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DVDs On The International Space Station
DrGoon writes: "The BBC has reported that "After docking, the shuttle crew of five astronauts delivered supplies and gifts to the Alpha crew, including a computer, cables for the laboratory, food, water, clothes and about 20 DVD movies. " in this story, which raises the interesting question: what DVD region is the International Space Station?" So, either they have a region-free DVD player - which is theoretically illegal according to Hollywood - or only the U.S. crew gets to watch movies.
I am aware that CDs and DVDs have very little mass compared with the rest of the station, but what effect would these discs have on the station when they start and stop spinning? Could the usage of discs onboard the station require thrusters to compensate for them?
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Desperation is a stinky cologne
The 'correct' region for the ISS is actually region 8 which is reserved for 'international venues' like cruiseliners and aircraft (And now also the ISS technically).
Remember there are 8 regions in the system, but the world is divided in just 6. Region 8 is for aircraft and such. Region 7 is reserved for future expansion.
I'm personally more interested in issues than "real" news - especially from slashdot. That's what I come here for, because no other site is gonna feature this story, but if there is a huge genome breakthrough you'll know it as soon as it happens. And I do wonder the region coding of the ISS DVDs . . . it is something of a mystery. I bet it's region 1.
Of course, this bias is the whole reason why people read /. in the first place. If you don't like the linux stories, then you can always A) remove them from your preferences, or B) go away.
/. crew posts Linux stories in ALL categories.
I'm so sick of this BS answer. I *HAVE* removed Linux stories from my preferences. Yet it doesn't matter, because the
Like it or not, there are people that enjoy most slashdot stories, but do not like Linux. Slashdot used to be about news for nerds, not news for linux zealots. (And don't let me high user number fool you, I had a lower one a long time ago, and I know how Slashdot "used" to be.)
"And like that
So basically, if the laws of space were like the laws of the sea, everyone would agree that there is a law, but would argue about what that law is. The Open Skies Treaty has not entered into force yet, and in any case would only apply from Vancouver to Vladivostok, excluding the Pacific Ocean. The US may not recognize any claims of sovereignty beyond the planet, but whoever claims that sovereignty certainly will.
~~~~~~
under-paid karma whore
I don't think any laws apply in space, just like they don't on international waters. At least not for private vessels. Navy ships have to be bound by international law through their government.
Did this happen? Wouldn't "We at NASA need to play our DVD's on ISS on Linux, because it was to expensive to ship the extra weight of seperate DVD players up into space. DeCSS was the only logical way" be an excelent argument in the 2600 appeal.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
That's amusing. I'm surprised that the MPAA didn't insist that the ISS use a Region 8 (aircraft/ships) player. The MPAA really is insisting that aircraft and ships use Region 8 players. (You'd think that US flag aircraft would be allowed to use Region 1, but no...) NASA would then have to procure special Region 8 DVDs, which are available only for a limited range of films.
It is my impression that region-free players are in no way illegal.
Manufacturers can't get the IP they need from the DVD Consortium without agreeing to abide by region rules set out by the consortium, so they can't sell a player that's region-free. That simple.
Region mods are perfectly legal.
Also.. The government does not enforce region coding. It has no basis in Law. It is purely a construct of the DVD Consortium (or whatever they are called). Region free players are 100% perfectly legal.. region coding has nothing to do with copy protection. You can't use DMCA against it....
Modified players can be sold perfectly legally. The only reason they aren't more common in North America is because most of what the vast majority of people want to watch is released in Region 1 first anyway.
Players with hacked region coding are very common elsewhere, and mod kits for a great many players are easily obtained.
Manufacturers can't make them because they are in contract with the DVD Consortium, who they need to be in business with to make DVD (decryption and all that). Part of their contract is region-coding.
Region coding is not copy protection. THis is not at all the same thing as the decryption mods.
REgion hacks are perfectly legal pretty much everywhere.
You just don't find anyone making the players, because the manufacturers are all under contract wiht the DVD Consortium.
...to circumvent the DVD region restrictions by playing the DVDs on an orbiting satellite, and beaming down the picture?
(I said theoretically possible, not cheap...)
According to a CNN broadcast, one of the movies brought was an early DVD release (presumably for Oscar handouts or the like) of "13 Days." Since this is about the Cold War, it'd be pretty interesting to know how the Russians and Americans interacted after the fact. They also should've brought up "Goldfinger" or another good Bond flick since those were banned in the U.S.S.R. at the time of release.
Don't worry about the Russians. They're probably stuck watching VHS tapes on a dusty old multisystem VCR. There aren't a whole lot of DVDs being made with Russian translations. In Russia, a typical solution is to watch an American or Western European DVD with the sound turned off, and simultaneously play an unofficial MP3 dubbed translation downloaded from the net.
Unfortunately, they don't have fast Internet access in space, so they can't download the MP3s up there. And it seems unlikely an American space shuttle crew would think to burn some CDs of the Russian audio dubs to bring along.
