[00:00.000 --> 00:03.840]  We are learning a lot about audiovisual over here.
[00:04.760 --> 00:09.840]  The name of this panel is the DeCSS story.
[00:10.500 --> 00:16.620]  To my left I have Mackie, Robin Gross, and a gentleman by the name of Emmanuel Goldstein.
[00:17.820 --> 00:25.940]  A few years ago, several years ago, a subpoena was tossed at the front door at Emmanuel's place of residence.
[00:25.940 --> 00:35.100]  And since then, he's been leading a fight against the Motion Picture Association of America and making a lot of enemies.
[00:36.080 --> 00:43.420]  And the purpose of this panel is to discuss the DeCSS case and some recent things that have transpired.
[00:44.300 --> 00:44.700]  Emmanuel?
[00:45.200 --> 00:45.620]  Thanks.
[00:46.100 --> 00:48.880]  First, before we begin, I just want to thank everybody for coming.
[00:49.220 --> 00:51.020]  I hope everyone's having fun at the conference.
[00:51.320 --> 00:52.700]  It's been going great so far.
[00:53.680 --> 01:00.380]  Some things haven't worked technically, but we've had people working very hard to get things right, I think, overall.
[01:00.640 --> 01:01.520]  So it's working out really well.
[01:01.780 --> 01:04.380]  I want to thank everybody for cooperating and being patient, that kind of thing.
[01:05.320 --> 01:09.440]  As far as the DeCSS, we have updates, of course, on that.
[01:09.620 --> 01:11.940]  There were developments in that story in the last couple of weeks.
[01:12.040 --> 01:21.200]  But just to give you some historical background, it began back in 1999, November of 1999, when we first posted the DeCSS code on our website.
[01:21.200 --> 01:22.620]  First we linked, then we posted.
[01:23.460 --> 01:25.320]  And there are actually two lawsuits.
[01:26.060 --> 01:46.520]  The biggest one of them, of course, being the Motion Picture Association of America, and all their minions, the film industry, Sony, Walt Disney, all those companies, every single one of them, filing suit against us, picking us as a defendant, even though there were literally hundreds of other people doing the same thing that we were doing.
[01:46.520 --> 01:58.080]  And basically taking us, first time ever, taking us into court, where we had to basically defend our existence, what we do for the magazine, what we print, what we stand for, that kind of thing.
[01:58.080 --> 02:07.040]  I think that's what the trial really ended up being more about, was the perception of hackers in the mainstream, how that legal system looks at them.
[02:07.220 --> 02:21.220]  And I don't think it really focused as much on what the DeCSS was, mainly because most people who were reporting on the story got it completely wrong, and they insisted that it was a tool for piracy, which if anyone has ever used the DeCSS, you know that it's not true.
[02:21.220 --> 02:24.120]  They're much more efficient ways of practicing than that.
[02:25.460 --> 02:31.760]  So basically we went through a whole trial, which started the day after our last conference, H2K, in 2000.
[02:32.980 --> 02:35.760]  And it went on for about, what was it, two weeks or so?
[02:37.200 --> 02:44.500]  And I think we did a really, really good job with the combined skills of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Garvis firm.
[02:44.760 --> 02:49.800]  I think we put on one hell of a case, and I think the MPAA put on a really stupid case.
[02:51.680 --> 02:54.740]  We all got it, but the judge did not.
[02:55.300 --> 02:56.340]  He really didn't.
[02:56.420 --> 03:00.060]  He quoted word for word some of the things that the MPAA said about us.
[03:01.540 --> 03:07.680]  And in the end, he found for the MPAA.
[03:08.640 --> 03:18.620]  Fortunately, we weren't fined or imprisoned or any of the other horrible things that can happen as a result of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the DMCA, the law that makes all of this possible.
[03:20.160 --> 03:23.100]  We appealed the case to the first appellate?
[03:23.240 --> 03:23.700]  Second.
[03:23.920 --> 03:25.220]  Second appellate court.
[03:25.520 --> 03:28.500]  Should have gone to the ninth appellate, I think, but never mind that.
[03:30.180 --> 03:35.120]  And they sat on the case for a very long time, months.
[03:37.540 --> 03:40.880]  And we thought they were going to come up with something better than what they came up with.
[03:41.020 --> 03:49.360]  They came up with a couple of good things, but for the most part, they pretty much backed up what the original judge had said in our case.
[03:49.360 --> 04:03.140]  And the next step after that was to go to the Supreme Court, which a couple of weeks ago, we reached the painful decision that it wasn't in the best interest of either us or the fight against the DMCA to continue.
[04:03.140 --> 04:09.020]  And we'll go into more detail on that as far as exactly why we reached that decision.
[04:09.160 --> 04:18.240]  But I think most people have understood the logic behind it and have realized that the fight has gotten a lot bigger than just 2600 versus the DMCA.
[04:18.240 --> 04:28.180]  When we did this two years ago, when we first started, or when it was started against us, so many people did not know what the DMCA was.
[04:28.480 --> 04:44.520]  And now, because of the idiocy of the record industry and the film industry and just the overall greed of all of these people, so many more have learned about the DMCA and how bad it is and how anti-consumer and anti-freedom it is.
[04:44.520 --> 04:47.760]  So there are a lot more cases on the horizon.
[04:47.760 --> 04:52.900]  There are a lot more cases that are already existing that are stronger than our case.
[04:53.140 --> 04:55.220]  I'd like to think that we got it out there.
[04:55.220 --> 05:01.500]  We helped people realize what the DMCA was, why it's bad, and what this fight means.
[05:02.060 --> 05:07.580]  And now that we started the subject, more people are involved.
[05:07.780 --> 05:08.880]  More people will be involved.
[05:08.940 --> 05:10.360]  And I think in the end, we will win.
[05:10.740 --> 05:12.240]  The question is, how soon will that be?
[05:12.240 --> 05:14.420]  That's basically what it's all about.
[05:14.840 --> 05:19.040]  And I'll turn it over to Robin now, and we'll go into some more detail.
[05:21.200 --> 05:23.780]  Hi, I'm Robin Gross with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[05:24.260 --> 05:29.120]  And I just wanted to tell you guys a little bit about why EFF got involved in this case.
[05:29.360 --> 05:34.080]  I'll give you a little bit of background about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the DMCA.
[05:34.080 --> 05:43.820]  What it does is it outlaws providing someone with information that could help them to bypass technological protection systems.
[05:44.040 --> 05:46.120]  So this includes software.
[05:46.400 --> 05:48.100]  This includes technical information.
[05:48.100 --> 05:52.180]  It can include research, papers, speeches in some context.
[05:52.180 --> 06:04.300]  Basically, any distribution of information that could help someone to bypass technological protection measures that control access to copyrighted works is now illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[06:04.420 --> 06:12.520]  And if you do it for profit or for some kind of personal or financial gain, you can go to jail.
[06:12.520 --> 06:13.660]  You can go to prison for this.
[06:13.660 --> 06:15.320]  So this is a very serious law.
[06:16.120 --> 06:27.140]  And unfortunately, 2600 was one of the first organizations to find themselves behind the barrel of this very powerful gun in the hands of the copyright industry.
[06:27.820 --> 06:34.800]  So when we first heard about... Actually, let me tell you a little story about how we actually heard about this case.
[06:35.960 --> 06:46.980]  When the movie studios first decided to sue over the creation of DeCSS, what they did was they sued everyone electronically.
[06:46.980 --> 06:49.900]  They sent out the complaint via email.
[06:50.180 --> 06:54.880]  And instead of BCCing everyone, they put the entire defendant list.
[06:54.980 --> 07:00.160]  Now, in the first case that they filed, it was against 70 named individuals and 500 John Does.
[07:00.160 --> 07:05.740]  And so all of these people were all sent this one email message at the same time with the complaint.
[07:06.000 --> 07:11.100]  And so they all knew they were being sued by the studios and they all had each other's email address.
[07:11.240 --> 07:22.300]  And so it was able to get together immediately, network, they contacted us, and we sort of created, you know, a distribution list about these issues, got into touch with 2600 about these issues.
[07:22.400 --> 07:29.380]  And so that's actually how we first got involved in that case was because the studios served everyone immediately...
[07:29.380 --> 07:34.780]  with their email, they had this network in place instantly.
[07:35.040 --> 07:41.480]  And so we were able to jump right into that and to start advising people and finding lawyers to defend these folks.
[07:42.140 --> 07:45.480]  So that's kind of how we first got involved in this case.
