I suppose if you were feeling like annoying the movie industry you could send DMCA takedown notices to anyone who trys to show the film. Especially if they send you takedown notices for showing screen grabs on your blog.
The network scanner NMAP has appeared in a lot of movies before. Fyodor has a page on it: http://nmap.org/movies/ . Apparently it even made an appearance in a soft-porn movie...
Actually, do we have a list of good computer movies?
I liked the movie hackers when I was a kid and first came out with Jolie and everything but it's kinda ridiculous and the approach is very hollywood-esque.
I found Sneakers to be a great movie.
War Games was kinda old to get me involved when I first saw it. Tr0n is unwatchable (at least the latest version).
I like the matrix (imho best karate one-on-one fighting scenes ever made to date) for a variety of reasons and of course for the ssh root exploit and nmap.
Any other movies we should know of? Is this one any good actually?
23 is the best hacker film I know of. It's German and based on the Karl Koch story. It's not exclusively about hacking, necessarily, but it is far more realistic than any other I've seen.
Reboot from 2012 is a short film that features a whole lot of real world penetration testing tools and security lingo, but was overall poorly executed and nonsensical. Still worth a look just to spot all the references.
Antitrust is a programmer film. It's somewhat slow-paced and mediocre, but it has a nice scene with the Unix shell and overall tries to mimic the work environment at Microsoft.
Takedown, which although not that good, is a watchable telling of the Kevin Mitnick saga.
Travelling Salesman is based on computer scientists solving P = NP and creating a crypto weapon for use by the U.S. government. Actually quite intellectual, much like Primer.
Good movie that shows some C, Java and HTML code and also explains "open source". Miguel de Icaza helped them, so you see GNU/Linux desktops and GNOME shell and bash.
Finsher's "The Social Network" shows some real Perl code too. In several scenes with monitor closeups - downloading images via Perl calling wget from Harward dorm websites.
Does including GPL code in your project (movie) makes this project (movie) GPL too and requires release of all movie source code? (i.e. 3d models, scenes, screenplay, etc.) And if yes, if someone will rebuild whole movie, will it be possible to download binary version of it compiled by some Joe for free?
Assuming that the GPL is fully representative of Stallman's views, they would not be be required to release 3d models, scenes, or the screenplay. Those parts would not be considered software. However, I am not sure about the source code involved in the movie. He makes a distinction between art and software because software is meant to do "practical jobs" whereas art is not so he does not put the free requirement on them.
> Assuming that the GPL is fully representative of Stallman's views,
What does Stallman or his views have to do with it? The GPL is a document that is interpreted by judges and juries, not by Stallman.
The text of the GPL itself makes no distinction between software or other things that can be copyrighted. GPLv3 even changes its language to make it clearer that it can be applied to non-software things. For example, it defines "source code" as "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". What this actually means is up to the aforementioned judges and juries, but for a movie, it's conceivable that the preferred source for modification is indeed the 3d models, the original reels, and so forth.
Seeing as he wrote the first version, was involved in the updates, and spends a lot of time promoting GPL, I would assume his views have a large influence in how it is used and perceived. GPL mentions software quite a few times and the preamble states "licenses for most software and other practical works". As I mentioned above, Stallman does not consider art as a practical work.
However, I am not sure how a judge or a lawyer would interpret the word practical work.
The GPL refers to the use of software, the licensing, the linking thereof.
This is nothing that would ever be covered or considered to be covered by the license. It's a screen shot of source code.
I don't think - well I know he's not - entitled to acknowledgement either, any more than the producers of a movie would be required to acknowledge the NYT because one of the characters is reading it in a coffee store.
Regardless of the GPL, I think this qualifies as fair use by any reasonable interpretation. By the I'll-take-down-your-youtube-video-because-my-copyrighted-music-is-playing-on-the-radio-in-the-background or every-unauthorized-song-download-is-a-loss-of-$150,000 interpretation, I think the author should sue for seven or eight figures.
Unless the GPL license is different from what I read here (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html) then it does not extend to make the entire film subject to the GPL license. The GPL license only extends to "covered works" (works based on the GPL'd work).
If the entire movie was based on the GPL'd work then the GPL could extend to the entire movie and its source assets. For example, if the code of the GPL'd work formed a central pillar of the plot of the movie (the actual code itself, not just its function or purpose because those things are not copyrightable), then the GPL could possibly extend to the entire movie. However, in movies the GPL'd work is usually just shown briefly on-screen to fill out a scene involving computer code; it does not form the basis of any part of the movie itself.
A bright line test: if the code could easily be replaced with random mumbo-jumbo psuedo code (or even jibberish) without meaningfully altering the tested work (i.e., the movie), then the GPL won't apply to the tested work.
No, you are interpreting the license text in the wrong context. Covered works in an legal context mean derivative work, as in: "A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works" - United States Copyright Act in 17 U.S.C. § 101
Based upon don't mean "central pillar". If a copyrighted song plays in a movie, it would still count. The song do not need to be a "central pillar" of the movie.
