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MPAA Head Valenti on DVD "Hackers"
Anonymous Coward writes "Commentary from Jack Valenti, MPAA President and chief executive, in today's L.A. Times, with his side of the DeCSS issue: 'The intent of these Web sites is clear. Break the encryption. Steal the product. The posting of the hacking code is akin to mass producing and distributing keys to a department store. The keys have only one real purpose: to allow a thief to open a locked door to steal the goods he targets.' Yikes." Yep. We've heard Jack's words of wisdom before, when the first MPAA lawsuits were filed. This article is definitely required reading for anyone interested in this battle.
4. Create DVD's of original material to which you hold the copyright
You are totally right, I forgot this one (and it is a very important one (my guess is that they probably are breaking the antitrust laws by controlling the access to the market)).
I know that currently this is not a very likely scenario, but when DVDRs and media become more common and less expensive it may become an issue.
Let's say I want to put my holliday on DVD's, this is completely legal isn't it? But how do I do?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
It's all his office's propaganda, of course.
The article doesn't deal with actual technical issues, doesn't explain how poor planning, short-sightedness, and plain arrogance created the situation in the first place, and serves only to try to convince Joe Consumer that "gee, the MPAA is only protecting my rights."
My rights to their monopoly. Bull.
Cam
- Cam MacLeod
He fails to mention that these exact same keys are needed to even be able to play the video.
is Jesus your personal savior? click here
So I guess all copying of keys should be done by a single private institution, thereby keeping any keys from being copied without the consent of the lockmakers regardless of who owns that which is contained within.
"I disagree profoundly what you say, but I would defend with my life your right to say it." -Voltaire
Right, there are legal uses of copying. I wasn't clear enough, then: it's the illegal copying I'm concerned about, though secondarily I also believe that discussing legal copying just muddies the waters.
No, we must insist on it I think, and for three reasons:
1. if we don't we may manage to keep our right to view DVD's but our right to copy them (or other copyighted material for that matter) for personal use will be a little bit more diluted because we haven't fought for it. Some more dilutions and they will manage to make it illegal.
2. Even if CSS was protecting against copying (which isn't the case, you just copy encrypted data) the fact is that it would protect against any copying, included fair use, so even in the case were Free Software Players for any platform you can think of there probably would be a case against the MPAA (or maybe just the DVD-CCA) because they are violating their customers rights to copy.
3. Even if players were legally available for any OS you can think of there would be at one time or another (when DVD-R's prices fall) where people would have done a software to copy DVD's, not to illegally copy it (thought some would have done so, as always there are some black sheep) but to make backup copies (which are completely legal). Today they are more likely to buy a new copy given that the price between a DVD-R and a new DVD makes it stupid to pay more to have less (the cool box), but when DVD-R's prices fall we may want to exerce our right to copy.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Yeah, where's Eric Raymond right now? Why haven't we heard anything from him? Isn't he the self-proclaimed voice of the Open Source community? Why hasn't he even posted anything here recently?
--Cycon
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
Point #1: this is exactly what the MPAA does not want the courts to realize. Point #2:this really doesn't mean much, kinda ticks me off when people use this as a reason for the CSS people to just let the issue go, deCSS will be around for a long time and in the next few years blank DVD's will drop down to CD-R levels, so lets not kid ourselves ok? Point #3: EXACTLY! they are afraid of DeCSS because they won't beable to control the DVD player market anymore, in fact they my flat out lose it all together. Point #4: you are correct this is just a reaction from the public in response to being ignored by DVD makers. Point #5: the DeCSS people most likely violated Xing's license agreement, so XING should be the one sueing people here, and the CSS people should be going after Xing for screwing up big time. Saying Xing screwed up so its ok to break the license agreement is essentaily the same as saying its ok to hack a gov site because they didn't have enough security.
From what people in threads above are saying, it seems that the only thing this does is allow the playback of dvd's in regions that they are not licensed for. I would not be surprised to see this come up as the major problem that the mpaa has with decss.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I'm not asking politely. I paid for a DVD player. I paid for a DVD movie. They won't play on my Linux box because I can no longer download the free software to use them for fear of being the target of a lawsuit. If the MPAA speaks for the manufacturers of these products then they were sold to me fradulently. I am not claiming that they are defective. I am claiming that they were sold to me with the intention that I would not be allowed to use them except under conditions that were specifically not specified. The packaging should say: "You are not allowed to use this product unless you have paid your Microsoft Tax." That condition was omitted. Therefore, it is not part of the contract.
I think it is time that we demand that the MPAA provide us with an operating system that lives up to both their conditions and ours. For them, it must be a recent version of Windows. For us, it must never crash, must be open source, must come with a rich set of programming tools, must be free (as in beer and speech), must have a community already maintaining and supporting it. Or they can let us use our DVDs under Linux.
JV's words are only surprising from the vantage of those who thought there was honesty left in Hollywood. We should not be so naive. What he's said is completely in line with the role he's supposed to play, which has nothing at all to do with the merits of their case or the truth of the matter. What matters to the MPAA et al is a business objective, and any means to that end is apparently OK -- including lying under oath (misrepresenting playback technology as a means to duplicate content) and bullying foreign governments into search/seizure acts using baseless claims of potential criminal acts.
JV is saying the appropriate thing at the appropriate time to help those means. Nevermind that his words are a disgustingly twisted abrogation of the truth, that he's deliberately confusing the issue of DVD encryption hacking for playback versus pirating (which has no need for decryption). Valenti and his MPAA cohorts know that they are lying. It's just another Hollywood role. The role he's playing is one solely calculated to confuse the issue, redefine the common understanding of the decryption tools away from the real technolegal situation, and deceive people into believing a thriving business is somehow the victim of the open source movement. It's a classic well-funded, well-executed snowjob. One can only hope that there's enough brainpower and willpower in the judicial system to survive it.
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
Ah... the web has a long memory, even though I do not. He's been consistent, at least (or at most).
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[4/2/98] http://www.calinst.org/bulletins/bull 512i.htm
he suggested that the U.S. should expand copyrights to match the extended copyrights of European nations; continue its fight against worldwide piracy; and, expand intellectual property right protection by enacting the WIPO copyright treaties agreed to in Geneva in 1996 (see article below). He also stressed the necessity of other countries enacting and enforcing similar penalties for copyright infringements
[04/03/1997]http://www.star.so.swt.edu/97/04/ 03/040397n3.html
As a war pilot, scholar, White House special assistant, movie industry leader and author, Valenti has worn many hats throughout his career
He received his bachelor's degree in business from the University of Houston in 1946 and his M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1948. In 1952 Valenti co-founded Weekley and Valenti, the advertising/political consulting agency, which was in charge of coordinating the media during President John Kennedy's and Vice President Lyndon Johnson's visit to Texas in 1963
Valenti was in the motorcade in Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated, and within one hour of the shooting was hired as the special assistant to newly inaugurated President Johnson
[Mar. 14, 1997]http://www.mediacentral.com/Magazines/MediaD
"Sen. Lieberman believes if you say 'V, S and L,' nirvana has arrived," Valenti said, adding that such a content rating "winds up lumping The Three Stooges in the same category as "Natural Born Killers." However, Valenti on Feb. 27 told a Senate committee hearing that he was not opposed to some changes in the system. "I've changed my mind," he said at the hearing. "I'm not inflexible."
[1992-1997(?)]http://iitf.doc.gov/members/valenti
Apparently, he was on "The President's Information Infrastructure Task Force." This site has not been updated in a while: "Use Netscape 1.1, IE 2.0, or CyberDog in 8 bit color" Cyberdog? Heh.
[1-28-98]http://www.twsu.edu/~news/insi de/1-28-98/forum1.html
Valenti will explore the relationships among free speech, censorship and personal responsibility in "Lights, Camera, Rhetoric! Who has control of television and movie violence?" on Monday, Feb. 9, at 7:30 p.m. in the Metropolitan Complex
No stranger to controversy, Valenti's first movie content battle came just weeks after becoming president of the MPAA in 1966 with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and its frank language. Other controversies followed, along with a Supreme Court decision that stated cities had the power to prevent the exposure of children to books and films which could not be denied to adults.
Those events led Valenti to announce in 1968 a new voluntary movie rating system, which has been revised occasionally to reflect changes in the movie audience.
In 1996, Valenti helped create a similar, and controversial, rating system for television.
[July 16, 1998]http://www.internetnews.com/i wlive/summer98/key4.html
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association Of America, took on the persona of a fire-breathing, circuit-riding preacher as he talked about digital copyright protection to the afternoon keynote audience today at Summer Internet World.
"The only way to protect works [of intellectual property] and to guarantee their future is to employ technology to protect them whenever they go on the Internet," he pronounced. "If Congress confers legal status on any machine whose mission is to commit copyright burglary, we're in trouble."
Valenti's jeremiad was inspired by proposed U.S. legislation being revised later the same afternoon in Washington. The bill would implement an international treaty--the World Intellectual Property Organization treaty, signed by more than 80 countries in October 1996--extending copyright protections to digital works, such as digitized movies, software, and the contents of Web sites. Each country must pass enabling legislation for the treaty if its existing laws don't already cover the treaty's provisions.
In its original version the U.S. bill would have criminalized the manufacture of any device that could be used to circumvent copyright--for example, software to decrypt an encrypted movie--but this provision has been opposed by hardware and software makers who don't want to be responsible for every possible use to which their products could be put. They have proposed criminalizing the act of copyright violation rather than the manufacture of the equipment, but the motion picture industry and recording industries oppose this strategy as being too difficult to enforce.
"We don't want to ban VCRs," Valenti said. "The only folks who have cause for concern are the makers of black boxes, which are nothing more than stealing machines." The film industry fears unleashing the ability to copy movies on DVD, since such technology could produce unlimited copies with no degradation in quality, removing any intrinsic incentive to purchase a commercial DVD rather than a pirated one.
Valenti cut his remarks short so that he could fly to Washington to attend congressional meeting involving the WIPO legislation, saying that when he accepted the invitation to speak several months ago, he didn't know the bill would be revised the same day.
Valenti wasn't exactly preaching to the converted, however. In a panel discussion put together to fill the rest of his speaking time, speakers pointed out that the Motion Picture Association of America's approach to the WIPO legislation could make it a criminal offense to commit such everyday acts as setting a Web browser to refuse cookies, if they were being used as part of a copyright protection scheme. Moreover, even manufacturing a browser that is able to refuse cookies would become a crime.
"Jack doesn't want these laws to be so sweeping, but Washington doesn't always get it right," said Jason Catlett, founder of Junkbusters, a company dedicated to stopping the spread of Internet junk mail.
