Civil Disobedience and DeCSS 480
The EFF has put out a series of Updates covering the case day-by-day as it progresses. The most recent one or two aren't on the website yet, but should be soon.
2600 is keeping a complete archive of case-related documents, including transcripts. The transcripts are serious time-killers - it takes a long time to read 7 hours of testimony. But if you've got some time on your hands, they make good reading. Nothing beats first-generation source materials.
The New York Times has a nice summary in their Cyber Law section. Concentrates on the surprise testimony of Jon Johansen on Thursday, but touches on other issues as well.
The people at Harvard's Openlaw project have been scrutinizing the trial as it unfolds. They've collected a bunch of links to press coverage of the trial, and it's frankly pretty interesting to see the substantial differences between publications - almost as if they were watching different trials, one about the freedom to view DVD's as you choose, and a completely different trial about pirates, freebooters, and buccaneers. Their DVD-discuss mailing list often has insightful commentary.
So now that you've had a chance to read up on the trial, let's cut to the chase: the defendants are going to lose. (Note that the decision in the case may not come for a few weeks yet.) No doubt Monday-morning quarterbacks are already primed for action, and the MPAA's PR people have already prepared their after-action press releases calling 2600 a bunch of pirates, thieves, and baby-stealers. Some people will claim it was due to Judge Kaplan's evident bias (which has now degenerated into the lawyerly equivalent of a flame-war between the defense lead attorney Martin Garbus and the Judge); some will point out that any judge could have interpreted the statute as rigidly as Kaplan, with or without bias. Regardless of who wins, the case will be appealed, so this matter will be finally settled in the Court of Appeals or perhaps even the Supreme Court.
In the meantime, I'm going to take the liberty of reposting an email from John Perry Barlow. I don't think he'll mind.
Dave,
Thanks for the LA Times link. I like best the delicious irony of the following:
"This is a very profound moment historically," Time Warner President Richard Parsons says. "This isn't just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It's about an assault on everything that constitutes the cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
A profound moment, indeed. Indeed, it is an assault on everything that has stifled the cultural expression of our society. It's an assault on the system that stole every dime The Chambers Brothers ever made while grotesquely enriching Brittany Spears.
There is certainly the potential for a cultural Dark Age here, by which I don't simply mean what would follow the death of Time-Warner. Rather, I refer to the very real possibility that Time-Warner and the rest of its loathsome kind will die with most of the expressive genius of the 20th Century buried with them, embedded in their corpses by their last success: using copyright to prevent the digitization and, hence, perpetuation of all that creation.
Only massive civil disobedience will prevent this ugly future. Speaking as someone who has created a lot of "intellectual property," I can assure you that my primary incentive was the possibility that what passed through my heart would be heard. I want it to be available to my great grandchildren. But they will never hear it unless it's stored in some other medium than the material objects the record industry manufactured, all of which will be as mute as stones by then.
Of course, I wanted to be paid for it, and I was. Just as Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and countless others were paid, despite the absence of copyright protection.
The only people who are likely to lose the lesser incentive of wealth will be the likes of Richard Parsons. His loss will be our gain. Unless, of course, he wins.
Mad as hell,
Barlow
Re:artists (Score:2)
But even more than that, at least in my opinion the desire to create is what makes someone an artist - not their past creations, not their marketability or their worth in dollars. If someone loses the desire to create because they aren't getting paid, maybe they were never true artists in the first place.
Re:The key to innovation (Score:2)
I have to agree with you on this. Copyrights are a good thing. But as the saying goes, all good things in moderation. Since copyright was first instituted in this country in 1790, the production of just about everything has increased and change has happened at a more and more rapid pace. These changes are not the result of copyright. They are the result of many people building on the ideas of others. The areas where change was greatest and fastest were the areas where patents and copyrights held the least sway.
We need to repeal the last couple of copyright extensions and go back to a much shorter term. 28 years is still a long time to profit from a creation. Patents get less than that today, and should probably get less still in some cases (and the patent system is a whole other argument). I don't think we'd see any shortage of new works if copyright terms were shortened. No, the studios and publishers would scream bloody murder about it, but in the end, they've been the one's trying to screw the rest of us over in the name of "the poor authors." Copyright is a deal between the public and the authors. The public has been getting the shaft for years though. That needs to change.
Re:The results of riots (Score:2)
Rebels in Afghanistan were taking out Russian helicopters without modern weapons. Had they been better armed, they could have put up a much better fight still. I would assume that the guns come out after the government pulls its guns out. By doing that, it has declared war on at least a group of its citizens. They should have the ability to fight back. There will always be those who don't want to be involved, and will go along with any outcome, but the rest should not have to suffer under a tyrannical government. History seems to show that virtually all governments that last for any good length of time eventually get to such a point. I think that's one of the reasons that the founders of this country wanted us to have the right to keep and bear arms. Of course they probably didn't forsee such advances as nuclear weapons, Cobra gunships, F-117 Stealth Fighters, etc. But those weapons will probably not be suited to the sort of conflict that would result. It would mostly be a war of information, with guerillas that only fight when forced to. They would probably much rather run and continue to wage an information war to unseat the government.
Re:You mean Passive resistance, not CD (Score:2)
It doesn't have to be tolerated, and in most instances, CD is not tolerated. Witness the events in Seattle recently. But the demonstrations do get attention and that is what those people want. They may get arrested, tear gassed, shot with rubber bullets, or in some cases shot with real bullets or severely beaten. This is the risk they take to get attention for their views.
Hmm.. I think we have a bingo.. (Score:2)
The truth is, copyright was limited in effectiveness to the time in our history between the invention of mass publishing and the time that mass publishing became so cheap anybody could do it.
He's right, you know. Copyright was created in response to the invention of the printing press. The English government (a monarchy at the time) needed a way to control what was printed. Censorship was the original intent of copyright. Later, in 1710 with the Statute of Anne it was changed to reflect new goals, namely that of ensuring that the publishing industry could prosper while not giving them complete or perpetual control.
The statute was challenged later, several times in fact, by the publishers. They hoped to regain the perpetual ownership rights that they had before the Statute of Anne came along. They failed in every attempt. The US used the Statute of Anne as a guideline for our own copyright as it's described in the Constitution and as it was originally made into law in 1790. It granted a 14 year term, renewable for 14 more years, just as the Statute of Anne granted English publishers and authors.
Since copyright originally came about because mass copying became much easier, so should a new method be created now. The problem, as always, is still the publishers. They are still pursuing the goal of complete and perpetual control. This is not in the artist's interest, and it is certainly not in the interests of the vast majority of the citizens of this country. There is supposed to be a balance struck between providing the incentive for creators to create and paying back the people of this country for their granting of a limited monopoly to the creator by adding the work to the public domain once its term has expired. I believe that that balance was completely destroyed about 24 years ago with the Copyright Act of 1976 which extended the copyright term to life+50. That meant that copyrighted materials would probably not fall into the public domain until at least a few generations after they were created. A minimum of 50 years, but conceivably much longer. This throws the whole arrangement out of whack and (through the publishing industry's whining of "It's for the poor authors.") has created a sense in the American public that authors weren't being rewarded for their work, when, in fact, prior to the extension, author's were protected for up to 56 years. That's a very long time to have a monopoly on the publishing of a creative work. The term has since been extended to life+70 years, or 95 years for "works for hire," (i.e. anything created by a corporation). I suppose the 95 years would apply to most music now since the record industry got music created while under contract to a record company declared a "work for hire."
Read the background material in the Eldred v. Reno case to get a better explanation than I could provide here.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eldredvreno/ [harvard.edu]
My 2 cents worth (Score:2)
In a way, that's an understandable tactic. All you have to do is prove possible bias, demonstrate the trial was swayed by something other than evidence, and you can walk out on appeal. It's the same stunt Microsoft tried in the Anti-Trust suit.
