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ESR on the DVD Control Association
Johan Jonasson writes "Eric S. Raymond takes a look at how the DVD Control Association is trying to obscure the real issues in the whole DeCSS affair. " The next hearing is Jan. 14 - for those who haven't followed the case, check out the story. Thanks to Rik van Riel for pointing out the OpenDVD site. It's a community site designed to explain to people what's going on with the case and another perspective on the DVD industry in relation to consumer rights.
I don't know enough about DVD-ROM to post anything here which you probably don't know already, but whatever happens - why not treat this as a Litmus Test for the awareness of the public / governmental organisations involved.
Judge Penfold Jackson got the point - but how quick are other branches of goverment to see the 'new dawning of the Information Age'?
The DVD situation will resolve itself in time (we are after all living in an advanced industrial economy where capitalism / market forces and the rule of law are in full force. No monopoly exists forever.
So why not look at the situation laterally and use it to track the current level of awareness of I.T. among different organisations and more interestingly, how quickly different organisations learn as they go on?
While what he says may not necessarily be startling news to those of us whose freeholds lie deep within the blessèd demesne of hackerdom, he nevertheless fulfills a critical role in packaging and projecting our memes to the barbarian realms beyond the Pale.
Let us not begrudge him his work. Wearisome and troublefilled as his task must be, better him than me, say I. I, for one, would surely lack the stamina and patience and skill and tolerance which his job doubtless requires.
Who as of 2100 EST on Sunday the 2nd still have this lame story by Amanda Barnett (dated 12/28) posted with no followup (and linked from their homepage, too).
[rant mode]
Isn't it interesting how the "mainstream press" just can't quite manage to figure out why so few people trust them anymore?
[/rant mode]
It seems as though people want nice, easy-to-digest pundits who will say only things they agree with. Chances are, if someone fits this criteria, they have done so by saying nothing at all. I like to read speeches by people who generate controversy because they have actually said something. All you have to do is extract whatever part of the speech makes sense and discard the rest. With this simple technique and a little critical thinking, anyone can sift out lots of good points and interesting observations from people that you think are (as a whole) full of crap.
Ah, very true! But, esr has himself chosen to speak on behalf of the Open Source Software community. And if esr is acting on behalf of the OSS community, should he not be using a different address than the one he uses to espouse his gun views?
I'm sure that, as an accomplished hacker as esr is, he should be able to generate a different set of pseudo-random
Eric, you are not doing the OSS community any significant favours by speaking on their behalf, if you continue to publicise unrelated agenda when you do so!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
I'm not saying that Eric doesn't have a right to free speech. He's certainly allowed to say this, when and whereever he feels like it. But it seems like it would be more responsible to seperate his personal agenda from that of the people he's taken as speaking for.
--
I threatened to get
"medieval on your ass".
I need a new phrase.
Yeah, he posted those
last week. They were dumb then, and
they are still dumb now.
Is this my problem?
I don't think so. Separate
the wheat from the chaff.
I would rather bitch
at ESR and Tom C
for poor haiku form.
Five seven five, d00d2
are syllables for haiku
not just seventeen!
You, of all people,
understand the importance
of open standards!
You are major d00d2.
Please set a good example
for all the newbies.
That is all i ask.
Respectfully submitted,
(signed Frank Sullivan)
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
I have a response :}
for you here. Kind of a flame,
but you're used to that.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Thanks for the pointer!
Now i shall use this module
in all future code.
It would be cool if
unworthy code generated
unworthy haiku.
After all, software
is like poetry. Sturgeon's Law
applies equally.
And, in re-reading,
i realize your haiku
is in correct form.
Therefore, my bitching
about bad haiku is for
ESR alone.
I apologize
to you, Tom, and i hope that
you will forgive me.
I shouldn't flame you
carelessly like some half-assed
lamer wannabe.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
But then he had to go and mix other politics into it. He included a standard signature with his usual gun rights stuff in it at the bottom, line upon line of it. Regardless if you agree with him on this or not, isn't it at best inappropriate to mix these controversial (even in the US, and in particular globally) view into speech from someone who claims to be a spokesman for the community? I think so.
--Joakim Ziegler
reasons for this suite.
The other one is that this is the only "play your
DVD before time" thing that will be widely
distributed. Think about it for a while. It's
GPLed and it will eventualy be smoth, fast and acurate.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Many Slashdot kiddies
think earth revolves around them;
they're assholes too.
Not considering
my posts might be here only
as side effect...
The true target is
all the mainstream media;
and CEOs' heads.
Pointless chattering.