"I run a Web site, and I think that people who violate copyrights should all go to hell, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions," said David Fiedler, editor of the Mecklermedia site Webdeveloper.com. "This legislation might make your computer illegal because if programmed correctly it could be used to circumvent copyright." He also pointed out that the Motion Picture Association of America had in fact sought to ban VCRs and video rental when they were first introduced.
[December 12, 1996]http://www.cme.org/press2.html
"The age-based system that Valenti's group is proposing is inadequate and will not be helpful to parents," explained Kathryn Montgomery, CME President. "The ratings group has chosen to ignore the recommendations of academic experts, parents, child advocacy groups, and professional organizations to develop a usable ratings system that can work with the V-chip," Montgomery added. "Instead, they have purposely devised a system that will not tell parents whether a program contains violence, sex, or offensive language."
[April 25, 1966]http://www. resignation.com/historicaldocs/letters/04251966_v
The economic commitments to my growing family cause me to regretfully submit my resignation as Special Assistant to the President, effective May 15.
(reply:) Dear Jack:
It has been a very long day.
[Tuesday, 19 May, 1998]http://www.chl.ca/Cannes98/may19_pirac y.html
CANNES, France -- The film industry is making progress in its war against piracy, but digital copying is posing a new and "cancerous problem," the head of the U.S. film association said Tuesday.
Recent raids, including the seizure of 8 million videos in Hong Kong, show progress is being made against pirates who cost the U.S. industry up to $5 billion a year, said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America.
"In digital, the 1,000th copy is pure and pristine as the first copy. So digital presents a cancerous problem," Valenti said.
His trade group is spending about $50 million annually to fight piracy, including employing ex-FBI agents to bolster other countries' efforts.
"What we're trying to do in China is get market access," he said. Hollywood is limited to 10 films a year in the world's most populous nation.
Valenti said he'll try again with a trip in the fall.
The carrot for the Chinese?
"We'd like to invest with Chinese partners in state-of-the-art cinema," he said. "We are looking forward to a partnership relationship with China."
[September 28, 1995]http://ww w.economicclub.org/Pages/archive-old/abstracts/ar
Currently, a good many public officials have certified that the so-called "popular culture"-defined as movies, television, and musical recordings-is the prime villain in what they perceive to be the clanging of the last ding-dong of doom for this society, the source bed of much of our ills. TV is a powerful medium, but there are deadly combustibles in the community, more noxious than any movie or TV program, and violence has been on the decline in movies and television for the past decade. A restoration of the homely" standards by which ordinary Americans have so long and through so much turmoil sustained their values, maintained their families, and guarded their country--not rating systems and censorship--is the only means for solving American social ills.
[02/07/96]http://www.house.gov/judiciary/461.htm
But what we do know is this binary numbers future is coming. It will have large impact, as well as both sublime and dislocating effect, on millions of Americans. It is the mandate of the Congress to peer beyond the veil, to make sensible and required judgments about how to make absolutely sure that America's grandest trade asset, its intellectual property, is protected in an era of technology so magical it verges on fantasy.
This committee knows full well the broad global sweep of American intellectual property which in 1994 produced over $45 billion in international sales, and is that rarity, a producer of surplus balance of trade, a phrase seldom heard in the corridors of the Congress. These creative works are the jewels in America's trade crown. To protect these delicate products in cyberspace is of transcendent importance. For if you cannot protect what you own, you own nothing.
[03/26/99]http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/14 _1/199903/t4151392.htm
President Kim Dae-jung yesterday told visiting U.S. commerce secretary that Korea will maintain the controversial screen quota system which limits imports of foreign movies into Korea, in defiance of U.S. demands for film market liberalization.
He made the remark as Jack Valenti, head of the American Film Producers Association, suggested that Seoul scrap the system, saying Korea is the only Asian country which maintains a quota.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Because making copies of CDs onto audio cassettes, and minidisks, is covered, "exact copies" cannot be part of the criteria. Dito for VCRs. All copies made onto VHS tape, cassette tape, or minidisk are lossy and therefore not exact.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You discribe the actions of the movie industry as "people protecting their right to protect what they made."
This has nothing to do with the issue at hand. If a company wants to make DVD's, and keep them, DeCSS does not help me break into their storehouse and take them. DeCSS, a DVD burner, or any other method of copying DVDs doesn't enable me to take away any other person's (or company's) property.
What it does do is make those DVD disks more useful than the producers had planned on. But that is their mis-step. Either they can suck it up, or stop selling DVDs and take the sales hit. But they can't go running to the courts to stop people from using the DVD disk however they please. It's not their DVD disk anymore, *because they sold it*.
Suppose someone sold printers that automatically broke after 2,000 pages. Suppose I looked inside and set some pin to ground or whatever and it now lasted until it physically wore out. Is that illegal ? No, because it was my printer after I bought it, and I can modify it as I please. That kid in Norway bought a computer and a DVD drive and a DVD, and whatever he did with them is completely OK, and he should be able to tell other people about what he did.
There is nothing wrong with cracking copy protection on software, writing code to access *your* hardware anyway you please, or looking under the hood of that Camaro to disable the 115 mph cut-out on the carburator.
To put it shortly, the movie industry wanted to sell a non-replicable disk, and it turned out they were accidently producing replicable disks. They decided to try to use the courts to make up for their technological miscalculation rather than go back to the drawing board.
In other more mature industries, companies usually expect and anticipate that people will try to find out how to get more use than out of products. Texaco isn't suing because because we have found out how to drive further on a gallon of their gas.
The DVD producers have two choices: 1) suck it up, 2) stop selling DVDs and invent another scheme.
I've actually corresponded with a NYT journalist on the issue of their parroting the MPAA position. No satisfaction; not that the NYT has ever addressed points of view which were too uncomfortable to the rich'n'powerful.
There was a comment that several of the legal briefs filed by EFF acknowledged copying as one use of the software. (They talk about "copying and viewing".) Since that's all that the DVD CCA talks about, it comes across as one of the few "agreed-upon facts".
The "viewing" bit comes out, if at all, as an unfounded asserttion by the defense ... which by that time (in all articles I've read) has already been painted using the DVD CCA (or MPAA) brush, as "hackers". And we all know hackers are just evil punks, kids with no moral character, like that Norwegian kid they threw into the slammer for hacking the same stuff, right? After all, that's what these same media have been telling the world for several years.
I'm sure that comes across as a travesty to many of you, as it does to me.
I can't see much we can do ... except that those who really do talk about copying should just shut up, since you're ruining it for the rest of us. (You do exist, yes.) The community should try to talk about its issue as "viewing".
At some level every minority community, like "hackers" (in the best sense) gets to deal with the opression of the majority. It's not always just. In the US, there still isn't equal opportunity, though it seems to be improving.
The other general issue is that most large media outlets have gotten quite accustomed to accepting the spin that other folk put on stories, without any real journalism. Look at the whole "Drug Prohibition War" deal, and the recent stories about payola for propaganda in mainstream media.
Good journalism would be a fix for this, but it's becoming less and less possible in mass media. And media like 2600.com don't get respect, particularly when they're (sort of) enjoined as actors in the case.
Don't windows DVD decoders (or any legit decoder) have to pay a license fee or something to use whatever it is you need to decode DVDs?
That's the whole root of the problem. CSS doesn't do a thing to prevent copying, but is a scam to extort cash from hardware manufacturers (and therefore indirectly consumers). It's monopoly power over playback, pure and simple.
There is literally no excuse for this kind of setup in an age where technology ought to be enabling the seamless interchange of information through common standards. If anything, government action should be focused on breaking up this kind of damaging trade practise.
Could someone get a license to make a Linux decoder? Possibly. But the point is that they shouldn't have to. Running a competitive market economy requires that no single company or cartel has control over any sector. Proprietary content formats of the kind we are discussing here are a serious abuse of the free market and are likely to hinder the development of digital technology.
Pretty clear who the real criminals are in this case.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
While Valenti's article may not be actionable libel, some of the letters of demand his organisation has sent to ISPs almost certainly are.
In those letters, the MPAA falsely states that the targetted individual has exhorted others to, or has offered him/herself to pirate copyright works. These false statements have the effect of defaming the target.
The stated intent of the letters was to have internet access provided by the adressee ISPs to the targets removed, which would likely cause them some real assessable commercial damage.
So, in summary (and depending upon the jurisdiction), I would say Valenti's organisation will have some nice civil suits heading their way.
[ObAbuse: Libel? Libel? I'll give you libel, you regurgitated lab-rat choad!]
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
Will there be T-shirts at LinuxWorld Expo too?
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Perhaps you missed Eric's article on Linux Today about the DVD CCA's lawsuit. I think Eric covers the situation quite well in that article, and I haven't seen anything that would require an update to that article.
Perhaps you've missed out on Eric's speaking engagements over the last month, but I know that he's been on the road, unpaid, for well over 50% of the time in the last several months, including the Eighth Annual Python Conference last week, and Linux World this coming week. What I want to know is this: where have you been? Where have your letters to the editor been published? Where are your articles on what's wrong posted?
To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, "Ask not what the Linux Community can do for you, ask what you can do for the Linux Community". That means doing more than writing derisive posts on Slashdot that take cheap shots at people you don't like. Or, as in the words of my (and I'm sure everyone else's) mother: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all".
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
The other side is making the argument that this issue is about copyright protection. After thinking about it, I've thought of an example that would seem to prove them wrong, and that the issue is about WHO gets to view the videos, and not protecting intellectual property.
Prior to the 1980's, if a sufficiently talented electrical engineer wanted to build his own audio equipment (and many audiophiles DID do this) he was free to do so. In this case I am specifically talking about a turntable/record player. There was nothing prohibiting a talented electrical engineer from building his own record player which would allow him to play and LISTEN TO his record collection.
This example could be extended to reel-to-reel tape machines as well as cassette decks, and yes even music CD players, today. For that matter, someone out there is even capable of building a Sony 3348, 48-Track 24-bit, 96Khz pro studio multi-track recorder. And if these people have done their job right SOUND will actually come out of the speakers that the device is hooked to. I'll say it again:
Anyone sufficiently talented is capable of building a device which will render an intelligible playback for whatever media they have chosen to build a player, audio or video
UNTIL NOW.
Now, if I were inclined to do so, I could buy various components and build a DVD player, but without prior knowledge of the encryption algorithm used to encrypt the data on the discs, and a valid ecryption key, I would be unable to actually watch and listen to the DVD that I put into my machine.
What has suddenly changed, that no longer allows me to play a DVD that I purchased in a store and legally own? It would seem (to me) that this is the crux of the issue.
As I was composing this message, something else occurred to me that distills my point into a far more palatable and less wordy argument:
Over the length of my entire life, I have yet to purchase a book whose text was encrypted.
