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DVD Watermarking On Its Way
Cranston Snord writes: "A group of seven major players in the DVD market has come together to form the Video Watermarking Group, which will be submitting a spec to the DVD-Copy Control Association in July. More info is available from this article on Business2.0. With the recent SDMI Watermark crack saga, it's hard not to see the storm clouds looming..." This article has more information about how the waterworking would work.
In the posted Request Expression of Interest on the DVD-CCA site they actually have a contradiction to their testimony. They testified that CSS protects against piracy, yet here they state:
"The protections afforded by CSS technology alone do not always prevent content from being copied or utilized in unauthorized ways. The 'marks' are intended to act as persistent indicators of the original CSS protection and authorized copying, if any, as the audio-visual content is transformed from one condition to another." on page 3. I would almost say that the watermarking initiative is proof that their CSS system doesn't protect against piracy. The fact that CSS was successfully broken (by an amatuer [although very intelligent] teenage cipher analyst [hobbiest]) is irrelevant.
I don't see how watermarking can prevent me from stealing a DVD from my local DVD store. Their only goal is to prevent copyright infringement.
/*For example, I can take a CD I have purchases and record it onto a cassette tape and listen to it in my car or at work. I can make copies of my video tapes and take them to a friends house to watch. I can also use a TV tuner card to convert my video tapes to realvideo and watch them on my laptop*/
Actually, I think the RIAA and MPAA have both addressed this issue. The RIAA and MPAA don't really give a fuck (legally) about recording your CD's and dubbing your tapes. In the first place, that does legitimately fall under "fair use" and secondly, you suffer degradation when you dub tapes and videos. Tis true. Same goes for MP3's. As long as the copy is not as good (although it may be good enough for your purposes), you still have the "incentive" to purchase the original. So, Joe Blow makes a copy of Britney Spears "I'm 18 and you know it" CD onto tape and gives it to Mary Suck. She goes "oh golly! her voice is so dreamy! but that static in the background.." and goes and buys the CD, or so the thinking goes (in reality, many high quality tape decks eliminate most hiss, I've never had many quality problems). Here's the cruz of the MPAA/RIAA argument: when you can make bit for bit perfect copies of digital media, then you lose 90% of the incentive to go out and legitimately purchase/license the material. DeCSS and the like do this. Ripping off a video stream to MP4 or whatever does *not* give you the same quality, at least with any reasonable size. Same can be said with MP3's, which are still a small bit lossy at the highest settings. However, burning a CD image gets the same quality. If you were able to do the same with DVD's (and we eventually will), people will do that, as well.
<rant>
It's their shit, let them do what they want to with it. If you don't like their rules, don't buy their shit. Fuck your stupid "But, music and movies belong to the people!" arguments, if you want to make music and movies and "give them to the people", go buy yourself a camcorder and have at it. </rant>
On a more serious note, yes, I do agree: there's rampant piracy of DVD's and CD's (predominately in non/minimally regulated SouthEast Asian markets), all completely without Napster, DeCSS, MP3's, etc. The only reason that I can think of that the MPAA/RIAA are all in a hussy is because they lack the legal bargaining power in SE Asia that they have purchased (or in many cases, earned) here. So, it may be more of a "yeah, we can't do dick in Singapore and Hong Kong, but by fucking god we're not gonna let these DOMESTIC assholes copy our shit!" here's where fair-use arguments come into play. I also agree with the premise that not everyone who wants to use DeCSS wants to rip and pirate DVD's. I certainly don't (you like the movie? Go buy it at Walmart, asshole! don't come to me looking to save money..)
anyway, back at the ranch...
Why not introduce the ultimate YACPS, making the movies cheap enough that it is not profitable to bootleg them? Instead spend those millions on producing better movies, or actually procecuting those bootleggers who seem to causing them so much concern. My theory is DVD's technology is so expensive BECAUSE of all the YACPS.
Do you think DVD's are so expensive because of the costs to actaully produce them? That is why the bootleggers make a profit anyway. The YACPS are hurting not just the end-user, but all the middle industries as well.
What really bites be is that we, the end-users, get stuck with the check of all that red-tape.
Why can't we have general purpose 10Gig (or whatever DVD size is) recordable laser discs?
The technology is here. Why is it restricted to a special video format?
Lets study this phenomenon. Companies have stopped general purpose laser disks to CD. Which is quite old. Not even one has come up with the next generation of CDRs.
I demand data-independant recordable laser disks.
That would be a superset of DVDs and thus make DVDs obsolete.
Thanks.
If you download movies these days you know that most all of them are "tagged" with a logo of the group who ripped them. In most cases you will see initials of the group on the screen and some even make 3D animated intros! They are proud to claim first rip of movies and screeners. Why whould anyone who has done ANY research think a watermark would be enough to bother someone?
A watermark should be invisible to the naked eye, but readable under scrutiny. How can a vague watermark survive a reduction in resolution followed by mpeg1 or mpeg4 compression? These formats throw out all but the most obvious pixels in the scene to achieve massive compression. Sometimes actors faces are unrecognizable and don't even think about what they do to text or background images.
Lastly, DVD rips are not the "hot" downloads. The current run movies shot with a camcorder in the theater are. I fail to see how this will stop them. By the time the DVD is released, the movies are already old news to those who download them.
