DVD CCA Applies for Restraining Order

Robert Jones writes "I have just received an email which I think will be of interest to many Slashdotters. Apparently, the DVD CCA [Copyright Control Association] has applied for a restraining order against myself and approximately 70 others to keep us from distributing 'any proprietary property or trade secrets relating to the CSS technology'. The hearing will be at 'the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, State of California, on December 29, 1999, at 8:30 a.m.' This will probably result in the bastards silencing us, but what can you do? If this goes through, I will never purchase a DVD player using current technology." Yes, the e-mail is real. Many people sent copies. We'll post an in-depth story within a day or two.

Trade secrets vs. patents

Is something still a trade secret if it has been reverse engineered? I thought this was the trade off between patenting and keeping something a trade secret. Surely they can't have it both ways?

slashdot also in the email

slashdot is also mentioned in the email, which is mirrored here: http://douglas.min.net/~drw/css-auth/legal-info/ ~spot

Whack the mole!

They didn't serve me, Who wants some DeCSS? I got source, I got source!!!!

Anybody ever play "whack the mole"? Watching these lawyers try to stop the flood of information is like playing the game - every time you smack one down with your mallet two more pop up.

If anyone wants the source, contact me [mailto]. Oh yes, and I'm making a dare to any of the lawyers out there - whack this mole.

These are 'secrets'

The DVD algorithms that were found through some clever hacking were not found by rummaging through propretary documents or other blackops means, but through working with software. The software that they aquired the "method of decryption" from was not found illegally in the country it was found. That technology then was legally exported into the united states. These methods are pretty boring and were quickly incorprated into some nice pieces of software. Wheres the lawsuit, oh yeah, the DVD people DONT WANT YOU TO beable to use the technology yourself. That would give the consumer some rights to a product that could the copied and *gasp* pirated.

Sorry DSS guys, it was too late when you released the format.

pining for the old days?

remember the machine-breakers of england?

those were the good old days. if a company tried something like this, their buildings would be burned and the owner tarred and feathered in front of his house. sure it's dangerous, but how dangerous is it to let someone step on your freedom? is it really better to die on your feet than live on your knees?

are these companies paying me to allow their software and data run though MY computer and MY cables in MY house? do I have the right to put a logic analyzer or debugger on my system and look at the registers, memory and I/O or the various hardware and programs? can i use than information in turn for whatever purpose i choose? when will this become a "fair use" issue? reselling someone's app as your own is one issue, but using their protocols and command set should be quite another.

sometimes i think that the only reason corporations get away with this stuff is that we've become so acclimated to greed and selfishness that we have forgotten how to stand together and fight when we see it.

c'mon everyone, join me in a rousing chorus of "BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

they will lose in the long run. make it sexy, make it warez.

A sad note to end the millenium

With only a couple of days to go, I think that this, more than anything else, personifies and highlights the fight we have ahead of us. Nothing is such a danger to the values that ANYONE who loves the Internet and the Information age holds highly then this fight of stupidity (armed with guns) against the progress of the mind.

I'm pretty much at a lack for words right now, so I will just send my moral support to anyone targeted by this outrage. However, this is a battle we can fight on our turf and they can fight on their's. The courtroom is definitely theirs.

There was never a revolution without somebody going under wheel, and there was never a meme to go under without a fight. And there has never been a fighter like corporate society.

-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Solution

Look folks, the only way to combat this is for everyone to distribute copies of this software and associated documentation. Go here [free-dvd.org.lu] and download all of the local files and host them in as many locations as you can. If possible mirror the actual page rather than downloading. Just get them in as many public locations as possible any way you can. Lets make 'em play whack-a-mole.

Remember, one ant won't make a bit of difference, nor will two or three, but millions can overcome any obstacle.

Another issue I am reminded of here is that this is a great experiment by the powers that be. It has long been held that you cannot regulate the internet because it is so distributed and decentralized. If they win, it will be proven that it is easier to control the content of the internet than was previously thought...

Good Luck!

-Chuck
--

Info

Here's the nastygram [min.net] (was sent in MS-Word format, HTMLized [more-or-less] for your pleasure) that I got via email this afternoon. Expect my css-auth mirror [min.net] to close by midnight tonight. On the advice of legal counsel, I'm not at liberty to discuss matters further.

Douglas R. Winslow

DeCSS, LiViD, css-auth, link!

Download this [mediaone.net].

Let them try to call a few hundred thousand people into court... I'd like to see that. =)

The Hearing is Coming Up, not Passed

I cannot be in Santa Clara on that day, but if there are as many activists within reach of this article as one is led to believe, and if they believe so fully in their views, go be heard in the courtroom venue.

If I read on Dec. 29th that the hearing came and went without a standing-room-only courtroom, with all sides of the issue having been clearly heard, I will stop caring about the intellectual property debate.

It's not as if the article was "they applied for AND RECEIVED a restraining order." There is still an opportunity to influence the court. If nothing else, a judge could be made to realize that this matter is not something that should be decided off the cuff, but rather has very significant implications. Simply having a few thousand people on the courthouse steps that day would probably be enough to effect change.

Do I think it will happen? No. Will I be there? No. When the rubber meets the road on these issues, the bottom line is we really don't care. We Email our congress people, but do we snail mail them? Are these issues even worth $.33 to us? Maybe not. History will tell.

Section 47.

47. On information and belief, this proprietary information was obtained by willfully "hacking" and/or improperly reverse engineering
software created by CSS licensee Xing Technology Corporation ("Xing"). Xing's software is and was licensed to users under a license agreement which
specifically prohibits reverse engineering.

Re:Trade secrets vs. patents

Heh. In case you missed it, there are no more such tradeoffs. A combination of techno-illiterate judges, brain-dead patent officials, and good old fashioned corruption has basically reduced the court system for IP issues to a modern form of 'trial by combat'. In Ye Olden Dayse, you see, issues could be settled by hiring a champion to fight for you. The richest man, obviously, could hire the best champion -- thus assuring himself victory, unless the person he was in disagreement with was named 'Volagr, Destroyer Of Towns' or some such.

Today, the situation is similair, though less physical blood is shed. A court system that inflicts almost no penalty on those who file baseless lawsuits encourages such filings, and the victim often has no resources to challenge it.

The recent 'extension' to the 'limited copyright' granted in the Constitution is a prime example of this.

I tend to be in favor of IP rights as social convention -- they should be honored because it is the right thing to do. The last few years have seen so many attacks on basic rights in the name of protecting IP that I can no longer in good conscience claim that the current system is workable.

Re:amazing.

Yes, of course they/we/whomever has an understanding of the real world.

In the real world, there's this new type of media called DVD, and this format in which it is stored, called CSS. CSS is an encryption format; it's not proprietary, really, as they (the creators) have published papers explaining how it works. What they haven't published, however, are the list of keys that can be used with CSS to decrypt DVD movies.

It is a perfectly feasible option to buy a product which will decrypt DVD movies (so they can be played) without having to know any of the keys.
Such products come in two forms: (a) hardware, or actual physical VCR-like devices that connect to a TV, and (b) software, which decodes the DVD format with the aid of a computer.