Ignore Alien Orders
As an example, take following paragraph (the third one, although most paragraphs contain adequate nonsense for a rebuttle, I just don't have that much time):
"Every DVD is coded with encryption software. The protection of our creative product is even more critical in a digital world because the one-millionth copy of a digital film is as pristine and pure as the original. The program in question illegally breaks the encryption, leaving the valuable product unprotected."
from the article, it seem to indicate that the "hacker" software exists to copy CD's in their pristine form. However, this is contrary to several factual statements from the manufacturers of DVD equipment. For example, Toshiba offers a DVD writer that would allow "pristine" copies of DVDs without ever decrypting them. I would speculate that the production of innovative hardware that permits copying without ever decrypting the DVDs would be more dangerous than software that permits decrypting them. At least decrypting them has the logical use of allowing them to be viewed.
Why is software decoding not dangerous? Because every DVD player can play encrypted DVD's. It is irrelevant that you copy DVD's encrypted or not, and the ability exists to copy them as encrypted DVDs. One must then speculate, what is the real intent behind the DVD decrypting software? Mr. Valenti conveniently leaves out the fact that the DVD software allows users of the Linux Operating System to view the DVD movies that they own, something not available prior to this. If I own a DVD, am I not entitled to view it in whatever manner I wish?
I have a license to drive, which makes sense since driving can be deadly, and putting the wrong people on the road endangers us all. I see no justification to live in a world where I need a license to watch movies. But that is the implication of Mr. Valenti: If you do not possess licensed decoder from the DVD consortium, DVD's are an inaccessible technology to you. Is it really his place to dictate this? I believe it similar to dictating which cars I am allowed to drive, and allowing me to only drive the BMW, and "to hell with me" if I can't afford that or want choice.
The stark ignorance of Mr. Valenti is appalling. The "cyber-thieves" generally have better things to do than copy films. (most of them are rich, anyway) Indeed, it is the very benevolence of the entire community surrounding open source software that permits them to work together on a common project, by volunteering to create software that allows users of Linux and FreeBSD and BeOS and all the other free operating systems, to view DVD movies.
In all honesty, I can tell you that Mr. Valenti is one of the most ignorant people alive, or one of the most selfish and malevolent ones. The publication of this FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) in your newspaper undermines your credibility; without a satisfactory rebuttle, my faith in your publications is compromised, indefinitely.
Please try and find one of the many well educated people to publish a sensible rebuttle to this deception. It is a shame to see a respectable newspaper used as a medium for nonsensical opinion. The web page www.opendvd.org has information for journalists, which should be of interest to you. It provides true statements in direct contradiction of Mr. Valenti's article, except the statements on opendvd.org can be validated as true. Mr. Valenti's are fictitious opinion.
I must implore you to research this issue, and take heed when Mr. Valenti attempts to abuse your publication like this. There are millions of people out there who have read this article. The innocent will be deceived. The wise will be skeptical. The knowledgeable will be insulted.
If you do not have the right to use what is yours, what rights do you have?
One, to figure out how too play DVDs, you have to discuss it and share info.
Yes, so we should argue that this is about the right to reverse engineer, and the right to play DVDs that we own on any player or any operating system we like.
Whether or not this is speech doesn't carry much weight. If I stole a dozen credit card numbers, and published the numbers on the web, I can't claim a right to do so based on the right to free speech. Yes, we're not stealing anything here, but so this is what our defence should be about; the right to speech doesn't aid our argument -- it sounds too much as though we're saying: we have the right to speech, so we can say anything we damn well like, even if the information is obtained illegally.
In case you haven't been keeping up with copyright law in the last 30 years or so, it is legal to disammble programs, even if this contrary to license agreements. Click through licenses do not give companies a right to overstep the bounds established by copyright law. Perhaps this is why the MPAA's lawyers are arguing under trade secrets and what not.
Of course with the DMCA (all of which isn't law yet) could change this.
Last I checked, breaking into another's computer was illegal.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
That's precisely what I was getting at.
Perhaps I didn't express myself well enough. What I was trying to say was do I have the right to make archival copies of my software, music, etc., without loss of quality if it is in theory possible to do so? If they introduced something similar to CSS for audio CDs, would I have the right to decrypt the data and make a bit for bit copy of the decrypted audio stream? To do so, it would likely be necessary to circumvent their copy-protection scheme. Or is it sufficient that I can make an analog recording of the CD and too bad for me if I'm a stickler for sound quality?
Dave
- Subsolar http://th under.prohosting.com/~subsolar/articles/2000/20000 124-letter.png
Dear Editor,
I work as a computer programmer by profession, and am a website developer and computer enthusiast by hobby. I have become very concerned by recent legal actions by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the DVD CCA (DVD Copy Control Association). In December 1999 the DVD CCA filed for a preliminary injunction that was heard January 18 against numerous web sites that feature a program called DeCSS to force them to remove the program, source code, and any materials dealing with the CSS encryption algorithm. The judge decided January 21 to grant the DVD CCA the preliminary injunction against 500+ web site operators and online news sources. On January 14, 2000, the MPAA filed suit against three individuals under the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" stating that the only possible use of DeCSS and the DVD decryption information is to pirate DVD disks. The judge heard the case granted a preliminary injunction January 20 against the website owners.
The best analogy I can come up with is if book publishers printed books in such a way that they could only be read under a special light that was only manufactured by certain companies that had promised to keep the book publishers secret of how to make the special light to prevent people from possibly making xeroxes of them. Then say John Doe takes apart one of the special lights that he had bought and discovered that you could read their book by just putting red cellophane over a normal light. John Doe then publishes this discovery in his newsletter and the information gets republished in other magazines, newspapers and newsletters.
The book publishers discover a month later that John Doe has published their secret and the worry that the information could be used to make it possible to xerox whole copies of books (never mind that the book is cheaper to buy than the copy). So they file a lawsuit against John Doe, his newsletter, and against every other newspaper, magazine or newsletter that reprinted John's article or mentioned other publications that had printed John Doe's article. The law suit requires all defendants to recall articles dealing with John Doe's discovery or face fines of $2500 for each copy that contained the information.
Is this fair to John Doe and the people that republished John Doe's work? Is it fair to the general public since John Doe's discovery means that people could read the books they purchased without buying expensive special light bulbs, or a third party could make a less expensive version of the light bulb?
This is the situation facing hundreds of individuals and website operators right now, and less directly effects tens of thousands of users and software developers. The primary use of the DVD decryption information is to allow access to and play the video stored on DVD disks that people have purchased on systems they own that are other than Windows or Macintosh. I feel it's unjust and infringes on my right to "fair use" of the DVDs I've purchased to make me use only DVD players that are sanctioned by the Motion Picture Association, and to indicate that I'm irreparably harming the Motion Picture Industry if I provide information on how DVDs work or links to DVD information.
Signed,
- signature withheld.
I spent $200 on DVD drives and disks just because there was a decryption module for it. A person with my education has to work 3 hours to pay for 1 DVD and 2 days to pay for a DVD drive. For that kind of effort we should be allowed to play the DVD. The kids who use my software refuse to use anything they can't compile from the source code themselves. That means a lot of people aren't buying into this format who would if the source code was just legal.
If the MPAA speaks for the manufacturers of these products then they were sold to me fradulently.
I agree with you. You bought the DVDs expecting that you were buying the right to watch them. The DMCA tries to limit your rights, by creating `authorised' means of access.
The DMCA speaks of copyright owners' authorizing means of access. As far as I can tell, that authority can be revoked ad lib. So what have you actually been sold? Absolutely nothing - certainly not the right to watch what you've bought.
You should check this out http://www.loc.gov/copyright/1201/anticirc.html and make your comments clearly heard.
The comment period closes in a couple of days, but with enough comments, DeCSS may be granted an exemption.
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
Even under DMCA it is legal to reverse-engineer for reasons of interoperability.
(as per my understanding)
6. The MPAA is suing its customers for trying to watch DVDs they (the customers) purchased on equipment they (the customers) purchased.
I can think of better business plans.
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
Someone also pointed out that over the past 12 months, CD sales supposedly dropped 30%. The music industry is quick to blame this on piracy. Certainly piracy accounts for some of it. But I don't think that's the real reason sales are dropping. Nor is it the fact that people are listening to more independent artists who have no deals with the record companies. I think the cause is far more simple: evolution. Technology evolves in a manner not unlike life does. When the CD came around, vinyl records died a slow and painful death; they're all but gone now, limited to a niche market(let's please not get into a vinyl vs. CD flamewar here).
It's happenning again, only this time digital music is abandoning its physical form, the CD. The record companies never saw this coming. They had their chance; if any of them had come up with a secure, open standard, put it out there for many platforms, and sold music using it at a reasonable price, it would have flown. But they ignored the "new music" and now they're paying the price as evolution leaves them in the dust. I doubt it's quite too late for them; if they can get a reasonable open standard going they can still recover. But they had better hurry, and they'd better do it right.
Digital video isn't going that way anytime soon, of course. It's still too big to transfer over most networks in a way that leaves the video quality intact while still making the transfers practical. But it will come eventually, and the entertainment industry had better be ready this time, or they're going to get trampled into the dust.
More specifically, ask him what he thinks of the $2.50 Hong Kong pirate DVDs which were in production long before DeCSS ever existed.
Or what he thinks of the bill of goods the MPAA and it's members were sold by the DVD Forum/DVD-CCA.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
If I were the EFF, I would start by submitting, and demonstrating, the software produced by the LiViD project for DVD playback. I would then ask the MPAA, under oath, if it would be possible to play back the DVD without the decryption knowledge - or if there is currently any other way to watch a DVD under Linux.
Then, I might try submitting a VCR tape of a movie, which was created by recording directly off a DVD.
Next, challenge the MPAA to do the same, only they must use DeCSS to produce a bootleg DVD which was created with tools and media which are readily available.
If DeCSS is such a boon to pirates, have them demonstrate, step by step, how it can be used. They can always seal the document.
Sure, they could show how you could downsample to a Video CD - at a significant loss in quality, analogous to a DVD -> VCR copy.
----
The problem is for a DVD decoder to really "exist" in the Linux world, it has to be compilable from the source code up, unlike the windows world where anything goes. Sure you can download a binary that plays encrypted DVD's for Linux but who wants to run anything you can't compile yourself?
They do, in effect. Every borrowing is tracked, and every author whose works are in a library are paid a fee per borrowing of their book.
That said, I agree. :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I beg of you - please don't flame, or the MPAA will win. Please read the Advocacy guide, and stay calm no matter how angry you might be.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
I know it's not here yet, but it's supposed to be coming. What about the days when your DVD player just spits out a digital signal? What will stop me from put a box in between the two and recording?
Hell if we're using DVD-R for recording from TV by then, what'll stop me from doing that? Or, what stops me from intercepting the data stream coming out of a licensed Windows decoder?
