News.com Links to DeCSS Program

zorglubxx writes "In less than a week News.com has published 2 articles ([Oct 3] and [Oct 7]) talking about copyright law and the DMCA where they LINK to DeCSS. Not source but compiled Windows version called DeCSS.exe. News.com know that 2600 lost their fight for linking to DeCSS so I wonder why they are doing this. Trying to make a point? Civil disobedience? An honest mistake?" Update: 10/08 02:51 GMT by T : An anonymous reader writes "In the time between when I read the first and second referenced articles, the links were updated to point the DeCSS gallery rather than DeCSS.exe"

3 reasons

[larry bagina]

Because News.com.com has more resources/clout than 2600?
Because the author didn't know better?
Because the author loves freedom? (and will soon be unemployed)

Probably an exercise of first amedment rights?

[haplo21112]

It is civil disobience, via exercise of the 1st amendment people. Its one publisher supporting another. If every new organization does the same whats gonna happen...I doubt everyone one of them is going to court.
AT least I hope thats what their link is all about. I suppose we shall see if it disappears later or not.
Hey does /. become an acessory because they link to a story that links to DECSS?

One Idea

[LawGeek]

Not having read the DeCSS case, I've got one theory as to why News.com is linking. I believe that their news reporting purpose probably means that they are much safer from copyright related claims than was 2600 magazine.

The whole "guilty by linking" idea relies upon CONTRIBUTORY copyright infringement, which involves at least some sort of encouragement by the entitity/person hosting the link for people to use the linked-to software to infringe copyrights. 2600 has a hard time convincing anyone that they're on the right side of that equation because they're a magazine dedicated to hacking, and because of the particulars of the way in which they were liking to DeCSS-hosting sites.

When the press is involved, First Amendment concerns get very heavy -- heavy enough to outweigh copyright law. More importantly, though, is the thought that contributory infringement (a judge-made doctrine, mind you) probably was not intended to apply to situations like news reporting agencies referring to sites for the purpose of reporting news. If News.com had to worry about things like that, technology reporting would be heavily chilled.

Then again, it could just be a News.com oversight. --- Checkout Greplaw [harvard.edu]

Any bets how long...

[AB3A]

...it will take before they retract the link?

Seriously, I think this was just something that got past certain editors. It goes to prove that editors don't ALWAYS understand what their writers put out.

I'd like to think an organization such as Ziff Davis would take the lead and fight this battle; but somehow, I doubt they really care about this issue one way or the other.

My guess is that an editor didn't. And now that we've caught them, I wonder what they'll do.

Nonsense

[drhairston]

The MPAA will not sue news.com for linking to DeCSS. Their new pet law is still wet behind the ears, and they will not 'sic' it on anything but defenseless targets. 2600 was a perfect target because their profile is such that they could be hauled into a New York court accused of nearly any crime and convicted solely on appearance and reputation. The MPAA has not sued the "DeCSS Gallery" hosted at Carnegie Mellon because they fear sic'ing their new pet on Academia or the Press until it has grown up a bit and sharpened its teeth.

Once the DMCA stands up to the U.S. Supreme Court, news.com may be a suitable target. But not yet.

Somebody time it!

[thatguywhoiam]

I give it 2 hours until they carefully de-link that DeCSS, max.

Re:3 reasons

[neuroticia]

I doubt that News.com encourages their writers to break laws, even stupid ones like the DMCA. No company wants a writer who is a liability.

I think it's most likely that the author didn't know better. I mean- hey. How many people can keep up with what is and is not a permissable link? You'd think that an author writing about something like that would know, but... Stranger things have happened.

Another possibility is that Author emails article in to work, article is handed off to low-level drudge HTML markup person who enters it into the system and link-ifies anything that looks like it could be a link. Sees "DeCSS.exe" and thinks "Oh. what's that?" does a search for it on Google, finds a link, and enters the link.

I mean... Most authors can't even handle their own proofreading. Who says they create their own links?

-Sara

innocent?

[Anonymous Coward]

if this binary is so innocent, why has the author used PEShield ?

-= PE-SHiELD v0.2 -- (C) Copyright 1998 by ANAKiN [DaVinci] =-

$ od -A x -vs DeCSS.exe
0001d0 PESHiELD

maybe its not as innocent as it looks?

Re:Exploiting Different Standards?

[neuroticia]

An even fight where one party is backed by a law (even one as shifty as the DMCA) and the other is backed by...?