However, that isn't "justice". That's trying to win by default. And trials are not supposed to be about "winning" or "losing", they're supposed to be an impartial examination of a situation, to ensure fairness and accountability.
Far from using the actual DATA that the defendents possess to show the reality of things, the defendents are being sold up the river by their own lawyers, who seem more interested in a pyrric victory that can generate lots of publicity for themselves than a fair decision that reflects the reality of DeCSS.
Re:The EFF 20/7 comments are more positive: (Score:2)
If one of the Slash hackers could add a special over-ride switch for postings of exceptional value to the readers, PLEASE do. There aren't many posts that deserve to flout the +5/-2 range, but this is definitely one of them.
Re:Civil Disobedience is essentially evil. (Score:2)
Well, sometimes the majority is wrong. If the majority was always right we'd all be married to Harrison Ford or Jennifer Aniston.
The evolution of an idea from a minority opinion to a majority opinion can start with small protests. It's the best way.
Re:The EFF 20/7 comments are more positive: (Score:2)
You mean M- M-w C-y, don't you?
Re:The fine line... (Score:2)
It means that, while still inexcusable, racism was at least comprehensible; it's hard to avoid a "tyranny of the majority" in a democracy, except by making sure that the majority of people respect each other's individual rights, and that's not an easy process. The ability for corporations to exert excessive control over consumers and workers, on the other hand, is a tyranny exerted by a small minority; when that becomes possible it's a good sign that the distribution of wealth and power are seriously fubarred.
Wow. I think of myself as a libertarian, mostly, but you'd never know it to read the above paragraph...
You had just claimed that Banning DeCSS wasn't about "the right to watch a movie", and then equated it "the right to get a drink of water".
In the sense that both are gross underestimations of the rights involved, yes. Want some more similarities?
"Movies" aren't something that the government owns. They don't throw you in jail for watching a DVD on Linux because the government mandated that Linux users can't watch DVDs.
Um.. the judge here is presiding over a trial, not a philosophical debate. The MPAA wants it to be illegal for you to view movies in ways they don't allow, whether you paid for the movie and are exercising fair use rights or not, and they have a law (a government mandate) on the books now which will make it possible for you to go to jail if you resist.
Sure, I could buy properly licensed players for each region I wanted to view DVDs from; and blacks could go to colored schools. Just because there's an alternative available doesn't mean that unfair restrictions are suddenly OK.
If I didn't make this clear enough before, I don't think the DeCSS case in particular, or even the IP rights war in general, are as worrysome as segregation was. But they are both about rights, not trivialities like what operating system you can play DVDs with or what restaurant you can eat at.
I'm skipping your weird analogy; I'm still trying to figure out exactly who "Ford" is analogous to, and where the "volunteers who implemented improved Super Tires, gave the design away, and then got their asses sued off" are.
Photo of Emmanuel Goldstein (Score:2)
Jamie McCarthy
I love this line (Score:2)
Artist don't only create to get paid that create to express themselves to see if they can capture the public's eye this has nothing to with the artist but the corporations.
Mr. Parsons--cultural decay? (Score:2)
Yep. And you're the one assaulting it. You are the one who shoves crap like the Backstreet Boys on us. You are the uncivilized cretin, Mr. Parsons. The sooner your kind die, the sooner real culture can thrive. I won't miss you at all.
If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create.
Mr. Parsons, consider yourself to have met an artist with the incentive to create no matter what monetary rewards (or lack thereof) are present. Perhaps your world, where so-called "artists" are in it for the money, would perish; but this would definitely be a boon to civilization. We can do without Britany Spears.
Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
It already is and you are to blame. I've seen the sort of garbage that Warner produces and I can tell you that it is responsible for all the cultural decay you see around you now. You are a fool, Mr. Parsons.
A constitutional amendment would be even better. (Score:2)
This seems to me to be exactly the kind of "laying down the basic framework" type thing that would be best served by an amendment to the constitution. Maybe stick some reasonable privacy stuff in there as well.
Passing a law would only lead to years and years of lawsuits until the law is confirmed or shot down by the Supreme Court.
Jon
Re:artists (Score:2)
Do you really think music would disappear if that lure of fabulous rock-star wealth disappeared? I don't. There has always been music. There haven't always been copyright laws, record companies and multit-million dollar recording contracts. But people made music anyway because they wanted to.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:Declan was never a friend of DeCSS (Score:2)
As another noted, my dislike and prior experience with Declan colored my interpretation of the photograph and the message it was sending. mae culpa.
2. Posting a link to a photo of Declan's in a comment means that he "enjoys a rapport with slashdot"?!
I should have been more specific. I was not referring to you personally, or the photo in particular. Rather the photo (and my misinterpretatino of it) were the catalyst to expound on Declan's lack of journalistic ethics and the seemingly high (perhaps now cooled to medium based on the "olde tyme hacker" article) he appears to be held in by at least some editors at slashdot. I refer to previous slashdot articles, particularly those posted during the time when livid was under attack and developers were being forced through legal thuggary to withdraw from the project, largely because of Declan's irresponsible journalism. At that same time this was happening numerous articles of his were posted, with slashdot intros of the sort saying (paraphrased) "Declan has another interesting look at X" or "Declan McCullagh of Wired covered Y." Most other stories are not introduced with the author's name, but rather "an article at [publication]." In fact, the only author I'm aware of that enjoys such regular billing on slashdot, by name, is Jon Katz (apologies to Mr. Katz for mentioning his name in the same breath as Mr. McCullagh).
This implies rather strongly some kind of rapport or relationship between Declan and slashdot, which, if true, reflects poorly on slashdot.
I point that out as criticism because
Re: (Score:2)
Re:artists (Score:2)
You can produce all you want and not give away your creations for free. You have a perfect right to not show anybody anything you've created unless you get money. You do not have a right to tell them what to do with it.
Copyright is not about preventing stuff from being taken from you. It's about telling other people what they can do with what they own in the hopes that you can make more money. At one point in time, this restriction was not unreasonable. Now it is. Deal with it.
Stop trying to claim that copyright is some holy thing handed down by God itself. The truth is, copyright was limited in effectiveness to the time in our history between the invention of mass publishing and the time that mass publishing became so cheap anybody could do it.
Copyright is no longer effective. It no longer works. Figure out something that does work and stop whining about a situation that has irrevocably changed. If people listen to your whining enough, and try to make copyright work against all odds, our society will be plunged into a dark age of tyranny.
Re:Ok, I agree (Also post the analysis) (Score:2)
There is a:
Re:MPAA must go! (Score:2)
When they took the second amandment, you didn't care because you didn't own a gun.
When they took the fourth amendment, you didn't care because you had nothing to hide.
When they took the fifth amendment, you didn't care because you weren't guilty.
When they took the sixth amendment, you didn't care because you weren't waiting for a trial.
When they took the eighth amendment, you didn't care because you'd never been arrested nor convicted of anything.
When they took the ninth amendment, you didn't care because as long as you had your job and a place to live you didn't need any other "rights".
When they took the tenth amendment, you didn't care because you're not concerned with national politics or state's rights.
But you actually get up and arms when the corporate suits come after your SOFTWARE? Give me a break.
We must fight the good fight, we must do everything that we can to win. However, we must also be prepared to lose. We must have plans in effect just in case things don't go our way.
Stuff like this is going to make the boys at havenco VERY rich some day.
LK
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:2)
Determining whether their actions were "legal" or not is the whole point of the lawsuit. I don't read the law the way the MPAA suggests and neither do a lot of other people. Furthermore, there is the question of what lawmakers actually intended, and what we as citizens want to happen, something that needs to be resolved legislatively. Legal challenges are an intrinsic part of the US system of law and government; this case had to be brought.