My guess is just some black-box software/hardware and some reverse engineering time. And how would that be illegal? I'm not touching their encryption scheme. And under the fair use principle that data is mine to with as I see fit. I just can't redistribute it.
We don't need crap like this. Mr. Valenti may indeed be a scumbag, and he and his wife may engage in 'swingers' events, but unless you can prove it, I'd say keep it to yourself. The DVD CCA and the MPAA have shown a bad habit of taking everything they read on /. out of context; even if that comment were to have been read in the context of 'standard immature sex reference' it would inevitably show badly for us when the DVD CCA reads it off in front of a judge.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
At the end of his article it said:-
... quite apt, really! :-)
Jack Valenti is President and Chief Executive of the Motion Picture Assn. of America
Oddly, I read the "Assn." as "Assasins"
Unfortunately this interpretation doesn't hold water, as assasins aren't likely to last long if they're as dumb as Valenti, inasmuch as he can't even get his facts straight about the role of encryption in DVDs.
On the other hand, perhaps this means that he won't last long, but that would be a pity. It's always much easier to fight the clueless.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
That's easy.
First of all, they have to give up on the ridiculous idea that copy protection will help. So take the money that they would have wasted on copy protection, and give it to their lawyers/investigators instead, so they can go after pirates. Have 'em drop by #warez now and then.
Maybe try to add watermarks too. This has a few problems (the current retail model of anonymously buying physcial media no longer works, and also transforming the content into other formats may damage the watermark) but it's better than nothing.
Spend some of that money (that they saved by avoiding copy protection) on propaganda. Get the message out that the MPAA will prosecute pirates, make people think that their own copy of the content has their personal key hidden in it, etc. For people whose ethics don't prevent them from pirating, appeal to their fear.
But the most important part was at the beginning: no copy protection! If they attempt anything that makes it hard to copy the content, then they will piss off legitimate users and the copy protection will be defeated, since copy protection is impossible if humans are capable of ever perceiving the media. And attempts to bribe lawmakers into implementing copy protection through legal means (instead of technological means) like the DMCA is just wasted money, as we are now seeing.
In short, handle it the way the software industry did.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If I had a credit card I would Bruce, however I did step up and Became a Doe. Just got mail today that they're past the break even mark and the shirts will probably be printed, I encourage others to buy a One of a Kind shirt also!
-- iCEBaLM, Doe #140
"You have committed slander or libel when you knowingly make a defamatory, false statement about someone. Publicly accusing someone of a crime s/he didn't commit -- and which you know s/he didn't commit -- is a perfect example. "
Bzzt, wrong. It's only slander or libel if a loss can be proved. This is usually monetary loss. This is only in the US, of course.
I mean, people call other people things all the time. I mean, I can call you a murderer, for example, but you have no recourse if it's true or no financial harm comes to you. If I ran in and screamed it at your boss and you got fired right away, then you might have a case.
Might, it's hard to prove intent, of course.
Dan
All these guys wanted to do was to make the code available to programmers so that they could make DVD software decription for Linux, BSD, etc. If the idiots out in hollywood would just make the source available to some people so they could get the job done, nobody would've had to get arrested and bad-mouthed by every news agency in existence. Give the guy a break MPAA. He was only trying to let more people watch yer stinking DVDs.
Ideally the EFF would step in here and somehow (appealing to right of reply?) get a reasoned counter-argument in print in the same publication.
Here are the facts.
The entire livid-dev archive needs to be introduced into the record of every court proceeding touching this case. It's a clear record of a group of people collaborating - not to pirate or defraud the movie industry, but to develop some software to play DVDs that they'd legally purchased.
Some terrific quotes from the archive:
Jon Johansen on his reasons for DeCSS
The legal issues, months before anybody sued anybody
(Note: This is taken slightly out of context. The 'rippers' mentioned are framegrabbing, not CSS-decrypting (yet another feather in the cap for the argument that CSS is only about playback, not piracy.)A fairly clear statement of intent from a list member:
This is ludicrous. They sell us DVDs. We play them in our homes, and we can watch them when we want. We use their products to do this. The only reason that we use Thier products is because the information that is stored on our discs is encrypted in thier scheme. Can they really be afraid that we are going to pirate a disc of such immense filesize that it would fill our hard drives, or that we are going to re-create them on media that doesn't exist? OR, are they afraid that we will make players that they don't liscense? That they haven't recieved compensation for? They will get their money for the media, and they do deserve it, but by making it illegal for us to "Do it ourselves" they are no better than the pirates they are making us out to be.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
That said, I'm really just mentioning this as devil's advocate. It's the sort of reasoning the MPAA will use to argue that DeCSS was made to copy DVDs. I don't think the best way to combat that is to say that there are other ways to pirate DVDs or to claim that CSS is not a copy-protection scheme. We don't need a list of arguments. We need only one: "The primary purpose of DeCSS is to enable playback of DVDs on open-source DVD player software."
That gets right to the core of their argument. I'm no lawyer, but if the "primary purpose" of DeCSS is NOT the copying of DVDs, then the DMCA shouldn't apply, right?
>Currently, we have CDs with no copy protection whatsoever, and the recording industry has remained very rich despite that.
Uh, just to play devil's advocate here. The Music industry has been heavily affected in recent years by the widespread use of CDR burners and MP3. I've seen some estimates that in the last 12 months sales of audio CD's have dropped 30%.
Of course there is a good argument to make that the big 5 record companies have colluded on prices for years and CD's were overpriced. Of course the sensible answer for the music industry is to drop prices to the level where people would rather pay for the original product with nice packaging than copy it.
Of course that's not the course they intend to take: encrypted audio cd's here we come.
I like the special light thing, but even that sounds somewhat techno-scary. Try this on for size:
A book publisher chooses to only publish books in a rare, obscure language that very few people can read. Due to this, after you purchase one of these books, you must take it to a special person who will translate it and read it to you, in english.
Some smart fellow figures out this language, so that he can read his book curled up by the fire, rather than taking it down to the translation center. He also tells other people how to read the language, so that they can do the same. After all, they bought the book, right?
Meanwhile, the evil copyright pirates are taking these books down to the local copy shop, and xeroxing them like crazy, to sell on the black market. The details of the language don't matter one bit to them - their copies are perfect, and they don't have to understand what it means, since the copies can still be taken to the translater - they are indistinguishable from the original books.
Now - who does the publishing industry sue - the guys curled up by the fire, reading their books, or the pirates in the copy center....? Yup, you got it. The fireside readers get hauled into court.
----
The point of CSS is not to protect against piracy. It's so the DVD industry can milk as much money out of this product as they possibly can. To make sure that no one beside their chosen few can make players to play DVDs (read: those that pay the toll) they encrypt them, and only give the keys to those who pony up the dough. Now that someone has broken it, they can't come out and say that someone has found a way around their exclusivist scheme, so they just pin it on piracy. Which of course, no one likes.
There's no one to extor-ERR, pay the license fees for DVD capability on Linux, so they dont create players for Linux or bother with it. There is plenty of extortion potential in Windows companies.
End of story. Mr. Johansen (probably spelled wrong) killed their cash cow and now the MPAA will wipe its ass with the Constitution and any other basic human rights to protect its bottom line. Unfortunately its too late, the cat is already out of the bag.
Sorry Jack. Mirror DeCSS, even if you don't care about Linux DVD players. Let the MPAA play Whack The Mole. This isn't about piracy, its about protecting ourselves from corporate greed.
Thank you, I'm done now.
This has nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with control - control of how I watch a DVD, and what products I watch it on.
You seem to be believing the lie. Don't. I urge you to read every post in this thread, and see for yourself what I am talking about.
Here is my mirror of the DeCSS code. Where is yours?
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
This is what the court decides; It is not over yet.
I think this speaks for itself; if at least he would get ideolegy right...
*sigh* - I want DVD video for linux
I would not want to be a DVD player manufacturer. If the MPAA decided to black-ball a DVD player manufacturer, they could enforce this by removing that company from the keys list. Whoops, all the new movies released on DVDs won't play on your player.
If I were to pirate movies, I'd buy the DVD release and copy it to VHS from the video out. Double or triple the price of the blank tape and you'd make money in no time. The master (DVD) wouldn't wear out and you wouldn't need to pay for DVD-R disks.
Eventhough the MPAA is protecting their markets with all of these lawsuits and lobbying for copyright legislation, they are fast removing any choice from the consumer. I think the license that defines the consumers' rights after a movie (in any release format) is purchased need to be revisited.
If you want perfect copies of DVD, you buy an expensive DVD writer and expensive media and make bit-for-bit copies of the disk.
Sure, DeCSS allows people to copy the information (video output) itself (and transfer it to another video medium). But you can do that with some coaxial cable and a VHS recoder too. Properly set up, you can copy from a dedicated DVD player to your computer (to a digital medium).
DeCSS doesn't allow a person to do something that isn't already doable with other current technologies.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
CALL TO ACTION
- --------------------------------
01/30/00
Thousands of copies of the flyer have already been distributed at movie theaters worldwide. Versions are also being made in different languages. The next step will involve a massive action this Friday, February 4, 2000.
We call on all 2600 meetings held around the world on that day to head to the local theaters and spread the word of this travesty of justice by handing out as many flyers as possible. Everyone is invited to show up and participate, bring your friends, bring your Linux User Group and join us in advocating justice. We find that once people are made aware of the facts of the case, they become as outraged as we have.
First, make sure you make the flyers distinctive by printing on colored paper if at all possible. The quickest way to do this is to go to a copy shop. Get several hundred at the very least - you WILL go through them quickly. Make sure you can print more if you need them.
Familiarize yourself with the facts of the case as presented on www.opendvd.org. It's important to be able to answer questions of people who are interested in learning more. Remember, this is NOT about DVD piracy - that is how the movie industry is trying to portray this case. The issue here is CONTROL of players - whether you have the right to play DVD's on the computer of your choice and whether you should be able to see DVD's from other countries. As well as our freedom to continue reporting on the events, developments and discoveries of the hacker community, in a full and accurate manner.
We find that people respond well to "Protect Your Rights" as a catch phrase to get them to take the flyer. Let us know if others work for you. Be courteous to the people passing by - don't block their path and, if they ignore you or even make a snide remark, don't heckle them. We find that the vast majority of people are polite and interested in what you have to say. You'll find that some will even come up to you asking for more flyers! Have a set of master copies (printed on white paper) for others to make copies of their own and hand out in other places.
If you are asked to leave by theater management, cooperate and ask them where they would like you to stand. They can't force you to leave the area, only the part that is their property. You can still successfully hand out material to everyone coming and going by positioning yourself in neighboring areas or even in the parking lot. If things become unpleasant, simply head to another theater in a different part of town. (If you run out of theaters, you can always fall back on video stores.) We find that 90% of such confrontations can be averted by befriending security guards and making it clear that you don't intend to be disruptive.
