Slashdot Mirror
The Confounded Mr. Valenti
On June 6th, MPAA Chairman Jack Valenti finally recorded a deposition to be used by the United States District Court in the case of the DVD CCA vs. 2600. The deposition is available here from Cryptome, and here on 2600's site. Wired has an article about the deposition here, as well. According to the phrase-counters at Wired, Mr. Valenti said "I don't know" 62 times, "I don't recall" 29 times, and "I'm not aware" 16 times. Interesting that Mr. Valenti makes all sorts of statements, but isn't actually aware of what's going on.
Valenti suggests that if a student wants to cite from a movie, that they use the analog version.
Here is the excerpt:
Q. If a student wants to do a term paper, let's say do a video presentation on the holocaust -- do 20 minutes on the holocaust, and wants to take two or three minutes from a DVD from Schindler's List to put into that holocaust presentation and she has to de-encrypt the DVD to do that, is that illegal?
(lawyer interference deleted)
A. The student could do that by getting an analog version of Schindler's List, because that's not encrypted.
Though Valenti and his lawyer clearly did not want him to express any legal conclusions, this clearly shows that he thinks that the DMCA overides fair use protection. He is clearly indicated that fair use applies to analog works but not to digital works. So the wuestion would be, if a work is never released in analog, is therefore never to be given fair use protection?
Since fair use is a constitutional right, upheld by the Supreme Court, and DMCA is merely a statute, I think we Mr. Valenti's legal conclusion that DMCA is unconstitutional, and should therefore be struck down by the Supreme Court!
Another lesser point is that Valenti is wrong when if he is trying to imply because the analog copy isn't encrypted, that the DMCA doesn't apply to it. Though not encrypted, and not digital, analog video tapes are encoded with MacroVision copy protection. Which I think the DMCA would still apply to, since it is likely added digitally to the tape. But IANAL either.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
The fix is for the movie execs to develop technology which will protect their copywritten material.
... that's the "hacker incubation" time. It's when you spend all day and all night studying machine language specifications, attempting to comment disassembly listings, and working on solving the challenging puzzle that copy protection is.
No, this is not a fix. It can never be a fix. Copy protection does not work as a long term strategy. It can not work.
The reason is extremely basic and fundamental. The problem is that a protection-stripped product (the "warez" version) is intrinsically more valuable then the original, copy protected product, because you can do more with it. Specifically, you can do the very things that the copy protection tries to keep you from doing, whether it is backing it up, as in the Apple II days, or, as in the case of DVD, extracting and manipulating the raw program content.
As any copy protected technology becomes more and more interesting; as more and more material becomes available in that format, the interest in breaking that copy protection will also rise.
The average age of a successful copy-protection cracker appears to be about 16-18 years old. That's the age when you have enough free time, and enough focus to really dig deep into the details of a copy protection system
Cracking copy protection usually does not require sophisticated tools. It does not require advanced training. Mostly, it requires extreme dedication, hard work, and a young mind flexible enough to figure it out. Criminalizing the art of defeating copy protection is nothing more then criminalizing our next generation of computer scientists. We can do it, but wow, what a stupid thing to do.
In other words, you can't regulate 16 year olds. You can't even get them to clean their rooms.
Unfortunately, we have a Congress that was elected on the issues of gun control, the death sentence, and partial birth abortion, so it's not surprising that they understand so little about the Constitution that they would tamper with Copyright the way they have -- by banning reverse engineering, in the apparent hopes that this will "dumb down" the population, at the "small" cost of criminalizing our brightest young people for satisfying their curiosity about their most valued possessions -- their music and video collections.
The real "solution" to copyright infringement is to remove the incentives to infringe. Pay close attention to your pricing, make sure that you are offering a total package that contains more value then just a copy on recordable media. If you're a music publisher, that means including nice artwork, with printed lyrics and liner notes. If you're selling a computer program, that means including good printed documentation. If you're selling a DVD, that means having interesting "extras" on the DVD that people will want to buy, as opposed to just selling the movie itself, which can be decrypted with DeCSS and copied as an MPEG stream.
In short, provide value for your customers money. The same thing that producers have had to do since the beginning of time -- or until our Congress created special laws to relieve the entertainment industry of this "burden".
Copy protection is an illusion. Every copy protection for every interesting product will be broken, given time. If you've based your business model on the illusion that copy protection will allow you to control your customers, then your business will fail. The entertainment industry does not need to base their business model on copy protection, but if they continue to do so, then they will fail as a business.
They will not win. The 16 year olds will win.
Mark my words.
It seems that people breaking DVD encryption is the least of their worries.
That said, I think it's time I changed my
Youc an see with when you see people getting so protective of thier money, to the point of trying to strangle new technology to keep it within thier grasp.