What kind of government do you think operates in the US? Your kinds of arguments might be applicable in fascist or autocratic societies, but in a democratic society that is governed by the rule of law, court challenges and political participation are essential. That may annoy some lobbyists and legislators with vested financial interests, but it still needs to be done.
I find your arguments both dangerous and naive. Similar arguments have been made throughout history, and I suggest you read up on the consequences. Issues of corporate control of the media are of fundamental importance to our society, and this is not only a good cause, it's an essential cause.
Re:DiVX will lose the case (Score:2)
Implicit in your argument is that a technology should be outlawed if it allows pirating. That's nonsense and it was never the stated intent of lawmakers. The stated intent was to outlaw technology whose exclusive purpose was to allow pirating. If some otherwise useful technology also enables pirating, then the industry should have to figure out how to deal with the consequences, not society as a whole.
Besides, if the industry wanted to make cryptographically secure DVDs, they could. DeCSS is a consequence of either technical incompetence or a deliberate attempt to test the laws on the part of its developers.
Only the first round (Score:2)
This case will undoubtedly be appealed. It might well go all the way to the Supreme Court, as it is one of the first in what seems to be a whole series of new intellectual property disputes, and the Supremes might deem it a good idea to lay down a precedent. And appeals are where Garbus really shines; bear in mind that the man has never lost a case before the Supreme Court.
It might take a while, but I think we have a good chance of winning in the end.
--
Re:DiVX will lose the case (Score:2)
The whole piracy-is-infeasible argument was extremely weak from the very beginning. Spending any effort on that argument is just setting up a strawman for the plaintiffs to trivially knock down. Even if it weren't for good encoding like DiVX, it is a sure thing that storage and bandwidth technology will make 5 Gig movies pretty easy to pass around in a few years.
I was kinda saddened when I read Garbus splitting hairs about whether that guy or his assistant when to IRC to get a pirated movie or not. I mean, I guess Garbus has to fight and contest every inch of ground, but that whole issue is so pointless.
I'm a few days behind in my reading. I damn well better see some good arguments by Garbus about Fair Use and the purpose of DeCSS. If the court is still treating the potential-for-piracy angle as being relevant, then Garbus is screwing up.
---
Re:artists (Score:2)
And from my own experience (I am a programmer@mandrakesoft), the most it takes is time. The hardware is pretty cheap. I program whetever or not I get paid to do it. But I likes to get paid for doing it. I think that is a pretty common view of the things.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
ROFLMAO (Score:2)
ZDnet News:
(snip)
The attorney for the movie industry called it a clash of cultures: the freewheeling hipsters of the Internet vs. the hard-working creative talents in the movie companies. "The plaintiffs have a right to protect their content," said Leon Gold, a partner at Proskauer Rose LLP and the lead attorney for the studios, in his opening remarks. "The hacker zealots are wrong."
(/snip)
Oh, yeah, hard-working creative talents. Eisner and Valenti?
Neither of these guys has broken a sweat in 20 years. They live extremely well off the proceeds of their serfs.
Go, Go, Goldstein!
Re:which part was the uninformed crap? (Score:2)
My point was that organizations like the AP, UPI, Knight-Ridder do the real low-level reporting; what we see on the networks is nothing but repackaging. The repackaging process removes alot of content, leaving the public with a shell of what you would find in a good newspaper article.
Even if corporate giants disappeared, there is already more than enough media out there to go around. Newsweek and US News would take over Time's share. The newspaper and internet news market isn't really an issue. The radio news market could go to Bloomberg, which is already a good radio news source. Television news wouldn't really exist, but that's okay because the quality sucks and market share is dropping anyway (except for local news market share).
Re:MUST READ, PLEASE! (Score:2)
What really drives your point home are the bios on the user pages you linked to. That's just too much to be a simple coincidence. Now, I'm not ready to believe that Signal11 is forming a "Karma Mafia", but I think it's becoming pretty clear that he's abusing the system. As you will almost certainly be moderated down I'm posting this with my +1 Bonus in the hope that it will cause people to notice your post and read it in its entirety. Moderators should take note of this and it will hopefully be a factor in their future moderating decisions.
Re:The law makes a tremendous difference (Score:2)
Re:Being sued is no cocktail-party (Score:2)
They affect you in one country in the world. Fortunately, there are still N-1 other countries.
The Web being what it is, no matter how hard the MPAA tries, there will always be places from which you can download DeCSS. And many legal mirrors of DeCSS, too (though your dowloading it may not be).
You know, strong crypto used to be illegal where I am (France). That didn't stop me from using it: I just downloaded the software from a place (e.g. Finland) where it was. I see the same happening with DeCSS.
Re:Not nice (Score:2)
Have you seen all the trolling, racist, anti-gay and what not comments? I don't think I'm the one that's poisoning something.
I am merely stating that this kind of person does not deserve some sort of extra attention,- the moderators will sort out how relevant his message is.
Breace
Re:MUST READ, PLEASE! (Score:2)
Sjeez, you could have looked at his user info [slashdot.org] first (fortunately this is possible, because he did not post AC, even though he stated that), and look at his posting history. Hardly the kind of person worth listening too, right?!
I guess this will make me a karma whore, but there's no need for you to override the moderators. Now you are abusing the system to draw attention to the post of a person who's proven to be a troller, racist and so on.
Breace
Re:Court System (Score:2)
Who wants this domain? (Score:2)
Re:MUST READ, PLEASE! (Score:2)
Incidentally, if anyone is interested in buying a 125+ karma account, I'm more than willing to sell...
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:The right to watch a movie? (Score:2)
To authors and inventors. Not to their heirs, employers, or assignees.
Re:The fine line... (Score:2)
Re:The right to watch a movie? (Score:2)
Re:Unintended irony? (Score:2)
I would also note that folk music is now disseminated partly by recording; I've learned many songs by listening to recordings of Peter, Paul, and Mary, or the Grateful Dead, or Fairport Convention.
Re:bad moderation! this is __NOT__ flaimbait! (Score:2)
Let the moderation system do its job. For every person throwing around a few bad mods, there are at least five others doing a good job. I've got the karma to spare
[hey, cmdrTaco! There needs to be more moderation points given out just to combat all the pr0n posts and juvenile offtopics rants which are cluttering
the AC
Re:Money buys a lot of things (Score:2)
The surprising news is that dozens of other PR and ad firms also got similar contracts at the same time. The total amount to be spent will be more than all the presidential campaigns together estimated to be between US$90 million and US$220 million. Just to convince the US citizens to vote one way or another on some health reform law. Billions are at stake. The are so desperate, they are giving the ad agencies money to refund to other clients and buy out their ad spaces on tele and in print.
I prefer the old fashioned way, where someone outside the polling station hands you $5 and tells you which candidate to vote for.
the AC
Re:Unintended irony? (Score:2)
We can see the art of cavemen, the writing of the ancient egyptians. But can we hear their music? We hear Mozart on the radio, on CD's, in concert because his music was written down in sheet music and then many people copied it down again.
The (copy-righted) music of today is not allowed to be written out in sheet music for all to enjoy. It is only available to us on CDs which aren't going to last as long as most people seem to think. Sometime after the decay of the music industry the CDs will slowly lose their memory, the few tapes that exist will be practically worthless, and who ever uses a LP anymore? How will we listen to our favorite musicians then? The music can't be reproduced there is no sheet music to reproduce it from.
Devil Ducky
Re:When the law is wrong. (Score:2)
What people consider to be or crime is irrelevant. If people don't consider it a crime to pirate software or go on murderous rampages, that doesn't make it any less of a crime. Dodging the draft was a crime. People who fled to Canada broke the law. The difference is President Ford pardoned all the draft dodgers. This shows 1) why people don't consider it a crime anymore and 2) that it was a crime, as Ford had to issue a pardon.
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
Slashdot! (Score:2)
9 utility that defeated CSS and decrypted the content of one of
10 the studio's DVDs?