Although both schemes require a key to operate, the key is embedded - the end user does not need to know what the key is in order to use the product.

This would work well for any standardized environment; from the hardware point of view, as long as you had a standard 60-hz NTSC television, you could use a NTSC DVD decoder; if you had a 50-hz PAL television, like in Europe, you could use a PAL DVD decoder. Here, there are only two major standards that companies need to produce products for.

In the software world, things are much more complicated. Not only are there different standards for how a software product talks to the operating system, but there are different graphical standards, different standards for talking to the DVD drive, etc.

Software companies so far have fulfilled very few niches in terms of all the standards in use. This means that there is still a demand that is unfulfilled, and in the _real world_, demand and supply go together hand-in-hand.

In other words, in the "real world", by not providing enough supply to make everybody happy, you invite competing products.

The only illegal thing done here is to have reverse-engineered a poorly-written software decoder to extract a key. However, it would also have been possible to brute-force test keys until one was found, although it would have taken a while.

So, here (as I see it) are all the things going on here:
In the case of the company with the poorly-written software, negligence.
In the case of the program crackers, reverse engineering. (but is it really illegal to know what the processor knows? I mean, you *own* the damn processor after all!)

Just my $0.02.


--TheOrangeSquid


The fellow sat down at a bar, ordered a drink and asked the bartender if he
wanted to hear a dumb-jock joke.
"Hey, buddy," the bartender replied, "you see those two guys next to
you? They used to be with the Chicago Bears. The two dudes behind you made
the U.S. Olympic wrestling team. And for you information, I used to play
center at Notre Dame."
"Forget it," the customer said. "I don't want to explain it five
times."

Re:You guys are missing the point

"because there was no
DVD support for *n?x operating systems"

When I mentioned that, I got flamed by people saying that there was in fact DVD support for Linux. What I have yet to see, however, is "enough" DVD support to justify it being a bullet point for what's supported by the OS. At best,
playing a DVD on linux seems to require:

1. Willingness to take a risk in a hardware purchase, for equipment that may not be usable on your OS.
2. Technical savvy enough to run a very experimental system (far beyond the usual requirement for the OS).
3. Willingness to be considered part of a criminal conspiracy by the DVD industry (if this court order goes through and follows to its logical conclusion).

That makes Linux a laughable alternative to Windows9x for the application of playing DVD.

Unless you can give me a cookbook solution (what DVD drive to buy, what software to run it on, works with all titles, totally legal to obtain and use in the USA), don't you dare flame me for saying this. Linux remains an unacceptable solution for the DVD player application.

This issue has nothing to do with piracy

Although I'm sure 99% of Slashdot readers understand this point intuitively, I'm going out of my way to make it extra clear to those who don't know much about the subject or who haven't put much though into it:

The breaking of CSS encryption has absolutely nothing to do with piracy. Think about it for a second: how feasible is it to move around 5- and 6- gigabyte DVDs? How do you store them? Not on your hard drive, that's for sure! How many people do you think can afford a DVD burner capable creating true dual-layer DVDs (and not DVD-RAM discs, which are something completetly different?) And when DVDs can be bought online by a judicious shopper for as little as $5 per title, do you really think anyone's going to go out of his way to pirate them? It's far easier to hook a VCR to the video output of your DVD decoder card and videotape the damned things! The loss of quality is far less than if one were to recompress an MPEG2 stream using a lossier but higher-compression encoding.

No, the issue at hand here is that of free access to information--an issue that has traditionally been very important to the open-source community and very unimportant to the corporations that write your software and, to an increasing degree, control your life.

You see, when the DVD manufacturers came up with CSS, their goal was not to protect the intellectual property contained on DVDs; rather, they were establishing an ironclad grip on the entire DVD market. They control who gets to view DVDs, how, and with what hardware and software. They have accomplished this end through the use of a proprietary encryption scheme (CSS) about which they have released no information. Of course, if they'd bothered to consult with any security professional, they would have been told that security through obscurity simply doesn't work, as has been proven endlessly, usually at the expensive of the implementor of said obscure security.

Now, someone has broken their cute little encryption scheme, which they never patented and never published. In what is basically a panic response, they are wasting millions of dollars and contemplating turning the entire DVD market on its side just so they can maintain total control of the market.

As if this wasn't bad enough, they are threatening legal action against the people who cracked CSS, an activity that never was and still isn't illegal, and they are trying to block them from publishing anything else they find out about the non-patented CSS encryption algorithm. This is a violation of the CSS crackers' right to free speech which, if you'll recall, if a constitutional right.

This is an old story, of course. Those of you who have been around long enough can remember countless other occasions where some company's naive encryption scheme was broken and the corporate response was to attempt a legal assassination of the cracker in order to maintain security.

So, instead of whining irrelevantly about piracy, why don't you boycott DVDs yourself in order to protest the violation of someone's first amendement rights? Somebody might someday do the same thing for you when you find yourself against the wall.

The list of defendants (Are you one of them?)

The Defendants:(are you one of them?

(apologies for the length of post)

1. www.free-dvd.org.lu
2.josefine.ben.tuwien.ac.at/~david/dvd
3.rockme.virtualave.net/
4.amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h0444t2v
5.www.homestead.com/_ksi0701961562917005/avoid.../ index.htm
6.www.anglefire.com/jazz/avoiderman/
7.www.intelcities.com/Main_Street/Avoiderman/
8.www.members.theglobe.com/avoiderman/dvd.htm
9.members.zoom.com/_XMCM/lkjhgfdsa2/index.html
10.www.vexed.net/CSS/
11.www.unitycode.org/
12.batman.jytol.fi/~vuori/dvd/
13.www.zpok.demon.co.uk/
14.www.dvdlinks.co.uk/css/
15.www.twistedlogic.com/archive/dvd
16.www.capital.net/~wooly/
17.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Campus/8877/inde x.htmlgeocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Cam pus/8877/index.html
18.www.angelfire.com/mt/popefelix/
19.members.tripod.lycos.nl/jvz/
20.tv.acmecity.com/parody/356/index.html
21.cryptome.org/dvd-free.htm
22.altern.org/bettina/0a0a.html
23.www.crosswinds.net/~valo/DeCSS/
24.info.astercity.net/~nicodem/
25.134.100.185.221/decss/
26.www.dvdripper.videopage.de/
27.Crypto.gq.nu
28.www.humpin.org/decss
29.209.132.25.138/~inkk/DVD/
30.members.brabant.chello.nl/~j.vreeken/main.html
31.dirtass.beyatch.net/
32.therapy.endorphin.org/DVD/
33.www.angelfire.com/in2/mirror/
34.sent.freeserve.co.uk/DeCSS
35.members.tripod.co.uk/bap/css/css.html
36.angelfire.com/myband/decss/top.htmlangelfire.co m/myband/decss/top.html
37.www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/tylerbridge/679/dvd. htmlfortunecity.com/tinpan/tylerbridge/6 79/dvdcss.html
38.munitions.vipul.net/software/algorithms/streamc iphers/decss.tar.gz
39.munitions.polkaroo.net/software/algorithms/stre amciphers/decss.tar.gz
40.munitions.dyn.org/software/algorithms/streamcip hers/decss.tar.gz
41.munitions.cifs.org/software/algorithms/streamci phers/decss.tar.gz
42.uk1.munitions.net/software/algorithms/streamcip hers/decss.tar.gz
43.munitions.firenze.linux.it/algorithms/streamcip hers/decss.tar.gz
44.perso.libertysurf.fr/ortal98/dvd_rip/decss_12b. zip
45.users.drak.net/bemann/software/css/
46.www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Port/3224/
47.ftp://alma.dhs.org/pub/DVD/
48.decss.tripod.com/index.html
49.discordia.de/decss/DeCss.zip
50.www.dvd-copy.com/
51.dvdtidbits.com/dvd.shtml
52.www.neophile.net/
53.perso.club-internet.fr/ches/dl/rippers/
54.plato.nebulanet.net:88/css/
55.quintessenzs.at/q/mirrors.html
56.www.ceraton.com/decss/
57.slashdot.org/articles/99/11/09/1342207.shtml
58.cryptome.org/dvd-css.htm
59.ftp://dvd:dvd@206.98.63.136/
60.www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=547600297
61.www.brakton.freeservers.com/#downloads
62.www.remco.xgov.net/dvd/
63.www.dvdcracked.tvheaven.com/index.html
64.dvdsite.homepage.com/
65.www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Derby/2659
66.get.to/dvdsite
67.home.worldonline.dk/~andersa/download/index.htm
68.www.ooze.org/dvd.html
69.start.at/dvdsoft
70.mmadb.no/hwplus/DeCSS/decss.html
71.home.sol.no/~espen-b/dvd/css/decss.html
72.o2.uio.no/dvd
_________________________

