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DeCSS Depositions Begin 155

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
Booker noted that cryptome has the DeCSS deposition now online for folks to read it. Hopefully someone can post a translation: I'm reading it and just seeing a lot of objecting and refusing to answer questions.
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DeCSS Depositions Begin More

DeCSS Depositions Begin

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  • In fact, that exchange was in my original submission for the story... I understand that Mr. Garbus is what... in his 50s? And Linux etc is a pretty new thing for him. He's worked really hard to try to understand what's going on... but reading this deposition has a "comedy of errors" feeling to it. Lots of things that show that they really don't quite know what's going on.

    I'd like to see a place where those people who are "in the know" could review the case materials (they're all faithfully posted to cryptome) and try to correct the technical errors in their strategy, re-explain the things that are causing confusion, etc.

    These are the people who are gonna make the laws when they set this precedent on the DMCA, and it seems that they're floundering a bit. :/

    ---

  • Apply the Turing Test. (Score:4)

    by luckykaa ( 134517 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @05:07AM (#1009050)
    That looks almost like a bad turing test.

    From that, I take it you have concluded that Lawyers are not yet intelligent.
  • I'm not bothering to send in stuff anymore. I sent this in shortly after it was posted to the web, and it was refused. Now it's up. WTF? I guess I don't have "The Touch".

    Time/Warner filed to remove our hero, Martin Garbus, because the law firm he is a partner in is representing Time/Warner in another, unrelated matter.

    The judge ruled that the matters are unrelated, but before he did, he ordered Garbus not to interview any people from Time/Warner.

  • I suggest skipping ahead to page 87, line 15, and starting from there. You won't miss much.
  • We spend so much time reading dispositions, lawsuits, trials, anti-trust crap....

    Considering the number of page views they get from us debating legal stuff we are probably ignorant about, can't they at least afford legal council for us?
  • Hehe, reminds me of that Seinfeld routine where he's talking about lawyers. He said that when lawyers say "Your Honor, I object" it's lawyer-speak for "'Fraid not". And when the judge overrules the objection it means "'Fraid so".
  • A complete prick? This is slightly acrimonious, but not nasty or unprofessional. It is what you should expect from serious hardcore lawyers. They don't get into screaming fights, but neither do they hold hands and sing "Kumbayah."
  • OK, I agree with you here, it seems to be a lot about having the best lawyers. However, I think Garbus seems to be a good one, he just hasn't got all this stuff right, besides, it is not easy to say if he did get it wrong, or if something was lost in the transcription.
  • I'd agree, but I'd also note that this principle has its limits: witness the disastrous Gates deposition. It's important that the witness walk a line between not volunteering information and outright stonewalling.
  • I think the following sections show that theory to be flawed: Q. CSS-auth we have agreed is a Linux BSD program written by the Livid Group? A. It is a Linux program written by Derek Fawcus. --- Q. Do you know whether or not it is a Linux BSD program? A. Can you describe Linux BSD? Q. You previously said that CSS-auth was a Linux BSD program. A. I belief I said CSS-auth was a Linux program.
  • 2 A. It varies widely depending on the
    3 compression algorithm of the content, the length of
    4 the movie, the additional items on the disk.
    5 Q. Assuming that a movie consists of 4
    6 gigabytes of data, would it take more than 200
    7 hours to transfer a movie via standard 56K modem
    8 connection to the internet?
    9 A. I haven't done the math.

    (Skip a bit)

    14 Q. What is your answer?
    15 A. Approximately 160 hours.
    16 Q. Can you tell us how you arrived at
    17 that computation?
    18 A. I took 4 gigabytes, multiplied it by
    19 8 to get gigabits, divided that by 56,000 bits per
    20 second. This is not completely precise, but close
    21 enough, I assume. I Divided by 56,000 bits per
    22 second, giving me the total number of seconds,
    23 divided that by 3,600, which is the number of
    24 seconds in an hour, to arrive at approximately 160
    25 hours.

    Okay, that is assuming you can connect to the internet at 56,000 bits per second (actually, with a 56k modem, it would be 56,600). The maximum you can connect at (according to FCC power regulations) is 53,333 bits per second, making the end figure approximately 167 hours. Add to that the fact that a good majority of people with 56k modems can't connect at a v.90 speed, I'll assume the average connect speed with a 56k modem is 38,000. That brings the final calucation to 234 hours. (Of course, this is assuming the internet is perfect; you're not going to get a sustained transfer rate equal to the connection rate.) Quite a difference, huh?

  • Heh... in honor of the fucking MPAA's lawyer, Mr. Gold, I am going to "object to the form of this comment."

    Seriously though... why does he object to the form of every other question? Just goes to show that the MPAA doesn't feel that they have too great of a case and have to win it on legal nitpicking. Bastards.
    --

  • MPAA assumes it is proven DeCSS is copy util (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12, 2000 @05:10AM (#1009061)
    The MPAA depositions treat it as proven that DeCSS is a device which circumvents copy protection. I'm not sure anyone has done a good enough job there of educating the judge that what it circumvents is not copy protection, inasmuch as copies can be made of ciphertext, but player control, controlling what devices customers can use to play their DVDs. If this is not done I predict (regretfully) that MPAA will prevail.
  • To make matters worse, this line of questioning was actually regarding the distributed form of DeCSS - nothing to do with the DVD itself. It was shortly after this that Mr. Garbus demanded the man's hard drive, I think. :/

    ---

  • MR. GARBUS: Mr. Schumann, is it or is it not true that while at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, last week, you stole a Taiwanese boy's pants [hardocp.com] and used them for your own private use? Did you know you were in fact commiting a crime against major movie studios, and that the MPAA are very concerned about this?

    MR. SCHUMANN: No, I was not aware.

  • I assumed he was actually saying "Linux/BSD", meaning that the programs are relevant to both operating systems. Though it is pretty funny that he was corrected by the witness.
  • It has occured to me, in a very general way, that it seems that lawyers really do not know anything about what they are talking about. They are using catch phrases like "open source" and "linux BSD" without any real knowledge of what either or anything is, short of perhaps a review by somebody.

    My point, taken from the DeCSS deposition:

    • Q. Do you know who developed CSS-cat?
      A. I do not.
    • Q. Do you know whether or not it is a Linux BSD program?
      A. Can you describe Linux BSD?
    • Q. You previously said that CSS-auth was a Linux BSD program.
      A. I belief I said CSS-auth was a Linux program.
    • Q. Is CSS-cat a Linux program?
      A. I believe it is.

    ... ad nauseum.

    It's no wonder some of the large companies with very well paid lawyers can manage to get UCITA and the DMCA passed, as well as coming up with these blatently illegal (or at least shifty) EULAs (IMHO acronyms are fun.). I honestly hope that as the younger generation, which has been more exposed to computers and technology than any other before it, grows up, things like this will not so easily be slipped under the public eye. At the same time, I can look at my peers who can't even get into MS Office, and realize that that hope will probably never come true.

    -- Wedg

  • This little diatribe has all the cordiality of a US/Russia cold war period meeting:

    4 MR. GARBUS: It occurs to me,
    5 Mr. Gold, that you just might have an
    6 objection if I ask for that file.
    7 MR. GOLD: I think I would.
    8 Although you might have been so amazingly
    9 clever I wouldn't have recognized it. I
    10 gave him a compliment and I think it
    11 deserves to be on the record.

