On 5/2/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ah, I missed that. Someone way want to correct any misunderstandings then that the Foundation hasn't mandated it's removal on that level, then (so no one thinks they have OFFICE authority or whatever. Just so there are no misunderstandings about official WMF stances and whatnot. "Notable" is not "this week's Internet meme." As I said in my previous Yeah, I think so too. The moment they began DMCAing it, it was bound to get out of control. I almost think Digg did their crazed assault on the numbers last night as some weird reverse-psychology trolling of the MPAA et al, to *get* people to post about the numbers as fervently and as widely as possible. -- Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

On 02/05/07, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote: Of course, it is notable as "the HD DVD key", not as a string of hex digits - there is nothing *numerically* significant about it. We could quite legitimately (if somewhat clumsily) write about it and the giant kerfuffle without ever actually quoting the number, or indeed ever *needing* to. Consider the way newspapers cover high-profile defamation lawsuits without ever quoting the slander - the important story is that something was said and how it was reacted to, not the exact wording of what was actually said... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

The question is, can we be required to prevent it from being posted to Wikipedia, including in any disguised form, old history revisions, etc? If so, are we supposed to read all revisions before making them live? That would basically stop Wikipedia from improving at all. Nathan

On 02/05/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: I presume there's no reason all the same not to mention it in the HD-DVD article? Zoney -- ~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...

On 02/05/07, Zoney <zoney.ie(a)gmail.com> wrote: As explained earlier, it is perfectly easy to write an informative and useful article about the topic without ever feeling the need to quote the string in question. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 02/05/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Definitely. But I think we should wait a month, when the massive distributed spam attack has calmed the fuck down. It was a dev (obviously ab)using their power to do the obviously right thing in the face of a massive distributed spam attack. - d.

On 02/05/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Lots of fuckwits deciding FIGHT THE POWER!!!! and cut'n'pasting The Number into every input box on the damn Web. Fuck that. That's not writing an encyclopedia. That's distributed spamming. The more we can do to render this futile, the better. - d.

On 02/05/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Yeah. The "wait" solution is bolstered by its clear effectiveness on [[Brian Peppers]] - after a year, it was obvious "oh, he's not really notable after all." Just some poor bugger with a weird condition. It's an immediate developer response to a distributed spam attack. I still don't see what's intrinsically wrong with having done this in the situation. (I'd be putting the number all over the blog if it wasn't hosted in the cursed nation of America by friends.) - d.

David Gerard wrote: Well, we never really got to come to a conclusion on that. And the conclusion we came to was pathetically wrong, so it's a poor example across the board. Notability isn't temporary, whether it's some unfortunate web meme or a large-scale act of civil disobedience. Yes, probably, if we had an article on the situation and on the number, it would decrease it better than the typical overreaction we tend to have. -Jeff -- If you can read this, I'm not at home.

Todd Allen wrote: Sorry, I thought we were an encyclopedia, not a free-speech campaign group? Exactly how does publishing the string, as opposed to writing an article about it, further our declared aims? Doc

You can't honestly be serious, Doc. We don't write an article about "that company that starts with an M and made the popular operating system that starts with a W", we write about Microsoft and Windows. When we write about The Pirate Bay, we don't say "Well, there's this one website out there that distributes pirated software", we identify and name them, despite the highly-questionable legality of what they're doing. When we write about things, we identify and mention them. Now, of course, as always, we must require reliable sourcing. If no reliable sources publish the actual string, we can't verify it, so we can't publish it. But if they do, we mirror that, by identifying and naming it. Even -if- some people are acting badly in trying to force the issue, that's the way we do it with anything, and that's the way we should do it here. On 5/2/07, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

On Thu, 3 May 2007, geni wrote: 1) That involved an actual OFFICE action. I would object to deleting the number much less if it was an office action (probably not at all, depending on the details). 2) If you look at the article's talk page itself, you'll see that there was a ridiculous amount of Wikilawyering over not printing her name by someone who kept claiming that the sources were unreliable or that finding her name is OR, but who seemed to just not want it included and was straining for excuses.