/. Poll Suggestion: Who is Doe #57?

CmdrTaco

Hemos

Andover

John

DVD Consortium sux

Re:The list of defendants (Are you one of them?)

How does a State Superior Court have any impact or bearing on a citizen of Denmark, Australia, or whatnot?

It's not a US federal court case. As far as I know, the state of California does NOT have any extradition treaty with Denmark or Australia, for example.

What do non-US nationals have to fear? Also, what about US residents who have given up their US citizenship and live only as citizens of another US state? (Yes, I've seen a few--it's a good way to get out of Social Security and the IRS.)

Chris

yeah, i got one too

Yeah, I recieved one of those lovely letters also... you can read it here [frozenlinux.com]. Contrary to what was written in the email, it's perfectly legal to distribute the notice.

I promptly called my lawyer (actually a close friend) after recieving the email and he said I have nothing to worry about. Firstly, such a notice must be mailed to me, not emailed. And even by post is not legally binding. Secondly, if they do get their little restraining order, it must be delivered to me in person... hehe, I'm in germany right now. Based on what I told him he said (gasp) that they're just trying scare tactics. I forwarded the email to him, he will review it and give me more advice tomorrow morning.

This sure is a fun, isn't it?

-----

Re:The Hearing is Coming Up, not Passed

I'll be there. Unfortunately, I don't have a "Team Slashdot" t-shirt, but maybe we could get Andover to fed-ex a box of 'em to distribute to anybody who shows up and finds the Official Slashdot T-Shirt Distributor? I'd even be willing to pay for mine, but I think it'd be a good idea for as many people as possible to be both present and recognizable.

The "Other" DVD Copy Protection

We've heard a lot about CSS, its being cracked, and various vult^h^h^h^hlawyers getting involved. DVD is turing out to be a real mess. So, at the risk of getting sued for talking about another way in which DVD is screwed, here goes...

I got a DVD player for Christmas today. It's the regular console-type thing with composite, digital audio and s-video outputs. I have a somewhat older 27" TV that takes only RF input. So, I hooked the DVD player to my VCR, which takes composite in and emits RF out. Problem solved, I thought... but no. The video goes through a cycle of great->flickery color->crap in color->crap in monochrome->great, repeat. Funny enough, in the troubleshooting section of the manual, under "I can't record DVD video to VHS tape," it pretty much says, "that's right." It seems that they have screwed around with the hsync signal coming out of the box, such that any intermediate device, like a VCR, degrades the video. Short of buying a new TV with s-video or composite inputs, or a timebase corrector (which would probably cost more than a new TV), what can I do? This seems to be a common problem with DVD players. I've got a perfectly legal TV, perfectly legal HiFi VCR, perfectly legal DVD player, and a perfectly legal copy of the Matrix ("DVD killer app"), which I can't use together because of a very stupid, artificial problem. Little help here?

Fair pre-millennium hearing impossible

The hearing will be at 'the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, State of California, on December 29, 1999, at 8:30 a.m.'

It is impossible for the hearing to go ahead with fair consideration and representation on this date, on account of all the defendents being fully occupied getting ready to prevent the collapse of western civilization through the millennium bug. And no geeks ever get up before midday anyway.

Re:The list of defendants (Are you one of them?)

And I'm highly offended they ignored me!

http://www.chello.nl/~f.vanwaveren [chello.nl].

Re:Trade secrets vs. patents

I've read the thread so far regarding this legal action and the consequences will probably shock the lawyers that brought on this action.

The one thing they are trying to prevent (distribution of the DeCSS source code) is going to happen anyway, probably to a wider range of people than it would've orginally.

Another trend in this thread that i find amussing is the whining of some that the DeCSS folks are pirates. Does this mean that the Linux community is supposed to sit on its hands and wait for someone to decide that its time to support Linux with in their DVD products? I'm not a big time Linux Guru but I know that that isn't how Linux got where it is today. Furthermore, the software market is alive and well despite piracy, the Video Cassette market is alive and well, the Compact disk market is alive and well. So much for the rumors that DeCSS is going to kill the DVD market.

A suggestion to the DeCSS authors. While I know it doesn't sit well with the OpenSource philosopy, why not incorporate. Yeah, you'll have to distribute binaries for awhile but hey, at some point declare the source open and let the code go free.

My 2 cents...

A simple way to beat the system.

This stuff was never publicly released, correct?

So why don't we patent it? After all, it is possible to get a patent on a procedure, such as windowing, that has been in existance long before you claim to have invented it.

Since we are not suppossed to know how this is done we can claim that there is no legitmate way we could have found this as an example of prior art.

Then, one we have the patent we can sue them!

I love America.

Need to start doing some damage

We need to start filing counter suits (Harassment, misuse of the legal system, etc) and actually start demanding damages that would actually hurt some of these companies filing these frivolous. As long as we keep rolling over and taking it up the ass, they're going to be happy to keep giving it to us up the ass.

I'm sure we could make a legal argument to a jury that this big corporation is out to screw over the little guy and that the only way to keep this from happening more and more often would be to award substantial damages (Say, $500 Million or more) for the misuse of the legal system.

Don't bend over!