  • I dunno, this certainly IS relavent, I mean the
    very idea that a person could be in legal trouble
    because he wrote some code that a company disliked
    is frightening...

    Though...as to your suggestion...I would rather
    not go to Lie School and become a liar myself.
  • Aye, and they only wanted the harddrive to check the datestamp on the DeCSS archive. Poor man indeed, i know i wouldn't want a lawyer poking through my harddrive. And it's not because of the MP3's on there, if you know what i mean. ;)
  • Yea, I was expecting him to say, "I cannot tell you what Linux is, but it is all around us..."

    -capt.

  • Of course DeCSS lets you evade region codes -- it doesn't pay any attention to it and will decrypt DVD's from all regions. Schumann was clearly trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

    Yeah, I was curious about this. Why he said that... I mean, one should think that the MPAA would be hammering on this as well, that DeCSS takes away region codes, but their expert witness says it is irrelevant... I wonder how to best use this, perhaps act stupid, the MPAA should return to the question some time, and perhaps the best would be to say "but your expert witness testified that it was irrelevant...".

  • It's boring stuff.
    Reading that u can imagine the lawyer with a gun pointing to the guy.
    Here in Spain we don't have those problems...people, when are caught hacking or something, simply dissapear.
    And happens the same with those who do not appear on the Media (papers..etc.). They simply dissapear on a mist of strange lawyers appeared from nowhere, and policeman.

    They, finally, are gonna make Internet not free.
  • Most people are looking at this from the wrong prespective. It isn't a interview to obtain information about a subject. It is a deposition that will be used in a trial.

    It is like a chess game where both sides are playing for position. The lawyer questioning the witness wants to 'lock-in' the witnesss into a particlular line of testimony without tipping his hand. The lawyer who represents the opposing side wants to avoid that from happening and give as little information as possible to his oppenents.

    For example, if a lawyer catches a witness in a lie, he is not going to challenge him on the spot. Instead, he will rephrase the question a couple of different ways to ensure that the witness is truely lying. He will wait for the trial to impeach the witness giving the opposing side less time to react or minimize the damage.

    While you are focusing on trivia about Linux/BSD and asking about the hard drive, the lawyer was nailing down certain facts. The witness has never played a copy of the movie. He only viewed the movie using the original DVD.

    He also got the witness to declare that he thought DeCSS was not relevant to regional coding. (It doesn't matter whether the lawyer agreed or disagreed, the witness can not go back and change his position without losing credibility in the court room.

    The lawyers were also probing the witness about the feasability of transferring files created by DeCSS and if he knew of any instances of a pirated movie being traded or sold. (The witness only knew of the ones from the Hong Kong pirate factories and did not know of any using the DeCSS.)

    In my opinion, the biggest win was that the witness admitted that cryptographers learn from reading source code and that it is an 'axiom' of the cryptrophy field that a code that does not have peer review is weaker than one that does.

    The witness also admitted that there was merit in a scolarly journal, e.g. ACM's, to include parts of the code in writing an article. In other words, there are other reasons, besides pirating movies to publish the DeCSS.

    As for the objections, they basically fell into two catagories: attorney-client privilage and "form".

    Reading between the lines, it appears that the witness was hired by the law firm to do some investigation into the case. Any work that was done for the lawyer would fall into the attorney-client privlilage and work-product category. In other words, you don't have to give the other side a blue-print of your case.

    The other objections were related to the form of the question. If the question is too ambigious, too complecated, etc., the opposing side will object and the questioning lawyer will rephrase the question.

  • he's gonna be pissed (Score:5)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @04:34AM (#1009074)
    MR. GARBUS: If that is so, then we don't get into any disagreement about confidentiality.

    MR. GOLD: That's not good enough, because, among other things, I don't want to wake up and see this transcript in the newspaper tomorrow, and I have reasons to believe that that is a possibility, but I won't get into that thoroughly.
    In light of this discussion, I have designated the entire transcript as confidential.
  • The lawyer asking questions clearly does not understand DeCSS. He keeps getting upset (it seems) about the witness saying that DeCSS produces a perfect copy of the original data on the DVD. He seems to be waiting for the witness to trip up and say that DeCSS can produce an "ok" copy of a movie.

    There's about 50 or so questions to this effect in differing forms. The jabs from the other lawyer are great like "He is not here as a legal expert and so I am going to put an end to this. If you want legal advice, see your colleagues. They will be happy to help you."

    The one asking the questions seems not only technically incompetent (for which I would have expected him to have had an advisor who prompted him with good questions) but doesn't even understand his own questions. Perhaps that's just a clever smoke-screen to allow him to ask some inapropriate questions, but that's pretty far-fetched.

  • just read whole thing... head very numb now...
  • I disappeared just reading it.

    'course I'm visible now.

  • Well, the deposition is marked May 15, 2000. I assume they either did not get the ruling to make it confidential, or it got leaked somehow. Any info anyone?
    ---
  • 15 Q. Do you know whether the Disney

    16 search engine, for example, will do a search if you

    17 put in DeCSS?

    18 A. If Disney has a search engine, which

    19 I will believe is true, I would presume it would.

    20 Q. And do you know how many sites then

    21 come up under the Disney search?

    22 A. I have no knowledge.

    23 Q. Is your answer "no knowledge," would

    24 that be true with respect to any of the other

    25 plaintiffs in this case?

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    136

    1 Schumann

    2 A. Yes, that's correct.

    3 Q. Do you know if the Disney search

    4 engine will take you to CSS.auth?

    5 A. I have no knowledge.

    6 Q. CSS.cat?

    7 A. I have no knowledge.

    8 Q. Do you have any knowledge of how

    9 many people have downloaded or taken off --

    10 (Telephone interruption.)

    11 BY MR. GARBUS:

    12 Q. -- downloaded DeCSS?

    13 MR. GOLD: I object to the form.

    14 MR. GARBUS: Pardon me?

    15 MR. GOLD: I object to the form of

    16 the question.

  • You managed to make it through the whole thing? Wow - my eyes started to ache after about 20 seconds of looking at it. I can hardly ... stay ... awake.....

    ZZZZZzzzzz.....

  • The lawyer Mr Garbus, keeps referring to "Linux BSD". Of course, that could just be the court reporters in error, but the following exchanges make me think not:
    Q. CSS-auth we have agreed is a Linux BSD program written by the Livid group?

    A. It is a Linux program written by Derek Fawcus.
    [...]
    Q. Do you know whether or not it is a Linux BSD program?
    A. Can you describe Linux BSD?
    You said previously that CSS-auth was a Linux BSD program.
    A. I belief I said CSS-auth was a Linux program.

    Other bits make it sound like the he doesn't understand what he's talking about, technically. E.g., talking about when Robert Schumann (the witnes) tried out DeCSS:
    Q. Are there any records that indicate what you did on that date with respect to the DeCSS?

    A. I doubt I would have written a detailed log, to that level of detail.
    Q. I presume there is information on your computer that would indicate what you did and when you did it with respect to DeCSS; is that right?
    [...]
    Q. Isn't DeCSS designed to send the material to a permanent computer file or a computer's hard drive?
    A. That is the function it performs, yes.
    Q. So wouldn't you have that hard drive?
    A. Certainly.
    Q. where would that hard drive be?
    A. It would be in a computer in my office.
    MR GARBUS: Will you produce that?
    MR GOLD [defence lawyer]: The entire computer in his office?
    MR GARBUS: The hard drive.
    MR GOLD: You want the whole hard drive?
    MR GARBUS: Yes.

    Mr Garbus seems to be unaware that the decrypted version of the DVD file can be deleted.


    Other than that, it seems fairly conventional [to my limited experience, IANAL] The Mr Garbus is doing the usual trick of multi-threading several lines of questioning so that it's harder for the witness to work out what he's leading to.

  • This is so very scary. Seems like this lawyer just doesn't quite get it. But, he's a professional, assumedly, and intelligent, assumedly, and dangerous in that he's probably not the only one...

    I assume this excerpt is about the printing of Linux DVD development mailing list logs: (emphasis mine)

    A. I downloaded a -- I didn't download.
    There is a large amount of Linux DVD development, I
    guess, history that you looked through.
    Q. You chose not to put that into your
    affidavit?
    A. It is three inches of paper.
    MR. GARBUS: I ask that that be
    produced.
    MR. GOLD: I will take it under
    advisement.

    And this is about, I guess, proving that Schumann downloaded and used DeCSS. And how...?

    Q. Isn't DeCSS designed to send the
    material to a permanent computer file or a
    computer's hard drive?
    A. That is the function that it
    performs, yes.
    Q. So wouldn't you have that hard
    drive?
    A. Certainly.
    Q. Where would that hard drive be?
    A. It would be in a computer in my
    office.
    MR. GARBUS: Will you produce

    that?
    MR. GOLD: The entire computer in
    his office?
    MR. GARBUS: The hard drive.
    MR. GOLD: You want the whole hard
    drive?
    MR. GARBUS: Yes.


  • 19 Q. To your knowledge, was MORE or any

    20 members of MORE involved in the decrypting of

    21 DeCSS?

    22 A. Can you define "decrypting"?

    23 MR. GARBUS: Withdraw the

    24 question.

    Damn Stupid Lawyers
  • Nah. I think this is more like the 18 wheeler hitting a Pinto from behind.

  • I just got one question (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've just got one question:-

    When they keep saying "linux" in the transcript, how are they pronouncing it???!!:-)
  • lol.. sounds like a plan.
  • Maybe Linus is the first Open Source Human? Just hope he's a stable build...
  • Well, it seems you have missed a point, Garbus is our man.... :-) Yeah, he mixes up things badly at the start, but it improves as you go down.
  • "they"? FYI, the "they" you refer to, the party asking for the hard drive entered as evidence, is Martin Garbus, the defendants' lawyer. Mr. Schumann, the witness being interviewed, is MPAA's witness trying to testify that DeCSS is a piracy tool.

    From your attitude and comments I'd guess you think DeCSS shouldn't be under a lawsuit right now. If that's true, your reading of the transcript was TOTALLY off track. If stuff like this is too hard for you to understand, please don't even try, because obviously it only serves to further confuse the issue and cause you to spread misinformation.
  • it's not easy to say if he did get it wrong, or if something was lost in the transcription.

    True. Also, understanding the technical issues is not the be-all and end-all of a defence case. If he's good at lawyering, that's probably the main thing.
  • Instead of bashing him as 'computer illiterate', we need to understand that these things are not obvious and accept the burden to explain them.

    Yes, I chose my wording badly and I apologise to him for it. It's great that there's a competent lawyer working on the defence, and it's great that the team are listening.
  • How about the defense lawyers take a stardard encripted DVD, copy the DVD in question bit-for-bit, burn it to a blank DVD and pop it into a handy DVD player. While this is going on, make everyone in the court room sit there, and when the process is done in about, several hours, there will be a copied DVD, not using DeCSS, which would more or less end the trial. And to further punctuate how stupid the entire thing is send the copy ov the DVD image across a 10 base T (standard college network, in my expierence) and see how long that takes. Im my best uneducated guess the entire process will take the better part of a day or two. I have no idea what the actual times are, but it seems to me that that would show the judge, jury, whoever that this is just another waste of the courts time.
  • I mean, one should think that the MPAA would be hammering on this as well, that DeCSS takes away region codes, but their expert witness says it is irrelevant.

    On the contrary, the last thing the MPAA wants to do is admit that DeCSS has applications that seem perfectly legitimate to the man on the street and/or fall within traditional fair use doctrine.

    Let slip the fact that the stakes are the MPAA's ability to preserve market cartelization (region coding) and push extra advertizing (fast-forward lockout), not the ability to curtail bootlegging, and they lose the PR part of the political battle.
    /.

  • No, becuase the 'poor' are too damn stupid to know how to grow food or do much of anything without the rich organizing, training, and supplying equipment to them.

    In most instances (repeat for emphasis _most instances_) being 'rich' means that a person through their own hard work and enginuity created something better than the sum of the available parts, and resultantly got some portion of the benefit. If thats organizing people to tend fields, or building tractors, or creating crops with better yeilds, or whatever.. that 'rich' person made life a little better for the people around him.

    So go starve the rich, see how far you get when nobody is around to build tractors to plow the fields, and trains to transport the food, or medical supplies for the 'poor' who can't manage to do much of anything but consume resources and breed.

    Here's a clue; the cold war is over and guess what? The comunists/socialists lost.

    I just looked over their website and according to their faq they provide 'food', I don't see training or water purification equipment! I didn't see any 'donate a tractor now' button either. They do state that occasionally they will entice people to get out of their squalor and do something useful for their comunity by bribing them with food. I guess for some if planting a field now doesn't feed us today then there is no point. *shrug*

    -- Greg
  • Thanks for the pointer. However, I was under the impression that the Second Decleration was already submitted at the time of the deposition. I seem to recall a couple of references to it. I will have to reread the deposition.

    He mostly emphasizes that despite the dificulty of making pirated DVDs, there is a real danger of pirating DVD movies by compressing the DeCSS'd movie files with DivX, which he claims can currently compress a movie to 1.2Gb, small enough to put on two CDR's, or to send over a 100Mbs LAN in 7 minutes.

    That would explain all the questions about DivX and CDRs. I seem to recall that the witness admitted that he has not actually viewed any movies that were compressed with DivX or put on a CDR.

    He also attacks the argument that DeCSS has "legitimate academic, commercial or scientific value", noting that if this were the case, then it would only be available in source code, since, it is hard to learn how a program works from a compiled binary.

    That also explains some of the questions. The witness kept referring to the .exe files. Which is probably why the lawyer asked exactly how he got the file. (I recall the witness saying that the MPAA provided them and he did not download them himself.) It also explains why the lawyer kept asking if the witness knew if the MPAA provided everything they downloaded.

    For those critics saying this is boring: it is no more boring than watching a chess game. If you understand some of the startegy, it is extremely interesting. If you don't know anything about chess, it is extremely boring.

  • This was clarified elsewhere in the deposition, where it was clarified that by "Linux" they were referring to Linux developers or Linux-related companies.
  • 4 MR. GARBUS: It occurs to me,
    5 Mr. Gold, that you just might have an
    6 objection if I ask for that file.
    7 MR. GOLD: I think I would.
    8 Although you might have been so amazingly
    9 clever I wouldn't have recognized it. I
    10 gave him a compliment and I think it
    11 deserves to be on the record.

    Man, I think that has to be the worst attempt at Haiku I've ever seen on Slashdot.

    Rich

  • MR. GARBUS: Will you produce that?
    MR. GOLD: The entire computer in his office?
    MR. GARBUS: The hard drive.
    MR. GOLD: You want the whole hard drive?
    [snip]
    Mr Pink: No *&%*hole! I want the whole goddamn office. What the $%&* do you think I want.
    Mr White: How about we just cut his ear off.

  • Re:It's not the complete transcript (Score:4)

    by alkali ( 28338 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @05:40AM (#1009099)
    A common thing for a lawyer to do when beginning a deposition is to ask for the home and business address of the deponent. That's probably what was marked confidential on page 4.
  • Mr Garbus seems to be unaware that the decrypted version of the DVD file can be deleted.

    Not only that but I suspect he is labouring under the popular misaprehension that the hard-drive =PC-(keyboard+monitor+mouse), i.e. the case and the bits inside. I think it would be quite amusing if the witness turned up with the little black/silver box, 3.5"x6"x1" with the Western Digital label on and the lawyer guy spent ten minutes trying to find the VGA port.

    Rich

  • Since more than half the score 2+ comments at the time I write this (pretty early into the thread) have totally confused who's who, let's try to explain: MR GOLD: The plaintiffs' (MPAA/studios) lawyer MR GARBUS: The defendants' (2600, DeCSS) lawyer, who MPAA has tried to get thrown off the case MR SCHUMANN: A witness for MPAA. Hopefully, now that you know this much, please also realize that lawyers, even smart, good lawyers that might be on YOUR side, don't necessarily know each detail about, for instance, how Linux DVD device drivers interact with the hardware, or that sort of thing. They don't need to, either. What they need to be able to do is to argue their point to a judge who doesn't know that either, and convince him/her that they are right. Thus, it isn't necessarily a failure that they might not get each and every technical detail completely right. And as to trying to get MPAA's witness to provide his computer for evidence, you can bet that the other side would try to do the exact same thing - so why would it not be a valid move for the defendants?

  • Who's who (properly formatted, this time) (Score:5)

    by tau_ ( 154048 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @05:47AM (#1009102)
    Since more than half the score 2+ comments at the time I write this (pretty early into the thread) have totally confused who's who, let's try to explain:

    MR GOLD: The plaintiffs' (MPAA/studios) lawyer

    MR GARBUS: The defendants' (2600, DeCSS) lawyer, who MPAA has tried to get thrown off the case

    MR SCHUMANN: A witness for MPAA.
  • Is it me, or is every question asked at the beginning responded to with some form of "I don't know?" I'm no lawyer, but one would think that if I were taking a deposition, I would ask questions that I KNEW there were answers for, and ask the useless stuff later.

    Do you know so and so? NO. Did you ever hear of ... NO. Do you know what this is? NO.

    I gave up after reading the first several pages.. almost looked like they asked my Grandma to testify in Microsoft's case.. and she can't even type.
  • Mr. Gold would likely not make all these objections at trial, but if he does not make them now, he cannot make them at trial. The witness will answer the question notwithstanding the objection unless Mr. Gold specifically instructs the witness not to answer the question. There is nothing unusual or unprofessional about Mr. Gold's conduct in this regard.
  • This was amusing, but I seems like Garbus had a purpose here - he is trying to establish whether this clown actually did the things (downloaded and used DeCSS) that he said he did before initiating the suit, or if he's just parroting what his techs have told him to say. The plaintiff have had credibility with the judge because they have appeared (to him) to know what they're talking about. This is a first step in destroying that credibility, and exposing the knee-jerk, know-nothing reasoning that led to this suit being filed in the first place.
  • Despite all the hoopla and heat and large amounts of time being wasted by a lot of people on this issue, at the end of the day, what will happen is what people on the net want to happen. The genie's out of the bottle, and nothing short of a total international police state has any chance of putting the little people back "into their place". Men with guns will still try to exert the will of those in political and monetary power every now and then, but you can't successfully hold back the tide with the occasional sweep of a broom.

    Nor can you do so with commandments from on high. The pronouncements of judges or of Moses himself won't make any real difference at all except in closing off one particular avenue or another. But there are infinite avenues to try.

    Furthermore, only lawyers gain from the current focus on appealing to reason through the courts. It's doomed to failure simply because the courts are part of the establishment, whereas everyone associated with the net is a heinous outlaw. ;-) Like supports like. Don't expect any acceptance of the new online reality from that quarter.

  • Attorney-client privilige (Score:3)

    by Eric Green ( 627 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @12:52PM (#1009107) Homepage
    Perhaps the most important question was when the witness was asked whether the MPAA lawyer was his lawyer. The answer was "I am a hired expert witness", then Mr. Gold put a quick stop to that line of questioning. Attorney-client privilige only applies to discussions between an attorney and his client, which the witness was not. No wonder Garbus was livid in his appeals to the court to get the MPAA to quit abusing the attorney-client and work-product priviliges!
  • When I said "they," I meant the lawyers, of course. You read too far into things man.

    Yes, I don't think this case has a point. Why? Because it has NOTHING to do with DeCSS other than 2600 provided links to it. I guess rootshell better shutdown quick before someone sues them for hosting denial of service attacks. wooo.

    All 2600 did was link to files. Hollywood doesn't like these files (ok, I can see where they are coming from and agree that DeCSS isn't the "best" thing out there) and demands that 2600 censor information. I applaud 2600 for standing up for our free speech.

    Again, all that this lawsuit will prove in the end is that money buys censorship. If a company doesn't like something, shut the people up and keep their mouths closed with beurocratic red tape.

    Yes, DeCSS could destroy DVD by making studios cautios about releasing big titles on DVD.

    No, 2600 should not be responsable for a program that they linked to.

    In the deposition, they point to meaningless issues of Mr. Schumann trying out DeCSS himself. They try to accuse him of pirating a movie when all he was guilty was of curiosity about some cryptography.

    Whoops.. I guess its illegal to be curious or inquisitive in this world. I guess we should all shutup, fall in line, take a number, and fit into YOUR cookie cutter mould. Bah, not for me.

    Lighten up. The CREATORS of DeCSS should be under lawsuit, not the people who were talking about it.

  • There was another story, either by Asimov or Fredric Brown, of some guys who invent a machine that, when fed a complex document, summarized it and output a simple-to-understand result.

    But they made their fortune when they discovered that their machine also worked in reverse...

    --
    Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]

  • So Schumann, the guy that is supposed to testify the DeCSS can be used to decrypt DVDs never played back the movie he copied! And, deleted the copy of the movie from his HD afterwards This has to hurt the MPAA case.
    No wonde the MPAA wants to make those depositions sealed!!!!

    --
    Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]

  • JMS has it exactly right -- the whole point of this is for the defense to get the plaintiff's witness to establish what he does and does not know, and thus what he can and cannot testify about. Furthermore, notice the whole back and forth about Schumann's educational background and those of his partners on pages 20 and 60. This is part of the effort to undermine and disqualify the the witness as an expert, or at least limit what he can testify to.

    For some more substantive tidbits, I actually read the whole thing (I have an advantage, I'm used to doing this sort of thing -- I used to be a consulting economist and I have read many of these puppies). Aside from the nice chunk pulled out by inquis, they cover:
    1. Region-coding and fast-forwarding
    2. Acutal piracy using DeCSS
    3. Schumann's knowledge of decrypted movies
    4. Linking to pages with DeCSS

    To start, here's a good chunk from inside around pages 82 and 83.

    22 Q. Does DeCSS also have the function of

    23 permitting a consumer who has purchased a DVD to
    24 evade the region coding?
    25 A. No.

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    83
    1 Schumann
    2 Q. Does DeCSS permit a consumer who has
    3 purchased a DVD to fast-forward through sections of
    4 a DVD that the manufacturer has prevented from
    5 being fast-forwarded?
    6 A. DeCSS itself?
    7 Q. That's my question.
    8 A. No.
    9 Q. Does DeCSS enable someone to use
    10 with some other program, like a DVD player, to skip
    11 the region code?
    12 A. I think it is irrelevant to that
    13 problem.
    14 Q. You think DeCSS is irrelevant to
    15 that problem?
    16 A. To the problem of evading region
    17 code?
    18 Q. Yes.
    19 A. Yes.
    20 Q. You have reviewed some of the
    21 declarations that the defendants have submitted?
    22 A. Yes, I have.
    23 Q. In a Declaration if there is a
    24 statement that says that DeCSS permits you to evade
    25 region coding, a region coding limitation, then

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    84
    1 Schumann
    2 that statement is incorrect?
    3 MR. GOLD: I object to the form.
    4 Q. You can answer the question.
    5 A. In my professional opinion, DeCSS is
    6 irrelevant to evading the region coding, in your
    7 terminology.

    To summarize, Schumann has stated for the record that DeCSS is not intended to evade region coding or fast-forward through copyright notices and the like.

    From pages 106-109:

    13 Q. So you have no knowledge of any DVD
    14 that was burned, that was allegedly ripped off,
    15 ever sold?
    16 A. Burned on an individual writer?
    17 Q. Yes.
    18 A. Personal knowledge, no.
    19 Q. Burned on any kind of writer?
    20 A. No.
    21 Q. Since you have been employed by
    22 Proskauer, have you had any conversations with the
    23 MPAA about how many DVDs they believe were seen by
    24 anybody as a result of DeCSS?
    25 A. No.

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    107
    1 Schumann
    2 Q. Have you had any conversation with
    3 Universal concerning that?
    4 A. No.
    5 Q. Other than Time Warner, putting them
    6 aside, have you had any conversations with the
    7 other plaintiffs concerning that?
    8 A. No.
    9 Q. Have you ever seen any MPAA records
    10 indicate that they know of a DeCSS being used to
    11 gain access to a DVD, particular access?
    12 A. Is this different than your earlier
    13 question?
    14 Q. Yes. Talking about records now
    15 rather than people.
    16 A. I believe before lunch I said that I
    17 had no knowledge of any records of any shape from
    18 the studios, relative to -- I guess pirated movies.
    19 I don't remember the exact question, but I think we
    20 have went over this. I apologize, but I don't want
    21 to waste any of our time.
    22 Q. Have you ever seen any records that
    23 Proskauer has --
    24 A. I have not.
    25 Q. -- concerning whether or not they

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    108
    1 Schumann
    2 know of any particular case of DeCSS being used
    3 with respect to DVDs?
    4 A. I have not.
    5 Q. Do you know if Proskauer or any of
    6 the plaintiffs or the MPAA has retained any firm or
    7 any third person to see the application or to
    8 understand the application of DeCSS to DVDs?
    9 A. I have no knowledge.
    10 MR. GARBUS: Can I hear the last
    11 question, please.
    12 (Record read.)
    13 BY MR. GARBUS:
    14 Q. Do you know whether either Proskauer
    15 or any of the plaintiffs had ever seen the DVD that
    16 had been decrypted by DeCSS?
    17 A. I have no knowledge.
    18 Q. Have you ever seen any reports from
    19 Proskauer or the MPAA or any of the plaintiffs
    20 indicating whether or not they had ever seen the
    21 DVD after the application of DeCSS?
    22 A. You were referring to pirated DVDs
    23 when you clarified?
    24 Q. Yes.
    25 A. I have no knowledge.
    INTERIM COURT REPORTING
    109
    1 Schumann
    2 Q. Do you have any knowledge whether
    3 anybody at the MPAA claims that there ever was a
    4 pirated copy of a DVD sold, a copy that had been
    5 enabled by the use of DeCSS?
    6 A. I have no knowledge.
    7 Q. Would your answer be the same with
    8 respect to Proskauer and the seven plaintiffs in
    9 this case, excluding Time Warner?
    10 A. I believe so, yes.

    So Schumann has does not know about (even secondhand) any DVDs that have been pirated using DeCSS; nor do the plaintiffs, the MPAA, or their lawyers.

    From pages 119 and 120:
    24 Q. Have you ever tried to make a

    25 determination as to the quality of a film that is

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    120
    1 Schumann
    2 shown from an original DVD that is now being shown
    3 because DeCSS has "broken the code"?
    4 MR. GOLD: You can answer that
    5 "yes or "no."
    6 A. No.
    7 Q. Do you know if anyone at the MPAA
    8 ever has?
    9 MR. GOLD: You can answer.
    10 A. I have no knowledge.
    11 Q. Do you know if anyone at the seven
    12 plaintiffs, other than Time Warner, have?
    13 A. I have no knowledge.
    14 Q. Have you ever seen any reports from
    15 either the MPAA or any of the other seven
    16 plaintiffs?
    17 MR. GOLD: Yes or no.
    18 A. I have no knowledge.

    So Schumann can't say anything about the quality of a video file after it's passed through DeCSS -- he can't contradict the Toronto Star article. It does not matter whether or not the MPEG file plays properly or not; only that Schumann can't say anything about them. Folks reading here will know that the bits from the file are the same after such a symmetric encryption/decryption, anyhow.

    On pages 134-136:
    22 Q. With respect to the Disney site, do

    23 you know whether the Disney site links to any DeCSS
    24 postings?
    25 A. I have no knowledge.

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    135
    1 Schumann
    2 Q. To your knowledge, has anyone at the
    3 MPAA tried to determine whether the Disney site
    4 links to specific DeCSS postings?
    5 A. I have no knowledge.
    6 Q. Do you know what strings are?
    7 A. Strings?
    8 Q. Yes.
    9 A. In the computer sense?
    10 Q. Yes.
    11 A. I believe so, yes.
    12 Q. Tell me what they are.
    13 A. Strings is typically a term used to
    14 define a sequence of text characters.
    15 Q. Do you know whether the Disney
    16 search engine, for example, will do a search if you
    17 put in DeCSS?
    18 A. If Disney has a search engine, which
    19 I will believe is true, I would presume it would.
    20 Q. And do you know how many sites then
    21 come up under the Disney search?
    22 A. I have no knowledge.
    23 Q. Is your answer "no knowledge," would
    24 that be true with respect to any of the other
    25 plaintiffs in this case?

    INTERIM COURT REPORTING

    136
    1 Schumann
    2 A. Yes, that's correct.
    3 Q. Do you know if the Disney search
    4 engine will take you to CSS.auth?
    5 A. I have no knowledge.
    6 Q. CSS.cat?
    7 A. I have no knowledge.

    Schumann doesn't know about Infoseek (owned by Disney, one of the plaintiffs) having links via their search engine to DeCSS, CSS.auth, etc.

    There's some more stuff, but it does get repetitive after a while. Hope this helps some of the folks who are less legal-oriented.


    --Paul

  • So assuming that the DeCSS case will wind up in the worst case scenario, i.e., the companies outlaw knowladge, I think it would be a great time for programmers to being to unionize, and go on strike.

    I think Jello Biafra said it pretty good in Electronic Plantation [alternativetentacles.com]

  • Windows NT is based on VMS, so the first one isn't far off.
  • To the contrary: the entire point of a deposition is to determine what the witness does or does not know. In any event, why do you think Mr. Garbus should have known the answers to these questions before he asked them?
  • neither of whose subtleties a court reporter would understand.

    i was just waiting for the hordes to leap upon that glaring wrongness.

    as for grabbing a hard drive, well, it's nice to give as we get. might as well harass them too.

  • 1984 (Score:2)

    by crazyc ( 142807 )
    Only Big Brother would sue Emmanuel Goldstein, the "Enemy of the People."

  • Q. Tell me, what does DeCSS do?
    A. DeCSS, as described in my
    Declaration, DeCSS performs three -- has three
    parts to it, if you will. It authorizes the DVD
    drive to release the CSS protected information, it
    allows its user, through user interface, to select
    one or more files from the DVD to copy.
    Both select what to copy and also
    where to copy those data files, and that can be on
    any, I guess, connected drive or network connection
    that is attached to their computer in the standard
    Windows file system. And then after the user
    indicates what files they would like to decipher
    and store, it then proceeds to read -- decrypt the
    contents of those files and store them where
    indicated by the user.
    Q. And you indicated that you undertook
    that exercise; is that correct?
    A. I did run the DeCSS, yes.
    Q. What movie did you use?
    A. I don't recall. It may have been, I
    think, The Matrix came out around then.
    Q. Do you know how big the movie was,
    how many gigabytes?
    A. It was 4 or 6 gigabytes. It was
    probably 4 gigabytes.
    Q. Do you have a record of what movie
    you viewed?
    A. I doubt I kept a detailed written
    record of it.
    Q. You actually don't know what movie
    it was or how big it was?
    A. Not exactly, no.
    Q. Did you leave the deciphered or
    decrypted files on your hard drive?
    A. I doubt I did. I may have.
    Q. How big is your hard drive?
    A. I think the machine that ran on was,
    I don't know, 10, 12 gigabytes.
    Q. Did you have to clear files out in
    order to make room to store the movie?
    A. No.
    Q. You had between 4 and 6 open
    gigabytes of space on your hard drive?
    A. Yes.
    Q. You didn't play it, so you don't
    know if it would actually play?
    A. I played it from the DVD.
    Q. But you didn't play it from the
    stored files; is that correct?
    A. I did not.



    So Schumann, the guy that is supposed to testify the DeCSS can be used to decrypt DVDs never played back the movie he copied! And, deleted the copy of the movie from his HD afterwards This has to hurt the MPAA case.

    Most of the rest of the testimony deals with how Schumann became aware of DeCSS, what other methods of pirating DVDs already existed prior to DeCSS being written (using a video capture card to re-record to VCD); the impracticality of copying a DVD (DVD-R's not readily available, can't download a DVD movie over a 56k modem, loss of quality if put on VCD, etc.); and, whether there were any known cases of DeCSS being used for pirating.

  • Bablefish or any other online translator could handle legal mumbo jumbo. You could feed it an entire court proceeding and all bablefish would have to say is: "That guy is screwed!"

    Just a thought.

  • Re:It's not the complete transcript (Score:4)

    by bwt ( 68845 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @07:13AM (#1009126)
    Parts of it are marked confidential, see begining (lines 8-13 on page 4), so it looks like Mr Gold got his way.

    Um, no. Gold wanted the whole thing marked confidential. The fact that you are reading it means Gold lost. They had a hearing and the judge sided with Garbus (except that journalists can't actually attend the depositions - they can only get the transcripts). Only personal information and things that are truly trade secrets will be redacted. Otherwise, 'prominent' people's depositions will be released to the public within 3 days, all others within 10 days. Anything released can be posted on the net.

  • Re:he's gonna be pissed (Score:3)

    by breser ( 16790 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @06:40PM (#1009133) Homepage
    No you're totally interpretating what he meant wrong and taking it very much so out of context.

    The agreement they made was to treat the entire thing as confidential until they received the deposition (i.e. the paper copy) and then they would ammend what was and was not confidential.

    So he meant tomorrow literally. It's not unusual for paper copies of depositions to not be available to even the lawyers for up to a week. In fact if they want it quickly (like say the next day) they usually have to pay the court reporter extra.

    You'll note that this deposition was taken almost a month ago. So I'm sure all issues with what was and was not confidential have been adequately been hashed over by the parties.

  • Linux BSD vs. Linux/BSD (Score:5)

    by Sir Tristam ( 139543 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @06:16AM (#1009136)
    I've noticed that there are a lot of posts about this article to the effect of "These MPAA lawyers are so dumb; they're talking about Linux BSD, and there is no such thing." Now, don't get me wrong, I think that the MPAA has their collective cranium firmly lodged up their rectal orifice on this one, but I'm not sure that the lawyers deserve the flames they're taking on this point. We have to remember that we are reading a transcript typed up by a court reporter who has proabaly not spent much time researching the technical aspects of this matter. It is entirely possible that the lawyers' notes read 'Linux/BSD' and the court reporter is taking down what they say, losing the silent slash.

    Guys/gals, put this one down as a typographical error before we start looking too petty, and let's start looking at the real substance of what the two sides are saying.

  • I think they meant decrypt CSS, (accually reverse-engineer). Which was done to create DeCSS.
  • The law firm Garbus works with also had a relationship with Time Warner. At the time of this deposition, the MPAA was trying to get him thrown off the case for this reason. That effort has since failed. In the interim, the judge sought a compromise by allowing him to continue but specifically excluded Time Warner until he had time to decide whether to throw Garbus off the case.
  • "Give a man a match and he'll be warm for an hour; light him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
  • The lawyer Mr Garbus, keeps referring to "Linux BSD".

    Mr Garbus actually is a complete layman about tech matters, although his associate Mr Hernstadt is much more informed. Garbus has posted a couple times to the Openlaw mailing list and it's very clear that he can barely type and that he isn't exactly sure what a mailing list is.

    He is, on the other hand, an extremely competent lawyer. John Young, who has attended many of the hearing reports that he is exceedingly composed in front of the often hostile Judge Kaplan. In fact, his effectiveness is starting to score points. In the last hearing (on public access to the transcripts), Kaplan wasn't so hostile to our side. One of the points Garbus then made is that he needs public access because the issues are so technical.

    Instead of bashing him as 'computer-illiterate', we need to understand that these things are not obvious and accept the burden to explain them. We're lucky that he is a good enough lawyer to have won us the right to read them at all -- believe me the MPAA brief from Proskaur Rose trying to close off the depositions was no small thing to defeat.

    The Openlaw forum is in fairly regular communication with Hernstadt, so when they make errors, we just need to politely put them on a list and explain them so they don't make the same mistake twice.

  • Why this deposition is boring as paste (Score:5)

    by jms ( 11418 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @07:44AM (#1009152)
    The whole thing looks like a bunch of back and forth bickering, and to a certain extent it is. Once you understand what is really going on, things become more clear and the exercise becomes more useful.

    The purpose (for the defense) of a deposition such as this serves two purposes. First, you try and find out what the potential expert witness knows and has witnessed.

    Secondly, and more importantly in the case of this particular expert witness, Mr. Garbus has placed into the record a long list of what Mr. Schumann does not know and does not have knowledge of. For instance, among the hundreds of factoids teased out by Mr. Garbus, it came out that Mr. Schumann has no knowledge of anyone ever using DeCSS to create a pirate DVD disk that was then sold.

    This limits the value of the witness to the MPAA at trial. He can't claim that he has seen or heard of anyone using DeCSS to burn a pirate DVD and sell it, because he testified that he hasn't in his deposition. This also gives Mr. Schumann about a hundred different chances to blow his credibility on the stand by contradicting his deposition.

    Think of it as seeding the minefield.

    This is how the game is played, and you have a front row seat. Enjoy!

  • Schumann's response to own testinony (Score:3)

    by Cy Guy ( 56083 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @07:48AM (#1009153) Homepage Journal
    Also available on the Cryptome site is a copy of Second Supplemental Declaration of Robert W. Schumann [cryptome.org]. This is basically his response to his own testimony where it gets to add any additional information he doesn't feel he explained adequately during the questioning.

    He mostly emphasizes that despite the dificulty of making pirated DVDs, there is a real danger of pirating DVD movies by compressing the DeCSS'd movie files with DivX, which he claims can currently compress a movie to 1.2Gb, small enough to put on two CDR's, or to send over a 100Mbs LAN in 7 minutes.

    He uses Gnutella & Freenet as examples of the real current threat, saying "the most concentrated activity in the unauthorized digital copying and Internet transmission of pirated copies occurs among college-age students. This is not only because of the demographics of age and interest, but also because access to wideband systems is readily available to them."

    He also attacks the argument that DeCSS has "legitimate academic, commercial or scientific value", noting that if this were the case, then it would only be available in source code, since, it is hard to learn how a program works from a compiled binary.

  • New lawsuit launched. (Score:5)

    by Richy_T ( 111409 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @04:45AM (#1009160) Homepage
    In a press release today, the American Automobile Association announced that it would be launching a lawsuit against large numbers of internet users "as soon as we can find something to litigate about". A spokesperson for the organisation said "With the recent lawsuits instigated by other companies with acronyms ending with 'AA' such as the MPAA and RIAA, we felt we were in danger of falling behind in terms of publicity and dilution of the brand. Our members need to be reassured that the triple-A will always be doing its upmost to be first, whether it be ensuring its members get from A to B or initiation spurious lawsuits"

    When asked if "Alcoholics Anonymous" would be jumping on the litigation bandwagon, their spokesman said "Our lawyers are looking into whether is is sufficient to simply have an acronym ending in 'AA' or whether the actual name must also include the words 'American' and 'Association'"

    Rich

  • Damn, if people like this are going to be representing either side in this case, I don't hold much hope for anything useful to be accomplished:

    Q. Go ahead. What is your understanding of CSS-cat based on its name?
    A. It is a mechanism for reading files.
    Q. Do you know who developed CSS-cat?
    A. I do not.
    Q. Do you know whether or not it is a Linux BSD program?
    A. Can you describe Linux BSD?
    Q. You previously said that CSS-auth was a Linux BSD program.
    A. I belief I said that CSS-auth was a Linux program.

    Say what? What the hell is Linux BSD? If these people have such a feeble grasp on even the names of the technologies that they're fighting over, why are they involved in the trial at all? CSS-cat is a mechanism for reading files? I guess that's... a way of putting it... kinda forgetting the important part of DECRYPTING THE DVD DATA FIRST, which is what this damn thing is all about, yes?
    --
  • Q. When you say you have spoken to people at those companies, who is it that you have spoken to at each of the companies? For example, Universal.

    MR. GOLD: If it was after January of 00, don't answer. If it was before, don't answer.

    Gotta luv them lawyers....
  • Why shouldn't he just be asking for the hard drive? That is all he needs in order to find out what is on the computer? DUH

  • highlights (not concerning computer illiteracy) (Score:3)

    by inquis ( 143542 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @06:48AM (#1009171)

    here are some things I found interesting and why I found them so.

    page 39 line 25 - page 40 line 11

    25 A. I'm sorry. I did not download the

    2 materials I reviewed that is attached here. I did
    3 not do the downloading. I reviewed downloaded
    4 materials, which is what I said in my affidavits,
    5 but I did not, myself, download these materials.
    6 Q. Your colleagues did?
    7 A. They did not.
    8 Q. Who did?
    9 A. My client did.
    10 Q. Which client?
    11 A. That would have been MPAA.

    hmm... so that means that the lawyer only got to see hand-picked posts by 1337 warez d00dz... the signal-to-noise ratio on some lists can be quite low.

    page 66 line 18 - page 68 line 16

    18 Q. Other than conversations that you

    19 have had with Proskauer or any of their clients,
    20 and the reference that you just made to the Toronto
    21 Star, have you ever heard of anyone or know the
    22 name of anyone who has used DeCSS to download a DVD
    23 and watch a DVD?
    24 A. I have certainly seen much, I guess,
    25 ancillary evidence of it occurring.
    2 Q. Specific evidence.
    3 MR. GOLD: I am going to object to
    4 the form of the question.
    5 Q. When you say ancillary --
    6 MR. GOLD: If you want to ask the
    7 witness what evidence he has seen, ask
    8 him that.
    9 Q. What ancillary evidence have you
    10 seen?
    11 A. A variety of websites that describe
    12 copy and share your movies.
    13 Q. Do you know if anyone has acted on
    14 those websites, what is said in the websites,
    15 mainly copy and share your movies?
    16 A. I have no personal knowledge.
    17 RL Q. As of today, you have no personal
    18 knowledge of whether or not anyone has ever shared
    19 a movie by using DeCSS to decrypt a DVD? All you
    20 know is that the websites tell people to do it?
    21 DI MR. GOLD: The witness' answers
    22 stand for themselves.
    23 Q. Is that right?
    24 MR. GOLD: I have already taken
    25 objection to a part of this question, so
    2 I am going to object to this question,
    3 but you have all of the information at
    4 the time that you ask direct questions.
    5 Q. Have you ever seen a movie that had
    6 been on DVD on the internet?
    7 A. Have I ever seen a movie that had
    8 been on DVD on the internet?
    9 Q. Yes.
    10 MR. GOLD: By "seen," I think he
    11 means watched. Is that what you mean?
    12 MR. GARBUS: Yes.
    13 A. Have I ever watched one off the
    14 internet?
    15 Q. Yes.
    16 A. No.
    translation: supposedly "piracy" happens, but I have never seen it happen for myself.

    oh yea, and a special bonus, following right after the previous quote:

    17 Q. Do you know of anyone who has? 18 A. Yes.

    19 Q. Who?
    20 A. I know of a cousin of mine.
    21 Q. Do you know how it got on the
    22 internet?
    23 A. I do not.
    24 Q. Do you know if it came from DeCSS?
    25 A. In that particular case, it almost
    2 certainly did not come from DeCSS.

    oh, so i've seen a pirated DVD. but it was not from CeCSS.

    that's all for this episode... damn this thing is long...

    the inquisitor has spoken.

