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Similarities Between DeCSS And The Connectix VGS Case?
bahamat dropped this interesting tidbit into the inbox: "Has anyone compared the DeCSS case to the Connectix VGS case? The facts surrounding both are very similar: A company produces content on disks and provides an expensive player on which to view the content; then another company reverse engineers the player to produce a software version for very cheap. The big company sues the little company. In the case of Sony vs Connectix, Connectix won, the court ruling was that Sony can't bar someone else from producing compatible player. It seems to me that this case has already set a precedent for the DeCSS case. Really, what's so different about the two? Has the DeCSS legal team approached the case from this way?" One thing to note: the win in the VGS case is on patent grounds, the two copyright claims in the suit are still undecided. It was copyright law, namely the DMCA, which the decision on the DeCSS case is based. Still, are there any similarities between the two that may make a legal difference to the 2600 case when it is appealed?
Wasn't a big part of the DeCSS legal strategy the Sony/Connectix case... until Connectix won? Then the MPAA kinda let it fall by the wayside.... I may be wrong for all I know, but I think I'm right.
Anyway, as a Mac User, I use CVGS to play on my iBook. It ain't a tv, but it plays real nice, I have all the memory cards I want, plus screenshots of cool game sequences make great backgrounds. All Connectix has to do now is make a version for the DVD Macs for the PlayStation 2. I think that'll work out real nice....
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The DMCA applies to the DeCSS case because there was encryption envolved ("access control"). Nothing of the sort in the Sony case.
It didn't have to be good encryption, they just had to try.
Lame, but true.
sig fault
You can sing DeCSS.
You cannot sing the Virtual Game Station.
...the reason it won't really apply is because it was a patent dispute. Not to be redundant, but as you said, the copyright suits are undecided and those are what would carry the most weight in the 2600 case.
A case that I think *does* apply to this is the Sega v. Accolade case (hosted on www.eff.org in their case law section, so they're already aware of it, I'm not sure if the defense brought it up however..). In that case, Accolade reverse engineered the Sega Genesis to create compatible games for the console. After releasing some titles for the system, Sega made a change to their hardware to display the Sega logo everytime the system booted (or rather, whenever code from the cartridge issued a specific, BUT REQUIRED, initialization instruction).
The similarities here are that Accolade was reverse engineering the console for compatibilities sake. Really, the case of DeCSS is the same-- except in this case, the end result desired was a piece of code/software which could decode and play the content. (Although it could go both ways, couldn't it? Now that CSS's algorithm is known, you could (if you desired anyway) encode your own content.
But back to the Connectix case; I admit, I wish it could be applied, but for the reasons you stated, I just don't think it can. Maybe the appeals judge will be more inviting of case law and the idea that the motion picture industry is basically trying to create their own monopoly. (And HOPEFULLY the appeals judge will be more mindful of the 1st amendment!)
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
The main attack that the MPAA is taking is over the circumvention issue. Not that DeCSS can enable viewing on non-sanctioned platforms, but that under the strict letter of the law (which lawyers are well-known for following instead of the spiritof the law) DeCSS is a circumvention device that is illegal under the DMCA.
The defense did try to use that case, along with the betamax case and the Rio case. Unfortunately, the judge felt that all those cases didn't apply because the DMCA had changed the law, and this case was on whether or not DeCSS violated the DMCA.
Does anyone know if this does apply for Server Emulators (like EverQuest Server Emu at HackersQuest.
I've got couple of cease and desist letters from Verant (sub company of Sony), but ignored them all.
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
Has anybody looked at how intertwined the music industry is with the "traditional" news media?
Emulators may make it possible to play pirated game CDs (hasn't Bleem! been hacked for that?), but unlike DeCSS, they don't make it any easier to copy and distribute the things to begin with. (Because they're already in realistically stored/transmitted sizes). Not that DeCSS is NEEDED for movie piracy, but it has helped some people do it.
