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Civil Disobedience and DeCSS
from the forlorn-hope dept.
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
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".
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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.