Hearing the sound of a car hitting a person is one of the un-fun things about living above Telegraph Ave.

Best. Poster. Ever.

(thanks Leia!)

Okay, follow me on this one, this is great:

One of the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA, passed into law in 1998 as house resolution 2281) is that not only is it illegal to circumvent content-protection schemes (for music, CDs, DVDs, anything) but it's also illegal to distribute such circumventions, even if the circumvention mechanism in question can be used for legal purposes, such as making a personal backup of a piece of software or encoding a CD to mp3 to listen on your portable player.

The most famous test case for this was regarding DeCSS, a small software app that allowed people to copy and decrypt DVD movies. Within weeks of the software coming out, the developer was sued, and sites hosting the software were ordered to remove or face prosecution.

The most notable site refusing to remove the program was the hacker site 2600. 2600 was sued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) where the judge found in favor of the plaintiff, and 2600 lost [pdf]. To be clear, they were breaking the law because they were, through dissemination of information, enabling people to circumvent a content-protection scheme.

In a similar case, a Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, was detained while attending a trade show in the United States because of his participation in creating a program that circumvented Adobe's content copy-protection scheme.

After Adobe customers staged significant protests at Adobe's San Jose headquarters, Adobe asked that the charges against Sklyarov be dropped. Since it was a criminal matter, not a civil matter, Federal prosecutors had the option to continue with the charges against Sklyarov if they so chose. As of May 8th, a federal judge has declared that the law is constitutional, and that Sklyarov and his company must still stand trial to determine if they violated it.

...

A few months ago, Sony started manufacturing audio discs with a copy-protection scheme which inhibited their being ripped into MP3s by making them incompatible with the Audio CD and Hybrid CD formats in such a way that most audio CD players could read them, but CD-ROM drives could not. (Pioneer, the developer of the CD format, claims that Sony can't call them 'Audio CDs' because they don't conform to the standard for that designation.)

The protection system works by making a 'hybrid CD' that looks like it contains both an audio session (with the music tracks) and a data session. While an audio CD player ignores the data portion entirely, a CD-ROM drive will check the data session on mounting the disc, to determine what it should do with that data. On Sony's disc, they place corrupt header data on that session, so that the CD-ROM drive rejects the disc, audio tracks and all, and refuses to mount it.

Some smart folks figured out that this was how Sony managed their trick, and they scribbled over the data session portion of the disc with a black marker. The data portion is visible as the matte ring around the edge of the CD, while the audio tracks make up the matte circle from the inner edge to nearly the outer edge of the CD.

Covering the data track prevents it from being read in the first place, and thus the CD-ROM drive sees a simple audio CD, and operates normally.

Okay, well and good. Except that by the letter of the DMCA, this is a circumvention mechanism and it is therefore illegal to make this modification to the media you purchased. Further, disseminating instructions on how to circumvent the copy-protection mechanism is also a criminal violation of the DMCA.

So yesterday CNN publishes a story about the circumvention technique, spelling out in the introductory paragraph exactly how to defeat Sony's copy protection mechanism.

According to the DCMA, ratified by Congress and upheld by the federal courts, CNN appears to be in violation of the law, and should face criminal prosecution (as should I for this very post).

It's irrelevant that Sony might not want to press charges against CNN. The federal government's refusal to grant Adobe's request to drop the charges against Sklyarov demonstrates that, as a criminal matter, the decision on whether to prosecute doesn't lie solely with the alleged victim.

The trouble is that the only person who is helped by this prosecution is the consumer. The entertainment industry would rather not have this trial come to court for fear it would expose the DMCA's protections as going beyond reason and restricting a free press. CNN would rather not get prosecuted. Actually, I hope I'm wrong and CNN would welcome the constitutional challenge, but with so many media outlets being owned by entertainment corporations in favor of the DMCA, it's questionable how likely CNN, or other sizable media outlets would be to test this case. A smaller outlet probably wouldn't want to risk the legal consequences of losing.

It's important to realize that bringing CNN to court over its story sounds stupid and childish, and it absolutely is. sadly, it's what the DMCA demands, and I dearly, dearly hope that it happens to show that the copy-protection-protection laws in the DMCA go far beyond what is reasonable for the protections they seek to provide, and that this case may be the method for stopping the next Sklyarov, or any person simply wanting an mp3 of the album for which they've purchased an individual license.

I'm sending out a few emails tonight. Further news will follow if any of the people in positions to do something about this get back to me...

Oakland and Pittsburgh are both 53.1 degrees this morning. See? It's not so different...

Okay, rather than write a long critique/rant/rave about the finale (which some of my fellow timeshifters haven't watched yet), I'll point you to the post I made this morning on MetaFilter.

The rest of the thread is pretty insightful (well, some of it is) as well...

FilePile, one of the best sites ever for keeping up on cultural events, memes, kittens, and porn, has a thriving online community, but has closed new users accounts for about a year.

Today, a regular user put their spare account up for auction on eBay. This is one of the most relevant, ironic, and interesting cases of grassroots e-commerce I've seen all year.

