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NYTimes, DeCSSm EFF, DVD, And Other Acronyms 88

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-a-whole-lotta-capital-letters dept.
mudpup writes: "The NY Times has a nice story about Martin Garbus a well-known New York trial lawyer and First Amendment specialist, who was brought on board recently to assist the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the DVD case. My question is will The Motion Picture Association of America now be filing suit against the Times for linking to 2600's catalog of DeCSS mirror sites? Or will that Link disappear sometime before/after the West Coast wakes up this morning? "
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NYTimes, DeCSSm EFF, DVD, And Other Acronyms More

NYTimes, DeCSSm EFF, DVD, And Other Acronyms

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  • My question is will The Motion Picture Association of America now be filing suit against the Times for linking to 2600's catalog of DeCSS mirror sites? Or will that Link disapear sometime before/after the West Coast wakes up this morning?

    Can't wait for Emmanuel to rant and rave on about this.

    MPAA: NY Times, your being sued for "hyperlinking" to a "hyperlink" collection of illegal hyperlinks!

    When will all this stupid crap end and just let DVD be open before it becomes obsolete :-)

  • MPAA and the New York Times go toe to toe.

    Talk about your free speech battles.

  • really interesting. If the MPAA really tries to do anything, there is a chance that the NYT will see this as a method of getting very positive publicity as valiant fighters for free speech and follow through with the issue...
  • You've discovered the MPAA's secret plan: They want to eliminate DVDs even before they're obsolete!

  • What 2660.com have to say.. (Score:5)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:34AM (#1104170)
    2600.com [2600.com] Have regarded this as a vote of support by the NYT.

    In what we see as an important show of support from a major force in journalism, the New York Times has linked directly to our list of sites which currently house the DeCSS code.

    The links have been a source of contention in recent weeks, as the MPAA and eight Hollywood film studios have sought to force us to remove them, claiming the links are the same as having the code published on our own site. We see it differently - while they may have been able to get a federal court to order the material off of our site, forbidding us from telling the world what other sites still have it would be a very ominous precedent to set.

    Read the rest of their news item Here [2600.com].

  • MPAA and the New York Times go toe to toe

    I'm very tempted to purchase a classified ad in the NY Times and publish the DeCSS code in my ad...

  • Better URL for story (no login) (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:38AM (#1104172)
    Read it here. [nytimes.com]
  • If for instance it's written backwards, nobody will suspect anything until it's too late and it's out.. send it just before their deadline. :) How many copies do they print a day?

  • It will probably stay there (Score:4)

    by MillMan ( 85400 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:41AM (#1104174)
    because the NY times has deep pockets. Intimidation doesn't work as well against a major corporation as it does against an individual with little money. There is really no threat of jail time against a corporation as there is with an individual, and any monetary penalties won't amount to much. The MPAA's plan of attack so far has been mostly to use playground-bully type tactics anyway.

    If anything the NY times can use this as free advertising if the MPAA tried any lawsuits or other "tactics".

  • MY question is... (Score:3)

    by Jonny Royale ( 62364 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:42AM (#1104175) Homepage Journal
    My question is will The Motion Picture Association of America now be filing suit against the Times for linking to 2600's catalog of DeCSS mirror sites?

    My quesion is will the MPAA sue /. for linking to a story that links to a site that links to sites that have the program??

  • business speech is not free (Score:4)

    by G Neric ( 176742 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:44AM (#1104176)
    There's a difference between business speech and other speech, including freedom-of-the-press speech, and business speech is regulated more.
    • So, you cannot run ads as a business making false claims like "we say our cigarettes do not give you cancer"; that speech can be censored.
    • However, a newspaper would be allowed to report "they say their cigarettes do not give you cancer"; that speech cannot be censored.
    ... under U.S. law, that is. I would presume that the dispute with 2600 would be along these lines.
  • If for instance it's written backwards, nobody will suspect anything until it's too late and it's out.. send it just before their deadline. :) How many copies do they print a day?

    Haha

    I wonder if the MPAA would sue everyone who bought the newspaper with the code in it. That's plenty of people to sue.

  • Can EFF always hire high powered lawyers? (Score:3)

    by xcedrinod ( 148865 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:45AM (#1104178) Homepage
    Is the EFF really loaded or something? I mean where do they get the money to hire these high-priced attorneys? I guess it's all you stock-options fat noveau riche eh? Cause it ain't anyone I know. Anyways, attaboy EFF.