[07:45.700 --> 07:54.400]  But the reason why we decided recently that this isn't the best vehicle to have this statute overturned, for one thing, there really wasn't a fair user in this case.
[07:54.400 --> 07:59.300]  And one of the big problems with the DMCA is that it essentially eliminates fair use.
[07:59.520 --> 08:15.260]  And so if we want to be able to show the court a set of facts that is most appealing to them, in addition to not having the defendant called the hacker quarterly, it's also a good idea to have an actual fair user as part of the case.
[08:15.360 --> 08:18.020]  So we want to see this statute overturned.
[08:18.100 --> 08:19.760]  We are determined to do that.
[08:19.760 --> 08:24.580]  And we realized that there are better cases, there are better sets of facts.
[08:24.940 --> 08:29.180]  The recording industry, Hollywood, has made even more stupid mistakes since that.
[08:29.340 --> 08:46.480]  I mean, when they sent the threat letter to Professor Felton and his research team for their announcement that they were going to talk about the vulnerabilities of SDMI, for example, that was another opportunity that gave us a case to bring to challenge the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[08:46.480 --> 08:54.200]  And once we brought that case, arguing that these researchers have a First Amendment right to distribute their research, the industry immediately backed down.
[08:54.400 --> 08:56.720]  They said, okay, we never meant to threaten the good professor.
[08:56.740 --> 08:58.460]  And if we did mean it, we don't mean it now.
[08:58.580 --> 08:59.220]  We take it back.
[08:59.440 --> 09:00.700]  So that case went away.
[09:00.940 --> 09:05.240]  The publisher was able to... the scientists were able to publish their results.
[09:05.480 --> 09:09.420]  And we got a little hole, a little public hole in the DMCA.
[09:09.480 --> 09:11.860]  Not necessarily a legal precedent, but in the minds of the public.
[09:12.480 --> 09:18.000]  There's a little hole for researchers, only a few researchers to publish their research.
[09:18.380 --> 09:19.840]  But nonetheless, it's the start.
[09:20.060 --> 09:22.940]  So these are the kinds of cases that we're working on putting together now.
[09:23.260 --> 09:25.260]  We're looking at more cases.
[09:25.520 --> 09:35.940]  We've got some in the works that I can't really talk about, but be prepared to see more cases brought that will challenge the constitutionality of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[09:36.620 --> 09:38.820]  So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Mackie.
[09:40.120 --> 09:40.840]  Hi.
[09:44.490 --> 09:45.210]  Hi.
[09:45.950 --> 09:48.730]  Um, I guess...
[09:48.730 --> 09:51.690]  Well there are a lot of things that happened during the trial.
[09:51.690 --> 09:59.110]  And little funny stories that really, weren't necessarily newsworthy, but I think are pretty interesting.
[09:59.730 --> 10:04.450]  And I've been asked to tell the doughnuts story.
[10:06.350 --> 10:28.050]  So, during the trial, which was pretty much immediately after H2K in the summer of 2000, it was at a federal courthouse in New York, and you're not allowed to bring in any recording devices, and they have some sort of video scanning x-ray machine, and they can see inside your pagers,
[10:28.250 --> 10:34.350]  and they were pretty strict about it, even though their enforcement was kind of haphazard because they'd let you...
[10:34.450 --> 10:44.210]  For instance, they let people bring in a Palm Pilot, but then when a reporter put a keyboard on his Palm Pilot, they'd say, no, you can't have that, because now it's a computer.
[10:47.190 --> 10:58.550]  And you'd see people with laptops, and they'd let laptops through sometimes, and, you know, you could be recording with that, but they're just kind of, you know, as long as they didn't have, like, a moving tape or something.
[10:58.550 --> 11:17.010]  Anyhow, I didn't have any recording devices on me, but during a recess, I'd gone downstairs to, they had a little commissary, and I got some chocolate gem donuts, you know, those little dry, disgusting donuts.
[11:17.730 --> 11:32.970]  And, um, and I was wondering through the lobby during the recess outside the courtroom, and, uh, and I kind of wandered around, looking out the windows, and I go to one side, and all of the MPA's lawyers are in a huddle, uh, probably discussing strategy,
[11:33.170 --> 11:41.190]  so as soon as I see them, you know, I'm not there to spy, so I kind of look at them, I turn around, and I walk back to the other side, given their privacy.
[11:41.190 --> 11:53.290]  And, um, then, during session, uh, uh, during the trial, one of our, uh, attorneys taps me on the, on the shoulder, and takes me out, and he says, hey, were you recording their conversations?
[11:54.890 --> 12:01.130]  They say you had a microphone, and they think you were recording their conversations in the hallway.
[12:01.690 --> 12:06.610]  And I had to swear to them up and down, no, how could I even get a tape recorder in here?
[12:06.730 --> 12:09.250]  There's the x-ray machine, you're not allowed to have them.
[12:10.310 --> 12:17.210]  And, uh, it was a big ordeal, and eventually they, they were satisfied, I guess, that we weren't spying on them.
[12:18.590 --> 12:19.310]  They thought...
[12:20.330 --> 12:23.590]  They thought you had a microphone in the donut, wasn't that the story?
[12:23.610 --> 12:25.150]  Well, no, they thought the donut was the microphone.
[12:25.170 --> 12:26.090]  The donut was the microphone.
[12:26.110 --> 12:28.330]  Because I was, because I was, well, you know, they come...
[12:28.330 --> 12:29.530]  See, hackers are up to all kinds of things.
[12:29.710 --> 12:35.070]  In a row of six, and I'm holding them like that, and I was like, well, what would make, what would give them that impression?
[12:35.070 --> 12:38.510]  And then I, like, I'm like, oh, well, I had donuts.
[12:40.230 --> 12:41.750]  They're, they're, they're chocolate.
[12:42.510 --> 12:43.970]  Maybe that, maybe that's why.
[12:44.170 --> 12:47.830]  The technical proficiency of the other side was not exactly dazzling, but...
[12:47.830 --> 12:47.950]  No.
[12:49.490 --> 12:51.550]  It was pretty funny, too, at, at times.
[12:51.710 --> 12:55.270]  But, uh, you know, while we got a good laugh out of it, it didn't, it didn't win us the case.
[12:55.270 --> 13:01.070]  It's because the judge was equally, uh, um, blind to, uh, to how the technology actually worked.
[13:05.000 --> 13:05.360]  Yep.
[13:06.160 --> 13:14.160]  I mean, the, basically, they, they looked at us in a different way, I think, than they looked at, um, at most defendants.
[13:14.280 --> 13:16.900]  They looked at us as kind of, you know, outcast, rebels, that kind of a thing.
[13:17.340 --> 13:24.180]  I mean, our, our, Robin was one of our attorneys, and she was regularly chastised by the judge for her manner of dress.
[13:24.180 --> 13:26.720]  I mean, do you want to get into, uh, into that a little bit?
[13:27.240 --> 13:30.140]  This is unbelievable, the kinds of things that they, they subject people to.
[13:31.480 --> 13:46.820]  Well, rather than speaking to me individually, when they felt I wasn't dressed formally enough for trial, they would just go talk to my, the bailiff would get an instruction from the judge to go tell the intern, my intern, to come tell me that I need to put on a dress,
[13:46.980 --> 13:47.340]  basically.
[13:47.940 --> 13:50.700]  And this really, this really upset me.
[13:51.220 --> 13:52.320]  Tell them what you were wearing.
[13:52.760 --> 14:01.080]  So the next day, I said, okay, as long as I have to, uh, if I have to be wearing a suit, if that's the issue that I'm not wearing a suit, I'll, I'll be happy to get a suit.
[14:01.260 --> 14:02.780]  So I went out and I got a leather suit.
[14:05.860 --> 14:06.220]  Um...
[14:06.220 --> 14:12.460]  The judge, the judge wasn't happy, but he didn't say anything at that point in time, so...
[14:12.860 --> 14:14.020]  It was my compromise.
[14:16.020 --> 14:17.700]  We were very happy with our legal team.
[14:21.980 --> 14:22.420]  Um...
[14:22.420 --> 14:26.420]  And then, and then, so that, then he wasn't happy with that later, or...
[14:26.420 --> 14:27.000]  That's right.
[14:27.060 --> 14:32.280]  And then the next day, I was wearing a business suit, but it had color on my shirt.
[14:32.600 --> 14:40.340]  And apparently, color is not, it's frowned upon in courtrooms, and you're just supposed to wear like black, blue, pinstripe suits.
[14:40.340 --> 14:48.720]  And I, I'm from San Francisco, so, you know, forgive me if I'm not, uh, really up to speed on the New York, uh, legal, uh, fashion attire.
