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DeCSS Litigation Update
Winston Smith writes "Law News Network has posted this article on the current status of DeCSS litigation and how a Connecticut intellectual property attorney, with the help of Yale, Harvard and Quinnipiac law students, is fighting the MPAA." For more background on this issue, read our last news posting on the MPAA DVD issue.
Do you work for the MPAA, mr Anonymous Coward?
If I want to take my MacOS software and port it over to my GameBoy, is it Apple's right to tell me what I should or should not do to something that I bought with my own money?
If I want to take my MacOS disk, soak it in milk and eat it for breakfast, should Apple be allowed to take me to court for this?
Say if a movie from a "Zone 3" country come out in DVD, what code will it use? Zone 3? What if it is not yet available to ALL other countries (like Zone 1 - 2, 4 - 5)?
The whole CSS thing seems to assume that all movies are from Zone 1 countries! It can only go one way as far as I can see...
If I really have a desire to find out what studio made the movie, I'll look on the packaging.
Yeah, but if you ripped the DVD, you don't have the packaging.
[SARCASM] To me, there is nothing worse than having high quality sound and digitally sharp pictures! Why should I, as a consumer, would want this? By depriving Movie Studios of their right to control the distribution and media storage of their copyrighted content, we can make sure that this great format dies. I personally would rather watch movies on low quality VHS than high quality DVD. [/SARCASM]
It is truly sad to see the great support behind DeCSS. DeCSS was written to defeat encryption in order to subvert the distribution rights of the intellectual property owner. Why should intellectual property owners want to distribute their content on a great medium like DVD if we have an active community chomping at the bit to strip them of their property rights? If you don't like their distribution arrangements, too bad. Its not your business to determine how, where or what media they choose distribute. You didn't bust your ass to create it. You don't get to decide for them.
Though many "hacker purist" (give me a freakin' break -- what are there, 2 of you?) claim that DeCSS is only being used so Linux users can view movies. In reality, we all know that this is just another tool to allow online pirates to strip content from one medium and place in it into another medium that is easily distributed online. Since the release of DeCSS, I have noticed a tremendous increase of pirated DVDs translated via VCD on this internet.
Wonder why [insert favorite movie here] is not coming out on DVD? Thank DeCSS.
You know, for someone who's apparently not very bright, you're pretty damn obnoxious. The point he's trying to get into your arrogant little head is that it's the *studios* choose the medium on which a movie gets released. If they don't want to release it on VHS, you won't be able to see it (legally) on VHS. If they decide, tomorrow, to stop releasing VHS movies, you can't do jack shit about it. And the point is, that given the fact they have a hell of a lot more control over DVD than they do over VHS, they might well decide to do exactly that. And you'll have two choices: Buy a DVD player, or commit copyright infringement.
VHS movies and players are only "*CHEAPER*" because DVD is the latest neat new thing and the stores can charge more for them. The players and disks are both actually less expensive. Given that they've seen that people will pay $20 for VHS, but $30 for a format that costs them less, why should they continue to produce DVDs?
Maybe you should yank your head out of your ass, stop being such an arrogant shit, and actually read what other people are posting.
Well, that is interesting. This has got to be one of the most widely-known trade secrets of all time. I can buy a t-shirt that contains that secret, and download it from numerous places on the internet. I even saw the trade secret in a mirror of some of the case's legal documents over at cryptome. And it will be on TV soon.
Heh, trade secrets in software? I guess these guys have never heard of disassemblers. Can you imagine being an engineer for DVDCCA and testifying in court that you took reasonable steps to protect the secret, and then have to admit (on the public record) that you have never heard of a disassembler? Wow, what a way to blow a reputation.. Maybe they were counting on UCITA, which would make disassembly illegal?
Since the cat is out of the bag, I like the idea of burning some DVDs of my own, and then sueing everyone involved in the DVD industry for violation of DMCA. Sounds like a great way to MAKE $$$ FAST!
I am sorry, but the MPAA just has more money that anyone else and the fights will be in vain, same fate with napster, RIAA will keep them in court so long, it will end up just being a money battle, eventually napster wont be able to afford fighting them.
a. Referes to an electronic civil liberties group with the same acronym as the Electronic Frontier Foundation but a different name.
b. Is because of a recent, unnanounced change in the name of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
c. Shows that the person who researched this article isn't technically savvy enough to put "eff" into a search engine to find out the correct name.
This quote is relevant because:a. The author of the article is an iMac user.
b. The author of the article likes "anime cuties."
c. The author of the article is trying to pigeonhole the ct2600 web master into the "teen hacker" stereotype.
Oh, sure you have. The point is that they want you to pay as many times as possible. In fact, it would probably be easier if consumers just handed all their money over to the MPAA at once.
:-/
Nuke em.
The time has come the the DVD clone or the DVD compatible player.
The real problem with Jim Crow Laws was that the North raped, robbed, and pilliaged the South, taking ALL THEY COULD in the Great Stealing
The South has NEVER RECOVERED! Many down in the South lost all and their families NEVER recovered (black and white).
The Slavery/Jim Crow analogy breaks down when you realize you are talking about human rights versus DMCA/UCITA and large corporations.
Corporations have ALWAYS wanted more power. Now they are getting it (at our expense).
Kudos for realising that a world outside the US exists, but DeCSS is a Norwegian product already.
, accidentally,
might want to yell for that turnip truck to wait up for you.
Good idea...
I hereby declare that I am using a type of code, source code, to hide the contents of my programs. The programs can only be run using a decryption tool, called a compiler.
Even better, I'm going to patent the idea.....
Actually, the error is in the implication that DeCSS can somehow modify the disk. (It's in three or four places, eg. "the deCSS utility makes it possible for users to make a number of legitimate modifications of the information on the disk." It's amazing how easily people that should know better say the wrong thing; it's no wonder The Layman gets so confused after awhile.)
Yadda yadda. What about iron wire, Betamax, LaserDisc, and CED?
Here's a clue. If DVD writers can't write to any necessary areas of the DVD, what good are they? You think someone's going to pay shitloads of money for a burner only to find out that it's absolutely worthless?
This also has nothing to do with the fact that you could trick a "licensed" ("blessed"?) software player into reading from a directory on a hard disk instead of the DVD drive, if you were so inclined.
Get a fucking clue. Fuck. This isn't rocket science. I bet you're an MPAA goon.
If you can find a player to fucking play a decoded fucking DVD off a fucking hard drive, you can sure as fuck find or trick a "blessed" software DVD player into playing a fucking encoded DVD sitting on your hard drive.
DeCSS has absolutely nothing to do with anything except regaining "fair use" over DVDs.
They already broke the law. The problem is that the DMCA was written by a bunch of dumbfuck congresspeople who probably got campaign contributions from the MPAA. Not to mention that they probably had no fucking clue what kinds of things the DMCA's circumvention clause could apply to when they wrote it.
Well, some copyrighted material is restricted as to where you can read it. Just think of the annual fracas that occurs in many school districts when some book is placed on the ``banned'' list and cannot be read in school. (I've heard stories that certain books weren't just banned as material for use in the classroom but that students were prohibited from reading it in study hall or anywhere else on school grounds) And all because some bluenose deems it offensive in some way. Censorship is almost universally scorned. Is there a way to couch this DCMA BS as a form of censorship? That just might get the masses up in arms. If this continues to be just a bunch of Linux users vs. the MPAA, I doubt we're going to get very far in this.
According to Katz' "Geographic Screening" article on the MPAA's suit against iCraveTV, Valenti commented to reporters: "I think we want to nail them to the wall now".
This sort of brutal remark is far more in character for a thug or gangster than for a "captain of industry". I for one would very much like to see this remark come back to haunt Jack in the worst possible way.
Of course it would be much kinder if he were verbally skewered and humiliated by the likes of David Boies, rather than being physically crucified by a mob of enraged geeks, but sometimes when I am feeling less charitable, either version seems appealing...
This seems to be the prevailing blindspot on Slashdot. I consider that position dishonest. First let me say that I think consumers have every right to copy their data, and I am very PRO-DECSS.
DeCSS is very powerful for copying DVD's. Namely it allows them to be copied to the hard drive, and using freely available software, converted to an MPEG-1 (MPG) file which can be burned on one or two CD's. This can also be done in standard VCD format. The image quality is about VHS.
There is also a new conversion using MPEG-4 for video and MPEG-3 for audio which produces an AVI of almost double the quality (resolution) of the above method with smaller output. It rivals the original.
As CDR's are 50 to 100 cents a pop, you can copy a DVD pretty easily and cheaply. Of course you can use a VCR to copy it without DeCSS providing you get around macrovision protection. But everyone likes having their AV material in computer format.
When DVD burners become more mainstream, we can just burn the decrypted VOB files directly to a fresh DVD disc. As I understand it, you can't do this without DeCSS because the area of the disc where the key is stored is pre-burned in the media with zeros. I don't know if a homemade copy will play in non-computer DVD players but it will on computers. I prefer watching DVD's on the computer anyway as the screen is flat and crisp.
So IMO dragging this "DECSS is an innocent player-only app" sign is garbage. Why not stand up and say "YES, I want to copy my DVD's. So?" Consumers have had that right for a long time - to copy software, music, and videos for their own purposes. I also agree that it is a player issue, but not exclusively.
Personally, I feel consumers should be free to share their data too. (In fact they are free, unless they choose to obey rules set forth by others.) I think selling the data is lame, but if people are stupid enough to pay for what they can get free, that's their problem. As for the artists, I guess they need to find a new model which reflects reality. Maybe their days of million dollar houses and limosines are over (for their managers too). Is acting really harder work than the average person does every day? But really I think there will always be multitudes who buy the line the purchase the inflated copies. Piracy has never stopped the studios from making huge profits, because a lot of people actually do believe in playing by their rules. Fair enough. But I realize everyone doesn't share that opinion. Regardless, DeCSS is Good (tm) for Legitimate (tm) purposes.
Good and Legitimate are established trademarks of The Establishment, Inc.
Your scenario was realistic until you suggested tat someone might be compelled to say "I like Kylie Minogue" ;-)
Absolutely correct. And it is not their business how I choose to view the media they distribute. Or where I can view it, for that matter. Truthfully, what they do here is not illegal, but it certainly is what I would consider an unethical business practice.
Actually it is their business what media their content is being viewed on. That is like saying Apple does not have the right to say MacOS can only run natively on hardware they produce. If Joe Blow Hacker came up with a method for booting MacOS directly on Intel hardware, you are saying Apple should shut up and accept the fact that their intellectual property has been subverted to operate on a platform it was not intended.
How does enforcing the DMCA and even private NDAs with the DVD-CCA bebefit China.? We all know no one is going to impose sanctions on China because it's the largest source of cheap labor on the planet. China knows this too. Ya know what? Apex is still making players. No fines, No lawsuits. No company shutdowns. No license revokings. No interruption of anything whatsoever. Enforcement? I just don't see it.
OK... That's: N-O-R-W-E-G-I-A-N
(Geez, I'm feeling like such a smarta** today.)
The "real" purpose is to make sure that anyone who wants to play a DVD has to pay the DVDCCA for a license. It's all about the money.
I hardly think that's the point. How braindead do they think I am? I'm going to pay hundreds of dollars for a player whose keys are likely to be blacklisted in a few years? I'm going to pay for disks loaded with commericials (which surely have already been handsomely funded by advertisers) nearly twice what I pay for VHS loaded with commercials I can at least skip over, or even excise with a pair of scissors? Disks which only be playable as long as my player functions (since the keys'll be blacklisted, and even assuming there's no software bomb in the things we all know how well things are made to last these days)?
God, I wish I could bilk people out of their money so easily. Well, you're right they can't force me to watch their damn commercials, 'cause they can't force me to spend my legitimately-earned money on their bullshit technology, I don't care haw goddamn sharp the picture's supposed to be. This is a racket, and for my part, it ends here.
