Build Date: Sat Feb 22 15:30:42 2025 UTC
Any REAL CREED has to mention Spock or it really isn't much of a CREED now, is it?
-- Johnnie Royale
Smash the MPAA through DIRECT ACTION!!
2000-02-02 16:37:18
2600 Magazine is taking the fight for SOFTWARE FREEDOM to the streets of America! Striking a blow against the INFORMATION HOARDERS where they live! Beaujolais to that!
Check this: if you don't know the scoop on the DeCSS decryption issue, man, it's time you DID. Here's the deal: a group of brilliante Linux programmers developed a program that would let you play DVD movies on your Linux box. You would think that the DVD people would be, like, "Beaujolais!" to that, since it saved them a lot of trouble. But no!
See, the dipshits who make DVD movies have this lame, trivial encryption on the disks. The Linux DVD player needed to crack this encryption, using reverse-engineering. Which is TOTALLY ILLEGAL in the United States -- but the crazy cracking was done in Norway, which is a slightly more enlightened country for hacking in. But the DVD people -- including the heavy-weight industry group the MPAA -- started FREAKING OUT and running around BLINDLY like wounded moose and SUING everybody they could find.
There have been HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE hackers-rights violations all over the place. Bunches of people who just LINKED ON THEIR WEB PAGE to the DeCSS code have been sued! Just for having a link! Mother fucker! Also, the poor sap who did some of the first hacking on the project, Jon Johansen, was ARRESTED by ICY VIKING THUGS, and all his computers were seized, and even his DAD was thrown in the NORDIC CLINK! Imagine having to go to jail with your DAD, man. That would blow.
The WEIRD thing is that it's ALL about wanting to watch MOVIES on Linux! Watching MOVIES is not a fucking CRIME! It's not even MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE! It's not like people aren't BUYING the fucking DVDs in the first place -- they're just ASKING TO PLAY THEM on a REASONABLE OPERATING SYSTEM. WHAT is so wrong with that!? WHY does Jack Valenti have CAYENNE in his BRIEFS about this? God damn!
Anyways, 2600 Magazine, who are some of the main defendants in this linking bullshit case, are calling on ALL SOFTWARE FREEDOM ADVOCATES to take this battle BACK to the MAN. They want people to hit the movie theaters of America this Friday with DEMONSTRATIONS and FLIERS and just generally be a PAIN in the BUTT. It's one of those AWARENESS-RAISING things that are so crucially important.
The movie industry has set itself up against the SOFTWARE JIHAD, and only ONE group can come out on top here! Go to the movies this Friday and make sure it's US and not THEM!
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Paranoid Strippers & Psychotic Crack Dealers (Tales of Christmas Eve)
Christmas day, for the last 17 or so years has bored me. I find that the real fun and excitement always takes place on Christmas Eve. Every other year, it's the excitement of the metaphorical hunt instead of the kill. Otherwise, it's just plain bad craziness. (More...)
Clowns Take on God in Mysterious Annual Ceremony
Last Sunday's (the 6th) Grimaldi Service at a small church in East London was a red-letter day for clowns worldwide. About a hundred old-school red-nosed clowns made the sombre trip to darkest Dalston to pay their respects to clowns who died in the last year and to thank God for the gift of laughter in a bizarre ceremony presided over by the eccentric Reverend Clown Roly, resplendent in a garish red lumberjack shirt with oversized gold lapels. (More...)
The Innocent San Francisco Mule
Flesh and Abby have moved to an isolated rural location in the United States - equipped only with their sense of adventure. Recently they came down off the mountain briefly to file this report? (More...)
Hooray! At long last, a NEW Spocktail of the Week! Kid-tested, mother-approved! (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
The Liquidation of Hobo Junction
Albany, CA's homeless hooverville by the Bay, "Hobo Junction," is going to be torn down by The Man. Entrances are already being blocked off, and it's now difficult and dangerous to get there. Worse, these obstacles are making it hard to get to the nearby HORSE TRACK on foot. Local historian, Pao Tzu, has an overview of situation. (More...)
