In his essay, Culp compares the practice of publishing vulnerabilities to shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theater. What he forgets is that there actually is a fire, the vulnerabilities exist regardless.
c. And that the remedy was not in line with the findings of fact or law
That's just wrong.
Since they threw out the remedy for bias, they never reached the merits of Jackson's proposed remedy. They cannot rule on an issue that is not before them, and they remanded for a new remedy after "vacating" not "reversing" on the remedy.
All of the states and joined the DOJ in saying that they would not push for a breakup. There would be no reason for them to do this if it was a mandate from the Appeals Court.
Ouch, indeed! This may mean the eventual demise of the California Trade Secrets Act, as its scope is to far-reaching.
No, it's old hat that trade secrets only bind people that have a "duty" to keep the secret. That can come from a contractual agreement (an NDA) or a fiduciary duty. You also have a "duty" to not break the law, so blabbing about the results of your industrial spying won't cut it.
The court ruled that source code is speech; compiled executables received no such protection. As such, posession of the DeCSS source code is legal, but use or posession of binaries, or even compilation of source (which would produce a binary) is not legal. "You can have it, but you can't use it."
NO, NO, NO!!! This is a trade secret misappropriation case. Once the secret is out, the secret is out. DeCSS is the intellectual property of Jon Johansen and it was not misappropriated according to this opinion. Thus there is no trade secret based reason not to compile it or post it or whatever. The issue of object code protection is compeletely irrelevent here.
This case is a state law case. DeCSS may still be found to be illegal under the DMCA, but that is a completely different matter.
"If the source code were compiled to create object code, we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas."
This is a good example of "dicta", meaning a comment on an issue that is not before the court (at least this court didn't think it was before it -- I agree it may have actually been wrong about that).
Of course, it's difficult to understand how DeCSS could disclose any secrets if it's a meaningless string of 1's and 0's with no "conveyed ideas". What does that say about copyrightability of binary software, let alone the DVD movies, which are also 1's and 0's. Of course, DeCSS was created by somebody extracting the ideas from just such a compiled object code, so perhaps if the Court had been briefed on this subject it's dicta would be different.
Kaplan heard extensive expert testimony on that very point. The one thing Kaplan actually did buy off on is that the journey from human thought to speech to source code to object code is a continuum.
DeCSS is not source code, but rather a precompiled Windows executable!
Many people have distributed just the executable, but I'm baffled to hear you suggest that there is no source code. There is, it's in C, it's widely available and it's under the GPL no less.
Many people predicted early on that the C source code would be made legal, while the binary would not be. Of course, DeCSS is completely irrelevenet now. libdvd, drip and their peers are much more robust.
Well, unless you are *selling* it, distributing DeCSS wasn't ever a criminal issue anyway.
The real question is whether you can wear it without violating civil laws. Sadly, the answer still isn't clear. This court does say that you can wear it without misappropriating trade secrets, so at least you can wear it without violating state laws.
The other matter here is that this court's reasoning conflicts with Kaplan's. Eventually, the legal conflict will have to be resolved. The CA Supreme Court might reverse the appeals court or the 2nd Circuit might reverse Kaplan.
If neither of those things happen, the stage might be set to decide if code is pure speech at the Supreme Court level.
Why isn't Johansen's status as a minor the key factor in his inability to agree to the Xing EULA?
It's all a matter of civil procedure. That is a factual matter that might come into play if this made it to the trial stage. This court proceeded based on the assumption that the DVDCCA would prevail at trial on showing its claim that the EULA was valid. So no court has reached the merits of that issue yet. What this court said was basically that the trade secret act could not bar distribution of speech unless that specific person was contractually obligated to do so (ie had voluntarily waived their First Amendment right by agreeing not to disclose it). They cited the recent Bartnicki v. Vopper case to justify this viewpoint.
In sum, it doesn't matter whether the EULA is valid -- a EULA can't stop 3rd parties from posting code. The court completely ignored Kaplan's opinion (!!!) , an act that speaks volumes through silence, and ruled that source code sitting on a web server is "pure speech".
The definition of software under the copyright act is basically any instructions that make a machine produce a desire result. There are US legal precedents that imply that HTML qualifies.