Vast `Operation Mindfuck'.
The sage susses out both.
>>esr>>
To the people replying to this comment with anti gun control views, you're missing the point.
I agree with ESR's stance against gun control, but I *don't* think that it should be something that gets tacked (unless it's a random sig?) onto the end of what is, essentially, a press release for the Linux community.
"ESR, spokesman for the Open Source community" and "ESR, anti-gun control advocate" are both fine positions to take, but I'd rather he not mix them. If he's going to start a letter summarizing our views and representing the whole of the OSS community, I'd rather he not finish it by making unrelated statements that many OSS users and authors disagree strongly with.
I don't think this specific instance was a problem - the quote was obviously a sig, random or not; and he didn't claim to be representing anyone but himself in the letter. Nevertheless, it makes me uneasy.
I thought I saw OpenVMS on the list of binary releases of M12. Granted, it's still buggier than Communicator, but it's a step up from Netscape 3.
Oh, and I suspect the reason ESR mentions Linux rather than "free operating systems" is the reason he talks about "open source software" instead of "free software" - marketing spin. Don't confuse the lusers with details, just give them a name they can wrap their heads around...
For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration!
FYI, there are other countries than the USA, which consider themselves civilized, and more so than the US of A, and which mostly prohibit firearm. All of Europe, for instance.
I read the article, ready to jump and write to CNN, only to find that it was'nt that lame -- I've read much lamer actually. They mention the fact that the purpose of DeCSS is to view DVDs on Linux.
that contains the DeCSS code. Do I win?
Here are a few related answers:
Because millions of people have heard of the word "Linux" as opposed to mere thousand who have heard of BSD.
Because non-free Unix is mostly used on corporate systems that have absolutely no use in playing DVD movies. I'm sure you can find a couple exceptions, but they will be just that: exceptions.
I'm sure you can count the people who actually need that on one amputated hand.
Now I have one question for you:
We know you don't like the GPL. Now give us a break.
Note to potential moderators: I choose to speak under my real name; please respect this as my opinion. Thank you.
You're 100% WRONG - check your facts first. In many parts of Europe you now have greater gun ownership rights than in the USA. Get a CLUE.
Name one.
Okay, here's one: Switzerland. It's due to the military system (where every citiwen is a soldier).
What else? I'm waiting. I'm waiting ... What else?
The more the mainstream media gets a copy of this article, the more they will understand the real issues.
What better story for the media than "big corporation spreads lies to smash little man" - the more that slant on the story comes across to the public, the less the DVDCA will want to throw their weight around.
So spread copies of that article to all media outlets far and wide!
The original program was written for Windows. See this message. For the whole chronology, including how it got to Linux, take a look here .
----
"The argument that CSS protects DVD's against encryption"
should be read
"The argument that CSS protects DVD's through encryption"
Sorry for the typo
The argument that CSS protects DVD's against encryption is completely false. Before this DeCSS whoopla I have noted that a lot of DVD started to appear in the market that are far from showing "the real thing". They come from a lot of sources but the main part of the pie comes from Chinese ones (they can be traced by some errors chinese usually do on translating from chinese to english).
:) ). If you wanna have another drink you have to buy another. Instead of being a similar to a book, on which, recorded information resembles, DVDs become soemthing like fast-food consumption...
I can classify for the moment the pirate DVD's in three categories:
-Bit to bit copies
-"Broken" DVD's
-Copies from mpg or VCR sources
Bit to bit copies are usually european or asian (american pirates are not seen around but I suspect this is just an "oceanic" problem)
Broken DVD are copies where encryption was broken somehow. I saw two such DVD's but people have told me that there are a lot more. In fact they are becoming a major segment. However these DVDs are quite problematic. Do don't always go and sometimes hang either the viewer or the machine. Quality is poor.
mpg or VCR copies. Some people have managed to make such a crazyness to copy from such sources to DVDs. It is understandable. Even pirate DVDs cost more than a videocassete. But such copies are usually horrible in their quality.
Now the market in many places is running over such pirated copies. Note! This is been hapenning before DeCSS came out. Sincerly I have not seen DeCSS or alikes to change tendencies or creating boosts in piracy. The most I have seen is that people have grown their tastes to borrow DVDs to each other and to write them in the HDDs. But I think this is a very questionable point to consider it as piracy or not. Anyone is allowed to make personal photocopies of a book. And anyone is allowed to borrow a book to his colleague or gilrfriend.
Commercial piracy has been growing on its own and I don't think that anyone will stop it. Much like CD history, when Sony claimed over all winds that it had given a blow to piracy. Today we not only have pirated cassettes but also pirated CDs...