Taken from The Letter [min.net]:

On information and belief, this proprietary information was obtained by willfully

"hacking" and/or improperly reverse engineering software created by CSS licensee Xing Technology Corporation ("Xing"). Xing's software is and was licensed to users under a license agreement which specifically prohibits reverse engineering.

Taken from The Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science [onlineethics.org]:

Article Number 142
Reverse engineering and patent infringement

In most instances, "reverse engineering" is an acceptable option for creating new products. However, there are legal and ethical limitations that must be considered.

Reverse engineering is a common procedure that typically involves the disassembly, examination, and analysis of a product to reveal its design and function. Normally, this is done for competitive analysis, and sometimes for the purpose of building and selling a similar product. It is legally and ethically acceptable for a company to purchase a commercially available product, to analyze it thoroughly, to design and develop a similar product and a method for its manufacture; provided the new product and method do not violate the patent rights of another company.

Seems to me (and I'm NOT a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV) that the programmers were completely within their rights here. What really jumps out at this letter at me is that NOWHERE do they reference an actual patent number that I could look up. If they did, I'd be able to pick it apart a bit more; I can only assume that they intentionally left this out of the document because they're hoping a judge isn't smart enough to ask for it. I would think that if the patent helps their cause, they'd certainly quote it or reference it. My understanding of their letter is that they have their panties in a knot over illegal copying and distribution. The fact is, none of these defendants has been accused of either copying or distributing DVD movies. To quote the letter again:

49. Defendants knew or should have known when they posted or provided "links" to the DeCSS program on their web sites that it was being made available by virtue of the unauthorized use of proprietary information and that they were misusing proprietary confidential information gained through improper means. This is because the DeCSS program has the capability to defeat DVD encryption software and, as a result, the DeCSS program allows users to illegally pirate the copyrighted motion pictures contained on DVD videos - - activity which is fatal to the DVD video format and the hundreds of computer and consumer electronics companies whose businesses rely on the viability of this digital format.

Two things about this scare the living hell out of me. First, this business about "the DeCSS program allows users to illegally pirate the copyrighted motion pictures contained on DVD videos": Sure, it makes such things possible. At the same time, one can mix fertilizer, black powder and some other goodies together such that one could blow a building to hell. A camera makes it possible for one to observe you in the shower. A photocopy machine makes it possible for one to distribute damn near any document. But nobody's sueing Miracle Grow. Nobody's sueing Kodak. Nobody's sueing Xerox. See, the fact that Product X enables one to achieve a nasty objective DOES NOT make Company X liable. This has been established time and time again in the court system. And it holds, so long as Product X's primary purpose is NOT to assist in achieving the nasty objective. The software in question IS NOT written to aid in copying DVDs. It's NOT written to aid distributing illegal copys. It's primary objective was to make DVD's playable on Linux. Quite legal, if ya ask me.

Now, the second thing that really worries me here is that they're going after people who were NOT distributing the software. There are sites on that list who just LINK to the software, or a site that distributes it. Hasn't at least one prior ruling already said that this is a legal activity? If it's not, God help Google, and any other search engine out there. Or anyone who links to anyone who links to the software. And so on.

I'm also completely unsure if this program is anywhere near the stuff used by the licensed friends of the DVD CCA. If they're totally different, and don't make use of the same proprietary algorithms, etc, the case has just grown exponentially weaker. Me thinks that if these guys get shot down, someone oughta rewrite the program such that it doesn't use anything from Xing except the key - and whoops, that can be brute forced in a matter of weeks once a non-proprietary algorithm implementation is in place (see distributed.net efforts w/weak encryption cracking).

Anyways, I highly encourage these defendants to pull together and find a decent defense attorney (anyone out there who is one, and reads slashdot...?), and make sure that DVD CCA doesn't force them to bend over and take this...

--

"improper means" -- key to case

which they either obtained by improper means or knew or should have known was obtained by others by improper means

I'm definitely not a lawyer, but the above quote from the letter is very likely the key to their case. Even those IP cases are now pretty much wars of attrition, where whoever can afford to keep fighting wins, Trade Secrets aren't protected unless you can show that they were obtained from the original company. If I independently discover a method of, e.g., organizing a database, another company can't force me to stop using it unless they can show that I got the idea from them. (Well, unless they patent it).

--Kevin

X10 Solves Another Problem

I have that problem too. It turns out that the X10 DVD-Sender has a coax output, and it uses it beautifuly. I bought mine for the sole purpose of outputting it to an older tv. You also get a nifty RF Remote for controlling your computer from across the house (and freaking out relatives)

-Tim

.sig: Nobody but us .sigs in here

Re:The list of defendants (Are you one of them?)

After reading that list - I'm confused.

Can someone explain to me exactly what right an organisation has trying to use a US court to tell non-US citizens what they can or cannot put on a web page which is not hosted within the USA or on a USA controlled domain name ?

Perhaps someone needs to point out to these lawyers that some bits of the world which aren't the USA take a very different attitude to IPR generally (eg many places have many to avoid the lunacy of software patents altogether thus far - even if some bits of Uncle Sam are now exterting pressure on us to change our policies)

I'll let the people in the US comment on the wrong and wrongs of this case under US law. But I hope those people named who are not in the US tell complainents exactly where they can stick their legal action.

Important fact number one:

Several countries named have decided both as a matter of principle and as a matter of law that reverse engineering of certain types similar to this are legal - whatever companies or other countries might wish.

Important fact number two:

Were the complainants to start legal proceedings in those countries they would have absolutely no hope of winning.

Important fact number three:

In the UK and in much of Europe - if someone launches a civil action against another person and they loose that civil action - then they are (almost always) made to pay ALL of the legal costs involved - *including* the costs incurred by the defendent. These costs in IPR cases are likely to be very high.

Important fact number four:

The UK civil courts have a very robust attitude to people trying to use their procedures in an oppresive manner. They have various powers to deal with organisations which cynically abuse legal process and have shown themselves (on occasion) to be willing to use them. These powers include forcing one side or the other to pay sufficient money into court to cover all the likely relevant costs if they loose, or declaring individuals "vexatious litigants" which means they cannot launch any civil actions without the prior permission of the court.

Important fact number five.

Some people in the UK, the EU and several other countries are already rather touchy on the issue of US courts attempting to exert their authority in other people's countries. Some such people are just waiting for an opportunity to show the US courts exactly where their jurisdiction ends. This looks like it might be a promising candidate.

Re:Trade secrets vs. patents

Provided you reverse engineered it lawfully,
it is no longer a trade secret. You can't
burgle a factory, and there are issues with
hiring trusted employees. But other than
that they have to protect their trade secret.

However, they can have trade secrets, patents,
copyrights and trademarks all at the same time:

Copyrights on the media
Patents on the DVD CSS technology
Trademark on DVD
Trade Secret on stuff I don't know about (yet)

Download.Com

As i remember, Download.com had a copy of this software on their website. I wonder why they haven't been added to the list of "Defendants". Kind of makes you wonder what's going on here.