[14:48.920 --> 14:51.080]  But, um, it was, it was a real eye-opener for me.
[14:51.120 --> 15:00.600]  What was particularly frustrating, though, was that, you know, here we were to, these were very important legal issues, and we were so hopeful that the court would pay attention to what was important.
[15:01.140 --> 15:05.220]  But the only thing the judge just really seemed to be interested in was what we were wearing.
[15:05.220 --> 15:10.660]  And it was really, really frustrating for us, because we wanted these issues to be really thought about.
[15:11.060 --> 15:11.420]  And it was...
[15:11.420 --> 15:13.360]  Who borrowed a jacket from John Young?
[15:13.540 --> 15:14.680]  That was, that was me, yeah.
[15:14.840 --> 15:15.420]  Did you both do that?
[15:16.140 --> 15:17.940]  No, I, I didn't wear a suit at all.
[15:18.460 --> 15:18.580]  I don't know.
[15:18.640 --> 15:19.180]  Maybe that's why I lost.
[15:19.180 --> 15:20.320]  When you had to testify all of a sudden.
[15:20.660 --> 15:20.740]  I don't know.
[15:20.920 --> 15:22.960]  When you, when you had to go on the stand...
[15:22.960 --> 15:23.180]  When I...
[15:23.180 --> 15:25.000]  ...and had to turn your t-shirt inside out.
[15:25.000 --> 15:29.620]  I had to go into the bathroom, and I had, I think I had a black t-shirt on.
[15:29.860 --> 15:35.360]  I went into the bathroom and turned it inside out, so it looked like I had a regular black shirt, but didn't say anything on it.
[15:35.500 --> 15:36.780]  Like, you know, I love feds or whatever.
[15:37.200 --> 15:38.580]  Whatever I happened to be wearing at the time.
[15:38.620 --> 15:40.220]  I think it was the anti-MPAA shirt.
[15:40.420 --> 15:41.740]  Was I actually wearing an anti-MPAA shirt?
[15:41.740 --> 15:43.880]  I think it was the one with the picture of Jack Valenti on the back.
[15:43.940 --> 15:44.540]  I'm not sure.
[15:46.360 --> 15:47.420]  Yeah, that sounds right.
[15:47.660 --> 15:55.820]  Oh, before I forget, speaking of Jack Valenti, I don't know if people have noticed this, but as one of the films, we're showing the Jack Valenti testimony during the deposition period.
[15:56.020 --> 15:57.060]  It's, it's really scary.
[15:57.640 --> 15:59.880]  He claims to have been sick that day, but I don't know.
[16:00.060 --> 16:02.800]  He's a pretty, pretty menacing figure there, but...
[16:02.800 --> 16:04.420]  You know, I got my picture taken with him?
[16:05.300 --> 16:06.260]  At the debate.
[16:06.440 --> 16:09.440]  This was, yeah, this was a year later.
[16:09.440 --> 16:14.360]  We were both speaking at the same conference, WebNoise, in Los Angeles.
[16:14.640 --> 16:22.260]  And after his panel, I was wearing my Stop the MPAA t-shirt and had a bumper sticker in my hand.
[16:22.360 --> 16:27.620]  And, like, his publicist came up to me and was like, hey, so I saw your talk.
[16:27.740 --> 16:29.100]  And I was like, oh, did you like it?
[16:29.100 --> 16:33.620]  And, meanwhile, I'm trying to get next to Jack, because she said he wouldn't pose for a picture.
[16:33.960 --> 16:38.320]  So I had a friend waiting with the camera, and I just kind of, like, got next to him.
[16:38.560 --> 16:42.740]  And he snapped the picture, and I'm just kind of grinning, like, it's pretty good.
[16:43.320 --> 16:45.420]  See, we never had anything against Valenti.
[16:45.520 --> 16:49.000]  He seemed to be like this grandfatherly figure that we had no problem with.
[16:49.100 --> 16:52.580]  We would have, you know, loved to have hung out with him and, you know, chatted.
[16:52.580 --> 16:56.720]  But he just does not get it, and he's very aggressive about not wanting to get it.
[16:57.280 --> 17:06.920]  This is a man who, back in the 70s, testified that VCRs were going to destroy the movie industry, and that they had to be abolished, regulated, controlled in all kinds of ways.
[17:07.060 --> 17:09.940]  Well, obviously, that didn't work out, and the film industry is still here.
[17:10.660 --> 17:16.240]  And now he's going on about DVDs and digital technology and all kinds of things like that.
[17:16.240 --> 17:21.120]  And, unfortunately, the industry is buying it, and the industry is winning.
[17:21.300 --> 17:23.200]  And I think that's a really sad issue.
[17:23.320 --> 17:30.740]  It tells you all kinds of things about, you know, the conglomeration of media outlets, how everybody is owned by the same people, and how...
[17:30.740 --> 17:38.500]  I mean, we would be interviewed by particular news agencies, like, say, CNN, for instance, outside the courthouse.
[17:38.740 --> 17:44.500]  And we'd have to tell them, you know, you're suing us, because you're part of Time Warner, and they're suing us.
[17:44.500 --> 17:48.340]  And every media outlet that talked to us was a part of it somehow.
[17:48.560 --> 17:51.220]  So, coincidentally, they never quite got the story right.
[17:51.340 --> 17:57.120]  It was always the old party line about how hackers want to copy movies and make money on the internet by trading them.
[17:57.340 --> 17:59.020]  Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
[17:59.100 --> 18:00.160]  It's got nothing to do with that.
[18:00.340 --> 18:05.580]  This is so that you can use a Linux box to play a DVD that you already bought.
[18:06.000 --> 18:09.140]  And nobody seemed to understand why anybody would want to do that.
[18:09.560 --> 18:15.340]  This really is, though, right in line with history in terms of how the industry has responded.
[18:15.340 --> 18:21.140]  Every time a new technology comes out that they can't control, that interoperates with their works.
[18:21.940 --> 18:29.780]  Back in 1909, when piano rolls first came out, the industry, music publishers, tried to outlaw piano rolls as tools of piracy.
[18:31.680 --> 18:36.980]  When radio first was invented, there was attempts to outlaw that by the copyright industry.
[18:38.140 --> 18:40.260]  Manny just told you about VCRs.
[18:40.960 --> 18:43.320]  Believe it or not, they tried to outlaw VCRs.
[18:43.440 --> 18:52.200]  In fact, Jack Valenti stood before Congress and his exact quote is, the VCR is to the American film industry what the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.
[18:53.220 --> 18:54.480]  Don't you just love this guy?
[18:54.680 --> 18:57.020]  I mean, he's full of things like that.
[18:57.160 --> 18:57.540]  It's great.
[18:58.240 --> 19:07.280]  Fortunately for Mr. Valenti, the Supreme Court disagreed with him and ruled that VCRs are lawful tools because of their substantial non-infringing uses.
[19:07.980 --> 19:16.940]  And particularly, fortunately for Mr. Valenti, VCR tape rental and sales is now the number one most profitable revenue for the movie studio.
[19:16.940 --> 19:19.880]  So it's actually a good thing that they lost that case.
[19:19.880 --> 19:25.340]  And they were forced to figure out a way to innovate and to embrace the technology.
[19:25.340 --> 19:29.420]  And that really seems to be a lesson that they don't learn.
[19:29.420 --> 19:31.680]  And every single time a new technology comes out.
[19:31.820 --> 19:33.560]  Most recently, MP3 players.
[19:33.680 --> 19:38.800]  The recording industry filed a lawsuit to outlaw MP3 players claiming that they're tools of piracy.
[19:39.020 --> 19:42.000]  Look at the lawsuits filed against peer-to-peer networks.
[19:42.300 --> 19:43.140]  Replay TV.
[19:44.180 --> 19:48.900]  All of these cases are about technologies that the industry does not control.
[19:49.140 --> 19:52.220]  And because the power rests with the hands of the people, it makes them very nervous.
[19:52.400 --> 19:54.060]  And they want that power back in their hands.
[19:54.620 --> 20:01.260]  The thing about digital technology is that they have the ability now to control things in a way that they never were able to control things before.
[20:01.540 --> 20:07.200]  Such as with digital television that's being rammed down our throats.
[20:07.820 --> 20:12.360]  They will have the ability to make it so that you cannot record a TV program unless you pay for it.
[20:12.500 --> 20:16.180]  Or even play back a TV program you've already recorded unless you pay for it.