You can see it when these people go infront of the worlds press and are able to make all sorts of statements full of facts and figures off thier head and have an answer to any and all questions.
Put them on the stand where people have a chance to ask questions and delve for the truth behind the facts and figures, and they suddenly develop a bad memory and can't quite figure out where they heard some facts and figures.
Courtney Love's rant in salon.com shows what the artists at the recieving end are really getting from all the protection: next to nothing.
The sooner that things like the RIAA die off the sooner you will find local bands getting success because they are actually good musicians, and not getting success because they have a manager that knows someone.
The same goes for DVD technology. Robert Rodrigeuz was the exception to the rule when a small filmmaker could actually make a film for nothing and get it taken by a studio. Locking up the DVD distribution and technology will allow executives to have control over who gets to pay them money to buy films.
Yes. They are trying to gloss over the fact that programs like DeCSS allow one to watch movies without regard to region coding. This is a non-infringing use of DeCSS -- it allows you to play back DVDs that you have legally purchased in other countries, and, under the doctrine of first sale, you have the legal right to use.
Their "party line", after all, is that the only use of DeCSS is to facilitate illegal copying, and that DeCSS has no non-infringing uses. That's what the entire lawsuit is riding on.
Schumann glossed over the exact same point by claiming that DeCSS had nothing to do with region coding, which was disingenuous to say the least.
I don't understand why Garbus didn't push him on the point. It's a very important point.
Sure, it would have been nice if Jack would have dug a hole for the MPAA but is anyone really suprised by his lack of knowledge and selective memory? I am sure that the MPAA lawyers went over in excruciating detail exactly what Jack would remember and what he would forget if in fact he did know of any relevant information. Additionally, this guy is not a techie. This guy probably does not know what reverse-engineering and fair use entail. I am sure that he does not know how valuable this is to development, and I am sure he does not know what the ramifications to the open source community this lawsuit can lead to.
AFAIK, all Jack knows is that DeCSS==decryption==availability==piracy. It is a whole lot harder trying to track down and prosecute pirates, so why not try to illegalize any tools that can be used to commit the crime!? To them this is damage control, to us it is an invasion on our rights to make decisions. If I can decrypt a DVD to watch it on my Linux box then fine, but I can also chose to convert the unencrypted data to VCD format and upload it onto an FTP server. That is like using a hangar to open the door on my car when I lock the keys in it as opposed to using a hangar to open the door on someone else's car to steal it. I am suprised that automotive insurance companys do not lobby to make hangars illegal all together!
I just pray that the defense proves to the judge that there are legit purposes to DeCSS and that it is not practicle to use it for illegal purposes. The DMCA needs to be re-evaluated!
It's instructive to see precisely how Mr Valenti views the whole DVD-on-linux situation. For example:
BY MR. GARBUS: Q I'm not taking now about reverse -- Mr. Valenti. I'm not now talking about the actual reverse engineering. Let's assume man A does the reverse engineering. Man B posts it on the internet. Man C then takes that information, and he's a Linux, user, and he uses that information to play a DVD on a Linux operating system and the Linux operating system has no license from the DVD CCA. Is it your view that that's against the law?
A[Mr Valenti] Yes.
His views on fair use are also interesting and far more restrictive than I believe the law to be. Another excerpt:
Q Did you also testify before congress that the Fair Use Exception was not cut out by the DMCA?
A Yes. The concept of Fair Use is intact in the DMCA.
and a little later ...
BY MR. GARBUS: Q What is the concept of Fair Use, as you understand it?
A It means that libraries or schoolteachers can play movies in their classrooms for educational purposes.
I also threw my coffee over the keyboard at this one. Just for educational institutions?
Draw your own conclusions.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Whine, whine... I have to wonder what the stenographers think about this. They have to put up with it every single day.
Of course, it's fairly obvious that this is an issue he's "here to answer on". His competence in addressing the DMCA is directly relevant to this case, and I find it a little surprising that his lawyers are trying to stop it so blatantly. Myself, I would have just tried to dodge the question with a Clinton-like many-words-but-no-content answer.
We all know, that the reason they're so worried is that if he screws up even the tiniest aspect of the DMCA, Garbus will be all over him for it. As well he should.
This reminds me of those Grisham novels where the lawyer takes on a corporation, finds out they are in way over their head, and just rips them to shreds within minutes. Quite enjoyable to watch... =)
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I also note for the record that Mr. Valenti is here at considerable personal inconvenience. He is not feeling well this morning and has some kind of bug.
Ah! is this a beta version of Mr. Valenti? Bring on Valenti 2.0! Less crashes! More Lawsuits! Improved Grandstanding!
air and light and time and space