Speaking of internet piracy on the net, why the hell are the MPAA so up in arms about DeCSS because of the quality it allows (good rips more easily), when it hasn't been any worse than bootlegs taken in theaters with video cameras? Jeez, been on IRC, lately? Hardly anyone bothering with DVD rips, compared to all the movie-theater bootlegs. The quality doesn't seem to bother people, because the experience is already pretty degraded watching it on a computer screen. (So long as it isn't absolutely terrible)
Really, has DeCSS made a practical difference to internet movie pirates (like me?)
One thing to note: the win in the VGS case is on patent grounds, the two copyright claims in the suit are still undecided. It was copyright law, namely the DMCA, which the decision on the DeCSS case is based.
Actually, from the article:Sony brought suit to suspend sale of the product claiming copyright infringement and tarnishment of the PlayStation name and other marks. After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal rejected Sony's claims, Sony subsequently alleged that Connectix infringed eleven of its patents, seems like Sony lost 7 of their 9 copyright infringement suits, and afterwards they withdrew their patent infringement suits. That's not the same as they losing their case.
So, to clarify things a bit, I think this was the way things went (feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken!):
- Sony launched 9 copyright infringement suits.
- Court of Appeal rejected 7 claims.
- Sony then started 11 patent infringement suits.
- Just before the Court of Appeal decided wether to dismiss Sony's case, Sony voluntarily dismissed their case.
Let's hope Sony got wise and saw the monetary logic on getting more consumers to play their games (in their PCs), and while they would not make mroe money selling PlayStations, they'd probably recover by the increase in PlayStation games.
*Sigh* And all I've got is just a lousy Nintendo...but hey, I've got Unreal Tournament in my PC.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
In the Sony case the technology was patened but in the DeCSS case the encryption is copyrighted. therefor falling under the DMCA. The practicality of copying DVD's doesn't seem to be an issue only that some form of PERSEVEVED copyprotection has been "compermised".
"Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window." -Steve Wozniak
Yeah, the main difference is the DeCSS case's reliance on the DMCA's encryption and circumvention clauses.
;-)
First off, PlayStation games were formatted bizarrely, but noone ever argued that this was "encryption", nor that it was covered bythe DMCA's "effective access control" wording. I'm not sure if this is fortunate or not... it could be that had Sony gone this direction, they could have had as much success as DeCSS, but I think that's unlikely.
One of the reasons Sony would have a tough time fighting under the DMCA is because nothing was being copied by Connectix, or its software. They wrote an emulator, plain and simple. The problem with DeCSS, not that people ARE using it to copy, but that the prosecution has managed to convince the courts that it is a tool for copying.
There's a fine line there, but it matters a lot. After all, the "C" in DMCA stands for copyright. Sony wasn't worried about copying (publicly), only about emulation. The MPAA is (right or wrong) crying about copyright, so, I imagine the two are legally unrelated.
As usual, IANAL.
Connectix made a lot of headway in court when they were able to show that their emulator was developed in a 'clean room' environment - with only the Playstation APIs to implement to. Sony tried to argue that their APIs were protected by copyright and ended up losing. (To me, thats kindof like GM can't read Ford's drivers manual)
Now, i am certainly not an expert on DeCSS development (and someone please fill in the details or correct me where wrong), but my impression is they obtained certain 'keys' from officially branded DVD hardware/software decoders. And in turn, use those keys to decode/emulate a DVD player. If so, then DeCSS is not a 'clean room' environment, per se. And MPAA could argue that this key was stolen IP.
Anyways, I see this is an important difference between the two cases.
Tom
Really, what's so different about the two?
In the Connectix case, the judge had no connection to either party.
In the DeCSS case, the judge was deciding the legality and enforcability of a player market control scheme that his own law firm -- his colleagues -- personally designed for the MPAA.
What a fortunate coincidence for the MPAA!