-----------------------------------------------
The MPAA's strategy is very clear.
Propagandize with their money far and wide to sway the public in their favor, link "hackers" with sexy words like "narcotics", and portray them as theives. This is how they expect to win the general populaces support, and right now its working.
Our problem is we have no voice ourside our own circles. The MPAA can write propaganda articles and get them published in the LA Times, but what about us? We have no mass market voice, and they know that and are trying to capitalize on it.
What we need is a stronger voice, one which can get out into major papers, out to the public, we need to tell people whats really going on. Unfortunately I don't really know how we can do this, maybe someone else has a good idea?
-- iCEBaLM
For example, the lawyers tried to argue that the source code is protected by the 1st amendment because of the programmers' comments in it. The judge replied by asking several questions, such as:
And when the program was compiled, the programmer's notes would not be compiled into object code, right?
Alhough this isn't news to us, that a judge understands this much about programming is rare.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
- The straight encrypted disks can be copied by any 10K $ DVD burner.
- The blank media costs more than the real movies
- As the encryption does not stop copying, the encryption only serves as a blockage to playback.
- If they'd produced a viewer for Linux, even if it was "black hardware" decryption that used an opensource driver, they'd never have had this problem.
- If Xing had been smart about encryption, they would not have had this problem.
People want to be able to have fair use on the movies they buy. People are now wizing up to the DVD "playback protection," so expect to see more "damage control" by these DVD guys in the future. Be sure you are out there spreading the truth, and making sure they don't FUD some other poor guy in jail.---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I think the EFF should stop using the "source code is speech" argument in their defense. The Bernstein decision on which this was based was controversial in the first place, so I don't think this carries much legal weight. And the fact that something is speech doesn't necessarily give you the right to speak it e.g. when the information was obtained illegally, which is the case the MPAA is trying to make.
Here's a hint for Mr. Valenti - it's not to pirate DVDs.
1. I want to play DVDs on Linux. I know that's semi-possible now with the css-auth code, but not on a K6II with no hardware decoding. I'm hoping that once the CSS cat is legally out of the bag we'll start to see the software that's already there blossom much faster than if further development is legally shackled.
2. I don't want to play DVDs on Windows or with a hardware DVD player. I don't like Windows, I don't use Windows, and I'm not about to change that. I don't have a standalone CD player, and never bought CDs until I had a CD-ROM. If I have to get a separate DVD player to hook straight to a TV, I'll just stick with VHS, thanks.
Oh, and I'm not too interested in closed source Linux players either. I buy closed source games for Linux, but something as basic as a video
decoder should be open source, for a number of reasons.
3. I want to archive movies someday. Analogy: I went through grades K-12 without buying a single audio CD (and just a couple tapes). After MP3s became popular, I started buying audio CDs, simply because it's infinitely more convenient to have my entire music collection ultra-accessible. I have an internet accessible (passworded) infinite
CD changer (of my own purchased music), in essence, and that's a very good thing. When hard drives get into the hundreds of GB, I want to
do the same thing with video.
4. I want to be able to play DVDs without a DVD player. Sounds oxymoronic, no? But in the not-too-distant future when Crusoe webpads are all the rage, I want to be able to upload a movie or two to my light notebook and watch them on the road. I shouldn't need more than an ethernet connection on said notebook to do this; I definitely shouldn't need an additional (and more expensive portable) DVD-ROM drive.
5. I don't think all software should be open source, but I do think all software should be possible to reimplement from scratch as open source, whenever people with the necessary skills gets up sufficient motivation. Microsoft gets enough flak for making obfuscated, poorly documented Office formats; what do you think the DoJ would do if all their file formats were *impossible* to read/write with other software because of some technically weak but legally bulwarked encryption scheme?
6. I want to be able to conveniently downsample, take still shots of, and edit DVD video. Yeah, yeah, you can do this pretty well with a Windows crack or piping the analog video to a capture card, but I want to do it on *my* system. Did nobody else get a kick out of the recent Matrix parody? Imagine more things like that, but add short dubbed clips, Gimpish effects, etc. Imagine taking a set of TV episode collections (I'm waiting for the Simpsons) on DVD and chopping out credits, bad episodes, etc. and putting just your favorites on a disk to lend to friends.
7. I want to be able to preserve my DVDs. The movie industry seems to be pining for the day when consumer video just wore out after a while, when technology made sure that people who paid for a piece of video didn't get that video forever. How many millions of dollars did media studios get from people who left a tape in the sun, who watched or listened to an analog tape too many times, etc. and wore down the quality but enjoyed the entertainment *they purchased* enough that
they bought a replacement? Even DVDs get scratched - and the horrid skips in a copy of Saving Private Ryan my friend rented demonstrated what happens then. I want to be able to make perfect copies of movies I buy, stick the originals in a closet, and just make a new perfect copy to watch if something happens to the first one.
8. I want to be able to move my DVDs to The Next Big Format. Sure, it's a nice coincidence that we're at just that moment in technological history when 1 movie of data == 1 disc of data, but does anyone really think we won't be able to fit a dozen movies on removable media in 10 years, or a hundred movies on a disc within our lifetime? If you can't make fair use copies of the movies you
purchased, and you want a library disc of your whole video collection, you're out of luck.
9. IT IS MY RIGHT. It was the DeCSS author's right to reverse-engineer software to make a compatible alternative. It is my right to make perfect copies of media I own a license for, for personal use. I made up this list because Mr. Valenti (and the judge in the court transcript I read) can't seem to understand that there might be normal reasons for normal people to want unfettered access to the media they purchased, but in reality I shouldn't need any excuse to legally exercise the rights that copyright law gives me.
I don't own a DVD player, and I don't plan on ever getting one if distributing this software is incomprehensibly ruled illegal. I would want to move this mirror offshore to somewhere it is legal, however.
I'd boycott them because I'll be sick of the DVD industry, not because I won't be able to use the software, mind you. I downloaded CSS source code from public court records, so I've got it legally; they can't retract that after the fact. I wouldn't be copying DVDs illegally, so they can't pick on me for that. Even if they rule that reverse engineering pitiful "encryption" is illegal, using a legally obtained product to exercise your license rights still won't be.
Somebody needs to ask him what his stand is on copying encrypted DVDs -- without breaking the encryption. In other words, what he thinks of raw bit-for-bit copies, and how his position on that differs from his position on breaking the encryption. Perhaps someone should put up a web page describing how to copy a DVD without touching the encryption, and see if the MPAA takes the bait. Looks like a job for GeoCities.
Of course, he is denying us our rights by disallowing private backup copies -- including copies to another media type -- which the courts have said is legal.
Blah blah blah. Sadly, I'm tired of hearing it, and making the sam arguments over and over again. But if we don't continue to respond, we lose.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I have that decoder card. it is not exactly a high-quality decoder card -- the difference between that and even the DxR3 is amazing. I don't even think that the DxR2 is readily available anymore -- it's been technologically surpassed long ago.
now let us mention that Creative, let alone the MPAA, was not precisely helpful in creating drivers, from what I've heard. as soon as I get my motherboard replaced, I'm going to try out those drivers, but last I checked, they were mighty unstable, and they weren't getting any help from Creative on that, even in the form of information. I hope this has changed.
so, yes, there is some sort of solution, but in many, many ways a unsatisfactory one.
Lea
Why was this article run? This piece had no publishable merits at all! I won't even get into the issue of the Times exibiting gross journalistic misconduct by publishing such fluff with no research into the truth of the material, from a paid corporate spokesman who has shown himself to lie whenever it suits him. It should have been labelled 'Advertisment'
The only conclusion I can draw is either Valenti's office paid a great sum of money to get this published, or Valenti made a threatening phone call to the media company that owns the L.A. Times, and threatened to have their balls cut off if they didn't play ball with his political grandstanding.
Mr. Valenti, you should be ashamed!
.sig: Now legally binding!
Did you read them? Good.
E-Mail John Forgetta, Editor of CalendarLive at john.forgetta@latimes.com
Remember, if you are being idiots, you are only hurting us, and not helping us one bit.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
This one I only learned recently, but I hadn't seen it on Slashdot before.
Yes, we all know that the price of DVD-ROM discs is higher than the price of a DVD movie. This presents a sort of pseudo-barrier to copying, right? Of course, that barrier will drop as the prices do.
But there's another barrier, and this one is real.
Apparently, DVD players don't work with unencrypted disks (DVD-ROM drives are another matter, but most of the DVD playing machines out there are the set-top boxes). Furthermore, the key is always stored at a very specific spot on each disk.
Now, on a DVD-ROM disk, that spot is pre-burned with zeroes. Making it physically impossible to burn a disk which will work in an ordinary DVD player.
Of course the DVD CCA wouldn't let this information out normally; if people know that DeCSS still didn't let you burn practical pirate DVD's, there would be no case.
Yet another reason DeCSS doesn't promote piracy; pirated disks won't even work. In other words, this guy's spouting DeCSS FUD. Not that he hasn't before, but this is just another bit of factual evidence to add to the pile.
I'm sending an email to Bruce Perens and RMS about this. Here is what the mail says:
There is an article at http://www .calendarlive.com/calendarlive/movies/20000130/t00 0009450.html which was written by Jack Valenti, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. (you may have seen this on Slashdot already)
Like other people such as myself, this really ticks me off. Big business is able to get mouth time and is able to write articles for the LA Times, while the people in the open-source community have little or no say over these matters and are frequently considered a negative impact on society.
While I was chatting in IRC I figured that someone should do a mass protest at the courthouse where this is taking place, or even one of the several federal buildings in this country (making sure this doesn't turn violent and cause negative publicity) As citizens we have the right to protest peacefully. If we do not do so the government has every opportunity to bias themselves toward the MPAA and to consider us as "weak."
Another possibility would be to borrow a DVD recorder and a computer that can play DVD's and record a video about how encryption isn't even necessary in order to copy and redistribute DVD's. The video would be given to the defendents' lawyers as evidence or even to the MPAA itself.
Unfortunately I can't do any of these things because of school, but I will support you or anyone else if this does take place. Thank you for letting me be heard.
A letter similiar to this could be sent to open leaders of the Open-Source movement, allowing more people to get involved in this. This is the only possible way it seems to get any action done.
(Note: for people outside the USA, try protesting outside your nearest US Embassy :)
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
This whole story has become redundant. Every new case brings the same rhetoric and pontifications about the same issues. However, this shouldn't mean that we should stop responding. In particular, this article in the LA Times has some very serious problems:
Article:If one visits the sites in question, one will see enticements to "break encryption and copy a DVD onto your hard drive. Decrypt movies and let them be played off your hard drive or off DVD-R [recordable] if you have a burner [recording device].