Actually, yes, I know quite a few people who routinely speak of (and in) hex digits and the like. Now, of course, they all tend to be programmers. But how many people do you think, if it happened, would wake up, call their friend, and say "WOW! Did you hear they discovered a new allotrope of carbon called blabitychasomethingblehwhatsit?" I can't imagine very few people would use such a name, if our fictional allotrope existed. (I strongly doubt most people could tell you what a fullerene is either, and that's a very real one.) We quite often use technical and scientific terminology that very few people would use in day-to-day conversation. In this case, the number has a great significance. As to "breaking text", yes, we should only write it -once-. But we shouldn't fail to write it that once, because we're scared that the Big Bad Lawyers will Come And Get Us. The worst they'll do is send a DMCA notice, and we'd have to take it down temporarily. They likely won't even do that. On 5/2/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

I agree, we should probably title the article "HD-DVD encryption" "HD-DVD decryption discovery", or something of the like. (Though the number should be a redirect, it's not inconceivable someone would see it and paste it into the search box.) But I don't think anyone, with a straight (virtual) face, can say that this is not a notable event which will not have a place in the encyclopedia. I'm all for "we're not a newspaper". But we certainly had articles on the Virginia Tech massacre shortly after it occurred, because it was patently obvious that it was a notable event that was most certainly going to call for an article. The same applies here. Now, must we wait on, and work from, reliable sources which report on it? Absolutely, and Slashdot and Digg don't fit that bill. But when they do, we ought to have the article, and it ought to include information relevant to the situation-including the number. On 5/2/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

David Gerard wrote: And how does one go about distinguishing it from [[Illegal ;-) prime]]? Ec

On 5/3/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ahem. Existence proof follows: Just 20 hours or so ago, I did precisely this; after having gone to the trouble to create a mnemnonic with pseudo-occult undertones, to ease memorisation. Now; this only provides a counter-example to the precise wording of your stipulation. It proves that *someone* (me) _would_ do so. In the actual case I did *not* go through it, because my friends interrupted me in the process, wanting to first know what the number was, and hearing that it was "illegal information" we had a full and frank discussion about the morality (or otherwise) of merely speaking the number outloud in a bar. So it does not precisely logically speaking prove that someone *has* done so. Note, by the way, that these folks I was meeting with at the time were specifically people with a strong interest in all video formats (a regular meeting of scifi/horror movie buffs) and who do infact swap such and lend between each other (won't stipulate whether anyone of them privately circumvents any or all copy protection or otherwise engages in illegal copying). On the larger issue though (as the above is largely beside the point from wikipedian purposes) I think we can easily have our cake and eat it too. Let's not be at the forefront, but not laggards either. A family friend once gave his opinion about how to best get along with ones army troop; never be first at anything, and never be last either. There is no need for us to blaze the trail on this particular issue or any like it, but we can and should confidently saunter forward on it, once the elephants have passed through and trampled a nice solid path, clearing the bush in their wake. It is nearly inevitable that this is going to be a case where all MPAA's horses won't be able to put humpty dumpty back together again, and after it becomes definitively obvious that is the case of affairs, and the number indeed has spread far, wide and into authoritative information outlets, we can safely go with the de facto non-enforcement of what rights (or not, as the case may in the de jure sense have been) MPAA might have had to prevent disclosure. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

On 5/3/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: Or, they might realize that such an action would just encourage people to crack the rest of the keys, and make damn sure they get spread quickly again. Now, of course, I'm not generally one to give the MPAA much credit for such common sense, and treating them like a potentially dangerous lunatic does make a bit of sense here. So, let's see what everyone does. If they start suing Wired, or Digg, or anyone else, we should probably err on the side of caution for a bit. However, having a quick look, the NYT blog even has links to the Youtube video of it, as well as to Digg, which at the time they wrote it has roughly eleventy thousand mentions. So my read on it is, if the NYT and all the rest aren't too worried, we don't have much to worry about either. The number's out there, and there's not a snowball's chance that any lawsuit or anything else can change that. -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