It seems to me that if it takes a judge 91 pages to make the argument that he should not recuse himself from a case, something is wrong.
is that regardless of the purpose that DeCSS was created for, it *did* bypass the DVD access controls. Due to that fact alone, it was in violation of the DMCA. The next trial will not question the legality of DeCSS, but rather the constitutionality of the DMCA...and its THAT case we should be atching intently, as it will change the way things work with copyrights in the future
Before and after DMCA?
Instead this why the lawsuit is in California instead of someplace else?
Perhaps I should look some of this stuff up. But instead I'll let people cuss at me if I'm wrong.
While it's fairly obvious IMHO that code is a form of expression and should be covered under the first ammendment, the judge says code is more functional than expressive. Has anyone thought about the Perl Poetry contest? Seems to me that stuff is about as expressive as you can get, as much as regular poetry or any other form of expression. Has the DeCSS thought about this argument?
Erik
DMCA's biggest problem is its inherently split personality. In 1201(a)(2), it prohibits the manufacture or import of devices primarily intended to circumvent "effective" copyright measures. But, in 1201(c)(1), it states, "Nothing [in section 1201] shall affect rights...including fair use, under this title." That's right, boys and girls - you have the right to copy that DVD, it's just illegal to make a device to do it!
So, as usual, this is just folks who haven't actually read the law running off on tangents. Yes, it's a good analogy. But the law very clearly prohibits some things (building a device to defeat an "effective" copyright control system) and clearly doesn't prohibit others (building an emulator). Read the law before you post.
Oh yeah, and for all of you thinking, "Well, if DeCSS can break it, by definition, it isn't effective," the law has an answer to that, in 1201(b)(2)(B): An effective measure is one that "in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents...the excercise of a right of a copyright owner." DeCSS isn't in the "ordinary course of its operation," therefore, it doesn't make the copyright control ineffective! In fact, there is some argument that, if I simply put a bit on my content (much like the copyright bit in the MP3 standard) that said, "Don't copy me," and all the players in the market enforced that bit, making a player that ignored it would be prohibited by DMCA!
There's not any clever legal arguments to get out from under this. Either the Supreme Court strikes it down (which it conceivably could do simply for being so internally inconsistent in stating that fair use is OK but you can't build a device to enable fair use, or perhaps on first ammendment grounds), or We The People get Congress to revoke the law. Us against Disney, Microsoft, the MPAA and the RIAA...Hmmm. I know who's the favorite on this one...
(DMCA information taken from The EFF. Large amounts of legal verbage have been removed from the quotes above in order to make them actually readable.)
Considering that Connectix lost all ability to provide VGS when the GS was hot, I would say that Connectix won the battle but lost the war.
Just stop reading at one hundred words. :p
Are you kidding me? You've gotta count, man!
This is thought control on the source level. Essentially, DeCSS is a war cry against this.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Connectix was found to have engaged in infringing copying but won on the defense of fair use. Its temporary copies were necessary to gain access to the unprotectable functional elements of the Playstation BIOS, and its resulting emulator was a transformative use of the copy. Judge Kaplan told the defendants in the DeCSS case that fair use was not a defense to circumvention of access control devices. That's still a major point of contention, of course.
But, it's not over yet.
We need to draw a closer parallel between the cases, to argue that the DMCA did not so change the landscape and thus that the reverse engineering and interoperability endorsed by the 9th Circuit must still be permitted. There's lots of great language in the Connectix opinion that claims of copyright infringement can't be used to cut off access to unprotected ideas and functional elements. Can we extend that logic to say that even "access controls" endorsed by the DMCA can't be used to cut off that same unprotected information or fair use of the underlying content? Putting a ROT13 on a work shouldn't cut off fair use.
Join the fight at Openlaw!
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
I could be mistaken but i thought that Sony dropped the VGS suit when it became clear that they would lose. It was speculated that they dropped the suit specifically so that it would not set a precedent against them in the future.
Can someone verify this? I could be wrong and i'm at work now so can't spend time looking it up.
What about the DVD players that don't pay attention to the region code that were produced by Sony and the like?