The film could however argue that 1), the small amount of code is not copyrightable, or 2) that they have a permission under fair use.
To answer if something is copyrightable, you have to dig quite deep into case law. Simple pure silence for a set period of time has been granted that status. Its a quite difficult argument to make.
fair use is also a difficult one, since it normally looks down on for-profit exploitation. However, they do look if the market for the original work is "harmed" by the infringement, which in this case is obviously not.
Pressed, the film could be sued and might be found infringing. Had it been 10s of a song, I would say 99% certainty that it would be found infringing. 1 page of a program is less tested in court.
1) If the GPL wanted "covered work" to mean "derivative work" they would have chosen that language (the GPL is not jurisdiction specific, so they would not have included a cite to any particular statute). They chose not to, and basic rules of legal construction hold that this choice can be interpreted against that meaning.
2) You are misinterpreting the legal meaning of "based upon" which is what my post discussed.
A song in a movie does not make the movie a derivative work; it simply means the movie is distributing the song. The movie becomes a derivative work if, and only if, the movie is based upon the song, i.e., if some plot or character or some other aspect of the movie draws elements from the song. (For example, any random episode of Glee.) If the song could be replaced with another song without changing the movie, then no part of the movie is based upon the song, and the movie is not a derivative work.
On a second check into this, there is some corrections to my previous comment:
A “covered work” means either the unmodified Program or a
work based on the Program. - GPL
So what a covered work is, is clearly stated. Either unmodified program, or a work based on it.
You are right that a movie don't become a derivative work of any preexisting work it includes. Rather, the movie requires to have performance and "sync" rights to such works or they become legally liable for infringement.
So the real question is, do the GPL give performance and sync permission to the movie producer for using the covered work?
This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the
unmodified Program. The output from running a covered work is covered by this
License only if the output, given its content, constitutes a covered work.
The answer to that is ... only if the movie itself is based upon the code and thus become a covered work. Otherwise, the license to do not give any such permission. It could be argued that performance right is covered under the term "convey", as it states:
"To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties
to make or receive copies.".
However, it also says:
"Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under the conditions
stated below."
Since performance and synchronization are not include below, such right can not be seen as given under the term of conveying.
So to correct my statement: The GPL can't come into effect since it is not giving any permission to the movie producer in the first place. The movie producer would have to get a separate license or be liable under copyright. You are right however that movies do not become derivative works of the preexisting works they incorporate.
Interesting factoid about the points and comments. I wonder if a resubmission of the same popular post a few months later will gather the same amount of points and comments?
Hmm, as far as I can tell most of the pointer casts I see there are unnecessary.
- ifr_name is cast to char pointer. It's already a char array.
- A few memcpy() calls cast their arguments to void pointer. This is just silly. All pointer types implicitly convert to that. This anti-pattern can create bugs with some 64-bit compilers if you fail to declare a function prototype (implicit `int` from undeclared function, cast into `void pointer` = bad times).
- The file ends in `.c`, but the return type of `malloc` is cast to different pointer types. This is a big "author has no idea what they're doing" red flag to me. In C you can implicitly convert void pointer to any other pointer type. It's not the same as C++. This also happens to let you fall into the "convert `int` to `void pointer` trap of the previous point.
I hate it when people assume that they know everything and attempt to lecture others. Especially when you go on large platitudes like "This is a big 'author has no idea what they're doing' red flag to me." Maybe, the author is actually compiling the code with a c++ compiler?
No actually, in my experience it is a red flag, and worse, it hides really nasty bugs like the conversion from int that I mentioned.
To elaborate, I do find misuse of casts to be a reliable shibboleth to determine competence in C and C++. If a programmer writes lots of pointer casts that don't make sense, that's usually reliable a signal that the programmer doesn't really understand the warnings from their compiler and is just trying to shut up the warnings (real or perceived) rather than fix actual problems. This approximation has played out well in my experience.
It's not meant to be judgmental, I too made the same mistakes when I was learning C. I remember in 2000 or so I made the "cast memcpy args to void pointer" mistake because the manpage said void pointer and I didn't know what that was yet. If nobody ever pointed that out to me, maybe I'd still be doing it today. This kind of "pedantry" you're accusing me of is how a lot of people get better.
By the way, the most popular compilers most people use today (llvm, gcc, MSVC) don't do what you're describing when the file ends in .c which it does here.
> The only thing I felt a bit dissapointed about was to see a couple of open source projects use snippets of my code without any form of acknowledgement.
Does the original code have a free license? It seems like it doesn't, so these free projects taking the code could be violating the original copyright.
it has some C, Java and HTML code. It also explains "open source" and is a pretty good movie. Miguel de Icaza helped them, so you see GNU/Linux desktops and GNOME shell and bash.
The OpenBR source code was shown in Revolution S01E18 and S01E20. Pretty neat actually that they went to the trouble to get real code for the biometrics app they were showing.