    Now what's up with this judge? In the preliminary hearing he ruled:

    "Under section 1201(a)(2) of the DMCA, Judge Kaplan said, it is illegal for anyone to offer technology intended to circumvent a technological measure that controls access to a work protected under the act." (NYTimes)

    How stupid is this? This criminalizes a form of reverse engineering. Now if I were reverse engineering for criminal intent, would I announce to the whole world what I had done? No! I'd freakin circumvent the bozotech in secret. The act of open-sourcing the exploit should clear any doubts of an engineer's non-criminal intent. Duh! But nooo, that ain't how it is. We have to criminalize the tech sharers, so the bozos in the bureaucracy can milk the corporate establishment for favors... y'know, some Senator calls his Federal Judge Law School buddy and asks him for a favor: "psst, hey skippy, let this injunction stand 'kay? just think of it as payback for when I took you to the hospital and waited while you got your stomach pumped."

    Sometimes the law is so stupid it makes want to stick hot pokers in my eyeballs.

  • Pirates don't need DeCSS (Score:4)

    by molog ( 110171 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:47AM (#1104179) Homepage Journal
    At a seminar on e-commerce and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act at Yale University this week, Gregory P. Goeckner, vice president and deputy general counsel of the MPAA, said that DeCSS greatly increased the threat of movie piracy on the Internet.

    I took this from the article linked to. DeCSS does not increase the threat of movie piracy and here is why. DeCSS is being argued that you can copy a movie onto your hard drive and thus can post it on the internet. You can get an MPEG-2 of a DVD movie from some of the players that are on Windows. If all you wanted to do was post an MPEG-2 you could either set up a huge buffer for the movie in the player or use on of the utilities out there taking advantage of the player. In fact most would see it as more of a pain in the ass to compile DeCSS then to just use the tools already out there. That nulls the comment above because if DeCSS is a tool for piracy it is nothing more then a redundancy.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • Important Quote (Score:3)

    by mochaone ( 59034 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:48AM (#1104180)
    f the judge's view is correct, Benkler said, then the Digital Millennium Copyright Act "does something no copyright law has ever done -- it extinguishes fair use," he said.

    Fair use, after all is the crux of this case, regardless of what the MPAA would have you believe. I am confident that jurors will understand that this basic right cannot be abrigded.

  • Entire 2600 news item by request.. (Score:4)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @05:52AM (#1104181)
    NEW YORK TIMES LINKS TO DECSS CODE

    04/28/00

    In what we see as an important show of support from a major force in journalism, the New York Times has linked directly [nytimes.com] to our list of sites which currently house the DeCSS code.

    The links have been a source of contention in recent weeks, as the MPAA and eight Hollywood film studios have sought [2600.com] to force us to remove them, claiming the links are the same as having the code published on our own site. We see it differently - while they may have been able to get a federal court to order the material off of our site, forbidding us from telling the world what other sites still have it would be a very ominous precedent to set.

    The action by the Times comes in an article [nytimes.com] in today's electronic edition. What makes it particularly significant is this paragraph in which our attorney, Martin Garbus, is quoted:

    "Take a hypothetical case, he said: If a major newspaper that operated an online news site wrote an article saying that somebody had broken the DVD encryption code, and it linked to a site that had the code on it, 'I think they'd have absolutely every right to do that.'"

    At the bottom of the page, they do precisely that, linking not only to 2600, but to "2600's catalog of DeCSS mirror sites [2600.com]".

  • MPAA: NY Times, your being sued for "hyperlinking" to a "hyperlink" collection of illegal hyperlinks!

    Well, gee, if that can happen, wouldn't places like Yahoo, Google and many others be in a lot of hot water?

  • Personally, I've always prefered the New York Times over other national newspapers (read McNews [usatoday.com]), now I have more reason to love the paper. This is the type of Journalism we need to see more of, unbiased, fair coverage of both sides of the story. It sure beats my local paper's "MP3: Local Students Stealing Music Online".

    My Prediction: The NYTimes is fond of freedom of the press. Their defiance of the MPAA will lend legitamacy to the OpenDVD [opendvd.org] cause.