This story rises some serious questions. Why DVD Control Association is so eager to give a blow over a rather primitive tool like DeCSS, while it keeps quite silent over the "real" threat? Considering many issues over commercial piracy I think that they are just pushing over people to forbid them the free use of DVDs. Note that many pirated products are made with the blessing of these same corporations behind DVD Control Association. I know that because I saw what happens in the VCR market and how smart these guys "collect" their part on the pie. At least, in the places where I have been, I know that even officially they collect some cents on every pirated copy. Something much like Microsoft Tax.
So the only interpretation of this story is that they are trying to avoid people to be free in their use of DVD. To turn DVD into Coca-Cola bottles (no offense Coke!
I'm sorry, but this just doesn't wash. First of all, proprietary binary-only Linux drivers are easy to produce, and many of them already exist for sound cards, video cards, and the like. How is this better than the situation with BSD? Second of all, you present a wholly misleading picture of the BSD community's attitude toward proprietary use. A tradition of sharing among BSD developers is as old as BSD itself (three times as long as Linux has existed). Closed development is hardly encouraged--to say it is accepted "enthusiastically" is grossly misleading. But unlike Linux, it is permitted, and open contributions from developers who also produce closed products from BSD are warmly accepted. At least in some cases this results in more of a contribution than the all-or-nothing approach Linux espouses. Of course, it can go the other way, too. But I don't find your presentation at all balanced.
Regardless of this, I agree with you that Linux makes the most sense because of its mindshare, momentum, and volume. I think the original point was that open drivers don't need to be limited to Linux (as they would be if released solely under GPL--forgetting about Hurd for the moment).
I don't know about evey DVD decoder board on the market, but I know my Sigma Hollywood+ is among the most popular, and the current version of their player software installs a program to allow you to change your region code.
Yes, we're all aware that there are tons of grey market applets available as shareware to be the same, but this is a CSS licensee distributing a supported application.
It's right there in the DVD Station menu on my windows box - first item, actually. "Change Region Code". Pretty much right out there.
So, I wouldn't say Windows is entirely in line with the region controll cabal. No.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Indeed. But if I remember correctly from the previous articles, there were lots of people named as defendants. Surely only a handful of them could actually have been involved in the reverse engineering?
It's all bogus of course. (Mind you, I'm not a lawyer.)
We're not asking to own machine guns (which can be owned legally in the USA provided one undergoes a massive legal registration process); just legitimate means of self defense. Bows and arrows are all well and good, but modern hardware does not stand still.
Fair enough, but this is a case of the proverbial slippery slope. At what point is a weapon so powerful and destructive that it is no longer a legitimate means of self-defense? Arrows are okay; nukes are not okay; but where in between those do we draw the line?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
DVD Forum
They are a bunch of assholes
ESR said so.
They abuse the courts,
ignore the first amendent
and order silence.
No legal basis
Something about trade secrets
They have no patent
They blame the hackers
for their own weak encryption
Its their own damn fault.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Linux hackers? Weren't they windows hackers?
No. The original DeCSS program was a Windows program, but the purpose for writing it was to get an unencrypted VOB file on a hard disk for developing the player software while udf filesystem drivers were still in development. Shortly afterward, a Linux version of CSS was writted so that the intermediate step of unencrypting the file under Windows was unnecessary.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
I say, screw 'em! I think region locking is unfair. If I had relatives in France and brought my DVD collection of American movies, I wouldn't be able to watch them? If I was an anime addict and the movie wasn't released in the USA, I would by it off the internet from a sight in Japan. With DVD region locking, I wouldn't be able to watch a movie I had paid for!
Amen! I live in Germany right now, but I'll be moving back to the U.S. after my studies. The only thing that has kept me from buying into the DVD market is the fact that I don't want to buy DVDs which I won't be able to play on an American-bought player, or having a player which requires me to order my movies from Europe after I move to the States. I will buy a DVD player only when I can be guaranteed to play any DVD I buy.
And I can respond to the idea that people would buy a DVD in India to use in America because it's cheaper. It's simple dynamics of trade: If it's worth it for me to buy a DVD in India and have it transported to the U.S., then it's obviously too expensive in the U.S.
In my opinion if a company can't even survive competition with itself, it deserves to go under.
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
BTW, there's more to this message than meets the eye. :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Don't believe everything the American media tells you about America. For some reason they relish the negative. They aren't happy unless they're reporting homicide, rape or arson. The trouble is, it's complete bullshit.