[20:16.560 --> 20:29.020]  They want these kinds of technologies to be in place so that they have total control over how you play something back, when you play it back, and how much they know about what it is you're doing with their copyrighted works.
[20:30.160 --> 20:34.160]  The concept of fair use is pretty much a thing of the past in their world.
[20:34.420 --> 20:36.400]  And that's something that we have to be very aware of.
[20:36.460 --> 20:42.340]  And that's something I hope that we were able to bring across in our case so that people saw what the threat is.
[20:42.500 --> 20:47.200]  And I think we should probably talk a little bit about why we chose to stop where we did.
[20:47.200 --> 20:51.500]  and why we think we're better off now than we were when we started the thing.
[20:52.200 --> 20:55.300]  Maybe we can start with Robin and the rest of us can offer some background.
[20:55.480 --> 20:55.620]  Sure.
[20:56.400 --> 21:16.860]  Well, in large part, we all have this community to thank for the amount of attention that's been drawn to these issues and the way the word has been spreading, not because you hear about it on CNN, but because you guys are talking about these issues and talking about the DMCA to people that you just meet on streets.
[21:17.240 --> 21:23.440]  And whereas when this first case was filed, nobody had heard of the digital copy millennium what?
[21:23.560 --> 21:24.220]  What is this thing?
[21:24.320 --> 21:25.380]  Nobody had heard about it.
[21:25.680 --> 21:26.780]  Particularly the reporters.
[21:26.980 --> 21:28.260]  We really had to educate them.
[21:28.800 --> 21:44.960]  Last year, when Dmitry Sklarov, the Russian cryptographer, who really revealed the vulnerabilities in Adobe software, when he was speaking at DEFCON and then got arrested under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, there was an entire network, a community in place,
[21:45.100 --> 21:46.200]  to rally to his defense.
[21:46.420 --> 21:49.200]  There were protests all over the world at U.S.
[21:49.340 --> 21:52.100]  embassies, in Russia, in London, in France.
[21:52.400 --> 21:56.180]  There were massive letter-writing campaigns to the U.S.
[21:56.520 --> 22:05.240]  Department of Justice saying that we, the American people, do not support the prosecution of this young man for writing software that can help people read books.
[22:05.420 --> 22:07.480]  Sounds like a dangerous man, doesn't he?
[22:07.480 --> 22:11.300]  Well, he faced 25 years in prison for this.
[22:11.500 --> 22:14.980]  This is what this law, the law in the books, allows.
[22:15.520 --> 22:24.240]  And the American public, the world community, particularly the technologically savvy folks, would not allow this to happen.
[22:24.420 --> 22:33.400]  And so, because of the pressure that was put on the government, the charges against Dmitry were dropped in exchange for his agreeing to testify at trial.
[22:33.400 --> 22:37.860]  But that's really no big deal, because all he's going to say is, yes, I wrote the software, and so what?
[22:37.960 --> 22:39.040]  It should be perfectly legal.
[22:39.640 --> 22:45.940]  So, I think we have to look at this as a victory, actually, because now we've educated the world.
[22:45.940 --> 22:52.820]  We have created a community of activists who are knowledgeable about these issues, very connected.
[22:53.440 --> 22:58.560]  The Internet has been such an amazing tool for that, to allow us to exchange information instantly.
[22:58.560 --> 23:07.240]  We had a lot of folks over in Norway, the original author, one of the original authors of DeCSS, Jon Johansen, is a young Norwegian teenager.
[23:07.700 --> 23:11.260]  And we had folks working in Norway on these cases.
[23:11.660 --> 23:21.620]  And it's really been kind of an inspiring thing, just to see these people coming together and working very hard and rallying around this issue.
[23:21.620 --> 23:31.020]  And, you know, we really should be proud that Dimitri was released and allowed to go back to Russia last December, so he could be with his wife and two young children.
[23:31.820 --> 23:32.340]  Absolutely.
[23:32.340 --> 23:51.440]  I think the community-building aspect and the end result is extremely important and can't be undervalued at all, because, I mean, the amount of support that 2600 received after being sued, and I know H2K helped a lot to just rally everyone together, was really,
[23:51.600 --> 23:53.080]  I think, overwhelming.
[23:53.880 --> 23:56.360]  And it continued to build after that.
[23:56.640 --> 24:16.160]  And I think beyond the community, it was also a growth experience for 2600, because there's a tremendous amount of things at risk that, you know, Mano could have gone bankrupt, and the MPA could have taken his house, or burned down his house, or tortured his cat,
[24:16.600 --> 24:16.660]  you know.
[24:16.660 --> 24:17.280]  Yeah, all kinds of things.
[24:17.340 --> 24:18.160]  It was bad.
[24:18.420 --> 24:19.520]  They're not nice people.
[24:22.060 --> 24:27.580]  And it survived, and we survived pretty much, and it...
[24:27.580 --> 24:37.640]  You know, it's interesting, because we've dealt with challenges over the years, usually involving raids of hackers and machines being seized and things like that, or something being shut down.
[24:37.640 --> 24:42.440]  And we developed a saying over the years that every time they attack us, we just get stronger.
[24:42.760 --> 24:55.300]  And I think this really played out well in this particular case, because not only did we get stronger, we joined forces with so many other communities that saw the risk here, and we stayed together.
[24:55.460 --> 24:57.680]  We stayed bonded and updating each other.
[24:59.000 --> 25:02.720]  And I think we really have done something that's very necessary.
[25:02.720 --> 25:09.940]  Had we not done this, we'd be just, you know, completely unaware of what the technology was headed for.
[25:10.140 --> 25:13.080]  Also, people stopped mocking us on Slashdot.
[25:13.080 --> 25:13.880]  Oh, yeah.
[25:15.020 --> 25:15.900]  If you...
[25:15.900 --> 25:19.760]  Can you tell us how today we run, we do DVDs on Lotus?
[25:21.100 --> 25:21.920]  On a prayer.
[25:22.680 --> 25:25.040]  What's the practical use today of DeCSS?
[25:25.360 --> 25:27.900]  It was available publicly in the same way.
[25:28.920 --> 25:29.900]  I haven't tried...
[25:29.900 --> 25:32.080]  You know, I've never used DeCSS myself.
[25:32.980 --> 25:36.360]  In fact, I don't really know very many people who have successfully gotten it to run.
[25:37.200 --> 25:41.720]  Nothing against the authors of it, but it wasn't something that was just out of the box that would work.
[25:42.320 --> 25:46.520]  There's lots of different code out there right now to decrypt DVDs under Linux.
[25:47.600 --> 25:55.540]  I'm reminded of the, I think it was an MIT Perl contest where someone wrote the shortest version of DeCSS.
[25:56.000 --> 25:57.600]  Like seven lines or something.
[25:57.740 --> 25:58.760]  On the head of a pin, yes.
[25:59.060 --> 25:59.140]  Yeah.
[25:59.400 --> 26:05.840]  Now, someone tell me, is there a commercial product available today that will play a DVD on a Linux machine?
[26:06.080 --> 26:06.440]  Yes?
[26:06.600 --> 26:06.740]  No?
[26:07.200 --> 26:09.980]  Because I remember back then there was one being announced.
[26:10.340 --> 26:13.560]  That, oh, you know, you don't need to do this because it's going to be...
[26:13.560 --> 26:13.820]  We're going to license it.
[26:14.340 --> 26:16.840]  And it always seemed to disappear when...
[26:16.840 --> 26:19.080]  It really seemed like vaporware, actually.
[26:19.520 --> 26:19.600]  Yeah.
[26:19.720 --> 26:22.520]  It was something that the industry kept promising.
[26:22.700 --> 26:26.440]  Oh, don't worry about the fact that there isn't a DVD player for the Linux system.
[26:26.440 --> 26:27.340]  We're working on that.
[26:27.480 --> 26:28.120]  We're working on that.
[26:28.200 --> 26:39.240]  But what they fundamentally didn't understand was the idea of open source and the idea of being able to take whatever technology it is and take it apart, figure out how it works, and make it work for you.
[26:39.280 --> 26:42.880]  Not on this operating system or that operating system, but for you.
[26:43.000 --> 26:43.680]  What works for you.
[26:43.840 --> 26:45.920]  Customize it yourself for your own taste.
[26:46.040 --> 26:47.760]  And that's exactly what they don't want.
[26:48.000 --> 26:50.020]  It's irrelevant which operating system it is.
[26:50.080 --> 26:51.060]  It's who has the control.
[26:51.060 --> 27:01.200]  And because they are so afraid that a copy-enabled public will destroy their revenue sources, that's really what they're trying to take away.
