Try to find this number at Digg.com.
Monthly Archive for May, 2007
From Turre Legal:
In an unanimous decision released today, Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is “ineffective”. The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments that ban the circumvention of “effective technological measures”.
Oh joy! Oh 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0! Boy am I relieved to hear this decision. It means that I no longer need to be on the look out for the police when watching a DVD on Linux. I can now safely admit that I have libdvdcss installed on my computer. All the guilt and shame has finally been lifted off my shoulders. To watch a DVD on Linux no longer means you’re a criminal (in Europe at least).
But wait, there’s more:
According to the court, CSS no longer achieves its protection objective. The court relied on two expert witnesses and said that “…since a Norwegian hacker succeeded in circumventing CSS protection used in DVDs in 1999, end-users have been able to get with ease tens of similar circumventing software from the Internet even free of charge. [...].” Thus, the court concluded that “CSS protection can no longer be held ‘effective’ as defined in law.”
According to Finnish copyright law and the underlying EU directive, a protection measure is effective if it “achieves the protection objective” – that is, if it has not been “broken” or circumvented. Any protection measure which has been cracked is thus not effective, and it is legal to crack such a protection measure. This means that it is only illegal to crack protection systems which have not, or cannot be cracked. Wow, what a smart EU directive! Imagine if there was a law banning the picking of a lock which cannot be picked. That would just as smart.
It’ll be really interesting to see what happens to HD-DVD and Blu-ray. There will very likely soon be software to crack both, and following this court decision it should be legal to use such software.
So, kudos to the Helsinki District Court!
48th Valokuvatorstai photo challenge, “One”.
“1″ on aiheena melko haastava. Tietysti voisi räpsäistä kuvan mistä tahansa yhdestä kohteesta ja väittää että kuva nyt symboloi yhtä. Tyylilleni uskollinen ratkaisu olisi ollut kuvata kaksi tai kolme kohdetta rinnan, ja vääntää siitä sitten jokin hauska vitsi 
Tällä kertaa kuvassa kuitenkin jököttää vain yksi surkea ja onneton naurulokki. Kuvan sommittelu on enemmän kuin lakoninen. Sävyt ovat miellyttävän tasaiset ja kuvassa on rauhallinen ja tyyni tunnelma. Tätä olen taustakuvana tuijotellut nyt jo kokonaisen kuukauden, enkä ole vieläkään kyllästynyt.
Naurulokki on by the way suomalaisista lokeista ehdottomasti sympaattisin ja ystävällisin. Kannattaa tutustua. Samaa ei todellakaan voi sanoa Suomen vittumaisimmasta linnusta, eli siis häijysilmäisestä ja koukkunokkaisesta harmaalokista. Juokse pakoon ja lujaa, jos kohtaat harmaalokin yksin ulkona liikkuessasi.
The theme for Valokuvatorstai 47th photo challenge is the poem “Le Port” from Le Spleen de Paris by Charles Baudelaire from 1869. Here’s the translation from Babelfish:
A port is a charming stay for a tired heart of the fights of the life. The width of the sky, the mobile architecture of the clouds, colourings changeantes of the sea, the flutter of the headlights, are a prism marvelously suitable to amuse the eyes without never wearying them. The slim shapes of the ships, for gréement complicated, to which the swell prints harmonious oscillations, are used to maintain in the heart the taste the rate/rhythm and the beauty. And then, especially, there is kind of a mysterious and aristocratic pleasure for that which has neither curiosity any more nor ambition, to contemplate, lying in the view-point or accoudé on the mole, all these movements of those which leave and those which return, of those which have still the force to want, the desire to travel or to grow rich.
I love the sea and I love the harbour. This picture was taken at a marina near where I live. Yeah, it’s awesome just to watch other people work, come and go…
If you’re in Helsinki, you want to check out CityWall at the corner of Lasipalatsi (map). I took some pics in Helsinki, then went home to upload them to Flickr. When I came back a couple hours later I walked past the CityWall and saw my pictures there. That was pretty awesome! The CityWall automatically fetches pictures from Flickr that are tagged “Helsinki”. Kind of neat, you can watch in close to real time what’s happening in the city. For mobile users it works even better. The user interface is like something from Minority Report, it’s something you’ve never seen before but you know straight away how to use it. You can rotate and stretch pictures, you can zoom into the timeline and throw the pictures around… I saw a couple of little kids try it out – even the kids knew immediately how to use it! This is really the user interface of the future, the most intuitive thing I have ever seen. Cooler than the iPhone. Really awesome. Jeff Han has demonstrated this kind of technology earlier, but this wall is the first public multi-touch interface of this scale in the world. Just come to Helsinki if you want to play with it 
If you don’t believe me, check out this video. Oh and they interviewed me about my experience. I hope I managed to say something sensible.
I caught the girls from Serebro, Russia’s Eurovision 2007 representers, admiring Superman at Kamppi. More pics of Serebro in my Flickr set. Helsinki is good place to stalk celebrities now I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff on the streets lately…
In Finland you could get arrested for posting this code:
09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0
… and face up to two and a half years in prison.
It seems that the MPAA is sending DMCA takedown notices to sites all over the net. These attempts have caused a massive backslash, especially at Digg.com. How long will it take them to figure out that you can’t censor a number? It should be clear to everyone that DRM just doesn’t work, especially when it needs silly laws to protect itself.
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