AC
They seem to be more interested in chinese bootlegs than in the De-CSS. Maybe they finally figured out that piracy in the US is next to nothing, and that they have much bigger fish to fry. Note that the chinese bootleggers don't use De-CSS or anything like that, they just buy a fricking DVD presser and do direct copies of the DVDs. A ship of fools, the whole MPAA is.
Here's what your not being told. The watermarking system can determine what MEDIA the bits are coming from. That's because every recordable DVD, except the professional DVD for Authoring, has a unique serial number, in the place where a stamped DVD places the CSS key info. So a watermark that says don't copy on a DVD recordable is a clear violation.
Also, because the system allows some use of "copy one time", each device may have the ability to re-mark the watermark, probably by re-encoding the MPEG. Yes, this will totally kill the quality of the original, IMHO, but it is required to change the "copy one time" to "don't copy anymore".
And while they're re-marking, why not add an ID from the player to the OUTPUT watermark? And don't forget the CPRM system uses all of this to know if you are the original recording of a program or a clone on a different piece of media. Can't clone the recording because of CPRM and can't copy on another recorder because of watermarking. So a single copy is the limit if the "copy one time" watermark is used.
"What, my new DVD-VCR knows what I'm doing and watches to keep me honest?"
Easy to defeat? Hollywood-MPAA wants to put the watermark pickup inside each and every DVD drive!
number scheems, not trying, and HUGE file sizes.
The best workaround i've heard of is a flag on the disk that executes a scipt to point to a partion on the disk with all the cool stuff(interviews commentary etc.)The other partition on the DVD would play only the movie, the idea being, yeah you might get the movie but not all the fun stuff.
And how about the other side of the issue: the price of DVDs? Reduce that to the point where it's not worth it for wouldbe pirates, bang it's more available, costs the same as a rental (4.00 dollers at blockbuster), and people will be more inclined to purchase the.
2. It may or may not do anything to stop copyright infringement -- but you can bet that if it at all effective at stopping non-commercial copyright infringement (as opposed to exposing counterfeit commercial DVDs), it will infringe on Fair Use rights and make it harder for people to use the movie when it passes into the public domain.
3. This isn't instead of waves of lawyers, this is in addition to lawyers (see recent Slashdot items about 2600 magazine / MPAA / DeCSS case, where the movie-industry-favored DMCA threatens not just Constitutional copyright law, but First Amendment freedoms of the speech and of the press). Even if it was instead of lawyers, who says that copy protection systems which impede Fair Use and eventual public domain use (that is to say, just about all of them) should be welcomed with open arms?
I do not think that word means what you think it means...
Also I do have kids, and funny thing is I can let them have access to the VHS tapes. They seem to stand up to standard kid wear. DVD's are a no-no. They can't pass the 6 year old test.
Totally agree here -- all of my wife's Disney collection is VHS for this specific reason: My three kids (well only one has the ability now) can grab a movie, pop it in and go to town. It's also why Fisher-Price hasn't come out with the sing-along CD box yet -- CDs and DVDs are just too susceptable to scratching.
However I do feel that in 10 years' time, my DVDs will be perfectly watchable, while my VHS tapes will be fading and generally crappy to watch.
This so called "durable media" isn't... when compared to VHS. Yes, virginis, this MORE FRAGILE MEDIA has a far greater NEED FOR CONSUMERS TO BE ABLE TO BACK UP.
I would debate that point. Magnetic media is far more fragile when presented with extreme heat and magnetic fields... things that consumers don't even think about.
Optically, DVDs are far more vulnerable, this is true. But causing damage to the surface of the disc is something which (IMO) happens on purpose -- scratching the disc, dropping it, letting the 3 year old get at it...
I'd also like to see some proof (press release?) that shows that Blockbuster only gets an average of ten rentals out of a disc. I know our little hometown movie store gets hundreds if not thousands of rentals on their DVD media without issue.
No... After these news after genetically modified humans, they'd probably start talking with the genetic engineering folks to produce humans with no ears, eyes or any other senses.
Yet, even that is bound to fail. There's no scientific explanations for sixth sense, and with all other senses removed, such modified humans would develop psychic skills with which they could a) guess what happens in the movie and b) burn DVDs with just those psychic powers.
=)
And yet, the method is still effective. Anyone would be able to tell at a glance whether or not a disk was pirated. With a number for an antipiracy put into DVD boxes, this would provide the movie companies with a very effective method of stopping piracy: consumer policing. Believe it or not, most people actually don't want to pirate movies, and most would probably be more than happy to turn in pirated discs, as well as whoever sold the discs to them. And yet, this method would still allow legitimate copies to be made. It's the best of all worlds. It's not as effective at stopping all piracy as Draconian methods like watermarking, but it doesn't punish a single innocent, and in the end that's what is truly important.
----------
It is currently illegal to sell region-locked players in New Zealand. So they are not locked - so I am told, but I'm having trouble confirming this.
In Australia, all it takes is one court case to decide on prima-facie evidence that region locking reduces consumer choice and restricts competition, and any CE manufacturer importing region locked devices will be up for large fines. The vitamin industry was fined $AUD25.5m because of very similar behaviour, and the fines are relative the ability of the companies to pay. I'd love to see Sony, et al fined lots of $$$ because of their illegal players.