Unlike a music CD, a DVD has navigation commands that were rich enough to implement the old game Dragonslayer. This includes chapter markup, paging, etc... The MPEG-2 and AC-3 compression is essentially instruction for how to reproduce the raw video and sound. Even the CSS encryption TPM is a software mechanism. During the preliminary injuction hearing in the DeCSS DMCA case Kaplan asked the MPAA guy something like "What is this key thing? is it hardware, is it software?" and the reply was "it is software".
I think it is very clear that DVD's are more than simple content. They are meant to be read only by a particular computer program.
The implication is that 17 USC 117 applies which gives "owners" of software certain additional rights - ability to "adapt" for use in a machine and ability to archive. If a DVD is software, it also refutes judge Kaplan's reverse engineering analysis (he found the DMCA RE clauses only apply to software works and wrongly assumed that a DVD wasn't one).
I can't really tell if this will make it easier for people to get information about the S Office file formats.
In my mind, when the various open source office suites can read and write MS Office fluently, then there will be a real choice on the business desktop. Open Office can hold a conversation, but it isn't fluent.
It also doesn't say anything about Java. One of the specific findings was that MS was anticompetitive by deceiving developers with its embraced and extended Java. I think they should be forced to include a Java VM in their browser.
Konqueror does seem to allow domain specific default overrides on most every type of thing you want. Allowing this on javascript is perhaps the best thing ever.
Now if Mozilla (and therefore K-Meleon) would do this, I'd be happy even when I have to use windows.
"They" don't store any data in "their" cookies. They're on your machine in plain-text format and ready for your inspection at any time you wish to look at them.
Thank you for stating the obvious. Nothing you said has much bearing on my feeling that every site to be required to state what data it keeps in its cookies and what it does with it as part of its privacy policy.
Me: I'd like to see browsers with more refined cookie control. I should be able to set the cookie policy for each domain.
You: As far as I know every major browser does this, or at least you can be asked each time if you want them.
I don't know of any browser that does this other than by asking "each time". As I said, I want more refined cookie control, with firewall type rule sets: berkeley.edu deny, *.edu accept site, default *.yahoo.com accept, *.com deny
They should allow opt-in cookies, but I'd still like every site to be required to state what data it keeps in its cookies and what it does with it as part of its privacy policy.
I'd like to see browsers with more refined cookie control. I should be able to set the cookie policy for each domain.
Killing terrorists creates more terrorists, because terrorists have families and friends.
What part of "kill them too" do you not understand?
Now, tell me again how the way to get rid of terrorism is to kill all of the terrorists. When the fact that they were facing death was what made them a terrorist to begin with. Go ahead, tell me again.
Round 1: Kill the Taliban and Al Qaeda
Round n+1: Kill everyone who takes the place of those killed in round n.
There are two possibilities: either the sequence eventually converges to and stays at zero killed in round N and beyond, or the sequence doesn't. Since there are a finite number of people, the second case isn't possible because it requires infinite people.
So long as there are generally more people killed in round n than n+1, the total number of living terrorists decreases with each round.
In fact, at some point, the number of living terrorists gets so small that they cannot maintain political influence sufficient to persuade any government to tolerate them. Soon after this occurs, subsequent rounds can be handed over to the local government.
The "never ending cycle of violence" argument is a pyramid scheme.
Re:More (and more and more)
on
Globalization
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· Score: 2
You need to make it clear that you won't put up with unwarranted attacks and then solve the root cause of the attacks (which, in my opinion is grinding poverty, lack of education and tyrannical government in the Arabic region. Educated, rich, democratic societies tend to produce protesters, not terrorists).
Bin Laden is multi-millionaire. Lot's of the Al Qaeda terrorists are/were college educated (and the Sept 11 ones could have put their flight training towards getting a rather lucrative job as a pilot). The Taliban REJECT the luxuries associated with economic success.
If those were the root cause, then the leading terrorist countries would be the likes of Honduras, Bangladesh, and nations of Central Africa. Your argument is basically recycled from the class struggles of the cold war. It's a new conflict, please get a new argument.
