Re: EFF's take on DVD situation

[William.P.McGonigle@artoo.hitchcock.org (William P. McGonigle)]

--- "John B. Brown" wrote:
...
     So it aint so cut and dried as the PR folks would have you believe. Just
ONE
small change breaks both a patent and a copyright. Or at the least casts some
very heavy doubt.
--- end of quote ---

Yes, this is clearly correct, but doesn't pertain to my post.  

The original CSS attack was [allegedly] using a Xing key, copied verbatim from
their binary code.  Since the whole block of keys is included on every DVD, and
those are copyrighted, that was my concern. 

What I have learned subsequent to my post has two important parts:

1) such a small block (one key of 5 bytes) is not eligible for a copyright
2) the keys are so astonishingly small that it seems possible to find a key
without prior knowledge, so my concern is not valid.  The Xing key was only used
to reverse engineer the system, after that it was obvious how to attack it.

This is good.

-Bill