Andrew van der Stock
Well, I buy DVDs, which I play under Linux using Xine. Presumably (unless this hardware-based watermarking scheme is entirely transparent to playback software) these future DVDs would be unplayable under Linux even if I purchased the appropriate watermark-reading DVD drive. Yes, in the DeCSS case, the judge claimed that such fair-use arguments were irrelevant because fully-licensed closed-source DVD-players were in development for Linux, but these players appear to have been just vapor.
> Copyrights now last 70+ years (courtesy of Disney's lobbyists).
Actually, it's now Life of Author + 70 years, or 95 years for corporate stuff. Of course, it's "limited" (which the US Constitution requires), but expect them to try and make it life + 90 years or 115 years in about 15 years (when the current copyright life starts showing).
Of course, you're right on the lobbyists.
Okay, in case it needs repeating -- and it probably does:
Copying is not theft. Period.
That said, if this watermarking scheme were intended to protect the reputations of the people who created the film, then I'd be all for it. For artists, reputation is what's really at stake here. A watermarking scheme would help thwart someone copying an artist's work and passing it off as their own.
As it is, it's going to be used by the DVD player's firmware to determine whether the user has "permission" to view the content on that disc, which is a pointless exercise.
The central flaw here is that the studios are failing to acknowledge that the users don't give a rat's ass about what the studios claim is, "their property."
I mean, think about this: In the mind of the average consumer, posession is nine-tenths of the law, especially when they have a receipt to back it up. Yet the studio claims the receipt is meaningless -- they believe they still get to tell the user what they can and can't do with it after the fact. Name a single consumer who's going to buy in to the idea that they should pay for the privilege of being bossed around simply to protect the pocketbook of a guy who's already filthy stinking rich. Where's the value to the consumer in such an arrangement?
On the other hand, if the encryption/watermarking were there to preserve the creator's reputation so that it couldn't be usurped, I think you'd get a lot of consumers to heartily sign on to that bandwagon.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It stops the real threat, which are pirates which produce packages that look like the real thing and which get sold into stores, etc. George making a copy for Frank to watch on his VHS isn't the problem, and even Sally sharing a .VOB with Susan over Gnutella isn't the issue. 100,000 authentic looking DVDs complete in packaging, etc. arriving from offshore and ending
up on the shelf at <insert retail store name here> is the issue.
And for those, the hologram scheme sounds like the best bet to me.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Notice I didn't advocate watermarking as the solution for this, I advocated the very-hard-to-reproduce holograms. As best as I can tell, all the watermark tells you is what source they copied from (assuming different masters have different watermarks) -- pointless, I heartily agree.
I guess my main problem is that I replied to the wrong post without fully clarifying my stance. My point to the poster I was replying to was not that the watermark was the right answer (I don't believe that it is), but that the real pirates do provide all the trimmings that make the package look legit. And the answer there is the hologram or some other object/thing that the pirator cannot copy easily. A watermark consisting of bits can be copied just like any of the rest of the bits, which in my mind is not really a watermark. (Think of real watermarks on paper and how they work -- I can't think of a digital equivalent.)
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
You didn't spell it right.
It's LENticular, not LINticular.
--
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Yup, indeed. Waterworking. What else could better describe that UNsanitary plumbing that waterMARKing DVD would be. But in any case, it will be LEAKY plumbing...
So, whenever we pop a movie in the player, after the DREAMWORKS PICTURES logo, we'll see the "PROTECTED BY WATERWORKS PICTURE PROTECTION"???
--
Well, it's an inconvenient solution, but there's really no other alternative. Every software-oriented solution gets cracked.
So so most hardware solutions. Home satellite dishes are hacked, hardware protection schemes for software are hacked[0], "fleetnet" style police radio systems are hacked..
At some point in the process the data becomes unprotected, that's where it's vulnerable.
grubby[0] I realize these incorporate software on the computer as well, but some dongles now contain key pieces of the software in them. No matter.
Trolling is a art,
One use of a watermark is to track copies. So if Mr. X buys a DVD and copies it and gives it to a friend and the copyright-police find Mr. X's watermark on his friends copy, they know to prosecute Mr.X.
But that won't work if every watermark is the same, so they won't be able to just stamp these out.
It also won't work if they can't tell which watermark is on Mr. X's DVD. Unless they require registration and outlaw cash sales, they'll never know who the original source of a pirated videos. They would also need to outlaw (or track) after-market sales, because Mr. X should be free to sell his DVD to Mr. Y (who may be the pirate).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Whew, glad that is going to be over. Seeing as how watermarking is so secure. Wouldn't want to make a backup of a DVD or anything would I?
Blogging because I can...
I don't have a press release, but I spoke with the manager of a local rental store here in Portland, OR and he showed me a box of DVD's and games that were un-rentable. He gets much longer lifetimes out of VHS tapes.
Also I do have kids, and funny thing is I can let them have access to the VHS tapes. They seem to stand up to standard kid wear. DVD's are a no-no. They can't pass the 6 year old test.
Durable media? Don't think so.