    Mirror DeCSS on on a T-Shirt [copyleft.net].

  • The creaters of the hyperlink committed the same crime! Now the public can view copyrighted web pages.... this means anyone with a web site can sue anyone with a browser! ::chuckle:: If this isn't a dumb law, I don't know what is... oh wait, yes I do.... encryption export limits.
  • As everyone knows, on the internet you are always only three clicks away from a lesbian chat room. Everything is linked to everything. The MPAA is bascially trying to outlaw the entire internet. Don't think they are going to do it. Can't wait for my apex DVD player to come in!

  • Re:Entire 2600 news item by request.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    thanks, dude !!!
  • Did anyone else notice that the NYT article is linking to 2600's links to DeCSS? Does that make them guilty as well?

    And of course, what about Slashdot, linking to the NYC article that links to the 2600 page with links to DeCSS?

    And what about .....

    Jason

  • Why stop at the New York Times. Lets start a Fund and run classifieds in all the National Papers.

    I'm good for a couple of bucks.

  • Sorry, there is a patent and copy protection on hot pokers with a Fair Use clause prohibiting your use of them on any optical organ. The patent is pending on the use of fire as a heating element in poker applications.

    I am with you on the EFF-lawyer thing unless they are getting some help from the ACLU, of from 1st Amendment guys trying to make a name for themselves. In the growing frontier of electronic info, it seems like good publicity could elevate a lawyer into the F. Lee Bailey strata.

    -L
  • So I cant listen to mp3's, I can't watch dvd's. I'll just have to sit here and let the microsoft paper clip entertain me. when is some body gonna sue slashdot?..everyone else is being sued.
  • No question who the NYT supports in this battle, making themselves guilty of the same crime Corley's being accused of.

  • linking by words to slashdot, the nyc article, 2600's pages, and DeCSS?
  • To get around registration for any NYTimes articles, simply substitute "partners" for "www", e.g.: http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/cyb er/cyberlaw/28law.html [nytimes.com]
    instead of:
    http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/cyber/cy berlaw/28law.html [nytimes.com]

    --
  • Plus the New York Times knows that they have to from time to time draw a line in the sand for Press freedom and hold it. I don't think the MPAA will even try to sue the Grey Lady.

    The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

  • Even more interesting (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So far they haven't picked it up yet, but in several stories about this subject in the past Cnn.com has linked to 2600's site. Now I may be mistaken, but I believe that Time Warner is one of the major players in the MPAA. Does that mean they'll have to sue themselves?

  • Take a hypothetical case, he said: If a major newspaper that operated an online news site wrote an article saying that somebody had broken the DVD encryption code, and it linked to a site that had the code on it, "I think they'd have absolutely every right to do that."

    And now they did it. Go NY Times! They took that very hypothetical case and made it completely real. I think the MPAA will have to think very, very hard about this one....
    ----

  • You can get an MPEG-2 of a DVD movie from some of the players that are on Windows.

    Really? Which ones? If nothing else, publicizing this fact could cause the MPAA stormtroopers to stop focusing solely on DeCSS... and that could only be a good thing. :)

    ---

  • Probably not. But you can help. (Score:4)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @06:39AM (#1104198) Homepage
    I did... ok, it was only $35, but it makes a difference. Perhaps it's time to slashdot the EFF again? Join here [eff.org], or contribute directly to the DVD Defense Fund here [eff.org]. "Make a special gift to help EFF defend against the movie industry's attempt to criminalize open-source coding."

    They've got a point...

    ---

  • EFF now has a DVD defense fund... (Score:3)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @06:41AM (#1104199) Homepage
    In addition to joining the EFF, you can also contribute directly to their DVD defense fund, to help pay for lawyers like Mr. Garbus. If you can, put your money where your mouth is! The page is here [eff.org].

    ---
  • dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr | grep '^c..\..*A' | sort | cut -b5-36 | perl -e 'while(){print pack("H32",$_)}' | gzip -d

    a friend emailed that to me...a little more interesting than a page of hyperlinked mirrors...
  • Pirates are people who enter other people's ships, kill the crew and steal the cargo.

    Somehow I see this as a much more serious crime than copying a DVD.

    Don't go along with the abuse of the word "piracy" to mean "copying something made by A Very Big And Important Company, Inc."