Yes, there's crime here. There's violent crime in every nation, including the UK. But it's nowhere near as bad as the American media portrays it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
HotBot identifies it as a Zippy the Pinhead quotation. I suppose that makes it funny. Ha.
It's probably a quote from some movie or play. I admit, I could think of more amusing quotes, but it might be very funny if you've seen the film.
Anyhow, nothing to get your tights up about imho.
Now THIS is funny: I tried to find out where it was from, so I fed it to google. It returned microsoft.com as third hit. Google seems to associate microsoft with everything...
Great cynicism, A+. However, I've found lot's of things online (and even quite a few in the fortune database) that I don't find funny. However, I just ignore them because one thing I have noticed is that as soon as you are totally politically correct, and you only write stuff that offends no-one, it's boring, and definately not funny. Reminds me of that xmas southpark epp where kenny doesn't die.
Yes, the reverse engineering part would have to be under win ofcourse. But why the decryption prototype?
While linux programs' GUIs might not always be on par with windows, I for one find it a much more versatile development platform.
>A few weeks ago, some Linux hackers in Norway cracked the encryption scheme used for DVD media, producing a DVD decoder called DeCSS
Linux hackers? Weren't they windows hackers?
I've emailed ESR about the fact that he claim's they're linux hackers.
He said:
>OK, why did they say in response to the DVDCCA complain that they had
>written the software in order to play DVDs on their Linux boxes? (Same
>thing one of the defendents told me in private email.) Am I supposed
>to believe they are lying?
My answer basicly being: Yes. I don't know why they did wrote it (It's obvious why they claimed they where doing it to view DVD's in linux), but somehow I find it hard to believe someone would write windows programs to view dvd's under linux.
What you say is true. What is interesting here, of course, is that it was the US government that basically forced the DVD makers to use the weak encryption scheme that was cracked, and that will, barring a new encryption scheme, make DVDs much easier to copy.
But I think the interesting part of the law, as it concerns the DVD makers, is in the bit about archival purposes, since the "altered form" would appear to guarantee the interoperability criterion by itself. Since I can make an archival copy of something, and consult the data in the archive rather than the original, once I have that right, I need not ever be concerned with the strictures that the DVD people want to place on the devices that can "officially" play the original copy of the work.
But, on the other hand, if I give even a single copy of the work away, I've obviously violated the copyright unless I'm licensed to do that. The whole thing is so fair it makes me incredulous that it was a work of the US legislative process. :-)
Babar
Of course, you're correct. But maybe even more correct than you imply. :-)
I think the problem is even more chilling than this. It isn't just open systems or open source systems, but almost anything besides Windows.
Probably the biggest threat to the apparently resurgent Macintosh (for example) is the deliberate lack of driver support or documentation for things like multifunction devices. In the example of Apple, or course, I know that some people would see a delicious irony in all of this, but that's just the problem.
A bad attitude doesn't really matter any more. You or I or anybody might not be a fan of FooOS for the best of reasons, but the only thing that might keep any of us in business is the realization that nobody has the luxury of accepting "special favors", or thinking "serves 'em right" when another OS goes down for the simple lack of information about how to tweak which registers to make the dang thing work.
Babar
I believe this to be true. Many acts of government/industry as of late like to make us think this is not the case (ie: personal copying of music in exchange for a tarriff on recordable media in Canada, DeCSS, etc...).
The fact is, copyright protected people's right to not have others steal their work for profit, or to make it so they cannot profit from their original work; to foster their talented creation of more work.
'Fair use' has always applied, and personal copies are certainly fair use.
Nothing beats a summary of everything everyone on Slashdot has been saying for 2 months. But hey, now that Eric has said it, it carries weight, right?
Maybe I'm bitching a little here, but it doesn't sit right with me that in a community that is so, well, community-oriented, a small number of people get zeroed in on and quoted/printed like they were the second coming. Who are we kidding?
A community without spokespersons is called a disorganized mob. Our community is somewhat more with-it than most, as displayed by the fact that it works so well with so little formal organization. No one elects any of our spokespeople, no one officially presents issues to them that we feel should be presented to the general public. It just happens. Amazing.
Well, I for one have forwarded his text to CNN.com - I couldn't believe my ears the other night when they read their copy on this story "the DVDCA went to court to prevent the spread of a program which was created by hackers to make illegal copies of DVD movies to exchange on the internet". What?!? Usually you say some thing like "the suit alleges that the software infringes on the copyright holders... blah blah blah" but this sounded like they read the DVDCA's complaint as fact. I sent off an email to CNN trying to point out that DeCSS was for playing, not copying DVD movies, a fact that seems to be lost on the media, but thankfully not on the Judge.