[27:01.480 --> 27:06.160]  Or a public that can fast-forward commercials or play it in different regions.
[27:06.740 --> 27:10.980]  I think a large amount...
[27:10.980 --> 27:20.940]  What do they really care if you're at home playing a DVD when there's massive commercial piracy throughout the Far East?
[27:21.520 --> 27:21.980]  And...
[27:21.980 --> 27:22.680]  That's another thing.
[27:22.860 --> 27:38.660]  You know, during the trial, while I was on trial downtown in New York, for allegedly being a DVD pirate for having this source code on our website, outside the damn courthouse, there were people selling tapes of films that were still in the studio.
[27:39.440 --> 27:40.620]  Outside the courthouse.
[27:40.640 --> 27:41.260]  On the sidewalk.
[27:41.680 --> 27:48.760]  And the guys, the lawyers that were prosecuting me, and the judge, they all walk by these people, and didn't say a word.
[27:49.020 --> 27:49.160]  You know?
[27:49.340 --> 27:50.420]  That's not the threat.
[27:50.580 --> 27:53.980]  You know, people selling films, you know, that are obvious cases of piracy.
[27:54.120 --> 27:54.540]  That's not...
[27:54.540 --> 27:56.420]  They're not on trial, and nobody cares about that.
[27:56.560 --> 27:57.800]  I don't think that's the issue.
[27:57.940 --> 27:59.160]  I don't think it was ever about copying.
[27:59.340 --> 28:02.260]  I think it was and is still about control.
[28:03.160 --> 28:06.960]  And, you know, they want a world where everything is paid per use.
[28:07.380 --> 28:08.920]  And the same way with the RIAA.
[28:09.760 --> 28:14.220]  And they're not going to stop until, you know, the libraries are outlawed.
[28:14.220 --> 28:14.780]  Yeah.
[28:14.820 --> 28:19.040]  I think it's worth noting, also, that it's not over for Jan Johansen, either.
[28:19.780 --> 28:31.820]  The MPAA's attorneys filed a formal complaint with the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit against Jan and his father, Per, because Per owned the servers onto which DeCSS was first published.
[28:32.040 --> 28:53.460]  So they filed a formal complaint asking that the Norwegian government criminally charge both Jan and Per, and earlier this year, I believe first week of January, Jan Johansen was himself charged by the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit for violating Section 145.2 of the Norwegian Economic Code,
[28:53.660 --> 29:01.860]  which makes it a crime to bypass technological protection measures in order to gain access to data that you don't have a right to.
[29:02.140 --> 29:08.800]  Now, what's really important here is that this idea that Jan Johansen doesn't have a right to the data on his own DVD.
[29:09.160 --> 29:10.400]  He purchased that DVD.
[29:10.620 --> 29:12.100]  He purchased that DVD player.
[29:12.220 --> 29:12.900]  They're his property.
[29:13.360 --> 29:24.320]  This is the first time that this particular law, this particular statute, is being used to try to prosecute someone for actually breaking into their own property, essentially.
[29:24.500 --> 29:33.480]  This has always been a statute that has been brought against someone who breaks into bank records or phone company records, essentially data that you don't have a lawful right to.
[29:33.620 --> 29:53.800]  But now we're seeing, based upon the request of Hollywood's duty videos, the Norwegian government is essentially trying to stretch that law to ban people from accessing their own computers, their own files that they own, and Jan Johansen faces potentially two years in prison if he is convicted of this.
[29:54.260 --> 29:56.560]  I wonder if they're going to try him as an adult.
[29:57.000 --> 29:59.680]  I think he was like 16 when it happened, right?
[29:59.680 --> 30:01.360]  Yes, that's a good point.
[30:01.520 --> 30:06.680]  But the age is 15 in Norway, so it's not an issue.
[30:06.840 --> 30:08.520]  But there is an update on this.
[30:08.640 --> 30:11.340]  His trial was supposed to start last month.
[30:11.340 --> 30:17.500]  And what happened was the Norwegian government said they couldn't find lawyers qualified enough, or excuse me, judges.
[30:17.660 --> 30:18.860]  There was going to be a three-judge panel.
[30:19.100 --> 30:24.300]  They couldn't find judges qualified enough, so they've basically put it off indefinitely.
[30:24.580 --> 30:30.660]  So while Jan Johansen is under this criminal investigation, he's been formally criminally indicted.
[30:30.900 --> 30:32.500]  He's not going to get his day in court.
[30:32.620 --> 30:36.640]  He's not going to get his opportunity to tell his side of the story.
[30:37.100 --> 30:41.120]  And for one thing, the Norwegian public doesn't support the prosecution of this young man.
[30:41.340 --> 30:46.000]  He won an award the year he invented DeCSS by the Norwegian government.
[30:46.300 --> 30:47.760]  So it's...
[30:48.320 --> 30:50.200]  At least they're honest about it over there, though.
[30:50.240 --> 30:52.600]  They admit that they don't have judges qualified to deal with it.
[30:52.660 --> 30:53.660]  We're not honest about that.
[30:53.680 --> 30:56.700]  We just put the judges that are unqualified to deal with it up on the stand.
[30:56.940 --> 31:02.080]  And, you know, they judge based on archaic understanding of these technological issues.
[31:03.600 --> 31:06.220]  It's something... I mean, people think we've been through a lot.
[31:06.280 --> 31:06.580]  We have.
[31:06.720 --> 31:11.480]  It's quite a challenge to deal with this kind of a threat.
[31:11.940 --> 31:19.000]  I mean, the massive show of force that every single Hollywood studio versus you can generate is unbelievable.
[31:19.420 --> 31:21.280]  After a while, you become sort of immune to it.
[31:21.760 --> 31:29.200]  I don't think it compares, though, to when people actually are sent to prison for writing computer code or for figuring something out.
[31:29.460 --> 31:29.920]  And I...
[31:29.920 --> 31:32.520]  You know, we... In our case, it was a civil case.
[31:32.840 --> 31:39.080]  They could have, you know, let us dry for the rest of our lives, you know, financially, but we weren't going to prison.
[31:39.380 --> 31:40.700]  I think there is a difference there.
[31:40.820 --> 31:46.240]  I'm not quite sure myself why some of these cases are brought up as criminal cases and some are civil cases.
[31:46.420 --> 31:46.640]  Maybe...
[31:46.640 --> 31:51.220]  The criminal portion of the DMCA hadn't become effective yet, right?
[31:51.860 --> 31:52.560]  Oh, okay.
[31:52.560 --> 31:54.380]  No, they could have.
[31:54.720 --> 31:55.940]  They could have.
[31:56.060 --> 31:58.680]  It was the different part of the DMCA that hadn't come effective yet.
[31:58.960 --> 32:03.140]  But they could have gone after him criminally because presumably, you know, your website makes money, right?
[32:03.920 --> 32:06.040]  Well, not for putting DeCSS on it.
[32:06.040 --> 32:07.060]  Well, but because...
[32:07.060 --> 32:08.100]  For selling T-shirts, maybe.
[32:08.160 --> 32:09.460]  That would be enough.
[32:09.680 --> 32:10.540]  That would be enough.
[32:10.700 --> 32:10.920]  I mean...
[32:10.920 --> 32:13.320]  And our T-shirts don't have DeCSS on them, so we're safe there, too.
[32:14.280 --> 32:23.980]  They actually went after the person that made the DeCSS shirt that had the code on it and named him as a defendant for distributing the code on a shirt.
[32:24.320 --> 32:26.260]  I mean, these people are insane.
[32:26.560 --> 32:29.600]  If you can put it on a T-shirt, it's speech, right?
[32:29.760 --> 32:34.680]  I mean, this is having a tremendous chilling effect on freedom of speech all over the world.
[32:34.980 --> 32:51.640]  There are technical conferences now that are afraid to be hosted here in the United States because some of their speakers could talk about certain technologies that could provide someone with information that would tell them how to bypass restrictions.
[32:51.980 --> 32:56.560]  And so these conferences, because they charge a fee for admittance, could find themselves criminally liable.
[32:56.560 --> 32:58.480]  So these conferences are moving overseas.
[32:58.840 --> 33:14.720]  There are lots of noted foreign computer programmers and cryptographers who are issuing statements saying that they're afraid to travel to this country because something, a software that they have written or some research that they have done could subject them to DMCA liability if they were to come here.
[33:14.860 --> 33:22.260]  So this is really a very serious matter, and it's having a tremendous chilling effect all over the world.
[33:22.800 --> 33:29.840]  And Manny just touched upon the problems of the courts not understanding the technology, and this really is a big problem.