-Tim

.Sig: Bah, no .sig

MODERATE THIS UP! -- Group planning to meet at 8am

Chris Dibona and myself (and hopefully others!) are planning to meet at the courthouse at 8am. Chris' page for this is at: http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/index.shtml ... Hope to see you there! D

Re:DeCSS, LiViD, css-auth, link!

It would probably be hard to coordinate but if we just keep putting up web sites every time they sue one of us eventually they'll get tired of it or they'll go broke.

Perfect! That gives me another idea too: I was thinking of taking up hunting of dangerous carnivores. My problem has been: I can't shoot so well, so if my quarry is running around quickly or attacking me I might not be able to hit them. So, what I need is some people to run around and make a lot of noise until the animals devour enough of them that they become slow and sluggish; Then they're are as good as dead! Any volunteers? ;-)

Chris

Santa Clara Coordination.

Okay, we plan on meeting at the courthouse at 8am. See my site at http://www.dibona.com/social/dvd/ [dibona.com] for more details and ongoing planning.

Chris DiBOna
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG

C/DVD/Music/

Let's try reading that with a slight change:

32. Without the commercial music companies' copyrighted content for music recordings, there would be no viable market for computer CD drives and CD players, as well as the related computer chips and software necessary to run these devices and, thus, there would be no CD music industry.

Gee, if music CDs ever could be copied then the music CD industry would just fall apart. Oh, wait. We're doing that. Companies are even selling consumer CD copiers. Did the music industry fall apart and I didn't notice?

Well, based on what's on MTV right now I guess it did fall apart. :-)

Re:The list of defendants (Are you one of them?)

I myself live in an island in the mediterranean -- Cyprus. Can these courts do anything to me?

IANAL, but I went through a LOT of civil-procedure stuff when my girlfriend was in law school...

To do anything to you, the court has to have three kinds of jurisdiction:

1. Subject matter jurisdiction:the court has to be able to rule on the matter involved.
2. Personal jurisdiction:the court has to be able to make rulings which pertain to you.
3. Physical jurisdiction:the court has to be able to make rulings about the place where the activities took place.

My non-lawyerly judgement is that the court in California has no physical jurisdiction in Cyprus, and no personal jurisdiction over you (unless you are a US national, and maybe not even then).To do anything to you, the DVD consortium's lawyers would have to get a court in Cyprus to do their bidding.
--

Re:slashdot also in the email

hmm,

despite the fact that cease and desist letters were sent to their web sites

GET ~drw/css-auth/legal-info/ HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)
Cease-And-Desist: Please remove the CSS crack from your site.

--

Re:So where can we get the code *tonight* ?

This is from: http://www.2600.com/news/1999/1112-files/crypto.gq .nu/ Even if the *can* get all the copies of the sourcecode (not bloody likely) off the net... below is the general crypto system used... Vengence. 0 General disclaimer. This information is provided as is, with no warranties on its accuracy or usability. It is based on a piece of source code claiming to be the css algorithms, and which have since been confirmed to interoperate with the CSS system. The author has not read any official CSS documentation, and any errors in the terminology is a result of this. This information has not to the knowledge of the author been made available through breaches of the DVD consortium Non Disclosure Agreement. 1 System overview. Every DVD player is equipped with a small set of player keys. When presented with a new disc, the player will attempt to decrypt the contents with the set of keys it possesses. Every disk has a disk key data block that is organized as follows: 5 bytes hash of decrypted disk key ( hash ) disk key encrypted with player key 1 (dk1 ) disk key encrypted with player key 2 (dk2 ) ... disk key encrypted with player key 409 (dk409) Suppose the player has a valid key for slot 213, it will calculate (1) Kd = DA( dk213 , Kp213 ) To verify that Kd is correct, the following check is done, if the check fails, it will try the next player key. (2) Kd = DA( hash , Kd ) An obvious weakness stems from this check, by trying all 240 possible Kd, disk key can be deduced without knowing any valid player key. As will be shown later, this attack can be carried out with a complexity of 225, making such an attack feasible in runtime applications. Another obvious attack is that by having 1 working player key, other player keys can be derived through a similar search. This can be done offline, also keys obtained from the former attack can be used as a starting point. To decrypt the contents an additional key tk - the title key is decrypted with the now decrypted and verified disk key. (3) Kt = DB( tk, Kd) Each sector of the data files is the optionally encrypted by a key that is derived from Kt by exclusive or of specified bytes from the unencrypted first 128 bytes of the 2048 bytes sector. The decryption is done with the CSS stream cipher primitive described in section II. 2 CSS streamcipher primitive: The CSS streamcipher is a very simplistic one, based on 2 LFSRs being added together to produce output bytes. There is no truncation, both LFSR are clocked 8 times for every byte output, and there are 4 ways of combining the output of the LFSRs to an output byte. These four modes are just settings on 2 inverter switches, and the modes operation are used for the following purposes. 1.Authentication to DVD drive ( not discussed ) 2.Decryption of Disk key (DA) 3.Decryption of Title key (DB) 4.Decryption of data blocks. LFSR1: 17 bits ? taps, and is initialized by the 2 first bytes of key, and setting the most significant bit to 1 to prevent null cycling. LFSR2: 25 bits 4 taps, is initialized with byte 3,4,5 of the key shifting all but the 3 least significant bits up 1 position, and setting bit 4 to prevent null cycling. As new bits are clocked into the LFSRs, the same bits are clocked in with reversed order to the two LFSRs output bytes. ( With optional inversion of bits. ) The output of LFSR1 is O1(1), O1(2), O1(3) ... Likewise LFSR2 produces O2(1), O2(2), O2(3) ... These two streams are combined through 8 bits addition with carry carried over to the next output. The carry bit is zero at start of stream. (4) O(i) = O1(i) + O2(i) + c where c is carry bit from O(i-1) This streamcipher is very weak, a trivial 216 attack is possible with output bytes known for i = {1,2,3,4,5,6}. Guess the initial state of LFSR1, and clock out 4 bytes. O2(1), O2(2), O2(3), O2(4) can then be uniquely determined, and from them the state at i=4 is fully known. The guess on LFSR1 can then be verified by clocking out 2 or more bytes of the cipher and comparing the result. Another important attack is the case when only O(i) for i = {1,2,3,4,5} is known. Guess the initial state of LFSR1, and clock out 3 bytes. Now O2(1), O2(2) and O2(3) can be found as in the above attack. This will reveal all but the most significant bit of LFSR2s state at i=3. If both possible settings for MSB is tried, and LFSR2 is clocked backwards 24 steps, a state where bit 4 is set at i=1 can always be found. ( This is stated without proof ). Select the setting of the most significant bit for LFSR2 such that LFSR2 is in a legal state at i=1, and clock out two more bytes to verify the guess of LFSR1. For some values of O( i = {1,2,3,4,5} ) multiple start states can be found, and for others none. Selecting the correct start state is not a problem, as this attack is used in situations where only the first five output bytes are of significance ( encryption of keys ). 3 CSS mangling step: When the CSS streamcipher is used to encrypt keys such as in DA(data,key) and DB(data,key), an additional mangling step is performed on the data. This cipher is best illustrated with the following block diagram: A(1,2,3,4,5) are the input bytes (data) C(1,2,3,4,5) are the output bytes (data) ki = O(i) where O(i={1,2,3,4,5}) is streamcipher output from key B(1,2,3,4,5) are temporary stages The cipher is evaluated top down, with exceptions indicated by an arrow.