So, I for one welcome a coherent summary from ESR as it probably does carry a little more credibility outside of the "community" than a collection of AC posts on this fine site. (no, that came out wrong, I'm not slamming AC's or anyone else). I guess I don't see the harm in having a "spokesmodel" like Raymond put a communique (sp?) out to the wire with a coherent position statement, even if it just echoes what has been said here for a while. Goody - maybe some not-too-lazy reporter will pick it up and sniff about a little harder to figure out if what ESR says carries water or not, and possibly something a little closer to the objective "truth" of this situation will appear on CNN as opposed to the one-sided headline story that I heard the other day.
This was the only usefull post in the whole thread.
;-) If the distribution would be easy, they would have lost some of their market.
Decryptions is always lost after some time, but encryption is the thing they want to monopolize.
For music the distribution channels are the monopoly. They try the same for DVD. Producers and distributors are of course the same today. DVD's are physical, so one could never break this monopoly. But the physical days are over, distribution over the net could be possible. That's why they want to protect their realm.
After the Blairwitch Project, it is clear that anyone can make movies
Let's hope we can stop this monopoly, which is protected by copyrights, trade-secrets and maybe patents. We should be able to create DVD movies not just to watch them!
CU
>What we do need to find is a way for artists to make money off of their labors. The problem is how can we do this [in a way] that's fair for everyone?
RMS addresses this quite convincingly in his article The Right Way to Tax DAT. This article was originally published in Wired magazine in 1992, but still holds quite a bit of relevance for the situation you bring up.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
Don't the content providers support the DVD consortium? If they do, then ipso facto they must consider it to be in their interests. If they consider it to be in their intests it probably is. They may be vulgar and unprincipled, but they are not stupid.
My guess is that what they want to do is prevent a situation like the MP3 world, where any shmoe with a thousand bucks can become an impresario. The studios do create films, but they also buy them. If anybody can create DVDs, then indies who strike out a Cannes can go over the studio's head direct to the public. Some producers may actually prefer doing this.
What the monopoly on creating DVDs has reproduced is something like the old studio system where the studios controlled the theaters. There were good things and bad things about the studio system, but the bad thing was that as a movie goer, you only saw what the studios wanted you to see; there was no other place to go.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yes, but every software DVD player that you get for "free" comes with hardware that you paid for.
/. posts I've read), open source DVD players on ANY platform would not need to sign license agreements for DVD technology, and therefore would not have to support any of the unwanted features of DVD.
Either the software or hardware DVD player for you PC had to pay license fees and sign the license agreement to some sort of DVD control board. This may be the DVDCA, I'm not sure.
More importantly (and this goes a little against what ESR was claiming -- as well as being regurgitated from other
For example, they wouldn't have to play the mandatory FBI warning at the beginning of the movie.
Most importantly, probably, they would not have to obey region-locking of the DVDs. This would be bad for content makers, since if they sold a movie for 10 rupees in india (dirt cheep) and $30 US in the USA, then people could by it over the internet for the cheaper price.
I say, screw 'em! I think region locking is unfair. If I had relatives in France and brought my DVD collection of American movies, I wouldn't be able to watch them? If I was an anime addict and the movie wasn't released in the USA, I would by it off the internet from a sight in Japan. With DVD region locking, I wouldn't be able to watch a movie I had paid for!
Thanks for restating everything we've been saying here on Slashdot Eric, but we've got plenty of karma-whores here to do that.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Just like the "Suprised by Wealth" piece he wrote, I find myself asking the question "Why did he write this?" And in most cases I come to the answer, "To make himself look better to his fanclub".
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Maybe I'm bitching a little here, but it doesn't sit right with me that in a community that is so, well, community-oriented, a small number of people get zeroed in on and quoted/printed like they were the second coming. Who are we kidding?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
CSS keeps the key information for a disk in a special block on the disk. This block will not be writable on consumer DVD-R blanks... you will NOT be able to duplicate a DVD using these blanks. Writable blanks will be hard to find, and IIRC they will require special commercial equipment; you won't be able to write them in your DVD-R drive.
Now, obviously, this will not be an issue for commercial pirates, who will find a way to get commercial blanks and commercial production equipment. However, it will be an issue for the person making small-scale copies to give (or sell) to friends. The motion picture industry is just as interested in that kind of copying as it is in commercial-scale copying. The commercial blanks will be hard to get, and the equipment to write them will not be in everybody's living room, at least for a while.
