EFF and Dvorak Blame the Digg Revolt On Lawyers 262
enharmonix writes "A bit of an update on the recent Digg revolt over AACS. The NYTimes has taken notice and written quite a decent article that actually acknowledges that the take-down notices amount to censorship and documents instances of the infamous key appearing in purely expressive form. I was pleased to see the similarity to 2600 and deCSS was not lost on the Times either. More interesting is that the EFF's Fred von Lohmann blames the digg revolt on lawyers. And in an opinion piece, John Dvorak expands on that theme."
By no means are my defending lawyers (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not surprisingly (Score:1, Insightful)
Not a piracy code (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:By no means are my defending lawyers (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe a better thing to blame is "lawyer-like approaches" to this sort of problem.
Blame the Lawyers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Digg is the most childish site ever.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sit at home, find a piece of info that some company does not want the world to know and post it onto a site like Digg, Slashdot or some other popular site and kick back and watch the fireworks. The reason it is/was so successful was because of the response it got from AACS-LA, they issued hundreds or thousands of DMCA take-down notices. If it looked like they did not give a crap then odds are high that nothing would have happened.
This is 100% the result of a big bad corporation deciding to try and stomp on the rights of the consumers and citizens and in this case instead of laying down and taking their beating like a good citizen is supposed to they stood up and gave AACS-LA a kick in the balls. Trying to censor something is the quickest way to make sure everyone knows about it.
Plus sometimes it takes a childish tantrum to get people to take a look at a real problem (DMCA)
They still don't get it though (Score:3, Insightful)
Newsflash (Score:2, Insightful)
Everyone's so busy looking at copyright and missing the bigger picture! Our 'democracy' doesn't work.
Re:Takedown notice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Digg is venture capital funded, its management would be replaced by the end of the day if they seriously intended to risk any amount of equity in the company over some symbolic statement like that.
They'll obviously now just wait for the DMCA notices to take the offending material down, at which point we might expect more grandeur from their PR department if anyone notices.
Dvorak, are you a moron? (Score:2, Insightful)
Will you have me believe that the explosion of p2p mp3 sharing had nothing to do with a) the proliferation of broadband, and b) free music? That if the RIAA hadn't gone on a massive lawsuit campaign, no one would want free music?
Well, I think that you are full of it.
I dunno (Score:4, Insightful)
What probably happened was Digg got a letter saying, "You have posted a DRM circumvention tool. If you don't remove it, we will sue your testicles into the stratosphere."
It's different from a takedown notice, but it had the same effect.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad Journalism at NYTimes (Score:5, Insightful)
> Some people believe that such systems unfairly limit their freedom to listen to music and watch movies on whatever devices they choose.
What the is that? Could they maybe cite one of many sources who will freely give that opinion? Fox pioneered this terrible technique of interjecting their own opinion via the construct "Some say...", and it's terrible journalism. I imagine this article was written off the cuff, but just give the EFF or anyone else a buzz for a quick quote.
Re:Yeah, yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than that, however, I have to disagree. As far as I can tell, there is no "reasonable" DRM. "Reasonable" DRM is a paradox. It would defeat its own purpose. No, I believe all DRM, no matter how cute and cuddly it may seem to be (*ahem* FairPlay), should be completely outlawed. It serves only one purpose: the circumvention of fair use, yet it is cloaked as an "anti-piracy" measure. In my mind, the only solution to the problem is to ban it, and prosecute those companies that do not comply.
Re:Not a piracy code (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should you have to be a criminal to play your bought media on a different system?
If Mum sends me a WMV encoded clip from her camera of the new puppy, shouldn't I just be able to double click it in Linux, play it and enjoy it without having to feel like a dodgy guy for having not-so-legal Linux codecs installed?
I think, when you create a technology/protocol/service that is a fundamentally useful, standard that is a leading standard, this protocol/format should be open and exchangeable by everyone.
Dvorak doesn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Digg is the most childish site ever.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That summarizes it pretty well too.