Cryptome has an article on upcoming hearings to reassess the copyright circumvention clause of the DMCA. It has an email address for comments until Mar 31. This is a chance to chip away at the excessive controls on IP by the commercial sector. One could submit suggestions and ideas, especially from bigger groups and experts (relevant testimony to the advantages and drawbacks). Please be responsible and reasonable, though - this looks like a pretty formal process.
dingus
What you don't understand, because you don't know what you're talking about, is that this isn't about piracy at all. If you'd take your blinkers off and read the posts placed directly above yours about copy protection you'd see that deCSS doesn't enable any more ability for piracy than existed before. Pirates who actually 'damage' the industry use expensive professional duplication equipment and don't need deCSS. What they're really after is enforcing their region-encoding and their stupid advertisements that you can't skip. Having heard of these features, I for one will stay MILES AWAY from dvd until these bullshit 'features' are dropped. I WILL NOT PAY to be advertised at. WILL NOT. I WILL NOT PAY for an item that I cannot use in any way I see fit. This is an attempt by the movie industry to control HOW you see DVD's. Piracy is just a red herring. Please make an attempt to understand whereof you speak before you open your mouth.
What I don't understand is why they haven't been going after utilities such as Remote Selector that allow people with DVD-ROM drives to play movies from any region. After all, those would seem to do the same thing, right?
Because they're slicker than you might think. If given hazzle about "denying fair use" they can always state that programs like Remote Relector enables you to bypass Macrovision and copy to VHS.
And when VHS do become obsolete in the not-so-distant future... who'll remember?
AC for no obvious reason
I'm not sure its very helpful for us to pretend DeCSS doesn't have anything to do with copying. Keep in mind that: a) No-one has been prevented from writing DVD playback software for whatever OS they like. b) It has taken next to no time for people to build and distribute utilities based on DeCSS intended specifically for copying copyrighted material. DVD to VCD conversion tools don't do anything for our case I'm afraid. So let's stop pretending copying is not an issue. We all know there are VCD copies of films out there sourced from DVDs.
What if they started to slowly creep up the amount of time they allocated to unskippable commercials? What am I supposed to do then? GO out for a stroll?
Ridiculous...
"is produced for the purpose of circumventing
a technological measure that effectively
controls access to a copyrighted work."
if it's so effective, how can it be circumvented?
I am so sick of hearing how VHS is 'dead'. What are *YOU* recording off the air stuff with? Hey! I need my dose of Futurama, but can't be in front of the TV at that time. My rights had better be protected when the DVD-RW/RAM/whatever recorders finally do come out.
Hell i've yet to see previews for OTHER movies on a dvd yet.
I take it you haven't picked up a copy of DisneyTarzan yet? (A Disneyfied story that maintains only a few similarities to the original story, like the inclusion of characters names "Tarzan" and "Jane".) It's annoying enough that you can't skip past the FBI "no sh*t" segment but then you have to sit through a bunch of Disney ads for DisneyDVD(tm) ( = "Oh crap, we nearly missed the boat by backing DIVX, thereby telling the public that we think they're a bunch of drooling morons, so let's try to make it sound like there's something special about our DVDs. They'll buy that, after all, they're a bunch of drooling morons.") before getting to the Feature Presentation. I'd love a way to bypass all the BS and just get to the movie that I paid for in the first place.
Now if there were just a way to smack the real morons who, unfortunately, have the money to shovel at lawyers who'll do anything for a buck, upside the head...
Yes, but it's entirely true.
- ------------
Anyone who doesn't think that DeCSS is about piracy has never read the README file that is distributed with DeCSS:
- The Truth about DVD CSS cracking by MoRE and [dEZZY/DoD] -
-----------------------------------------------
Date: 4th of November 1999.
By: [dEZZY/DoD], [MultiAGP & German dood of MoRE]
This document is written cooperatively by the two groups that independently and simultaneously cracked the DVD Content Scrambling System, in order to straighten out mass media confusion.
DoD -> Drink or Die: "warez bearz from Russia and Beyond"
MoRE -> Masters of Reverse Engineering
[dEZZY/DoD] alone is the author of DoD DVD Speed Ripper. MoRE is a new group and they are the authors of DeCSS. Lately, Jon Johansen of MoRE has been pretty much all over the news in Norway, though he had NOTHING to do with the actual
cracking of the DVD CSS protection. Yes, it was MoRE who did DeCSS, but the actual crack was not a team effort, MoRE didn't even exist back when the anonymous German (who is now a MoRE
member) cracked it...
Most of the papers chose a headline very similar to this: "15-year old Norwegian cracked the DVD-code". They probably did this because they wanted to make a big Norwegian "Wooohoooo" out of it. This was also pretty much the contents of the TV show "Vestfold-sendingen" where they brought up matters from Vestfold, Norway where Jon Johansen
lives.
In most newspapers they vagely included the name MoRE, and that DeCSS was a team effort, but neither MoRE nor DoD liked the headlines. Jon's comment on this matter is: "I never told the media that I had cracked the dvd encryption.
What I told them, was that we (MoRE) had made an app called DeCSS which would decrypt dvd movies and let them be played off your hd, or off dvdrs if you have a dvd burner. I always used _we_ and _MoRE_ when talking to them. I never said anything
about me or my position in the group.
Now that the storm is over, I see that all they were after, was to get a big story. They even included some of "my" quotes, which I never said. When media starts making up stuff, it's really sad. I know that this has been done before in Norwegian media, regarding the cooperation between a computer group at my school and the school people in charge of the network. All I can say is that I'm very sorry that the media twisted my words, and even lied, to make it appear as I had done the cracking myself. I'm pretty sure that I will do everything to avoid the media in the future, but if I'm forced to talk with them, I'll have to get them to sign an agreement. Again, I apologize on the behalf of Norwegian
press, and I hope that this document will make everything clear. The truth shall set you free."
DoD DVD Speed Ripper was developed by [dEZZY/DoD] at the same time as DeCSS. The first release of DoD's app (which came out a couple of weeks before the first release of DeCSS) did not work with all (WB) titles, like The Matrix. This was
known by [dEZZY/DoD] at the time of his release. MoRE decided to wait until they could fix this. In short time, [dEZZY/DoD] solved the problem and MoRE's top coder/disassembler from Germany used that information to get DeCSS working with every
movie before they released it, along with a GUI. DeCSS was then the first application which decrypted ALL dvd titles, since DoD had not released a new version to the public. How MoRE got
their hands on the information by [dEZZY/DoD], seems to have something to do with the Linux community...
Why Drink or Die didn't want to release a new version so soon, was because warez sites nuke programs that are too close in release (minimum 2-3 weeks). Meanwhile when DeCSS came out, it
caused DoD to delay any Windows release until a GUI version of their Speed Ripper was done. However, they released a Linux version of their ripper late October 1999. As for the new Windows
version of the Speed Ripper, [dEZZY/DoD] has been very busy with his education and hence the ripper is extremely delayed.
[dEZZY/DoD] already got the idea of reverse engineering a DVD player for the CSS code back in late summer 1998. He was not able to do it at the time since he did not have access to a DVDROM. In
the beginning of 1999, MoRE's German member also got the idea. [dEZZY/DoD] and MoRE's German member got CSS decryption code working at the same time (middle of September 1999), without
having shared info (although they knew about each other). After [dEZZY/DoD] solved "the problem", MoRE's German member, as stated above, implemented these changes and added them to DeCSS for release.
Before DeCSS was developed and released, MoRE had already sent the source for the decryption to their contact in the Linux DVD community, Derek Fawcus . This is the reason
why one of Wired's news reporters was put on the case.
[dEZZY/DoD] also had relations in the Linux DVD community (who does not want to be mentioned), but decided not to release the source code publicly (at least not for the moment).
Enjoy the software!
- Jon Johansen [MoRE]
- anonymous German cracker [MoRE]
- [dEZZY/DoD]
Now, it seems pretty clear to me that a couple of big warez/cracking groups did not sit down one day and go "Gee, I think we should be able to play DVDs on our Linux boxen." No. The Linux development was just a cover to make the real reason...distribution of VOB files.
DeCSS is a pirate's tool because without it, you need to do bit-for-bit copying of DVD media and then distribute it in physical form. Extracting to a VOB lets you serve the file on FTPs and FServes, or better yet...convert it to a more bandwidth-friendly format like nAVI or the mentioned Div-X.
Face it people, warez and cracking groups are not out to spread Linux technology. They spread copyrighted materials. That's exactly what DeCSS helps people like the AC marked FlameBait do.
AC runs the world!
I know this is shocking to hear on this forum, but many of us are on a tight budget where every dollar counts. I don't need 12.4 sound and 5000 lines of resolution. I just wanna see phantom menace in the comfort of my own home without throwing lots of money away. VHS is 30-50% cheaper than DVD. Movie studios will not "stop making VHS" because they don't want to stop the flow of $$$ from a large chink of the people buying their movies. When DVD gets really cheap and VHS player/movie sales taper off *BECAUSE*FEWER*CONSUMERS*ARE*BUYING*VHS* then I will expect to see VHS production drop and eventually cease.
The consumer market drives the decision of what format to stay with, *not* the MPAA/movie studios. Otherwise, why are new titles still being made in the US on VHS? Why are new titles still coming out on LaserDisc in Japan? Why are new titles still coming out on VCD in HK and Singapore? Hint: The local market (i.e. consumers) dictate what video formats will continue to exist and be supported.
HOT GRITS.
Great analogy Dave. I would probably then write a second code down "h3110 w0rld" in order to demonstrate that with a little work, a couple of intelligent programmers could crack the code really easily.
This is all about control. The record companies want to tightly control their market. They don't view the Linux market as large enough, nor viable to develop a player. They won't develop a player as they believe it must be open source, when in fact, a closed source player would be legal and somewhat acceptable.
Remember the golden rule: He Who Has The Gold Rules
A fucking RCA VCR $120 can do the ad filter for you, uses dead cheap media (.8 to 1.0 for 2 hours, how much that consume your hard drivein compatable quality?)
I can write to cheap CD-Rs for $1/hour of MPEG-1 video, that's pretty comparable. The setup cost (computer+capture card+CD writer) clearly is more expensive, although it does have extensive abilities beyond simply recording programs.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I am so sick of hearing how VHS is 'dead'. What are *YOU* recording off the air stuff with?
Although I don't do it yet, if I didn't have a VCR I'd probably use a video capture card and a hard disk -- say an ATI All-In-Wonder 128...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Well, I suppose in practice it's no worse than the NTSC/PAL problems, but at least that technological conflict was the result of historical accident, not because greedy broadcasters wanted to control access to their shows.
In practice, as well as in theory, you can buy machines that will play tapes both in PAL and in NTSC format, and output it to whichever format you desire.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
There is nothing inviolable about the "intellectual property rights" of the MPAA to control how and when someone may view the property that appears on a medium. Any rights they claim exist only in so far as they can be enforced... their "rights" are effectively mythical and are there only because we collectively "buy in" to this myth.
We "buy in" to the idea that we should not engage in mass duplication of the program and distribute it far and wide. However, no matter what kind of legal claim a company may have to dictate how, precisely, I may use the data for my personal business is something that I have no reason to "believe in." Thus, their rights do not exist and pretty much end at the door to my apartment.
The "property rights" that the MPAA are claiming are rights that amount to breaking into your house and telling you how you may or may not use your DVD. You can argue all you want about how the contract in their license gives them these rights and we only buy a license to use the DVD in a specific way, but their "rights" are a legal fiction that are only followed by those who believe them. And I disbelieve.
If a television station said that it was illegal for you to record their programs, would you claim you were interefering with their intellectual property if you recorded the program on your VCR? Of course not, because you would regard it as an interference in your personal business, and such a claim by the TV station was inherently unenforceable and their right to tell you not to record it was a myth. The same goes for the MPAA in their claim that only "authorized" players are allowed to play DVDs.
-Dean
Sorry about the "Slashdot effect"
:).
:)
That's what happens when your article is mentioned on http://slashdot.org a site which should have been a defendant but wasn't chosen for reasons I will soon discus. I would guess this is message number 130 or so
OK. Let's get down to business. 1st there is the piracy claim. There is one little thing nobody you interviewed mentioned. Right now there are pirated DVDs for sale on the street in Taiwan. Those copies were produced without the use of DeCSS ( which isn't really complete yet ). The people selling the ~$3,000 DVD copying machines have not been attacked by the DVD-CCA or the MPAA yet. Never mind that the coping will soon spread to the US.