    If you do, you're helping their mind control strategy, to get people to see the sharing of information as a horrendous crime.

  • OK..
    Except 2600 is a magazine, meaning they should have Freedom of the Press laws right? They are not providing a direct copy of the DecSS code, they are simply providing a link for information purposes to the actual code. So, aren't they in the exact same position that the NY Times is in? I can't see how the MPAA can sue 2600 for providing the link, but not the NY Times.
  • Exactly!!! I sent an email to the author for making this point in the last paragraph of the article. The DMCA should have never happened in the first place. It completly removes fair use rights. If people had realized this before hand we might not be in this position today but instead it got clouded with words like piracy and copyright.
  • MPAA wants a precedent before they replace DVDs with a "more secure technology." They want to make sure that the idea that they still have the right to control your property after you've bought it to be firmly ensconced in American legal precedent.

    Then they can do what they want, and if anyone breaks the new encryption, they can put them in jail.

  • greatly increased the threat My god I didn't even notice that. I sort of tune out when that bile spews from the mouth of the MPAA attorneys. Since when did a threat cause justification for this sort of thing? I can understand in the case of murder and what not but gun manufacturers aren't being taken down because guns increase the threat of violent crimes. This may not be the best example so please avoid all NRA type arguments for now and try and see the point I want to make here.
  • I proved it yesterday at work when one of my coworkers asked me how should he properly handle a case of a form submission that has to take some time on the server side to verify customer credit information. How do you force the user to not click on that 'Submit' button twice, how do you prevent partial form submission? So I suggested that user needs some form of confirmation that his request has being submitted. I told him to create an intermediary page that would be populated from the submission of the first page and have a message on it asking user to wait for a while at the same time posting the HTTP request from this intermediary page to the server.
    However, my coworker somehow did not understand me from the beginning, so I told him to watch me, I opened my UltraEdit text editor and typed in a couple of HTML pages with forms and submission mechanisms and all that.
    While I was doing it he understood better what I actually meant to do.

    Does this sound to you just like any other form of communication? I mean, if I could express myself more clearly in one language than in another one, why shouldn't I use the other one if the person I am talking to also understands that language.

    What is the difference between English, Chineese, Russian, Esperanto, Assembly, Prolog, C, C++, Java, Perl, VB, Pascal, Fortran, PL1, Cobol, Ada, Lisp, Scheme, ML etc etc etc etc Greek?

    Computer code is just another language and must be protected under the First Amendment and have the same rights as free speech has.

  • That's be expensive, but one ad would be tres funny. I'm willing to contribute.

    And printing it backwards would be a hoot.

    ---

  • "Under section 1201(a)(2) of the DMCA, Judge Kaplan said, it is illegal for anyone to offer technology intended to circumvent a technological measure that controls access to a work protected under the act." (NYTimes)

    In fact, Kaplan had not read the law thoroughly. An exception to the clause making distro of circumvention tech illegal exists in 1201(f)(2) and (3) - (3) in particular says that circulation of a circumention tech measure (read "DeCSS") IS legal when it is solely intended for RE. 2600 originally posted the story as an example of RE. Look it up everyone!! :)

    Hopefully, next time around in court Kaplan will be made aware of these exceptions.

    ---

  • >I'm very tempted to purchase a classified ad in the NY Times and publish the DeCSS code in my ad...

    No-one would clue on to what you were doing if you stuck it in the personals - it'd look like just a secret communication between pen-friends (and it is even addressed "To the caring and honest person who enjoyed that movie last week".) :-)

    Next day, post a reply: "To the coded letter-writer, from the person who enjoys movies - Thanks for posting the DeCSS sourcecode in this column yesterday. I appreciate your help in preserving my "fair use" rights under copyright law."

    The punchline is, if they pull the second ad (they won't have pulled the first), then that's almost as funny as if they don't pull it :-)
  • It's slower than a wet week, using the free
    service, but perhaps you will be able to read
    such sites using www.anonymizer.com

    Alex.
  • Actually, I always thought that the real problem with pirates was the gratuitous saying of 'Arrr'

    but the boarding and killing sounds bad too
  • Hey! Why did they post this but decline my submission weeks earlier that had a link to a similar article [sciam.com] from Scientific American? [sciam.com]
  • as well, the login 'cypherpunk', password 'cypherpunk' has worked more me many times on many sites...

