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The Courts Government News

BayFF Kicks Off With DVD Trial Rally 23

Posted by emmett from the be-there-or-be-square dept.
Katina Bishop from the EFF sent me a link to a press release about an EFF event on Monday, and she asked me to ask Slashdotters to show up and show their support. The event is the kickoff of BayFF, and John Perry Barlow and Pam Samuelson will be speaking about EFF legislation and the upcoming DVD trial. For anyone following the DVD CCA battle, this will be a good event to attend. Here's the link to the press release which contains more info, contact information and directions. Stuff like this makes me wish I lived in the valley.
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BayFF Kicks Off With DVD Trial Rally More

BayFF Kicks Off With DVD Trial Rally

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  • really want to attend this? I mean does anyone ever learn anything that they can't read on the web about this issue?

    ----

  • hey, seriously, CSS will be like tapes for audio and video... they will be grown to be accepted by industry...
  • DVD: Digital Video Disk (feel free to flame)
    EFF: Electronic Frontier Foundation (kind of the ACLU of the Internet)
    BayFF: Apparently not an acronym but a nickname for the monthly EFF meetings in the San Francisco Bay area.
    --
  • "Stuff like this makes me wish I lived in the valley." One in NYC soon - check with NYLUG for details. Pd
  • i dont own a dvd player, wish I did, but i dont. but this isn't just about DVD's, this ruling will set the standard for many things (copyrights, patents etc.) in the future .
    Rock 'n Roll, Not Pop 'n Soul

  • Geography (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Friday July 07, 2000 @10:10AM (#950868)
    I would have rather hoped the EFF would have organized an event to take advantage of the more global nature of the internet. Surely they, of all people, realize that an unfavorable DVD ruling would have implications for the entire country. Even more, this has a direct impact on the internet, making it global. Why did they decide on having only one place to go to? Personally, I would rather have something ala 2600 where people stage rally's in dozens of major cities across the US. It would be much more publicized and convey the more global nature of this controversy.

  • New York July 17 (Score:5)

    by Billy Donahue ( 29642 ) on Friday July 07, 2000 @10:10AM (#950869)
    NYLUG and other hackers in town for H2K
    will be protesting at the Federal Court
    at the opening of the MPAA vs. 2600 trial
    on July 17... Be there or be square!
    We should be getting a press release into
    circulation (hopefully Slashdot?) next week,
    but this is an early heads-up for those
    of you who aren't on the West Coast for this
    one here...
  • This event is notable for a couple of reasons.

    1. It is occuring relatively close to the heart of Silicon Valley. This will help send a message to the valley. Now, could we get one scheduled in Hollywood? Hopefully with a few actors/directors to join in. Where are the usual "champions" of freedom from Hollywood? Rob Reiner, Spike Lee, etc.

    2. It is taking place on the Berkeley campus. Many of the people who are running things in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, have roots in or looked up to the protest movement in Berkeley.

    3. I don't normally agree with Berserkly. A lot of their "issue" coverage is non-issues, or blown out of proportion.

    Man, I can't believe I actually agree with something Berkeley is doing.

  • Actually that's a good question. In this day and age, do actual physical rally's mean anything anymore? Would a signed petition help the whole DeCSS thing?

    Shouldn't our fight against this kind of on-line censorship be fought on-line, and not in gatherings, get-togethers, sit-ins and petitions in the 'real' world?

  • Re:Money IS EVIL - Open Sores r007z (Score:3)

    by CIHMaster ( 208218 ) on Friday July 07, 2000 @10:12AM (#950872)
    Yes capitalism started this country. Now it's taken it over.

    <RANT> Your rights to do ANYTHING these days are considered SECONDARY to business. Now tell me if you can remain patriotic much longer when it's possible to be silenced just so a company won't lose sales on a dangerous product.

  • Re:makes 'em easier to arrest (Score:3)

    by dorzak ( 142233 ) <dorzak@@@gmail...com> on Friday July 07, 2000 @10:17AM (#950873) Journal
    The only people who would fight an IP law are people who want to pirate things. Sorry, it's the truth.

    Actually CSS does not prevent the disk from being copied, it only prevents it from being played on some computers, and in some regions of the world. This is a global economy.

    If somebody did a tape that could only be played on sony cassette players, or cassette players being licensed by Sony, how would you feel? Especially if your tape player was an Emerson or other brand, that didn't pay the fee. Even more appro, what if your stereo system was a custom system designed to get the highest fidelity possible.