As I recall, the first time I saw a description of all this was around a year ago; I think it was in some IEEE magazine. Even then, there was a clear explanation that the whole thing was not aimed at commercial-scale copying. It was aimed at consumer copying.
Now, it's true that the weak crypto they used made it almost certain that the system would be cracked, making the whole bit-copying issue irrelevant. It's fine to point out that it was silly for them to think it wouldn't be cracked. But this idea that they didn't even think about the bit-copying issue is just stupid. The only real problem with the system is in the crypto.
In fact, they even gave some thought to how to make it harder to get drives that will give you the encrypted files for cracking... although, unfortunately for them, the early drives don't have those restrictions.
Making drives enforce the system really does help from their point of view. Sure, you can burn a new PROM for a drive, but how many people are actually going to do that? They're hoping that people will either have to spend money or manually hack hardware; that will reduce copying to a level they can live with... especially since they were (and to some degree are) probably expecting the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's ridiculously draconian penalties to prevent the spread of any hacks.
Pure software cracks are what they really worry about... and the reason they're so upset is that they didn't expect one to come out so soon.
CSS isn't perfect, and I tend to share the prevailing Slashdot view that it wasn't worth their trouble to do it in the first place. Certainly I think that the lawsuit is crap, and I like the fact that the law doesn't give them infinite rights.
Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that the designers, and their corporate masters, didn't think about the obvious ways the system could be cracked. Their goal was to reduce piracy; they've always realized they couldn't eliminate it. They are being stupid, but not as brain-dead as the bit-copying argument makes them out to be. Don't underestimate your opponents...
On top of that, you could have your 12-year-old child open the package/click the button because s/he can't be legally bound to the agreement. That way the organization as a whole can't be held liable.
They shut out the VMS users, and I did not speak up because I wasn't a VMS user.
They shut out the Sun users, and I did not speak up because I was not a Sun user.
They shut out the BSD users, and I did not speak up because I was not a BSD user.
Then they shut me out, and there was no one left to speak up for me.
With apologies to Martin Niemoller (1892-1984)
Here's the start:
Darned clever, no?Here are references for you:
I imagine that this module will now allow ending haiku postings on Slashdot.:-)
- Why focus on Linux over all free Unix (aka freenix) in general?
- Why just `free' Unix instead of all Unix?
- Why just Unix instead of all systems? What's wrong with (Open)VMS, for example, on an Alpha Workstation?
It would be nice to see us all supporting open systems again instead of just jumping on the Linux cheerleading bandwagon.But *isn't* DVD encryption a form of piracy protection if you think about it.
We all know that piracy protections cannot be implemented at the content level. Content is always subject to ripping and re-recording. Therefore, effective piracy counter-measures must be implemented at the player level.
If all commercially viable players require their content to be encrypted, and if that encryption cannot be duplicated by ripping, then effectively the schema has rendered ripped copies useless.
I won't disagree that it's evil, but I would have to argue that they are indeed trying to prevent piracy.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
(Mind my type, this Netscape font is pretty small.. :)
Anyway, as with the trial, they said in order for the gentlemen to have reverse engineered Xing, they would of had to click through an agreement saying that they cannot. Now...Does that agreement (And I assume most other license agreement) apply to the machine and anyone who uses it, or just to the person who installed and accepted it? If it only applies to the person who clicked 'Okay', couldn't person A of installed it, and person B reversed it? I don't know much about RE'ing myself, so I don't even know if you *need* to install the software, but I'm assuming so. Anyway, back onto my topic. If person B did reverse it, would he still be subject to the agreement, since he is not actually *using* the software, but just watching what it does? I would assume, if the case is that he would not be under the terms, then the case would hold even less water then before. Someone feel free to clear that up for me.. =]
- decryption (ie who is allowed to build players) - maybe they want to force everyone to join the DVD/MPEG patent pool?
- encryption (ie who can create DVDs) - maybe they want to protect the people who master to DVD or the film studios themselves?
Anyway enough paranoia - one thing to realise - the 'net makes a lot of tradition ways to distribute media obsolete - there are a lot of people out there who make big bucks distributing music, software, movies/video, booksAll these people are obsolete - most of them probably don't know it yet - they are going to fight like hell for their piece of the pie as it starts to get smaller.
'Copyright' was a usefull law when setting up a printing press and typesetting a book were a large capital investment - you could lose it if you got caught - but when anyone can toss something through a provate xerox machine in their house it's a prettyuseless law. The same thing that happened with paper and xeroxes is happening now with most of the traditional media and the net. It's going to change the world and whether the people making money off the old ways like it or not they are toast in the long run.