On 03/05/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: I note we haven't even had a takedown notice yet. Note also that Wikipedia is a really bad site to sue when the article is academically entirely defensible. Not even the Scientologists, famed for their chutzpah, have tried. We would have *incredible* numbers of friends. I really doubt we're in danger, and if they were to try they'd be utterly, utterly fucked. The skies would turn black with fully armed combat ninja pro bono First Amendment lawyers. - d.

On 5/3/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: In legal speak they call them "amici", and they most likely can make a difference. All forms of "IP" are limited in ways which make them more consistent with the 1st amendment. For instance, with copyright infringement law, there is fair use. Have you seen anything from lawyers working with the EFF or the ACLU? Have you read anything by "actual lawyers" like Lawrence Lessig, Yochai Benkler, Keith Aoki, Ann Bartow, Paul Schiff Berman, Stuart Biegel, Thomas F. Blackwell, James Boyle, Dan L. Burk, Julie E. Cohen, Thomas F. Cotter, Rod Dixon, Eric B. Easton, Michael M. Epstein, Christine Haight Farley, Susanna Frederick Fischer, William W. Fisher III, A. Michael Froomkin, Laura N. Gasaway, Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons, Laurence R. Helfer, Peter Jaszi, Dennis S. Karjala, Raymond Shih Ray Ku, Mary LaFrance, Michael Landau, David Lange, Mark A. Lemley, Joseph P. Liu, Lydia Pallas Loren, Michael J. Madison, Charles R. McManis, Michael J. Meurer, Eben Moglen, Craig Allen Nard, Ruth Gana Okediji, L. Ray Patterson, Mark R. Patterson, Malla Pollack, David G. Post, Margaret Jane Radin, J.H. Reichman, David A. Rice, Michael L. Rustad, David E. Sorkin, John R. Thomas, Sarah K. Wiant, or Jonathan L. Zittrain? Need I name more? Anthony

On 5/3/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: How long did the US get by without it? You do realize that fair use was created by the courts *long* before it was encoded into the statutes. Of course there are limits. Yes, I have. Anthony

Lack thereof? Really, they wouldn't get too far going after Wikipedia or anyone else. The last time I checked, there are a lot of servers located outside the US. They can send anyone who runs one of those all the DMCA notices they like, it would be good for a laugh. On 5/3/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Freedom is the right to know that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.

On 5/3/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Err, not DVD encryption, it was some sort of CD CPMS. Anthony

On 5/3/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen(a)gmail.com> wrote: See the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty. And the Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. Neither have been full implemented yet but trying to find jurisdictions where such laws do not apply is simply prolonging defeat. -- geni

On 5/3/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: No I want to see comments from the lawyers you listed on the issue we are dealing with. So far all we appear to have is "Chris Sprigman, an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said that under the digital copyright act, propagating even parts of techniques intended to circumvent copyright was illegal." http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/technology/03code.html Which is technicaly true but unhelpful. -- geni

On 5/3/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Is it legal under US law to publish a HD-DVD decryption code? (the answer to that is probably sometimes) Is it legal under US law to publish a HD-DVD decryption code in the context of a wikipedia article about the subject? Is it legal under US law to publish a HD-DVD decryption code in the context of an unrelated wikipedia article? (ok we don't need to know that one but I've vaguely curious as to whether the answer is "yes as long as you manage to sell a commercially significant number of copies of the article"). -- geni

On 5/3/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote: You might wish to look at [[Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition]]. Child porn is protected free speech so long as no actual children were involved in making it. -- Mark [[User:Carnildo]]

On Thu, 3 May 2007, doc wrote: Publishing the string would be part of writing an article. It's true that few people may look up the article in order to get the string, but that's true of many facts in many articles.