The root cause is that the militant islamic culture has a world-view that disallows peaceful coexistence with others. It really is that simple. They basically say this openly.
Re:More (and more and more)
on
Globalization
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· Score: 2
That would be the organisation that disarmed itself because
A)The Brits stopped shooting and started talking Correct me if I was wrong, but Al Qaeda initiated the use of violence here, correct? You can believe it's our fault if you wish, but nobody will give a damn about your opinion if you do.
B)Ireland is no longer in an absolutely terrible economic situation which was blamed largely on the British. I really don't care what is "blamed" on the US. We are the LARGEST contributor of foreign aid to Afghanistan. We did not cause Afghanistan's economic devistation. They caused it themselves. For example, the international community built a soccar stadium in Kabul and they use it for public executions instead of sports.
Re:So Sad...
on
Globalization
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The first is that while the US has, in a lot of cases, really botched things in certain areas in the Middle East.
Nothing we have done was in any way justified any part of the violence committed against us. Nor do the things that most enrage the terrorists fit into that group:
We rightly support Israel's right to exist.
We rightly maintain a military force in Saudi Arabia with the approval of the Saudi Arabian government.
We rightly support the embargo against Iraq, which refuses to abide by the weapons inspections it agreed to as a condition for peace after it invaded Kuwait.
No. That's when we were able to break through our own denial. The simple fact is that the organization that did it has been openly waging a declared war on us for years.
Hint: the people who dance in the streets celebrating the mass murder of civilians are the ones.
Unless you actually don't want to become a country in a permanent state of war, there's no problem with this.
What part of "until the pyramid scheme fails" do you not understand?
For more information read about the Irish 'troubles'.
The IRA is the organization that just disarmed itself, right? You were saying?
Besides, each side in that conflict wanted peace. The only question is under what terms. I think negotiation can work in many situations. Al Qaeda isn't one of them.
It's not a problem if you're happy to go in and cause massive civilian death, but if what you want is quick resolution and the resumption of peace with minimum civilian casualties, then you need to persuade both sides that shooting at each other just causes problems.
Let's work backwards through your statement. Since we cannot persuade them to accept peaceful coexistance, a quick resolution with minimal civilian casualties is impossible, so we have no choice but to accept massive civilian death. That is the reality, deal with it.
Of course, we aleady new we had no choice but to accept massive civilian deaths, since 6000 of our civilians are already dead and it is impossible to undo this fact.
What we can affect is which civilians die as a result of their hatred. The ones that take up arms to fight us seem like good choices. I'm told that 5,000 Pakistanis are preparing to cross into Afghanistan. I would drop cluster bombs on them once they get a couple miles across the border.
Re:It's our arrogance is why others hate us.
on
Globalization
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· Score: 2
Our companies fight tooth and nail for the ability to sell to the entire world, yet want people in the US (the richest general population on the planet) to only buy products domestically (no buying cheap drugs from Canada, region-enforced DVD players, etc.).
We have the biggest trade deficit of any country in the world. Sorry to interrupt your rant with facts...
And regarding McDonalds, it's a franchise, so when a McDonalds exists in another country it's generally because locals own it and because locals eat there. I guess these people would rather have fast food than abide by your desire to see them retain their "traditional staples of living". If you don't like McDonald's -- don't eat there.
Re:Its not just the US, its lots of others too..
on
Globalization
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· Score: 2
Option 4) Work _with_ the other countries in the region, have Pakistan involved in determining the make up and format for elections (I know miltary dictator setting up a democracy), have Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria et al involved in this process.
Ummm... That is exactly what we are doing. What do you think this coalition thing is?
Now I understand. America is hated because the rest of the world is jealous.
Why on earth do people believe that America has a monopoly on being hated? The Islamic militants hate anyone unlike them, whether it's (a) the US (b) Europeans (c) the Soviets (d) the Israelis (e) India (f) the Pakistani government (g) moderate Muslim governments.
They hate us (and everyone else) who values individual rights and respects individual choice, even though such choice may be used to reject muslim fundamentalism. This conflicts with their belief that the Islamic fundamentalist culture is more important than the individual, which explains why they ask people to sacrifice themselves in suicide attacks.