Maybe they have a cheap off-brand DVD player like an Apex, so the Russians can play pirated VideoCDs.. that's one video format for which one can get movies dubbed in Russian that are playable on a DVD player. Either way, they likely have to wait for a Russian crew to fly up to bring them any such pirated stuff. Hollywood would have a fit if illegal VideoCDs and unofficial dubbed soundtracks were being transported on an American spacecraft.
How do you moderate an entire story down to flamebait?
1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6: China
7: Reserved
8: Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)
-Dave
According to their website, UK company Techtronics (www.techtronics.com) supplied 2 Sony FX1 players to NASA which had been modified to be multi-region. These players were also delivered by Atlantis.
Kithran
Addendum to my own post above: There's always the handful of Russian and Soviet movies available on DVD, but those won't have any English dubbing or subtitles. And do you think the Americans are going to stand for the Russian cosmonauts watching something they can't?
They can get DVDs to play in space but not on Earth. If you're using Linux that is. It's a sign of the times.
Oh boy, another, "I've been around since the old days, sonny." post.
/. We had to walk 20 miles to the nearest internet kiosk first. Backwards, through 2 feet of snow. Uphill both ways.
Back then, we couldn't just post on
very good point. The shuttle ought to be called the "earth shuttle".
here
hmm Illegal under the DMCA but NASA does it? HMmm I hope the MPAA sues them just cuz it will make news and rile some people up =]
I live in Brazil, an I was considering buying a DVD player. Then, I just went to an electronics shop in the local mall. I was expecting to find a lot of area 5 DVD players. What I found:
There were about 10 different DVD players for sale, of different brands. 8 of them, came FROM THE FACTORY with no area code restriction (and that was not only brazilian brands, like gradiente, but also a lot of japonese brands, but all manufactured in Brazil). I guess it is that way everywhere outside US.
After that, I came to the conclusion that soon, all the DVDs in the world market will be coded to area 1, since the US is the only place that can't play every DVD.
Isn't it obvious? Hollywood should be really excited now because they've identified a whole new region that consists of a growing handful of wealthy people.. Just imagine. A handfull of people willing to pay thousands of times above sticker for copies of Apollo 13. Man what a lucrative market. Wish I could have gotten in.
-Michael
-Michael
Imagine for a moment that the disk in the DVD weighed *far more* than the ISS. Imagine it's a huge disk, floating in the vacuum of space on perfect bearings, and the ISS is just a thin shell around it. Now motors attached to the thin shell introduce torsion on the bearings: surely the shell will spin, not the disk?
The earlier answer was correct.
--
Xenu loves you!
Just because you're in outer space does not put you beyond the reach of lawyers. Same for death.
Not to be an arrogant ass or anything, but "what has slashdot come to" from someone with a > 300K user ID is pretty damn funny, since you clearly have no idea what /. once was. So, a little history lesson: Once upon a time /. actually used to be about Malda having fun and posting whatever shit he thought was cool. This article falls pretty damn squarely into the "I think this is cool" category (which, if you ask me, is probably the best category on /.) If you don't think that this is interesting, take your "serious and important news" and go write for CNet. I mean- every other news source on Earth has something about the Human Genome Project this weekend... go read about it there. I'll stay here and continue to read things like this that I wouldn't have noticed anywhere else. In short: you go Rob, michael, etc. keep posting whatever the fuck you want to. Some of us still appreciate the weird and the different, and don't want to see this place become CNN.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
evilone wrote:
I am aware that CDs and DVDs have very little mass compared with the rest of the station, but what effect would these discs have on the station when they start and stop spinning? Could the usage of discs onboard the station require thrusters to compensate for them?
Good novice question. Anything spinning acts as a kind of gyroscope, but you should realize that for the most part that gyroscope works to conserve angular momentum. Pick up a spinning box fan and turn it, you'll see what I mean. There are actually many small fans aboard the ISS, not to mention computer disc drives, so that gives you an idea of how serious an issue this is.
For comparison, check out the Control Moment Gyroscopes that are installed on the ISS and used for stabilization and attitude control. They're huge and will dwarf any effects of something like a DVD player. They'll be activated after the Destiny lab goes online. In the meantime, the Zvezda and Zarya modules each have their own smaller gyroscopes.
Incidentally, the gyroscopes are more important for attitude control than thrusters. Rather than constantly firing in different directions, where you're fighting your own efforts, the gyroscope stabilizes the station and makes it harder for it to get out of control where thrusters would be required.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
ivi asks:
So, who's laws apply in Space?
(Whose.)
Legally, under Article VIII of the 1967 UN Space Treaty, the laws of the owner of the vehicle. Outer space itself is subject to international law and may not be claimed. On the Space Shuttle, US law applies. On Soyuz, Russian law. On the ISS, sovereignty still rests with the owner of a particular vehicle: Zarya and Zvezda are Russian, Node 1 and Destiny are American. In theory, Russia could remove its equipment and give us the hand-in-elbow gesture, or we could remove ours and give them the finger. In practice, most of this stuff is decided on the ground beforehand (as with the recent ESA announcement against permitting the Russians to bring Dennis Tito to ISS). In practice, there's a complicated usage formula based on assumptions about how much various groups (NASA, NASDA, ESA, CSA, RSA) contributed to the station.