  • MPAA Lawyer: Stop F*sking with us Big Media Company.

    NYT Lawyer: We are a Big Media Company!

  • I am confident that jurors will understand that this basic right cannot be abridged.

    I am not confident of anything. Jurors are human, and therefore subject to stupidity. Add on to that the American legal system, and you get a real-world version of quantum uncertainty.


    -- LoonXTall

  • This is really funny. I was at Tuesday's symposium, and Carl Kaplan was the moderator for the panel discussion that included Greg Goeckner, and at one point in the discussion he directly asked Goeckner, "Would the MPAA sue if the New York Times linked to DeCSS?" The audience was amused; after the laugh died down, Goeckner waffled.

    Looks like it's gonna get put to the test now. :-)

  • What is the difference between English, Chineese, Russian, Esperanto, Assembly, Prolog, C, C++, Java, Perl, VB, Pascal, Fortran, PL1, Cobol, Ada, Lisp, Scheme, ML etc etc etc etc Greek?

    C uses more {}'s than English and fewer ©'s than Lawyerian.


    -- LoonXTall
  • A while back here in Boston there was a EFF fund raiser where I and a bunch of other people gave nearly $10k. That's why EFF can hire high power lawyers.
    Accually, I'm sure that some of the lawyers are doing this also pro bono/pro se because they believe in the cause of the Constitution too.
  • ...And taking this argument to its logical conclusion, shouldn't everyone eventually be suing Kevin Bacon?

    Chris

  • Try this instead. The previous poster left out the less than and greater than in the while clause. DNS... the next great file system...

    dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr | grep '^c..\..*A' | sort | cut -b5-36 | perl -e 'while() { print pack("H32", $_) }' | gzip -d | less

  • This article [nytimes.com] discusses a joint venture of Microsoft and Xerox into "copyright protection software". Does anyone have any idea what kind of technology is involved here? If I can see it on the screen or hear it on the speakers, can you really make it impossible to copy? Inconvenient, yes, but I don't see how you can do better (or worse, I should say).
  • Does this mean that if they lose (and this linking to other sites with deCSS is not allowed), that JamesSharman has just screwed /. by posting the link to the 2600 catalog here as well? ;-)

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
  • Well, my friend, lynx and telnet/ssh to a box outside your work are your friends now :-)

    On a Linux box lynx is even colorful.
    --
    Leonid S. Knyshov
  • This link [leden.tref.nl] will take you to a page that lists them. Specifically most of the ripping tools require you to have a specific player. The page does list DeCSS but the other rippers, DoD Speed Ripper, DVD Ripper, DVD Matrix and DVD2MPEG have been out longer then DeCSS. Take DeCSS out of the mix and you have all the tools you need to copy a DVD to your hard drive. How is our utility that allows us to play movies on Linux going to more harm then what is there. My appologies for using the term piracy. I should have said copyright violation.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • It will be even more interesting if the MPAA doesn't do anything!

  • The MPAA (Score:3)

    by miracle69 ( 34841 ) on Friday April 28, 2000 @09:14AM (#1104226)
    Already Links directly to the DeCSS code itself.

    What is the big deal?

    Don't believe me? Follow these steps.

    Start at their page www.mpaa.org

    Click on members

    Click on Walt Disney - which takes you to disney.go.com

    The dropdown box that has "Where to Go" in the upper left corner contains go.com. Click that.

    Click through to the Go Network.

    Type DeCSS in the search area.

    http://www.go.com/Titles?col=WC&qt=DeCSS&svx=hom e_searchbox&sv=IS&lk=noframes

    That's the URL I got. Looks like DeCSS code to me.

    Of course, if linking to 2600.com is the problem, just type 2600 in the search link.

    http://www.go.com/Titles?col=WC&qt=2600&svx=home _searchbox&sv=IS&lk=noframes

    That's the URL I get. Oh well. I guess the MPAA should sue itself. It clearly links itself to DeCSS. In fact, one of its members is perhaps one of the biggest offenders. go.com has thousands of links to DeCSS code.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • dig @138.195.138.195 goret.org. axfr | grep '^c..\..*A' | sort | cut -b5-36 | perl -e 'while(&lt STDIN&gt) { print pack("H32", $_) }' | gzip -d | less

    REMOVE the SPACE after the &lt

    bah to slashdot plain text formatting
    which parses out &lt and &gt symbols.