DeCSS adds an additional feature which is that the results from the software is a preferable format for any user choosen manipulation of the data. I key aspect of the DeCSS trial was the fact that CSS data is not approbate for recompressing via DivX. Since being able to achieve further compression of the DVD content was note an intended feature of the DVD author, the DeCSS software is considered to provide an unexpected and undesired additional feature.
However, with the rate at which technoligy is going (60+ GB hard drives, Gigabit ether, etc.) it seems questionable as to how long remanipulation is going to be desirable for transfer. Probably withen the next 24 to 36 months their will be a reasonable size number of people with the equipement to easily do byte-for-byte duplication such that DeCSS is no longer desired as part of the pirating process. Please keep in mind that while it is presently not human noticable that the "Divx'd" DVD copies are degraded from the orginial. Once technology catches up with the the size of DVD images, why bother producing a degraded copy? At the that point in time that technology provides for making identical copies preferable the DeCSS will cease to be a popular tool for copyright infingment and will only have a popularized purpose of accomplishing playback. Hence, I believe the present "win" against DeCSS has only short term benfits for DVD publishers and in that regard was probably fairly pointless.
Personally, I'm waiting for a DVD player for Windows 2000 that will allow you to do screenshots and sound grabs that are not in excess of 45 seconds. Come on! The code is broken already!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
bm :)-~
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
The remarkable thing about this article is the number of on-target replies. This is a techie-nerd site, right? But I read post after post making careful distinctions about intellectual property law, weighing obscure precedents, quoting the U. S. code. Certainly, there is still abundant need for "IANAL" around here, but the level of legal sophistication on Slashdot has grown immensely in recent months.
I was wondering. What is encryption, in and of itself. Is it only software based? Is it hardware? Is it placing a smoke cloud between you and your enemy? For me, encryption can be putting a "pull" sign on a convenience store door, when you really have to "push" it. It can be all those things, and anything that keeps people out. I think that all of the rules and rights we have now are simply an illusion to make us feel better. If the door doesn't keep people out, then it isn't encryption. It's a door.
It's really interesting following the DeCSS discussions on /. I'm wondering where we stand here in New Zealand. I know the US govt has in the past tried to impose its will on small countries like NZ. I haven't bought a DVD drive yet but when I do I'm going to use DeCSS. BTW we non-Americans have had strong encryption for years in spite of your silly laws. It just means buying German or Australian software instead of American software - bwahaha!
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
Connectix never broke any copyright protection.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The EULA you agree to when you install the game and use the service (yes, there are two EULA's on this kind of software, and a code of conduct.) says that you agree not to either produce or use the software in any way that the company doesn't like.
And I looked, and behold, the pokemon all spontaneously combusted.
The server states that the file cannot be found..
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
DMCA. There's the anti-circumvention clause in that stupid law which your legislators have been dumb enough to pass. Since DVD has an anti-circumvention technology: CSS, however lame-ass and weak it is, never mind that anyone who hasn't fallen out of a tree could break it in five minutes with pencil and paper, the law's designed to protect it. Ain't it silly? It's creating a legal solution to what is essentially a technological problem. In this case, the MPAA's problem is that technology has passed them by; the notions of copyright it depends on are obsolete, so they need to change its business models to adapt to the Internet world, and abandon their obsolete notions of "intellectual property" forever. Their notions of copyright were dying around 1991 when Tim Berners Lee and Linus Torvalds began their work. By now, almost ten years later, it's not only dead, but stinking to high heaven. They should get it in their heads to bury that corpse before it creates more virulent infections such as the DMCA. It won't kill them either, just force them to make less money than they're accustomed to making. "Whether you like it or not, History is on our side. We will bury you." --Nikita Khruschev "You had your time. The future is our world. The future is our time." --Agent Smith
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
The only Sony factory multi-region player that I know of won't do signal conversion. That means Region 2 DVDs will play back in PAL, Region 3 in NTSC, and Region 1 in whatever they have in America (PAL/Secam/NTSC or whatever). That way it'll only play Region 2 on your UK telly, but they can advertise it as 'Factory Multi Region, not a 3rd party mod'.. and bump up the price. And it means they don't have to make more models, thus lowering the production costs.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Zoning was a good idea in theory, because a movie release more or less could go like this:
Of course they were stupid enough not to envision zoneless or multiple-zone players. Johansen in the 2600 trial even said it is common practice to buy zoneless DVD players where he lives. And most European DVD players can play NTSC DVDs, but you have to have a TV capable of displaying the signal. Computer DVD players are often zoneless and play either PAL or NTSC.
