2600 Appeal Rejected 273
blankmange writes "Wired is reporting that 2600's appeal has been rejected by a federal appeals court. "The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a one-line ruling that it was not going to revisit an earlier decision in which 2600 was found to be unlawfully distributing a DVD-descrambling utility. In January 2000, eight movie studios sued the legendary hacker quarterly for posting the DeCSS.exe utility, which decodes DVDs and allows them to be viewed on a Linux computer." The magazine now has 90 days to file a Supreme Court appeal." The Appeals court did not have to take the case, and they didn't. 2600 can appeal to the Supreme Court, but they don't have to take the case either - it's looking more and more as though Kaplan's ruling will stand.
and this is a first for Hollywood!!?????? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is hardly the first time that Hollywood and other DMCA proponents have won in court. A federal judge in New Jersey tossed out a case brought by Princeton University computer scientist Ed Felten, who claimed legal threats made by the recording industry unconstitutionally chilled his right to free speech
Is that something that Hollywood would be celebrating - this smells bad - real bad.
2600 cant get no respect (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Monumental Court Decisions (Score:1, Insightful)
DMCA here to stay? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is this any surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
I own guns. I'm capable of all sorts of mischief. I choose not to.
I own a baseball bat. I don't attack people with it. Sometimes I even hit baseballs with it.
Decss is a nice tool that I can use to store my favorite DVD on my laptop and watch it when I'm on travel without dragging a bunch of extra stuff around. I don't steal movies on DVD... I certainly could, I chose not to.
Just because you can use a tool that has a legitmate purpose to break the law doesn't mean you will do so.
Plus, who has time to download some sucky dvd rip anyway? Life's too short, I'd rather plunk down the $20 or so and have a nice library. It's retarded to spend all that time stealing a movie then pay big bucks for a writable DVD.
Re:2600 cant get no respect (Score:2, Insightful)
If you examine the Judges Original ruling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:2600 cant get no respect (Score:3, Insightful)
If this is the reason, then the judge should be put in jail. Judges are supposed to be impartial rulers of the law. If they are not doing their job, they should be impeached. If they are discriminating against groups of people (in this case, political activists), they should be put in jail for something (I'm sure there's a law regarding this with specific penalties and everything).
maybe you guys should wake up (Score:2, Insightful)
This hardly just ties into the DMCA, and the music and movies industry. It ties into a far larger picture, that of the decaying public trust in the gov't, and worse yet, the courts.
As Americans, we've liked to think of the courts as a neutral element in our politics, one that cannot be so easily swayed by money grubbers and the bands of lawyers and lobbyists they employ. I still remember how commentators noted that perhaps the most serious damage done in the Bush/Gore election was that a large segment of the population quietly lost faith in the judiciary's ability to stay apolitical--that they too can, and will, play political football.
Here, in light of the DMCA, we have seen how campaign contributions have been used to push a bill thru Congress, ultimately affecting a ruling in court, with the aid of their own high-priced lawyers.
So why should you give a damn? Because perfectly legitimate actions are being illegalized! When this happens, people simple don't give a shit about the law. And when people start with that attitude, the law loses authority, and the government's claim to righteousness is eroded.
In the end, everyday hackers like you and me will simply not shit about what's "right." Because we feel that we've been wronged, everything is now fair game. And believe me, vigilante rule, all of this every-man-for-himself mentality that might spew forth--it scares the shit out of me, cuz we might not win.
Re:2600 cant get no respect (Score:5, Insightful)
Judge Kaplan wasn't exactly shy about his views, no sirreee bob ...
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org) [sethf.com]
The fact of the matter (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're still angry about this decision, your next step is to contact your local senator and tell him or her your feelings on the DMCA and what you think they-- as your elected representative, should do. It is an election year afterall. Findout their stance on the issue and vote for someone who accurately represents your wishes!
adam
Re:T-Shirts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:2600 cant get no respect (Score:4, Insightful)
My response to the dopey judge:
Now we are all elitist too?
We believe that information should be available without charge to any dooling idiot who bought it.
I'll have to add that to the list - We're all elitist greedy selfish thieves with ulterior motives. Expecially those evil librarians [doc.gov], evil journalists [eff.org], and evil scientists [eff.org].
