>This small side note, if legally correct, >changes the whole playing field. If CSS is not >to be considered copy protection but rather >access control, then DeCSS is illegal simply >because it avoids the need to pay license fees >for a reader, notwithstanding any argument about >potential redistribution of the original >material.
Actually the DMCA is very clear on this. Cracking for the purpose of interoperability is fine. No Linux player, it was cracked to create a player on Linux. I would love the see the DVD CCA try this legal argument.:)
I just went to the Microsoft update site from my Win2K box (legal off of the Select CD's) and only found a couple of multi media type apps. No critical updates, no general updates, nothing. Now since they are probably going to do this the same way that they did 98 (making it a royal pain to get updates without the web site) this could be very annoying on servers. "What do you mean I have to launce IE5 on all of my servers independently to get SP78?" Can't wait 'till we're told to roll this out all over the company:) Les Weinmunson
First the obligatory Slashdot IANAL. However I used to own a used book store and got curious about the history of used books one day because I noticed that some very old books had something very similar to a shrinkwrap printed on the first page of the book. Basically it stated that it was illegal to resell this book or to sell it for less than the cover price. Well I dug around and found out that a case covering this went all the way to the Supreme Court in something like 1908. It looks like the book publishers at the time were trying to stop the sale of used books and so began printing these notices in them to make it illegal to sell a used book to a store and then have the store re-sell the book and thus cut into their profits. Now obviously this is a case of the industry trying to make their own law and not lobby congress for it (maybe it was harder to bribe our congressmen back then, but I doubt it.) Anyway it looks like they got all their lawyers in a huddle and wrote this big legal mumbo jumbo that was supposed to cure all their woes. Well unfortunatly the Supreme Court held that since it was simply printed, and that it could be held as un-available until after the sale that it had NO legal force at all. For the agreement to be binding it would have to show up at the cash register as you purchased the book and you would have to read it and sign it right there before any money changed hands.
Now how does this apply to shrinkwraps? Exactly the same way. The Supreme Court is very reluctant to overturn previous decisions. They may amend them, but can you imagine what would happen if all of a sudden you could not sell you text books back? Or could not sell your car because of some small print under the hood? I would think that the plaintiff's in this case are already on very thin ice by citing a shrinkwrap agreement that has never really been tested in court at a high and very publicized level (at least that I know of.) Note that the shrinkwrap doesn't cover things like piracy because it's very easily enforceable under copyright law (you can't go by a William Gibson book and then print out 3 million copies at kinko's and sell them can you?) The blurb about copying software in the shrinkwrap appears to be mainly to tie it in to other law and make it look more official. Now if the shrinkwrap is unenforcable, and if the person who did the code is probably too young to be bound by it anyway, then how can they win this case?
I think that with enough legle muscle they might get an injunction at some point that would be appealed and could drag this case on for years. They had been betting on the fact that they have more money and lawyers and can litigate this for the next decade if they have to, but it looks like they didn't count on the EFF getting involved. I can also see the ACLU and other civil rights organizations getting involved in this if they manage to get links pulled as well.
I can't remember what station did this. I think it was either PBS/NOVA or the Discovery Channel. It was primarily about the evolution of safety features in automobiles and how they were first invented. It showed several of these type tests being carried out both on the good doctor and on cadavers. Probably the most disturbing was the head impact tests where they put a body on a platform and dropped it about 3 feet so that the head would hit first. It was kind of neat to watch the first time but they kept going back to that footage again and again. It was enough to make you want to wear a helmet around the house all day long and never drive your car again.
IBM OS/2? Dead, the minute they decided not to support Win32. If their marketing slogan had been "absolutely, positively 100% Windows compatible, only better!", they would have won. OS/2 was not compatible because Microsoft would not let IBM get the code to include it in Warp. IBM and MS co-developed OS/2 1 and 2 so IBM had the rights to include win 3.1 support in Warp 3 and 4. Microsoft however did not give IBM any option to license even the API's for Win32. Warp does have rather limited support for Win32 API's through the Open32 subsystem of Warp but that mostly looks like a reverse engineering job that was hacked together at the last minute. I think that your statement that a fully compatible OS/2 would have won is very near the truth. MS would probably have the larger market share home use but many corporations probably would not have dropped Warp as quickly as they have.