And this was also designed before the popular WWW to make it easy to get DVDs interationally, so maybe the MPAA has an excuse for their stupidity
BTW, did you notice there's a zone just for China? All the Chinese government has to do is tell a studio not to produce an objectionable movie like Red Corner or Kundun in zone 6 or forget selling anything in China anymore. Then shoot anyone in China who sells zoneless DVD players.
1 - US, canada
2 - Japan, Europe (Bizarre, but hey!)
3 - Aisa.
4 - Australia/NZ
5 - Africa, India
6 - China
I haven't seen a 25" or larger TV for a while that won't handle an NTSC signal or at least a PAL 60.
Everyone is forgetting way back in the days of the IBM PC .... Compaq engineers basically reverse-engineered the PC's BIOS chip and produced a compatible version, which sparked a whole new era for pc's.. and thats the reason we have clones... if Compaq had never reverse engineered that chip, IBM and the whole x86 architecture would probably be similar to the APPLE machines....
If someone made a mac clone these days , a la compaq in the 80s, I think somehow the mac scene would be a whole lot better off... except they'd probably get sued before they got anything to the market.......
I have been known to be wrong, but I think it's even illegal to sell a zoned DVD player in new zealand...and with a bit of luck some more countries too.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
"circumvention device". The DeCSS is not a device until it is compiled and executed until then, DeCSS is nothing more than a bunch of symbols on a piece of paper or t-shirt. You publish code.
However, the MPAA does not say this. They tell website operators to "remove the circumvention device from your website." IANAL, but what kind of language is this??? See the letter that the MPAA sent cryptome.org today for an example of this.
They cannot say "please remove the code that you have published on your website" because publishing involves speech, which the DeCSS is. When it is compiled and executed, your computer becomes a decryption device , placing it under patent laws. Is the DeCSS patented? If it is, then the US patent office has already published it. Then it follows that it is your computer that is the circumvention device not the DeCSS code by itself.
Another thing that gets me is the mishmash of copyrights and patents. Two different things, or two different temporary "granted monopolies". People should not be allowed to use one "monopoly" to increase the power of the other (i.g. dealing in software patents), because that power has not been granted by the constitution. The constitution separates the two because they were intended to deal separately with two different things, not act together. For many years, they had about the same amount of power until "copyright creep" started taking place, continually increasing its power until now you have the DMCA controlling "devices" overtaking the power of patents. Software should either have a copyright or a patent, but not both. If it can be copyrighted, then I should be able to have rights like "first sale" and "fair use" that have been argued the century before last when a publisher put a EULA on the first page of a book. If the software is a patent (i.g. a device that configures a computer), then I expect to be able to copy it in twenty years when the patent expires (and I mean the actual software created by the company using the patent). Just because you flash a contract in front of somebody's face or toss it in with the shinkrap doesn't mean you can usurp somebody's constitutional rights, and I consider having patents and copyrights acting as two separate entities as one of those rights. What we see now is the result of abuse of these two constitutionally "granted" temporary monopolies. Taking a power that was niether "implied" nor "granted", they shaft the public out of their due - the very reason why the constitution grants patents and copyrights in the first place.
What the MPAA is trying to do is extend copyright privilege to devices (even they have to refer to the refer to DeCSS as a "device", otherwise their arguement gets flushed down the toilet where it belongs) all the while basking in the newfound powers of the copyright law/DMCA.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
So, here's my take.
2600 will probably loose - they have been painted as evil hackers in court, the copyright-owners are on a bit of a roll right now, and it's an election year.