Then we have the functionality issues. The encryption on DVDs is only used to limit playing of the movies not not copying of the disks.
Finally there is the choice of defendants. 2600.com and slashdot.org did basically the same thing. post discussions of the code and links to download sites. Slashdot is more popular than 2600 and is frequently quoted in the mainstream media. However it is also part of a publicly traded company.
2600.com by contrast has the image of a rogue site which for the last 5 years has been screaming about the injustice of Kevin Mitnic's arrest for cracking computer systems. In other words an easy target. The idea of this case is to have some court somewhere rule the DeCSS is an illegal technology. Once that is done it will prevent the likes of VA Linux and Diamond Multimedia from selling less expensive players which use that code rather than the code from the CCA.
In short they are trying to retroactively patent something which was previously protected as a trade secret. This is exactly like the case of the Playstation emulator ( look it up ) except that they get to pick a target.
PS : You will be flamed fewer times if you do more fact checking and don't appear to slant your story in favor of the bad guys ( prosecution in this case
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
To the average user, this is MILLIONS of times more persuasive than any argument about freedom or copyrights or the studio's money or Linux or anything. The masses will instantly be on our side, in forces you cannot comprehend!
Yes, it can't be said officially, but this has to become public, common, knowledge!. It closely resembles the freedom we desire, but in a form that directly affects joe user and a way they can understand trivially.
If necessary, figure out the worst things the DVD consortium can do (force you to watch a half hour? I dunno) and threaten the masses with it.
If a device existed that allowed you to do that, then yes you would have a good copy. But as I understand it, all currently available DVD-RAM devices zero out a certain header field to indicate they are not pressed discs. I assume devices that true movie "pirates" have circumvent this measure.
Therefore, yes, CSS is just to prevent playing by unlicensed devices.
Once again I think the author should have called the utility playDVD or something similar instead of DeCSS.
Here's my question: what advantage to consumers, aside from larger capacity, is DVD audio going to offer over a CD? Isn't it all just PCM data anyway? I don't understand why the hell anyone is going to get excited about buying an audio disc (that's encrypted, no less) just because it has a larger capacity. The quality isn't going to improve any, from what I understand.
Mankind has always dreamed of destroying the sun.
It doesn't matter how lame my TPM is. If I encrypt something by XORing it with the the string "12345", it is illegal for you to produce a program which
decrypts it.
Actually, It does matter how lame your TPM is. Because of the word of the law says that you cannot circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively controls access to blah blah blah. Which means your lame XORing 12345 could be argued as not being an effective means of access control because it is dumb.
Which is also why it matters if copying is practical without defeating TPMs because then the TPM could be considered ineffective and therefore not protected by the DMCA.
The problem is that it is now up to the courts to define effective. A broad interepretation could make the XOR 12345 method effective. A narrow interpretation could make any currently feasible TPM totally ineffective.
Dastardly
to make it illegal to make copies presupposes the purpose of the individual making them
They haven't made it illegal to make copies. That, after all, would fuel the fair use argument. They've made it illegal to circumvent access control measures, and impractical to make copies (by ensuring that only crippled DVD-R devices and media are widely available).
Hamish
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Ay, fair enough. I was far quick to judge you. It was the sequitur that I objected to (Its ... illegal ... Therefore ... I ... will never do the same.) - if you feel that this cause is not worth going to jail over, that's a different matter.
Hamish
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
This Case should be about one thing and one only.
The fair use of DVD I am glad that is what is
happening. If someone pirated a DVD they should be
prosecuted but using DeCSS to play a legal copy of
a DVD you have that is something different. All we
want is to use your DVD with the operating system
of our choice.
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
There is no way that they can force you to watch the commercials. They can prevent you from skipping/fast forwarding past them, but (assuming the same format as VHS tapes with advertisments prior to the main movie) cannot prevent you from leaving the room (making a coffee, using the toilet or whatever) while the commercials are playing.
But haven't you already paid that when you purchase/rent the DVD movie?
I am not a lawyer.
From what I understand, the Norwegian 16 year old Johansen didn't actually do the reverse engineering--it's some anonymous person/people in Germany and Holland.
My reading of the DMCA is that reverse engineering is permitted only if the person doing it owns the product legally. As the authors are anonymous, it seems to me that it would be impossible to verify whether they had legal copies or not.
I just don't see the reverse engineering legal argument standing up in the US court system. As I said, I know nothing about the law, but the cases of reverse engineering that were upheld by the courts such as Compaq's reverse engineering the BIOS for the IBM PC seemed to involve a clear line of accountability for how the information was obtained and who coded. I don't know if the technology underlying DeCSS would have passed the standards for legal reverse engineering even before the DMCA.
In my uninformed opinion, with the growth of the Linux market, had DeCSS not been written, some company would have stepped up and paid the fees to produce closed source binary drivers, similar to the market for commercial X servers. I am wondering if the anonymous authorship will guarantee that at least in the US there will never be legal software for DVD playback.
Um...yes, if someone manages to make something which lets people buy MacOS and run it on Intel (With is probably impossible without copywritten ROM, but let's pretend.), then, yes, Apple should just shut up.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Who set this to troll, the MPAA?
It seems that this charter information is only beginning to surface again in the public mindshare.
I would say that denial of copyright fair use, enforcement of player monopoly for consumer playback and legal intimidation to aquire rights above that granted by law are not in the public interest.
Even if this gets nowhere maybe the whole issue will hit mainstream.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Finally! Someone else who gets it. Anyone notice that China is its own region code? If that's not proof of the entertainment industry pandering to political interests, I don't know what is.
So, now that the secret is out, we can create CSS-protected works, and it will be illegal for DVD-CCA to sell information or licenses for DVD players, and illegal for anyone (whether they have a license from DVD-CCA or not) to manufacture DVD players. DMCA will trample their rights just as much as it tramples ours.
All we need is a blank/burnable DVD-R that doesn't have the key sector burned with 0s. Give me one of those (I'll buy a DVD writer drive myself), and this whole DeCSS fiasco will be over.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I've had a dvd player for a little while and i'm super happy with it. the only things i haven't been able to skip are the FBI warnings in the begining of the movie. I have yet to run into a dvd with ads for burger king or anything yet so i wouldn't worry aobut it too much. Hell i've yet to see previews for OTHER movies on a dvd yet.
this could all change of corse.
Nope i actually haven't bought tarzan. i never really wanted to anyway :)
Not only do some DVDs have copyright warnings, but they have copyright warnings in multiple languages (my copy of Star Trek: First Contact has a "copying is prohibited" message in both English *and* French). Further, some DVDs also toss up one or more studio banners (the pegasus comes flying in, we get the WB seal, etc.) that can't be skipped past either.
Frankly, I just want to watch the goddamn movie. If I really have a desire to find out what studio made the movie, I'll look on the packaging.
*grumble*
My understanding is that most "buy it at Walmart!" DVD recordable disks have the CCA key area already burned out, so that while you'll get the content you won't get the unscrambling keys.
As a result, while all of the content on the disk is still there and reproduced perfectly, the DVD player can't descramble the content.
The DVD encryption function is designed to restrict the user from being able to view it on an unlicensed machine. An unlicensed machine is one that has not paid the DVD-CCA for the algorithm that descrambles the DVD content.
Draw your own conclusion as to what the DVD-CCA is protecting: content piracy, or their wallets.
That's an interesting approach. All you need now is enough people in Delaware to make it work. Recruit friends and relatives. The more noise you make, the better your chance of being heard.
This comment is brought to you by a moderation bug where moderations of "Interesting" sometimes get changed to "Troll" for no apparent reason.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
I suggested this in another article. I got marked down as a troll while you got marked up. Be grateful. :-)
However, since ATI and/or Creative Labs have produced a DVD decoder card that essentially makes a bridge between the player and the video out signal, it is a relatively simple thing to write a Linux DVD player without lawyer scare... as long as you have the extra hardware.
Now what I want to know is why it hasn't been done yet. Perhaps the community genuinely comprehends the magnitude of this fight and doesn't want to help the MPAA in any way.
Only several years AFTER the war was it abolished in the Northern states (and NY only abolished it in the 1830's if I remember correctly).
The Civil War was fought in the 1860's, so I think you mean 1930, if you are not mistaken.
The South has NEVER RECOVERED! Many down in the South lost all and their families NEVER recovered (black and white).
Yeah, war is hell and all that.
But if it's our nation's hypocrisy that bothers you, focus on the present and do something about it, rather than harp on the past.
Ok, that's for redistributing the original content -- what about taking it, reducing the quality and size, putting it on a CDR and selling it for $4. That's a legitimate worry of the movie people.
"Lets not forget, the tracks on which DVD players expect to find the CSS keys and region info is also pre-burned with 0's. I have no idea how you'd get a movie on there that would actually play in a DVD player... "
:)
Simple. Make a player that looks elsewhere or alternatively makes this stuff up. Get the user to enter what region the disk is from and the player should already know a few keys. This is assuming you are playing it on computer though.
"DNA is God's contribution to the Open Source movement"
Does this mean the rot13 decoder in my newsreader program is now illegal?
Ideology is for ideots.
Yeah, I read it on Variety too.
/_____\. .......|
What I don't understand is why can't they have vary bandwidth technology. i.e. Fox has 8 channels and nbc got 10 (broadcast, not cable.) Fox decide to show low qulity tv while NBC decides to show true high definition, which uses 3-4 subchannle bandwidth.
When they premiere movies like Titanic (just an example, it has the highest broadcast tv premiere right) Fox will use 5 channels to show it too. So when you click to Fox1, Fox2...Fox5, the TV will show the same high definition picture.
A lot of local show really don't need high quality, they just waste good camera/film. They are already talking about digitally store the cartoons shows, which will have lower quality.
Don't think media quality will go down? This has already happened, APS films are pretty bad compare to 35mm. It doesn't even have 800 speed, which is useless with its tiny lens, but nobody knows about it. Don't even let me start with the digicams.
So when world series comes, we can have 3 channels for the high quality main behide-the-catcher cam, 2 sub channels for first base cam and center field cam. Fun!
CY
vvvvvvv../|__/|
...I../O,O....|
...I./
..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
You people are really doing it the long way. A fucking RCA VCR $120 can do the ad filter for you, uses dead cheap media (.8 to 1.0 for 2 hours, how much that consume your hard drivein compatable quality?) Better once can even control cable box, good luck setting up those with your X10 or whatever.)
/_____\. .......|
What happen tomorrow a toaster and a launtry can be connected to your pc? YOU STILL HAVE TO PUT THE BAGEL IN THE TOASTER YOURSELF.
CY
vvvvvvv../|__/|
...I../O,O....|
...I./
..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
here is a quarter, kid. Get yourself a blockbuster account.
/_____\. .......|
vvvvvvv../|__/|
...I../O,O....|
...I./
..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
You don't need any export license because all the players are made in Japan.
true - but the MPAA aren't - and exporting source code and/or compiled programs was just as illegal as hardware
It's my understanding that DVD was invented in Japan anyway so no exporting of hardware OR software needed to take place. Sony? Toshiba? Hmm..
And this was marked "Troll" because....?
Very informative IMHO!
if the deCSS program is outlawed, Chapman said, "Linux users would have to go out and buy Windows -- and Linux was created in cyberspace, by a community of users, to be an alternative platform to Windows -- because everybody thought Windows had too many problems."
:)
I have to disagree here. This alone makes me doubt the credibility of the article. Linux was actually made, AFAIK, as an alternative to minix. It just turns out that it's a plain old good OS
How in hell can you create software that is smart enough to tell if what you want to do is fair use, lets you do it if it is, and is still capable of preventing comparatively easy illegal copying?
A good point. I feel, however, that the problem is in "their" (the producer's) court. They are trying to use technical innovations to eliminate piracy. That's OK, as long as it only eliminates piracy. CSS does far more than this (including region access control which probably violates world trade treaties, but that's another thread). What it definitely does is remove some "Fair Use" rights (the right to make personal copies, for examples). The fact that it stops other activities that are not fair use is moot - the test, IMHO, should be "This system is unacceptable because it prevents any sort of fair use" rather than "This system is acceptable because it prevents some 'unfair' use".