[33:30.080 --> 33:38.240]  I can tell you, when this case was first filed, we had to participate in a preliminary injunction hearing over the telephone.
[33:38.460 --> 33:45.640]  There was a storm here in New York, and so we couldn't get a flight into New York, and we had to do the preliminary injunction hearing over the phone.
[33:45.920 --> 34:01.660]  And at the end of the hearing, when the judge decided he was going to rule in favor of the studios and issue an injunction against 2600 Magazine saying you're not allowed to post DeCSS, the MPA's lawyers then said to the judge, well, how about, you know,
[34:01.720 --> 34:01.940]  linking?
[34:02.220 --> 34:06.500]  We would like for them to be enjoined from linking to DeCSS as well.
[34:06.620 --> 34:08.220]  And the judge said, linking?
[34:08.480 --> 34:09.080]  What's that?
[34:11.740 --> 34:14.980]  So here, you know, he is in a very important position.
[34:14.980 --> 34:28.420]  He is being asked to rule on whether or not this magazine, this journalist is allowed to provide certain kinds of information and link to other sites, and he doesn't even understand the funding of the fundamental nature of the technology, and, you know,
[34:28.500 --> 34:31.200]  relies upon the MPAA to explain it to him.
[34:31.340 --> 34:43.820]  And if you have a chance, all the transcripts are on the 2600 and the EFF websites, read the transcript of the preliminary injunction hearing, because he did not like you.
[34:44.200 --> 34:46.940]  And they were, you know, like, it was not very sympathetic.
[34:46.940 --> 34:52.220]  We had this lawyer who, you know, I'm sure he's a very nice guy.
[34:52.400 --> 34:57.340]  He had been sued as part of the California case, the first case.
[34:57.760 --> 35:00.320]  He had been named, but he was a New York attorney.
[35:00.320 --> 35:05.980]  So he, and you needed to have at least one attorney there who was admitted to the New York bar.
[35:05.980 --> 35:12.900]  And there was, like, a couple days' notice, and there was a hearing in the other case a couple days before that the EFF had to be doing in California.
[35:12.900 --> 35:14.640]  So there was, like, no time.
[35:14.780 --> 35:18.580]  So this guy was in chambers while Robin and others were on the phone.
[35:18.740 --> 35:24.620]  And the judge would just cut him off, just, like, mid-sentence, and be like, well, you know, why are you talking?
[35:24.860 --> 35:26.980]  And let's not forget the timeframe of this, too.
[35:27.380 --> 35:42.900]  We were all out in California at the time on the eve of Kevin Mitnick's release from prison, finding out that we had to run to a Kinko's two towns over to get DeCSS off the website, or we could be in all kinds of severe legal trouble when we got back to New York.
[35:43.160 --> 35:44.260]  Well, forget about New York.
[35:44.400 --> 35:45.760]  You were going to be surrounded by U.S.
[35:45.920 --> 35:48.200]  Marshals in the morning when Kevin was getting out of prison.
[35:49.120 --> 35:50.660]  And they all knew who you were.
[35:50.860 --> 35:53.080]  Yeah, it really was an unreasonable situation.
[35:54.040 --> 35:56.880]  We did get some good out of the appellate ruling, though.
[35:56.880 --> 36:01.900]  The Second Circuit Court of Appeals did say that code is a form of speech.
[36:02.420 --> 36:03.880]  And, Robin, how significant was that?
[36:03.940 --> 36:04.080]  Sure.
[36:04.180 --> 36:16.720]  Well, that's actually a really important decision now, because the Second Circuit has held that computer code is creative expression, worthy of First Amendment protection, as the Ninth Circuit has held, as the Sixth Circuit has held.
[36:16.840 --> 36:23.100]  So there's pretty much agreement among the appellate courts now that computer code gets First Amendment protection.
[36:23.100 --> 36:25.020]  So this is a good step.
[36:25.900 --> 36:29.180]  The Court gives with one hand and then takes with the other.
[36:29.580 --> 36:34.560]  That's because being eligible for First Amendment protection is not the end of the story.
[36:34.720 --> 36:39.800]  There are different levels of First Amendment protection that are afforded to different kinds of speech.
[36:39.980 --> 36:44.860]  Commercial speech gets less protection than critical or political speech, for example.
[36:44.860 --> 36:50.940]  And so what the Court did was said, yes, it is creative expression worthy of First Amendment protection, but it's going to be the lowest.
[36:51.220 --> 36:53.520]  It's going to be one of the lowest levels of protection.
[36:53.920 --> 37:00.460]  So, on the one hand, it was a small victory because this Court was able to recognize that computer code was expression.
[37:00.460 --> 37:09.340]  And it's important, too, because at the beginning of this case, the judge did not see at all how there was any creative aspect of computer code.
[37:09.480 --> 37:10.000]  Not at all.
[37:10.140 --> 37:22.100]  And it really wasn't until Professor David Tereski from Carnegie Mellon University got on the stand and walked the judge through how you can understand computer code.
[37:22.100 --> 37:29.660]  And if there's any testimony from trial that you want to read, I highly recommend this because it was riveting.
[37:29.680 --> 37:30.960]  It was so interesting.
[37:31.160 --> 37:37.800]  The judge even got up from behind his seat and was sort of walking back and forth and scratching his head.
[37:37.820 --> 37:42.980]  And you could see that he was really having his mind challenged on these issues.
[37:43.240 --> 37:48.780]  It wasn't ultimately challenged far enough, but it was kind of an interesting thing to actually watch.
[37:50.200 --> 38:00.980]  We also... I don't want to miss out on thanking people, but we really have to thank Kathleen Sullivan for her incredible testimony before the Second Circuit, which she did for us pro bono.
[38:01.780 --> 38:04.220]  And that's available in audio form on our website, too.
[38:04.340 --> 38:05.840]  It's just... I think it was really compelling.
[38:05.900 --> 38:07.500]  She did a great job bringing up the issues.
[38:07.980 --> 38:15.280]  You know, it didn't convince the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to take our side, but I think it stated the case very well.
[38:15.340 --> 38:17.480]  And it forced them to take it seriously, I think.
[38:17.480 --> 38:17.620]  Yeah.
[38:18.060 --> 38:20.620]  I don't want to lose the opportunity to take questions.
[38:20.840 --> 38:21.940]  Is there anything else you guys want to...
[38:21.940 --> 38:22.960]  How much time do we have?
[38:23.100 --> 38:23.500]  I was going to...
[38:23.500 --> 38:23.740]  Like 10 minutes.
[38:24.220 --> 38:25.340]  I'll do this quick.
[38:25.560 --> 38:26.160]  You can do it quick.
[38:27.360 --> 38:44.280]  We mentioned earlier about, you know, how the problem with educating the judge, and it really, there wasn't for a lack of experts on either side, because there's, you know, great people working and submitting briefs on our behalf.
[38:45.380 --> 38:58.040]  But at one point, so the MPAA had to actually go on IRC and download a DivX of the Matrix and complete a trade in order to prove that it could be done.
[38:58.800 --> 39:10.840]  And, you know, they had all the money in the world to spend on this, and they paid a lot, but they couldn't get good experts because, you know, no one with the conscious who understood the case, I assume, would take it.
[39:10.840 --> 39:17.340]  And so they had a professor, I believe his name was Dr. Shamos from Princeton.
[39:17.640 --> 39:18.160]  Princeton.
[39:19.080 --> 39:19.600]  And...
[39:20.420 --> 39:20.940]  What?
[39:21.440 --> 39:21.960]  Pittsburgh.
[39:22.180 --> 39:22.460]  Pittsburgh.
[39:22.880 --> 39:23.260]  Pittsburgh.
[39:23.280 --> 39:23.360]  Pittsburgh.
[39:23.740 --> 39:23.820]  Okay.
[39:25.440 --> 39:27.040]  Assuming I'm remembering the right one.
[39:27.460 --> 39:27.980]  Okay.
[39:28.720 --> 39:29.080]  Thank you.
[39:29.140 --> 39:29.420]  Thank you.
[39:31.520 --> 39:32.000]  And...
[39:33.480 --> 39:35.200]  I don't know him very well.
[39:35.360 --> 39:36.520]  You know, I only saw him in court.
[39:36.680 --> 39:39.760]  But he reminded me of professors at a school I went to.
[39:40.000 --> 39:44.680]  The computer science professors who can't quite make it in the computer science industry.
[39:44.920 --> 39:50.660]  And so they kind of barricade themselves into a department and, you know, teach as long as they can.