Does anybody out there know the real reason MS won't let you clone systems? If there is some deeply hidden technical reason for this I'd love to know about it since I have two NT workstations cloning on my desk right now and several more to go before the end of the day. I've heard this from MS before and I have yet to figure out what they are talking about. As a consultant I have rolled out hundreds of NT workstations for many different companies using Ghost software and have never had a problem with a conflicting SID. I know this is supposed to be a problem if you "upgrade" to NT 5 (AKA 2000) but I have yet to see any problems running several hundred NT workstations with the same SID on the same network. As far as upgrading, I think that organizations are going to do what they did for NT 4.0 which is buy new hardware with 2000 installed on it. Not to mention the fact that if MS did something with SP 7 to check for unique SIDs all you have to do is run a program like Ghost Explorer to set unique SIDs for each computer.
I think it is ironic that this stance has been taken by the administration in the middle of a large legal battle by the EFF and others over just this issue. The courts have come down on the side of freedom of speech and that source code is speech several times already in this case. In fact the US 9th circuit court of appeals had previously ruled that regulations on encryption source code were unconstitutional under both the 1st and the 4th amendments and that they would have to be significantly reworked. The case the EFF is using is Bernstein vs USDOJ at this address http://www.eff.org/bernstein/ The courts have agreed to re-hear this case but I think it will probably make it up to the supreme court in a year or two. That's when we should finally get a clear answer on this issue and hopefully not have to worry about it any more.
I went to college at LA Tech in Ruston. This is reflective of the mindset of the entire town. It is the wealthiest town in Louisiana (possibly the south) pre capita and the people with influence tend to totally disregard the rights of others if it is convenient for them. If you have ever seen the movie "Drop Dead Gorgeous" then you should have a very good idea of what this place is like. FWIW, LA Tech has much the same attitude towards its students.
Slashdot Mirror
>This small side note, if legally correct,
>changes the whole playing field. If CSS is not
>to be considered copy protection but rather
>access control, then DeCSS is illegal simply
>because it avoids the need to pay license fees
>for a reader, notwithstanding any argument about
>potential redistribution of the original
>material.
Actually the DMCA is very clear on this. Cracking for the purpose of interoperability is fine. No Linux player, it was cracked to create a player on Linux. I would love the see the DVD CCA try this legal argument.
Les Weinmunson
I just went to the Microsoft update site from my Win2K box (legal off of the Select CD's) and only found a couple of multi media type apps. No critical updates, no general updates, nothing. Now since they are probably going to do this the same way that they did 98 (making it a royal pain to get updates without the web site) this could be very annoying on servers. "What do you mean I have to launce IE5 on all of my servers independently to get SP78?" Can't wait 'till we're told to roll this out all over the company :) Les Weinmunson
First the obligatory Slashdot IANAL. However I used to own a used book store and got curious about the history of used books one day because I noticed that some very old books had something very similar to a shrinkwrap printed on the first page of the book. Basically it stated that it was illegal to resell this book or to sell it for less than the cover price. Well I dug around and found out that a case covering this went all the way to the Supreme Court in something like 1908. It looks like the book publishers at the time were trying to stop the sale of used books and so began printing these notices in them to make it illegal to sell a used book to a store and then have the store re-sell the book and thus cut into their profits. Now obviously this is a case of the industry trying to make their own law and not lobby congress for it (maybe it was harder to bribe our congressmen back then, but I doubt it.) Anyway it looks like they got all their lawyers in a huddle and wrote this big legal mumbo jumbo that was supposed to cure all their woes. Well unfortunatly the Supreme Court held that since it was simply printed, and that it could be held as un-available until after the sale that it had NO legal force at all. For the agreement to be binding it would have to show up at the cash register as you purchased the book and you would have to read it and sign it right there before any money changed hands.
Now how does this apply to shrinkwraps? Exactly the same way. The Supreme Court is very reluctant to overturn previous decisions. They may amend them, but can you imagine what would happen if all of a sudden you could not sell you text books back? Or could not sell your car because of some small print under the hood? I would think that the plaintiff's in this case are already on very thin ice by citing a shrinkwrap agreement that has never really been tested in court at a high and very publicized level (at least that I know of.) Note that the shrinkwrap doesn't cover things like piracy because it's very easily enforceable under copyright law (you can't go by a William Gibson book and then print out 3 million copies at kinko's and sell them can you?) The blurb about copying software in the shrinkwrap appears to be mainly to tie it in to other law and make it look more official. Now if the shrinkwrap is unenforcable, and if the person who did the code is probably too young to be bound by it anyway, then how can they win this case?
I think that with enough legle muscle they might get an injunction at some point that would be appealed and could drag this case on for years. They had been betting on the fact that they have more money and lawyers and can litigate this for the next decade if they have to, but it looks like they didn't count on the EFF getting involved. I can also see the ACLU and other civil rights organizations getting involved in this if they manage to get links pulled as well.
Les Weinmunson
I can't remember what station did this. I think it was either PBS/NOVA or the Discovery Channel. It was primarily about the evolution of safety features in automobiles and how they were first invented. It showed several of these type tests being carried out both on the good doctor and on cadavers. Probably the most disturbing was the head impact tests where they put a body on a platform and dropped it about 3 feet so that the head would hit first. It was kind of neat to watch the first time but they kept going back to that footage again and again. It was enough to make you want to wear a helmet around the house all day long and never drive your car again.
IBM OS/2? Dead, the minute they decided not to support Win32. If their marketing slogan had been "absolutely, positively 100% Windows compatible, only better!", they would have won. OS/2 was not compatible because Microsoft would not let IBM get the code to include it in Warp. IBM and MS co-developed OS/2 1 and 2 so IBM had the rights to include win 3.1 support in Warp 3 and 4. Microsoft however did not give IBM any option to license even the API's for Win32. Warp does have rather limited support for Win32 API's through the Open32 subsystem of Warp but that mostly looks like a reverse engineering job that was hacked together at the last minute. I think that your statement that a fully compatible OS/2 would have won is very near the truth. MS would probably have the larger market share home use but many corporations probably would not have dropped Warp as quickly as they have.
Does anybody out there know the real reason MS won't let you clone systems? If there is some deeply hidden technical reason for this I'd love to know about it since I have two NT workstations cloning on my desk right now and several more to go before the end of the day. I've heard this from MS before and I have yet to figure out what they are talking about. As a consultant I have rolled out hundreds of NT workstations for many different companies using Ghost software and have never had a problem with a conflicting SID. I know this is supposed to be a problem if you "upgrade" to NT 5 (AKA 2000) but I have yet to see any problems running several hundred NT workstations with the same SID on the same network. As far as upgrading, I think that organizations are going to do what they did for NT 4.0 which is buy new hardware with 2000 installed on it. Not to mention the fact that if MS did something with SP 7 to check for unique SIDs all you have to do is run a program like Ghost Explorer to set unique SIDs for each computer.
I think it is ironic that this stance has been taken by the administration in the middle of a large legal battle by the EFF and others over just this issue. The courts have come down on the side of freedom of speech and that source code is speech several times already in this case. In fact the US 9th circuit court of appeals had previously ruled that regulations on encryption source code were unconstitutional under both the 1st and the 4th amendments and that they would have to be significantly reworked. The case the EFF is using is Bernstein vs USDOJ at this address http://www.eff.org/bernstein/ The courts have agreed to re-hear this case but I think it will probably make it up to the supreme court in a year or two. That's when we should finally get a clear answer on this issue and hopefully not have to worry about it any more.
I went to college at LA Tech in Ruston. This is reflective of the mindset of the entire town. It is the wealthiest town in Louisiana (possibly the south) pre capita and the people with influence tend to totally disregard the rights of others if it is convenient for them. If you have ever seen the movie "Drop Dead Gorgeous" then you should have a very good idea of what this place is like. FWIW, LA Tech has much the same attitude towards its students.