| Wednesday,
February 2, 2000
"Protection of intellectual property is a real
problem and we have yet to see a reasonable solution. This story isn't
going away." This is a prescient and very true statement. What do you
think of the Wired set maintaining that "Information wants to be
free"?
...cheers...KCL...
Keith C. Langill, Principal Engineer Stellcom,
an Employee-Owned Company
I think information may want to be free, but
"No one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Love of
the game won't pay the bills, nor will free information get new computer
games developed. I have set my face against copy protection since CP/M
days, but part of that was because of the horrible inconvenience for
legitimate users. Microsoft's hideous serial numbers with Office and
Windows are an inconvenience, but not an impossible one; of course they
don't stop piracy, only make it easier to identify the pirate's source. I
can live with that.
I have no final answers here... I just know that
I like getting royalties on The Mote In God's Eye which we wrote nearly 30
years ago now... and I don't think it unfair that we be paid for the book.
Nor would publishers publish it if they couldn't make some money
too.
Leif Eriksen commented yesterday:
" ... copying DVD's has always been possible, given a DVD_RAM
drive. The "broken DVD code" has been leapt on by the DVD-CCA
and the MPAA to try an stop unlicensed players being produced. ..."
Although I agree with the sentiment of his letter, a
couple of things need to be pointed out. First, a $300 DVD-RAM drive won't
do the job. Current models record only about 2.6 GB per side, versus the
5.2 GB of a standard DVD disc. The forthcoming generation of DVD-RAM
drives will write 4.7 GB on one-sided media, which in fact will be large
enough to contain most full-length movies. Be that as it may, what you
really need to make knockoffs of a DVD disc is a DVD-R drive, which costs
several thousand dollars and uses write-once blanks that cost $40 to $50
each. Obviously DVD-R drives are pretty much found only in commercial
mastering companies and so on. Using a $50 write-once disc is no big deal
if you're pre-mastering, but it's a pretty stupid way to copy a $25 movie.
Also, DVD-CCA probably doesn't much care whether
someone writes a DVD player for Linux or whatever. In fact, they probably
could have defuzed their opponents' arguments by releasing their own free
Linux DVD player in executable form. What disturbs them is that DeCSS
allows people to rip the unencypted digital data from a DVD disc,
re-compress it more tightly, and then write that data to a $1 CD-R blank.
What they end up with is a CD-Video disc, which, although its picture
quality is more like VHS than DVD, can be played back on nearly any
computer CD-ROM drive and many home-audio DVD players.
DVD-CCA isn't really too worried about the few $50
5.2 GB exact dupes that'll be produced. What scares the hell out of them
is the millions of $1 650 MB CD-V discs they think will result from DeCSS.
Or that's my understanding, anyway.
Bob
--
Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com
Could they be looking ahead? I recall when CD/R
drives were $20,000...
AND there is more...
Mr. Rice does the VIEWDEX and
MAILDEX indices for this site. He recently sent me a wonderful source of
information about Microsoft Outlook 2000:
Hi Jerry,
I ran across a good page of tips and tricks for the
MS Outlook Rules Wizard at:
http://www.slipstick.com/rules/index.htm
also other more general Outlook Information at
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/index.htm
The site seems a bit slow, but my connection may
just be slow today.
Hope this is useful.
John
-- John Rice coredump@enteract.com http://www.enteract.com/~coredump
The Internet - Somebodys LAB experiment gone horribly wrong.
Interesting:
Read your van Vogt obituary and thought you might
appreciate the following.
A. E. van Vogt dies.
Golden Age SF scribe meets
final Black Destroyer
Van Vogt's super Slan:
Science Fiction fans had their
tendrils on their can.
General Semantics
And Hubbard's Dianetics:
Lost mind more than once.
A great writer, but
one caught in amber; the field
Just moved beyond him.
Van Vogt: "The right to
buy weapons is the right to
be free." Then as now.
- Lawrence Person
lawrence@bga.com
Nova Express Web Site: http://www.delphi.com/sflit/novaexpress/
Lame Excuse Books inventory now online:
http://www.abebooks.com/home/LAWRENCEPERSON/
I can't say I agree with every one of those sentiments,
but interesting. Thanks.
Periodically I get suggestions for changing this
site. It may be time to consider some of them. As this:
1. Why not make make a typeface (cain't call them
things fonts) change from your site's current Times New Rooman or similar
to one of the Internet- friendly ones that come with Windows? Clearer
reading for your readers. The Microsoft site uses these fonts, and I'm
sure you find them less spidery than TNR. Even Stanley Morison didn't like
TNR, and he designed it.