11 A. Early to mid-October of 1999.
12 Q. What was that utility?
13 A. DeCSS.
14 Q. What was the source of the original information you
15 received in the existence of DeCSS?
16 A. I found it on a news posting on Slashdot.
EEEK!! They are watching. That is scary.
(ps. I hope the above quote is not copyrighted or something)
Re:artists (Score:2)
Online art and music need a lot of people to strat tring a variety of things including:
1) I'm writing one song per month, If people donate money I'll work at my day job less and make more songs.
2) Uploading versions of the song containing advertising to all the pirate mp3 sites, but distributing clean versions for free from the artists web site (which uses banner ads).
3) uploading mp3s to all the pirate sites which ask people to buy a CD of the same thing.
etc.
Anywho, It's a time for people to do what they enjoy and explore the finantial options surrounding their activities.. the operative words here being enjoy and explore.. not financial.
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:2)
except for law breakers. Laws shouldn't be broken lightly, but injust
laws shouldn't be followed blindly either.
Re:Artists' incentive to create. (Score:2)
I wonder if the guy who said that actually believes it. Somehow, young garage musicians will say "Fuck it mates, let's go into chartered accountancy, there's more money there."
Re:Uh, No (Score:2)
I definately can see fair use considerations, but I wonder why people are fighting so hard for the closed format of a media conglomerate. I never maintained that what the lawsuit is doing is a vioaltion of fair use, which is serious business. I meerly think that comparing it to the civil rights struggly is inflationary language. The term Nazi gets bandied about already for perpetrators of relatively minor violations (I would be surprised if there wasn't at least one reference to "SS-like corporate thugs" or something of the sort somewhere on this page), and I see this as a related issue. People infringing on fair use and intellectual property is a serious issue, but nowhere near as serious as the systematic deprivation of the fundamental rights of millions of Americans (or anyone else, for that matter).
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Re:Uh, No (Score:2)
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Re:Uh, No (Score:2)
intellectual property (a legal fiction to begin
with) influences how people make their livings, or
how well they will be educated?
I think that it definately will have an effect. I think that the effect will, however, be less than the effect of segregation and the systems that existed before the Civil Rights movement. If I seemed to diminish the impact of the Fair Use issue, it is only because I think that it's moral implications pale beside generations of officially enshrined injustice. Fair Use has very important implications, but the struggle to defend Fair Use remains, in my mind, less significant than the struggle for Civil Rights
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Re:Uh yeah (Score:2)
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Re:Uh yeah (Score:2)
In Fair Use, it is the same issue. The content is 'expressed' not by the end user, but by the company producing it. If there are no restrictions on what does and does not constitute Fair Use, than all control is lost. You're own words can be used against you, or used without any compensation, reducing the incentive for creation. The public as a whole then loses the benefits of that expression.
Fair Use is not about the government telling you what you can or cannot say, or what of your own information can be made available- it determines what you can do with information that is belong to someone else.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
JPB is right (Score:2)
How naive (Score:2)
Ultimately, this is part of the war over Intellectual Property.
There are two futures. In one, almost every piece of information (music, books, film, software) is owned by somebody. Powerful organisations use standards to make sure that "free" information is not a threat (eg "extend and embrace", or encrypting standard AV content so that only those with cryptographic keys can create it).
In the other, almost every piece of information is unrestricted, and the people who created it are rewarded in other ways.
This is every bit as big as the fight against racism (although obviously quite different too).
Re:They'll lose because there is no choice (Score:2)
The grounds for appeal have never been that "the purpose of the decss project was to play dvd's in linux without paying anything". Regardless of the fact that it violates our fair use rights to have to buy keys to watch stuff we already own, you've sidestepped the basis of the appeal. The basis of the appeal, to the Supreme Court, is an appeal over the consitutionality of the DMCA.
Specifically, whether it is constitutional to ban all speech which describes how a mechanism works, that could be used to circumvent a mechanism in a way contrary to the intention of the inventor of the mechanism. This is what the DMCA does.
The defendants ARE guilty of violating the DMCA, and should be found guilty.
The DMCA IS guilty of violating the Constitution, and should be found guilty.
I understand that it's very hard for moderators not to mod people like you as flamebait - and I applaud them for moderating you up for the public ridicule you so richly deserve.
P.S. the commercial linux DVD player project initiatives were commenced only AFTER the decss project broke, because the MPAA didn't want to appear that they were denying a community a legal way to play movies. Of course, that still leaves Amiga, Atari, Solaris, BeOS, HP-UX, BSD, etc., etc., and their user communities, without a DVD player. Maybe if some more Jon Johansens get their homes raided we'll see some bogus development for a HP-UX DVD player (:
Why don't you buy alternatives? (Score:2)
The Video CD was an interesting technology, and is still currently a cheap alternative to somebody who wants to put video content together for a "set-top" box, but not pay the huge fees to author DVD titles.
There are also other nacient technologies which will eventually replace DVD, but it will be the better part of a decade before they become as solid as DVD.
What really makes me upset is that the DVD Fourm had (and to a small extent still has, although the clock is ticking) the opportunity to establish a universal video data format, and create a "consumer" multi-media computer platform that could be operated by your grandmother. Instead, the DVD format will disappear in a few years when the next generation of high data density devices appear. Efforts on projects like MPEG-4 will also obsolete DVD-Video as a format, which can be only described as a specification comittee gone mad at best. This is too bad, because it held so much promise.
Re:They'll lose because there is no choice (Score:2)
No, the principle of first sale is explicitly endorsed by Congress in 17 U.S.C. 109, and a whole line of caselaw. Most recently, the Supreme Court used it in Quality King v L'Anze (1998) to allow importing of copyrighted works over the objection of the copyright holder.
Specifically section 109 includes 109(c): "Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(5), the owner of a particular copy lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to display that copy publicly, either directly or by the projection of no more than one image at a time, to viewers present at the place where the copy is located."
Note that this is an affirmative grant and that only the exclusive rights of 106(5) are notwithstanding. Congress did not add the right of access control to 106, and there is nothing you can point to that states they intended to.
Therefore, my interpretation is the proper one given the accepted jurisprudence for resolving conflict of laws.
2) [Reverse Engineering] You admit that DeCSS qualifies for RE and then basically say "but it's still copyright infringement". 1201(f)(2) Allows the creaton of and (f)(3) allows the distribution of descramblers as long as they are not "infringing", so you allude to correct law. However the copying done by DeCSS is performed on a copy that was purchased. Fair use is very easy to prove under these circumstaces. See the Betamax case and its progeny.
3) Too bad copying entire movies is not even remotely "fair use" The HOLDING in Sony v. Universal refutes your position.
You must learn how to read law.
I note that you quote neither law nor cases to support any of your positions. Silly you.
4) There is NOTHING in free speech which gives license to violate copyrights.
In Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) the Supreme Court refered to "the First Amendment protections already embodied in the Copyright Act's distinction between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable facts and ideas, and the latitude for scholarship and comment traditionally afforded by fair use".
So indeed, there are two such principles. You can see also the decisions in Feist, Acuff-Rose, & Betamax for a better grounding in these affirmative defenses. Particularly, read footnote 13 in the Betamax case.
5) This case has nothing to do with antitrust or misuse of copyright and you'll find that neither of those lame defenses was even attempted, even by this lame defense team.
Garbus is one of the leading Consitutional Lawyers of our time. Perhaps you've heard of the Pentagon Papers? Perhaps not.
In an interview in Feed in May, Martin Garbus answered the following question:
He's refering to the case US v. Paramount where the studios attempted to justify block-licencing of copyrights, but lost.
Antitrust consideratons occur in no less than three ways in this case to lead to misuse of copyright:
(1) Collusion - the studios collectively use the DVD-CCA licence to strengthen their negotiating position and control the player market
(2) Tying - the right of access is sold separately from the copy itself. The studios use their collective "market power" to "force" "unwanted" licenced players on people.