Blogging because I can...
I agree with you on the profit thing; however, the resolution issue is another thing altogether.
Newer televisions allow for much better color resolution than older ones do. I have a Zenith Chromacolor. Its video frequency response drops off dramatically about 4mhz. It can only realistically display about 320 full color distinct pixels in the normal viewing area. (Not counting overscan) So on this television I would agree that DVD does not have a lot over VHS. (There tends to be less noise coming from a DVD, but with full motion video this does not get you much.) Also have a newer off-brand 15 inch television. This one responds to the higher frequencies. Most televisions made in the last 6 years or so do. A DVD is better on this model. Also have a Sony Vega. Using Svideo it can display 640x480 in color and it is readable even with text. Using the component video inputs it is interlaced monitor quality. DVD makes a very nice difference on this set.
So if you are watching an older model, VHS is your best value if you don't mind the tapes degrading. Over the next 5 years there are going to be a lot of televisions that are capable of displaying the difference between DVD and VHS, so resolution does matter.
I think your concept of a cartridge is a very good one. This would make DVD more consumer friendly. Too bad we won't see it....
Blogging because I can...
I think their goal, however, is to make it difficult enough that copying a DVD isn't a commonplace event for the average user.
The trading of online music, for example, didn't become such a hot topic with the recording industry until services such as Napster in conjunction with MP3 rippers and encoders made it easy enough for the guy down the hall who has trouble turning his machine on, to rip, encode and share the latest music with the nation.
However, an even bigger concern for myself is how much trouble too many incompatible copy protection schemes will cause for someone attempting to simply play their legally purchased DVD's. Macrovision on VHS annoys me as it is.
The article also seems to claim that DeCSS is somehow responsible for DVD's of Starwars being created. Hu? Couldn't somebody take, say, the laserdisc set, record it to mpeg2 and run it through something like iDVD or a comparable pc product, burn it to a disc and mass produce it? No keys needed, no encryption, no CSS...
/nuke option it will make norad order the launch of nuclear weapons to kill all the cute fluffy bunnies in the world. Damn hackers.
How is DeCSS involved?
Oh wait, I forgot, DeCSS is a scary gremlin computer program ooooooo (in a ghost voice). I hear if you run it with the
Well first, hopefully Videophiles will come out against it. A watermark, in order to work, has to degrade the picture in some way - they can claim its not visible, but we'll see ... you can tell when you use the digimarc scheme on a photoshop file ...
The real question though - how does watermarking prevent digital copies? If I'm doing a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD, the watermark isnt going to change, and as far as the DVD player is concerned, everything is "jake". Note: this is assuming that the world the MPAA lives in is the real world, wherein anybody with a computer can make a digital copy of a dvd.
Is this designed to keep people from copying dvds to VHS? Isn't that what macrovision does? And, even if macrovision doesn't work (or, is defeated with a $20 box), wouldnt the VHS players have to support watermark detection?
I just dont see when this would ever come into play.
Somebody, fill me in?
Actually as a resident of Britain I'd like to
thank the Soviet Union for saving us from Hitler.
I think that they are purposely doing this to pave the way for hardware-level encryption. They know damn-well that software encryption never works. Who's been cracked? Microsoft Media, SMDI, CSS, and just about everyone else who relies on weak software encryption and the DMCA.
... they want the lock to be at the hardware level.
They will release this new standard. And when it gets hacked (.025 seconds later) they will point to the need for hardware encryption. These guys would love to have harddrives in TiVos and computers that only write "approved material" to the disk. Same with HDTV and iTv
What better way to convince the Gov't. to approve this nonsense? Step 1: release an inferior software encryption scheme. Step 2: wait until it gets cracked. Step 3: go whine and cry to the Gov't about all the money you are losing to those "video pirates".
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Works on Mozilla 0.8.1.
Which means Mozilla isn't standards-compliant yet, becuase it should barf because the W3 says you can use <p> without </p> but not vice versa.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Wasn't CSS supposed to "protect" the video information found on DVD's? Oh right, I forgot - it was cracked! Is it just me or do the big 5 just /not/ get it? I understand that they want to protect their ability to maximize profits, however as a consumer I have to say enough is enough. Consumer electronics and otherwise have become sophisticated enough to require some form of standardization (either ANSI or ITU, you be the judge). I mean look at the cellular carrier industry - the only way they could get people to (usually) sign up with service was with a free phone, and even now they (the cellular industry) is pushing for GSM or some other form of domestic standards. This is very different of "industry" standards, such as DVD - where they write the legal mumbo-jumbo so hodgepodge that it is a royal screwjob for the consumer.
You realy have to wonder what the engineers who designed this stuff and claimed they could make it an effective copy protection scheme were thinking.
They were mostly thinking "wow, that's a lot of money for putting together a system I've already told them won't work"
I mostly rent DVDs now anyway.
:)
for 1 GBP a night, I dont care. There aren't any DVDs I own that I've watched enough to justify buying them yet. Also, I'm a student so it's not a time issue.
Err..no. Lucas has stated more than once he wants to do another special edition upgrade for the movies, since DVD can support a lot more features. He and his studio just doesn't have the time since they're making Ep II. Besides Ep I DVD is slated for late next year when Industrial Light and Magic have some time to update it add scenes, etc. Lucas always adds something new for each release.