It's a serious, valid auction, and there are regular filepile users I know who would pay $300 for the accounts they got for free, but the question remains, how much will someone bid for an account on a site they've never seen? FilePile has always been a word-of-mouth thing, and since it's free and the server's so overloaded, there's never been an incentive to publicize it.

This'll be fun to watch.

For the rest of us: I've been contemplating a 'best of FilePile' secion on Fury, where I'd share some of the gems that come through there...

(note: At posting time, the auction was at $31, starting from $0.01)

God damn IE. Before it crashed in mid-composition, I wrote 500 words about Stephen Wolfram's new book, "A New Kind of Science" before linking to a great Wired story written by Steven Levy on Wolfram, his book, and the decade-long journey to create it and publish it, and a Slashdot review from a reader who's skimmed the surface of the dense 1200-page tome.

My copy's arriving from Amazon in just a few hours. The first self-funded publication run of 50,000 copies has already sold out, so who knows how long it'll be before Amazon, Ingram, and bookstores nationwide will be able to fill orders for the book which yesterday was Amazon's #1 bestselling item.

More to come as I dive into the work that's already made a big splash (good and bad) in the scientific community.

I'm taking the train today, for the first time in a week. On my last transit, up from Santa Clara after work a week ago last Monday, I was working on part II of the focus group story, as well as a few other fluffy tidbits I'll be posting today and tomorrow. Halfway between Hayward and Oakland, I'd just finished writing a post and I closed my notebook and took off my headphones.

My phone started ringing. It was Emily. As I thumbed to pick up the call, I noticed there was a waiting voice message from a call I didn't notice while under headphones.

Emily's dad was very sick and was in the hospital, and she had been planning to fly out to Chicago with her sister on Friday, but she'd just found out he was getting worse, and she stepped up plans to leave on Tuesday. As soon as the train arrived in Oakland, I drove back down to Hayward to provide what comfort I could as her friend.

Emily's boyfriend drove her to the airport in the morning, and by Tuesday afternoon she was with her father.

I've met Emily's parents a couple times. First, when we were dating and went to her cousin's wedding in Minnesota, and later when they came to visit her in Pleasanton. I know how deeply she cares for them, and I knew enough to know that I could barely conecieve what she's going through.

I was dealing with an issue with my own father for the past couple weeks, and that disagreement suddenly seemed so trivial compared to the prospect of losing one of my parents. As a friend, I'm always trying to do what I can for people, and when my friends are having trouble, I try to go out of my way to do whatever I can to help. It's humbling and frustrating to a friend so in need and yet know there's nothing you can do but take care of the cat, send encouraging thoughts, and wait.

On Friday Emily's dad passed away. It wasn't lost on me that if she had kept her original itinerary, she would have arrived on Friday, a few hours too late.

Even without being able to fathom the loss of a parent, I'm amazed at Emily's keep-it-togetherness. From the painful waiting/sleeping/living-at-the-hospital she's had to switch gears, fielding the calls of sympathy from family and friends, taking as much burden as possible off her mom. Today is his funeral, and I'm there in spirit.

Emily's staying out there for a bit longer to help out her mom. I'm looking forward to her coming back, to her friends who miss her, love her, and who are there for whatever she needs.

Em, let me be the first here to tell you how deeply sorry I am for you and your family's loss. We love you.

(notes: Most of this was written before 'Evil Will goes on a Rampage' aired. It's also rather randomly put together, but I've too much of a backlog to go editing and rewriting this into a term paper. :-)

I love Buffy. Along with The West Wing, it's my favorite show on TV.

But lately Buffy's been pissing me off.

Sure, there have been compelling storylines, and as far as the master-arc goes, I couldn't be more impressed with all the changes. Nevertheless, I don't feel like I'm watching anymore, but instead being manipulated.

The Buffy writers know the success they have on their hands. They know their rapt audience, lusting for their weekly fix, pushing the story along. They know that there are basically only two ways to lose this momentum.

The first way is to pull a Moonlighting or X-Files. For one reason or another the master-arc progressions stalls completely. You don't have to lose a main character to stop the arc-train. Sometimes it happens because the producers give too many opportunities to too many writers, making it nearly impossible to maintain a cohesive arc, resulting in a string of interchangeable capsulated episodes (again, X-Files pre-Duchovny's departure is a good example).

A lot of producers fear significant cast and focus changes. Some of that fear is nested with the worry about becoming a soap opera, where implausibility rules, and storyline shock is used for shock's sake. This kind of turn is rapidly followed by a 'who cares'-manship of the audience. When anything can happen at any time, what does it matter what the characters do? This is the second way to lose the golden eye of the viewer.

Granted, some shows thrive by exploiting both of these: Creating a world where outlandish things happen all the time, yet nothing ever sticks. This is usually the domain of animated shows. The Simpsons, Futurama, and South Park live and thrive in this world. This is not a suggested area for live-action shows, unless you're The Tick.

But back my Buffy Beef...

Buffy neatly avoids both these problems, but at the risk of finding a third problem. While the first few seasons had season or half-season arcs (The Master, Good Angel, Bad Angel, Dead Angel, Good Angel, etc.) for the most part the Scooby Gang remained constant, not rocking the boat until Joss proved to the network and the sponsors that she was seaworthy.