(3) Restraint of Competition - The DVD-CCA licence has restrictive terms that force anticompetitive terms on would-be player manufacturers.
If you care to continue the discussion, please subscribe to the dvd-discuss list at Openlaw.
Re:DeCSS really is irrelevant... (Score:2)
If you or anybody can actually prove this, it would be very helpful to the defense.
If you know of a DivX that is being "traded" out there that is definitely not available on DVD, then please email me and I will get that information to the defense.
The judge has pointed out that the defense cannot ask the plaintiffs to prove DeCSS caused DivX piracy if they cannot prove it did not. This would help prove it did not.
Re:Why not let the artists decide? (Score:2)
Otherwise what you are promoting is Marxism, pure and simple... whereby we take away the property of the people and redistribute it per state doctrine. "
It's actually a little more complicated than that. This issue is heavily dependant on your definition of property. I would argue that there is a 'natural' definition of property which deals with things that are physical - if I 'own' a house then I decide who may live there - if it were given to someone else then I would no longer be able to use it.
'Intellectual Property' on the other hand is a legal construct. An example of a society without the concept of intellectual property was ancient Greece. Storytellers in that culture told variations on the same stories - no one owned these stories - anyone could retell them, either in exactly the same way, or variations on a theme.
This took place long before Karl Marx was born, and I think that you would find few people who would call it a Marxist society. The concept of ownership of idea's can, and in my opinion should, be debated separately from the concept of ownership of physical things.
Bradley
Civil Disobedience: Time for a Revival (Score:3)
Start a Fair Use Law (Score:3)
Orin Hatch is already upset with the degree the DMCA underminded Fair Use. We can HELP him fix his mistake. www.NYFAIRUSE.org is one organization which is trying to do just this.
Declan was never a friend of DeCSS (Score:3)
While this doesn't necessarilly exhonorate Golstein, I would suggest we all consider the source and be appropriately wary of assuming the truth is being told (or shown) here.
I suggest anyone who is interested check out the archives of the LiViD mailing list. I found Declan's behavior to be shockingly reprehensible, unprofessional and downright destructive, and truly regretted that I had previously defended him on the very same list.
Declan is in my opinion responsible in no small part for what has happened with DeCSS (and is directly responsible for the original author of css-auth quitting the project as an act of self-defense). He is the main reason I don't read wired, and a contributing cause to my reading slashdot less and less.
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:3)
Which is still remembered today and is used as the canonical example of an American fighting for her rights.
> The only actions which worked
The bus boycott would not have happened if Rosa had not been arrested. She brought attention and focus to the struggle.
Incidentally, sit-ins are illegal. Something about trespassing.
Also remember that there are two ways to change a law: get the legislature to change it or have a judge overturn it. In the case of DeCSS, the legislature was already bought and paid for and isn't about to change its mind.
The only alternative is for judicial review, but courts don't hear theoritical cases. The only way to get a law like the DMCA heard by a court is to break it.
Re:The status of DeCSS in EU? (Score:3)
"Then it comes to be,
that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel,
is just a frieght train coming your way..... "
This is only the beginning (Score:3)
The next round of this debate? Digital Television! While the FCC is telling us that we'll be enjoying this wonderful new technology by 2006 - don't count on it. The MPAA and others are fighting like mad to control the delivery, and playback of digital content that will become HDTV (or DTV). You think they are going to transmit a digital signal and let you receive and record a perfect copy on to box or hard disk? Ha! Not likely...
The Digital Transmission Content Protection Method (DTCP) currently being debated will morph into some new standard controlled by the MPAA and others to control what you can see, and how you can see it. Check out some of these links:
Fourth digital-TV interface spec tossed into fray [eet.com]
US digital TV strategy "in disarray" [pira.co.uk]
Digital interface debate resurfaces at Western show [eet.com]
FCC sets deadline on DTV interface issues [eetimes.com]
Cultural development? (Score:3)
"This isn't just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It's about an assault on everything that constitutes the cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system , the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
First he assumes that capitalism is required for cultural development. Second he states and boldly so that we must protect our "intellectual property system" when most people know full well that in it's current state it is flawed at best. The IP laws on the books currently reflect a society where products were largely tangable. In todays society these products are not so. Music, Software, etc. Lastly I'm shocked that he would seem to make the statement that "we control your culture" - we meaning all media companies. The truth of the matter is that popular music, news, etc. are hardly a basis to grow our culture on. They are capitalist sell out rip offs of something that is truly creative.
Now my rant to these companies; For those who purchase music regardless of the medium we should have the right to do with it as we *damn* well please. I sure as hell know what happens to a CD, or an LP if I play it over and over -- it fucking gets scratched, warped, or otherwise. That is why I transfer files to mp3 format - guess what I use napster also! And I buy more music than anyone I know. As for movies the media companies must think that they control every possible media solution avaliable because if I happen to run Linux or BSD, or QNX -- anything BUT MacOS or Windows and I want to use a DVD disk you come down hard. To me this seems completely retroactive of what the consumer needs.
My end statement would be that you, the media companies out there & the "artist organizations such as MPAA and RIAA - you disgust me with your arrogant misunderstanding of the very people who you market to. I would love to see all of you replaced.
Stephen King has the right idea (Score:3)
Re:Money buys justice (Score:3)
I'm sick of hearing this "argument." Money didn't buy justice in the OJ trial. The LA DA spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to convict somebody, and then they made the bonehead move of putting a cop on the stand who had a record of being questionable and he happened to get caught in a lie. It was gross incompetence that got OJ off and nothing more. If you want to start a serious discussion about money and the courts then the real question to ask about OJ is how much more money did they spend trying to convict him than most people and why was that? For me personally, it would have been much more acceptable to let the bastard skate had LA county not spent $19million trying to convict him.
Don't believe me, then how come the tobacco companies got busted for $150billion?! They are the one group that has unlimited money and they lost their case.
Big money and big companies don't always win. They will in this case in part because 2600 tried to disobey the court when they were asked to take the DeCSS code down. They removed the code and then published a list of mirrors in an attempt to circumvent the court order. They lost a lot of credibility with the court by doing that. Goldstein is somewhat lucky to have not done jail time for contempt.
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:3)
You might want to read Civil Disobedience [fatbrain.com] by a Mr. Thoreau as to why there are many many people who disagree with you.
LL
Re:Declan was never a friend of DeCSS (Score:3)
This post should not be taken as a defense of Declan McCullagh in general or in regard to any other actions he may have taken, but I think your dislike for him is causing you to misread this photo and its message.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Re:The results of riots (Score:3)
Your imagery is spot on for 30 years ago but I think completely irrelevant for today. The connected citizen who disagrees strongly enough with his elected (or not) government has enough power to shake himself free without physical protest. The Internet makes it possible to work anywhere in the world, untaxed and undetected by a government or legal system. And I think civil disobedience in this day and age will be characterised more by code and data flowing through networks than bodies lying on University lawns.
Sure there will be casualties and I agree that the huge machine that is the Federal Goverment and legal system is not going to go down without a fight, but I think the very example you give of a Cobra gunship shows just how the rules have changed. Will the Government deploy Cobras and the National Guard against sysadmins mirroring DeCSS or Linux-using DVD software programmers? They can't.
What can they do? There are countries other than the U.S who think the DMCA is a crock of shit. If you're an information worker or a programmer or an artist, hell you can go and work there. You could even have your money in yet another jurisdiction - preferably one which laughs at any IRS attempts to come calling. Remember I'm not talking about a faceless mass of blue-collar workers here: this is a highly skilled bunch of people who don't like what their Governments are doing in the name of big companies.
I look forward to the next 20 years or so when the elephants realise they've been outsmarted...