Only if copyright law allows you that fair use, for example in UK copyright law, there is no such thing as "fair use".
In the UK, according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act it would be even illegal to make a recording of a song, even for your own personal use. Don't believe me? - look at the section about Infringement of copyright by copying section which states that "This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means".
If you think this falls under "fair use", think again, there is no such thing. There is a section called "fair dealing" which allows certain exceptions and copying for personal use (as opposed to personal study) is not one of them.
Oh, and one of the clinchers is that if you are unprepared, you can be convicted for copyright infringement on a work that has passed into the public domain, because "it shall be presumed [that it was copied illegally] until the contrary is proved, that the article was made at a time when copyright subsisted in the work."
So, in the UK, you can only legally access a work in extremely limited ways, and you can be found guilty until you can prove otherwise
--
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
Sounds like yet another scheme that can only prevent hobbiests from copying discs. Real pirates can always just copy the media bit-for-bit, flaw-for-flaw.
It worked everywhere in the world but the U.S.. face it, you guys a slow, stupid, stuborn and lazy
IIRC the US was actually an early signatory to the Treaty of the Metre. More that the US is often a "bad faith" nation when it comes to treaties.
Only if copyright law allows you that fair use, for example in UK copyright law, there is no such thing as "fair use".
On the other hand UK law does not have the rather draconian idea of any "derived work" belongs to the original copyright holder, which is the case in the US. (Probably made sense with the original term of copyright in the US, but now is simply another "club" for large corporates.)
Thus in the UK things which would in the US fall under the "derived work" criteria would actually be "original works"...
look at the section about Infringement of copyright by copying section which states that "This includes storing the work in any medium by electronic means".
Thus radio and television are now illegal... Using "any medium" is a very very silly definition.
And what's wrong with being tried twice on the same accusation if there is new evidence against you? Too many criminals get away these days because of silly technicalities or due to the incompetence of the prosecution.
That's part of the reason for not allowing people to be repeatedly tried for the same thing. It gives the prosecution an incentive to do a decent job in the first place.
The problem with systems like this is that they rarely do anything to counteract large-scale piracy
Simply because the large scale priates can get access to the same production lines or to the content in unencrypted form.
The average consumer probably doesn't realize the amazing price difference there is between pressing a CD (which is no more than a couple cents per disc) and recording a cassette (which is considerably more).
Compare also the cost of distribution and quality control.
Why should I have to pay (again) for the right to watch Star Wars? I paid at the theatre, and I paid again for the VHS tapes. If I pay (yet again) for the DVD version - now I have to also pay for a player to watch this?
It might make sense for the first case to be different. But with the issue between VHS and DVD it looks like the people involved are trying to have their cake and eat it. Also there is the issue that a DVD costs more even though the actual cost of producing and distributing the media is undoubtedly far less.
As for providing the equipment without the hardware, DVD is rather more tightly controlled. I suspect that you won't be licensed to make DVD players *unless* you agree to the hardware
Except this is likely to backfire, people will soon find out the reasons for the trade embagos this would need to be remotly effective.
The problem with DVDs, CDs, and any other digital medium is that all it takes is one person to make a copy of the data free of the copy protection scheme
Also both the encryption mechanism and any keys are static, the information is valuable for 70-100 years and decryption systems are very common.
It's a matter of when rather than if...
I wish people would understand that it *is* in fact, perfectly possible to have extremely nearly perfect copy protection, as long as you don't care about backward compatibility with existing hardware.
Except that at some point in the chain the data will end up in an unencrypted format. Be it before the DVD is mastered, in the RAM of a player or the electronics driving a CRT or LCD array.
They just hook up their (secure) player to their (secure) digital TV
Except that the TV isn't remotly secure the electronics have no way of knowing if they are driving a CRT or a pile of electronics which outputs in PAL, NTSC and SECAM all together.
The best you can hope for is to make it too expensive to be worth doing (a sufficiently long encryption key would take more compute power to defeat than would be available in the useful life of the data, but that doesn't mean it couldn't (eventually) be cracked).
The more copyright gets extended the longer any "useful life".
Anyway when it comes to security you need to consider the whole system. Encryption has rarely (if ever) been broken purely by brute force. It's more common by expoiting a weakness in the system. Here the weakness is that keys are fixed and embedded in consumer devices. As a whole it's probably a weaker complete system than those used in WW2. At least those cypher machines had the keys changed every day! (Also the information was only valuable for a fairly short time.)
The dongle was "defeated" (well, some of them, anyway) because the people designing it cared more about cheap and mostly effective than in making a really uncrackable system.
Unless you make a dongle which cannot be reverse engineered, produced in a factory where people can only leave in coffins it's impossible to make such a secure device.
Name one other operating system suitable for the average computer user.
The assumption here is that Windows is suitable for the average computer user...
Windows is a mediocre sever platform but UNIX is just plain awful as a workstation platform for the average user.
For many "average users", i.e. those who use a computer as a tool for a job such things are unix workstations, graphics terminals even TEXT terminals could be very good. Because they can't break the thing easily, even if it fails its easy to swap in a spare.