As for parody, review and the ilk - there is already an estabilshed route within the current framework of copyright to obtain redress and restitution. If a movie company really objected your the parody of the matrix then they can do exactly what they would do if you parodied using VHS - sue. Taking the draconian step of preventing any parody ever that is based on the DVD because someone in principle could overstep the bounds of fair use is ludicrious.
Thinking through the DMCA under this sort of model two things are clear: 1) CSS definitely removes some fair use rights and 2) DeCSS restored those rights. Now DeCSS does other things, but in my view that's too bad for the movie companies: a valid defence against reverse engineering and the ilk is "does it restore fair use rights."
If they want their "technical solution" for the protection of copyright, they had better make sure that it protects everybodies' rights, including the purchasers', not just their own.
Going back to your point: some fair use may be subjective and decided after the fact, but there is lots of fair use that is objective and has been decided. The latter is being prevented by technical means, and I believe this is wrong.
This should read "a valid defence....should be "does.....
Doh!
Let's circumvent this entire issue. Let's lobby the MPAA and the RIAA to set-up a program that allows the consumer to legally copy DVDs and CDs. If the only thing standing in the way of my copying a DVD to tape, etc. is a licensing agreement, then let me buy a license to copy. I'd pay an additional dollar, or two, to be allowed to copy a DVD or CD for personal use. This would take away the perceived consumer pirate market (as opposed to the professional pirates) and the artist should benefit from this type of agreement.
If the MPAA continues to push there draconian control of the after-market access to their product, then new media will be developed. Consumers do not like to be oppressed and bullied. If they did, all cars would come in one color: black.
However, lately the tactic that the DVD CCA, MPAA and it's ilk are using to go after DeCSS is that it violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act because legally you aren't allowed, under that act, to create a tool to defeat any copy protection scheme. In this case, it doesn't matter if you figured out the DeCSS Algorithm in a clean room, the law says, "Just trying to figure it out is illegal."
The DMCA is a horrible, evil law which was designed to upset the applecart on consumer's rights, destroying the delicate balance between the rights of copyright holders and those of the consumers who buy copyrighted material.
Oh, phrases like "legal license holder" is just FUD used by the DVD CCA to confuse the issue.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Wired Article:"DVD Player at Apex of Controversy"
that can defeat their attempts to destroy fair use, they summon their lawyers and start making threats.
The real goal is to make fair use de facto illegal, so that whenever anyone does something that could cut into their profits they'll have legal precedent backing them when they go after him/her.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
So are you suggesting they just mirror DeCSS on a webserver in China? That would be ideal I guess. Anyone have any friends in China with a high bandwidth website?
Work for Change & GET PAID!
The man is f*cking NORWEIGAN! The MPAA and RIAA are AMERICAN. He can say "fuck off" and just go back to "fondling his penguin".
If this is in error, please point this out me.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
OK, you caught me.
But I also didn't list: bakelite (sp?) cylinder, 45rpm, 16rpm, wire reel-to-reel, and WAV files.
Brings us to:
Waxed Cylinder, Bakelite Cylinder, 78rpm, 45rpm, 33 1/3rpm, 16rpm, wire reel-to-reel, tape reel-to-reel, 8-track, casette, CDs, WAVs, MP3s
That's a buncha times to buy "The Blue Danube".
Is it currently illegal to sell blank DVD's, completely blank DVD's? I would think that it couldn't be, anyone know?
I smoke it 25. (26 on leap day)
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
I should know better, I have a LD player.
What is CED?
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
You forgot two:
Waxed Cylinder, MP3s
i.e. - Waxed Cylinder, 78rpm, 33 1/3rpm, reel-to-reel, 8-track, casette, CDs, MP3s
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
Aren't there DVD capable macs?
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
So, I copy a DVD bit by bit and it doesn't work because there are no CSS keys on the disc. I decode it and copy it, and it doesn't work because there are no CSS keys on the disc. CSS is not a copy protection scheme because even if you do defeat it, you still can't copy the DVD (except as a poor-quality small MPEG or as images).
The MPAA are trying to criminalise any use of the content they have not specifically authorised and any method used to do this. By criminalising any DVD players not authorised by them, they can enforce any bullshit they like on the consumer, such as region codes, forced advertisements and annoying notices, etc. If their agenda was really about copying they'd be going after all copying systems and DVD pirates.
They are in an obviously attempt to confuse the court into thinking that Access Control == Copy Control but in fact Access Control rips infinitely more power from the consumer to the movie industry.
I'm 100% disgusted in their attempt to confuse - if you want to control "access", please define clearly that what is "access" and more importantly, what is NOT "access" so that the term cannot be broaden anytime you wish and people will have a clear idea about the boundary of your power.
I'm not talking about recording stuff off the air, I'm talking about buying movies to watch at home.
The consumer market drives the decision of what format to stay with, *not* the MPAA/movie studios.
Usually I would agree with you. But with the way the powers that be have been acting about all this, I worry that they will cut over before the normal market forces would dictate. What better way to get the new technology which they have such tight control over a jump start that to stop making the old one.
The MPAA/movie studios are the ones who actually *decide* what format to release movies on. My worry is that they may make the decision from a more long term view than what consumers want now. The sooner they can force people into a format with all sort of nasty content controls on them, the sooner they can get people used to them, which sounds like the ultimate goal. Why spend all the money on a court battle over a feature that you don't have any long term plans for?
That's all I plan to say on this thread. You do make good points, but it's not the normal case I'm concerned with here, it's the extreme one
With VHS, region protection was a non-issue; if you produced a video for Europe, for instance, you couldn't watch it in the States without a PAL/SECAM to NTSC convertor. The incompatibilities of the technologies served, accidentally, as a tool for the studios to limit distribution of their products by region.
"The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy." -I. M. Isaacs
Grr... Windows just crashed on me while I was watching a DVD and finishing posting a reply, so this is the condensed version of what I was saying, with regard to future Macrovision copy protection and whether or not the MPAA is thinking ahead to HDTV:
The other day at Sears, I overheard an HDTV technician telling a sales rep that the current model of a certain HDTV decoder boxes with connectors for digital output of the decoded video stream was being recalled, and the next generation would be shipped without the connectors. He said that the reason for the recall was because "Hollywood" had told the manufacturer that this connection made it too easy for people to make copies of HDTV broadcasts too easily. (I am assuming that Hollywood==MPAA & movie studios.) Obviously, "Hollywood" is thinking about the future of digital entertainment and is taking aggressive steps to place as many obstacles as possible in the consumer's way before the consumer realizes what has been taken from them. This disgusts me, and I only wish I had the money to buy one of the decoder boxes with the digital output before they are gone forever!
-- NorseThunder
Classic random Star Wars script excerpt:
HAN: If we can just avoid any more female advice, we ought to be able to get out of here.
-- Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope
Let's assume I take a pre-recorded DVD (of, say, The Matrix) and a blank DVD. I copy all the bits from the Matrix disc to my blank disc. (I don't decrypt anything; I just copy everything, encrypted or otherwise, from one disc to the other.) Have I successfully created a pirate copy of The Matrix, or will my copy not work for some reason? In other words, does DVD encryption function as DVD-to-DVD copy protection, or does it merely prevent DVDs from being read by unlicensed devices? If it isn't copy protection, then it's useless; there is so much data in a DVD edition of a two-hour movie that it's impractical to store it on your hard disk and share it with friends over the Internet.
Well, I suppose in practice it's no worse than the NTSC/PAL problems, but at least that technological conflict was the result of historical accident, not because greedy broadcasters wanted to control access to their shows. This time around, it's sheer greed and stupidity, and I resent it.
Probably the same inability to reason that allows the US crypto export regulations to exist instead of being discarded as utterly ridiculous because the regulations are trying to control the export of something that has already been exported and is widely available all over the world. I've been asking the same question about the crypto regs:
"What is the response of the proponents when asked what good does this do in light of the contrary evidence?"
I have never seen Louis Freeh or any of those yahoos pushing for crypto regs give an answer to this. The reason? Maybe they aren't being point blank asked the question. The reason for that? We're back at square one.
-core
Casual Linux users will be able to make those copies as soon as the DVD-rom file system is widely distributed. That is right around the corner. DeCSS is much further from widespread usability -- especially with the current economics of the disks.
They miss the fucking point. It is not a matter of piracy, it is a matter of being able to play the disk. All it takes to pirate a DVD disk is a DVD-R drive.
When you're crushing a man's windpipe with your knee, you can be sure he will attempt to bite you.
Unfortunately, machines that can truly convert between the formats are about 20 times as expensive as low-end ones.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Wrong. The funny thing is, there is no patent of any kind on the CSS code. Therefore, you don't need a license for it. If this were about licensing, the MPAA would have won the case months ago. But there is no licensing issue, therefore they have to try and win it on the stupid copy-protection argument.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
They make money twice. Once for the license on the player, then once again on the DVD media itself.
No, they make money at least twice. Once on the DVD itself, once for each piece of hardware to use the DVD and finally once for each piece of software used to view the DVD. The question is will we have to pay for any "flash" hardware upgrades as each revision requires a new payment to the assholes (sorry, but giving them any name other than the Major Pricks After Anti-Trust just doesn't seem right)? And will each version of your DVD viewing software require a new license/payment?
Is there any reason why a DVD cannot be produced WITHOUT using CSS? And if not, how long before Independant film makers, regional film makers (i.e. Bollywood) and many others choose NOT to use CSS as they would LOVE to be able to send one version of the media to anywhere on the planet? CSS only protects the rights of the Masturbating Practioners Association of America to try to milk money, lets see if America really the power to make the rest of the world follow if its legal system is stupid enough to allow it.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Id always wondered abotu this... what stops you from producing DVDs that use a string of zeros as the CSS key?
is this a manner for people to produce their own videos that can play on any DVD player.
Just an thought..
so would this work?
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
Okay, Speaking from a totally legal stand point.
Its been proven illegal in a court of law
Therefore you are taking the law into your own hands so I admire you but will never do the same.
Jeremy
No, There is no sense in speaking anonymously when it defeats the purpose of my post.
I am not out to change the world.
I am not willing to do something illegal to prove to the world I believe that I am right.
True never is a strong word. At this point I truly believe I will never do something so it is a belief now but I am aware never and forever do not always work.
Call it cowardice, whatever you feel like calling it. I have more to lose at this point in my life than I will ever gain by being a hero to people. That is an assumptive statement and if it is false I just do not care, which is really the heart of the issue.
People need and depend on me. Life CAN and does change in a single day, for example the day my wife was killed.
I am not willing to lose again at this point. Take the meaning from your satirical signature about walking a mile in a man's shoes.
No, people are more willing to judge than actually discover who people really are so do not speak to me about a revolution I have had a few to many in my life.
Jeremy
CSS is not about restricting discs to a certain region, it is copy protection. The reason it's copy protection is that standard DVD players will not play a disc copied bit by bit to another DVD. They wont play them because they are designed not to. The keys for the content scrambling system (CSS) are on a section of the disc that the writers you can buy will not write to. You can copy the information but your DVD player will not play it for you and if you try to play it on your computer you will find that approx 10% of the picture is scrambled (i.e. just enough to ruin anyones enjoyment of it). The regional coding is a totally separate issue. I live in Europe and everyone I know who owns a DVD player has had it modified to play discs from all regions, they have not disabled CSS. CSS is a totally different system designed for a different purpose.
Off-Topic, I know, but how would WE design this system?
Assuming that we had to
a) protect the rights of the content creators to make a FAIR buck from their movies. This would be mainly implemented by preventing mass quantities of content from being made WITHOUT paying royalties to the original content creator.
b) Allow owners of media who HAD paid proper royalties to view the content on THEIR choice of dedicated players, computer systems, hand-held devices, or anything else that technology could come up with.
Any thoughts? Maybe we could help design the NEXT system. And it sems inevitable that their will be a NEXT system, now that the CSS cat is out of the bag.
Okay somebody explain this to me.