    Go DNS !!
  • I left out nothing!

    your line's the exact same except with a pipe to less...

    it is however interesting that you can use dns records to transmit information.

    for those to lazy to cut and paste that line into an x-term, it will print out the source of deCSS...anywhere, anytime.

    kinda crazy.
  • i believe www.copyleft.net is selling t-shirts w/ the actual source written on the back. www.copyleft.net [copyleft.net]
  • The NY Times, while sometimes better than other papers, is still a creation of the corporate media. Their coverage of the IMF/WB protests in DC, for example, was totally biased against the demonstrators. Even Time magazine (part of the AOL-Time-Warner ultraConglomerate) had decent coverage [time.com].

    --
  • >>I'm very tempted to purchase a classified
    >>ad in the NY Times and publish the DeCSS
    >>code in my ad...

    Ooooh baby! I'd kick in cash to buy a REGULAR add to post this!
  • There was a story on slashdot a while back... on average, you can go from one web site to any other web site on the Internet in an average of 19 clicks (or something like that).

    So pick any two websites, and you should be able to go from one to the other just by clicking links.

  • An Aside:
    In order to make their threats hold against other entities, the MPAA must, if they claim this is to protect copyrights, pursue all violations. Failure to pursue even one blatent infringment, would essential destroy their credibility with the courts in regards to activily protecting their copyrights. However, if there claim is that of patent infringment, then they are not required to pursue all infringments.
  • My quesion is will the MPAA sue /. for linking to a story that links to a site that links to sites that have the program??

    Don't be silly. However, the MPAA will sue me for linking to Yahoo! [yahoo.com], which links [yahoo.com] to slashdot, which links to the NYTimes, which links to 2600, which links to DeCSS mirror sites, which live in the house that Jack built.

    --

  • I wouldn't doubt that there would be a way to do that...after all, MacroVision (which is "technology" that prevents using a VCR to record a signal that looks just like any other TV signal) has been out for quite some time now. It would probably be hard to do on a PC screen though, so it may involve using software hooks to block certain functions a la IKIOSK.


    =================================
  • In the first DVD case, in California in January 2000, the plaintiffs brought suit against Frank Stevenson, who wrote one of the programs, and some web sites that carried the program, and a large number of people (500 John Does) who linked to the program, either on their web sites or on Slashdot. The suit against the linkers was tossed out, though the suit against the authors succeeded, and I think the web sites were told to take it down. (The source code TShirts worn by many attendees weren't enjoined :-)


    Emmanuel Goldstein is a special case, because he had originally been hosting the material, and replacing that with a link to material now posted elsewhere aftern you've been ordered not to post the material yourself tends (in the few cases that have addressed the issue) to be viewed differently than just having a link.

  • My wife's employer blocks telnet but not anonymizer. My employer doesn't block either. (I need telnet, ans so long as smartfilter blocks ABAP/4 sites as "sex", my job function needs anonymizer - without anonymizer, I'd grab the tripod page, my superviser, a random one of our net guys and barge in on our CIO. Anonymizer saved me several hours yesterday. (alternatively, smartfilter almost cost me several hours)).
  • My quesion is will the MPAA sue /. for linking to a story that links to a site that links to sites that have the program??

    Hmmm, Let's see... Jerrypournell, user friendly, the Register, and just about every other high-tech source have linked to slashdot at some time or other.

    And most of the rest of the net have linked to the NYT. I think we've just indicted the entire net.

  • You've reached the voice mail for the MPAA. We were attending the latest wrap party until the wee hours, so we won't be able to litigate until at least 1pm. Maybe. Definitely 2 if I can get Raul to bring me a double decaf mocha latte' supremo. Oh, darn, I've got aroma-therapy at 2... Okay, 3pm. Absolutely by 3. Oh wait [BEEP]

  • That will block their trade secret attack, but I can't believe anyone is taking the trade secret aspect seriously anyway. But go ahead and publish it if you want to. It won't hurt.

    The real problem is DMCA, and even tattooing the DeCSS source code onto the judge's ass, still won't block the DMCA attack.