Windows with it's single user, end user is expected to be a sysadmin, store everything possible locally approach is an awful approach for a workstation.
Seems like to me that the MPAA is grabbing at straws here...we'll try this, we'll try that and what not. Maybe the next scheme will be Mission Impossible-esque "This movie will destruct in 5 seconds...4...3...2...1...42...?
:)
Pity we can't simply introduce the whole lot to a character played by the Mission Impossible leads' daughter
Yes, the law gives you the right to create backups; however, this is NOT a god-given right! Private corporations ARE allowed to come up with copy protection schemes to protect their property.
They don't have a God given right to this "protection" or even to consider this "property" in the first place anyway...
Of course at airport they start looking for DVDs just like they look for certain drugs, guns and bombs. The MPAA introduces another copy protection "feature" scented DVDs. This allows them to train dogs to sniff baggage looking for smuggled DVDs.
Considering how much is spent trying to stop people importing things into the US (including people) and how ineffective this is does anyone seriously expect this to work?
but the best thing the MPAA could do for the pirates would be to give everybody a DVD with a personalized watermark
How is the MPAA going to verify the information they are given? How are they going to ensure it stayes valed, e.g. if people move? What happens when a DVD is bought be a corporate?
It will probably be impossible to do a bit by bit copy of the DVD via a hardware module, simply because the watermark may only be copied by a machine worth millions
Except the relevent issue here is how much does it cost to either gain access to such a machine or to build one which does the same job.
Not only that, a prosecutor could win almost every case he has by withholding evidence and holding trial after trial until the defendant runs out of $$$.
Or alternativly defendants start getting off on the technicality of there being no prosecutor, because so many have been jailed for contempt of court.
but it will make it very easy to determine whether a DVD is pirated or not. That will hopefully protect people from being scammed and buying bootlegs unintentionally
Except for the "bootlegs" which are made on the same production line as the "genuine" ones.
DVDs are cheap to make, especially where they are made in the poorest parts of the world.
Ah... but the best thing the MPAA could do for the pirates would be to give everybody a DVD with a personalized watermark. Say for example I take my StarWars, you take your StarWars, and Joe down the street grabs his StarWars and we do a bit by bit comparison. The differences are.... THE WATERMARK. And now we all know what bits need to be twiddled with to remove said stupid watermark. Why that could cut a good 50% off the time it takes to remove them!
-Rob
--Rob
I'm not so certain. I'm fairly certain macrovision stops a lot of casual copying and a lot of older players weren't affected by it.
As for providing the equipment without the hardware, DVD is rather more tightly controlled. I suspect that you won't be licensed to make DVD players *unless* you agree to the hardware. Even if there are a few leaks, a large majority of people won't be able to play pirated DVDs, which is the whole aim.
If I lived in Afghanistan, then I wouldn't be allowed to even buy the DVD in the first place. The discussion is obviously about the U.S. law and not the UK law. Your point, is pointless.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
If you mishandle it (get fingerprints and food smudges over it, use it as a Frisbee, etc.), a DVD won't last too long. That is Blockbuster's likely problem. I rented a movie once and it wouldn't play at first. A few minutes at the kitchen sink with some water, some dishwashing detergent, and a towel fixed it...maybe they should invest in some cleaning equipment to deal with the slobs who don't know how to properly handle DVDs.
The DVDs I own, OTOH, all look like-new, with no scratches or smudges. I handle them only by their edges, and they're either in the player or in their boxes. I suspect they'll last much longer than 7 to 10 plays.
None of this, of course, negates the fair-use rights of people who buy DVDs to make backup and/or working copies. I don't have kids, but if I did, it'd be nice to rip DVDs of their favorite movies to VCD or SVCD, lock up the DVDs, and let them use the copies. They won't notice the difference, and if they screw it up, you just rip & burn again.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Judge: Okay, RIAA, you win. Napster, you must comply and take down the songs that RIAA says you must take down.
(time passes)
RIAA (in a whiney voice) Your honor, names alone aren't enough, can't you do something?
(time passes)
RIAA: (all cocky) Your honor, we have a program that can automatically identify which songs are ours. Please have Napster remove all songs which this program identifies as ours.
Judge: So this will stop copyright infringement of the major labels, but will allow songs from individual artists who want their songs to be traded to be traded? Sounds good to me. Napster, I order you to comply.
--
Here are the official DVDCCA requests for watermarking proposals. The proposals are due by May 9, 2001. Some of the interesting highlights include a serial-copy-management-like copy protection (ie, ability for producers to designate NO-COPY or COPY-ONCE flags); the fact that watermarking is not a prerequisite - other technologies will be entertained. A preliminary selection will occur later this month. Candidates will be required to pay for their own testing expenses (ouch!).
Notice to Interest Parties (brief, general instructions)
Request for Expressions of Interest (formal instructions and requirements)
Both are PDF documents.
It's obviously too expensive to watermark individual dvds. And even if they could, just pay it with cash and don't "register" it.
And if only regional watermarking is feasible, what good does to MPAA to find out that all the pirated DVDs from Malaysia were copied from a New York DVD?
Didn't one of the Mars missions fail because of "metric conversion" errors? If you used the metric system like everyone else in the world, there would be no conversion errors. ... What's STL?