A financially-even fight is a losing fight if one party is backed by legislation. It's dubious that News.com would want to fight that fight, unless they're seeking to overthrow the DMCA. The "Freedom of speech" argument wouldn't really fly here, as they could have just as easily made that link into one that leads to a page DESCRIBING DeCSS. (I would have actually found that more appropriate. I clicked on the link in my needing-caffiene stupor, and was quite surprised to find out that I had just downloaded the software. Imagine my mother following the link. ;)

Either way, it's a bit inappropriate for a mainstream publication to provide a direct link to software and not specifically state that it is a direct link to software, and not just a link to a page describing software. Particularly when the software performs an illegal activity. Imagine the panic that someone could feel when they're reading the article, click the link, and are confronted with the fact that they just downloaded something that the article clearly identifies as illegal, and (like most computer users) cannot figure out how to remove it from their system. ;)

-Sara

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Being that the author, Declan McCallugh, has extensively covered the 2600 and similar cases, I would say that he did know what he was doing.

As for the actual reason, I'll leave that for others to speculate.

Re:innocent?

[Anonymous Coward]

an executable packer, this one is designed specifically to make it really hard for people using disassemblers and debuggers to figure out what the executable actually does.

soooo......whats he tryin' to hide ?

Re:and we should care because....?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps that *is* childish, it's also a pretty damn good point.
How come they can do it, and 2600 can't?

Not a mistake

[Betelgeuse]

An honest mistake?

I think it's pretty clear that there is one thing this is not: a mistake. Even if they only did this once, I don't see how it could be a mistake. I mean, when was the last time you saw a news story from a legitimate news outlet that linked DIRECTLY to an executable file?

News.com is, perhaps, setting up for a court battle ('cause they want to challenge the DMCA) or this guy is trying to make some sort of point.

Wow, DeCSS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad DeCSS doesn't even work on newer DVDs. Look for DeCSS Plus instead.

DeCSS is Just a Symbol

[ksw2]

DeCSS is just proof of concept code. libdvdcss accomplishes the same end-result, and it actually works. It's embarassing how many people involved in the DeCSS issue don't realize this fact. libdvdcss is just as illegal (according to the MPAA's gestapo) as DeCSS was/is. Maybe it's a good thing that nobody realizes it...

Need this in a real paper

[phorm]

If we could get this is enough "physical" magazines or newspapers it would be a lot more effective. I know some magazines do provide URL's, I'm not sure about newspapers. If the RIAA sends them a "cease and desist" then what? They can stop printing, perhaps even pull copies of the article, but by then it's already out. It's a lot harder to stop something in live print than in online news, too bad it's probably not going to happen.

Every time an article mentions RIAA it should be linked, slashdot them every chance we get! - phorm

Re:Exploiting Different Standards?

[RealAlaskan]

Remember, the RIAA is well-funded by all the CDs they overprice, and all the artists they rip off.

It's silly nitpicking, I suppose, but you're wrong. The RIAA is well-funded by all the fools who buy the over-priced CDs. The distinction seems important, because it shows where to attack their funding: not by going after the CDs or the ``artists'', but by educating the fools.

HAH! So much for hope on that front ...

Re:Exploiting Different Standards?

[blakestah]

Could it be that news.com is simply pointing out the obvious double standard given to "hacker" sites like 2600.com and "reputable news sites" like news.com?

Absolutely. The judge in the 2600 case said as much. 2600.com was not viewed as disseminating free press, or providing a link point for people interested in fair use, or providing a service for linux people who wanted to view DVDs on their computers.

Instead, the judge saw them as anarchists who thought movies should not be protectable simply because someone somewhere cracked the crypto. He then ruled accordingly.

Defendants, on the other hand, are adherents of a movement that believes that information should be available without charge to anyone clever enough to break into the computer systems or data storage media in which it is located. Less radically, they have raised a legitimate concern about the possible impact on traditional fair use of access control measures in the digital era.
Lewis A. Kaplan
United States District Judge

Re:Obvious Ploy

[Soko]

Almost, but not quite.

News.com does a whole lot better if there's controversy happening somewhere in the IT world. IOW, if it's getting boring, nothing new happening, same run-o-the-mill Microsoft announcements on the front page, most people spend less thatn 30 seconds looking at it. Now, if they get sued, they get to play hero to the geeks and "stand up for user's rights", and in doing so become the centre themselves of a big (they hope) news story. Traffic galore - including getting /.ed regularily. Very clever.

IMHO, it's a case of the news reporters manufacturing news. I say let them whore all they want. I'm sure they can bring some bigger legal artillery to a court case - hopefully thier journalistic bretheren. I'll be happy when the DMCA is smacked down no matter who, what or how it's done.

Soko

Re:Exploiting Different Standards?

[Da_Biz]

Keep in mind that Declan McCullagh is the author of this article. He isn't exactly a spring chicken in tech news reporting circles--he's been writing for Wired for quite a while.

Declan--savvy writer that he is--very likely did this for a particular reason. Keep in mind that people who make a living out of (hopefully) careful observation of a situation, as well as grammar, do not make "mistakes" like this.

Source is available at that link...

[Codebender]

I'm guessing that most of you have the DeCSS source already, if not the t-shirt, but if you truncate the link, you get a source tree for 1.2.