Personally, I do not remember seeing this alledged quote (at least not in the manner in which it was used in the article). As stated by others earlier, most importantly by the U.S. Judicial system (sorry for those outside the U.S., but this is centering on U.S. law for the most part), the end user has the right to make copies for his own, personal, non profit use. Honestly, how many people are going to have a large store of copied DVDs on a HDD? With their size, it would be easiest and cheapest to just purchase a copy if the intent was piracy.
The posting of the hacking code is akin to mass producing and distributing keys to a department store.
To run with the initial metaphor, it is akin to mass producing and distributing keys to a department store if you own the store and like to ensure that you will be able to access it (that and the store costs about $20 and the key costs about twice that).
The keys have only one real purpose: to allow a thief to open a locked door to steal the goods he targets.
The key does not facillitate theft. Byte-by-byte copying is always possible, but not practical as mentioned above.
In the trial, the defendants no doubt can count on support from activist groups that have been seduced by the hackers' strange ideology, which equates copying and stealing software code with free speech.
Excuse me? The first comment is the one that I have the most trouble with in the entire article. I finded it troubling that someone could say that people "have been seduced by the hackers' strange ideology." Well chosed diction for his case, but heinously false. The predjudice in this statement is outrageous, to state that others have been seduced by a "strange ideology" while he has written this piece is preposterous. While he obviously meant strange to mean "extraordinary," (benifit of the doubt, right?) I think that he could have rephrased this passage. Finally, the ideology of which he speaks, I believe, generally advocates the open sharing of [source] code and giving credit where credit is due when copying it. It does not advocate the outright theft of code (software code == source code? or binary code?). I certainly do not want to speak for everybody when discussing their own ideology, but I believe this to be a good summary of the ideology of which he speaks.
Some even have dared to assert that since the encryption was hacked, it wasn't tough enough to begin with. This is no different from saying that breaking narcotics laws is OK because it can be done.
Flatley stated: it wasn't tough enough to serve their purpose. Moreover, forgetting to encrypt data at one point in the process of playing a DVD was the real reason (so I have been told, correct me if I'm wrong) that cracking the encryption was so easy. This was basically like giving someone a coded message and the uncoded message where a simple shift cipher was used.
Does this make it right? We must define 'it.' Does it make it right to break a law because it is easy to do? Without breaking out my copy of Walden or Civil Disobedience (Good ol' Henry David Thoreau) I will move on to: does this make it legal? No, of course it doesn't. But what laws have those involved in DeCSS broken? They have not made it easier to pirate anything nor have they broken any laws themselves. They only wanted to open up the DVD market to those who wish to use an alternate operating system.
The producers of artistic works did not labor over their creations for months and years simply to see a band of cyber-thieves gain applause for stealing their work. . . Those who passionately believe in freedom of expression and consumers who value creative storytelling have a lot on the line as the judge considers this matter.
Yes. Well said. We certainly do.
---------------------
On another note, how many peole actually own DVD-Rs? With all the problems (three main divisions in the market, resulting in DVD-RAM cartridges etc.), I don't think I actually know one personally. I'm curious as to whether they have caught on elsewhere.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Milton on Windows:
"And what the people but a herd confus'd,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Never trust anyone over 90000.
You shouldn't have to legally defend encryption. If it gets broken, then you simply have to rely on legal action against anyone that subsequently steals or copies your product.
Otherwise I could use ROT-13 as encryption then prosecute anyone that decodes my message, simply because they "broke" the encryption.
If we don't stop them here, a day will come when many web pages gray out your print button. Your web browser will read encrypted content, will refuse to save it to a file
Aside from the encrypted bit, I've actually seen Netscape do this. Of course, there's no way that this can be enforced (right now) for other browsers..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
The whole argument by the MPAA seems to be that computer users want to pirate the content of their DVDs by using DeCSS. Umm. Excuse me? If I want to pirate a DVD it's going to cost me a whole lot more to go out, buy a DVD writer, buy a blank DVD, borrow the DVD from the video store and make a copy. Much easier just to wander down to K-Mart or (insert your local bulk store here) and buy a brand new DVD movie off the shelf with all the nice wrapping and free posters etc. and sleep with an easy conscience.
I can see how my argument may fail within a few years, when blank DVDs are being rolled out at $1 each and writers can be picked up for a couple of hundred. But by then this whole argument will be over anyway and there will be some new technology to squabble over.
The only argument for keeping CSS a secret appears to be to make sure that those companies who actually purchased a licence to decrypt CSS in their players aren't seen to have wasted their money. That seems to be a joke, anyway. If I want to go out and buy a reasonable quality DVD player for my home theatre it would set me back about $800 (I'm in Australia, BTW). Ok, so I realise I'm buying hardware and software there (including paying for the licence to have the CSS decryption software in the machine), but that seems fairly pricy for a glorified CD player that I wouldn't pay more than $150 for without the software component. I mean, the physical mechanism hasn't changed that much. CD shaped object still goes into the machine, gets spun up to speed and gets read by a laser on the end of a focussing arm. Big deal. So, let's be generous and say that the added technology above and beyond that of a normal CD player costs about $50 per unit to implement. That means I'm paying about $600 for the added software component that is inside the DVD player, as opposed to a regular CD. Does that seem reasonable to anyone?
On the other hand, if I want to go out and buy a DVD player for my computer, it only costs about $450 for a good quality unit, which usually comes bundled with a Windows DVD player. Ok, so a regular CD-ROM for my PC will set me back about $100 (I'm being generous there!). So, as in the home theatre player mentioned earlier, let's add in $50 towards the modified hardware within the unit, and that leaves me with $300 towards the software that I run on the computer to read the DVD. Err. That's $300 (50%) less than I'm paying for my home theatre DVD player software. Paying that much for software I'm never going to use (if I use an unsupported OS like Linux etc) seems a bit harsh - especially when I'm then told I can't write my own software to do the playing on my OS.
Even without the software issues, though, it's amazing that they have to wonder why people want to watch their DVDs on their computers? Heck, even if I go out and buy a TV out card and pipe the DVD from my PC into my big screen TV for home theatre, I'm still going to come out $200 ahead!
So, to sum up, it seems that the only reason for having CSS licences isn't to protect artistic content, but to protect those companies who are producing DVD players for the home theatre market.
It's interesting to note that the VHS copy protection scheme that is used these days (developed by Disney, I beleive - correct me if I'm wrong) is so insanely easy to bypass it's not funny. However, it never really becomes an issue because computer users aren't involved. I don't recall a big fuss being made about all the VHS copy protection breaker-box schematics that were thrown about when it came out. I even saw some of them in respectable electronics magazines.
Email me or not.
email me or not.
The analogy that he uses is very weak. The only way that distributing the means to view the information on a DVD is akin to distributing the keys to a department store is if every customer was assigned a key to the store. Only if the customer has a key are they allowed to shop there. And you have to buy the key in the first place, because the store controls the production of the keys. And if you move to a different area, you have to purchase a new key to access the local store.
It seems to me that he left himself wide open to debate in court by using that weak analogy. DVDs are a transport for content. Is it right for a corp. to control the means of transport with such precision? To segment markets, introducing incompatibilities that make their products valueless for resale in a global marketplace?
People don't buy DVD players to tap into the product of a few elite corporations. They buy them because they want to own a device that allows them to use next generation content. Are we to allow ourselves to be so shortsighted as to accept the DVD medium as a conduit for the transfer of large amounts of money directly into the pockets of entrenched titans, while stripping the public of rights that they cherish? I understand the problem that they see, but their solution is weak and would have to trample on our established rights to keep alive.
But, deCSS and utils based upon it are available for windows, which provide no other purpose but copying.
Wrong.
DeCSS was written for Windows...so that it could be used to play DVD's under Linux.
Or rather, so that it could be used to play DVD's under WINE under Linux. According to Jon Johansen (the 16-year old member of MoRE who was arrested in Norway for writing deCSS--although he probably didn't), this was a necessary first step because at the time, Linux didn't offer support for the file format used on DVD's. (Can't remember the acronym right now, and can't find the article in which he was quoted as saying this. It was one of the "Jon Johansen gets arrested" articles referenced by a poster in an earlier DeCSS thread...) Thus, at the time, DeCSS on WINE was the only way for those who will only allow free software on their computers--and there are many of them--to play a DVD.
Then, once support for that format was available for Linux (again, this is what Jon was quoted as saying), a program that ran DVD on Linux the right way--CSS-auth--could be written. But DeCSS was a legitimate first step towards that goal; for a short time, DeCSS on WINE was the only way to view DVD's on Linux.
Or, of course, you could have just had one of your Windows using friends rip any DVD to MPEG using one of the many many *many* available rippers that allowed the CSS key already included in any Windows DVD software to break the encryption before capturing the file. This page lists no less than 19 of them. IIRC, only one of those listed (DeCSS) actually breaks CSS itself. That is, there were (I believe) no less than 18 DVD rippers already available before CSS was reverse-engineered.
As for your argument that these rippers were "less perfect" than a DeCSSed copy, I can't say, since I've never seen the output of any of them. However, I do know that CD-to-mp3 rippers are of greatly varying quality, and are always improving; unless there's some technical obstacle I don't know of (and I highly doubt it), there's no good reason why these tools wouldn't become perfect very very soon--especially because what they do is not, as I understand it, any different from the job a CD ripper does.
I have no idea Bruce, you'll have to ask copyleft about that. Would be a good idea tho.
-- iCEBaLM
While it's a very valid point, that DVD decryption will allow open access to dvd media (ie, free and open dvd players) I think that a lot of us are attempting to ignore the more dubious side of things. Many of us do want DVD players for linux, but so do many people want more perfect copying of DVD discs. If the purpose of decss was to help produce free dvd players, the main audience of those players would have been linux, since windows already has players (usually bundled with drives). But, deCSS and utils based upon it are available for windows, which provide no other purpose but copying. Before deCSS, copies werent 'perfect' and the advantage of digital perfect copies that dvd would give you disappears - deCSS lets you copy things more perfectly. Maybe the MPAA fears large scale pirates who repackage and sell copies of DVD discs more than they do the little warez kiddie. I think that this is more likely. The situation is akin to the publishing of security exploits before they've been patched. They can help find vulnerabilities to fix, but they can also be an open door for the people who wana do damage. While the linux app idea is good and needed, the fear of the app used to make high quality piracies of discs is a real and valid one. I think that the MPAA is going to have to find a more effective way of securing the media against large scale pirates - or else they're going to have to figure out some way to eliminate the negative effects of piracy. (maybe like make them free to watch after they've been out for a year or somethin? I duno :)
One thing that's faking you out is this- the job is so much harder than you could possibly imagine. But that's OK too- sometimes it's good to have people around who are enthusiastic and don't realise a thing is impossible. And making movies is not strictly impossible- it's just very very involved and tedious.