They pushed very hard with the thousands of DCMA take downs and we pushed back, taking out a popular site in the process.
Re:Yeah, yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
But better: Its freaking working! Here I was thinking that nothing I do can change the system. Then we add a few numbers in our sigs, and what have you, and now Dvorak is spouting off stuff that actually makes sense for once!
"The music industry is decimated" (John D.). Hellaf'in yeah, it is! I don't buy CDs anymore. I don't "steal" music either. I boycott it. I started boycotting the RIAA labels and their artists when Napster (the real one) got taken down. And now, only 8 years later, the mainstream press is getting the message. Napster (the REAL one) wasn't hurting anyone, or hurting business models. When Napster was running, CDs were selling like never before. When Napster went down, CD sales started to drop. There is no data that says otherwise, and the RIAA's own reported stats show it.
Even digg.com is going to become a household word over this. And just yesterday, my dad would have sworn "digging" is something you do with a shovel.
When "exploit ignorance through rampant douchebaggery" stops being the primary business model operating in the US (and I do think its primarily here, in the US), I'll be much, much happier.
Re:Newsflash (Score:2, Insightful)
Real change only comes through education. Start educating the people, and the change will come. Not today, not tomorrow, probably not in your lifetime. But eventually. That's the way the system works, like it or not.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Insult Dvorak if you want, but he (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:DRM as offensive tool (Score:2, Insightful)
>Suppose, for example, that someone's Valuable Intellectual Property were, through pure coincidence, protected by the key
>"sony.com", by the contents of http://www.riaa.com/ [riaa.com] or by the image of Mickey Mouse?
I think the only successful attack against the **AA will come from within. One of its own members will see the light, recognize the organization as competition, and destroy it.
Re:Yeah, yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
They used to call those 'laws'.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dvorak doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't have some "duty" to be a "servant" -- either they refuse to do stupid crap, or they don't. Just like *I* can refuse to write a spambot or throw customer credit card data on an insecure server or -- well, not refuse to do these things.
'Sall it is. There's a lot written about how important lawyers are, and lots of laws talking about the burningly vital obligations lawyers have, but it wasn't programmers or hot dog vendors who wrote those laws, if you know what I mean.
Re:Dvorak doesn't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawyers may say that they're only following the letter of the law, but the fact of the matter is they have a lot of leeway in what cases they bring in front of other people. Suing a dry cleaner for 67 million dollars for losing a pair of pants [go.com] may be within the letter of the law, but it is a fair example of lawyers run amock. Jack Thompson [wikipedia.org] is fully within his legal rights to make the outlandish and unsupported claims that he has been, but that doesn't mean he should be doing so.
Linden Labs has sent out "Permit and Proceed" letters. Other companies have official policies of blind eyes. So there are legal options at hand. Why is it that some legal departments get this and spend most of their time defending their client's actual interests, and others just go crazy sending nastygrams to the 4-million-and-climbing pages that list the HD-DVD key?
Re:Takedown notice? (Score:3, Insightful)
it sure would be nice if it was some sort of modern form of protest, but its digg for cripes sake. its just 15 year olds pulling the same shit they pull on every other forum. no free speech issue. no copyright issue. just your standard overzealous admin meets overzealous user scenario.
Lawyers (Score:2, Insightful)
All I see is lawyers generating more work for lawyers. They are not stupid - of course they know that there is no way anyone can keep the lid on this, which suits them perfectly.
Re:Takedown notice? (Score:3, Insightful)
We're not talking about code (eg. DeCSS) which actually does something, this is just a string of numbers.
Code also is just a string of numbers. Music, movies, and electronic books are strings of numbers as well. An interesting thing about strings of numbers is that when combined they become one number. You often hear people say that a number can not be copyrighted but obviously that is not the case because every thing digital can be represented by one single number.
Re:Yeah, yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)
The AACS-LA had to decide how to respond to the recent breaks. Someone recommended DMCA-based cease-and-desist letters to any site publishing the relevant integer. This 'someone' was probably a lawyer, and the suggestion proved to be counterproductive to the AACS-LA in a very predictable way. In the narrow context intended by the linked article, it probably is "the fault of lawyers".