2. Why not use an e-mail system that does not
require users to work with Outlook Express? Many people use OE; many --
including me -- don't. Plenty of websites have direct-opening
crossplatform mail boxes, including NYTimes, ZDNet, Washpost and PBC
Online NewsHour. Like the font change, a one-time action, probably not all
that difficult. The NYTimes page isn't all that smart.
Coda: CMP bought Byte soon after I took an extremely
expensive multi-year airmail subscription. Cost hundreds. Didn't get my
money back. Didn't get offered any make-good. Got no reply to my letters
of inquiry. Wasn't even told about the Website reincarnation (or
metamorphosis: ain't no flesh in these here electronic signals). I suppose
that to all my earlier quivering with rage is the possibility that these
thieving bastards have made a fat profit on the money they stole from me
... aaargghhh.
Kind regards --
Paul Kunino Lynch 4/36-38 Bayswater Road Kings Cross
Australia 2011 02-9368 0809 +612 9368 0809 ... phone &; fax
What fonts or typefaces would be better? I like Times Roman. Apparently
many don't.
I don't use Outlook Express, I use Outlook 2000, and I like the RULES a
lot; it was not easy learning how to do them properly but I managed. I
have also managed to get the mailing to my subscribers work properly.
I have nothing to do with circulation and refunds, but surely, surely,
you can get your money back if you work at it? I know you should not have
to work at it. I fear I can't do anything at all about it...
Okay, I realize this is the second time today I've
responded to a message from one of your readers, but I'm puzzled about
this one. Mr. Paul Kunino Lynch wrote:
" 1. Why not make make a typeface (cain't call
them things fonts) change from your site's current Times New Rooman or
similar to one of the Internet- friendly ones ..."
As far as I know, you seldom specify fonts on your
pages, except where you've cut and pasted reader mail in Arial or
whatever. Normally, you use "default", which means the reader's
browser determines which face is used to render the text. If Mr. Lynch
prefers something other than Times Roman, all he need do is set the
default proportional font in his browser to whatever he likes. Perhaps I'm
missing something.
Or perhaps Mr. Lynch is suggesting that you
implement Cascading Style Sheets and specify fonts directly. If so, I hope
you won't do that. I intensely dislike reading sites that use CSS to
control the fonts (and particularly the sizes) of text on my screen. For
example, John Dvorak's PC Magazine column is too small to be easily
readable on my screen. On a normal web site, I'd just use the Size button
on my IE tool bar to increase the font size. That doesn't work with PC
Magazine pages. I have to reconfigure IE to tell it to ignore the
specified fonts and use my choices instead. That's a pain in the butt,
because it causes other sites to display very poorly.
The whole idea of HTML in the first place was to
deliver content independent of the hardware upon which it would be
rendered. So-called designers hate the idea that the appearance of
"their" content is controlled by the reader instead of by them,
so they use features like CSS font and size to control appearance, much to
the aggravation of me and many other readers. Please don't go down that
road.
Mr. Lynch also writes:
" 2. Why not use an e-mail system that does not
require users to work with Outlook Express? ... Plenty of websites have
direct-opening crossplatform mail boxes ..."
Again, I'm puzzled, unless he's referring to those
hideous HTML forms that some sites use instead of providing an email
contact address as a live link. As far as I know, the only relationship of
email clients to your web site is that you post email addresses
frequently. But those are done using the RFC-standard "mailto:"
URI. Any browser/mail client combination should be able to handle that. If
it doesn't, it's broken.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com http://www.ttgnet.com
One of the better perks of running this place is
that I often don't have to write responses to mail...
Thanks.
The following is long. To skip to its end, click
here. But don't do that because it is interesting...
From:
Thomas Crook [tjcrook@email.com]
Subject:
The DVD brouhaha
Jerry,
This
is long, but bear with me; I don’t think it can be covered adequately in
less than a couple of pages.
I’ve
been following the DVD de-encryption controversy closely. The Motion
Picture Association of America (MPAA) is in vigorous legal pursuit of the
authors and disseminators of the open source software module DeCSS (so
called because it decrypts the CSS encryption code present in many DVD’s).
It was the MPAA’s intention to limit the dissemination of decryption
keys to paying CSS licensees.
MPAA’s
position:
§
The
writing and dissemination of DeCSS is piracy and theft of intellectual
property.