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I'm a C++ guru
I'm Canadian. BTW, where do your best scientists and pilots come from (i.e. are born)? ... What's STL?
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I'm a C++ guru
IIRC, DeCSS is the parent of libcss, which is being used in the LiViD (Linux Video) project to play DVDs. I'm sure that's used more than DeCSS in itself. ... What's STL?
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I'm a C++ guru
10 megabits == 1.25 megabytes. ... What's STL?
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I'm a C++ guru
AudioDVD supports full 5.1 playback at greater-than-CD bitrates for all channels. The sound quality in any case is more spectacular than anything else a normal electronics consumer can get; even better than the sound found on DVD.
Minidisc is just a crappy tape replacement that's already been passed over by the music industry and everyone else except Sony.
Assuming that you listen to music to enjoy it, even without 5 speakers, you're going to have a better experience with an AudioDVD than any other source.
It really pisses me off that the reason I can't buy more AudioDVDs right now is that my favorite labels (Telarc, for example) are worried that someone could break the format and steal their "perfect" data.
Personally, I want a format that's uncopyable, reasonably priced, and better quality than CDs.
I don't mind supporting the musicians and composers whose music I enjoy, or the record companies that serve my interests (classical music, in my case. Generally not part of the RIAA mess, as far as I can tell). I want my music to remain commercially viable, too - something that a lot of non-top 40 listeners should be concerned about.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
[Why is watermarking a hard problem] [mirrored]
Authority Figure: How long till watermarking protection is final?
DVD Crypto Engineer: Sir we're still working on it we're not sure
Authority Figure: Great I'll put out the word to Associated Press that we're ready to go.
Can you find the Mole?
Want Root?
Depending on your drive, you may need to set the region code of your DVD drive before you can read encrypted DVDs at all. This can be an issue if you have never used your drive under Windows. This was the case with my Pioneer.
Heh. Obviously everyone reads that as "If we try to make people upgrade to something that doesn't have significantly better quality, it will go the way of DIVX".
The problem with systems like this is that they rarely do anything to counteract large-scale piracy, but they usually *do* cause problems for individuls who aren't trying to break the law.
Honestly, this particular proposal, which basically sounds like the SCMS from DAT/CD isn't so bad. What pisses me off is CSS and region coding. Honestly, I don't understand why region coding is legal, and I think CSS ought to be illegal.
Also, while from the description in the article doesn't sound so bad, given the recent history of these IP organizations, I am going to reserve judgement until I actually see it. The fact is, they are a bunch of greedy, arrogant, unethical bastards that should all be thrown in jail.
Your solution is best for consumers in that it still allows the DVD to be copied without any kind of degradation. th eonly thing missing is the hologram, an element the consumer couldn't see until after purchase anyway given current packaging.
As somebody else pointed, out pirates can also do holograms.
The industry wants to declare war on its own customer base. None of the proposed solutions really prevents the DVD from being copied bit for bit by pros, it only restricts the consumers' playback and use. You can bet when the entertainment industry feels they've stomped out the rights of consumes to use non threatening hardware or software, DVD prices will go from the $15-$20 range to the $40-$50 range.
They don't seem to get it. Every time they encrypt content it gets cracked, same with watermarking schemes. Don't they realise there is only one sure protection against copying? They should be lobbying the gov't to ban DVDs! Since they tell us how much money they're losing from DVDs being copied or viewed in a different country to where it was bought. Surely it would be best if nobody bought any DVDs, then nobody would ever use them immorally.
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Very well said. I completely agree, and actually, this has been my suspicion since a long time. Why would the RIAA allow fair use? They can make lods of cash if they prevent you from fair use, therefore...
However, there is one problem (ok, there are many, but at least one more): there are too many good out-of-print records, movies on VHS and DVD. Which means, the MPA and RIAA don't give a shit about stuff that only a few thousand people would buy. The profit margin is too small (i.e. maybe less than 90%). And don't fool yourself, these guys don't care about cultural heritage or art. I know of reels of wonderful movies that were not stored adequately, and are, therefore, lost. Even classics like "My Fair Lady" were halfway destroyed. So, yes, they will sell you the various fair use surrogates, but probably only for the popular stuff. If your copy of OOP DVD is damaged, tough, "but we can sell you Mission Impossible 7, as a consolation".
Thanks for your post, very good points.
Sigged!
Your absolutely right, but there's more:
The film companies are banking on appliances as maintaining their dominant role as the primary display/storage devices for entertainment. I think the 10 to 15 year outlook will proove that assessment as wrong. Software will become the primary medium (just look at lame things like Tivo). The computer is the future DVD player, not some appliance.
Someone you trust is one of us.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Also, DVDs cost SUBSTANTIALLY less to manufacture than tapes. Though we don't see those savings as consumers (where DVDs cost almost twice as much), I'm sure Blockbuster can arrange better terms, possibly better than VHS.
You think pirates don't do holograms? Hahahaha.... get real.
In other words, you'll be able to see it. And unlike Macrovision, it will be in-band, so even if you remove it, the information it covers up will still be gone.
Lovely.
Free Hans!
