365 T-shirts - the reasoning

This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.

I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.

I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.

When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.

The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.

I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.

Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)

Thursday, May 30, 2013

T-shirt #70: NO DVD CCA

T-shirt #70: NO DVD CCA - This shirt is illegal

Information wants to be free.

But is a movie information? Is it data or a work of art?

With the advent of DVD recorders came the arrival of DVD decrypters. I found this shirt online as the situation was becoming nationally known.



From August 4th 2000: "Copyleft sued over DVD code: LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - A T-shirt with the DVD encryption source code printed on its back has elicited the ire of the MPAA. The organization has added the shirt's creator, Copyleft, to the list of defendants in its lawsuit centering on the propagation of the DeCSS computer code, which cracks the encoding of DVDs. A small, New Jersey-based company, Copyleft specializes in items of interest to the "open source" sector of the technology community, who favors openly available coding for software so other programmers can improve upon or adapt it. Copyleft donates $4 for every DeCSS shirt sold to the Electronic Freedom Foundation, which is providing legal defense for Eric Corley (aka Emmanuel Goldstein) in the same lawsuit in which Copyleft now finds itself embroiled. Corley is being sued for publishing a link to the information that Copyleft printed on the controversial shirt" (Billboard, 2000).

I bought the shirt, which then promptly became illegal. The code for decrypting the copy protection on DVDs is printed on the back of the shirt. The shirt also came with the text of the code in text file format.

Copyleft as a concept is a thing described here: COPYLEFT.

Copyleft the concept is separate from the Copyleft organization that created this T-shirt.



The issue with the T-shirt is also well-described in a CNN article.

Also, RGTOnline has a good article.

As of 2013, the DeCSS source code and several clones can be readily obtained on the Internet.

Copyleft, which was to be found at  www.copyleft.net, is defunct.

The DVD CCA is at www.dvdcca.org.

A great resource for these issues is the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). The EFF is at www.eff.org.

Also, these issues are frequently written about at one of the 'Net's best blogs: BOING BOING.

Information wants to be free.

- chris tower - 1305.30 - 10:25
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