Delirium wrote: The DMCA does not prohibit publication, it prohibits "trafficking". The MPAA vs Corely case held that publication on a website constitutes trafficking, and this was upheld at appeal. The Act specifies damages of $200-$2500 per "act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer, or performance of service". Presumably every time someone downloads the number from the mailing list archive, and every time we send it to someone by email, this constitues trafficking of such a device. WikiEN-L has 878 members, so sending the key to the list would create a liability of between $175,600 and $2.2M, plus archive downloads and what not. -- Tim Starling

On 5/6/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: If "trafficking" were as simple as "making the number show up on someone's computer screen", they'd get a lot more mileage out of suing Google than us. And there -are- exceptions built into the law for academic use of the number. This isn't the same as the 2600 case, nor MPAA vs. Corel. Neither of those institutions are primarily academic and educational in nature, nor are they nonprofit. They've actually been pretty hesitant to sue academic users, because they -know- that's not one they'll probably win. -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

"I don't want to be number one on Google. This is the position I expressed to Brad Patrick over a year ago. I could live with a bio under those conditions. ... All it would take is a new flag in the system to generate a "noindex" meta in the header of certain articles. You wouldn't have to change robots.txt. It might be slightly easier than getting the article deleted, and it could be one option to offer BLP victims short of a deletion" (Brandt) Why not agree to this? In saying that, I'm not arguing that Brandt should be treated differently, but we could consider the following options: 1) *no index bios on subject's request*. We keep the info, but the subject doesn't have an article on them , with all the vandalism or POV pushing risks, as top on google. They don't need to check their article everyday. OR 2) *no index all low-notability living-person bios* which have experienced any problems. Any admin, or OTRS op seeing repeat problems can flag it as such, reducing the collateral damage if their are future issues. OR 3) *no index ALL BLPs* - being in [[category:Living persons]] could automatically flag the article. This would be easiest to maintain, and apply consistently. The argument against it will be that it will take [[George W. Bush]] etc off google, but if it were combined with stable versions, so that all BLPs were removed from Google UNLESS they were stable, we might have a workable solution. The popular ones are likely to have stable versions very quickly. Incidentally, this would also reduce the attraction of vanity bios. Is this crazy? Doc

On 5/6/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well I'm sure answers.com would love having the controversial bios market to themselves. -- geni

On 5/6/07, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Not really, no, and it would possibly solve a great problem right off. Doing it on a sliding scale--low notability, semi, etc., would probably be a Very Bad Idea, as it would certainly need that sliding scale implemented to go with it, and that in and of itself would a be silly jungle war at times. The notability standards would likely need clear thresholds from status A, to status B, to status C, so that people wouldn't fight tons over it. Making all BLPs nofollow outright gets around this, solving the problem of fighting over status, and making the bios less prominent. Two birds, one stone. It's always possible to go back later then to go a sliding nofollow scale, as the notability scaling would probably take longer to get consensus on than it would take to implement "no follow all BLP" on the tech side. However, it adds a new third problem possibly to nofollow all BLPs: Bad crap in bios that are 'off the beaten path' may now fester longer, if someone can sneak them past Recent Changes before someone finds them off Googling the given the person. -- Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

On 5/6/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: We could always try to see if Google would be willing to part with a GB8008 on the cheap. :) http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/product_models.html -- Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

On 5/6/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Perhaps it's because I've just woken up in the past hour, but are you joking, or do we actually have a policy to only use equipment on the NOC/infrastructure level that only runs open-source/GFDL compliant? (If we do have that policy: very cool, A++ as they say.) -- Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

On 0, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> scribbled: Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Java at least open source these days? And Mono was uncertain with regard to Microsoft's patents, last I heard... -- Gwern Inquiring minds want to know.

