My first thought, on seeing this posted on slashdot, was to book
it over to the monastery to see what the best and brighest of
the Perl community had to say about this practical and political
bit of obfuscation.
However, few of us know better than merlyn the ugly reality of what it's like to tangle
with the machine of law, far removed from noble ideals about "free speech" or "rights," and his point is well taken that the
monastery is not the right battleground for the DeCSS case.
I would like to point out, though, that this is a site
arguably devoted to "scholarly examination," and as such is the logical
place to discuss this code on it's merits as code, apart
from it's political significance.
The crowinging irony is that this is precisely the sort of "chilling effect" on otherwise
legitimate speech that Dr. Touretzky is protesting in
his "Gallery of CSS Descramblers." In declining to discuss it
here, of all places, we have provided an excellent
example of the danger he's bringing to light.
I see the discussion has continued on slashdot - that's fine, they're
commercial, they've probably got lawyers and would welcome the
publicity of publicly jousting with the MPAA/DVD-CCA. But I've learned three new things about Perl today
by following the discussion there instead of here, and
that is saddening.
Peace,
-McD
| [reply] |
Warning: this post contains absolutely no perl related content.
Oh so very true. I ran one of the original sites that mirrored decss before the legal madness started. I got the infamous letter twice, since i was the technical contact for the netblock the site used to live on. I ignored the first one, since i was out of their jurisdiction. Then I moved to California, and finally took the mirror down after recieving the second letter. Not to mention the phone calls i got (i've never told the truth on a domain registration about my phone number since then). The mpaa has way too much spare time on their hands, and they will go after anyone. and most isp's will just take their word for it and drop whatever account the complaint is against.
i did manage to get a bit of revenge though. The letter came via email both times in msword format. The return address was mpaa234@mpaa.org, but the mail headers showed the email coming from a pacbell.net dialup account. So i forwarded both emails to the abuse contact at pacbell, and told them that an unknown person was sending me large binary files from a faked email address. both accounts were promptly shut down :-)
BlueLines
Disclaimer: This post may contain inaccurate information, be habit forming, cause atomic warfare between peaceful countries, speed up male pattern baldness, interfere with your cable reception, exile you from certain third world countries, ruin your marriage, and generally spoil your day. No batteries included, no strings attached, your mileage may vary.
| [reply]
[d/l] |
I wouldn't of shut the site down unless you got a demand
letter on dead tree stock, which would add more authenticity
to their claims. But IANAL -- many threats of legal action
were send via e-mail to NANAE folks by spammers, but very
letters were ever sent via snail-mail or courier. (And of
those, the cases got thrown out since the judge found the
spammer guilty of lying under oath)
That and a spoofed address means the letters were as
authentic as degrees sent by spammers, and as valuable as
points on "Who's Line is it Anyway?"
--
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
| [reply] |