Re:Trade secrets vs. patents

DeCSS came from the Windows community, not the Linux community. It was then ported to Linux.

The DeCSS authors don't seem all that interested in open source. All the copies of the Windows version I've been able to find have been without source, and the Windows version checks for Soft-ICE and refuses to run if Soft-ICE is present, so it looks like the DeCSS authors don't want their code to be reverse engineered. Anyone else find that hilarious?

Re:The Hearing is Coming Up, not Passed

In California, you can have a full hearing on ANYTHING. Please don't encourage a defeatist attitude. Nothing will ever be won with that.

They can file a TRO, certainly. But if the defendents actually show up, they must be heard. If even ONE of them insists on not giving up their right to a hearing, they must be heard.

It does not cost a trillion dollars to do this, contrary to popular belief. And you are mistaken about this item of jurisprudence:

"and the judge compares the size of their wallets"

It probably looks that way. I've gone to court and won before, and it didn't drive me to bankruptcy.

The simple fact that there are defendants named on a California suit who are not subject to California law would be enough to have the TRO suspended, if only it were to be mentioned properly according to the rules of civil procedure.

It is my sincere hope that some wise person, hopefully one of the named defendants, is corresponding with the court on this very subject, and will be prepared on Friday's court date.

Forgery or not?

I'm not aware of any recognition of a "legal notice" being able to be delivered by email. Has anyone verified that this is not a forgery?

A few legal facts.

There is no obligation on plaintiffs to be "non-discriminatory" in who they sue. It suffices that they sue wrongdoers. If there are more who are left out who owed duties to the sued defendants, they can implead them (defendants turn around and force others in to the case). But if you are part of a gang that beats up Bob, and Bob sues just you, it's no defense to your liability to say that you were part of a gang.

Of course, suing people who are not guilty is a big no-no: "If a claim of misappropriation is made in bad faith, a motion to terminate an injunction is made or resisted in bad faith, or willful and malicious misappropriation exists, the court may award reasonable attorneys' fees to the prevailing party." Cal. Civ.Code 3426.4.

I'm not a California lawyer, and california law has all sorts of strange wrinkles. Plus, the complaint raises a claim for "misappropriation of trade secrets" which sounds like it may have some common law component as wall as a statutory aspect(??). But here, in any case, is an arguably relevant statute, Cal Civil Code sec. 3426.1:

3426.1. Definitions

As used in this title, unless the context requires otherwise:
(a) "Improper means" includes theft, bribery, misrepresentation, breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, or espionage through electronic or other means. Reverse engineering or independent derivation alone shall not be considered improper means.
(b) "Misappropriation" means:
(1) Acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or
(2) Disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who:
(A) Used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or
(B) At the time of disclosure or use, knew or had reason to know that his or her knowledge of the trade secret was:
(i) Derived from or through a person who had utilized improper means to acquire it;
(ii) Acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or
(iii) Derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or
(C) Before a material change of his or her position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret and that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.
(c) "Person" means a natural person, corporation, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, limited liability company, association, joint venture, government, governmental subdivision or agency, or any other legal or commercial entity.
(d) "Trade secret" means information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, device, method, technique, or process, that:
(1) Derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to the public or to other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use; and
(2) Is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.

If the above is the law that applies, and if the person who reverse engineered and disclosed had a contractual obligation NOT to, and if the named defendants knew or should have known these facts and if the court has jurisdiction over them, then and only then this statute suggests the judge may grant the injunction.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that outcome, just reporting. I should also note that sec. 3426.2(a) says that injunctions must be lifted if someone demonstrates that the "trade secret has ceased to exist" and that sec. 3426.2(b) says that "If the court determines that it would be unreasonable to prohibit future use, an injunction may condition future use upon payment of a reasonable royalty for no longer than the period of time the use could have been prohibited."

All that aside, an injuction against "linkers" as opposed to posters would seem to me to be outrageous. But there is a little bit of (ugly) precedent floating around....

Final point: while showing up in numbers can't hurt, it would be a lot better if one of the free software groups could get a lawyer down there and attempt to appear either as an intervenor or as a friend of the court. Much more likely to have some effect. Spectators are not allowed to talk in court.

A. Michael Froomkin [mailto],
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA

Everything to do with DMCA

You're right, a good reading of the injunction makes clear that they're not defending the terrible copy protection in the dvd mechanism. However, this has a lot to do with recent changes in the U.S. copyright laws, I recommend that folks read H.R. 2281 [dfc.org] - The Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The Library of Congress has an easier to read summary [loc.gov] online.

What it really comes down to is that the defendants were informed that they should have removed the offending materials and refused to do so (it's right at the top... of the injunction [min.net] right beneath the 69K of MS-XML.) They can't touch the guy who wrote DeCSS because he complied upon notification of transgression.

If you haven't yet actually read anything about the DMCA, you'll find the WIPO/Title I sections useful in understanding what they new laws have to say about reverse engineering of the sort used in DeCSS. WIPO is the World Intellectual Property Organization, and Title I is the U.S. Congress ratifying general new international agreements about intellectual property. Read Educause's summary [educause.edu], particularly the section on: "Prohibitions on Circumvention of Technological Protection Measures ."

Pratik Dave
ps: Given the specific burden of proof placed upon service providers and their DMCA agents given by the DMCA, I'm especially shocked that some of the defending sites were .edu sites. Since we're (academic sites == service providers) monetarily culpable if we don't take "prompt" action upon notification, seems like someone at rpi dropped the ball.

This part doesn't take effect for a few months, but see if you don't find it the slightest bit relevant (and frightening):
''(b) ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS.--(1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
''(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;
''(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or
''(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.

Cite for home taping decision

See http://www.hrrc.org/betamax.html

That covers the entire decision. The rest of the
site has a lot of related material to home recording, although not to fair use of DVD's you bought.

What I plan to do.

I am the original poster of this story; what I had originally done was to remove those files from my website pending the outcome of the hearing. Due to the mammoth support here, I have put them back and put a notice on the front page of my website informing all visitors of what is going on. I urge you to visit my site at http://www.devzero.org [devzero.org] now and get the software while you still can. Like someone said in a previous comment, it's like playing bop-a-mole. They may get me and 70 others, but hundreds more will be distributing by then.

And yes, I am on the East coast, and will not be able to be at the hearing. Anyone and everyone who is within range, GO, please, and make your voice heard.

This is about intellectual freedom, not "copyright infringement" or violation of trade secrets.

In defense....

With all the great information that may be gleaned from the pages of Slashdot, surely this is one way in which it can make a real difference. I personally will not be at the hearing (I didn't receive the e-mail either), but it would be really great if someone would print out the best posts to this story, and others about DVD encryption hacks, and submit them to the court at the hearing.