What we do need to find is a way for artists (musicians, actors, directors, writers, programmers) - people who make the stuff that goes ON the media - to make money off of their labors. Without the middle men we will all prosper and grow - consumers will cheaper products, artists will get a bigger cut (100%!).
The problem is how can we do this - how can we start a different way to pay for stuff - one that's fair for everyone? (and open source - that I think IS hard). There are alternate payment mechanisms out there already (www.kagi.com is one that's been very successfull for small programmers)
Uh, DIVX is dead.
-P
If I do something interesting say reach the south pole first then if people want information on how difficult getting there is they would usually ask me because before me they wouldn't know; additionally since no one would have gone before me then any possibility of getting any help would not be there. Now if you happen to go to the south pole and do so with only you and your trusty dog mike with nothing but the clothes on your back and a snickers bar then that is something. However because you don't have the ability to break into the my sphere because I got to the pole first then it gets more difficult to get noticed.
The whole point is that you can't blame people for wanting something from an entirely reputable source. To be honest anyone who uses just one or two or even all the posts on slashdot to base a major multi-million dollar decision on would be foolish not because people are stupid but because theoretically you could be getting screwed over by imposters who just happened to gt moderated to a 5 that day.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I'd be really interested in the relationship between Microsoft and the DVDCA. It's very convienent for Windows to be the only OS that you can get DVD software for (Before the advent of decss) and I'd be interested to know of the exact relationship between these two entities. Are any MS funds going to DVDCA? Have there been any meetings?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
ESR contends that the DVDCA wants to protect players since PC's will compete against DVD players. This argument holds very little water. For starters, Windows has a much larger marketshare than Linux, and Windows machines will compete more against DVD players, but Windows ALREADY had many, many software DVD players. Furthermore, these Windows players are essentially free of cost -- every video card in the world comes with a software DVD player.
That is just part of the conspiracy. Not all DVD players can decode all the keys. There are regional aspects to distribution. A Japanese DVD would not play in a US player. The Windows DVD players are in line with this. The linux players are not. If the encryption is broken then a DVD in Japan is just as good as a DVD here.
Also, is it really true that you can make a bit-for-bit copy? My understanding was that this required specialized hardware, and that commdity DVD reader hardware was not capable of reading special tracks.
Bit for bit READS can be made currently. The writes require a very expensive machine to do double sided double layering 17 GBytes per disk. For not so much money you could copy a DVD onto four disks though. Bit for bit. That is part of the point though - currently it costs a LOT more to make a copy of a disk at home than it costs to buy the disk. This will likely change in a few more years though.
This and more from http://www.opendvd.org
40 bit encryption is the best they can do because of US encryption export laws. They didn't have a choice on the quality of protection they could utilize. They went with the best they could. Of course 40 bit encryption is so outdated, they shouldn't have even bothered, and that they didn't expect it to be broken shows a high level of self-delusion and stupidity on their part.
Many things don't work between countries, such as many electrical appliances, so I don't see this as a big conspiracy.
The difference between DVD region codes and the different VHS formats is that the DVD region codes were created with the specific intent of preventing interoperablility. Fortunately, the region code scheme depends on the DVD player cooperating, and is easy to bypass for that reason. In any event, it _is_ a big conspiracy to keep people from bringing their DVD's to other regions, and the DVD folks freely admit that.
That being said, I know that slashdotters know all this. But has anyone seen any indication in the mainstream press that the DVD CCA is full of shit? I don't think so. Until we can spread that message to people who don't already know that, we're not doing any good. Write letters to the editor, folks. Write op-eds, if possible. Make sure people outside the tech community know that the DVD folks are wrong! In fact, I'm going to propose the smae thing I did back when NASA lost the last Mars mission - write your congressmen. Use registered mail, if possible. Write your newspapers, write to everyone you can think of. Forward these Slashdot stories to your less-technically-inclined friends. Spread the word, or we don't stand a chance.
- John Doe #53, an individual
ESR needs to do a bit more research on DVD/DeCSS before coming up with his theories. Content providers grateful for the hack because the hack will open the market when anyone can decode DeCSS? That would only hold water if DeCSS currently limited the content creators, but it doesn't, for the very simple reason that there is nothing that obliges them to encode their discs with DeCSS. Indeed there are lots of unencoded discs out there, especially in zone 2. If they thought DeCSS limited their market and served no other function, they could abandon it, DeCSS-hack or not.
