Editing 344: 1337: Part 4

This is the fourth part of five in the "[[:Category:1337|1337]]" series. The title 1337 is "L-eet", or "elite", using the {{w|Leet}} alphabet.

All comics in the series:

*[[341: 1337: Part 1]]

*[[342: 1337: Part 2]]

*[[343: 1337: Part 3]]

*[[344: 1337: Part 4]]

*[[345: 1337: Part 5]]

In this part [[Elaine Roberts]] returns to the second best hacker in the world, (she being the best according to part 2), her mom [[Mrs. Roberts]]. Together they are an unstoppable force and they help out a guy called Jon with a CSS decryptor.

This implies that {{w|Jon Lech Johansen}}'s DeCSS was written by Elaine. Jon Lech Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, is famous for {{w|DeCSS}}, a DVD decryption program that removes the copy protection from commercial DVDs. The {{w|Motion Picture Association of America}}, also known as the MPAA, were not amused.  

Both the MPAA and the {{w|Recording Industry Association of America}} (RIAA) use the {{w|Digital Millennium Copyright Act}}, shortened to DMCA, as a kind of brute club to silence "infringements" on their copyright. In a perfect world, the DMCA provides safe harbor protection to websites and consumers to make fair use of copyrighted content while also affording copyright owners the ability to protect their works from being pirated. In this world, this means that any content protection system, no matter how weak and poorly executed, cannot be circumvented and discussion of circumvention is illegal as well.

This is not a perfect world and in the end, the Roberts team is noticed and two men with black bowler hats and briefcases with the abbreviations MPAA and RIAA shows up at their house to arrest them. The two men look very much like {{w|Thomson and Thompson}} from {{w|The Adventures of Tintin}}.

When Elaine is not ready to let them arrest her, and draws her knife, they instead draw their {{w|katana}} swords, out of their (way too short) briefcases. Mrs. Roberts says to her daughter that she should calm down because it is illegal to slice people up in their own houses.

But of course, {{w|Richard Stallman}}, founder of the {{w|GNU Project}} and stalwart defender of freedom and {{w|copyleft}}, cannot stand for this kind of repression of freedom. (In the real world, Stallman is not a swordsman, but he is always depicted with two katana swords in xkcd, first time was in [[225: Open Source]]) In keeping with the "{{w|Kill Bill}}" themes from earlier in the series, [[Randall]] imagines the conflict between Elaine/Stallman/Mrs. Roberts vs MPAA/RIAA agents as an action-packed katana battle rather than the legal battle it would likely have been in real life.

The title text is talking about a {{w|Linux}}-ism. In Linux (and all Unix derivatives) ~ is a symbol for a user's home directory (usually <code>/home/<username></code>). Presumably "nomad" is Elaine's username. <code>find</code> is an application that recursively walks a filesystem, listing all files, and <code>xargs shred</code> takes those files and securely erases each one with pseudo-random data. This is different from simply deleting a file, which merely removes the pointer in the filesystem's record tables to the file's location on the hard disk. The latter can usually be recovered from. Secure delete, however, requires physically taking apart a disk and reading individual bits for remaining magnetic charge to attempt to reconstruct what was there.

Proprietary hardware is hardware (the electronics part rather than the software) created and uses only by that company as opposed to open hardware that uses parts or chips common to everyone. Proprietary hardware used to found in most gaming consoles and apple/mac devices but that isn't as common now since the cost of designing your own hardware is too expensive compared to using common chips.

:[Elaine, wearing a backpack, is walking up to a door where her mom Mrs. Roberts is greeting her in the open door at the top of two steps. Above this very low panels frame there is more of Cueballs narration:]

:[Elaine is lying on the floor with her laptop in front of her facing left with charger no the floor further left. Mrs. Roberts is sitting to the right facing right on a chair working on her computer at a table. Cueball is still narrating above the frame:]

:[Pan to the right where two men in black bowler hats arrive. Both holds briefcases the first guys reads RIAA and the other guy reads MPAA. Cueball's last narration in the comic is above the frame:]

:[Pan back right to the two men who simultaneously pull a katana sword out of each of their briefcase, while still holding on the the handle with the other hand. When when opened like this it causes two pieces of paper to fly out of the RIAA man and a note book to fly out of the MPAA mans briefcase.]

:Katan sword1 1: ''Shing''

:Katan sword1 2: ''Shing''

:[Pan back to the women. Mrs. Roberts continues to type on the laptop, a line goes up from the keyboard indicating activity. Elaine still holds her open folding knife out, so the tip now touches the right frame of the panel.]

:[Pan back right to the two men who holds up the katana sword having left their briefcase closed on the floor. The closest RIAA man is holding a hand up, the other MPAA man is holding his sword in two hands and pointing it threateningly forward.]

:[A wide panel showing the whole scene with even Mrs. Robert now standing having just pushed her chair back, the computer inert. Elaine is bending in the knees knife at the ready. Both bowler hat men, stil holding their swords as before, but no hands up, have turned to loo right back over their shoulder to see who speaks, as a voice comes from off-panel right.]

 

:[The scene pans further right, so the two women is no longer in the panel, but Richard Stallman can now be seen with his wild beard and long hair and holding two katana swords one in front of him and one over his head also pointing towards the two bowler hat med. They are standing normally, looking back at Stallman the MPAA man nearest him holds a hand to his mouth as he speaks.]

[[Category:Comics featuring Elaine Roberts]]