On 03/05/07, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well, it's pretty clearly a loss of academic integrity. Would [[Illegal prime]] lose by not having the allegedly illegal number quoted? Hell yeah. See the snippet of L. Ron Hubbard's handwriting in [[Xenu]]? That's my personal favourite piece of fair use on Wikipedia (yes, I put it there). Could the article be written without it? Of course. Would it lose something important? Hell yeah. I expect we can put the number into the article that already exists. I doubt doing it today will stick. I'm just glad we don't have to have Wikipedia perfect on a second-by-second basis. Immediatism really gets in the way of writing the encyclopedia. - d.

On 03/05/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com> wrote: There's a New York Times article (blood sample or bugmenot required): http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/technology/03code.html http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-1025_3-6180998.html (CNET) http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-TechBit-Digg-Rebellion.html (AP) The first mentions Wikipedia. None list The Number, but there are reliable sources (which is completely different from Reliable Sources) for it. - d.

On 03/05/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen(a)gmail.com> wrote: This turns out not to be the case - we've had nothing. We're contacting them with a correction. - d.

Ken Arromdee wrote: In the course of providing references for a wiide range of articles we can follow established referencing standards which include ISBNs. Are people able to remember and quote ISBNs without looking them up? That said, I can't see the momorability of a string as a factor. Ec

On 5/2/07, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: Short of putting it in sitenotice probably not. -- geni

On 5/2/07, Philippe Beaudette <philippebeaudette(a)gmail.com> wrote: Actually, it was openly published in a number of columns and some of the mainline news stories about the discovery. The law here is legitimately somewhat muddled. It may turn out to be legal, but there's also no clear evidence that the MPAA are wrong. The law was written in a way that's explicit for just about everything else, but may or may not cover a number that happens to be a key for such decoders. I think that the number is of questionable notability. 99.9999% of the people who see it aren't going to go code up a DVD player. For anyone else, it's purely a trivial point. That it exists, was findable, and is now public is notable. We can say all that (and the articles do, now) without listing the actual number. I separately do morally support the publication; but I don't see it as something Wikipedia can or should get involved in. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On Wed, 2 May 2007, George Herbert wrote: 99.999% of people who are told the aphelion distance of Mars to eight significant digits aren't going to use it in any fashion whatsoever, let alone use the eighth decimal place. So?

On Wed, 2 May 2007, George Herbert wrote: I highly doubt those people took the value from Wikipedia to use in their work. They got it from some other source.

On 5/3/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Disagree. What could possibly be unencyclopaedic about posting the actual key in a discussion about HD-DVD encryption, or possibly even the DMCA? In any case, actually keeping Wikipedia clean of that magic phrase is virtually impossible. It's still visible on certain pages. It's one thing to delete an article. But to delete a string? Steve

On 5/2/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: I don't know if it would even be clumsy really, I mean who is expecting a huge hex key in the middle of a sentence :) Judson [[:en:User:Cohesion]]

On Wed, 2 May 2007, David Gerard wrote: True, so I was generalizing a bit hastily. But I haven't seen *any* evidence that this is an office action. Nothing on the office page, deletion log not saying "delete per WP:OFFICE", no posts by anyone on this mailing list saying "we deleted it as an office action", nothing at all. "A bunch of admins got together and decided to delete it" isn't an office action.

On 5/2/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote: How can we make this any clearer? It was not an office action. Period. -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 02/05/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote: The usual reason is that it can be pretty laborious. It's way quicker for Cary to pop onto admins IRC and say "Bad living bio, could someone please grab and fix" than to do it himself. Then some surly experienced living bio editor (e.g. Doc glasgow) will go the hack on it, while Cary gets on with other things. - d.

On 02/05/07, Rich Holton <richholton(a)gmail.com> wrote: I must note again that I am not a Foundation employee and only do so much press because I consistently answer my phone ;-) (in fact, about the only calls I get are Wikimedia press and IT recruiters.) - d.