Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Tristan,

In most cases, 'Fair use' indicates use of and not republishing copywrited material.

Also, the issue is not just Fair Use. FIRST could convieveably (sp?) lose its copywrite if it does not defend it.
I.E. It becomes very difficult to tell the 31st republisher that he cannot republish a coptwrited piece of material when you did not instruct the first 30 republishers that they cannot do so.

And now you have crossed into that grey area of cracking. Please refrain from doing this as this is a good thread for teaching about copywrites, publication of copywrited material, and encryption.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Make no mistake: I'm not arguing that republishing the FIRST manual on kickoff day is likely a fair use—that's a tough case to make, and I'd say it would probably be losing argument in court. (Morally, it's less clear that this would be wrong on balance. Practically, as noted by myself and others, there's no likelihood of a suit.) I was responding to Dave's position that copyright was absolute by offering statutory and precedential reasons why it is not.

By contrast, I think that the TechnoKat history project, if it were sued and became a test case for fair use, would have a strong defence—because I think people, courts included, see the value of an express commitment to preserving seminal documents to understand the movement behind them. (Organizations themselves cannot be counted upon to preserve their own history—valuable content is lost all the time when websites are refurbished.) But that's far from a guarantee that they'd prevail, or a statement that the situation is clear-cut. Indeed, the only way I can rationalize their method of distributing the works (publicly to any visitor to their site) is that there's no commercial purpose or value in doing so—and as such, economic harm would not be a countervailing factor in determining fair use. (That's very distinct from most fair use law, which deals with commerce. Although untested in court, this non-commercial stance is part of the reason that the Internet Archive thinks it can get away with archiving essentially the entire public Web.)

Also, you're correct when you say most fair uses upheld by the courts are limited to use rather than public distribution (because there is a strong presumption in favour of the author's right to control distribution). There are exceptions for when a work is transformative—it adds something new and useful—that allow this principle to be suspended. For example, Google won a case allowing them to distribute thumbnailed images (derivative works) freely, because they were using the images in a transformative way as part of a service for finding the originals.

You're thinking of trademark. There's no such dilution possible in copyright (as a matter of law). A copyright is presumed valid until it expires, or until it is expressly relinquished into the public domain by its owner. (As a practical matter, I suppose it might make for an awkward conversation—but it doesn't change FIRST's legal rights.)

There is nothing wrong with posting a back-of-the-envelope calculation demonstrating that there are more possible passwords than could be cracked in the days until kickoff. In fact, there are hundreds of trillions of times more possible passwords than there are stars in the observable universe.

A discussion of this fact poses no legal risk to any of us, nor to ChiefDelphi. It certainly is not immoral or unwise.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

The encrypted 2012 Game Manual is available here:

http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprogr...ated-documents

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Guys this came to me in a dream and I believe it is part of the new game animation. Quoting from said dream:

"****** is played on a 27x54 ft carpeted field. Alliances of three teams each, operate their robots from behind alliance walls, on the ends of the field.

O.O I think I'm on to something. :yikes:

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

How many alliances :confused:

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

No, it's a water game.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

How do I download the encrypted files so I don't have to download them the day of kickoff?

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

Right-click and hit "Save link as" (Firefox) or "Save target as" (IE), then put the file where you'll find it easily.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

While I'm inclined to agree, the GDC has known to make people eat their words. So keep dreaming, but be sure to keep some ketchup around.

- Sunny G.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

It could be carpeted but there is no guarantee. I hope you are right though or my teams prototyping goes to waste.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

We (the Technokats) do not want to cause trouble with FIRST. We post past year's information to inform people of the past. Hence the history project. The current manual contains secret (until kickoff) information. Our past manuals don't contain any secrets (to my knowledge). So i believe it is fine that said material from our history is posted. If FIRST would like us to remove our information than we will happily comply.

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

That's a good attitude to have in general. A couple comments:

Firstly, if you ever do get asked, the decision to comply or not is of course yours to make. But irrespective of that choice, make FIRST (or any organization for that matter) go on record with their rationale: ask them specifically what they don't like, and what laws and moral principles they believe you're violating. Although it may cause them some minor annoyance, it will have at least two much more valuable effects. It will make sure they understand what they're asking (people are often utterly and fundamentally mistaken about copyright—this will make them do their homework and thus improve their internal practices). It will also allow others in the community to judge the validity of their argument (if they make bad arguments, they deserve constructive criticism—again, it puts them on the path to doing things right).

And if you feel even slightly adventurous, present them with a claim of fair use, and see what they say. While we all like FIRST, and doubt they'd ever use copyright as a bludgeon for silencing dissent, criticism or anything else they find objectionable, there exist organizations that make weak copyright arguments in an effort to stifle discussion or strengthen their business positions. By being reasonably firm with FIRST, you'd help set an example (change the culture, if you will) indicating that dubious legal threats are ineffective against an informed populace.¹

Secondly, it's important not to confuse secrets with copyright (and I don't think you necessarily made that mistake). Although trade secret law exists, it's not really applicable to a situation where FIRST posts something and says 'don't open this yet'. Government secrets are something else, but they're not relevant here either. Secrets in general have no protection at all. And something is only a secret until it's revealed—so don't worry at all about whether secrets might exist in the old manuals. Information kind of wants to be free....

¹ The morality of that plan is subject to other factors—there's absolutely a limit to making an example out of them, even with softball questions like "why isn't this a fair use for purposes of scholarship, research or teaching?"

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

ok i'm not the brightest one when it comes to computer stuff so ,how do you down load the encrypted version of the rules?

Re: How do I get the encrypted competition manual?
 

'Nuff said.