On 5/4/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/05/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/4/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
[snip straw man]
Greg, I'm saying that we can do the obvious encyclopedic thing and likely have not a peep from the AACS LA once they spend a few weeks exhausting their ability to put the worms back in the can.
I gave an example off the top of my head of why we are far from being anywhere near as powerless as you seem to be assuming.
Powerless? You misunderstand me entirely. We're not powerless. My view is quite to the contrary: I think we are often way more powerful than is justified by our maturity and level of responsibility. This was the entire purpose of my post.
We do have tremendous power. ... but it is equally a tremendous power to do wrong. There are many things which constrain our ability to do wrong. The law is one of them.
Our community might choose to ignore the law, but in doing so we would lose a useful tool which keeps our actions ethical.
[snip]
I don't consider a fight a good option. However, I don't consider that being unencyclopedic for fear of thugs is a necessary action to avoid a fight.
Unencyclopedic?
Please. We write about the Linux kernel without including the completely source-code, and yet we could manage to that that legally. ... The source code to the linux kernel is very informative.... Far more so than a completely opaque and totally randomly selected string of 256 random bits. Unless you try to decode a HDDVD you could not distinguish these numbers from any other random string.
Right now the only purpose these random numbers serve is to circumvent copy-protection. The trafficking of tools to achieve this purpose are specifically forbidden by law. Law which has been upheld in US federal court, and supported on appeal.
Perhaps you've got the enough chutzpah to stand in front of a judge and try to argue that our mission couldn't be accomplished by printing a part of the string (as we do to discuss the popular leaked windows license keys), by presenting a description (as we do for child pornography), or presenting a look alike (as we do to discuss the general concept of libel)... but I don't.
...If I was pulled into a court I'd have to give my honest view that our mission could be effectively accomplished without directly providing the previously-secret material needed to circumvent the AACS system.