ESR contends that the DVDCA wants to protect players since PC's will compete against DVD players. This argument holds very little water. For starters, Windows has a much larger marketshare than Linux, and Windows machines will compete more against DVD players, but Windows ALREADY had many, many software DVD players. Furthermore, these Windows players are essentially free of cost -- every video card in the world comes with a software DVD player. and I haven't noticed an increase in the price of video cards. So I fail to see how the DVD association is trying to protect investments in hardware players by going after the Linux player, since lots and lots of Windows players exist, at very little cost.
There is other mis-information as well. For example, he contents that DeCSS was developed by Linux hackers, which as we all know isn't true. I get the feeling he hasn't been following the story too well.
Also, is it really true that you can make a bit-for-bit copy? My understanding was that this required specialized hardware, and that commdity DVD reader hardware was not capable of reading special tracks.
DVD has been revealed as being just as much of a proprietary, closed-standard product as Windows. Either you play by the rules of a bunch of oligopolists, or you're out of luck. And yet we talk of digital distribution as the future. If we allow the distribution protocols of the future to be closed, then we lose.
We could complain, but mainstream news organizations, who drink from the same trough as the DVDCCA, will never hear us.
We could fight in court, but the opposition will always be better-funded. Now I don't believe money buys judgments, but it does buy time in front of a judge. We may win here and there, but can we afford to keep the fight up on every front? Not without a lot more organization, and money.
But the piracy issue will not just go away, and the media industry's desire for ever-more draconian controls will only grow as digital distribution grows.
The open-source community needs to do something about this. Unless a system which protects some freedoms is developed, then we will gradually lose all of our rights. I have many ideas about how this could be done, but the point is *we* need to do it, and offer it as an alternative.
Anyone interested, email cwkingsbury@hotmail.com
-cwk.
>CSS keeps the key information for a disk in a >special block on the disk. This block will not >be writable on consumer DVD-R blanks... you will >NOT be able to duplicate a DVD using these >blanks. Writable blanks will be hard to find, >and IIRC they will require special commercial >equipment; you won't be able to write them in >your DVD-R drive. No no no, no no no no. There isn't even a standard, right now, for DVD-R discs or recorders--several companies are all hawking incompatible equipment and have differing plans they're trying to push through. But that doesn't matter, because it's easy enough to trick DVD software into thinking that just about anything is a DVD disk--I got several commercial DVD players for Win9x to play bit-for-bit rips of DVDs off of an 8.4G hard disk. So, if I had a DVD-RW of any type I could record it to that media and play it--but again, the media is too expensive to bother. The truth is that ESR is right: they want all those $5000 licensing fees for anything remotely DVD-related. Aside from which, even without DeCSS, I can capture the video stream and re-compress in MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 and still have better-than-VHS quality video which I can record to the media of my choice. >Making drives enforce the system really does >help from their point of view. Sure, you can >burn a new PROM for a drive, but how many people >are actually going to do that? They're hoping >that people will either have to spend money or >manually hack hardware; that will reduce copying >to a level they can live with... especially >since they were (and to some degree are) >probably expecting the Digital Millenium >Copyright Act's ridiculously draconian penalties >to prevent the spread of any hacks. No, you don't have to fudge with the hardware or burn/buy special PROMs. The best DVD-ROM on the market (for the next 5 minutes, at least), the Panasonic/AOpen 10x drive, can be hacked by merely downloading a "firmware upgrade" to remove all region restrictions--go to http://www.dvdutils.com to get it.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
From our vantage point here in the 21st Century, we see that studios and production companies garner a sizeable portion of their income from video sales. And direct-to-video has saved projects that otherwise would have been total losses in theaters, if they weren't scrapped before that to cut distribution losses. So, far from ruining the film industry, the VCR has built a whole new market segment that generates a great deal of additional profit. I expect DVD-R will do the same thing. There is a good book on the Betamax case, "Fast Forward" that is well worth rereading in light of the DeCSS issue.
One issue I'd like to see tested in the courts, is the clause in US Title 18 that permits the owner of a copy of digital material to "make, or cause to be made, a copy, including an altered copy of the material for archival purposes". (Not an exact quote, and emphasis added). The 'altered copy' phrase has always struck me as applying to removing any copy protection. And, of course, I should be able to pay someone else to make that deprotected copy for me.
While all this is quite legal, I've never understood how the statute would create a 'right' to make copies, which ESR seems to think is being infringed. That is, there is nothing here that can be construed as forcing authors to provide their material in easy-to-copy format. It simply declares that if you can do it, it's not a crime.
(Anyone interested in opening a 'copy shop' to provide customers with legal, deprotected duplicates of their DVD's? I wonder what the DVD Association would say about that?)