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In his essay, Culp compares the practice of publishing vulnerabilities to shouting "Fire" in a crowded movie theater. What he forgets is that there actually is a fire, the vulnerabilities exist regardless.
Slam.
c. And that the remedy was not in line with the findings of fact or law
That's just wrong.
Since they threw out the remedy for bias, they never reached the merits of Jackson's proposed remedy. They cannot rule on an issue that is not before them, and they remanded for a new remedy after "vacating" not "reversing" on the remedy.
All of the states and joined the DOJ in saying that they would not push for a breakup. There would be no reason for them to do this if it was a mandate from the Appeals Court.
Ouch, indeed! This may mean the eventual demise of the California Trade Secrets Act, as its scope is to far-reaching.
No, it's old hat that trade secrets only bind people that have a "duty" to keep the secret. That can come from a contractual agreement (an NDA) or a fiduciary duty. You also have a "duty" to not break the law, so blabbing about the results of your industrial spying won't cut it.
The court ruled that source code is speech; compiled executables received no such protection. As such, posession of the DeCSS source code is legal, but use or posession of binaries, or even compilation of source (which would produce a binary) is not legal. "You can have it, but you can't use it."
NO, NO, NO!!! This is a trade secret misappropriation case. Once the secret is out, the secret is out. DeCSS is the intellectual property of Jon Johansen and it was not misappropriated according to this opinion. Thus there is no trade secret based reason not to compile it or post it or whatever. The issue of object code protection is compeletely irrelevent here.
This case is a state law case. DeCSS may still be found to be illegal under the DMCA, but that is a completely different matter.
I noticed this too. I think they have the Plaintiffs and Defendents amici backwards.
"If the source code were compiled to create object code, we would agree that the resulting composition of zeroes and ones would not convey ideas."
This is a good example of "dicta", meaning a comment on an issue that is not before the court (at least this court didn't think it was before it -- I agree it may have actually been wrong about that).
Of course, it's difficult to understand how DeCSS could disclose any secrets if it's a meaningless string of 1's and 0's with no "conveyed ideas". What does that say about copyrightability of binary software, let alone the DVD movies, which are also 1's and 0's. Of course, DeCSS was created by somebody extracting the ideas from just such a compiled object code, so perhaps if the Court had been briefed on this subject it's dicta would be different.
Kaplan heard extensive expert testimony on that very point. The one thing Kaplan actually did buy off on is that the journey from human thought to speech to source code to object code is a continuum.
DeCSS is not source code, but rather a precompiled Windows executable!
Many people have distributed just the executable, but I'm baffled to hear you suggest that there is no source code. There is, it's in C, it's widely available and it's under the GPL no less.
Many people predicted early on that the C source code would be made legal, while the binary would not be. Of course, DeCSS is completely irrelevenet now. libdvd, drip and their peers are much more robust.
Well, unless you are *selling* it, distributing DeCSS wasn't ever a criminal issue anyway.
The real question is whether you can wear it without violating civil laws. Sadly, the answer still isn't clear. This court does say that you can wear it without misappropriating trade secrets, so at least you can wear it without violating state laws.
The other matter here is that this court's reasoning conflicts with Kaplan's. Eventually, the legal conflict will have to be resolved. The CA Supreme Court might reverse the appeals court or the 2nd Circuit might reverse Kaplan.
If neither of those things happen, the stage might be set to decide if code is pure speech at the Supreme Court level.
Why isn't Johansen's status as a minor the key factor in his inability to agree to the Xing EULA?
It's all a matter of civil procedure. That is a factual matter that might come into play if this made it to the trial stage. This court proceeded based on the assumption that the DVDCCA would prevail at trial on showing its claim that the EULA was valid. So no court has reached the merits of that issue yet. What this court said was basically that the trade secret act could not bar distribution of speech unless that specific person was contractually obligated to do so (ie had voluntarily waived their First Amendment right by agreeing not to disclose it). They cited the recent Bartnicki v. Vopper case to justify this viewpoint.
In sum, it doesn't matter whether the EULA is valid -- a EULA can't stop 3rd parties from posting code. The court completely ignored Kaplan's opinion (!!!) , an act that speaks volumes through silence, and ruled that source code sitting on a web server is "pure speech".