I know I've been forming an 'open source recording studio': it's mostly because I want to 'push' acceptance of MP3s badly enough that I will record people for free if they are willing to release everything they do with me as MP3s unrestrictedly and look for other ways to earn actual money (like selling CDs or shirts or by gigging or whatever). However, you've got no idea how complicated, how involved it is to build a worldclass project studio- even if you're a hardwarehacker who can build his own gear half the time, and modify stock gear the other half. Everything from effects to the very cables themselves have to be made to demanding standards. You have to cast a wide net for certain key elements- for instance, I just arranged to get a Yamaha FM synth module, because certain types of tones (especially synthetic basses) need this type of synthesizer in order to get that sound. I'm about 1/3 of the way through replacing all the studio's patchcords with a special multistrand air-insulated variety I invented (the 8-channel snake is already built from this type of cable). Meanwhile, the studio's centerpiece, a 20-bit ADAT, is in Massachusetts being repaired, because when UPS drops such a thing in transit it goes 'smash'. This is all part of the day-to-day grind of building such a studio.
Now imagine your movie studio. There's no reason to limit yourself to webcams and basically produce a film that sucks- and the people are out there to give you access to equipment and skills- but again, the amount of work involved is not small. Who's your scriptwriter? Who knows how to direct- for that matter, who will you have that knows how to take a basic screenplay, work out all the locations, camera angles, different shots, and make a shooting script? When you have that, who gets the job of continuity and pays attention to the scene, shot over three days on a porch, only one of the days is 20% more overcast than the others- or keeps notes of who wears what costume when, and which props are in use or (like a glass of water) being altered over the course of shooting? Did he fire six bullets or only five? ;)
But the crazy thing is- this stuff is _fun_. It's fascinating. Even something so much smaller, like my recording studio, can be great fun- it's like the musical or film equivalent to having a great compiler and all the source to everything >;) it's positively liberating.
This is, perhaps, why I sometimes freak out colorfully in the pages of Slashdot.org against the threat of media being taken away from independent artists. Art is _glorious_. It can be a stunning, joyous outburst of human expression- and that doesn't necessarily mean 'nice'- to me, the last scene in Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' is a joyous outburst of directorial brilliance and panache, because it fscks with your head so brutally and giftedly ;) by way of another tangent, in another Gilliam film, "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas", the sound engineering hits some fantastic peaks with the remastering of classic 60's songs into the film- this is yet another little detail work feature, but the resulting music is _so_ powerful and alive that it helps the film immensely.
You're right, Temporal- things _will_ be going this way soon enough. They already are- you have people trying to make films out of scripting the Quake engine, you have people working with 3dsMax, you have a whole passel of firewire-packin' iMac users with those new graphite machines that came with video editing software geared to consumers- it's happening, but it's happening in so many places at once that it's too big to spot at first. How many people have just a little piece of the picture, or a few pieces? I know I can write, I can put together shooting scripts, and I can come up with the sound engineering. There are so many people out there who have things they can do for such a project!
But the thing is, writing the software gets you only half the way there- but you do that half over and over and over again, it doesn't end. Once you have software you find people to use it, and their skills are not yours- they use it and the next thing you know, they need some changes and new behaviors or abilities and you go back and code some more and they run with that and then get back to you with some more ideas... that's how the film EFX industry works, though it's mostly broken into little camps, people working on proprietary technologies and accomplishing amazing things.
Now imagine what it would be like if the open source community got a critical mass of these types of technologies- and got all these different people working together on projects, new media projects. That could truly change the world.
I hope we still have a way to show our creations when we finally get around to creating them.
Thank you mr moderator. Please continue to subtract points from my Karma.
Can the US citizens start a class action lawsuit against the MPAA? Buy a DVD, show gthat it doesn't play on Linux, and demand compensation as drivers. Let the MPAA make drivers for all the Linux ports, the BSD ports...
Or else let them agree to end the DeCSS lawsuit and release open source drivers and specs for DVD.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
So if I wanted to put the videos of my wedding on a DVD for my family to watch on their DVD players, I couldn't do this? Or, if I made an independent film I couldn't distribute it on DVD without licensing an encryption key?
Is that for real? Please tell me I'm mistaken.
Unfortunately, I think it's for real.
There is hope, however. Remember, those disks only fail in DVD players. DVD-ROM drives can still use them, and therefore any MPEG2 player should be able to access them.
I'm also guessing that before long someone will come up with a service where you send in an unencrypted DVD (and whatever fee they decide to charge) and they send back encrypted copies that'll work in any DVD device. This is far from an ideal situation, but there's very little that can be done about it, unless you're willing to go into the area of mod-chipping DVD players (which, while certainly doable, isn't something I'm into).
I hardly see how I "misrepresented" anything, but it appears I was wrong about the Internet2 being for general public use. Thank you for correcting me. Internet2 will eventually spread to general use, of course, as the current Net evolves to match and absorb it, but this isn't going to be a quick process.
In any case, your point only reinforces mine. Barring a truly major breakthrough in consumer-level (and even low- to midrenge corporate-level) connection technology, DVD-quality full-length movies simply aren't going to be practical to transfer ofer the Net for a long time.
I understand the need to have this case decided favorably (for the DeCSS crowd) for many reasons. What I don't like are many of the ones being bandied about as arguments.
Point 5 - that Xing had been smart about encryption, this wouldn't be an issue is a bad rationalization. It doesn't matter if Xing had been competent or not with their security. Opening a closed door that isn't your house can be breaking and entering.
Point 4 - If they'd produce a viewer from Linux, this might not have been a problem so quickly, but it still would of been a problem. There are many determined to break encryption and steal stuff. Just look at the warez sites to see if linux is needed for this.
Point 3 - Mostly true at the present time. Copying is happening, though in an altered form. Just check out alt.binaries.movies and watch how many dvd rips get posted there over time. These have been rerun into MPG1 files, but the source was a ripped DVD. So DeCSS *DOES* enable copying right now.
Point 2 - As has been noted many times, this will change.
Point 1 - True, but not necessarily pertinent to this case.
The true case here is how DeCSS was made. If it was made for the purpose of viewing under linux (which is the claim) and properly reverse engineered, then by all the rules, it should be legal to use in legal settings (like for a Linux DVD program). If it is found that the program was made for pirating purposes, then it is illegal by the Millenium Copyright act. Same can be said for the method of reverse engineering.
As far as the linking goes, this is a much more dangerous area of the case. There is first amendment issues here, and how they integrate with the other part of the case will be critical for our future.
Having said all this, I believe that DeCSS was created for legitimate purposes, and in a legitimate way. That being the case, it should fall under the exemptions to the copyright law.
... that's all there is to it.
The fact is, people will see this headline about the DVD issue, and they'll buy the paper to read it. "Everyone has heard about this DVD issue, it's been gossipped about widely, now I'll read a bit more about it from the MPAA guys..."
Journalistic integrity has *nothing* to do with it. The L.A. Times has been a bastion of controversial whoring for years.
I'm just glad that some of us geeks are starting to see this - we see it now with the DVD issue, will our eyes be opened enough to be able to recognize the L.A. Times pimping itself out on future, non-technology related stories too?
I would hope so.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Internet2, which you mentioned in your post, is not for the general public. Taking a look at http://www.internet2.edu will explain that Internet2 is only for academic, medical, or scientific purposes.
Please think twice before misrepresenting projects and efforts. A clear distinction should be made between the IPv4 network that we exist on now, and what IPv6(ipv4 allowed) transitional phase we shal become in the years ahead. Internet2 is not "a new internet" designed to replace the corporate dominated world we connect and live in today.
Came the time to invest in an LG 8080B DVD and I realised that it was firmware region-locked. No problem, DeCSS doesn't care about those, right? Well it seems to. Try as I may, I can't seem to authenticate a disc under Linux using the LivID tools if the disc is the wrong region. Luckily this Web site fixed my region problems for me, but I've tried several times to read "wrong" region discs in my drive with no success under Linux.
I've had a quick squiz at tstdvd.c but it doesn't give much help - the real reason is probably buried in the ioctls patch.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
IIRC Jon Johansen said that even if the Xing player hadn't kept the decryption code unencrypted in memory, it would have only slowed them down, not prevented them from hacking through CSS. So, Xing was only a catalyst, not the cause, for DeCSS.
The rest of your points are valid, of course, and the real cause for DeCSS' existence.
"The Internet, of course, is more than just a place to find pictures of people having sex with dogs." - Time Magazine
What Mr. Valenti has done here is what our lawyer friends know as "slander" (when it is spoken aloud in public) or "libel" (when it is published in print).
You have committed slander or libel when you knowingly make a defamatory, false statement about someone. Publicly accusing someone of a crime s/he didn't commit -- and which you know s/he didn't commit -- is a perfect example.
Now, it's possible Valenti is so deluded, so caught up in his own little world, that he is not aware that his victims committed no crime. This would mean that he didn't knowingly make false statements -- because he didn't believe them to be false. But for some reason I doubt this. I suspect he's not an ignorant demagogue, but rather a cynical one: one who knows that he's lying for his own advantage, and revels in it.
(Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.)
The entertainment issue has an attitude towards approaching marketing and legal issues with overwhelming force. However the MPAA is not the first marketing machine that Linux has taken on. Think, for instance, of the Microsoft juggernaught. Yet Linux advocates took that on, and have done a lot more than just leave a dent.
So every time you see an article like this, take the time out to write a polite and informative letter of explanation to the reporter and to the editors of the paper. The key is to be polite and informative.
And remember this. It takes a stroke of inspired idiocy to position yourself in the teeth of a movement like Linux. To start your lawsuits with Chris DiBona, a central figure in the most successful IPO in history. To attempt to, as the Fool put it, sue the entire Internet. Sure, the MPAA machine can be frightening. But that does not mean that they have not bitten off a lot more than they can chew...
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
perhaps I got a bad one, but I haven't had that experience -- my dad's computer looks much better, as does my boyfriend's... and this is of concern to me, since I don't have a TV, or a recliner. and no where to put them.
student life don't have so many perks...