What strikes me is that these huge organisations - both the "content creators" like Disney, and the software shops like Microsoft, seem to forget where their ideas come from. Never read a good book, watched a good film, heard a good song, used a good program created by a faceless organisation - to survive, these Intelectual Property-based organisations need one thing more than anything else, and it is TALENT.
The DMCA, the DeCSS and Napster cases - they all serve to turn those talented folks who could be making them rich into sworn enemies. Which self-respecting geek would go to work on a new form of encryption for DVD players ? Which teenage band who have been chucked of Napster is going to sign with a major label ? (well, maybe if the money was right...)
Somewhere in Hollywood, there is high-priced consultant scaring the studios, saying "look at Napster ! In 3 years time, everyone will have broadband access to the net, and the same will happen to your DVD content ! You will have to give up all that you hold dear !". The knee-jerk reaction is instantaneous.
Someone, somewhere is going to figure out a way to get rich from content in the new digital age, where information can not be protected by encryption and still be publicly available and run on cheap hardware.
I bet it won't be the existing powers.
Won't be me either, if I keep wasting my time posting to Slashdot....
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
What seriously pissed me off about the CSS system is:
1. Region coding. Why? Because I want to play the films I own, if I moved across regions, if they weren't released in my region, or at least much slower, or I could simply get them cheaper in another region. I'd call it discrimination, but I don't think the UN would hear me out.
2. Force feeding. I know of at least one DVD which has *required* parts, and I'm not talking about the legal section, it's commercials/trailers. Even on a video player you can skip what you don't want.
3. Playability. I don't understand the problem with releasing a software-only binary-only self-encrypting Linux player, like those on windows. It's not like the MPAA didn't have a market, or couldn't afford it. Not that I use it (Win2k actually is kinda ok if getting it to the same price as Linux), but I *know* they could have done it had they wanted. But I suppose they'd rather have you go buy a stand-alone player....
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
you encrypted an original work of authorship, say a CSS-player, which infringes no copyright, but does in fact facilitate circumvention of the anti-copying technology of another?
What if a prospective plaintiff "broke" the encryption thereby and obtained evidence of for its own DMCA case?
Would not the plaintiff also have broken the law thereby?
Say the plaintiff seeks injunctive relief under DMCA -- in so doing, would a defendant be coming to equity with unclean hands, precluding an injunction?
In an analogous case under copyright law, where a plaintiff makes copies of a derivative work to obtain evidence of an infringement, the Court overlooks the incidental infringement by the plaintiff as a form of fair use.
But that is the fundamental difficulty of the DMCA -- it doesn't provide for fair use. What is good for the goose -- is it also good for the gander?
This is certainly not legal advice -- I haven't any thoughts one way or the other if this approach could work. But I'm wondering if it points to holes in fundamental DMCA policies. In particular, if there is no fair use as a defense for one side, how can the court rationalize a judge-made defense for the other?
My point is this -- DMCA gives far more than "additional protection" for copyrightable content -- it also permits exclusive rights to the ability to manufacture DVD players, giving patent-like protection to a technology that is not, in fact, patentable. In addition to everything else, this cuts at the heart of more fundamental IP policies. Fair use is necessary to make IP Copyright law tenable. Likewise, the scope of patent law was very clearly defined to make patent law tenable.
Now we have a new body of IP law, putative circumvention technologies, which are not limited by scope or by time or inventorship.
Bleah!
Well yeah that is the concept behind zoning.
:)
The problem is that it doesn't work. I would reckon about 60% of dvd players sold in the UK are either zoneless or have easy hacks to make them so. Some will even resample NTSC dvds to give proper PAL output.
Films in the UK sometimes take a VERY VERY long time to get out. I'm pretty sure I saw EdTV on cabletv in canda over 6 months before it's uk theatre release (that was only 3 or 4 months ago).
The zoning system allows studios to release to a sample audience (typically the us and canada) and if the film fails then they haven't wasted the expense of promoting it globally.