This is very, very good.
The definition of software under the copyright act is basically any instructions that make a machine produce a desire result. There are US legal precedents that imply that HTML qualifies.
Unlike a music CD, a DVD has navigation commands that were rich enough to implement the old game Dragonslayer. This includes chapter markup, paging, etc... The MPEG-2 and AC-3 compression is essentially instruction for how to reproduce the raw video and sound. Even the CSS encryption TPM is a software mechanism. During the preliminary injuction hearing in the DeCSS DMCA case Kaplan asked the MPAA guy something like "What is this key thing? is it hardware, is it software?" and the reply was "it is software".
I think it is very clear that DVD's are more than simple content. They are meant to be read only by a particular computer program.
The implication is that 17 USC 117 applies which gives "owners" of software certain additional rights - ability to "adapt" for use in a machine and ability to archive. If a DVD is software, it also refutes judge Kaplan's reverse engineering analysis (he found the DMCA RE clauses only apply to software works and wrongly assumed that a DVD wasn't one).
I can't really tell if this will make it easier for people to get information about the S Office file formats.
In my mind, when the various open source office suites can read and write MS Office fluently, then there will be a real choice on the business desktop. Open Office can hold a conversation, but it isn't fluent.
It also doesn't say anything about Java. One of the specific findings was that MS was anticompetitive by deceiving developers with its embraced and extended Java. I think they should be forced to include a Java VM in their browser.
Konqueror does seem to allow domain specific default overrides on most every type of thing you want. Allowing this on javascript is perhaps the best thing ever.
Now if Mozilla (and therefore K-Meleon) would do this, I'd be happy even when I have to use windows.
"They" don't store any data in "their" cookies. They're on your machine in plain-text format and ready for your inspection at any time you wish to look at them.
Thank you for stating the obvious. Nothing you said has much bearing on my feeling that every site to be required to state what data it keeps in its cookies and what it does with it as part of its privacy policy.
Me: I'd like to see browsers with more refined cookie control. I should be able to set the cookie policy for each domain.
You: As far as I know every major browser does this, or at least you can be asked each time if you want them.
I don't know of any browser that does this other than by asking "each time". As I said, I want more refined cookie control, with firewall type rule sets: berkeley.edu deny, *.edu accept site, default *.yahoo.com accept, *.com deny
They should allow opt-in cookies, but I'd still like every site to be required to state what data it keeps in its cookies and what it does with it as part of its privacy policy.
I'd like to see browsers with more refined cookie control. I should be able to set the cookie policy for each domain.
K-Meleon has come a long way. It seems pretty usable. Anybody else out there trying it?
It seems to use a lot less memory than mozilla.
Killing terrorists creates more terrorists, because terrorists have families and friends.
What part of "kill them too" do you not understand?
Now, tell me again how the way to get rid of terrorism is to kill all of the terrorists. When the fact that they were facing death was what made them a terrorist to begin with. Go ahead, tell me again.
Round 1: Kill the Taliban and Al Qaeda
Round n+1: Kill everyone who takes the place of those killed in round n.
There are two possibilities: either the sequence eventually converges to and stays at zero killed in round N and beyond, or the sequence doesn't. Since there are a finite number of people, the second case isn't possible because it requires infinite people.
So long as there are generally more people killed in round n than n+1, the total number of living terrorists decreases with each round.
In fact, at some point, the number of living terrorists gets so small that they cannot maintain political influence sufficient to persuade any government to tolerate them. Soon after this occurs, subsequent rounds can be handed over to the local government.
The "never ending cycle of violence" argument is a pyramid scheme.
You need to make it clear that you won't put up with unwarranted attacks and then solve the root cause of the attacks (which, in my opinion is grinding poverty, lack of education and tyrannical government in the Arabic region. Educated, rich, democratic societies tend to produce protesters, not terrorists).
Bin Laden is multi-millionaire. Lot's of the Al Qaeda terrorists are/were college educated (and the Sept 11 ones could have put their flight training towards getting a rather lucrative job as a pilot). The Taliban REJECT the luxuries associated with economic success.