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Re:Neither 2600 nor the EFF have skin in this game (Score:3, Insightful)
So far as I can tell... the foundation for the MPAA's case is that DeCSS was a 'tool' for people who stole their copyrighted works - that was why posting, and then linking to, DeCSS was interpreted as a crime in the first place. The defence was based on at least three central points. First, that DeCSS was legitimate to be in possession of, as it was useful as a tool to use content already paid for; moreso, as it was the only way to access such content on particular players (Linux DVD drives). Second, that computer source code is protected speech (I'm not sure if they only argued for symbolic code (C, C++, Java; assembler for your chip of choice) or bianary code (1100, etc.)) as it was a form of written communication, albeit encoded. Thirdly, linking to other websites from your own site does not just imply that you condone or encourage what the linked-to site has in terms of content.
The prosecution would somehow have to argue that the comprimising picture was illegal. Seeing as tabloids flourish (with many a unwanted photo) and there is nothing inherently useful about having a photograph in computer code except for the ease of distribution, the example may be a bit pessimistic. I may be wrong; some places have privacy laws that might cover such distribution. Either way, the disputed data must be illegal in some way. Or so I read it.
On the other hand, IANAL either.
P.S.DeCSS [is2.dal.ca]. The US may be the land of the brave, but Canada is the home of the free :)
That ruling doesn't make sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Notice that this paragraph says nothing about encryption, but talks about the law. Movies that were distributed on VHS were just as much protected by the law as DVDs are today. That is why the next sentence does not make sense:
The advent of "new technology" i.e. DeCSS, did not change the law anymore than the "new technology" that allowed the movie makers to encrypt the DVDs in the first place.
In other words the *law* is about stopping people from unlawfully distributing copies. Decryption is about viewing content.
Imagine going up to someone in the street who new a bit about computers but hasn't heard about this case. If you said to them "I want to watch DVDs on my computer, but it doesn't have windows so I have to make my own DVD player to watch them. Is that fair use of the DVD?" What would their answer be? How could they possibly say no?
I know what someone will say - yes you can use DeCSS for fair use, but you can also use it for illegal use. What are they really saying? They mean "it is easier to stop people producing DeCSS than it is to stop people distributing copies". In other words "we're inadequate to enforce the law as it is, so we're going to make it more restrictive."
Just my 2 pence...
Julian
Re:Errr. . . . Civil disobediance (Score:4, Insightful)
The DMCA is offensive because of the submersed way it was passed. Recall the stories about the method applied. The voting was held in a dubious way at a dubious time if I recall correctly. This is law that never had due process. While there was a little bit of mention about it prior to it being passed into law, the DMCA was passed very quickly and very quietly. There are enough people pissed off about that to disallow that tactic from being used again for a while. We should be fighting against that tactic but you have to get legislators prepared to fight that for you... there is no other way.
The DMCA was law written in the interest of one group only. The public's interest wasn't even a little-bit considered. It was already illegal to copy copyrighted works. We didn't need new law to make it 'more' illegal. It was written so that it could be a weapon against due process against the people who are less capable of affording good legal defense. In effect, it gave the entertainment interests "first strike nuclear capability" against anyone they want without good due process involved. The DMCA isn't about making anything 'more' illegal, it's a weapon. Since when should law be a weapon?
Finally, since this is a weapon in the interests of the entertainment media, getting the public's attention will be pretty much impossible without major events. Most people still don't know what Macrovision is and just think there's something wrong with their VCR. (Admittedly, I didn't know what it was either until I bought my first DVD player. Since I have an inexpensive TV and an inexpensive VCR, the only obvious way to hook my DVD player up was through my VCR's inputs... but for some mysterious reason it was all scrambled... most people usually stop there, but I'm a geek -- it's still a rare breed -- which is where my story kinda begins.)
The DMCA and future 'technology law' seek to restrict knowledge and the ability to tweak, tinker and research. This takes such knowledge out of the hands of the hobbyist almost entirely. The ability for me to hack on things on my kitchen table... to learn about the world on any level of my choosing is a very fundamental restriction. The restriction of information and knowledge... just the thought of it frightens me. Speech is just the way knowledge is conveyed. There are things that 'they don't want you to know or even know about!' That's a big problem.