The problem is that UK DVDs are generally of quite poor standards. It is not unusual to see mpeg encoding defects in them. They frequently lack the extended features found in US discs. They often lack multilingual soundtracks. It is not at all easy to buy a disc in the uk with a DTS encoded soundtrack for high end 5.1 speaker systems.
I prefer US DVDs for these reasons alone. Add to that the fact that they are typically released a few months earlier and cost quite a bit less and you can see the problems.
Perhaps the worst UK dvd I came across was that of the film 'Human Traffic'. I thought they had come up with some ultra cunning way of defeating DeCSS only to find that the disc wasn't even CSS'd in the first place
Interestly enough i'm not sure if that film was ever released in the USA since it came from a uk studio (afaik) and was banned in several other countries because of recreational drug use in it.
The MPAA dont want to adapt. They dont want to face a world where they have to do a simultaneous worldwide launch to films. They dont want the profit loss they would have by selling dvds at US prices the world over. Just like the RIAA dont want a world where artist dont need to be signed to make money.
What I fail to see though, as other users have commented, is what a US judgement would do to UK consumers. Perhaps it might set a precedent but we dont have a DCMA. We do however have a right to disassemble software, and also to free speech.
Why dont the UK arm of 2600 take over decss distribution?
Then again they manage to arrest johansen in norway... bastards.
I find this rather shaky, but the American legal system is strange to begin with. (How can you be acquited of murder, yet be found guilty in a civil suit?)
FunkyDemon
I think they recently refiled it. (About a week or so ago?)
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If I were to encrypt a Word document with the built-in encryption (no matter how feeble the encryption), it would be considered copy protected. Someone should sue someone about this.
I guess it's different when a large company's "revenue stream" is in jeopardy.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
The first is, the appeal can only consider evidence brought forward in the original case.
The second is slightly off topic, but had the same standards been applied to hardware, we wouldn't have a PC dominated world. On a level playing ground, (without the proliferation of inexpensive PC clones)the apple Macintosh would easily dominated the personal computer market over IBM. On the other hand, the higher cost of computers would have slowed greatly the distribution and expansion of the personal computer market, which in turn would have slowed the development of faster and better hardware, software, storage density, and of course the internet. Then again, we wouldn't have all these entertaining law suits to deal with either.
...the resulting program. In Connectix the reverse engeneering of the program allowed Connectix to create an emulator. The program did not allow a copy to be made of the purchased game as a result. The only issue was where the purchased game could be played on the computer and if the copying performed by Connectix was a fair use of reverse engeneering. If DeCSS had been released in the same fashion you may have had the same result as Connectix. In other words, it might have passed based on fair use if instead of a bare crack of the encryption it was a licensed program which allowed emulation i.e. play on linux but not copying. That difference along with the Judge's perception of the 2600 website and linux board killed the case. The real test of the de-encryption section of the DMCA will be a program like Connectix, not one like DeCSS.
I agree with the last half of your post. But you misread my intent; the strength or weakness of the encryption scheme is not society's problem. Businesses accept a certain level of risk when they go out into the world to do their business. If they're not willing to accept the risk of piracy, for example, for easily and perfectly copied media, they need to just get out of that business. If that risk becomes part of public concern and policy to negate, then we have our government controlling the economy, and putting legal means in to ensure that a business which should in a free market, fail because of their own poor decisions, does not. What does that remind you of?
On the other hand, the police have no grounds to arrest a customer of a nearby hardware store and charge them with a felony just because they have happened to purchase a hammer or a glass cutter.
Can't you just picture the Incompetent Jeweler's Association of America (IJAA) demanding a law to criminalize possession of anything that somebody could use to break a glass window? And going on about how badly "the economy," and "the sanctity of store windows," would be hurt if they did not get their way?