On 5/6/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote: For site operation yes (I don't know if it is actually policy per se since the idea and practice predates the formal foundation). There have been various foundation functions for which non open source software has been used and of course editors can use whatever software they like although we generally point people in the direction of open source stuff. It has some unexpected benifits in that the handful of people who can convert files to .ogg Theora generaly know what they are doing with regards to copyright. -- geni

On 5/6/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote: I always think of these as being for secret behind the firewall data, google seems to do a good job searching our stuff now :) We should just make our search box search google, haha. Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]

On 5/6/07, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: True. I'd say go for it myself, what could it hurt to try nofollowing them all for a month? From the code side, how hard is it to implement? Also, out of 1.5 millionish articles, how many are BLPs? -- Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

On 5/6/07, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Another idea. 4) "noindex" all articles that "[do] not adequately cite [their] references or sources". CW

On 5/6/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Exception 1, actually. It's short enough that I can post the full text here. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

On 07/05/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote: This is entirely false. The second part of your assertion is covered by fair use (which can be up to 100% of the work quoted) and the first part is not tested. As noted in the Felten case, the RIAA, when told to shit or get off the pot, backpedaled so fast as to break the world record for reverse circumnavigation by bicycle. - d.

Tim Starling wrote: Edward Felten was threatened with a lawsuit under the DMCA for publishing, in an academic context, details of how to break the SDMI DRM algorithm; upon his countersuing for a declarative judgment, the RIAA and SDMI dropped the case, backtracking so far as to argue in court that his academic publication of details on how to break SDMI did *not* violate the DMCA; the Justice Department has since agreed that work like Felten's does not violate the DMCA. Since we're much more similar to Felten than 2600, I'd take this as good evidence that us publishing information in an educational context on how to break DRM algorithms is not illegal. -Mark

On 5/7/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen(a)gmail.com> wrote: The actions under discussion are: 1) emailing material to all subscribers on the list, including other archivers, and 2) putting the material in our own list archives, which are websites We already know from existing case law that hosting material on your website and linking to the material on another website both constitute "manufactur[ing], import[ing], offer[ing] to the public, provid[ing], or otherwise traffic[king]". So that covers 2. If anything, 1 (which involves actually sending the material out to people) is more likely to fall under this definition than merely hosting the material on a website is. -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com

On 5/6/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: I just want something clarified. If I understand it correctly, before the AACS people sue, they have to send a DMCA takedown notice, right? And then they can sue if we don't comply? Why not just take it easy for a while and leave the archives intact, and if they do send a takedown notice, then we comply. --Oskar

On 06/05/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Do they say anything about press reporting? Six US-based press articles so far proudly displaying the number in text or image. What about TV broadcast? It was broadcast on Current TV, Al Gore's cable channel, and is still on the Current TV website. Realistically, the probability of Wikimedia being sued is zero. - d.

On 06/05/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Oh, yeah. It's a bit dickish, certainly. (And I must apologise for having included the key in full myself in one message.) I still support putting the key on [[09f9]], but in a week or two or four. Remember, we have the *next* memespam to discourage. - d.

On 5/6/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: No it is a violation of intellectual property law. It doesn't behave like copyright at all so it doesn't fall under that. It has a little in common with trademark but the protection is rather wider that trademark offers. It has something in common with submarine patents but lasts longer. -- geni

On 5/6/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: Copyright is finite the stuff we are talking about is not. Copyright does not protect again independent creation. The stuff we are talking about does appear to. Copyright under US law requires creativity. No evidence the DRM stuff does Copyright has fair use clauses. The DRM protection stuff does not. It isn't copyright by any reasonable standards and the courts have not supported the suggestion that it is. If it was copyright it would quite possibly be be unconstitutional in it's current wording since it lasts longer than forever -1 day. Additionally the name of the bill means nothing unless you are going to suggest that under UK law protesting in certain areas of London without a permit falls under the definition of "serious and organised crime" -- geni

On 5/6/07, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ahh, I see. Thank you for the clarification :)

On 5/6/07, James Farrar <james.farrar(a)gmail.com> wrote: Generally, the sending of a cease-and-desist precedes any legal proceedings that involve something ongoing. Judges don't particularly like to see cases on their (very full) dockets where someone hasn't even tried to work it out without going to court. -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

Yonatan Horan wrote: It's worth understanding that the number is *not* copyrighted. It's not patented, either, or trademarked, or a trade secret. It benefits from a brand-new kind of legal protection, specifically carved out by one clause of the DMCA: it is a component of a copyright protection device, and therefore may not be disseminated. My own reading of the situation is that it is *not* illegal for me to post this number on my website, or Wikipedia's. It is not illegal for me to say "09f911029d7452692g6h56c5635688c0" right here in this email. It would only be illegal for me to say, or publish, a statement of the form "One of the HD-DVD decryption keys is 09f911029d7452692g6h56c5635688c0".