If those were the root cause, then the leading terrorist countries would be the likes of Honduras, Bangladesh, and nations of Central Africa. Your argument is basically recycled from the class struggles of the cold war. It's a new conflict, please get a new argument.
The root cause is that the militant islamic culture has a world-view that disallows peaceful coexistence with others. It really is that simple. They basically say this openly.
That would be the organisation that disarmed itself because
A)The Brits stopped shooting and started talking
Correct me if I was wrong, but Al Qaeda initiated the use of violence here, correct? You can believe it's our fault if you wish, but nobody will give a damn about your opinion if you do.
B)Ireland is no longer in an absolutely terrible economic situation which was blamed largely on the British.
I really don't care what is "blamed" on the US. We are the LARGEST contributor of foreign aid to Afghanistan. We did not cause Afghanistan's economic devistation. They caused it themselves. For example, the international community built a soccar stadium in Kabul and they use it for public executions instead of sports.
Nothing we have done was in any way justified any part of the violence committed against us. Nor do the things that most enrage the terrorists fit into that group:
No. That's when we were able to break through our own denial. The simple fact is that the organization that did it has been openly waging a declared war on us for years.
Hint: the people who dance in the streets celebrating the mass murder of civilians are the ones.
Unless you actually don't want to become a country in a permanent state of war, there's no problem with this.
What part of "until the pyramid scheme fails" do you not understand?
For more information read about the Irish 'troubles'.
The IRA is the organization that just disarmed itself, right? You were saying?
Besides, each side in that conflict wanted peace. The only question is under what terms. I think negotiation can work in many situations. Al Qaeda isn't one of them.
It's not a problem if you're happy to go in and cause massive civilian death, but if what you want is quick resolution and the resumption of peace with minimum civilian casualties, then you need to persuade both sides that shooting at each other just causes problems.
Let's work backwards through your statement. Since we cannot persuade them to accept peaceful coexistance, a quick resolution with minimal civilian casualties is impossible, so we have no choice but to accept massive civilian death. That is the reality, deal with it.
Of course, we aleady new we had no choice but to accept massive civilian deaths, since 6000 of our civilians are already dead and it is impossible to undo this fact.
What we can affect is which civilians die as a result of their hatred. The ones that take up arms to fight us seem like good choices. I'm told that 5,000 Pakistanis are preparing to cross into Afghanistan. I would drop cluster bombs on them once they get a couple miles across the border.
Our companies fight tooth and nail for the ability to sell to the entire world, yet want people in the US (the richest general population on the planet) to only buy products domestically (no buying cheap drugs from Canada, region-enforced DVD players, etc.).
We have the biggest trade deficit of any country in the world. Sorry to interrupt your rant with facts...
And regarding McDonalds, it's a franchise, so when a McDonalds exists in another country it's generally because locals own it and because locals eat there. I guess these people would rather have fast food than abide by your desire to see them retain their "traditional staples of living". If you don't like McDonald's -- don't eat there.
Option 4) Work _with_ the other countries in the region, have Pakistan involved in determining the make up and format for elections (I know miltary dictator setting up a democracy), have Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Syria et al involved in this process.
Ummm... That is exactly what we are doing. What do you think this coalition thing is?
Now I understand. America is hated because the rest of the world is jealous.
Why on earth do people believe that America has a monopoly on being hated? The Islamic militants hate anyone unlike them, whether it's (a) the US (b) Europeans (c) the Soviets (d) the Israelis (e) India (f) the Pakistani government (g) moderate Muslim governments.
They hate us (and everyone else) who values individual rights and respects individual choice, even though such choice may be used to reject muslim fundamentalism. This conflicts with their belief that the Islamic fundamentalist culture is more important than the individual, which explains why they ask people to sacrifice themselves in suicide attacks.
You miss the point that even if we 'kill all the terrorists', more of them are created every day.
If you kill them faster than they are created, eventually they are totally gone. The more you "escalating the violence" the faster this occurs.
Actually, you won't. Because killing them will just make their neighbours hate you more and turn them into terrorists.
So kill the replacements and repeat until the pyramid scheme fails. What is so damn hard to understand about this?