A few words on Civil Disobedience, from the source (Score:3)
The original [cybernex.net] from Thoreau.
Re:Uh, No (Score:3)
A "War on Copying" is a very real, very frightening possibility. A waiting period, background check, and registration of CD burners - or photocopiers. (Or pens). We must, after all, Protect the Children, so we'll have programs in the schools: CARE (Copy Abuse Resistance Education) would encourage kids to report their parents to the friendly neighborhood police officer if they found CD-Rs in the house. And we can mandate the death penalty for pirating kingpins.
I can see the PSA now...a father discovers the bootleg MP3s on his son's computer and demands to know who got him into such an obscene practice. Finally Junior yells "You, all right? I learned it by watching you!". And as Dad's face crumbles as he thinks about that Van Halen CD he burned to have a copy for the car, the voiceover comes up: "Parents who make copies, have kids who make copies."
Money buys justice (Score:3)
If you have enough money, you can buy any court decision you want. Right and Wrong haven't applied in decades. The MPAA has tons of money to spend to defend their monopoly, and the lack of morals and scruples to do so.
This case will be lost because the judge is well in the pockets of MPAA. The only hope is to bring this obvious fact out in the appeals court, and get the ruling overturned.
the AC
Re:How naive (Score:3)
You're making a big mistake by thinking that because a danger is explicit, it is more important.
I don't think that either you or I could possibly quantify how different a world without IP could be to a world in which technology has provided ubiquitous means for controlling information ownership. One thing that is certain though - information has the power to completely change education, politics, science, medicine, and just about any other field you care to mention.
In a world without restrictions on information, lives would certainly be saved, and (I suspect) the fight against racism would be aided.
I'm not trying to say that the DVD case specifically is that important. Instead, I argue that it is part of a larger and completely world-altering battle.
I guess I was also arguing in my original post that an "in between" future where half the world's information is controlled would be relatively unstable... in the long run, we will either have mostly free information, or mostly owned information...
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:3)
I totally disagree. If the law is wrong, you have an obligation to break it. You must be prepared to accept the consequences, but you don't need an excuse. The government is the one that needs an excuse, for passing this kind of crap, and they will have to look very hard to find one that doesn't say "we were paid to".
--
Re:They'll lose because there is no choice (Score:3)
Fact: That is, currently (like it or not), illegal.
Fact: The judge has no choice but to do easy math: 1+1=Defendents lose.
I'm tired of all the people who seem to take this for granted. If you read the statue you'll see several things that to me make it clear that DeCSS does NOT violate the statue:
(1) "Circumvention" is required for a violation, and this is defined as access without the authority of the copyright owner. The First Sale doctrine should apply and say that the copyright owner volunatarily parts with his rights of control as soon as he takes his just reward in the marketplace.
(2) The DMCA has an exception for reverse engineering. DeCSS clearly allows interoperability and meets this exception.
(3) The law explicitly says that "fair use" is not affected see 1201(c)(1). Under the Sony Betamax decision, DeCSS would qualify.
(4) DeCSS, as a computer program, is protected expression under the statue. Computer programs are 'literary works' under well established copyright laws. The DMCA explicitly exempts speech from it's scope in 1201(c)(4). Further it explicitly bans prior restraints from judicial authority in 1203(b)(1)
(5) The tying of DVD copyrights to "licenced" players violates antitrust laws and constitutes "misuse of copyright", both of which are affirmative defenses in copyright cases.
All of these are based purely on statutory arguements and existing caselaw.
I posted this before, but it obviously didn't penetrate into some people's skulls.
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:3)
How would one test the constitutionality of a law without breaking it? Rosa Parks is a pertinant example of why we should break wrong laws. It's called civil disobediance.
"The whole world is watching! The whole world is...(THUD)" -Uncle Duke in Iranian Prison
Re:How do we make civil disobediance work? (Score:3)
I presume that the document should be authored in the US to ensure that the legal situation is an appropriate quagmire, and really we should get a nice lawyer to write the click through licensce to ensure that if they try to prosectute ANYONE (ISPs etc.) that they must therefore break the DMCA.
Any American Lawyers there to tell us what we should and shouldn't do, and to write the "licensce", I'm sure we wont have a problem designing the mail itself
DiVX will lose the case (Score:3)
One of the original defences was no one had the bandwidth for trading 5 gig files. Getting that down to 640 Megs over a college internet connection gives huge ammounts of ammunition to the MPAA.
It's not always the wallet! (Score:3)
Remember Stack v. MS? Stack won $130m Microsoft won $30m. But MS bought Stack.
You may not agree with the McDonalds' coffee cup case, but they are a big guy too.
Big tobbacco lost! It took years and years, but they lost. It took hundreds of plaintiff lawyers to coordinate via the internet.
I have been using sharing information on my case [sorehands.com] with others via the net to help them (and myself) to win against Mattel.
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (No it wasn't) (Score:3)
This stinks a lot to me since it's the whole 'America is soo big that it must be right' thing, and afaik no license agreement can withdraw your fundamental rights.
By installing M$ Office you agree to spend several hours a week banging your head off the screen and wondering where autobackup went
- no one would agree to that!!
As I see it, in disassembly he did nothing wrong. In redistributing that knowledge there may be some problems since it was derived from a work which he didn't own the rights to duplicate. However if the actuall CSS block makes up a sufficiently small amount of the total code then he might get away with that. I'm pretty sure in the UK you are allowed to legally photocopy up to a certain %age of a book.
And the Whilst I appreciate the good intention of DeCSS I think the people involved in this case acted foolishly and wrongly, and should face the consequences, no matter how much we might wish things had turned out otherwise.
f**k that - they stood up for what they believed in despite the fact that a foreign government was screaming nooo. If they had conceeded quietly we might never know that decss worked.
Re:there's an interesting thought (Score:3)
Legality, do people really care? (Score:3)
Rage (Score:3)
One thing is for sure, I don't recommend reading the above links or posts on this topic while listening to all three (3) Rage Against The Machine albums. I am in a frenzy and about ready to return the power to the have-nots right here from my corporate cubicle.
"Just victims of the in-house drive-by. They say jump; you say how high?"
DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:3)
As much as I'm not a fan of organisations like the RIAA and the MPAA, not with the crap they promote and the decent stuff they stifle, I still can't help thinking that the DeCSS defendents should lose this case, for two reasons.
Firstly the fact is that whether or not their actions were moral, their actions were most definitely not legal and refusing to comply with the law is still a crime whether it is keeping DeCSS on your website or murdering small children. Whilst there are important moral differences between the two, we live under a code of laws which attempts to follow morality but in order to be effective must sometimes be harder than is perhaps necessary.
You may not agree with the law or its interpretation, but that's no excuse for breaking it! If you disagree that badly then there are perfectly legal means to protest which are a lot more effective in the long run. This case certainly proves that point.
The other point is that by rushing out and making such a big point of keeping DeCSS available they make the more reasonable pro-freedom groups look tainted by association. Now it looks like the same thing is going to happen as soon as legal action is started, making it harder for organisations like the EFF and ACLU to fight for good causes.
And you can bet that this episode will be used as the basis for more punitive legislation by a US government already dedicated to eliminating all vestiges of freedom on the net as it is.
Whilst I appreciate the good intention of DeCSS I think the people involved in this case acted foolishly and wrongly, and should face the consequences, no matter how much we might wish things had turned out otherwise.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:3)
That said, the Project Gutenberg link for this book is here [unc.edu].
DeCSS really is irrelevant... (Score:3)
Lately I've seen DivXes made from tapes done with camcorders snuck into theaters, and from screeners (tapes sent to movie reviewers/oscar type people), so I doubt that DeCSS is responsible at all for most of the increase in pirated movies (DivX, on the other hand, probaby IS)
Strong Words! =:-) (Score:4)
After his son left the witness chair, Per Johansen told a reporter in the courtroom hallway that his son had done "very well." He noted that Jon's grandfather fought the Nazis in World War II. He said that he himself fought communism in Europe in the 1980s by working as a secret courier for Solidarity leaders in Poland, carrying money into the country and smuggling out documents.
