Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
On Tue, Jan 04, 2000 at 11:20:16AM -0800, Martin Minow wrote: Here's my translation of the law Eivind Eklund describes. Note that, while I am a fluent speaker of Swedish, Norwegian is a similar, but not identical language. This is a really quick translation and should not be relied upon for judicial opinion. It's free, and worth what you paid for it. Thanks! I had a translation done, but did not feel like doing it again after I lost the copy while mishandling mail. S/S 39i It is permitted to create examples of a computer program's code and translate the code's form when this is a requirement for obtaining the information that is necessary to provide functional compatibilty between an independently developed computer program and other progrmms, where 'Copy' is what is meant where it says 'eksemplar' (what you've translated to 'example'). a) The operation is performed by a person who has the right to use an example of a computer program, or for the benefit of a person who has this right. [Sorry, sloppy: I think this means that an employee or consultant can do the work, not only the "person who has the right."] This match my reading. b) The information that is necessary to achieve functional compatibility has not previously been readily available for those named in section a and, c) The operation is limited to those parts of the original program that are required to achive functional compatibility. The information obtained under the first paragraph may not a) Be used for other purposes than to provide functional compatibility with the independently developed computer program. b) Be given to others, except from when this is necessary to provide functional compatability with the independently developed computer program, or c) Be used for development, production, or marketing of a computer program that significantly duplicates the form, or in other fashion damanges the copyright of the program. These paragraphs cannot be revoked by contract. One thing that is important in understanding norwegian law is that it is the *intent* of the law that matters. The intent of the law is that proprietary dorks should not be able to block other people from making compatible software (e.g, DVD players under FreeBSD/Linux/whatever). I do not believe anyone is going to be able to argue around that in (norwegian) court; the politicians that originally passed the law are available to be asked :-) Eivind.
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
Sameer Parekh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The DVD CCA does not have a strong case, but they will not back down. They have too much riding on this. As Lucky has stated, their entire existence is built upon licensing the CSS technology. Since it is no longer a trade secret, they have nothing left to license. The DVD CCA has expected and continues to expect to Don't forget that the DVD CCA is only a month old. When the DVD CCA became the licensee for CSS, CSS had already been published. So in my opinion the entire reason for the existence of the DVD CCA is the this very lawsuit. Andreas -- "We should be willing to look at the source code we produce not as the end product of a more interesting process, but as an artifact in its own right. It should look good stuck up on the wall." -- http://www.ftech.net/~honeyg/progstone/progstone.html
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2000 18:43:52 -0800 (PST) From: bram [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm a little confused. Are you saying that as of October it will be legal to do any amount of reverse-engineering, publishing, and writing to APIs you want without violating the original author's copyright? Does that mean that, say, Bsafe will have the rug yanked out from under it by allowing alternate non-infringing implementations? No, October 28, 2000 is when the act of circumventing an effective technological measure becomes a violation (with exceptions for fair use, crypto research, reverse engineering, law enforcement, etc.). Until then it is legal under the new copyright law. Circumvention for interoperability purposes is already permitted, but not as broadly as you state. Trafficking in technology (including software), the primary purpose of which is to circumvent effective technological measures, is already prohibited. I recommend that you read Section 1201 of Title 17 for details, which is available online at http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/unframed/17/1201.html. I've excerpted the subsection about reverse engineering below (paragraph 3 is the one I mentioned in my previous message). Ray (f) Reverse Engineering. - (1) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title. (2) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2) and (b), a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title. (3) The information acquired through the acts permitted under paragraph (1), and the means permitted under paragraph (2), may be made available to others if the person referred to in paragraph (1) or (2), as the case may be, provides such information or means solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title or violate applicable law other than this section. (4) For purposes of this subsection, the term ''interoperability'' means the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged.
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
On Mon, Jan 03, 2000 at 11:46:48AM -0800, bram wrote:
On Wed, 29 Dec 1999, Lucky Green wrote:
1. CSS was reverse engineered from Xing's DVD player.
2. Xing's player requires the user to click on a button accepting a license
agreement prohibiting reverse engineering.
3. Reverse engineering could not have been performed without accepting this
license agreement.
This may be reiterating the obvious, but isn't (3) just plain wrong?
Yes, but there are other errors, too. The license agreement was not
valid for the person doing the reverse engineering, because he is a
norwegian, and this license agreement is in violation of paragraph 39
section i of the norwegian copyright law ("Åndsverskloven"), active
from june 30th, 1995. That's available from the following URL (in
norwegian) http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19610512-002-029.html#39i
This section specifically allows reverse engineering to get
information for product interoperability as long as you have a legal
copy to start from, and cannot be revoked by a license.
Oh, and AFAIK, click- and shrinkwrap-licenses aren't considered valid
here, either.
Eivind.