If one astronaut were to murder another there might be some trouble deciding who had criminal jurisdiction. This has been studied for some time but won't be completely sorted out until we have more experience.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
And every 15 minutes they have to change DVDs/Players because they're in a new zone.
That's some good thinking there...
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Right so now these damn Americans are assuming they own space and can push their laws out there too?
They can hassle someone in Norway, so this would hardly be a surprise...
>the plane is from USA, even if you are over China, legally, you are in Area 1.
Yeah, except the ISS supposedly isn't from one specific country.
You know, that's an interesting idea, in general. What if an ISS crew member commited some serious crime while in space, like killing someone? Where would he/she be tried and under whose laws? Wonder if they'd go to all the trouble of convening an international tribunal in The Hague for somthing like that, or they'd be extradited to the country of origin of the victim to stand trial?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
>What is illegal is to play a US encoded DVD in a non-US DVD player.
:)
When you're in the US
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
In fact the UN has an Office for Outer Space Affairs and there is a bit of International Space Law.m for more info.
One of the treaties says that outer space is not subject to national appropation by claims of sovereignity, interesting.
Check http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SpaceLaw/spacelaw.ht
Yes, and we all know that U.S. Government agencies never break any laws...
At least that's how th US State Department sees things.
Who'd be suing who?
MPAA vs NASA
RIAA vs NAMBLA
FBI vs CIA
NSA vs KGB
TOO many lawsuits from TOO many companies with TOO many acronyms.
Small cost of buying them? The US Government *never* buys anything for a "small cost". I would expect each DVD player to have been purchased for at least $12,000 dollars. While YOU may see them as identical to the $200 model you see at Circuit City, they are actually structurally reinforced and radiation proofed for special hazardous ops on the ISS.
Maybe we can let the UN control that chunk of the Universe...
While over North America, they use the regional encoded DVD with the appropriatately sanctioned player.
Having all sanctioned players on the ISS as well as their DVDs, the ISS will pave the way as a shining example of how the MPAA wishes the whole world to watch.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
A good link is here, but I don't think that's what you are really thinking about. The Coriolis force relates more to moving objects (and their forces) on the surface of a rotating sphere IIRC.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Ha! Thanks, dude, I have found this link on techtronics.com, and it looks like they really got Multi-fucking-Region players up there! This made my day, folkz! For one moment I thought it'll be Region 8 or something, but since they needed something that will play Region 5, too, they got themselves tvo nice portable multi region players.
Sigged!
(</humor>)
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
With all the billions of dollars that the International Space Station is costing, I would assume that they could afford one player for each region.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I still want to know what movies they brought up there. Rocky IV perhaps? ;)
Since ISS uses 110V 60hz power, I expect they have a region one player. On a good orbit they will be over rgion one area for long enough to watch an entire movie.
Yeap, another plagiarist eager for. This document was copied from previous Slashdot articles:
h tm l
h tm l
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/05/23/2021213.s
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/08/12/1528230.s
--ricardo
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
The UCMJ covers offenses against military law, not civilian. For example, failure to salute an automobile carrying a officer of General rank.
For offenses against civilian law (persons, property, etc.), local civilian law is applied. Following completion of that sentence, additional military penalties may be applied. For example, pissing on the door of the Embassy of the (now former) Soviet Union in downtown Tokyo would have gotten you a short stretch in the Tokyo Municipal lock-up. When you got out, then you answered to military law. (If lucky, a reduction in rank under Article 15 [commander's non-judicial punishment] followed by being shipped out of the country immediately.)
So we are still left with the question of what is the civilian legal zone for the space station.
_ _ _
I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.
Really, only Slashdot could get over 200 comments in response to this totally silly and arcane question. It's space! It's video! It's a loophole in the DVD region-code rules! And it's yet another threat to Your Rights Online! I must say I'm impressed and amused.
sulli
RTFJ.
#1 - US airspace does not extend into where spaceships orbit to. So US law won't effect them.
#2 - There is a region for international use. It's not toatally unbelivable that the MPAA would make DVDs that fall under that region (either 7 or 8 I belive)
#3 - The DVD player going to the space station is comming from another country so again, it doesn't fall under US law.
#4 - If it is a region 1 DVD player with Region 1 DVDs they'll just put it in the US section of the space station because that should/could be considered US teritory.
--
Free Mac Mini
"theoretically illegal under US law"
Right so now these damn Americans are assuming they own space and can push their laws out there too?
Last I heard it was not owned by anyone and was without *any* laws.
> So, who's laws apply in Space?
Locally, Newton's.
Globally, Einstein's.