4 ms·

> but can you point to any prosecution of someone for a _prose description_ of circumvention (as opposed to actually making code available)? I'll do you one be

> but can you point to any prosecution of someone for a _prose description_ of circumvention (as opposed to actually making code available)? I'll do you one better: 2600 Magazine was prohibited from saying which website hosted DRM-circumvention code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Corley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v... They were legally prohibited from saying, on their own website, words like "You can get DeCSS from http://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/ http://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/" and nothing else. Criminalised speech.

immibis 1y ago
The USA has a lot of criminalised speech, despite the 1A. The most obvious historical example is "I am going to assassinate the president tomorrow at noon", but recently there have been a lot more things you can't say, such as "Fuck Donald Trump" which got someone arrested and deported.
- chrisco255 1y ago
  One can have a visa revoked for any arbitrary reason, as they are a guest in the country and not a citizen. But yes, obviously serious threats of violence are not protected speech.
  - mycall 1y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if publishing circumvention code would be argued in court to be violence against earning money for political oriented books (spending money is a necessary and inseparable part of political communication).
    - ranger_danger 1y ago
      relevant article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
  - Sammi 1y ago
    Which would explain why foreign tourists to the US have been decreasing recently.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    Right, but as confirmed over and over and over again, non-citizens also have the right to 1st amendment, same as citizens.
    - amiga386 1y ago
      They do have that right, but at the same time, a chaotic and vindictive adminstration can revoke the visa of, and then physically abduct, a non-citizen. They can then make statements that plainly make it clear they did that because of what the non-citizen wrote. They can also contravene a number of other legal safeguards along the way, and disregard judges' orders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%96zt%C3%BCrk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Rasha_Alawieh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Rasha_Alawieh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mohsen_Mahdawi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mohsen_Mahdawi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_deportations_in_the_second_Trump_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_deportations_in_the_s... It appears the US has elected an administration that wants to turn the country into a lawless shithole, where the powerful do whatever the fuck they want, and they deliberately fuck with laws and safeguards, and deliberately target their political enemies (e.g. student activists), to flex how powerful they are.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        > They can then make statements that plainly make it clear they did that because of what the non-citizen wrote. I kind of hate the thing where people want to make this the part that matters, because Trump is a massive outlier who doesn't care about that and says the thing he's not supposed to say. But the people who still do the prosecution under the pretext and then don't admit to why are even worse, because they're doing the same thing and then lying about it on top of that. If all you do is punish people for not lying, that's not going to solve anything. You need to take away their ability to trump up charges against random people.
        1y ago
  - rswail 1y ago
    The First Amendment applies to any person in the United States, not just citizens. Visas should not be able to be revoked for "any arbitrary reason". The fact that your statement is becoming more and more true in the United States is an indictment.
- TheRealPomax 1y ago
  These two things aren't even remotely in the same category. Committing a crime, then documenting how you committed that crime and then publishing the instructions for others to repeat that crime with the clear intent to have others repeat that crime, has nothing to do with saying a bunch of words that you haven't even acted on. Dispute that this should constitute a crime as much as you want (and please, do. Take it to court, get the laws changed, go into politics, get the US fixed, this is bullshit) but for as long as it is: being charged with a crime for "doing crime and teaching others to do the same crime" is not a first amendment violation.
  - immibis 1y ago
    There aren't many words in the first amendment, and none of them are "unless you're telling someone how to commit a crime" The current regime (before it was a regime) got away with a lot of very bad speech because "the first amendment says all speech is allowed, no matter what" and should be made to hold everyone to the same standard they hold themselves to.
pxeger1 1y ago
> I'll do you one better I think this is a weaker example.
- amiga386 1y ago
  Which part of the text "You can get DeCSS from http://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/ http://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/" on a website constitutes distribution of "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" ? Judge Kaplan very likely went beyond what the law allows, in issuing the injunction against Eric Corley for even _adding a hyperlink_ to the DeCSS code on his website. However, we don't know this for sure, because Corley did not take this to the Supreme Court. There is a chance that the SCOTUS would have accepted the case, and found that neither a hyperlink to computer source code, nor computer source code itself, constitutes "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof"... but at the same time, maybe they wouldn't accept it, and maybe they would but it'd cost a lot of money Corley didn't have to see the case through. So who knows? Corley seemed satisfied enough that, even though he was personally enjoined from linking to DeCSS, it nonetheless spread like wildfire all over the world, and DVDs were effectively copyable from that day forward.
gregwtmtno 1y ago
This is going to date me, but I had a t-shirt with basically a code-golf version of DeCSS printed on it and it said "This shirt is illegal" on it or something like that. I never actually wore it in public.
- js2 1y ago
  Oh, I definitely wore my Perl RSA "This shirt is a munition" T-shirt. http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/shirt/ http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/shirt/ DeCSS was also available in DNS txt records for a while circa 2000. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283084
- hacknewslogin 1y ago
  There's a site somewhere that has various ASCII art renditions of that code. It's on my project list to print some of those on some shirts :P

immibis 1y ago

The USA has a lot of criminalised speech, despite the 1A. The most obvious historical example is "I am going to assassinate the president tomorrow at noon", but recently there have been a lot more things you can't say, such as "Fuck Donald Trump" which got someone arrested and deported.

chrisco255 1y ago
One can have a visa revoked for any arbitrary reason, as they are a guest in the country and not a citizen. But yes, obviously serious threats of violence are not protected speech.
- mycall 1y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if publishing circumvention code would be argued in court to be violence against earning money for political oriented books (spending money is a necessary and inseparable part of political communication).
  - ranger_danger 1y ago
    relevant article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
- Sammi 1y ago
  Which would explain why foreign tourists to the US have been decreasing recently.
- gambiting 1y ago
  Right, but as confirmed over and over and over again, non-citizens also have the right to 1st amendment, same as citizens.
  - amiga386 1y ago
    They do have that right, but at the same time, a chaotic and vindictive adminstration can revoke the visa of, and then physically abduct, a non-citizen. They can then make statements that plainly make it clear they did that because of what the non-citizen wrote. They can also contravene a number of other legal safeguards along the way, and disregard judges' orders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%96zt%C3%BCrk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Rasha_Alawieh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Rasha_Alawieh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mohsen_Mahdawi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mohsen_Mahdawi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_deportations_in_the_second_Trump_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_deportations_in_the_s... It appears the US has elected an administration that wants to turn the country into a lawless shithole, where the powerful do whatever the fuck they want, and they deliberately fuck with laws and safeguards, and deliberately target their political enemies (e.g. student activists), to flex how powerful they are.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      > They can then make statements that plainly make it clear they did that because of what the non-citizen wrote. I kind of hate the thing where people want to make this the part that matters, because Trump is a massive outlier who doesn't care about that and says the thing he's not supposed to say. But the people who still do the prosecution under the pretext and then don't admit to why are even worse, because they're doing the same thing and then lying about it on top of that. If all you do is punish people for not lying, that's not going to solve anything. You need to take away their ability to trump up charges against random people.
      - 1y ago
- rswail 1y ago
  The First Amendment applies to any person in the United States, not just citizens. Visas should not be able to be revoked for "any arbitrary reason". The fact that your statement is becoming more and more true in the United States is an indictment.
TheRealPomax 1y ago
These two things aren't even remotely in the same category. Committing a crime, then documenting how you committed that crime and then publishing the instructions for others to repeat that crime with the clear intent to have others repeat that crime, has nothing to do with saying a bunch of words that you haven't even acted on. Dispute that this should constitute a crime as much as you want (and please, do. Take it to court, get the laws changed, go into politics, get the US fixed, this is bullshit) but for as long as it is: being charged with a crime for "doing crime and teaching others to do the same crime" is not a first amendment violation.
- immibis 1y ago
  There aren't many words in the first amendment, and none of them are "unless you're telling someone how to commit a crime" The current regime (before it was a regime) got away with a lot of very bad speech because "the first amendment says all speech is allowed, no matter what" and should be made to hold everyone to the same standard they hold themselves to.

pxeger1 1y ago

> I'll do you one better I think this is a weaker example.

amiga386 1y ago
Which part of the text "You can get DeCSS from http://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/ http://lemuria.org/~tom/DeCSS/" on a website constitutes distribution of "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" ? Judge Kaplan very likely went beyond what the law allows, in issuing the injunction against Eric Corley for even _adding a hyperlink_ to the DeCSS code on his website. However, we don't know this for sure, because Corley did not take this to the Supreme Court. There is a chance that the SCOTUS would have accepted the case, and found that neither a hyperlink to computer source code, nor computer source code itself, constitutes "technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof"... but at the same time, maybe they wouldn't accept it, and maybe they would but it'd cost a lot of money Corley didn't have to see the case through. So who knows? Corley seemed satisfied enough that, even though he was personally enjoined from linking to DeCSS, it nonetheless spread like wildfire all over the world, and DVDs were effectively copyable from that day forward.

gregwtmtno 1y ago

This is going to date me, but I had a t-shirt with basically a code-golf version of DeCSS printed on it and it said "This shirt is illegal" on it or something like that. I never actually wore it in public.

js2 1y ago
Oh, I definitely wore my Perl RSA "This shirt is a munition" T-shirt. http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/shirt/ http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/shirt/ DeCSS was also available in DNS txt records for a while circa 2000. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6283084
hacknewslogin 1y ago
There's a site somewhere that has various ASCII art renditions of that code. It's on my project list to print some of those on some shirts :P