The DeCSS hack is blamed for the delay in DVD audio. This must be costing the industry millions! Are they trying to tell us that they are willing to sell NO discs at all in case they lose a sale to piracy?
Actually it reminds me of the type of school teacher who would punish the whole class because a single person was misbehaving, and blaming it on the naughty child. (A tactic that still results in the kids laying the blame solely on the teacher).
Why not reverse engineer DeCSS (outside the US)? That doesn't have any licence agreement preventing this, and the source code is supplied.
Using this code, produce a DVD player that is very strict about the technologies that actually ARE used to prevent copying (e.g. Macrovision), and not about those that are about control (e.g. regional coding, unauthorised playback, preventing fast forward). The point is that anyone who tried to ban this would find that it couldn't be used to copy discs, so they wouldn't be able to use the piracy angle to try to ban it.
A couple of comments/notes
this turned out a little long, and maybe a little awkward but here goes:
Macrovision - how it actually works, is it tampers with the vertical sync pulses of the output video, increasing and decreasing its amplitude. VCRs set their record gain by amplifing/attenuating the entire signal until the sync pulse is at the correct level. In plain english its like constantly adjusting the brightness setting on your tv. A very simple circuit can defeat this.
----
Much of the holdup for HDTV is because of these issues. Also, the DMCA applies here. A HD vcr will be able to record a perfect digital copy of programming. The sets are coming down in price at a rapid rate - i've seen HD ready sets closing in on $2k, without the set top box. (If you are going to buy a set DO NOT buy one with a built in HD tuner - get an external set top box so you can upgrade it). Expect to see the prices drop much further by Christmas time. The amount of information in the HD pipe is incredible - over the air @ 19 mb/s. (Raw HD is 1.5 gb/sec). In any case, the only available hd vcr machines at the moment are commercial grade, and quite expensive: the current sony lists for $58,500; a fuller featured panasonic at $100k - not for home use. Expect to see something like the DAT "solution" - some kind of the copy of a copy protection inserted before hdvcrs hit the home market. This is a VERY big issue in broadcasting - many people aren't going to buy HD sets until there is something to watch, and no one is making programming for HD because there are no sets out there. I've watched some HD and it is awesome - the Super Bowl was so much better in many ways.
As to what the final outcome will be - anyones guess. If you have ideas that will balance the needs of ip holders and consumers, the broadcast industry is really looking for one. They just want to get the ball rolling, and start recouping the very high cost of getting HD on the air, not to screw end users for every last cent, unlike the mpaa (although they are some of the same companies). Broadcasting and computing/networking are rapidly converging - in most major markets, all the spots (ads) you see are being played from video servers, not tape. Many of the DMCA issues are rearing their ugly head here too (remember when vcrs first came out and there were court fights about taping tv shows to watch later? and advertisers pissed because you could skip their ads and go back to your show without viewing their stuff?)
Those of you in the Las Vegas area April 8-13 can visit the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) and see a lot of this stuff and where the future of audio/video is going commercially. Also see www.nab.org
-
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
The DSS algorithm uses 40 bit keys specifically because of export restrictions.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
CSS is considered to be a trade secret by the DVDCCA (by whatever name they are using now) and the MPAA. The CCA licenses the CSS "trade secrets" to various licencees that make various DVD-related components and content who (1) pay for the priviledge of being licensees and (2) contractually agree to several conditions in return for the license. For example, respecting the region-encoding and macrovision on output is technically a requirement of the license, but several players have been found to have secret menus or remote control sequences that disable one or both of these "features".
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
You're right, of course... but why the heck is this fact going completely unrecognized by both the media and the court? I realize I'm a geek, but the idea that you can't protect against somebody copying a disc bit-by-bit doesn't seem that complex to me.
Is this just a Jedi mind trick on the part of the MPAA? "DeCSS IS a pirating tool!" For the life of me, I can't figure out how this case is holding any water at all.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
Does anyone know offhand how strong the encryption is on a DVD ... do you need a Export license to send a DVD/DVD player to Iraq...Just thinking about ways to turn the tables on this one. I'm not a lawyer...any ideas?
perl -e "print(pack('H37','4d65726b7572795a40676e7572642e6e6574'))"
This sounds good, but it's going to be hard to implement. The problem is that fair use rights a) are very broad and b) can only be determined legally after the fact.
I understand what you're saying here - but I have to disagree. Just because something is difficult to do gives these bastards the right to take away my "fair use" rights? Fuck that. It's the MPAA's responsibility to implement a system like this, not ours, and their lack of legal and effective access control methods is certainly not our problem.
The real problem here is that the MPAA and all of the other Evil Acronyms(TM) are attempting a pre-emptive strike against digital copying of their copywrited works. Even LEGAL copying. Well, I understand their position (retarded as though it may be), but they just need to shut the fuck up. If they catch pirates who *ARE MAKING MONEY* then they should sue/jail/castrate. That's fine, that's the law, it's wrong to make money from someone else's IP. But preventing me from making a digital backup copy? One that I won't be giving away or selling? That's wrong, that's a violation of my rights, and it must be stopped.
"We demand free access to information...but it comes with some responsability..."
You're forgetting one thing. One can make a case that defeating CSS is protected under DMCA as reverse-engineering for interoperability (how can it be otherwise, is what I'd like to know). But DeCSS is essentially clean-room -- we still don't necessarily know the encryption algorithm, and without that you still can't burn a CSS-protected DVD. To be honest, DVD is, right now, too much. It is an incredible format -- there's no better way to watch a movie at home -- but production seems to be a bitch and the fact remains that the MPAA will fight to the death over the issue (I still think it's interesting that the DVD patent holders couldn't seem to care less about this whole flap). Wake up, movie people: with DeCSS on the scene, you're no better off than the RIAA vs. MP3. You've already lost -- give it up gracefully. /Brian
This is what I have assumed all along. The pirating issue is economically absurd at present and for the immediate future. Has anyone inquired about licensing the technology for a Linux player? What would the cost be? Is there any information on what the license fees are for M$ players? Would a license fee for a Linux player be prohibitive? Would the idea be rejected out of hand? How about an e-mail campaign in the nature of "Hey, this DVD stuff looks really cool. If you had a *NIX version I would be very interested....". Perhaps finding a consumer freindly federal judge (is their such an animal?) and seeking an injunction against the further distribution of DVD players which violate fair use of copyrighted materials would be interesting.......
Most definitely not a lawyer, but there is nothing wrong with my sense of smell.
I don't know how the MPAA is going to win this lawsuit. Look at game cracks - game industry did somewhat the same almost 7 years ago, but against game cracks - they lost it. The program itself is not illegal, it is the usage of it.
:)
For all you game cracks go to megagames
When you download the prog, it does not mean you are going to use it. I downloaded it, took a look at the sources, and kept it. I never ran any binary form of the prog(don't have a DVD device:).
Now I just need a DVD drive and I can start copying DVD's
Now thats not very nice ;]
Not really: The DVD itself still has the copyright, although the film does not.
But there's another problem: If content is copy-protected, this not only has effects on copyright expiration.
As noone is able to copy it, there is no possibility to copy it to new media, convert the format etc. So after the author/company has lost interest in the product and does not produce any longer, the time will come when all copies are broken or can't be played in modern equippment - and no new copies are produced. Finally it's impossible to get the work in any form. The work will be lost completly.
So maybe in 100 years from now, it will be impossible to view any films that were created fully digitally - and copy protected.
Claus
Have you read the articles about the authors? Obviously not.
"Its not your business to determine how, where or what media they choose distribute."
Absolutely correct. And it is not their business how I choose to view the media they distribute. Or where I can view it, for that matter. Truthfully, what they do here is not illegal, but it certainly is what I would consider an unethical business practice.
"In reality, we all know that this is just another tool to allow online pirates to strip content from one medium and place in it into another medium that is easily distributed online."
Either I am not included in 'we all' or I have a little more technical knowledge than you. This kind of a copying is impractical for the average, or even the above-average user. While you might be able to translate the data into another medium, like AVI [who on earth would do that?] it is not going to happen.
"I have noticed a tremendous increase of pirated DVDs translated via VCD on this internet."
Really? Show me. Sounds like a BAS to me. I get around, and I am sure I would have noticed a 'tremendous increase' in pirate traffic.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. Next time sign your name, would you?
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
I never was good with sarcasm....
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
I have two cameras. A Nikon F2 (old, fully manual, you can even take the eyepiece off and look down on the glass like a view camera), and a Canon Elph (APS). I end up using the Elph more just because it is so portable. I can put it in my pocket and forget about it until I want to take a picture. My biggest complaint with the APS camaras is inherent in all point and shoot - I hate automatic exposure. Also, the flash is useless after a few feet. I find the picture quality to be fine for 4x7 prints even with 400 ASA film. I'd never take an 'art' picture with it, but for taking on vacation, to the ball game, etc. it is hard to beat.
The problem with this rosy future is that the HD in HDTV is optional. When the beancounters at DisAOLWarner choose between a beautiful high-definition broadcast and 20 low resolution broadcasts, what are they going to do? Yes, we will finally get our 500 channels, but it will be the same crappy resolution we have now. Oh FCC, what could have been...
Insert a clause into future open source licenses:
.... You do the math. The idea is to point out to them that we are valuable to them as both suppliers and as customers. MPAA, are you listening? You are suing the same community that made the special effects in Titanic possible. Be careful. We bite. Imagine filing for an injunction to prohibit the sale, distribution, marketting, rental, and merchandizing of an extremely popular and profitable movie.
The user of this software agrees to allow the creation of open source software to access any data that is created using this software and either sold to the public or made available for free. The user will place no licensing restrictions on software that is created in compliance with this clause. The user agrees to indemnify and hold harmless such software in all claims of intellectual property infringment involving software to use the data or media. This clause does not apply to copying the data or media itself.
If a clause like this had been in the GPL prior to Titanic being made
It sounds like there is only one licensee of this technology, the MPAA. They use this licensing to artificially harm consumers with inflated prices and or deny access to legally licensed copyrighted works.
:}
IANAL, but I really hope some of the DOJ lawyers, fresh with the Micro$loth kill, would be interested in going after another monopolistic industry with lots of $$$. ('Cuz that's what it's
all about in the end.) I believe the anti-trust laws apply to 'collusion' as well. And the MPAA certainly exhibits all the behaviors of a collusion whose sole purpose is to artificially manipulate the market price of a good or service to the financial (and accessibility) detriment of consumers.
If not the anti-trust laws, then certainly RICO statutes might also apply. But, then again, IANAL, and they are certainly smarter than me. I do not venture to guess why this has not occurred to them.
The movie vendors have explicitly licensed the DVD players, or rather the player manufacturers, which is why the players are legal. DeCSS was not licensed.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
what about taking it, reducing the quality and size, putting it on a CDR and selling it for $4. That's a legitimate worry of the movie people.
How is that any more of a danger than people recording DVD movies onto VHS tapes? You end up with a much inferior product. Same with recording CDs onto cassette tapes. These things can and will be done. These copies are legal to make, as long as you don't distribute them. It didn't hurt CDs. It won't hurt DVDs. The movie industry will continue to make money hand-over-fist regardless of whether you can copy DVDs onto some other media.
The only danger they've pointed out so far that seems credible is the fact that people will be able to offer decoded DVD movies for download at some point in the future when we actually have enough bandwidth to download one in some reasonable amount of time. Perhaps that will be the case a few years from now. I currently can't even get a DSL line though, and most of the people in my city are in the same situation. I think this illustrates the fact that DeCSS was not developed for the purpose of ripping and distributing DVD movies, but for the legitimate purposes of making DVDs work with Linux and other "alternative" platforms that the movie industry wouldn't give the time of day to. In which case, it should be considered a legitimate tool and not made illegal. What it comes down to is that I should have the right to make the DVD I bought legitimately work with my hardware and software. I don't care who created the DVD in the first place, I paid what they asked and I now own a copy for my own personal use and enjoyment. As long as I'm not distributing copies (which is ALREADY a crime), or facilitating public viewings (which is also a crime), they shouldn't have any right to tell me what I can or cannot do with my DVD.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually, it never says anything about modifying the info on the disc. It says that it modifies the information. It does this after it has been read from the disc, so the article is technically correct. I suppose I can understand someone misinterpreting what they said though. It certainly wouldn't help matters either.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
By implication, if you haven't handed over vast quantities of green bits of paper to the movie industry, you are a closet Blackbeard, ready to filch those DVD's at the slightest opportunity, irrespective of the fact that there are no DVD writers available to Joe & Jane Public that could record a feature-length movie.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
People under the age of 18 aren't real people and don't have real rights.
