CSS: About Piracy, or About Content Regulation?

Linux Today is running an opinion piece which gives an alternative interpretation to the DeCSS saga: CSS is not so much about preventing piracy or enforcing region codes as it is about protecting the current content providers from any new competition (thereby also controlling what you get to know).

Comments

Court of public opinion controlled by...guess who?

[MAXOMENOS]

This article raises a very good point: the MPAA and its allies are very good at manipulating public opinion. In fact, not only are they very good at it, but they have all the tools to do it. The companies represented by MPAA include Warner (CNN and Time), Fox (news and newspapers), Disney (ABC), Paramount (any number of news shows), &c. You'd be a fool to assume that any of these sources is going to be unbiased about this case. Unfortunately, most people still believe that these media outlets are motivated by the search for truth, rather than corporate policy (read as: greed.)

This is why protests are important right now. The only way we are going to get our side heard is to go out and tell people what's happening. Slashdot helps a lot, but it reaches a very specialized audience. The people whose minds we need to change aren't typical Slashdot readers; they're average joes and janes, who, for the most part, have other things to worry about and don't have time to investigate these things themselves. Either we tell them what's going on, or the MPAA does through its many voices. Which would you prefer?

How to get involved:

• This bears repeating: join the EFF! I did and I am damn glad I did. These are the people who are fighting for your rights.
• Get involved with protests being organized by 2600. Better yet, organize your own protest!
• Join a boycott of MPAA products! Pain in the rear it may be, we need to stop seeing movies in theatres, stop renting movies, and stop buying new video tapes of major motion pictures. OUR money is going to help the MPAA trample on OUR rights. We need to cut off their supply! (This isn't easy and it won't necessarily catch on, but this is the right thing to do.)

Post other suggestions here!

At last - someone "gets it" - almost

[BranMan]

I'm glad to see that someone is starting to "get it" - what this is all about. Unfortunately, they are just a little bit shy of the whole picture.

DeCSS is not about piracy, but about compatability - we all know that by now. You can make the bit-wise copies by other means. The real thrust is controlling the medium - who can make and sell DVD movies.

We are talking about a <b>Motion Picure</b> consortium here. That's the big clue - they could give a $#@# whether we can watch DVDs on our Linux boxes. But to get there we needed to 1) decrypt the DVD movies, 2) store them locally, 3) work on the playback software to the point that the picture and sound look good , 4) put on-the-fly decryption in the player. 5) Done. DVD on Linux.

Step 4 is what has caused the witchhunt. If the OSS folks build a DVD player - do you seriously think they will make it play ONLY encrypted DVDs? Heck NO! It will play unencrypted movies and sound also.

And THAT's the "it". After DeCSS, it is trivial to make a player that will play encrypted and UNENCRYPTED DVDs. They are scared to death of having a DVD player S/W that plays both encrypted and unencrypted DVDs. Ever made a copy of a VHS movie for a friend? Not legal to do so, but hard to stop. If you wanted to do the same with your new spiffy DVD-R (fast forwarding a year) would you try to encrypt it? Heck NO!

Once there is an OSS DVD player application that plays both encrypted and unencrypted DVDs, the jig is up. Independent artists can make DVDs and distribute them without CSS encryption. Your DVD player won't play it? Here's the link - download the freeware player that does.

That Japanese DVD won't let you play it? The freeware DVD player will play ANY DVD, no matter where it came from.

Then we start hacking the "upgradable" console DVD players - so they can play unencrypted DVDs and break the region locking.

Follow the reprocussions to their logical conclusion and it's easy to see why the MPAA will throw everything including the kitchen sink into this fight. They have a whole new medium to lose (not to mention the $$ they spent designing it in the first place, plus the $$ spent on getting the DMCA legislated.)

region controls are irrelevant

[Travoltus]

Check out the Apex AD-600A DVD, VCD and MP3 player.

There are instructions at nerd-out.com for changing the Region ID, as well as the Macrovision options and, ahem, other things, via the secret menu.

LOL. The player costs $199 at Circuit City. People are buying it en masse. I ordered mine already. :)