CNet reports that IDC has released a new way of ranking supercomputers which they claim is more accurate than previous methods, and the results are drastically different.

San Jose – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today asked a California Superior Court judge to dismiss a case involving a DVD descrambling program called DeCSS because that program is widely available on the Internet and cannot be considered a trade secret. The DVD Copy Control Assocation (DVD CCA) filed the lawsuit against Andrew Bunner and others in December 1999, alleging that Web publishers of DeCSS unlawfully misappropriated trade secrets.

The case, officially known as DVD CCA v. Bunner, could set an important precedent in how far trade secret law can affect First Amendment free speech rights.

Building on a November 1st victory when the California Court of Appeal reversed the court’s preliminary injunction confirming that the publication of DeCSS is protected by the First Amendment, Bunner and his legal team today asked the court to recognize that – because it is widely available – the information contained in DeCSS cannot be a “secret” protected under trade secret law.

California trade secret law prohibits injunctions once a trade secret becomes generally known to the public. Noting that Bunner found DeCSS in the public domain and simply republished it, the motion also relies on declarations from five leading academic scientists in the area of computer who confirm that DeCSS is not a secret.

The evidence includes the following facts:

* Hundreds, if not thousands, of sites on the Internet continue to publish DeCSS where it may be freely examined, copied, or downloaded.

* The CSS algorithms and keys have been the subject of worldwide academic study, research, teaching, and communication. Professors at Carnegie-Mellon, Berkeley and Lulea University of Sweden state that they use DeCSS as an example in their courses of how to avoid designing an encryption system easily vulnerable to circumvention.

* Wired Magazine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?s journal Technology Review have published DVD descrambling programs. The Wall Street Journal has published one of the CSS encryption keys.

* DVD CCA has ceased policing its alleged CSS trade secrets, claiming it would be too burdensome for it to examine every website now posting a DVD descrambling program.

Based on these facts, EFF told the court that “DVD CCA seeks to put the Court in the impossible position of trying to put the genie back into the bottle.”

DeCSS is a controversial program that unscrambles the information on DVDs. It was created as part of a project to develop a DVD player for computers running the Linux operating system. DeCSS was published on the Internet in 1999 by a Norwegian teenager and quickly republished by hundreds of other publishers around the globe. In early 2000, DVD CCA filed the lawsuit against hundreds of Web publishers seeking to ban its publication. Only one of the publishers, Andrew Bunner, has been subject to the jurisdiction of the California court. If Bunner’s motion is successful, the other publishers of DeCSS will also be free from the chilling effects of this California lawsuit.

Andrew Bunner is represented in the Superior Court by Richard Wiebe of San Francisco, Allonn Levy of San Jose’s HS Law Group, Tom Moore of Tomlinson Zisko Morosoli & Maser in Palo Alto, Professor Eben Moglen of Columbia University Law School, and Electronic Frontier Foundation attorneys Cindy Cohn and Robin Gross.

The following academics and scientists provided supporting declarations:

* Princeton Computer Science Professor Edward Felten (on sabbatical this year at Stanford Law School?s Center for the Internet and Society; chief technical adviser to the U.S. Department of Justice in United States v. Microsoft)

* University of California-Berkeley Computer Science Professor David Wagner

* Carnegie-Mellon University Principal Computer Scientist Dr. David Touretzky

* Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Scientist Gregory Kesden

* Computer Scientist Roland Parviainen of Sweden?s Luleå University of Technology

Current EFF filing in DVD CCA v. Bunner:
http://www.eff.org/sc/20011128_bunner_sum_judg_motion.html

The 6th District Court of Appeal decision overturning the injunction:
http://eff.org/sc/20011101_bunner_appellate_decision.html

More information on DVD CCA v. Bunner including legal filings, expert declarations, and media releases:
http://www.eff.org/Cases/DVDCCA_case/

About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression, privacy, and openness in the information society. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most-linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/

Kelly McNeill writes “Maintaining that its plan for reversing its downward slide is taking hold, Palm nonetheless has announced that it will reduce its workforce. The handheld device maker said some new hires “of additional people with skill sets to match the future needs” — including 45 software engineers recruited from recently acquired Be Inc. — will offset planned layoffs, resulting in a net loss of some 250 jobs.”

ftobin writes “Advogato has information on a report based on SourceForge project data. It gives a general overview of projects housed at SourceForge.”

CNet reports that this year’s Webby Awards are seeking nominations in a wide variety of categories, including everything from radio and science to news and activism sites.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
today represented a team led by Princeton Professor Ed
Felten in the first skirmish of a case challenging the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Without addressing
important First Amendment considerations and after less
than 25 minutes of debate, a plainly hostile Judge Garrett
Brown of the Federal District Court in Trenton, New Jersey,
dismissed the case. EFF intends to appeal.

“This judge apparently believes that the fact that hundreds
of scientists are currently afraid to publish their work
and that scientific conferences are relocating overseas
isn’t a problem,” noted Robin Gross, EFF Intellectual
Property Attorney. “This decision is clearly contrary to
settled First Amendment law, and we’re confident that the
3rd Circuit Court will reverse it on appeal.”

The court granted two separate motions to dismiss the case,
one brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the
second by private defendants led by the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA).

“Since the government and industry could not even agree on
what the DMCA means, it is not surprising that scientists
and researchers are deciding not to publish research for
fear of prosecution under the DMCA,” said EFF Legal
Director Cindy Cohn. “Scientists should not have to ask
permission from the entertainment industry before
publishing their work.”

Professor Felten and a team of researchers from Princeton
University, Rice University, and Xerox discovered that
digital watermark technology under development to protect
music sold by the recording industry has significant
security vulnerabilities. The recording industry,
represented by the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA) and the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)
Foundation, threatened to file suit in April 2001 if Felten
and his team published their research at a conference. They
subsequently issued a press release denying having
threatened the researchers. On behalf of the research team,
EFF then filed a lawsuit seeking a clear determination that
publication and presentation of this and other related
research is speech protected under the US Constitution both
at this conference and at other conferences in the future.

Together with USENIX, an association of over 10,000
technologists that publishes such scientific research,
Princeton Professor Edward Felten and his research team
had asked the court to declare that they have a First
Amendment right to discuss and publish their work, even if
it may discuss weaknesses in the technological systems used
to control digital music. The DMCA, passed in 1998, outlaws
providing technology and information that can be used to
gain access to a copyrighted work.

For all of the motions and declarations in the case:
http://www.eff.org/sc/felten/

About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages
and challenges industry and government to support free
expression, privacy, and openness in the information
society. EFF is a member-supported organization and
maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world:
http://www.eff.org/

Dave writes, Changelog:pre3:
– Al Viro: more superblock cleanups
– Jens Axboe: more patches for new block IO layer
– Christoph Hellwig: get rid of the old, long- deprecated SCSI error
handling
Download: http://www.kernel.org/mirrors/“

Kelly McNeill writes “Along with lots of angry consumers, a bunch of upset lawyers, several disenchanted judges and a slew of dissatisfied business executives, Apple CEO Steve Jobs joined the ranks of those vocally protesting the proposed settlement of a group of private antitrust cases pending against Microsoft. “We’re baffled that a settlement imposed against Microsoft for breaking the law should allow — even encourage — them to unfairly make inroads into education, one of the few markets left where they don’t have monopoly power,” Jobs said.”

Newsbytes reports “a federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit by civil liberties groups who claimed that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was planning to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to keep a Princeton University professor from publishing research on security flaws in music industry anti-piracy software.”

CNet reports that a “vulnerability in the most widely used FTP server program for Linux has left numerous sites open to online attackers, a situation worsened when Red Hat mistakenly released information on the flaw early, leaving other Linux companies scrambling to get a fix out.”