I'm a little short of sleep, a little cranky, and feeling the effects of trial attendance on my work backlog, just like everybody else in the audience today. Good thing we get a weekend away from it.
Today's highlight is taking place this afternoon, so I can't see it: the LiviD DVD player demonstration. I wonder how it's going to go? Check the EFF trial transcripts around 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. tonight for the details!
Not to write off this morning's testimony by Emmanuel Goldstein, who publishes the Hacker Quarterly. The plaintiffs are still busy arguing that linking to a site with DeCSS is illegal, and they're determined to show why by asking not very helpful questions on cross-examination.
For example, why should it be relevant that some sites in 2600's mirror list might have had other content than just the DeCSS executable, and others might not have? Who cares? It's all about the SPEECH, stupid!
Okay, maybe I'm more than just a little cranky.
In the meantime, Judge Kaplan is pursuing another theory about how the plaintiffs can win this case. There's been some discussion as to the fact that plaintiffs have not been able to point to a single movie offered for download or trade or sale on the Internet which was copied (illegally) in part using DeCSS. Kaplan asked the parties to brief him on whether the defense shouldn't have the burden of proving that these movies *aren't* created with DeCSS, or else the plaintiffs are entitled to argue that they have been harmed. It seems a little backwards to me, but there's apparently a court case that could be used to argue this view: Summers v. Tice, 33 Cal.2d 80, 199 P.2d 1 (Cal. 1948).
One good moment was when a blue-haired doughnut-eating hacker, who shall remain unnamed unless he personally tells me otherwise, was pointed out by a representative for the plaintiffs as having been present with a recording device which he had held up to his mouth. (Speak into my Boston-cream-filled donut, please, sir...) We were on the verge of taking the whole troupe down to the commissary to buy doughnuts for everyone to hold up in court but somehow we just didn't have the energy.
I guess that's what must have happened to yesterday's trial party, too. Rumor had it that there was to be a Barlow-sponsored gathering near Chelsea Piers, but when I got to the designated meeting place, I found it fairly empty and recognized no familiar faces. After waiting around a little, I went home. It turns out that a few other people had the same experience; I wonder how many little one or two-person groups went down there during non-overlapping time slots, waited for the party to arrive, and finally gave up?
Speaking of not getting any work done, Princeton's CS department must be pretty backlogged because virtually the entire department seems to be coming down pro bono to testify for the good guys. (Thanks!) Today a networking expert and an expert in digital video compression (and other areas) showed up to do their spiels. Yesterday afternoon, Ed Felten was in town talking about reverse engineering and security weaknesses. I'm sorry I missed it; he's a very eloquent speaker.
Oh, btw: the little girl mystery is *solved*. She's a relative of one of the judges who wants to decide what to do when she grows up; to help her out, folks agreed that she could sit in on this trial to see how they work (and presumably decide if the law is the field for her).
Obligatory Analogy Of The Day:
This is like having the Tappan Zee bridge going across the Hudson river up there, and we don't know how many cars are going across it, and we don't know how many lanes there are, but you want to find out what happens if all the cars are suddenly replaced by very large trucks, what will happen to the traffic.
(Judge Kaplan, trying to illustrate what was wrong with defense attorney's question to Felten about the effect of a sudden flood of downloads of DivXed movies over the Internet.)