"Jon is in an historical line," Per Johansen said proudly. "He is fighting for freedom."
Them's fightin' words. IT's good that his family stands behind him in this battle.
Ok, I agree (Score:4)
I have has that there for a while. I too see that the DMCA is the last nail for many who only want to make small productions. If the DVD format is a licensed format, lecensed by the studios what chance does the little guy have.
This is an era where we can record our own music, edit our own video, digitize voice and pictures for future generations. Digital formats will last. The medium will change, but things can be copied from disk to disk. The quality will never go down.
We see this imortality of data as a boon, but studios don't. Studios see it as a loss. With analog formats there was lifespan to a movie, and copies lost quality.
Our boon is, by their definition, is the studio's loss. I don't think they will lose anything if the DVD format is open. I think that there will still be people small time productions, if it's open, and some control will be lost, but it's control they should never have had.
It's time we hacked the law, and exposed laws that protect corperate "freedom" by tossing the freedom of the people in the trash. If keeping the DVD format and platform closed is the only thing keeping American culture alive, then I for one think it should die. A more interesting culture will rise up. The one that exisited before large studios killed American culture.
Let's find out who voted away our freedom when they voted for laws to protect these closed formats. Let's publish the original notes and ideas of the people who pen the original copyright laws. Let's dumb things down forthe press. Let's PR our cause.
People who want to maintain the freedom that their parents fought for, have to keep up the fight. That is a war that never ends. Someone is always attacking freedom, just not always with a gun.
Re:Money buys justice (Score:4)
That is not a good example to use to support your argument! Go rent The Insider. Yes it's a dramatization, but the events in the film really happened, it really was tramatic enough for his wife to leave him, he really did get smeared on TV, and he really did get shafted by CBS because they were affraid of the tobacco industry... See just how much money can buy you in the courtroom. The only reason the tobacco industry lost was because some people were willing to throw their lives into the trash to take them down. And it took a long time for them to lose a case. Think about it, millions of people die every year because of cigarettes, and up until just a few years ago they had NEVER lost a case.
The tobacco industry (actually, a certain tobacco company, don't remember which) was able to influence the court in the state of Kentucky, the FBI, make death threats with impunity, etc. etc..
You are wrong, money buys a lot.
Naive indeed (Score:4)
If the people taking that information feel like it.
What are you going to do, send them a box of cookies? Warm and supportive Hallmark cards? I'd like everyone who has a bunch of mp3s to apply the following filter:
- Remove all mp3s in your list that you actually own the media to, CDs, cassettes, vinyl, or, God help us, minidisc.
- Remove all remaining mp3s by bands you can actually swear you'll buy CDs from in the next three months. Be honest.
- Remove all remaining mp3s for songs you've only had on your hard drive for two months (let's give you a chance to throw out the chaff).
- If you really feel like you are someone who has the exclusive right to determine how much someone else makes (and, for those of you who are high-paid geeks, or don't think you're that highly paid, guess how much someone working at McDonald's thinks you should make), take off all bands that are incredibly famous millionaires, your Britney Spears, Metallica, and NIN kind of bands.
Armed with that list of remaining tracks, go over to your wardrobe and count how many band T-shirts you own by that band.What? No T-shirts? Well, where are your concert ticket stubs? Okay, none of those...umm, bumper stickers? (A stretch, who knows if they get anything from that at all.)
Let's get this "rewarded in other ways" thing nailed down before we start the revolution, shall we? And, heck, before we're in such a rush to help out all of the poor, unfortunate natives (the musicians, the artists, the writers), let's actually ask them before bringing (forcing) the benefits of our wonderful civilization on them. "Geek culture knows best for you" is not the approach we want to take.
The results of riots (Score:4)
Young people quite naturally expect - based on their experience with authority figures in their childhood years - reasonable behavior from people in positions of authority. THIS DOES NOT OCCUR when dealing with government entities.
The legal system is a giant unemotional machine, and if you get caught up in its gears it will grind you into very small pieces. The legal system does not care if you are right, or if your cause is just; the gears will turn no matter what.
The 'Due process' that the Constitution promises you does exist, but processing is what is done to a piece of meat when it is put into a grinder, and the results of the legal system are just as inexorable. Because of its great size and power the legal system is an extremely dangerous machine to get caught up in; roughly 90% of the people who are indicted in the Federal Court system are convicted; the 10% who are not are like the spillage from a meat grinder.
I suggested trying to fight an elephant, because the analogy is pretty good. If the elephant notices you, and you are engaged, your chances of escaping are very small. The one thing which we do know is that nothing bad is going to happen to the elephant.
You have read about cases where civil disobedience has changed things about government. What you do not understand is that the reason that you read about them is because they are so rare that they become news stories. Dog bites man is not news, Man bites dog is.
Back in the 1960-70's we had Kent State. I guess this generation will get a repeat: while the Seattle WTO disorders caught the law off guard, eventually that sort of behavior results in a massacre.
Are there other ways of doing things? Yes - well thought out words and ideas will do far more toward changing things than street protests ever will. Government is not going to lose a street fight - that is the one thing it is designed to win.
Have you ever seen a Cobra gun ship in action? I have. Trust me, civil disobedience won't last 10 seconds against a single Cobra gunship, and the National Guard has thousands of them. All that you will wind up with is lots of dead people, and no one to tell their side of things. History is written by the survivors - not by the people lying dead in the streets.
The right to watch a movie? (Score:5)
Banning DeCSS isn't about "the right to watch a movie", any more than segregated water fountains are about "the right to get a drink of water".
The latter is about discrimination, restricting freedom of association, and the removal of rights from a minority of society by an ignorant majority. The former is about maintaining a stranglehold on intellectual property, restricting freedom of speech (If I can't tell someone, in English or in C, how to bypass a broken encryption scheme, yes, it's restricting freedom of speech), and the removal of rights from a majority of society (the hundreds of millions of consumers who *used* to have "fair use rights" guaranteed by the supreme court) by a minority (the IP providers who can make more money off of restricting content distribution channels, controlling content player manufacturers, and moving even digital data to read-only and pay-per-use systems).
Granted, segregation was grossly worse, but with centuries of evil tradition to back it up and a subtle (and often too unsubtle) population-wide bigotry, that wasn't surprising. And racial relations improved, and are still gradually (too gradually for some) improving.
On the other hand, intellectual property controls are getting worse, and fast. The court cases that made VCRs, dubbing between media formats, personal MP3 players, etc. illegal are all pretty much moot now, since we've got this shiny new DMCA law that wasn't around back then. Even EULAs (you know, those "contracts" you "agreed to" without signing or reading anything) may become binding, and all the ridiculous restrictions therein take effect. The idea being fought here is the idea that you can purchase a data disc, "own" that disc, entertain yourself or run your company using the data on that disc, but have no control whatsoever over it except what the previous owner gives you, revokable at any time you try to move that data to a new medium, play it with an unauthorized system, publish incriminating benchmarks, or do anything else the previous owner doesn't like. Does that not worry you a little bit?
Re:DeCSS was handled all wrong (Score:5)
..or sitting at the front of the bus.
Re:Uh, No (Score:5)
I'm sorry that people can't play their DVD's on Linux. I really am. But comparing your ability to watch a movie to someone's ability to make a living for themselves, to attend a decent school- that is a confusion of scale that I just don't understand.