  • I'd say it's more like a freight train hitting a bicycle.

  • Actually, the lawyers may know very well what they're talking about (at least to the level of an educated person who isn't involved in software development on a day to day basis).

    The thing is, they know that the testimony is going to be read/heard by at least a judge and quite possibly a jury, who are virtually guaranteed to know far less about this sort of thing, and the only opportunity they have to educate the judge/jury on it is through what they ask the witnesses. Which can lead to asking a lot of dumb questions.

    In effect, the laywer is serving as proxy for the judge/jury, since the jury cannot ask questions itself. (Of course, he's acting as a filtering proxy -- he won't ask questions he doesn't want the jury to hear the answers too, but the opposing lawyer might.)
  • Considering that the MPAA believes that CSS is a copy protection program then DeCSS would be a device to circumvent a copy-protection since it removes said copy protection, thus circumventing it.

    Whether CSS is an actual copy protection device is debatable.

  • Funny -Zen and the Art of Depositions (Score:4)

    by BoLean ( 41374 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @07:56AM (#1009176) Homepage

    Q. Do you know what Linux is?
    A. I assume so, yes.
    Q. You assume you know?
    A. As much as anybody knows what Linux is.

  • That caught me up for a minute too, but I believe what it means is that the deposition is only concerned with events taking place during January 00, not before the start or after the end.
  • Here's an interesting exchange between Hernstadt and Schumann.

    Q. Does DeCSS permit a consumer who has purchased a DVD to fast-forward through sections of a DVD that the manufacturer has prevented from being fast-forwarded?
    A. DeCSS itself?

    Q. That's my question.
    A. No.

    Q. Does DeCSS enable someone to use with some other program, like a DVD player, to skip the region code?
    A. I think it is irrelevant to that problem.

    Q. You think DeCSS is irrelevant to that problem?
    A. To the problem of evading region code?

    Q. Yes.
    A. Yes.

    Q. In a Declaration if there is a statement that says that DeCSS permits you to evade region coding, a region coding limitation, then that statement is incorrect?
    A. In my professional opinion, DeCSS is irrelevant to evading the region coding, in your terminology.

    Q. Why is that?
    A. Because region coding is not part of the DeCSS specification.

    Schumann probably means CSS specification there, but this is still bunk. Hernstadt posted about this dialog on the Openlaw mailing list. We confirmed his beleif that he basically caught Schumann spewing junk, so this'll give us a good chance to "impeach" their expert witness come trial time.

    Of course DeCSS lets you evade region codes -- it doesn't pay any attention to it and will decrypt DVD's from all regions. Schumann was clearly trying to pull the wool over their eyes.
  • Bear in mind that this transcript came from a transcription of a court stenographer. Stenographers are much better at recording things like "I object to the form of the question", then things like "http://www.slashdot.org"

  • Page 25, starting at around line 17. They get into the definition of a "compressed" file and how he obtained it. Instead of understanding simply "I downloaded the program in a compressed archive, unpacked it and used it," they drag it out to this long winded borefest of who compressed it, how it was compressed, why it was compressed, how long it took to decompress, blah.. god.. it's all like that.. ugh.

    4 Q. Well, tell me how you had it

    5 compressed.

    6 A. I didn't compress it. I received

    7 it -- I would have received it, I believe,

    8 compressed. I don't remember the details. It's a

    9 standard technique, however.

    They have the nerve to ask for his harddrive simply because he used DeCSS to see if it would work. It's irrevelant unless they wish to accuse him of stealing movies (like, if he copied lots of movies on his harddrive and ran a site.. that would be bad... but if was just examining DeCSS.. then gimme a break!)

  • It's not the complete transcript (Score:4)

    by BlueUnderwear ( 73957 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @04:55AM (#1009187)
    Parts of it are marked confidential, see begining (lines 8-13 on page 4), so it looks like Mr Gold got his way.
  • Q. Do you know whether or not --

    [Recess was taken, some parts removed]

    -- the MPAA has done any investigation or examination into Linux's attempts to build a DVD player?

    A. Other than what I performed?

    Q. Yes.

    A. No.

    Wow, so now Linux is a legal entity? Last I checked, it was just a kernel...

    You'd think that the lawyers would have been at least partially briefed about the technology they're asking questions about...

  • Q. What is the Livid Group?
    A. It is a group of Linus developers who are in the process of -- I assume they arestill doing it, developing a DVD player for Linux.

    And I thought Linus was fully developed. :)

    Thad

  • Someone should create an encryption routine called "Position", then someone can crack it and create a program called "DePosition". Then the lawsuits can fly and we can have a "DePosition deposition"

    Rich

  • to get a better lawyer? This is absolutely ridiculous, lawyer that represents defendants has absolutely no understanding of technology.
  • Bablefish or any other online translator could handle legal mumbo jumbo. You could feed it an entire court proceeding and all bablefish would have to say is: "That guy is screwed!"

    Anybody else remember the bit in Asimov's Foundation where a logical analysis of the "assurances" offered by a visiting Imperial lord revealed that he had spent an entire week saying absolutely nothing?
    /.

  • Re:he's gonna be pissed (Score:3)

    by Anomalous Canard ( 137695 ) on Monday June 12, 2000 @05:00AM (#1009199)
    Judge Kaplan ruled last week that only certain information in the depositions would be sealed as confidential. All depositions may be released a week after they have been taken. The depositions of Eisner and Valenti may be released three days after they have been taken. The judge warned the plaintiffs about being too zealous in marking material as confidential.

    Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected

  • Jesus (Score:5)

    by Dr. Sp0ng ( 24354 ) <mspongNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday June 12, 2000 @05:01AM (#1009200) Homepage
    Look at this:

    UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC., PARAMOUNT
    PICTURES CORPORATION, METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
    STUDIOS, INC., TRISAR PICTURES, INC.,
    COLOMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC.,
    TIME WARNER ENTERTAINMENT CO., L.P.,
    DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC., and TWENTIETH
    CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION,

    Plaintiffs,

    vs.

    ERIC CORLEY a/k/a "EMMANUEL GOLDSTEIN"
    and 2600 ENTERPRISES, INC.,

    Defendants.

     Am I the only one who's getting visual images of an 18-wheeler hitting a Civic at 110 mph?
    --

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