This is so when you are over 18 you are exceedingly happy with the limited rights you have.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
The MPAA and the RIAA have been in and out of the courts for years. If you go to the DOJ website you can find pending lawsuits regarding price fixing by "copyright societies" in Europe, and Time Warner was slapped a while ago for offering kickbacks to dealers who keep CD prices high.
Copyright isn't just a mechanism to ensure that authors get paid. It's also a way to ensure monopoly pricing by middlemen, for services like distribution which should be a commodity.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Someone would have found a way to override the fucking copy protection scheme, and you would have had to pay less to 'buy' a movie ... LOL ... well I'm not even kidding, that's what would have happened!
Its been proven illegal in a court of law
Therefore you are taking the law into your own hands so I admire you but will never do the same.
Not spoken anonymously, but nonetheless like a true coward. Never say never, for come the revolution your life will have changed.
Hamish
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
The player's who can buy? If you seriously believe the big pirates have any trouble getting ahold of writers that will copy the keys, you're seriously mistaken. The only people who'llhave any trouble getting hold of such things are private individuals, most of whose copying is either fair use anyway, or would probably not constitute a sale if copying were impossible.
Copying using deCSS is impractical with current technology because their simply is no other random access digital medium big enough to hold a movie.
CSS may been intended as a copy protection system, but in fact the only thing it can ever do effectively is protect the monopoly on the production of DVD players.
But the MPAA isn't worried about that, because a professional DVD copying setup costs many thousands of dollars.
They're worried that you will remove the copy protection and dump the movie onto your hard drive. You could then take a week or two and upload it to the internet for others to download.
All sarcasm aside, (sarcasm is my life!), the thought is that soon, hard drives will be big enough to hold multiple movies (how many gigs on a roll of scotch tape?) and that DVD writers will be cheap enough (like CD-R drives) for people to make copies of movies for their friends.
But just as 500GB hard drives will soon be $50, and DVD-writers will be $25, so will the professional DVD-copiers fall in price.
The fact of the matter is that what CSS does is not prevent copying, but controls how I access the movies that I've purchased.
I am currently ripping my CD's into MP3's and putting them on my network file server so I can listen to them from anywhere in the house, on any platform (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc -- We've got 'em all.) Now I don't have anywhere near enough disk space to put even the few DVD's I have on the network, but I would like the opportunity to view them on whichever machine I like.
But the MPAA/DVDCCA wants me to only be able to view them with a player that can decrypt CSS -- that is, one from a company that has paid them a hefty fee.
Now, if I wanted to, I could write a CD player program with whatever features I want. I could write an image viewer that lets me look at jpeg's upside down. But I can't write a program to let me look at my own DVD's. (Unless I pay the DVDCCA.)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Bingo! It's the exact same reason why AOL let other companies use their IM service but not MS. The other companies licensed the service from AOL. Microsoft didn't. So until they do, they'll have no right to use the service.
It's the same with DVD. It's not Linux that's the problem. The problem is licensing. No one wants to license a player for Linux. And until someone does, it will be illegal to have a Linux-based DVD player.
-BrentIt is funny though, that DVD's cost less to manufacture in quantity than VHS tapes. I'd guess that the cost to manufacture players are probably about even, or maybe DVD players cost more because of all the chips in them, but still. It is nearly identical to the record industry in the move from cassettes to CD's: Sell something that costs less to produce for a higher price.
At least in both cases the digital formats quality (especially across multiple listenings).
Consumers didn't really have much say in the transition from records and cassettes to CD's. The record companies decided to stop allowing stores to return unsold records but let them return unsold CD's for new inventory. No stores wanted to left holding a bunch of records they could do nothing with, so they swapped over to CD's.
And remember how CD's came with extra "bonus" tracks unavailable on the cassette or record versions? Kind of like how DVD's give us toys like multiple picture aspect ratio's, multiple language subtitles, etc...
Move along.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
All you have to do is make your own movie, and protect it with the unpatented CSS algorith. Since you have not licensed those manufacturers to defeat the access control on your movie, all those players instantly become illegal.
Please forward 1% of your settlement with those manufacturers to me. Thank you.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
From the article...
Ignoring, for the moment, the obvious error where they say that CSS was supposed to make the disks copy-proof, I am curious about something. What's this about "legal license holder"? Is there actually a basis (it's definately not in DMCA) for DVD-CCA exclusively owning that algorithm? Is there a patent which no one has mentioned yet?
Unless there's a secret patent (is that an oxymoron?), no one needs a license to do anything with CSS. (But interestingly, when DMCA goes into effect, DVD-CCA will lose its right to sell such licenses.)
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Most likly both, he is obviously an idiot, no argument about that. And just maby all he has seen is the De Cascading Style Sheets program. Most likly though, he/she is just an idiot
destroy the economy of the South and turn the war into a Moral Crusade.
Accually the war wasn't a moral crusade untill it was over, the war really had absolutly nothing to do with slavery, but the nice thing about a war is you can made the surendering side do just about anything you want.
The real problem with Jim Crow Laws was that the North raped, robbed, and pilliaged the South, taking ALL THEY COULD in the Great Stealing
I honestly have no idea what your talking about so I'm not going to comment
The South has NEVER RECOVERED! Many down in the South lost all and their families NEVER recovered (black and white).
Tension between the races have yet to recover, but maby its just me, but the south seems to be doing just fine, now that we are starting to get over our hangups about eachother.
The Slavery/Jim Crow analogy breaks down when you realize you are talking about human rights versus DMCA/UCITA and large corporations.
Well yea it is a stupid analogy, but whats your point
Corporations have ALWAYS wanted more power. Now they are getting it (at our expense).
See, we can agree oon somethings.
1.) DVD = Digital Versitile Disk, not Variable Disk
2.) ct2600 does not offer info on 'hacked' webistes nor am I sure when he means about 'software tools and repairs'.
3.) ct2600 does not offer the theme he mentions. Obviously he went to both my personal site and ct2600 and got them mixed up.
This reporter did not talk to me at all. He did talk to my lawyer, but maybe he should have talked to someone else or at least he should have gotten the damn DVD ref. correct.
Oh well...
DO NOT TAUNT THE OCTOPUS
I would be busting a gut to see that there was no way to home-copy with the new equipment that will accompany HDTV.
What do you think they are doing? This is the major hold-up for implementing a spec for Digital TV. The major copyright holders (you know the acronyms) are pushing for hardware layer copy protections. The makers of the sets (and pretty much everyone else) doesn't want that, as it adds both an additional layer of expense and complexity that is unnecessary. Here's a good place to start, if you are curious. The government get's involved, esp the FCC, because we give broadcasters their entire spectrum (for free!!)
--
+&x
One thing that confounds me is why they are trying to stop DeCSS on the grounds that it "is produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work." If, by this definition, DeCSS is illegal, then the DVD players you get from department stores are just as illegal! DeCSS decrypts the information stored on the DVD. A DVD player decrypts the information stored on the DVD.
Nope. A DVD player converts a DVD into an analog video signal; at no point to you get access to the unencrypted program material. What you get is good enough for pirating movies, though.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Am I being wrongfully arrogant here?
No.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
The average home user who currently would have to pay more for the media to put the pirated film on then the film would cost to buy! Okay, so in 5 years time black DVD-R's will cost a quarter of their current cost, but for your average person who might pirate a film, paying $20 for the film on DVD or $10 for the media and then finding someone with both the film and the DVD-RAM/R/RW drive to give them a copy... not worth a lot of peoples time.
Lets not forget, the tracks on which DVD players expect to find the CSS keys and region info is also pre-burned with 0's. I have no idea how you'd get a movie on there that would actually play in a DVD player...
-- iCEBaLM
Why should publishers be able to ignore the parts of the law that they don't like?
This is the sort of question that cannot be answered because everybody is guilty of the same thing at any given point in their own lives. For instance, when was the last time you were speeding? Your question applies here; why should you get to do what you want at the expence of the other drivers? Granted that IP and speeding laws are two different kettles of fish, however the philosophical principle is the same.
I'm not trying to defend the CSS in this case, I'm just trying to point out that the argument is basicly null. A better argument in my opinion is this: If company X can profit off of me, why can I not turn that around and profit off of company X? Applying that here would mean that if that company can get me to pay for what it is selling (the content of the DVD disk) why can't I enjoy that product (the content of the same DVD disk) as I choose? It's not like the DVD is a replacable good. I can't go out and choose a diferent format of digital media to view the same movie on. I have to buy a DVD if I want that "quality" that it is supposed to provide. I can buy a "lesser" product, the VHS version, but it is not the same thing (or so we are told).
So it comes down to that one basic idea that nobody can truly define for everybody else. Fair. What that can mean to the consumer is different from what it means to the company that is doing the selling. So what is fair in this case? Can we use the argument that the DVD player and the content is like a car and that we can take it apart and alter it as we see if? Do we have to treat it differently because it is a different technology? Does the consumer have the ability to comprehend the complexity of the situation here, and what impact does that have ultimatly on the decisions of the parties involved? There is alot to consider here, and none of it is very simple at all.
So far my guide thoughout all of this has been that the consumers will, in the end, make the decision about what is fair and what isn't. And being a consumer, I know that I have to tell other people about what I feel to be right and wrong. This is what I have done. I have told my friends and family. I have written my newspaper's editoral column. I have explained things to people that were curious and I have explained things to people who were not curious. And most importantly I have voted with my dollars. If you can come up with something that is more fair than that, you are a better person than I.
Far, far better to have a law that states that technical means for securing copyrights must not infringe your right of fair use. Keeping your rights is much better than stripping them of theirs. The alternative is giving government the power to remove rights on a whim. They are not called rights for nothing.
Because they can't figure out a way to scam anybody into thinbelieving king that there's a bootlegging issue involved.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The average home user who currently would have to pay more for the media to put the pirated film on then the film would cost to buy! Okay, so in 5 years time black DVD-R's will cost a quarter of their current cost, but for your average person who might pirate a film, paying $20 for the film on DVD or $10 for the media and then finding someone with both the film and the DVD-RAM/R/RW drive to give them a copy... not worth a lot of peoples time.
Now, when DVD-R's cost $2 each to buy, and DVD-R drives are $80... there will be a problem then, and that time will come. A time will come when people have 8Mbit links into their home, a DVD will take 4000-8000 seconds to download (1 - 3 hours roughly) and then it can be recorded. This is 10 years away at most, and it will happen and the MPAA and movie studios can do nothing about it - unless everyone in the country is sent to prison!
Okay, so for the meantime people must fight for their rights, but whoever selected a 40-bit key anyway - in 5 years time an average home computer will be able to crack that before you can say "I like Kylie Minogue"... :-)
True, but they are not doing too badly for a law- rather than techie-orientated piece. More importantly, the MPAA are *not* claiming copy protection, but that they are circumventing ACCESS CONTROLS which is of course what it does. If this is a reasonable restriction is debatable, of course. The exact paragraph is:
--
-=DaveHowe=-
Translation: been paid by / got their slice of the action from
which is why the players are legal. DeCSS was not licensed.
Translation: they aren't getting paid by them, so get mad
--
-=DaveHowe=-
However, with the VHS copy-protection scheme there are plenty of legal 'clarifying' devices that strip off these lines. These can only be sold for home use (yeah right, wink wink). If these are legal, then how can DeCSS or the APEX player be illegal, as long as they are not used for commercial copying?