I find it disturbing when there is software installed on my machine doing something I don't want it to do and didn't know was there. That's usually called a virus or a trojan. Now it's also called "spyware" and "ad engines." I'm not alone in that. I find it disturbing when law is passed without public notice, attention or heed... our legislators just looked the other way allowing the first of many up-an-coming measures to begin. Again, disturbing.
And finally, again as the DMCA and similar laws being attemptd are in the interest of the parties controlling the media, it's not likely that any small events will get public attention. If you need a visual, imagine a cute little cartoon boa contrictor surrounding us. It's cute, funny, interesting, colorful... but that's always the approach of this predator. And when we can't get out, they constrict until we can't breathe.
Changes in the way our government runs is no accident. It was predicted and it is happening now. Public opinion is that we do not own our country -- our government does -- and anything happening that we don't like; there's nothing we can do about it.
I resent being called a 'troll.' The point I'm making is that the public's attention isn't being raised and that's no accident. The 9-11 event was not just a 'terrorist act.' It was a very significant "PR" move to get attention. There is a problem with what's going on over there in those distant lands. People never really knew about it before then. Sometimes, that's just what it takes to get their attention. People still don't know why it happened but more people know now than did before. Likewise, people still don't know the value of what's going on here. Right now, the DMCA is only bothering a 'few' individuals and we have 'Larry Flynt' [2600] fighting our battles for us. In the same way people had a difficult time getting behind 'porn' people are having some problem getting behind 'hackers.'
Our Reality is our perception and since the media is our perception, they control our reality.
Re:Is this any surprise? (Score:1, Insightful)
I recommend you take a look at transcode [uni-goettingen.de] and dvd::rip [exit1.org] With these tools, it is possible to make a backup copy of your DVD's onto one or two CD-R's in DivX format. The ripping process takes about 15 minutes, and the encoding can take a mere 2 hours on a newer processor, depending on your settings. A high-quality, two-pass encoding session takes less than 8 hours on a 1-GHz machine. The resulting video is virtually indistinguishable from the original MPEG-2 video.
You may not want to download a 7-gigabyte file and pay for two DVD-R's to burn it on, but downloading a 1.4-megabyte file and burning it on two 25-cent CD-R's is not nearly as extreme.
What you fail to realize why the MPAA freaked out about DeCSS. They knew that DVD's were going to be around for a long time. They knew that while it was infeasible for technology at the time to make copying DVD's impractacle for the average consumer, it would get there in the next 5 years! They knew that video codecs and video encoding software would become more efficient and easier to use. They predicted that the .mp3 equivalent for movies would emerge, and bandwidth for the average end user would continue to increase. They didn't want to see another Napster in the movie realm.
And that's why they are fighting this tooth and nail. If they can get the courts to pass the laws that would keep people from copying their films, then they can reduce the number of movies that people obtain copies of movies without paying for them. They count on the fact that if something is illegal, fewer people will engage in that activity than if something is legal.
But to point out a flaw in your argument: people make a moral distinction between physically harming other people and copying a DVD or a CD. They are much more likely to use DeCSS to copy a movie that they didn't pay for than they are to bash in a stranger's head with a baseball bat.
Re:winux? (Score:1, Insightful)
The author's IRC buddies had no such higher pretenses about helping out Linux, and the Windows "ripping" community took the code and ran with it. Furthermore the defendant in this case is more closely allied with the crackers than with the Linux developers, as the judge no doubt noted.
I'm just sick of the argument that DeCSS isn't a 'circumvention device' because one of the original authors meant well. People around here are so interested in spinning this point that they have turned a complete blind-eye to the Windows rippers out there, going so far to even falsely deny that pirates use DeCSS.
Bottomline is that nobody cares -- the legal system is going to look at the net effect of the tool and not the good intent. EFF/Linux Devs need a better test case with a 'circumvention device' that isn't completely obviously used for copyright infringement by a large number of people.
Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
Civil Disobedience.
You have a moral obligation to ignore any laws that you do not agree with-- especially laws that are designed to protect the interests of a select few at the expense of society proper.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/