  • WRONG!

    Many IP laws are (IMHO) unreasonable or being enforced unreasonably (e.g. DeCSS). As such they should be fought. I don't pirate nor do I have a desire to.
  • DVD stands for Digital Versitile Disk. But I guess you knew that... what was the point of the "feel free to flame comment?"
  • He is a writer and lecturer on subjects relating to the virtualization of society and is a contributing editor of numerous publications,

    I've heard of virtualized device drivers but this is a new one on me.

    The Virtual Realist - on 2nd thought I've few virtues at all, but many vices in the shop. There's little virtue in not being for real.

    We need a weekend already.
  • Aah, but the politicians and the media won't attend an "on-line event" - this isn't for our own benifit, but for the benifit of others who wouldn't find out on the internet.

    This event isn't for ourselves - that'd be preaching to the choir. Rather, it's to try to get attention from the outside world, because they're the people who would go to a meatspace event like this.

  • The only people who would fight an IP law are people who want to pirate things. Sorry, it's the truth.

    hmmm... I don't see a whole lot of truth in your statement. I don't want to pirate anything. I want to fight an unfair IP law. Whether you realize it or not, these laws grant new powers to big business and special interests at the expense of personal freedom. At what point in our history did our government start protecting business from the people instead of protecting the people?

  • I met Barlow at a conference on Digital music at Harvard. He is truly a revolutionary fellow, a free thinker. Plus it is cool that he used to write lyrics for the Greatful Dead ;) Check out his website: http://www.eff.org/~barlow/barlow.html
  • You yanks realy are sick.

    Even Cama Sutra dosn't consider that "sex". A signe of declining sanity coupled with extream hunger perhaps but it dosn't even involve genetilia.

    Then again I have herd that some gay men have some sexual sensitivity in that area so this sounds like something they wold like.

    Prety strange to people outside North America however.
  • You have such a myopic view of the world. Our band of nerds is such a small, insignificant part of reality - if things are to change, we must put our mugs on the nightly news. The only way to do that is to take our physical bodies from in front of our computers and do something.
  • if things are to change, we must put our mugs on the nightly news.

    Why has nobody sent this in to the events calendar at the San Francisco Chronicle? If I'd known about it earlier, I would have gotten it to one of the editorial assistants in charge of listings. Too late now...this weekend's listings have already been sent to the print shops.

    Please, if anybody is having interesting seminars, give the major papers in the area a heads-up at least a week ahead of time. It's free promotion!


    ---
    Zardoz has spoken!
  • Are you going to make an email petition? And how many of those email address from hotmail.com, netscape.net, excite.com, and the list goes on forever, are actually from one person apiece?

    If i was someone that mattered (i'm not, though), i'd promtly delete any email that arrived in my box that stated, "These are the email addresses of people who agree with this". Yes, you could use real names, but it still comes down to if all you're going to do is sit at your computer and rattle off an email, how much effort do you expect your senator to make? as opposed to seeing you and 500 other people hustling down the street gathering support?

    500 people will make the local news. 1000 will probably make national coverage. 10,000 signatures won't get anywhere though.

    Besides which, it's a great excuse to get outside and away from the computer, don't you think?
  • Uhh...

    1. Berkeley is not in the "heart of Silicon Valley". More like the fringe/edge. In geographies, at least, you should look to Santa Clara/Sunnyvale for the valley. And Hollywood, well who knows. The HollywoodBerkeley connection is getting thinner and thinner (most people consider Northern and Southern California to behave like separate states anyway...) Maybe if you have the rally at the USC film school it would have your desired effect.

    2. It's taking place at Berkeley because there is a nationally-known law professor taking part who happens to be at Boalt. Conveniently, Berkeley is a university with large lecture-hall facilities in which to watch something like this.

    3. I don't understand your notion of "Berkeley". It's not like there is some unified front that represents Berkeley -- there is the town, the school, the alums, the CS dept, whatever. Sometimes one or more of these entities over-reacts to some issue, but to dismiss the whole lot of them for the actions of a few, well that's irresponsible.

    I don't particularly attribute the conference to Berkeley -- it's the BayFF, who happen to have some friends at Berkeley. It could just as easily happen at Stanford, I'm sure. (no personal bias or anything... =)
  • Officially, DVD doesn't stand for anything.

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