I believe that the views expressed on Slashdot deserve more of a voice than the archives of a web site... here is their chance. The following are the articles which I have found on Slashdot which go along this theme:

• Linux DVD One Step Closer [slashdot.org]
  
• DVD for Linux [slashdot.org]
  
• DVD for Linux: Interview with the Developers [slashdot.org]
  
• LinuxDVD CSS Decrypt - Source Available [slashdot.org]
  
• Watching DVDs in Linux HOWTO [slashdot.org]
  
• Why DVD Encryption Crack was a Cinch [slashdot.org]
  
• Legal Actions Against Linux DVD authors [slashdot.org]
  
• DVD Hack Delays DVD Audio [slashdot.org]
  

Re:Hand out free floppies at the courthouse!

This is a REALLY cool idea that deserves more discussion. Show up with a duffle bag full of floppies with the DeCSS source code.

Be prepared for some VERY pissed off lawyers.

Unfortunately, I am nowhere near California. Otherwise, I would be cranking out floppies right now.

Who let the RIA design our mass storage?

You see, when the DVD manufacturers came up with CSS, their goal was not to protect the intellectual property contained on DVDs; rather, they were establishing an ironclad grip on the entire DVD market.

This debate is rightly focused on issues of free speech and openess of hardware specifications, but there is another BIG issue that isn't getting much air time: how the heck did we get into a situation where our mass removable storage systems are being designed by the recording industry and movie industry? What is all that encryption hardware doing in there and why does it make my computer work better? To put this another way, why are we being served up hardware that was designed in the best interests of people who aren't us, and why do we accept that?

This kind of market inversion is the same thing that has forced the spectaular rise of the open source movement. Owners of proprietray, closed source, defacto standard software systems ground us under their foot for so long that we had to react. Now what we need is a similar, open hardware movement. Sure, there are problems that are harder - designing hardware requires expensive equipment. Manufacturing it requires even more expensive equipment. But it's not like it used to be - prices are coming down. Money for open projects is abundant. So please, lets have a high-density ROM disk design that's designed according to our needs, not those of the RIA.

I want it to be a smaller format - 5 1/4 should have gone out with 5 1/4 disks, sucks for laptops and won't fit in your pocket. I want it to have current densities - in other words, even higher than what DVD offers. I want it to be completely free of any hardware that isn't directly connected with making it work better and/or cost less.

Who will design my dream ROM disk for me? Who will bankroll them? Who will manufacture it? How would we make it hit critical mass so laptop manufacturers will use it? (hint: make it cheap)

DVD was a bad idea right from the start and still is. Take out the "V", all I want is the Digigital and Disk

Trade Secret Law of 1996 could screw defendants..

On October 11, 1996, President Clinton signed "The Economic Espionage Act of 1996" into law. The theft of trade secrets is now a federal criminal offense. This is a major development in the law of trade secrets in the United States and internationally. The Department of Justice now has sweeping authority to prosecute trade secret theft whether it is in the United States, via the Internet, or outside the United States.

Section 1832 of the Act makes it a federal criminal act for any person to convert a trade secret to his own benefit or the benefit of others intending or knowing that the offense will injure any owner of the trade secret. The conversion of a trade secret is defined broadly to cover every conceivable act of trade secret misappropriation including theft, appropriation without authorization, concealment, fraud artifice, deception, copying without authorization, duplication, sketches, drawings, photographs, downloads, uploads, alterations, destruction, photocopies, transmissions, deliveries, mail, communications, or other transfers or conveyances of such trade secrets without authorization.
The Act also makes it a federal criminal offense to receive, buy or possess the trade secret information of another person knowing the same to have been stolen, appropriated, obtained or converted without the trade secret owner's authorization.The definition of a "trade secret" in the Act generally tracks the definition of a trade secret in the Uniform Trade Secrets Act but expands the definition of a trade secret to include the new technological ways that trade secrets are created and stored.
The term "trade secret" means all forms and types of financial, business, scientific, technical, economic, or engineering information, including patterns, plans, compilations, program devices, formulas, designs, prototypes, methods, techniques, processes, procedures, programs or codes, whether tangible or intangible, and whether or how stored, compiled, or memorialized physically, electronically, graphically, photographically, or in writing if (A) the owner thereof has taken reasonable measures to keep such information secret; and (B) the information derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable through proper means by the public.

I am not a lawyer and have no plans to be one, but reading the above and doing some research seems to me that the DVD makers can screw the defendants that are in the US partially. Yes, DVD is wrong on this, but they can still kill the people that tried to make Linux support for DVD.

IMO DVD is going to lose a lot of potential customers and hopefully get bad publicity. What should be done is someone that knows a columist/newsman at a major station is to give this case publicity. If CNN were to get the info for a story on this from us rather than the DVD people they might actually get thier story right (see etoy vs etoys fiasco)

We also ought to patent the decrypter programs or GPL them if they are not already. DVD does not have a patent on its encryption algorithm as far as I am aware. Could some one reply with the feasibility of this option. As for me, I will be busy distributing the decoder via Hotline (www.bigredh.com - if its warez, its hotline) and uploading it to every webserver I find. (I have a far amount of spare time on my hands... so alot of people gonna get deCSS). While /. could orgranize a protest and some smart people are trying to do so, the date is far too late for anything major to be planned. I only can hope that they lose this case...

Once I was a drone - Now I am an Engineer

Re:Info - How to name your mirrors

Hey everybody, name your mirror directory structure such that when they summon you they have to put:

... and operates an Internet Web Site addressed as http://domain.com/lawyers-suck/and/this-is-harrasm ent/and/we-have-no-legal-grounds-to-do-t his-to-these-people/dvd-source.txt

Re:Everything to do with DMCA

The DMCA is scary, sure, but I think the DeCSS people have more of a leg to stand on than you imply.

The conditions you mention all contain the qualification that the code not have any significant commercial impact or legitimate use. The DeCSS code was designed for the sole purpose of writing a DVD player for Linux. This has commercial impact, as it will become essential for Linux to have an impact in the consumer market, and it is legitimate - at least as legitimate as playing DVDs on Windows is. I doubt that an argument could be made that playing DVDs on a computer is illegitimate unless you run monopolistic OSes.

I don't believe that the DVD lawyers are using this tactic. Their angle is that the license for the Xing DVD player forbids reverse engineering, which was done to extract the initial keys, and they violated this license and revealed trade secret information. I can't see how they can win from a legal standpoint, but the whole "bleed them dry" legal strategy can't be counted out.

Of course, neither can the "whack-a-mole heavy mirroring" and "foreign development" legal counter-strategies be dismissed easily, so I guess it's a fair fight.

:-)

Re:On your mark, get set, go! Start mirroring!

Another mirroring suggestion: buy a 50 pack of disks, put the files on, mail to 50 random adressess. if at least 10 people did that there would be another 500 copies floating around off-line. it would be interesting to see them try for that.