Example: as I write, I'm wearing one of those Copyleft T-shirts. Owning the T-shirt is perfectly legal. Wearing the T-shirt affords others a chance to copy the source code down and use it, which makes me a distributor of illicit source code. (The concept of "illicit source code" is, of course, profoundly silly, which is why I bought the shirt.) Then again, one could construe owning a shirt as evidence of intent to wear it... oh, well, let's not go there.
Now, suppose I have a change of heart and stop wearing the shirt. But I decide to start building DVD players, so I scan the shirt and use the code to design my players. I somehow make the embeded code inaccessible, so I'm not violating the DMCA. But I am infringing on whatever licenses and patents are involved in manufacturing DVD technology. I don't imagine it's hard to get permission to use this technology, but if I don't bother and the owner chooses to take notice, I can expect a lawsuit similar to the one Sony filed against Connectix. Assuming, of course, that whatever protection DVD technology has is more solid than Sony's.
An intereseting aspect of DeCSS has gone unnoticed so far: The DeCSS is a player ONLY for LINUX systems. Since NONE of the companies so far have come out with a player for LINUX, DeCSS has no copyright to violate! Undoubtedly, there will be LINUX specific code in there which will not be compatible with the rest of the OSes - the algorithm may be generic, but the final executable or LINUX source has to be LINUX specific. Thus in the absence of any similar product in LINUX, DeCSS should be given a copyright for having such a system under LINUX
One Master - One Apprentice
Thank you. That is EXACTLY what I was getting at. Knowing how to thieve is NOT the same as actual thieving. That is the difference between a free society and a society in which thought is controlled. And not only that, your example points up the absurdity of trying to control people's presumed intentions rather than dealing with the consequences of their acts. Confiscating all hammers wouldn't be enough -- rocks would have to be made illegal!
a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work [...] "effectively" might be interpreted in such a way that rot13, etc. would be interpreted out of the picture
There seems to be an even deeper ambiguity than some unknown criterion for how strong the protection has to be. Does "effectively controls access" mean that it is an effective means of controlling access, or just that its effect is to control access?
If it's the former, then there are the questions the rest of you have been talking about, namely, "How 'effective' does it have to be?" -- and, strictly speaking, as soon as it has been cracked, doesn't it by definition cease to be "effective"?
But if it's the latter, which seems to me to make more sense semantically, "effectively" doesn't mean that it is actually effective, but only that that is what its effect is, i.e., that that is what it is intended to do. The phrase simply refers to any copy-protection or access-control mechanism (the equivocation between copy-protection and access-control, by the way, is an even bigger problem, since that's the part that ignores fair use). So, yes, I guess rot13 (or XOR, for binary data) would qualify, since simply applying it to a standard file format would cause the files to appear unreadable to a standard application and a naive user.
For a similar example, have you ever seen a multimedia CD-ROM on which the media files were in a folder with a "hidden" flag set, so it wouldn't appear on the desktop? To get at the files, you have to copy the entire disk to your hard drive (where the directories are writable), then use a low-level filesystem editor to unset the flag. Now I think that would count as "effectively" controlling access, since to a naive user, or a knowledgable but unmotivated one, its effect is to make it so the content can only be accessed through the accompanying application, even though it is trivial for a knowledgable and determined user to get around it. I don't think that this would make low-level filesystem editors illegal ( at least I hope not ) because this is clearly not their primary function, but perhaps public posting of the technique would be, (uh-oh!) since it makes it possible for people who already have the necessary tools but don't know how to do it. This could be another interesting case, since the circumvention does not require any specific tools, but simply a bit of knowledge.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
DeCSS SHOULD be OK under DMCA since it is used to view legitimatly purchased DVDs (an allowable thing)
Sorry, not allowable. Viewing is, of course, a non-infringing use, but using DeCSS, even for that, still involves "circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work", so it's still illegal under DMCA. The real problem is this equivocation between "copy protection" and "access control", since that is where the notion of "fair use" gets forgotten. Even worse, it can cover uses for which you would not even have needed to invoke "fair use" (such as viewing), if the publisher adds a more restrictive access control. This seems to be where the DMCA's constitutionality really needs to be challenged.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}