There's also something about WMA in there. I have not looked at it, but I suspect that it's a way to circumvent the DRM that's built into the WMA format.

Re:innocent?

[malkavian]

At a guess, use the DMCA against itself. When taken to court, and told "You have put up this circumvention device online, and that's illegal, we're going to do you mate!".. He turns round and says "How do you know that this is a circumvention device under the DMCA?". At which point they say "Well, we circumvented your protection and....". At which point he invokes the DMCA, and says "Well, you just hacked my protection.. Now under the law,I'm allowed the same protection as you. You circumvented my protection, why can't I do the same to yours?". And things suddenly get a lot more interesting. Just my tuppence worth. Malk

Ouch! Shows what you know!

[Interrobang]

I mean... Most authors can't even handle their own proofreading. Who says they create their own links?

Actually, most authors do handle their own proofreading. Editors (whose time is usually spent doing far more administration than "galley slavery") love writers who submit clean copy. It saves them time, and it makes the author in question look like a real pro who actually knows what they're doing, instead of yet another no-neck yahoo who thinks they can write.

Likewise, a lot of [stc.org] authors [acm.org] can and do create their own links. I should think that Declan McCullagh [google.ca], with his tech-related tearsheets as thick as the average encyclopedia, would be better-suited to defending his ability to write a simple hyperlink (and to opine on the deliberateness -- or not -- of the DeCSS link) than I, but I'm here.

Also, low level process note: For any web-based print medium for which I've written (several, by now), the author generally includes his or her own hyperlinks, if not actual markup. Editorial commentary and/or low-level drudgery only come into it if the links don't work for some reason, in which case the author usually gets an e-mail from the editor advising him or her to change the link and resubmit the revised version. YMMV, especially if the link leads to actionable content...

Kind of a silly thing to do...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just like that Embed [politechbot.com] software that was sued under the DMCA [com.com]. You know, this one:

/*
* This program is for setting TTF files to Installable Embedding mode.
*
* Note that using this to embed fonts which you are not licensed to embed
* does not make it legal.
*
* This code was written by Tom Murphy 7, and is public domain. Use at your
* own risk...
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void fatal();

int main (int argc, char**argv) {
FILE * inways;
if (argc != 2)
printf("Usage: %s font.ttf\n\nPublic Domain software by Tom 7. Use at your own risk.\n",argv[0]);
else if (inways = fopen(argv[1],"rb+")) {
int a,x;
char type[5];
type[4]=0;
fseek(inways,12,0);
for (;;) {
for (x=0;x<4;x++) if (EOF == (type[x] = getc(inways))) fatal();
if (!strcmp(type,"OS/2")) {
int length;
unsigned long loc, fstype, sum=0;
loc=ftell(inways); /* location for checksum */
for (x=4;x--;) if (EOF == getc(inways)) fatal();
fstype = fgetc(inways) << 24; fstype |= fgetc(inways) << 16;
fstype |= fgetc(inways) << 8 ; fstype |= fgetc(inways) ;
length = fgetc(inways) << 24; length |= fgetc(inways) << 16;
length |= fgetc(inways) << 8 ; length |= fgetc(inways) ;
/* printf("fstype: %d length: %d\n",fstype,length);*/
if (fseek(inways,fstype+8,0)) fatal(); fputc(0,inways); fputc(0,inways);
fseek(inways,fstype,0); for (x=length;x--;)
sum += fgetc(inways); fseek(inways,loc,0); /* write checksum */
fputc(sum>>24,inways); fputc(255&(sum>>16),inways);
fputc(255&(sum>>8 ), inways); fputc(255&sum , inways);
fclose(inways); exit(0);
}
for (x=12;x--;) if (EOF == getc(inways)) fatal();
}

} else
printf("I wasn't able to open the file %s.\n", argv[1]);
}

void fatal() { fprintf(stderr,"Malformed TTF file.\n");
exit(-1); }

Or something like that, if I recall correctly... ;-)

a .exe file is source

[DunbarTheInept]

A .EXE file *is* source code - for the language known as "Intel x86 machine code" (linked to a Win32 library). Sure, it's a bitch of a language to understand by just reading it, but it still IS a langauge. So exactly what definition are they using of "source code" when they say you can't post DeCSS source code? Did they ever bother getting a legal definition so you can tell, because after all, the algoirithm implemented in Intel x86 machine source code is distributed all over the place in DvD software. My PC from IBM came with a tool that had DeCSS in x86 machine code inside. Most PC's sold today do. Is the definition that the code must be in it's executable form to not be "source"? Then what about Perl, or python, or any other such interpeted language where the human readable source code IS the executable form?

Australian PC Mags

[Anonymous Coward]

...particularly APC, have had libdvdcss on the cover quite a few times now when they've included Linux DVD players on their cover CD.