The problems with the DMCA and DRM from a public policy, engineering, or free-market perspective are broader and more important, but they're not exactly news, and members of various other professions can help shoulder that blame. This move by the AACS-LA, on the other hand, has "what were they thinking" written all over it. I'm still trying to think of an angle where they get something out of it that was worth the (predictable) backlash.
Re:Takedown notice? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, a computer program is just a series of 1's and 0's in the end; but his point is that the AACS key is a number that doesn't do anything on its own.
I'm really not arguing against you or the OP and clearly understand his point. My point is that since everything digital can be boiled down to a single number those who wish copyright to survive are going to have to accept restrictions on the use of numbers.
Re:Digg is the most childish site ever.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are those lawyers still working? It won't last too long.
Re:Yeah, yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
But banning is not required. They are attempting to do something which is fundamentally imposible anyway. They want to hand over to you encrypted content, a complete implementation of the decryption-algorithm AND all needed keys, and nevertheless prevent you from decrypting the data.
That does not work. Bruce Schneier said it best: Trying to make bits non-copiable is about as likely to suceed as an attempt to make water not wet.
All that is needed for the free market to dismantle such crap by itself is to let it.
That is -- remove any and all laws that protect these mechanisms. Kill the DMCA, basically.
DRM ain't dangerous. It won't and can't work.
DRM combined with laws preventing their removal and/or breakage is *very* dangerous.
It's not censorship, but the right to censor (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason this is not an issue of free expression is that the number, in itself, is meaningless. It has not intellectual or expressive content. It is merely a secret, and nothing more. Most people advocating the spreading of this number acknowledge the right of private parties to have secrets. They are mortified when sloppy IT practices expose social security numbers.
Does it make a difference why we say the takedown efforts are bad? I think it does. Framing the issue this way claims too much and too little. It claims a right to publish secrets that come into our hands, an idea most of us don't endorse. It claims too little, because the it obscures what is at stake: preventing private industry from taking control of cultural and political discourse using laws designed to encourage expression.
In other words, we must not allow the consortium to confuse the means and ends here. The average person will see clearly enough that the number is merely a secret, and secrets are legally protected as part of our right of privacy. It is the use to which the secret is put that is pernicious to individual freedom. The industry cannot assert it has suffered a loss of privacy with "clean hands". The takedowns are not censorship, they are protecting the means of censorship. The publications are not free expression, they are protecting the means of free expression.
Publishing the number is an act of civil disobedience. Again Thoreau has something important to say here:
This is marvelously apt to the issue of copy protection. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. The injury that AACS does to individual freedom comes from the power of the state. Furthermore, it prevents the public from experiencing and therefore understanding their rights of free use. Ultimately, it may cripple free political discourse itself, as the machinery of control becomes ubiquitous, and the means for evading control remain illegal.
Re:Yeah, yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
I see what you're saying, but something doesn't sound right to me.
What do you think threatens the media industries' bottom lines more; fair use or unauthorized duplication and distribution?
Clearly the people making DVD rips and posting a torrent, making the movie/whatever freely available at no charge has more of an impact than someone trying to make backups of movies already purchased.
The problem is that there is technologically a lot of overlap between the two, and the difference is only realized AFTER the technology has been applied.
It's like when I worked for the gov't, and was involved in an effort to develop software that would analyze transaction data to find credit card fraud. The problem was that looking at the transaction data, a legitimate purchase could look exactly the same as a fraudulent one. No software in the world can look at that data and see if the items purchased were used for a legitimate workplace function, or simply tossed in the trunk of somebody's car.
The media industries have taken the easy (though improper) road of simply banning the technology that has both legitimate and illegal uses. When they sue somebody, they should have to prove that the defendant actually violated copyright law. But then, I suppose that's the real problem with the DMCA; they don't actually have to prove that a copyright violation actually took place.
Pardon the long rant