The only theory I have is that the Digital Copyright Protection Act applies a new, tougher standard for digital works than apllies to analog works. If this is the case, then does a different standard apply for making a VHS-to-VHS copy of
- Toy Story
(a digital work) than a VHS-to-VHS copy of say- Gone with the Wind
?A final thought, I used to live in Philadelphia where bootleg videos (mostly of current release films) were sold openly on the street and even in some stores. As a result, this DeCSS mess unfortunately has me using the same line as the gun lobby: What we need is better enforcement of existing laws, not new laws.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
CSS has to decode the video signal in the DVD-ROM, and then send that signal, unencrypted, to the framebuffer for display on the monitor. In other words, a hack sitting at the driver level could rip the DVD content and save it as an MPEG (or whatever), and there's absolutely nothing CSS can do about it. Indeed, such programs have been around since 1997. There are quite a large number of them, and they're much more advanced and easier to use than deCSS in its current form.
Now, having said that, the copy they make, while fully digital, is technically slightly inferior to what could be made by the direct bit-for-bit copying that deCSS helps facilitate, but only because the signal has been degraded by the pass through your computer's electrically noisy innards. In other words, the copy is no worse than the best output you could get watching a DVD on your computer anyways!
Furthermore, it's always been easy to copy a DVD--again fully digitally--from a normal home DVD player; you can just route the digital output into a video capture card. You may have to deal with that Macrovision thing, which is this funky strobe-light effect that's somehow sent into the DVD out signal in such a way that it doesn't show up when you're just watching a DVD on your TV (as long as you have a new TV...), but does when you plug your DVD output into your VCR and press record. Luckily, though, Macrovision is as easy to disable as region encoding: most DVD players have a "hidden" setup mode--accessible through a combination of buttons on the remote or on the player itself (directions widely available on internet)--which lets you turn Macrovision and region encoding off. Just like the "hack" to turn region encoding off on the PS2 a few days ago.
Anyways, the point is, the only thing deCSS brings to the table as far as ripping DVD's goes is *publicity*. That is, most anyone could have ripped a DVD years ago with tools that have been readily available, and are indeed easier to use, but with all the publicity surrounding deCSS, it's a bit easier to find on the internet than those other tools. On the other hand, by the time you actually find the other programs required in addition to deCSS to successfully rip a DVD--i.e. a program which converts from VOB to MPEG--then you'll probably run across these other rippers as well. Yes, deCSS theoretically allows for rips which are closer to bit-perfect, but considering no one is going to be able to distribute the bit-perfect rip in a reasonably efficient manner (4.7 gig files over the internet?), it really makes no difference.
Nope. A DVD player converts a DVD into an analog video signal; at no point to you get access to the unencrypted program material. What you get is good enough for pirating movies, though.
Nope. A DVD player converts its signal into a video signal, but it certainly doesn't have to be analog. Witness DVD players with digital output, or any DVD-ROM. Indeed, such digital output can be recorded (digitally); there have been DVD rippers around for years which operate this way. So no, it's technically not a copy of the unencrypted program material; it's only as good as what actually shows up on the screen. =)
I liked their comment about how they've already suffered damages from DeCSS because they decided to postpone the release of DVD-audio because of the release of DeCSS. That's sorta like ford suing someone [for damages] who wrote a bad review of the Pinto a few months before the Pinto(2) was to be released because NOW they have to postpone the Pinto(2) to redesign it.
CSS isn't about copy protection. CSS is about undermining ownership, about limiting it and converting it into something less.
It's amazing to me that someone this clueless still gets to write - or *can* write.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Let's face it, the "average" computer user is running Win95 on a PC and cannot define any of the following terms: "compile," "DeCSS," "source code" or, for that matter, "MPAA." Even with the DeCSS source freely availible, printed on t-shirts, broadcast on Oz TV and tattooed on Emmanuel Goldstein's supple pink butt, the "average" computer user is exactly where he/she started.
CSS was never about stopping the average joe from copying squat-- it was about making the average joe, jose and jinku buy DVDs where, when and for how much the Motion Picture Industry chooses.
Much Love,
"S"HM
*****
(I refuse to spellcheck out of contempt for your belief system)
The "real" purpose is to make sure that anyone who wants to play a DVD has to pay the DVDCCA for a license. It's all about the money.
This statement gave me a nasty thought. Granted VHS will most likely die one day anyway of natural causes due to superior technology. But with the fact that currently you have to pay to get a licence to make a DVD player, what happens when the movie companies just stop making VHS. Not because people don't want them, but because they can get more money out of a DVD. They make money twice. Once for the license on the player, then once again on the DVD media itself. It gives me a funny feeling that we are being set up here.
This is a pretty good article - it presents both sides, although it doesn't attempt to represent the damage to OUR community should DeCSS become illegal while it DOES talk about the potentially "devastating" effects on the MPAA. Oh, like the devastating effect on the RIAA of MP3. And the devastating effect on the MPAA when people figured out you could copy VHS tapes. And the devastating effect on Microsoft when pirates started distributing their OS. And the devastating effect on the tobacco industry when 15-year-olds steal smokes from vending machines and get addicted... and the devastating . . .
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
So if the deCSS includes a quicksort routine, that quicksort, by virtue of being a part of a technology used for the purpose of circuventing the copyright, is now illegal.
What will they claim next? That the law of gravity is illegal?
Gonzo
Putting aside for a minute the finer points of law, freedom, the Constitution (which doesn't apply on this side of the Atlantic anyway) and all the rest of the very valid points made to date on this subject.....
We have had VHS for many years, and the VHS market is very lucrative. A great deal of good films are made and a certain amount are surely pirated, but in essence, we have two points, one is protected by law, established practice and common sense, and the other is borne out as evidenced by the behaviour of the major film-making companies over time:
1. We can copy our own purchases. No-one is allowed to stop us making copies of work that we have legitimately purchased provided we don't go round selling or exchanging or giving those copies away. (Please don't drown me in the legal rephrasing of what I just said - I know the law but I'm trying to remain in cleartext here).
2. The various companies that make up the MPAA have been making interesting and lucrative profits from the sale of videotapes for many years. It is well known that many films that bomb disastarously at the movies end up breaking even or better by virtue of video rentals and sales. The presence of a certain number of illegitimate copies has not prevented the market from being lucrative, and even though it is child's play to make copies of videotapes, sales have remained buoyant and even grown year-on-year.
The arrival of CSS on DVD is an attempt to reverse the current ability that people have to make copies, but to make it illegal to make copies presupposes the purpose of the individual making them, and that has been covered in a previous case where it was clearly established that people had a legal right to make copies for their own purposes.
Now I know that almost everyone reading this already knew all of that, but for some reason, it never seems to come across clearly in the articles that I read on this subject. People allude to it, journalists almost certainly know it if they have been doing their research, and yet the point is never clearly made.
That pisses me off, because it's a freedom that I want protected, even if I don't use it for films, because I have every intention of making digital quality audio compilations for my car and my walkman/discman/whatever.
Salocin.com
What governmental body could resist the temptation to help the DVD CCA with that goal. Whether by maintaining national borders or keeping certain movies in or out of certain regions, the conflict created by maintaining these obsolescent political boundaries is what gives the 20th century nations their power.
They feel that they need to restrict the flow of information, just as they restrict the flow of people. Only by keeping people afraid of some unknown external "enemy" can today's governments hold onto power. They built their nations on force and bloodshed, on top of the corpses of their foes, and it's coming back to haunt them.
(Preaching to the choir?: )
The global Internet gives us an incredible opportunity to erase xenophobia and decentralize information. Corporations and national governments, especially the large, abusive kind, are terrified of this idea.
They realize that the unrestricted flow of information could create the kind of world they've always feared: a world run by people, not artificial constructs like corporations and governments (that is, the kind of government that is called "the government", instead of being thought of as the true representative of the popular will).
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Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
This sounds good, but it's going to be hard to implement. The problem is that fair use rights a) are very broad and b) can only be determined legally after the fact.
Take criticism as a good example of a). It's generally accepted that it's acceptable to use short excerpts from a copyrighted work as part of criticism of that work. The video reviewer on your local TV station can include clips from the video he's reviewing under fair use. But how long is reasonable for critical purposes? If you let people copy short clips, how long will it be before someone creates a utility that cuts the movie into clips of the decided upon length, copies them, and pastes them back together to create a non-protected version of the movie?
More problematic, IMO, is that fair use is subjective and decided by judges after the fact. The key example here is Parody. Parodies have been ruled by the Supreme Court to be a form of criticism, and hence fair use. Furthermore, that decision stated that the parody must be allowed to use enough material from the original to be an obvious parody. The question then is how much copying is allowed. Is it OK to make a "parody" of The Matrix which uses the complete original footage but a replacement humorous sound track? How about taking the original sound track and using it with new, homemade footage? How about cutting out the individual scenes and pasting them together in a new order? All of these things might be protected fair use, and it would be up to a judge to decide. How in hell can you create software that is smart enough to tell if what you want to do is fair use, lets you do it if it is, and is still capable of preventing comparatively easy illegal copying?
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Just a thought. Maybe I am too paranoid. Then again...
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
Luck is what others call skill when they have none themselves. ~Phelan Kell
Luck is skill supplemented by chance. ~Ketriva
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
Cryptome has an article on upcoming hearings to reassess the copyright circumvention clause of the DMCA. It has an email address for comments until Mar 31. This is a chance to chip away at the excessive controls on IP by the commercial sector. One could submit suggestions and ideas, especially from bigger groups and experts (relevant testimony to the advantages and drawbacks). Please be responsible and reasonable, though - this looks like a pretty formal process.
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While it is true that CSS does not prevent a bit-for-bit copy of the DVD, which would be indistinguishable from the original (and thus playable in any player), the average home user does not have the ability to do this. Large scale piracy operations probably do.
So, CSS doesn't prevent professional piracy, but it is (was) a barrier to copying and distribution by a casual home user. However, it also restricted the user in other ways, such as limited support for various operating systems, and region coding.
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What I don't understand is why they haven't been going after utilities such as Remote Selector that allow people with DVD-ROM drives to play movies from any region. After all, those would seem to do the same thing, right?
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
> It doesn't matter how lame my TPM is. If I encrypt something by XORing it with the the string "12345", it is illegal for you to produce a program which decrypts it.
I hereby declare that I am using a code, ASCII, to hide the content of all my postings. Anyone who translates it into plaintext is in violation of US law, and can expect a nasty message from my lawyers.
Yes, even people who live in Norway.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yes, you are right that you can get your own DVD press and fabricate your own DVD disks, and press as many DVDs for your private use as you like.
However, what the Digital Millenium Copyright Act does is make illegal the defeating of technological protection mesasures, or TPMs.
It doesn't matter how lame my TPM is. If I encrypt something by XORing it with the the string "12345", it is illegal for you to produce a program which decrypts it.
It doesn't matter whether it makes copying practical. You can't make movie DVDs with a DVD writer.
It doesn't matter whether copying is practical without defeating the TPMs. For example, what the MPAA is really concerned with is the ability to broadcast pirate movies over the Internet, not making knockoff DVDs which is imposisble with consumer equipment. However, it is easy enough to redigitize the very clean analog signal to create a secondary master on disk without DeCSS. This doesn't matter.
DMCA title 1 makes defeating TPMS illegal. Period.
The only exceptions are:
As far as encryption research goes, its hard to argue defeating CSS advances the state of cryptography.
Software interoperability for Linux is the strongest argument, but is undermined by the fact that DeCSS was written on Windows, which already has a DVD player, but that it doesn't allow you to actually physically play DVDs on Linux. It's just an intermediate step. However, it is not clear that even if it did make it possible, that the courts would rule that this is "interoperability" in the statute's sense of the word. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not. If I reverse engineer the Word file format to allow my wp to read the customer's files, then that is interoperability. I'm not giving them access to the copyrighted material, but to their own files. DeCSS by contrast opens up the copyrighted materials, albeit almost soley for uses the average person would consider legitimate.
The library exception was something congress couldn't figure out and left to the executive branch to sort out.
The bottom line: MPAA is going to win this one, because of the DMCA. DMCA is bad law, in that in practice it makes illegal things that are reasonable to do, and does not provide any real practical protection against things that are unreasonable uses of copyrighted materials. It is against the public interest, but unless there are constitutional grounds for overturning it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Something to keep in mind - Corporate charters are granted to companies by the citizens of the state (or the government operating - in theory - on their behalf). These charters give the owners of the company certain legal protections that are not afforded to other types of businesses. Incorporation is not a right (it's not mentioned in the Constitution at all). It is a privilege granted by the citizens of the state at their discretion. This privilege can be revoked.
