one's ability to exercise fair use of the copyrighted works. Even if CSS is determined to be a copyright protection mechanism for DVD, DVDs should be an example of a class of works exempt from the coverage of the prohibition of circumvention clause in the DMCA. That class of works would be something to the effect of:
Those works protected via a technological means, such as encryption or digital watermarking, that adversely prohibits fair use actions, such as private performance (playing of the medium's content).