And yes, I do appreciate the intellectual property cosiderations. I think that the DMCA is junk, and I would love it if more manufacturers would embrace open standards. But if you don't like it, why not abandon it? You buy a media format knowing what platforms it works on. No one buys Betamax expecting it was their god given right to have it work in a VHS machine. So DVD doesn't work on your machine? Screw 'em. Don't buy DVD's. Watch regular videotapes. It might inconvenience you, but not nearly as much as minorities were "inconvenienced" by generations of segregation, prejudice, and violence. If enough people drop it, the manufacturers will relent, or the format will die.
But there is no need to demean someone else's struggles by comparing the life and death of a good percentage of the American population to the tribulations of a group of movie buffs.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
there's an interesting thought (Score:5)
Anyways, what would happen if the massive media machines that puss Britney Spears and N'Sync on us went the way of the dinosaurs? Let's think about this for a moment. There wouldn't be any huge parent companies anymore (at least temporarily). We would all get our news from smaller, independent outlets. We would, of course, have to decide for ourselves on the credibility of said news outlets. That in and of itself is a scary thought, we would have to make an important decision with information that we would have to go out and gather ourselves. We wouldn't get everything served to us all nicely tied together on a silver platter with a certificate of authenticity from whatever conglomerate we went to for that information.
What effect would this have on the music industry specifically? Well, if we lost the conglomerates we would lose the massive marketing machines. And since there is no longer a massive conglomerate we could assume that we would no longer be bombarded with identical images of how everyone is supposed to be (from tv, movies and music). So, it's feasible that the massive appeal of teeny-bopper music and celebrities may decrease simply because there wouldn't be a concerted effort on the part of the media to inundate us with images of how we should want to look and act.
Of course, there is a frightening "other side" of that coin. What if, in the absence of any media conglomerates, in a world of thousands of independent media and news stations, companies and outlets, we were still bombarded with tv's and movies that basically amounted to watching people more attractive than us make out with other people more attractive that us, and complain about the difficulties of being attractive and popular? If that type of entertainment (and I use the term entertainment loosely) persisted with a myriad of independent stations...well I'd give up all hope on the human race right then and there and go live in a cave.
a cave with a generator and a computer to play games on of course. I'm only human.
Moller
The EFF 20/7 comments are more positive: (Score:5)
Universal City Studios v. 2600 Magazine
EFF Fights Movie Studios' Attempt to Monopolize DVD Players
Johansen Shines on Witness Stand in Defense of his Software
Jon Johansen, the Norwegian teen-ager who created DeCSS, the software at the heart of this case, took the witness stand Thursday morning to testify for the defense. Johansen explained that he was attempting to build a DVD player for Linux when he and two other members of the group MoRE developed the code. He also explained that DeCSS was written as a Windows executable file because the project had to be tested first on Windows since Linux could not read a DVDs UDF files. This testimony blew a huge hole in both the movie studios' and the judge's reasoning who assumed that because the code was written for Windows it had nothing to do with developing a Linux DVD player, as EFF's defense team has claimed for months.
The courageous teen also revealed that the MPAA filed charges against Jon and his father Per, instigating the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit to ask Jon to answer questions at the police station in January 2000. His testimony revealed a flaw in the judge's thinking, who has previously stated in several opinions that the teen was arrested and has inferred guilt therefrom. Not only was Johansen never arrested for developing the software, the Norwegian government awarded Jon a prestigious award for his excellent grades in high school and his contribution to society for creating DeCSS. Although it did not come out in court today, the Norwegian parliament has also issued the young teen a formal apology for the treatment he has undergone as a result of publishing the code.
In stark contrast to the veracity and integrity Johansen displayed on the witness stand in the face of a powerful industry trying to crush him, the head of the MPAA's world-wide anti-piracy effort Mikhail Reider testified next. The MPAA investigator who was previously an intelligence officer for the DEA and FBI gave testimony replete with "I can't recall", "I don't know", and "I can't remember" to the most basic questions involving the MPAA's investigative efforts in this case, reminiscent of the Jack Valenti deposition. The credibility and truthfulness of this witness was called into further doubt when shown and asked about internal MPAA reports sent to her that contradicted her testimony and were obtained by EFF's defense team through discovery battles. At the conclusion of Reider's testimony, the Plaintiff's rested their case.
EFF's defense team called Edward Felton to the witness stand who is an expert on technology and testified for the Department of Justice in its case against Microsoft. Felton, who likened "hacking" to "tinkering" explained that the public is ultimately served by the disclosure of information learned from publishing the results of encryption research and security testing. He also testified to the expressive nature of object code and that he can read it and encourages his students to read and write it as part of their education. "In addition to executing it, you can learn a lot from it," stated one of the world's most highly respected computer experts.
Journalist and publisher of 2600 Magazine Eric Corley, who is more commonly known by his pen name, Emmanuel Goldstein took the stand in his own defense at the late afternoon and will return first thing Thursday morning at 9:00. Goldstein explained many of the important contributions to computer security, technology innovation, and the protection of privacy that his magazine was responsible for since its creation in 1984. He also described his extensive journalistic background which includes having been published in the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal among countless others and testifying before Congress on technology issues.
Judge Kaplan provided some sense of his thinking saying that Web publisher 2600.com had a reasonably strong case that the issuance a permanent injunction against it was a futile act due to the mass proliferation of the software. Fond of analogies, the judge stated the defense had a reasonably strong case for the proposition that the barn is unlocked and this horse is out. (See pulled quote from transcript below).
In response to questions regarding the movie studios' right to control who can make DVD players, the judge gave some indication that he believed the DMCA may over-rule antitrust law in the U.S., something to be found no where in the legislative history of the statute.
Thursday morning, Emmanuel Goldstein will complete his testimony with the cross examination of him by Proskaur lawyer Leon Gold. EFF's defense team also expects to call Matt Pavlovich, a developer of open source DVD player tools and Professor Peterson of Princeton University's Computer Science department to the stand.
>From trial transcript of July 20, 2000, Pages 670-1
17 Now, it seems to me also that what the MPAA wants is
18 a legal determination that unlocking this barn was illegal,
19 and so the next guy who considers unlocking another barn is
20 going to have something serious to think about. I suspect you
21 are also asking me to issue an injunction against the guy who
22 unlocked this barn not to unlock it again even though there is
23 no horse in it. So, you know, I don't know that this witness
24 has any light to shed on that subject.
Page 674:
6 courts have said for 300 years, at least that courts of
7 equity ought not to use the equitable power of injunction to
8 try to accomplish the impossible or to perform something which
9 is entirely futile, and therefore, in the exercise of
10 discretion, given the broad prevalence of this particular
11 utility, this time the court declines to issue the injunction
12 because it would do no practical good.
Transcript of today's hearing:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/2000
An index of the DVD updates can be found at:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/dvd_updates_archive
You can subscribe to EFF's mailing list to receive the regular
DVD updates. To subscribe, email
and put this in the body: subscribe cafe-news
EFF's archive of MPAA v 2600 litigation:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/
RELATED COVERAGE:
Norwegian Teenager Appears at Hacker Trial He Sparked
By Carl Kaplan, NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/cyber
(This is one of the best articles yet written about this case).
DVD-Hacker Trial Judge Says Horsefeathers to Movie Studios' Injunction Demands
By Greg Lindsay, Inside.com
http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770
artists (Score:5)
I have to speak personally here, as a musician - moreso as one that does not get paid. I do not create my art (music) for the hopes of getting paid for it. Money is not my "incentive" to create. I create because I am compelled to. I cannot not create. It is something metaphysical, something bigger than myself that drives my need to express myself. I don't do it for money.
That said, if I was getting paid for it, I could quit my day job and do a whole lot more of it. I would love to get paid for it. But that is not WHY I do it.
wish
---
The key to innovation (Score:5)
Baloney!!! The reason that our culture goes anywhere is because future developments are built off of ideas that come before. This is like saying that "Just because you learned how to read doesn't mean that you should be able to write." Sadly, I don't know what the lowly unwashed masses can do to prevent this.