[39:50.660 --> 39:54.260]  And, you know, they've got their Fortran class that they know really well.
[39:54.440 --> 40:00.360]  And they don't have to, you know, they don't have to redo the, the, the, the plan every year.
[40:00.900 --> 40:09.100]  And, um, now imagine that guy having to go on IRC and figure out the whole where's scene.
[40:09.360 --> 40:16.340]  And figure out how to, how to get DeCSS to work in the first place when it was practically a proof of concept.
[40:16.340 --> 40:21.380]  And, um, and then go through, this is an elaborate process.
[40:21.900 --> 40:24.700]  So, um, so they got him on the stand.
[40:24.920 --> 40:27.260]  Uh, to, you know, say, well, tell us how you did it.
[40:27.380 --> 40:30.080]  And you should really, uh, everyone should read this.
[40:30.360 --> 40:33.220]  Uh, on the website we have their, the brief he had submitted.
[40:33.440 --> 40:37.040]  Which, like, documents his whole thing of, you know, how he went on IRC.
[40:37.900 --> 40:41.340]  Including IRC logs, which are just great.
[40:42.020 --> 40:46.320]  And, um, I never thought we'd be, be reading IRC.
[40:46.320 --> 40:48.580]  IRC logs as part of evidence against us.
[40:48.720 --> 40:49.760]  Oh, you better get used to it.
[40:49.940 --> 40:54.840]  And, uh, and, and sure enough, he hadn't done it himself.
[40:55.100 --> 41:01.120]  In fact, he was in Hawaii, uh, during a portion of, of the, uh, of the investigation.
[41:01.700 --> 41:04.400]  And he had one of his undergrads doing it.
[41:04.740 --> 41:10.180]  Who's like, you know, um, probably close to the median age of people here.
[41:10.180 --> 41:14.460]  Like mid twenties, uh, guy, nice guy named Eric Lee Burns.
[41:15.140 --> 41:20.480]  And, uh, who, which coincidentally is the name of, uh, of a hacker known as Cyclone.
[41:20.620 --> 41:21.740]  Who was in jail at the time.
[41:21.860 --> 41:22.180]  Anyhow.
[41:22.800 --> 41:24.700]  Um, okay.
[41:25.120 --> 41:30.160]  Um, so yeah, so it turns out this, this undergrad did the whole thing.
[41:30.160 --> 41:36.840]  And we deposed him cause the, uh, Dr. Shamos, when he was on the stand, had no idea how any of it worked.
[41:36.960 --> 41:39.280]  It was like, oh, well, gee, I wasn't there for that part.
[41:39.920 --> 41:48.420]  And, uh, and of course, if you've been on IRC before, and, and if you're gonna be pirating a movie, the odds are you've done it before.
[41:48.420 --> 41:53.980]  You're not gonna, you know, spend 10 hours the first time and have no idea how IRC works.
[41:54.220 --> 42:00.260]  And so we had our attorney at Edward Ernstad, I gave him a crash court, a crash course in where speak.
[42:01.100 --> 42:10.720]  And, um, and so after like all the normal questions, a half hour into his deposition, he turns to him and he says, what are zero day infos?
[42:12.860 --> 42:17.560]  And, and the, the stenographer actually spells it with a Z, which I thought was great.
[42:18.460 --> 42:20.580]  And, and Eric looks, I'm kind of stunned.
[42:21.140 --> 42:21.780]  And he's like, what?
[42:21.980 --> 42:25.180]  He's like, do you have any zero day infos?
[42:26.660 --> 42:28.840]  And, uh, let's just move on.
[42:29.000 --> 42:30.560]  You know, are you a member of any wares groups?
[42:30.840 --> 42:32.760]  Have you ever been asked to join wares groups?
[42:33.080 --> 42:37.460]  And meanwhile, you know, the guy's freaking out and he consults with his, with his attorney.
[42:37.900 --> 42:47.060]  And he comes back and says, uh, I'm gonna make a little speech and then I'm gonna advise him not to answer because it's getting into his personal life of what IRC channels he hangs out in.
[42:47.060 --> 42:49.440]  And cause of course, of course he had.
[42:49.600 --> 42:55.780]  And so they decided that, well, if he got put on the stand, then we were entitled to like, find out all the bad things he's done.
[42:56.100 --> 42:58.500]  But since he wasn't gonna go on the stand, they didn't.
[42:58.700 --> 43:01.180]  And, um, and I thought it was hilarious.
[43:01.380 --> 43:04.600]  And at one point during the trial, he went up to, I think it was auto Jack.
[43:05.060 --> 43:08.740]  And he was just like, my friends are gonna kill me when I get home.
[43:09.340 --> 43:10.520]  I'm really sorry.
[43:13.120 --> 43:13.400]  Okay.
[43:13.680 --> 43:14.900]  We, uh, we don't have much time.
[43:15.040 --> 43:17.240]  So if people have questions, do we have an audience mic?
[43:17.840 --> 43:18.120]  Is there one?
[43:18.260 --> 43:18.400]  Okay.
[43:19.200 --> 43:22.020]  Uh, that, raise your hand and this guy will go over to you with a mic.
[43:22.440 --> 43:23.720]  And don't start talking until he gets to you.
[43:23.780 --> 43:25.800]  Otherwise, nobody will be able to hear you.
[43:30.260 --> 43:32.720]  Make your questions nice and brief so we can have a few of them.
[43:32.720 --> 43:33.700]  I'm curious.
[43:33.700 --> 43:40.340]  I understand why you're worried about, uh, free use and, and that sort of thing of things you owned.
[43:40.480 --> 43:42.680]  And why you're going through the legal system to try to do that.
[43:42.900 --> 43:48.740]  But the legal, the legislative branch just, uh, sees the laws are up, upheld basically.
[43:49.000 --> 43:53.900]  But it's Congress that needs the education and needs to change the laws and makes the laws in the first place.
[43:54.140 --> 43:56.600]  I mean, what can be done to try to get them educated?
[43:56.800 --> 43:59.680]  It's, it's, what, 500 or so people.
[43:59.680 --> 44:06.720]  It, it, it's gotta be easier to educate them or get them influence than to educate all the...
[44:06.720 --> 44:07.760]  Well, interesting.
[44:07.960 --> 44:08.960]  ...media companies out there.
[44:09.040 --> 44:12.700]  Interesting perspective is that the DMCA was passed by a voice vote.
[44:12.860 --> 44:14.740]  There's no indication as to who voted for it.
[44:14.860 --> 44:19.360]  If anybody voted against it, um, it's very difficult to reach people.
[44:19.520 --> 44:20.760]  I mean, yeah, we should try, you're right.
[44:20.860 --> 44:23.200]  We should definitely try to reach all of our Congress people.
[44:23.320 --> 44:27.940]  And I think if we did that in, in vast numbers, it might actually make a difference.
[44:27.940 --> 44:30.400]  I mean, if, sorry, just one quick comment.
[44:30.580 --> 44:42.540]  If, if everybody in this room asked 20 people to fax their Congress people about this, I mean, it would at least maybe get them thinking about it.
[44:42.720 --> 44:43.160]  That's right.
[44:43.220 --> 44:57.420]  And we've got a part of our website now called the Action Center, where people can go to and you can type in your information and it will automatically send the fax to your Senator, to your Congressman, or whoever it is that you want to be targeting with this particular message.
[44:57.540 --> 45:02.740]  And I think that's a really important point, that we've got to be educating Congress about these issues.
[45:03.120 --> 45:13.060]  Representative Boucher, Democrat from Virginia, has already said that he's very concerned about the DMCA, wants to issue, or wants to propose some legislation to curtail it.
[45:13.200 --> 45:15.820]  Hasn't been done yet, so we don't really know what that's going to look like.
[45:15.900 --> 45:17.900]  But he's really the only one, the lone voice.
[45:18.120 --> 45:22.920]  And the DMCA was very, very popular when it passed through Congress.
[45:24.200 --> 45:28.560]  Congress is very much in the back pocket of Hollywood, more than any other industry.
[45:28.560 --> 45:42.500]  And in some ways, it doesn't make sense because you've got this $30 billion industry, Hollywood, bossing around this $400 billion industry, the computer industry, and Congress doesn't seem to make that connection as to who they really should be paying attention to in a lot of respects.
[45:42.540 --> 45:45.820]  Is there anyone here who is represented by Representative Boucher?
[45:47.060 --> 45:52.180]  Okay, well, I suggest that you contact him and tell him that he's on the right track.
