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Why I’m Suing the US Government

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Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#71

Post by ygjb »

rayiner wrote: post #33

Circumvention by itself definitely shouldn't be illegal, and it's probably unconstitutional to make building and researching circumvention mechanisms illegal. But I don't buy Step 2. > EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, where he is developing devices for editing digital video streams. Those products would enable people to mak…

Um, if I am a content consumer that has legitimate access to content streams from two different sources, why am I not allowed to multiplex those streams in a way that is useful to me?

This is not about Twitter, or CNN, but the users ability to consume content that they have legitimate access to in the way that they choose.

Replace twitter in this example with the ability to feed an audio stream into a speech recognition and translation service to translate audio streams on the fly and suddenly no one can argue the value to the consumer, but both cases are legitimate uses to different users.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#72

Post by alexbock »

snissn wrote: post #62
alexbock wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens if we let people modify their microwaves and a terrorist uses his to give kids cancer!?!? I know this was said in jest, but given the (generally unfounded) fears some people have about microwaves and cellphones I want to point out that exposure to unshielded microwave radiation isn't going to cause cancer (at least not any more than anything else that heats you up could somehow cause cancer) because mi…

have you looked into 5G signals? I was recently reading about how they plan to make them in the 50GHz range, which to me seems potentially dangerous

50 GHz is still significantly less energetic than visible light, which is in the hundreds of terahertz. The sun bombards us with a lot of visible light, but you have to get into the blue/violet/ultraviolet region before it's energetic enough (high enough frequency) to cause damage. Barring some strange and previously unknown special biological interaction with a particular radio frequency, radio signals which have lower frequencies and lower intensities than visible light from the sun are not going to cause cancer any more than exposure to red or green light would cause cancer.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#73

Post by zekevermillion »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #37
zekevermillion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine tinkering with a Tesla could cause some heartburn for Elon. There are safety issues, which are real. What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? Also interesting, recently heard about a guy who can reprogram some diesel trucks to get better performance (probably at the expense of NOX emission…

> What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation. What happens if we let people modify their microwaves and a terrorist uses his to give kids cancer!?!? What if we let people tinker with their toasters and somebody uses one…

How many people die in auto wrecks each year. How many people die due to accidents involving microwave ovens.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#74

Post by zekevermillion »

coldtea wrote: post #61
gthtjtkt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation. What happens if we let people modify their microwaves and a terrorist uses his to give kids cancer!?!? What if we let people tinker with their toasters and somebody uses one…

> We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation. Well, given that the Earth could be wiped out at any moment with the nuclear weapons and stuff we stockpiled, long term this idea might prove to be laughably wrong.

Very true! We should be concerned about worst-case scenarios. Probably an isolated car crash is not a worst-case scenario, except for a PR-obsessed tech company.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#75

Post by AimHere »

ncallaway wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #33

Circumvention by itself definitely shouldn't be illegal, and it's probably unconstitutional to make building and researching circumvention mechanisms illegal. But I don't buy Step 2. > EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, where he is developing devices for editing digital video streams. Those products would enable people to mak…

Invalidating 1201 wouldn't get rid of all copyright law. Distributing a such a video would remain a copyright violation regardless of 1201.

If I'm reading the OP correctly, the video isn't being distributed. Just an alternative media stream with some form of captioning that could paired up with the video at the user end.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#76

Post by gkya »

coldtea wrote: post #61
gthtjtkt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation. What happens if we let people modify their microwaves and a terrorist uses his to give kids cancer!?!? What if we let people tinker with their toasters and somebody uses one…

> We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation. Well, given that the Earth could be wiped out at any moment with the nuclear weapons and stuff we stockpiled, long term this idea might prove to be laughably wrong.

Innovation is the magic word that renders everything it's attached to undebatable and unquestionable..

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#77

Post by zekevermillion »

jliptzin wrote: post #25
zekevermillion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine tinkering with a Tesla could cause some heartburn for Elon. There are safety issues, which are real. What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? Also interesting, recently heard about a guy who can reprogram some diesel trucks to get better performance (probably at the expense of NOX emission…

Someone determined enough to rework autopilot to work everywhere is not going to be stopped by the terms of a EULA.

It might be easier than you would think. It's possible Tesla (or other vehicles with self-driving features) have latent capabilities already in their software, which just need to be switched on. A hacker playing around in his garage might feasibly jailbreak the car and flip this switch. Whereas I would agree with you to the extent that writing self-driving software that uses all the various data inputs and maps to pilot the vehicle, from scratch, is not something very many people are even capable of doing.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#78

Post by unethical_ban »

zekevermillion wrote: post #73
gthtjtkt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens when some maniac changes the software to make autopilot into full self driving, then plows into a minivan on its way to Little League practice? We can't let these hypothetical worst-case scenarios be an excuse to stifle innovation. What happens if we let people modify their microwaves and a terrorist uses his to give kids cancer!?!? What if we let people tinker with their toasters and somebody uses one…

How many people die in auto wrecks each year. How many people die due to accidents involving microwave ovens.

Put that way, the statistical impact of someone tweaking their automobile improperly is lower than that of someone messing up their toaster.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#79

Post by stickfigure »

6stringmerc wrote: post #21
fweespeech wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am curious why, if they actually believe they have a good chance of success, this is only being filed now rather than in prior years? Has something changed? You need standing and money to sue. Based on the EFF release: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-lawsuit-takes-dmca-se... > EFF is representing plaintiff Andrew “bunnie” Huang, a prominent computer scientist and inventor, and his company Alphamax LLC, whe…

So you're telling me Andrew Huang's business model is to make derivative content devices, for profit, without permission or compensation from the original creators and/or rights holders? I don't find this litigant to be sympathetic in the least (the second one, Green, is much more reasonable - though redundant to the John Deere case going on). My initial impression is that I might actually want Huang to lose, if the…

I don't see the problem. I paid for some content, why shouldn't I be able to view it in my manner of preference? If I want to watch it mixed up with some funky third-party subtitles, or a chat window with my friends, why not? You're assuming that Andrew Huang's business model requires sharing content.

Here's a practical application: Due to travel, sometimes my wife and I are apart when the latest Must Watch Episode of something comes out. We will fire up skype and hbonow/netflix and watch it together. Dorky, yes. But also a pain in the ass to keep synced when pausing for bathroom breaks, snacks, etc. Someone should invent an app for that! Oh... but it would be illegal under DMCA.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#80

Post by LukeShu »

ryanswapp wrote: post #28

I studied section 1201 thoroughly during law school and I think this post doesn't give a fair characterization of it. The reason this statute exists is because companies were unable to devise protection for copyrighted works that hackers were not able to immediately circumvent. As a result, the government stepped in and created 1201 to make it illegal for someone to circumvent some form of access control that a compa…

> As a result, the government stepped in and created 1201 to make it illegal for someone to to .

Doing was already illegal. Therefore, doing in order to was also already illegal.

People are upset that is now illegal, for all purposes, not just doing .

> The purpose of the statute isn't to but is to . I don't see anything wrong with that.

What's wrong with that is that it also does (even if that isn't the "purpose").

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