    IMHO, the only defense against DMCA is to attack DMCA itself. Either by getting it struck down by a court, or by using DMCA against someone with big pockets (maybe even MPAA themselves) so that they buy it's repeal.

    My imploded and perverted DMCA attack would be to create a CSS encrypted disk (without signing any rights over to DVD-CCA), and then sue DVD-CCA and existing DVD player manufacturers for violating DMCA, since they would be infringing on my DVD. Some people say that wouldn't work, though. And until writable DVDs (without the key track preburned) are available, I don't know how I can try this anyway.

    It would sure be fun, though.


    ---

  • Eerie (Score:1)

    by JCCyC ( 179760 )
    Have you noticed the NYT article's author has the same surname as the pro-censorship assholic judge of the case? Family feud?


    "Standing up to an evil system [pcshop.com.br] is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
  • Well, I'm impressed. And as a result of the NYT showing some balls and actual journalism, I'm going to break a long standing promise to myself and register with their site.

    Good on 'em, I say.
  • This is the single most expensive project EFF has ever undertaken in our 10 years of fighting for freedom on the Net. EFF is counting on Netizens around the world to support this effort and contribute to the defense fund for this case. We need to raise at least a million dollars for this year's fight alone. You can join EFF and make your donation count at: https://www.eff.org/support/joineff.html This community understands far better than most the important issues at stake in this case, so we are depending upon it to fund this litigation and help educate the public on its need to join the fight for free expression in cyberspace. After all, civil liberties don't come for free. Thank you for your continued support. Robin Gross, EFF
  • 'we say our cigarettes do not give you cancer' is false? I think you mean 'our cigarettes do not give you cancer'

    -David T. C.
  • I'm sorry, the User Info like above links to a page at Slashdot.org, which is a site containing illegal content, to wit, a link to an illegal site. As all comments are owned by the poster, and as we consider the 'User Info' link as part of your comment, you will soon be contacted by our lawyer. Thank you.

    -David T. C.
  • I am hereby serving legal notication to myself for posting a comment that links to an illegal site. I will have my lawyers contact me.

    -David T. C.
  • You're right, DVD copying was made possible long before DeCSS.

    One weekend I set off with the goal to transfer one of the DVDs that I owned to Video-CD (yes this is legal as it was for my personal use). It was reletively easy to do. With a quick google search I found oleg's site (which was shut down by the MPAA) and started creating the Video-CD. The only real problem was that it took 4 hours to encode 1 hour of DVD into Video-CD format. Basically, DeCSS was needless in the copying process other than keeping me from having to leave the DVD in my DVD-ROM drive while copying the movie.

    The whole DeCSS case is a 'save face' for the MPAA, an attempt to keep themselves from looking dumb when they realized, "whoops, we forgot to protect this somehow". 2600 only got involved because of the magic word Hacker and its semantics making them an easy target for corporate greed.

  • Okay, how few links can you take to go from mpaa.org to any copy of the DeCSS code? And we already know about disney->go and typing in DeCSS.

    No easy ones like that, no typing anything. Just straight, out-and-out clicking (Or hitting Enter for you Lynx fans). Oh, and it's legal to modify a site if you happen to find your own site somewhere along the way. But no typing along the way.

    Let the games begin. Add directions as a reply. The contest is on till the forum is archived!

    -David T. C.

  • Try http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/WWW/Anonymous_S urfing/

    dmoz.org is mirred on directory.netscape.com and lycos.com and metacrawler.com and http://search.aol.com/index.adp and ...

  • I sent them $100. I also bought an anti-DVD CCA t-shirt from Copyleft (wearing it now).

    I'll probably send them more when some of my stock options vest, though the FSF is next on my list of "worthy causes".

    - RSH
  • Hey, that's a nice one for my private jesred/squid redirector rules. ;-)

    Thanks for the tip!
  • You know, I'd really love to get a chance to see a real life MPAA/RIAA Upper Echelons meeting where they discuss things like DeCSS and MP3. Do TPTB honestly believe that their world will crumble and fall apart, leaving them penniless, destitute, and begging passing IT professionals for money if they don't make certain algorithms illegal? Or would they not care but they've got this crack team of accountants, lawyers, and marketing execs who swear up and down that their livlihood is threatened? Dyolf Knip

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