Re:This issue has nothing to do with piracy

Everything you say is true, but the exact same argument could be made for CDs seven or eight years ago. No one except the exceptionally rich could afford a five thousand dollar, single speed CD burner, and 600-700mb hard drives were the things dreams were made of. Not to mention the fact that we were all on that Concorde of internet connections, the venerable 9600 baud modem. Now look at the situation today, when (literally) my seven year old brother burns every Playstation game he rents and hasn't bought an audio CD ever in his life because he can copy or get on MP3 anything he wants over our 1.5+mpbs cable connection.
For one thing, the size of hard drives seems to have already outpaced the maximum theoretical 17gb limit on DVD disks. Seagate et al have announced +50gb hard drives available in a matter of months. And it's only a matter of time before full-featured dual-layer DVD burners will fall under the thousand dollar mark, then under the five hundred, and to the point where every electronics boutique under the sun has them (just like their CD counterparts.) As for the bandwidth to share this all, both the government and private industry are virtually begging for more of it, and it's generally agreed that bandwidth will be so abundant in the near future so as to be a non-issue.
The moral of the story is it has everything to do with piracy. It would take a complete idiot to see the asskicking that RIAA and the music industry in general are taking right now as a result of piracy and not foresee that happening in just a few more years for the entertainment industry too, and I submit to you that the major studios are not filled with idiotic people. If nothing else, think of why they instituited CSS in the first place - you argue that it's about control, which is partially right. But even more than that, they knew that DVD would become technologically piratable in a matter of years after it was released, and they sought to do the only thing they knew how to do: make it cryptographically impossible. With the crypto out of the picture, they've really been caught with their pants down, and they know it.

--

The cat is out of the bag.

The purpose of a trade secret [laws] is to provide a legal means of prosecuting when somebody "spills the beans" and discloses stuff they've seen

... provided they have agreed to keep the secret. If somebody who has NOT entered such a contract with the secret's owner figures out the secret (by himself, with no "guilty knowlege" obtained from someone else who violate such a contract), he is under no obligation to remain silent.

Patents give a government-enforced limited-time monopoly in return for disclosure of the invention. (They exist to encourage the development and disclosure of such ideas.)

Trade secrets can last longer, but they last only as long as the secret is kept. After that they pop like a bubble. The only thing left once the cat is out of the bag is a legal claim against the person who let it out - IF he obtained the secret in violation of an agreement or from an agreement violator.

Caveat: I'm not a lawyer yadda yadda...

DMCA contradicts Trade Secret laws

The gist of the DMCA seems to directly contradict current US trade secret laws.

Once the knowledge protected by a trade secret becomes public (by legal or even illegal means) it is no longer a trade secret. This fact has been verified by a respected patent lawyer with a JD. Therefore, the only way that a trade secret remains intact is by it truly remaining secret. If by any means (including reverse engineering) it becomes public knowledge, then the trade secret ceases to exist.

For a good primer on current US intellectual property laws, head over to my old EE professor's web site at:
http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~kort um/ee302/lecture/IP/ [utexas.edu]

The PDF version of the lecture is available at:
http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~k ortum/ee302/lecture/IP.pdf [utexas.edu]

This lecture was recently written by a patent lawyer, so I would definitely assume that it is timely and accurate.

IIRC the EFF is ooking for a plaintiff

If I recall correctly, the EFF is looking for a plaintiff specifically on the DVD reverse engineering issue. I suggest those involved get in touch with them and look into the possibility of coordinating a counter attack on the DVD Forum. I suspect if this ever went to trial with a reasonably well financed plaintiff, the DVD Forum would stand to lose allot of clout when their licensing terms become unenforcable.

This is about intimidation -- the DVD Forum has allot more to lose in a trial than a plaintiff does.

Fair Use, Section 117(a), and the Cohen Doctrine

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

And I also can't really speak to the merits of the charge of misappropriation of trade secrets. Note that trade secrets as an area of law is largely defined at the state level, so you'll need to look into California law.

Having said that, there is some case law in the 9th circuit (which includes California) that may be positive.

Although the charge is misappropriation of trade secrets, it seems that the underlying complaint is an enablement of violation of copyright. If this underlying complaint can be answered then the misappropriation is harmless.

I argue that the defendants have a right to possession of the DeCSS software under section 117(a) of Title 17 of the US Code. Briefly, that section of law limits the exclusive right of copyright holders of software; owners have the explicit right to make backup copies for their own archival purposes.

This was has been tested in case law, and unfortunately I don't have my law books handy, but a case in the mid-eighties concerned a maker of a disk-copying software sued by a maker of copy-protection software. The defendant successfully argued that since owners have a right to back up software, and they could not do so without his (or similar) product, his product was legal.

This is the tricky step: DVDs contain software and data. I argue that the right to backup software extends to the entire disk, including data. As a broader claim, we can fall back on fair use; since DSS stops us from fair use of the movie, we have a right to employ software that gives us back those rights.

This theory is discussed in Lessig's excellent book _Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace_. A legal theorist (not related) named Cohen says that we have the right to hack copy-protection schemes that violate fair use. This is known as the Cohen Doctine.

Summary

So, let us summarize this:

• There is no patent on CSS technology, because they wanted to keep it secret. Therefore, the DVD Copy Control Association cannot sue on patents ground.
• The encryption was a trade secret, but none of the plaintiffs ever signed a non disclosure agreement over anything.
• It is not true that the primary use of DeCSS is to copy DVD's. Even if it were, such a copy is not necessarily illegal; and it certainly doesn't make the code illegal. (After all, photocopy machines aren't illegal as far as I know.)
• Reverse engineering for the sake of interoperability is permissible.
• Some of the defendents live outside the Court's domain of jurisdiction and their sites also; some are even outside the US.
• The defendents have only been notified by email.

This is just too obviously bogus. Evidently they are only trying to spread FUD.

They might have had a case against Derek Fawcus, although even that seems dubious. Now that he retracted, they have no case against anyone.

E pur si muove!

this url drives to the heart of the matter

That was very good! Inspired by you, here is one that I think has a little more truth and therefore more punch:

http://domain.com/any.lawyer.who/quotes.this.url/g ives.permission/for.his.residence.to.be. searched/any.bootleg.audio/video/tape.found/nullif ies.legal.and.moral.standing/dvd-source. txt

Re:Who let the RIA design our mass storage?

Owners of proprietray, closed source, defacto standard software systems ground us under their foot for so long that we had to react. Now what we need is a similar, open hardware movement. Sure, there are problems that are harder - designing hardware requires expensive equipment.

Hmm. I like the idea of an open hardware movement. Are there any current efforts being made yet to brand an "open standard compatible" logo?

It seems to me hardware that has met some kind of open standard requirements would be preferable to most consumers. Obviously simply creating such a logo isn't going to make a difference on its own. In time however, it could end up being identified with products of superior quality and use to the end user.

I don't think your typical end-user is going to be incredibly knowledgable about open standards and such. That's why a simple recognizable icon/logo is important.

I have a feeling someone is going to pop up and say "hey, people are already working on this...here's the link..." Hope so. At any rate, I think more thought/effort should be put into an "open" branding scheme of some sort.

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