Lea
made a good point in this DeCSS corporate clusterfuck. The big deal here isn't millions of people pirating DVDs robbing the poor MPAA of their precious money. The big deal is the MPAA can no longer rape DVD decoder manufacturers on licensing fees. A handful of kids in a dorm pirating movies on their T3 isn't nearly as damaging as a handful of kids in a dorm room building a DVD player that costs 100$ and the MPAA not seeing a dime of that 100. Besides that all the companies that paid the insane licencing fees for decrypt keys are wasting their money, they can now build boxes with no MPAA royalties if they so chose. This is the same thing with the RIAA, piracy is their media facade but their real interest is getting royalties off CD sales. The RIAA doesn't care about current CDs being pirated, they want to get rid of MP3 because it means CDs could end up going the way of the cassette. This is a battle of corporations who are using a facade of piracy to blame some quite innocent programmers for their woes.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Of course, plenty of non-Communist leftists (like union organizers) got blacklisted, mainly because Hollywood wanted to break things like the Screenwriters Guild, "Writers have power in the film industry? Outrageous!" which undermined the powers of studio bosses. The government helped them out with a handy paranoia about communism (yes, the Soviet Union was bad, but so was the paranoia about communist insurgents), which they could then use to tar anyone they didn't like. "You'll never work in this town again."
Of course, fear of communism is passé, but the government has shown itself to be extremely paranoid about "the hacker menace." Things like the Kevin Mitnick case were very useful to the government in playing up this threat, and of course the film industry did it's part too, with movies like Wargames. (Matthew Broderick's character was supposed to be sympathetic, but the movie still suggested computer hackers could start WWIII. Besides, it was an irritating movie anyway.)
So, now we have Jack Valenti, sounding-like circa 1950, talking about people "seduced by a strange ideology." Just replace the word communist with the work hacker, and you've brought it into the last year of the 20th century. "Oh Brave New World that has such people in it," time for me to go pray to Our Ford... and take my Soma, I guess.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
It is NOT breaking the law to copy a movie for your own private use. It IS breaking the law to distribute said copy.
But you have bought into the lie too, spread by the press (case in point: the LA Times article in question!) This is not about piracy. This is about several freedoms:
I have to agree with many of the people above. We do need to keep repeating this, the word needs to get out.... {sigh}
BTW, I dual boot Win98 and Linux too. I boot Win98 for games, Linux for anything else. I also use a Microsoft Intellimouse, a very nice mouse, imho. I am not totally anti-MS, just very tired of having to support their OS over the years.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
And they won't work, at least not the ones that are called for here.
Why? for one thing, how many boycotts for non-geekish issues do most of the people here participate in? How many of you are boycotting Monsanto or Nestle or Exxon or Mitsubishi? How many of you listen to the complaints of activists in other arenas against corporations' misbehavior? Damned few, I suspect. Geek-politics is deeply myopic, and frankly most global activists who coordinate and disseminate interest in boycotts are going to be a lot more concerned about environmental survival, labor rights, public health, and other issues that suffer massive geek-apathy. They (and even, to some extent, I) will ask 'what have you done for me lately' when you complain about intellectual property abuses. When some folks have complained vociferously about Microsoft, while continuing to line the coffers of Union Carbide, it is no wonder that the rest of the world sees hypocrisy and solipsism.
Also, those of us who care about DVD and other IP issues have done a piss-poor job of communicating with the world at large, treating the consuming public with contempt, arrogance, and indifference. That's all part and parcel of the pervasive social cluelessness that marks geek-culture, but it has a cost.
In general, boycotts are only effective when there's an issue that is important to a huge segment of the companie's target market (or its shareholders) - the issues here are clear for us, but really not for the public at large, and we don't have many good communicators among us (we have lots of good arguers and debaters, unfortunately.)
So, I don't have a lot of truck for calls for boycotts. I've participated in several boycotts, particularly related to the attempts to end apartheid and the Nestle boycott, and it takes things that this crowd just doesn't have.
May it do some good. If you also comment, you really should keep it polite.
To: letters@latimes.com
Subject: Misleading Misstatement in your paper.
Dear Editor,
In the article http://www.calendarlive.com/calendarlive/movies/20 000130/t000009450.html, Jack Valenti misleadingly misquotes the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, falsely implying that it says something which in fact it does not.
The actual text is `technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.', and not `technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner.'
This distinction is crucial, because Mr Valenti seeks much more than the rights of a copyright owner: total control over the means by which a copyright work is read, even when the act of reading is itself fair use, even when the reader (your readers!) have paid for the right to access the work.
As the effect of this misstatement is to mislead your readers, I recommend you (and they) carefully check Mr Valenti's words against the publically available facts, starting with the Act in question.
Mr Valenti's misinterpretations owe more to the private interests he represents than to any desire to inform your readership of the real issues. I hope you agree that your readers are owed better than this.
Yours Faithfully,
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." Ed Howdershelt
We have videotape with the very poorest of copy protection, and the film industry has remained rich despite that.
We have legitimate reasons to copy music and video. For example, I don't want to take a DVD drive along on the plane. I want to copy my movie to the hard disk of my small laptop, and play from there. I've paid for the movie, why can't I do that?
If we don't stop them here, a day will come when many web pages gray out your print button. Your web browser will read encrypted content, will refuse to save it to a file, and the format of encryption won't be available for use in Open Source web browsers.
We've really got to put our foot down regarding Intellectual Property Protection Systems, now. This will take a well-financed PR effort with some of the companies that have made big bucks from free software behind it. If you work for Red Hat, VA, or any of the others, ask your boss what they are doing about this. I hope you get a good answer.
I think EFF and John Gilmore are the right people to rally around for this issue.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I don't think people are realizing exactly what the MPAA is suing about. What they are suing about (and saying is illegal, which I personally DO NOT think should be illegal, but is true) is using ANY program or method (i.e. DeCSS) to circumvent the encryption method (CSS) to get at copyrighted material (DVD movie). Read the text of the preliminary injunction from 2600's discussion of it. This is (I think) the most important part:
THE COURT: Of course it is. The whole point here is that CSS is designed to protect against even the playing of a copyrighted DVD except with a player using a licensed CSS key. And if you go ahead and put out DeCSS for the purpose of playing it without using a player with the licensed technology, you have done it primarily for the purpose of circumventing the measure. Isn't that true?
On a related note, what's the cite for the claim that CD sales are down 30%? What does Billboard magazine say?
During the inquisition, non-clergy who owned and could read a bible were burnt for heresy
The guy who translated it to English (name escapes me) was killed for it (though later, the King John Bible was based almost entirely on his translation)
This is the *real* analogy. Should we nickname this guy "The Torquemada of the Third Millennium"*?
Rich
*Although of course, this is still the second millennium ;)
> what should they do the next time they release a new standard and want to prevent piracy?
Well, to prevent piracy, perhaps the recording industries should start looking at pirates as a business rival rather than a big bad force out to get them.
What makes you go out and pay for food when you can get plenty of scraps in the dumpsters for free? The answers obvious in this situation, and I think it's obvious in the case of DVDs. Making it difficult to pirate material is certainly necessary, but no matter what they do, the pirates will be able to circumvent their "clever" schemes. The key to curtailing piracy in the future is not in anti-piracy technology, but in convincing the consumer that an authentic recording is worth more to them.
Think about it. If Joe Cheapskate is presented with a $23.99 DVD of the Matrix and a significantly cheaper (possibly free) rip of the Matrix, he's definately going to go for the cheaper one if he doesn't view the extra money he'd pay for the legal copy as "worth it." How one defines "worth it" is dependent on the individual, but for the most part it means better quality, more features, etc. If MPAA et al. spent more time convincing the public that their product is superior to illegal copies rather than cracking down on the evil pirates, I think they'd be better off.
Of course, this raises further questions, like how exactly do you convince the public that a legal CD is worth the extra money over a virtually identical CD-R (same goes for DVDs a few years down the road when the media becomes cheaper)? I don't think pure propaganda will work, so how do you include non-copyable features into the genuine product? Perhaps someone else has an idea.
Dave
>>> Another thing: The MPAA and accessories have recieved a lot of criticism over their attempt to prevent piracy using proprietary encryption. I'm curious to know, what other options are available? Patenting doesn't seem like it would work, as then the complete record of how it works would be on file for all to see. So what should they have done and what should they do the next time they release a new standard and want to prevent piracy?
I have a legal right to make an archival backup of ANY media I purchase. Copy protection is wrong, it always hurts the consumer. VHS Tapes arnt encrypted, how many "warez" sites have you seen with captured VHS tapes on them, I havent seen any, and DVD's would be even MORE difficult to capture and distribute just because of the sheer SIZE.
Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror...
--AROS is an Open Source AmigaOS clone, and source compatible with AmigaOS! Try the x86 build at http://www.aros.org
If I make a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD to my hard drive, could i watch it with a Win32 DVD player?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Doubtful, DIVX discs weren't much better than VHS. They rarely had the cool extras that you find on real DVDs. They were usually pan-and-scan versions. I doubt people would pay that much for a new player if they weren't getting a much better product.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Email 'em. Go ahead.
And BTW, they *ADMIT* that it's not about copying, it's about "licensed players".
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Very good point.
I am out of modpoints so someone who has points left please BUMP this up!!!
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
First signal reaction. Reflexes without thinking. Boycott Holywood - to hell no. Boycott any non-DVD media - to hell yes. Then as people say: money talks. Namely sales figures talk.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
You think maybe they forgot?
Read it all!
If I stole a dozen credit card numbers, and published the numbers on the web, I can't claim a right to do so based on the right to free speech.
I'm not implying you should go do this, but actually this is speech. This is what we're ultimately fighting here - the inalienable rights of free-thinking entities in the universe, versus the financial interests of our social system. I personally don't believe in "imaginary" money, such as credit cards, etc. I personally choose not to use them. Telling someone your credit card number, or someone elses, is an act of speech, just like any other kind of speech. However, the act of stealing them in the first place is not. In other words, you could be punished for the act of stealing them, but giving them out after you stole them is not illegal, because it is an act of speech.
What we are dealing with here is a company trying to vanquish the speech of others for its own financial interests. I can understand why they're doing this - if they lose the ability to charge license fees for playing, duplicating, and producing content for DVD's, they will lose millions of dollars. However, that doesn't mean they are right.
The part I am the most upset about is the inability to produce independent content on DVD without getting a license. This makes it impractical for independent movie studios and recording studios to produce DVD's. I own part of a small recording studio. If I wanted to do music videos on DVD, for example, I would either have to pay astronomical fees to a licensed duplicator, or fill out mountains of paperwork and sign away my free speech on this issue. The first I don't have the resources to do, and the second I refuse to do.
If the DVD-CCA wins this case, the same conditions will apply to playback. To get a license to produce a player, you have to sign away your rights to free speech on this issue, which is against everything I believe in.
However, even if we lose based on the Xing License Agreement issue, we can start over with a cleanroom implementation. We can write a program to do a distributed brute force, much like the RSA/DSA distributed.net project. If they argue about HOW we did it, all we have to do is do it again with different people and clean reverse engineering. Then when they sue us again, we can go back and fight for our rights some more.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits