7 lines of Magic

[ChOas]

Hey All....

Don`t know if i'm violating something, but I would
like to point you all at this

It descrambles CCS in 7 lines of perl...

6 bytes extra, and it`ll do it real-time

Now THAT is a cool use for Perl

Please remove this post if I'm violating anything,
or if posting something like this is 'just not done'

GreetZ!,

ChOas

print "profeth still\n" if /bird|devil/;

[merlyn]

Please don't even discuss DeCSS here. The MPAA goes very hard after websites that post the code, and vroom probably doesn't have the resources or the inclination to fight it.

You threaten the monestary by bringing what some people consider illegal acts into the walls. Stop it.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[McD]

My first thought, on seeing this posted on slashdot, was to book it over to the monastery to see what the best and brighest of the Perl community had to say about this practical and political bit of obfuscation.

However, few of us know better than merlyn the ugly reality of what it's like to tangle with the machine of law, far removed from noble ideals about "free speech" or "rights," and his point is well taken that the monastery is not the right battleground for the DeCSS case.

I would like to point out, though, that this is a site arguably devoted to "scholarly examination," and as such is the logical place to discuss this code on it's merits as code, apart from it's political significance.

The crowinging irony is that this is precisely the sort of "chilling effect" on otherwise legitimate speech that Dr. Touretzky is protesting in his "Gallery of CSS Descramblers." In declining to discuss it here, of all places, we have provided an excellent example of the danger he's bringing to light.

I see the discussion has continued on slashdot - that's fine, they're commercial, they've probably got lawyers and would welcome the publicity of publicly jousting with the MPAA/DVD-CCA. But I've learned three new things about Perl today by following the discussion there instead of here, and that is saddening.

Peace,
-McD

[BlueLines]

Warning: this post contains absolutely no perl related content.

Oh so very true. I ran one of the original sites that mirrored decss before the legal madness started. I got the infamous letter twice, since i was the technical contact for the netblock the site used to live on. I ignored the first one, since i was out of their jurisdiction. Then I moved to California, and finally took the mirror down after recieving the second letter. Not to mention the phone calls i got (i've never told the truth on a domain registration about my phone number since then). The mpaa has way too much spare time on their hands, and they will go after anyone. and most isp's will just take their word for it and drop whatever account the complaint is against.

i did manage to get a bit of revenge though. The letter came via email both times in msword format. The return address was [e-mail], but the mail headers showed the email coming from a pacbell.net dialup account. So i forwarded both emails to the abuse contact at pacbell, and told them that an unknown person was sending me large binary files from a faked email address. both accounts were promptly shut down :-)



BlueLines

Disclaimer: This post may contain inaccurate information, be habit forming, cause atomic warfare between peaceful countries, speed up male pattern baldness, interfere with your cable reception, exile you from certain third world countries, ruin your marriage, and generally spoil your day. No batteries included, no strings attached, your mileage may vary.

[strredwolf]

I wouldn't of shut the site down unless you got a demand letter on dead tree stock, which would add more authenticity to their claims. But IANAL -- many threats of legal action were send via e-mail to NANAE folks by spammers, but very letters were ever sent via snail-mail or courier. (And of those, the cases got thrown out since the judge found the spammer guilty of lying under oath)

That and a spoofed address means the letters were as authentic as degrees sent by spammers, and as valuable as points on "Who's Line is it Anyway?"

--
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";

[strredwolf]

What? Posting source code is illegal? There goes the monestary! (Quick get me the Perl2English translator) :)

Anyway, I did the minor deobfuscation, and I'm confused over the use of "read+", "unpack+" and "pack+". Sounds like it's something that could save some bytes in rsa-in-3-lines-perl.

--
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";

[tye]

The "read+" can be replaced with "read ". However, if you replace "pack+" with "pack " and then end up with "pack (expr),arg,arg" then it gets parsed as "(pack(expr)),arg,arg" while "pack+(expr),arg,arg" gets parsed as "pack((expr),arg,arg)". My quick look didn't tell me if that was actually a problem for this particular script or not.

The "unary plus" trick is a faily common way of making a call to a predeclared function without using parens around the arguments when the first arugment might have parens around it.

        - tye (but my enemies call my lawyers)

[ichimunki]

update This node has been removed until vroom expresses his comfort level for a discussion of DeCSS in Perl as posted elsewhere on the web.

[Anonymous Monk]

Can somebody please explain this code:

(Node content censored by Corion)

This node is copyrighted. Fair use does not cover the source code of this node. You are not allowed to view it.

------------------------------------------------
deAntiCascadingStyleSheets

[EvanK]

::RIAA bursts in, smashes perlmonks servers, and beats ChOas severely::

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