WTF. The blogosphere commentary on this has been shockingly idiotic, and that page isn't any better:
With all that in mind, I read something today that made me step back: Google sent this guy a DMCA complaint notice for copyrighted material on his Google Notebook. The material is the title of this post, the string <key>...I don't want Google spying on my notes. So as of today I stopped using Google Notebook, and I moved the line a little bit closer to principles at the cost of convenience.
1. You put your stuff on the web, on their servers, they can see it. It's not spying, it's a basic fucking property of the universe. It's not limited to Google - his new provider can do it too. Most providers simply won't bother 'cos it's too much effort, but if you do something to draw attention to yourself...
2. The linked article says it was a publicly accessible note. So the whole world could see/search for it, and one party in particular is clearly showing a current interest in doing so. It's not Google.
3. Google didn't send the DMCA notice. They forwarded it. They aren't allowed to send a DMCA notice on this matter - they clearly have no title to whatever dubious and likely non-existent copyright claim there is over this material, and DMCA takedown notices have to assert ownership sworn under penalty of perjury. Google aren't about to do that. The tone of the Google letter was pretty damn reasonable, I thought, given that they have basically no choice in the matter.
4. I've seen pretty much verbatim on /. and other places, and on the entangledstate page, "I was not aware that a string of numbers and letters was copyrightable." Good news for all the pirates out their since books, CDs, DVDs etc are just sequences of numbers and letters. (Yes, I know what they probably mean but their phrasing is just dumb.)
the HD-DVD processing key for most movies released so far, published on the net by the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) a couple of days ago by mistake
Now *that* is news to me. The /. articles seemed to be saying that this key was cracked and made available a month or so ago, that efforts to squash it have been ongoing over that time. I've not seen any particular reason why the issue exploded over the last day. A recent leak by the AACS LA (not AACS, hmph) would be interesting, but the taoetc guy doesn't appear to have too firm a grip on facts so I'll discount this until I read it elsewhere.
You actually can't copyright a number. You can copyright a creative endeavor, and it happens that a lot of them can be represented as numbers, but this is actually just a number. It was probably generated randomly.
It's not like an illegal computer program that can be represented as a number either, because the HD-DVD key doesn't do anything on its own. You need to know how to use it AND you need the software with which to do it. Knowing the number alone does not give me the ability to copy DVDs.
I was also under the impression that the key was reverse-engineered rather than published by mistake. I'm not sure where to find out the truth.
Too simplistic. (I don't believe there is any valid copyright claim in the key either, but that is yet to be determined in court. There may be trade secret issues of course, as well as DMCA circumvention issues, but there ought not to be a direct copyright claim. Which makes DMCA take-down notices interesting.)
You can copyright a creative endeavor, and it happens that a lot of them can be represented as numbers, but this is actually just a number. It was probably generated randomly.
Which is the crux of the matter. Many numbers *are* copyrighted. Whether or not something is a number is irrelevant to its copyright status. What is important is how that number came into being, as the result (and expression) of a creative endeavor, or is it "just a number". This is the point of "What colour are your bits? (http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php)"
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 02:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 02:22 pm (UTC)http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:oAljKxLXz4UJ:entangledstate.wordpress.com/hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk&client=firefox-a
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 07:15 pm (UTC)1. You put your stuff on the web, on their servers, they can see it. It's not spying, it's a basic fucking property of the universe. It's not limited to Google - his new provider can do it too. Most providers simply won't bother 'cos it's too much effort, but if you do something to draw attention to yourself...
2. The linked article says it was a publicly accessible note. So the whole world could see/search for it, and one party in particular is clearly showing a current interest in doing so. It's not Google.
3. Google didn't send the DMCA notice. They forwarded it. They aren't allowed to send a DMCA notice on this matter - they clearly have no title to whatever dubious and likely non-existent copyright claim there is over this material, and DMCA takedown notices have to assert ownership sworn under penalty of perjury. Google aren't about to do that. The tone of the Google letter was pretty damn reasonable, I thought, given that they have basically no choice in the matter.
4. I've seen pretty much verbatim on /. and other places, and on the entangledstate page, "I was not aware that a string of numbers and letters was copyrightable." Good news for all the pirates out their since books, CDs, DVDs etc are just sequences of numbers and letters. (Yes, I know what they probably mean but their phrasing is just dumb.)
Now *that* is news to me. The /. articles seemed to be saying that this key was cracked and made available a month or so ago, that efforts to squash it have been ongoing over that time. I've not seen any particular reason why the issue exploded over the last day. A recent leak by the AACS LA (not AACS, hmph) would be interesting, but the taoetc guy doesn't appear to have too firm a grip on facts so I'll discount this until I read it elsewhere.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:10 pm (UTC)It's not like an illegal computer program that can be represented as a number either, because the HD-DVD key doesn't do anything on its own. You need to know how to use it AND you need the software with which to do it. Knowing the number alone does not give me the ability to copy DVDs.
I was also under the impression that the key was reverse-engineered rather than published by mistake. I'm not sure where to find out the truth.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 08:35 pm (UTC)Which is the crux of the matter. Many numbers *are* copyrighted. Whether or not something is a number is irrelevant to its copyright status. What is important is how that number came into being, as the result (and expression) of a creative endeavor, or is it "just a number". This is the point of "What colour are your bits? (http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php)"