Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Do you think that it is wise to admit, in writing, that you will be breaking the law?

Do you also think it wise to break the law?

Ponder that for a while, let me know what you come up with.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

That's why an encrypted manual is made available early. I downloaded the parts without any problem. I suggest everyone do the same thing.

And it's not like the encrypted manual is a secret or anything - it's announced on Bill's blog.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

That's very often true, but there are numerous exceptions—see fair use in 17 U.S.C. § 107, or as explained by the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. (Similar principles like fair dealing exist elsewhere.)

Is the proposed re-hosting fair use? The only way to know for sure is to sue, and have the court balance the merits of several factors. Equity and case law are inherently part of the process outlined in the statute, and they introduce uncertainty (and provoke debate among legal professionals).

And just to be clear, there are different grades of "illegal". Most copyright infringement is a civil matter, where the state won't get involved—only the copyright holder has standing to sue. Only some (usually egregious) cases are a criminal matter. Either way, it's probably a bad idea to tempt legal proceedings unless you're justifiably confident that you have a defence (like fair use).

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Tristan, so because you won't get caught or there may be no consequences, that makes it OK?

Fair use covers excerpts of material, not the whole thing. That's why it's OK for us to quote a rule from the manual when answering a question here on CD.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

It could be fair use for the purpose of scholarship. In terms of the factors to be weighed, the use is noncommercial, the work is technical rather than literary, the amount is the work in its entirety and the effect on the potential market is nil.

I'd say the TechnoKats have a strong fair use defence. Furthermore, I'd say FIRST will never sue them over it, so it will never be resolved officially (unless the law changes).

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Every year, FIRST sets forth a challenge for FRC Teams to complete. That challenge has rules limiting what materials we are allowed to use, how long we get to design and build that robot. How we can transport that robot and many other things. Downloading the rules for that challenge is not supposed to be part of the challenge itself (at least it hasn't been in previous years :p). As such I hope to make it easier for other teams to acquire the manual and begin their build season.

Also, others have also posted that they will be breaking the law. Maybe you should ask them their feelings on breaking the law also.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Not exactly. It's more like (in some hypothetical scenario), you're unlikely to get caught or suffer consequences, and it's OK. They're related, but not causally in the way that you propose.

The big question is whether it's right—and that's not the question that the law tries to answer directly. Instead, the law proposes a series of requirements that—given certain assumptions—balance the private and social costs and benefits. It then tries to come to a compromise that can be understood and enforced.

It's fundamentally different from the FIRST rules mindset, because there isn't even the remotest attempt to cover every scenario with a definitive answer as to what's right. Instead, the law intentionally defers to the courts to sort out tough cases. (It's much easier to be definitive when the scope is narrow, you update the rules every year, and you don't have a thousand years of common law precedent to consider.)

Furthermore, copyright law has evolved to rely upon the lack of economic benefit in pursuing de minimis infringement as a way limiting the number of infringement suits in a way that is acceptable to the public. In effect, if every possible infringement were prosecuted fully, we'd make tortfeasors of us all—and I suspect we'd be much less willing to allow a monopoly on the rights to creative works under those circumstances. Copyright as we know it would not be sustainable in that scenario. More to the point, society supports this limiting effect because it does not view every infringement as wrong, even though they are inherently illegal.

Fair use is an affirmative defence: you employ it when you're accused of infringement. (In other words, you've been caught, and consequence #1 is that you're on trial.) In effect, by claiming fair use, you're articulating why some alleged infringements are not wrong, and are instead justified by their benefits to society. Strip away all the legalese, and that's what you've got: a belief that something is OK because it's better for society than an alternative. If your belief is correct, then that makes it right.¹ If your belief is incorrect (particularly in the eyes of the judge)...prepare for more consequences.

Excerpts are generally much easier to justify as fair use than whole works, but sometimes the whole work can be used.

¹ That's not to say it's necessarily optimal; just better than the alternative.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

The encrypted manual was just released. You can get it here:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...cuments?id=452

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Oddly enough, it is illegal to make an improper fair use claim, something you can't know if you did until you've made it.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

I downloaded the ENTIRE encrypted manual to my desktop in under 5 minutes just now. Now all I have to do is note the password on January 7 (preferably an a .txt on my computer so I can copy+paste) and I'm all set until I can get to the unencrypted ones.

Yep, that's a better alternative than fighting the traffic on the FIRST servers (or even the CD servers, or mirror servers) to get the Manual, when that traffic has been known to shut down FIRST for 2 days and slow down CD for one. It's 100% legal, it's MY fault if I don't update it (and I know this), and I'm sure it's the right one.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

I think that applies when you misrepresent your position (such as with a patently false fair use claim) in the counternotice you provide in response to a DMCA takedown request (17 U.S.C. § 512(f)).

I don't believe there's any such penalty in litigation (where fair use is usually raised). You're free (legally, maybe not ethically) to offer a false defence, as long as you don't suborn/commit perjury.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Anybody have access to a super computer? My quad core laptop will take more than a year to brute force the PDF open. Haha

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

26 lowercase + 26 uppercase + 10 digits + about 20 common symbols = a set of 82 characters from which to choose. Assume that the password is between 10 and 20 characters long. That makes 82¹⁰ + 82¹¹ + ... + 82²⁰ = 1.9 × 10³⁸ unique passwords to check to be sure of success.

How many cores did you say you have?

(There's no practical brute force attack on the encrypted manual. It would be much easier to hijack a helicopter, land on top of FIRST HQ, cut a hole in the ceiling, steal all of their computers, and decrypt those.)

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Someone says they already have, but I think they're joking. http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=13 I said it before, and I'll say it again: The US government uses this encryption to protect Top Secret classified information. You're not going to get it.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

They also said they're computer did it today while they were at work, but the documents weren't even released until 5:39 pm EST tonight ::rtm::