Analogy from the MPAA’s viewpoint: it is akin to stealing the key to
the back door of a movie theater and making a copy for personal use so
that you can go in and watch movies at any time without the theater
owner’s permission.
Such theft should be vigorously prosecuted and an example should be made
of the thieves to deter further theft.
DeCSS
supporters position:
§
When
DVD’s were first marketed, commercial software providers only wrote
playback/decryption software for Windows and Macintosh computers. Users of
other operating systems (e.g., Linux, BSD, Solaris …) wishing to play
back legitimately purchased DVD’s that they owned could not do so,
presumably because commercial firms didn’t see much profit in a software
player for those OS’s given their market share and the CSS licensing
costs.
Analogy: The front door of the movie theater is in a shopping mall; the
only way to get to it is to walk through the mall. The back door opens
into a park. The DeCSS folks
like movies as much or more than mall-goers, but they despise the mall and
prefer to hang around the park. They would really prefer to buy their
movie tickets over the phone and then enter the theater via the back door.
They don’t want to sneak in to see movies for free, they just want to
come in through a different door.
§
When
Xing wrote their Windows DVD player, they neglected to secure the
decryption key. This allowed the DeCSS authors to easily reverse engineer
the Xing player. It is not clear whether they used “clean room”
reverse engineering practices. “Clean room” reverse engineering is, of
course, legal. That’s what Compaq and Phoenix did to make the first IBM
PC clones. It’s why Microsoft Word can import WordPerfect files.
Analogy: Xing left the key to the theater sitting on top of the doormat
in plain sight. The DeCSS folks came along, saw the key sitting there and
said, “We can cut a key just like that.” So they took out a pencil and
sketch pad and drew a picture of the key and then went away and made a
working key from the sketch they had drawn. Now they buy their tickets
over the phone and go in the back door, just like they want to.
The
DeCSS supporters raise some interesting arguments against the contention
that DeCSS was written for the purposes of piracy:
§
Copying
DVD’s using personal computers and software is uneconomical at
present—say $50 to make a copy versus $30 to buy a pre-recorded DVD.
§
It
is ludicrous to try share DVD’s over the Internet like MP3’s. It would
take days to transfer a DVD over a typical dial-up connection.
§
It
is implied that DeCSS has opened the door to widespread piracy of DVD’s--a
door that was previously shut--but it is not necessary to decrypt DVD’s
to copy them. Anyone who wants to pirate DVD’s on a large scale can buy
a DVD burner and make exact digital duplicates. And of course, anyone can
make analog copies ad infinitum to VHS tapes. In fact, it seems
that these two activities would account for a much greater economic loss
than a few computer hobbyists, so why is the MPAA so intent on punishing
the DeCSS people?
A
couple more points:
§
To
run the Xing player, you apparently have to click a button that says
(among other things) that you agree not to reverse engineer it. IF
the DeCSS folks clicked the button rather than just looking at the program
file, AND IF such an agreement is indeed a legally enforceable
contract, AND IF the MPAA can convince a court that the DeCSS
authors agreed to and then broke the contract, they may be in trouble. In
any case it is not clear that the DeCSS people followed the kind of
“clean room” reverse engineering that would hold up in a court.
§
Should
the MPAA prevail, it might set a dangerous precedent for future technology
developments, allowing contracts to abrogate the freedom to reverse
engineer.
§
The
MPAA hasn’t been helping its PR efforts by prevailing on the Norwegian
authorities to haul a 16-year-old boy into a police station for six hours
of questioning, as well as confiscating his computers and cell phone.
(Maybe he was playing pirated DVD’s on the phone?)
§
The
whole case raises the issue of how tightly should we allow intellectual
property to be controlled? For example, I think that it is fine to give
you as an author the right to be paid for your work. But should you or
your publisher be able to dictate when and where I buy it and read it?
It’s
an interesting case, worth paying some attention to.
Thomas
Crook
As
you say, interesting. Thanks! And for a bit more click
here.
This came with the subject: "The morons at Microsoft strike
again."
Jerry,
I think they are their own worst enemies &; will
end up driving us all to Linux. I've been using the IE5.5 beta since about
12/16/99 which is when went up on Tucows. I check the windows update page
one or twice a week-who knows what nifty keen patch or latest version of
directX you might find there. When I tried it yesterday I get this:
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/R357/V31Site/x86/w98/en/thanksIE55.htm
It's really annoying. It had worked just fine up to
yesterday. If I'd known they were going to pull this crap I'd never have
bothered with the beta.
Two games appearing RSN that I'm looking forward to:
Reach for the Stars &; Imperium Galactica II.