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
No, October 28, 2000 is when the act of circumventing an effective technological measure becomes a violation (with exceptions for fair But if it was an "effective technological measure", it couldn't have been circumvented. And by circumventing CSS, wasn't it shown to not be an effective technological measure?? Phil
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
No, October 28, 2000 is when the act of circumventing an effective technological measure becomes a violation (with exceptions for fair But if it was an "effective technological measure", it couldn't have been circumvented. And by circumventing CSS, wasn't it shown to not be an effective technological measure?? No, read the law. Their definition of "effective" is that it purports to protect intellectual property. Welcome to Wonderland, where words mean what *Congress* says they mean. Off with our heads! ``(B) a technological measure `effectively controls access to a work' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. John
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Ray Hirschfeld wrote: Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2000 18:43:52 -0800 (PST) From: bram [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm a little confused. Are you saying that as of October it will be legal to do any amount of reverse-engineering, publishing, and writing to APIs you want without violating the original author's copyright? Does that mean that, say, Bsafe will have the rug yanked out from under it by allowing alternate non-infringing implementations? No, October 28, 2000 is when the act of circumventing an effective technological measure becomes a violation (with exceptions for fair use, crypto research, reverse engineering, law enforcement, etc.). Until then it is legal under the new copyright law. Circumvention for interoperability purposes is already permitted, but not as broadly as you state. Specifically, is it, and will it be, legal to create an alternate implementation of an API you didn't write? This may be re-opening an old can of worms, but I couldn't help but notice the extreme looseness of the encryption research exemption - (1) Definitions. - For purposes of this subsection - (A) the term ''encryption research'' means activities necessary to identify and analyze flaws and vulnerabilities of encryption technologies applied to copyrighted works, if these activities are conducted to advance the state of knowledge in the field of encryption technology or to assist in the development of encryption products; and (B) the term ''encryption technology'' means the scrambling and descrambling of information using mathematical formulas or algorithms. Does breaking a proprietary algorithm 'advance the state of knowledge in the field of encryption technology'? Is breaking protocols, with no breaking of algorithms (as happened to ICQ) covered under (B)? Is it illegal to point out that a product sends a challenge/response of some trivial secret message before sending everything cleartext, since that neither deals with the scrambling of information using mathematical formulas or advances the state of encryption technology? -Bram
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
The only reason that justifies the existence of the player keys in the CSS scheme is control of the DVD consortium over the licensees: they can always threaten to revoke the player key of a given licensee if that licensee doesn't play by the rules (Macrovision, Region Codes, etc.). Now that the scheme has been published and broken, it's possible for anybody (and that distinctly includes the Linux folks) to build a DVD player. *That's* what they were afraid of. Piracy has been possible before, and they didn't care. This is a _really_ good point. It hadn't occurred to me before that a snapshot of a DVD would work just as well as the original, given a player with the appropriate key. I'm me-tooing this because I think the point you've made here deserves to have been at the top of your article, not somewhere in the middle! :') _MelloN_
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 20:06:32 -0800 From: Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] First, basing the litigation on trade secret seems sub-optimal. Not that a different legal argument would be anywhere near compelling, but it appears that an argument based on copyright would have been a better approach. I conjecture they did it this way because the prohibition against circumventing effective technological measures that was added to U.S. copyright law in October 1998 (as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which implemented the WIPO Copyright Treaty) does not take effect until October 28, 2000. Cf. Title 17, Chapter 12. The section against trafficking in devices seems like it might apply, though, and doesn't seem to be subject to the two-year delay. But reverse engineering for interoperability purposes is explicitly permitted, and making information so obtained available to others for interoperability purposes also does not constitute infringement under the new law (cf. Sec. 1201 (f) (3)). (I've just been looking at these regs as part of a separate discussion about DVD region codes.)
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
From: Andreas Bogk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 01 Jan 2000 22:37:18 -0500 Is it just me, or did the DVDCCA not exist when DeCSS was released? I've never heard of them, and when I tried to obtain a CSS license, the information I had was that CSS is licensed by some japanese company (which by the way didn't bother to respond to my request to license CSS for the purpose of building a Linux DVD player. Mistake.). I think you're right. According to their website, they started licensing CSS on December 15. See http://dvdcca.org/dvdcca/css.html.
Re: DeCSS Court Hearing Report
On Mon, 3 Jan 2000, Ray Hirschfeld wrote: Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 20:06:32 -0800 From: Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] but it appears that an argument based on copyright would have been a better approach. I conjecture they did it this way because the prohibition against circumventing effective technological measures that was added to U.S. copyright law in October 1998 (as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which implemented the WIPO Copyright Treaty) does not take effect until October 28, 2000. Cf. Title 17, Chapter 12. The section against trafficking in devices seems like it might apply, though, and doesn't seem to be subject to the two-year delay. But reverse engineering for interoperability purposes is explicitly permitted, and making information so obtained available to others for interoperability purposes also does not constitute infringement under the new law (cf. Sec. 1201 (f) (3)). I'm a little confused. Are you saying that as of October it will be legal to do any amount of reverse-engineering, publishing, and writing to APIs you want without violating the original author's copyright? Does that mean that, say, Bsafe will have the rug yanked out from under it by allowing alternate non-infringing implementations? (Doesn't the RSA patent expire in October as well? That's a mighty funny coincidence ... for anyone other than RSA, anyhow.) -Bram