/.ers living in Deleware (where all of the members of the MPAA are chartered) start writing/phoning/e-mailing your attorney general. Start a petition drive. Show these bastards that they only exist because we say they can, and if they want to abuse us that we are going to take our ball and go home.
The citizenry can request that the attorney general of their state revoke the charter of a corporation for failure to operate in the public interest. I know it is highly unlikely that any charters would actually be revoked (after all the companies' money probably helped to get the attorney general elected), but it might get the companies' attention, or at least the attention of the press.
For example, an effort is currently underway in California to revoke the charter of Unocal Corporation for repeated polution and violation of environmental laws. So all you
As I understand it, copy protection is a bad phrase to use here also. If I copy what's on the DVD to another DVD, what's to stop it from working in any DVD player that can decode the CSS stuff. It seems like the only real use of CSS is to make sure people in Japan can't play the movie if they buy it in the Sates, or some such nonsense.
This is actually a very important point that has been made before. A particularly good example of this is copyright expiration (though the current trend suggests that you shouldn't count on any copyright exiring any time in your life). Suppose, for instance, that a movie studio releases a DVD version of a very old movie that is no longer under copyright. They should have no right to control your ability to copy it, since it's now in the public domain. But if they release it as a DVD they still get protection. Why? Because you can't legally remove the DVD copy protection; any tool that can remove it from a public domain work can also remove it from a copyrighted work, and hence is illegal. The result is that your rights have been curtailed without you being able to do anything about it.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Something I'd like to add: copying isn't illegal. There is nothing illegal about making a copy. Its the distribution which is illegal. Figure I can make as many copies of something I've bought as I like. Its when I start distributing those copies that I get into trouble.
There's a Matrix event this Thursday: http://www.warnervideo.com/matrixevents/
This will be with the some of the editors and the special effects people. They might not be the most relevant people, but they are in the industry and their opinions might matter in the future. Besides, I'm sure that there will be other execs from Warner there too.
Bombard them with questions about CSS and deCSS. Keep it clean and intelligent. I tried at the last event with the Wachowskis, but obviously my questions were filtered. Enough people asking questions will get noticed, even if nothing gets through.
I think we should have a court decision or law that states that copyrights will not be enforced by the courts when technical means, such as the DVD CSS, have been used to infringe the fair use rights of purchasers. Otherwise, publishers will use access controls to rewrite the copyright laws, without an act of Congress. Why should publishers be able to ignore the parts of the law that they don't like? The recent discussion of electronic books illustrated the disregard some publishers have for fair use.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
is at the end of the article
"When they charged $79 for a VHS movie, it created a clear incentive to make pirated copies,"
he said. "When they charge a fair price, the market for pirated copies disappears."
Now, of course to get rid of a pirate market, there would have to be one. I haven't seen it. And they know they aren't against "piraters" out for a profit, they are against "sharers" who are against draconian control of the media. The Internet makes control of digital media impossible. The longer is takes the major copyright holders in the U.S to realize that, is the longer that lawyers will be making money off them. And the longer they WON'T be making money off us.
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+&x
I was having some thoughts about the inevitable conclusions of this whole mess (and the related mp3/SDMI mess), and realized that the MPAA and the RIAA truly have their work cut out for them in the future. What no one has really mentioned yet is that technology is constantly improving in all ways, not just in ways that require things to be hooked up to other things with little wires. What I'm trying to get at is this: what happens when a (digital) camcorder comes out which is good enough to record without any picture degredation (visable to the human eye)?? How can the MPAA stop me from renting the new HDTV-DVD of The Matrix: Part 6, playing it on my new HDTV, recording it with my new kickass digital camera, editing the result on my PC to remove everything in the picture outside of my TV screen, remove ambient noise, *downsample* to HDTV resolution, compress it down to 15 gigs or so, and pop that sucker off to the rest of the world via Napster v2.0 BETA 38??
Now, of course, there are a couple ways to attack the process I just outlined, but they're all pretty damn scary to think about:
First, they could use some sort of Macrovision thing--Macrovision is this funky strobe-light type thingy stuck on all current DVDs that screws up the picture if you try to videotape your screen with a camcorder, because the ugliness pulses are synced up in such a way that you don't notice them when watching on TV, but they create interference with the frame rate of your camcorder. Sort of like how computer monitors have that awful refresh interference when you see them on your local news. Of course, they look just fine when they show up on your national news, because there's a way around that problem--you just have a video camera which operates at the same refresh rate as the computer monitor; in other words, your camera has an adjustible frame rate. So, the MPAA could "mandate" that this feature not find its way into future camcorders. Of course, that would mean that you wouldn't be able to make a video with your computer in it without getting funky lines. Plus it would mean that the camcorders of tomorrow would have a different frame rate than the TV's of tomorrow, which also seems like a pretty bad outcome and thus doubtful.
Next, there's the bit about uploading the result to my TV and editing it. They could try to get in the way of digital video editing on the consumer level. (It would be impossible on the professional level, so they wouldn't even try; unfortunately for them, that means the equipment to do this sort of thing will necessarily be available, just perhaps more expensive.) Of course, now that Apple has invented desktop video editing a couple months back with the release of those new iMacs (note: sarcasm), this is probably too mainstream a technology for them to put back in the bottle without several people noticing.
Then there's the bit about all the edits we made to improve the quality--removing ambient noise, especially. The best the MPAA could hope to do is to make these tools available only on a professional level; still, with the inevitable advance of computers, and with the probable advance of open-source software, it seems quite doubtful that the average person 10 or 15 years from now won't have considerably more video editing capability on their desktop than the average movie-editing studio does now.
On a related note, there's the bit about downsampling to HDTV resolutions. The MPAA could try to limit (consumer-targeted) digital camcorders to HDTV resolution. However, doing so would mean a loss of quality for any video which was recorded and then digitally edited in any non-trivial way. Plus, it would mean an arbitrary limiting of available technology; cheap digital cameras already beat HDTV resolution (just 1024 x 768 IIRC), and it's certainly not too hard to just "do that" 60 (or whatever) times per second. (Yeah, storage concerns, but this is the future. Let the thing have a high speed wireless connection to the internet and use your home server for storage.) The bottom line is, if the MPAA tried to stop piracy here, lots of people would notice and would be very justifiably angry.
Finally, there's the bit about posting it to something sorta like Napster. Now, I'm not going to buy any arguments that 15 gigs is too much; we all know that in 10 years or so 15 gigs of hard drvie space will be about equivalent to the 5 MB an mp3 takes up now; even if it's not quite there, you have to remember that a movie is 2 hours of entertainment whereas a song is just 5 minutes. You might have a slightly better argument when it comes to bandwidth, but there will be a whole whole lot of people, including the MPAA, working very hard to ensure that HDTV quality video can be streamed into consumers' homes over the internet.
So the only avenue of easy attack is Napster. Of course, Napster is just a protocol; at this point I don't think anyone much cares about whether the RIAA wins their suit against Napster (except Shawn Fanning), because it's far far too late for that. Like it or not (and a lot of the old fogeys around here seem not to), Napster and Napster-like protocols are inevitably part of the internet now, just as much as ftp or irc. There may be some wrangling over the next couple years before we see which protocol will actually win out, but rest assured that one will. Now the question becomes, what can the entertainment cartel do about it? Obviously there's no way they can keep it off the computers of any geeks. Of course, geeks could trade pirated stuff years ago, because they knew how to use irc and ftp, and BBS's before that. What about the average consumer? Well, assuming that open-source software succeeds in making its way into the consumer's consciousness--which it appears that it will--then suing everyone in sight won't accomplish much. So it looks as though the only chance they have of success is some sort of large scale regulation of the internet. We all know it can't be done without completely changing the character of the internet, drastically for the worse. Whether it can't be done at all is still too hard to tell.
So, while I seriously doubt anyone has actually read this far, I'd like to ask those of you who have: what do you think the MPAA is trying to accomplish here? Do they have any plan to block universal sharing of movies in the not-so-distant-at-all future? Have they even thought about it yet??
Rather than simply sitting back and refuting the MPAA's claims ("We're not pirates!"), we need to take the initiative and grab people's attention. First impressions count a lot, and most people haven't heard about DeCSS yet. Explain the issue in simple terms first to catch their attention. Then the people who want to know more can read up on how the whole situation started.
The piracy issue is a lost cause -- most people associate piracy with being wrong. But pick a different viewpoint (huge corporations are trying to control who can watch DVDs), and suddenly the MPAA appears to be picking on a bunch of innocent people. Forget the technical explanations; present the case in ways the technologically-uninformed can understand.
As long as the MPAA is defining the terms of the debate, DeCSS is always going to end up looking like the bad guy.
Green Monkey
They claim this is to prevent people in other regions from watching a DVD from a region where the film already played its run while the film is still coming to or hasn't yet hit local theaters. I might agree with this if the region lockouts expired after a resonable amount of time but, WHY ARE FUCKING 50+ YEAR OLD MOVIES COMING OUT WITH REGION LOCKOUTS ENABLED? Kinda lays waste to the distribution-scheme argument, eh?
Or maybe it's to prevent competition with licensed local distributors/translators. Well, when these local distributors "port" a DVD to their region, they often cut out the extras, change the audio format (5.1 -> 2ch stereo), muck with the screen formatting, add in hard subtitles, edit for content, ..., in short, IT'S NOT THE SAME PRODUCT ANYMORE, so how can it 'compete' with the local version.
Third, lots of films NEVER SEE A LOCAL RELEASE in other regions. How long is reasonable for me to wait "in case" the title is picked up locally? 5 years? 10 years? 50 years? forever? I import a lot of anime from Japan to the US that will never see the light of day here.
Region coding violates fair use, IMO, and I am doing everything in my power to circumvent it. And not through lobby efforts or other bullshit that'll take decades to never to happen. Region coding is wrong now. So I have DeCSS, as well as several hacked PC and stand alone players.
I pay for all my DVD imports. They're legitimate copies. The original IP holders got their fair cut of the sale. Isn't that what all this region coding stuff is supposed to protect? I am following the spirit of the law. So what's the problem? Fuck you MPAA. Am I being wrongfully arrogant here?
The American Libraries Association's comments point out an even better rebuttal of the MPMA's case. Access control refers to prevention of acquisition of a copyrighted work, not use of that work once it has been acquired. Access and use are separate and distinct terms in copyright law. As CSS is not an access control mechanism, but a use control mechanism, bypassing it isn't illegal. Anyway, under the "first sale" principle, the copyright holder has no right to control the use of a work once it has been sold to a customer, and the DMCA has a get-out clause that says that no existing rights should be considered to be revoked by the DMCA.
The article contains a common error - 'a computer program which removes DVD copy-protection'. As I understand it, DeCSS has nothing to do with copying. It removes the playback 'protection'.
DVD players are crippled to stop you playing discs in countries where the movie studios don't want you to. However, in most countries copyright law does not allow them to impose such restrictions (IANAL), so use of DeCSS is not illegal. In fact, it is just letting you exercise rights granted by law.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
- Slavery was outlawed and supposedly equal rights based on race were guaranteed by constitutional amendments during and shortly after the Civil War. However, for the next 100 years, the local, state, and federal governments and courts allowed the so-called "Jim Crow" laws to deny legal equality.
- The movie and recording industry via the DCMA )and the software companies via the UCITA) are seeking to create and enforce rights that are ultimately anti-consumer, telling me what I may view
/listen to / analyze /reproduce data and how I may view / listen / analyze / reproduce data -- not based on technological patent, but on copyright. - This is a fundamental change, because if I buy a book which is copyrighted, I am free to read it whenever, however, and for whatever purpose I can think of. Within "fair use" limits I can quote from it, skip pages, cross out sections, etc.
But if that wasn't bad enough, the industries are attacking the Net citizenry as if we are citizens with lesser rights -- by the broad based attacks on the freedom to disseminate information via the web.But if the critical mass of people do not move the political forces to protect our rights, we may spend the next 100 years fighting for personal vs. corporate rights.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...