Soon characters were being added, relationships formed, were broken, twisted. Dawn was added, forever imprinted on the Summers household like a big 'CHA' half-etched on the surface of the moon. Plotline floatsam.

The true strokes of genius on the show is when the unexpected but believable happens. In 'The Body' where Buffy's mom is dead (not 'dies' but is just found dead, in the most honest post-mortem portrayal I'd ever care to see) we felt for the characters. It's not like she was murdered by her own lovechild who was kidnapped as a baby and returns from an evil dimension to hunt her down for her wrongs (ahem). No, it was a good example of life. Nobody expects an aneurism, and Joss didn't try to prepare us for one.

Granted, too much of that sort of thing and it becomes unbelievable, but in the right dose, it's honest life. When was the last time someone got in a car accident in a show, right in the middle of a totally unrelated storyline, and the accident becomes the new line? It happens all the time in real life, but on TV? Only on the soaps. Or ER, which is a perfect example of life-events pushing a storyline.

So I've written over 600 words. What am I getting at?

Buffy's in danger of turning to crap.

There are legitimate ways to foreshadow: Buffy the Musical was great because it revealed people's secrets. It didn't spell out what was going to happen, because often times actual events are the result of more than just innermost character desires. Contrived? Perhaps. But it was honest. It didn't declare what would happen, it was just a domesday book of where everyone was at at the given time.

Now, though, in recent episodes, the foreshadowing isn't at the character level, but at the omniscient level. When Willow and Tara get back together so fast and so passionately, Joss is tying on little heartstrings to pull a week later, when he kills her with a random bullet through the heart. When Spike has to leave for the sake of the story, we have to feel good about it, so he has to try to rape Buffy so he's the bad guy again.

Back to 'The Body', It was powerful because it was plausible, indefensible, and random. Shooting Tara through the heart just after her reconciliation is soap-operatic at best, predictable at worst.

Joss is telling me how to feel, so he can pull me like a puppet. "See? Spike is good deep down. Trust us; he doesn't have a soul, but you want to like him like he has one anyhow. Okay, do you feel for him yet? No? Then let's make him a little more sincere and a little more abused. Yet? Okay. Now let's show you how you were wrong when he slams Buffy's head to the porcelain.

"Remember how strongly people felt when Glory scrambled Tara's mind? Let's do that again! Oh, but we have to get Tara and Willow back together. The happier they are, the better it'll be. It'll be like Romeo and Juliet with kittens!"

Bah. My problem with all this is that Buffy's producers and writers decide where they want the series to go, then they figure out how to get it there. After a large, cycling ensemble cast (Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, Angel, Spike, (buffy's mom), Cordelia, Oz, Faith, Wesley, Anya, Riley, Dawn and Tara) (not counting the transient arc(h)-foes: Glory, Ben, the Master, the evil-supervillian-troika, Spike (err, again), Drusilla, Anya (heh), The Mayor, Principal Snyder, the Initiative and Professor Walsh, the Watcher's Council, etc.) they've decided to bring it back to the original foursome, the core Scoobies. Only in Giles's place we get Dawn, the master replaced by the apprentice (and if you think Dawn's not going to be 'let in' and will continue to warm the little-sister bench, then that's exactly what Joss wants you to think. Dawn has a trick up her sleeve that nobody knows yet.

Right, so: Foursome. Gotta get rid of Anya, while not making the viewers hate Xander for it. Have her sleep with Spike and get her vengeance back on. Gotta get rid of Tara without people hating Willow. Kill her off randomly in front of Willow. This also neatly solves the problem of Willow's ride on the wicca wagon, because a wegan Willow is as useful to the scoobies as a stupid Selma. (speaking of which, is it any coincidence that Buffy is reverting to core scoobies at the same time as Sarah Michelle Geller is staring in the Scooby movie?)

We got rid of Spike (but don't worry, "I'll be back, Slayer, and when I do..."), Giles is in England with a new show life, Mom's dead, Riley's married, Angel's on another network, and Oz is still on his wolfsome walkabout. Actually, there are some serious possibilities in the land of Oz. I watched Oz's last visit to Sunnydale last night, and his and Willow's 'wrong time, wrong place, but someday' speech sets the stage for an Oz housekeeping, if Joss can handle it tactfully enough to not raise the potential 'boy saving Willow from her lesbian self' ire.

Funny how there's an order to the randomness. In the words of the Fear Demon, "They're all going to abandon you, you know."

And of course, tonight we'll get to find out "what it really means to be a Slayer." Finally, again.

Sorry for the relative silence this weekend. I've had a lot going on, and a lot on my mind (Buffy, scientific revolutions, death, friendship, new beginnings, and more).

Ideally, this should result in more blogging, not less, and it will inthe long run, but I have to finish a few things first. I have a few posts that were almost-finished last week, so I'll touch them up and post 'em later today.

Also, on the shallow end of the Fury pool, I hope I'm not the only one who's excited for tomorrow's two-hour Buffy... Mmm... Evil Willow...