[45:52.300 --> 45:56.220]  And I think people need to hear positive reinforcement as well as negative reinforcement.
[45:56.220 --> 46:01.280]  And if you're lucky enough to have somebody who seems to get it, make sure they know that it's appreciated.
[46:01.540 --> 46:02.480]  Do we have another question?
[46:03.080 --> 46:05.320]  Actually, it's just more of a shameless plug.
[46:05.820 --> 46:07.040]  I actually run the site.
[46:07.160 --> 46:12.060]  Congress.org allows everybody to do whatever you want to, you know, send messages.
[46:13.440 --> 46:19.800]  You can actually have letters printed by my company and hand-delivered to your congressman for a fee.
[46:20.660 --> 46:25.620]  And we can get all three, you know, two congressmen or two senators and your congressman for like 10 bucks.
[46:27.380 --> 46:27.840]  So...
[46:27.840 --> 46:28.260]  Congress.org.
[46:28.260 --> 46:31.820]  I'm probably going to regret this in a few minutes, but well, here it is.
[46:32.680 --> 46:41.160]  There's, you know, there were more people that registered and used Napster than voted in the presidential election.
[46:41.740 --> 46:44.320]  So, if we really wanted to make this an issue, we could.
[46:47.000 --> 46:48.700]  Not that we're all a bunch of Napster users.
[46:50.620 --> 46:51.340]  Or 18.
[46:56.590 --> 46:59.230]  Donations can maybe impact the media working on.
[47:01.270 --> 47:01.630]  Okay.
[47:02.090 --> 47:03.710]  But that person has the microphone, so let them speak.
[47:03.710 --> 47:03.930]  Yeah.
[47:05.150 --> 47:10.130]  On Wednesday, the 17th, coming up in the afternoon at the U.S.
[47:10.290 --> 47:21.230]  Department of Commerce Technology Administration, it's going to be having a panel with Jack Valenti, Microsoft, IBM with the RIAA, and a whole bunch of these guys.
[47:21.650 --> 47:23.070]  And very few of ours.
[47:24.710 --> 47:31.630]  But it is open to the public, so if you're interested, you know, look in the usual channels or you can get...
[47:31.630 --> 47:36.250]  And it's open for public comments as well on this tiny little thing on their webpage.
[47:36.770 --> 47:40.590]  The webpage is ta.commerce.
[47:42.750 --> 47:43.650]  whatever it is.
[47:43.830 --> 47:44.410]  I forgot.
[47:45.110 --> 47:45.190]  Yeah.
[47:46.070 --> 47:46.470]  Yeah.
[47:46.550 --> 47:47.670]  There's a gov at the end.
[47:48.910 --> 47:51.070]  But, you know, you should be able to find it if you look.
[47:51.170 --> 47:52.490]  It's on slash dot and so on.
[47:52.590 --> 47:54.470]  Is the EFF going to be involved with that?
[47:55.930 --> 47:57.010]  We haven't been invited.
[47:57.310 --> 47:57.530]  Okay.
[47:57.630 --> 47:59.910]  They had one of these last December, too.
[48:00.030 --> 48:00.770]  This is part two.
[48:00.770 --> 48:01.370]  Okay.
[48:01.550 --> 48:01.990]  Okay.
[48:01.990 --> 48:04.790]  We have time for a few more questions, so let's try to make them as quick as possible.
[48:04.890 --> 48:07.510]  Raise your hands and we'll get your microphone.
[48:08.970 --> 48:09.410]  Hi.
[48:09.450 --> 48:09.950]  I'm curious.
[48:10.150 --> 48:18.930]  You had said before that the DMCA and other laws are preventing people from kind of working with their files and their property as they wish.
[48:19.130 --> 48:26.230]  But I kind of miss the connection between when a movie becomes your property and when it's someone else's.
[48:26.230 --> 48:27.970]  I'd be happy to answer that.
[48:28.310 --> 48:32.010]  Copyright is about dividing up different rights amongst different parties.
[48:32.190 --> 48:36.590]  And under copyright law, the creators get certain rights, but the public also gets certain rights.
[48:36.710 --> 48:40.850]  Things like fair use privileges, first sale doctrine privileges.
[48:41.290 --> 48:43.810]  Things are supposed to fall into the public domain at some point.
[48:43.810 --> 48:45.290]  So it's...
[48:45.290 --> 48:53.750]  When you buy a DVD, for example, it's true that the movie studio owns the... they are the owner of the copyright.
[48:54.070 --> 49:04.450]  But you own the physical medium and you have the right to view and access and enjoy that movie at your leisure, at your will.
[49:04.450 --> 49:15.430]  So it's about dividing up the rights and the fact that they're trying to use the DMCA to actually take some of the rights that are supposed to reside with the public and just sort of usurp those because the technology allows them to control it.
[49:15.670 --> 49:19.530]  Even though technically it's supposed to belong to the public, the technology allows them to control it.
[49:19.610 --> 49:22.870]  And any attempt to bypass that technology is against the law.
[49:22.990 --> 49:27.450]  So if you try to access in a lawful way to make your fair use rights, you're not able to.
[49:27.590 --> 49:30.890]  The law prevents you because the technology prevents you and the law backs it up.
[49:32.070 --> 49:46.590]  And the way the judges see this, they say that you can still preserve your fair use rights by simply using an analog technology, you know, such as making a camcorder recording of a TV set, playing a digital signal.
[49:47.030 --> 49:57.670]  Ridiculous things like that, which obviously are only temporary at best because we're moving into a digital age where everything is going to be digital and if they have this kind of control over the technology, it will be complete.
[49:58.110 --> 50:07.630]  And even though we are moving into a digital age, there is even an effort in Hollywood right now to do what's called plug the analog hole, is what the engineers are calling it.
[50:07.750 --> 50:17.150]  And so all kinds of televisions and all kinds of devices that are coming out, they want to have some mechanism in place so even the analog signal can't be copied appropriately.
[50:17.350 --> 50:28.370]  So it's not even... when Hollywood was arguing, well, don't worry about not being able to make the digital copies because you still have analog technology, they're working behind the scenes to take away that analog ability too.
[50:28.590 --> 50:29.610]  We have two minutes.
[50:30.590 --> 50:31.370]  Next question.
[50:31.950 --> 50:32.490]  Yes.
[50:33.210 --> 50:41.550]  I had heard that the parliament in Australia was investigating the DVD industry because of the region coding as a possible monopoly.
[50:41.890 --> 50:44.470]  I was wondering if you'd heard about that and any comments.
[50:45.350 --> 50:45.910]  Yes.
[50:46.090 --> 50:55.570]  That's a very good point, is how the DMCA is being used to create a monopoly in certain industries and it's very anti-competitive.
[50:56.470 --> 51:08.590]  DeCSS was originally created as part of an effort to create an open source DVD player for the Linux operating system because some Linux users wanted to be able to watch their DVDs the same way Microsoft users do.
[51:09.810 --> 51:20.110]  But the problem is, is because any time you need to be able to decrypt something, you have to unlock it in order to view it, you are bypassing the technological protection measures.
[51:20.310 --> 51:25.210]  So you violate the DMCA simply by trying to build a device that reads their content.
[51:25.430 --> 51:27.090]  So it's extremely anti-competitive.
[51:27.330 --> 51:29.710]  And the region coding issue is a big one too.
[51:30.530 --> 51:35.730]  You buy a DVD in one part of the world, it won't play on DVD players sold in another part of the world.
[51:35.850 --> 51:39.630]  And the reason they do this is because they want to control the flow of the DVDs.
[51:39.670 --> 51:48.970]  They don't want someone buying a hundred DVDs in the United States of the hottest new release and then shipping them off to China where they'll be duplicated and sold, for example, and played there.
[51:49.150 --> 51:52.430]  So they make them so they can't play them in different parts of the world.
[51:52.510 --> 51:54.210]  You can only play them in a certain part of the world.
[51:54.450 --> 52:03.490]  And it's very anti-competitive and it means that you have to have a license from DVD CCA if you want to be able to make DVD players.
[52:03.730 --> 52:05.910]  Are there any people here who have multi-region DVD players?
[52:06.870 --> 52:07.570]  Oh, good.
[52:07.750 --> 52:08.250]  That's great.
[52:08.430 --> 52:12.910]  Because most people don't and most people are missing out on literally a whole world of things that are out there.
[52:13.010 --> 52:18.810]  And I encourage anybody thinking of getting a DVD player only get multi-region because there are all kinds of things you can't see otherwise.
[52:19.770 --> 52:23.350]  We want to thank everybody for attending and thank you.