Wally
On going to that site I found it has to do with
updating a Beta copy of IE 5. While Microsoft does seem to be a bit slow
about updating some of the Windows 2000 stuff (but then it isn't formally
released yet, is it?) I find that there's quite a lot of good stuff
at
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
and I guess I am not particularly unhappy that
they haven't got around to setting up support for beta copies of a free
program. I can't see why this makes them morons? The simple remedy is to
stay with IE 5, or upgrade to 5.1 which is supported. Or just wait...
While I am at it; here's a somewhat different letter about Microsoft:
Fantastic article! I've been a computer professional
for 38 years, and the Linux zealots and the anti-Microsoft people either
don't know what really happened or are out and out lying.
Microsoft is actually one of the better behaved
companies. UNIX, with its brain-rotting inconsistencies and
unfriendliness, nearly wrecked the mainframe/desktop-workstation world.
SUN slashed and burned its way through, and now UNIX is dead, a number of
good companies were taken out by SUN's trashing and lies and their own
inability to believe that these people were actually going to succeed in
peddling snake oil... SUN was banned from selling to the government for a
year because of their falsification of benchmarks; now they are right out
there pitching lies to try to get on top...
I wouldn't have a job today if it weren't for
Microsoft's popularization of the PC.
WHY? Because the scientists did not want to use unix,
and here was the Apple, friendly and accessible. So they went to the
Apple. Then when Apple got to be too hard to interface to because it was
on a proprietary kick, they went to the PCs, and there they stayed.
If I had not followed them to PC-world and provided
networked servers and other services, our center would have gone down the
tubes. It would have been used only by about 10% of our user base; the
others were happily doing actual work on PCs while the UNIX people tried
to remember whether it was a capital R with chmod or a little r like with
cp.
All the time the DOJ is trying to salvage its ego by
killing off Microsoft, they are ignoring really serious anti-competitive
mergers in the vital communications industry. If I thought they were smart
enough, I would accuse them of the old bread and circusses game to
distract attention from their encroachment with encryption technology.
Well, Microsoft is 109 in the Fortune 500.
Time-Warner is 108 and now merged with AOL. HP is, I believe, 6. HP
something like 13. Compaq and Intel are right up there.
Globally, Microsoft is something like 284 in the
Fortune Global 500. This is something we want to mess with? I don't think
so.
Microsoft has only 22 billion in assets, $16 billion
+ in stock equity. So what is that 400 billion plus MARKET VALUE? I would
guess, largely good will which could easily go bye bye. If they break up
microsoft, they end up with three companies with about $7.5 million each
-- too small to compete in the world.
And they accuse Microsoft of "bullying"
these companies? What about the basic premise of the law that
sophisticated corporations are expected to be able to solve their
differences through courts without dependency on defenses such as they
were picked on?
And would some lawyer please tell me how that biased
job can find that Microsoft is a monopoly as a finding of FACT, when it is
a legal question as to whether a company is a monopoly.
Also, would someone please tell me how this is
helping CONSUMERS. Prices are going to skyrocket.
Why, because development will be more expensive for
all companies.
And when it is claimed by someone that they must
have charged too much for Windows, because Gates is so rich, I would
remind them that if they had charged LESS for windows, they would be
accused of predatory pricing!
I hope that Microsoft goes against those states and
appeals this case as quickly as possible.
I feel that I have a thorough understanding of all
of these issues. I would enjoy talking to you or be pointed to other
people who do, and I would like to help Microsoft fight these ridiculous
charges.
Virginia Metze
And here is how to find The Week In Review. These
are the broadcasts, but done in MP3. They will stay around, and in future
they will continue to stay around...
Jerry:
per your request, these are the week in review files
that are available as MP3. I have attached the descriptive files for each
of them as well.
http://img.cmpnet.com/byte/weekinreview/te-20000128_wir.mp3
http://img.cmpnet.com/byte/weekinreview/te-20000121_wir.mp3
http://img.cmpnet.com/byte/weekinreview/te-20000114_wir.mp3
http://img.cmpnet.com/byte/weekinreview/te-20000107_wir.mp3
Paul Schindler
While we are at it:
http://www.technetcast.com/tnc_program.html?program_id=72
Is a page with live and archived video from Linux
World (including a speech by Linus Torvalds) done by our sister
publication, Dr. Dobbs Journal. I don't know how Linux rabid the people at
your site are, but if they like Linux, they'll like this.
Paul E. Schindler Jr., Editor Winmag.com, Byte.com
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