> Oh wait, I forgot, DeCSS is a scary gremlin
:)
> computer program ooooooo (in a ghost voice).
Actually it's a digital crowbar
--
Azrael - The Angel of Death
posted with: Mozilla (0.9+)
You're either thinking of patents, or how long copyrights USED to last. Copyrights now last 70+ years (courtesy of Disney's lobbyists). The only DVDs available then are going to be in museums.
Well, they banned the perfectly legal APEX DVD players with the "secret" menu, so...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
how this will stop bit for bit silver pressed copies again (ie, what the professional pirates have always been doing anyways?)
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I blinked for a second, I thought the title was DVD Watermelon on the way.....
The idea is to introduce a new protection scheme and hardware that will read it the new protection, but to let old hardware work without that protection. "You can't do that to consumers -- you've got to have to have backwards-compatibility. That's why this is not an easy solution," he says.
Um...so all we have to do is keep one DVD player around from the pre-compulsory-watermarking days (ie, now) and use it to rip all future DVDs into DivX;-) or Vorbis or whatever format is popular at the time? Doesn't sound like a very useful copy-protection scheme...
It's been said a million times, and it's still true; the only people that are going to be hurt are the HONEST consumers.
Congratulations to all you people out there who, while whining and crying about it, still run out and buy all the latest DVD players and discs. Sheople. Reep what you've sowed.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Don't expect things to change until the public in general is notified of it. The only thing the public is against the RIAA is for the insane prices they've fixed on audio CDs due to their stranglehold on the market. The average consumer probably doesn't realize the amazing price difference there is between pressing a CD (which is no more than a couple cents per disc) and recording a cassette (which is considerably more).
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
No, MacOS doesn't count. Apple is even worse than MS because they control both the OS and the hardware platform. And MacOS is only a viable option to begin with because of Microsoft and Adobe's support.
Windows is a mediocre sever platform but UNIX is just plain awful as a workstation platform for the average user. I love UNIX but drop the bullshit, we have to hear enough of it from the editors here.
And I pay for my NT licenses, just like I pay for my UNIX ones. Please grow up, or at least refrain from posting until you graduate. Thanks.
--
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I like to watch.
two related points:
1) Watermarking is one of the primitives on which larger content-control systems are/willbe built. Fundamentally, consumer devices that are crippled so as to play only entertainment-cartel-licensed content will use watermarking to determine what is and is not valid content. Anyone who cares about the future of fair use and open access to media technology should be fighting this stuff NOW.
2) (A personal bother, exists today) So, my TV is cheap and only has RF inputs. I must run the output of my DVD player through the VCR in order to view the output on my TV. Macrovision prevents me from even viewing (!!) DVDs encoded with such. Note that this problem also affects owners of large homes with complex video distribution systems. (I know there are devices that overcome this, but I don't believe we should have to go to such lengths to make legit use of the products we PAY for...)
Ok, there are two possibilities here.
1) These distributors/publishers are selling things pretty close to what it takes to cover costs. Maybe for every movie they distribute, for every $25 DVD they sell, they also snag $2 from people who watch the movie on the plane, another $4 from people who want to watch their movies over the web at a friends house. But that $31 is roughly what it costs to make the movie, the DVD, distribute it, market it, and provide technology for all those time-shifts and whatever-shifts you've paid for.
In this case, if we were to overturn whatever laws you want to overturn in the name of FAIR USE, these movie distributors will have to raise the price of DVD's by 20% to cover the costs they were making.
So you'll still be paying the same damn amount, you'll just have to pay up front for your right to do those things, instead of later on as needed.
2) The second possibility is that these companies are charging waaay more than they need to cover costs. In this case, the law has a solution. No, don't violate their copyrights to "send a message"...
START YOUR OWN DISTRIBUTION COMPANY. Distribute movies cheapy, to just cover costs. Dissuade pirates by making your movies available cheaply.
IF THIS WILL ACTUALLY WORK, GO FOR IT. There's a wide open market for cheap DVDs.
Personally, I think is that it's not enough. You can sell your DVDs for $5 and people will still copy them. Especially the young kids who don't remember when DVDs were $25 and are pissed at the increase to $6. REVOLT! WE DON'T HAVE TO TAKE THESE LUDICROUS $6 PRICES! ASSEMBLE AND COPYRIGHT-VIOLATE!
another $.02 in the pot.
-Erik
That's bullshit. If someone is producing a movie, they pitch it to distributors. Artisan didn't *make* the Blair Witch Project, they just promote and distribute it. If you think they're doing a bad job of it or are overcharging, start your own distribution company and try to convince directors and producers to have you distribute their movies.
Yes, it's hard to start a distribution business. But if you think members of the MPAA are doing such a horrible job, explain that to some investors, get some capital and do it right! What right does Universal Pictures have to "shut you down"?
I'm not suggesting libertarian anything. Just good old fashioned free-market competition.
-Erik
Seems fairly obvious to me that a "perfectly copied" DVD would contain the exact same watermark as the original. Why you could copy the original, but not the copy is beyond me, if the copy is indeed perfect.
Do you have a DVD pressing machine? Do Napster-using online pirates have them? The idea is that if the player detects the watermark on non-approved media -- anything that isn't a pressed DVD, like VCD's or DVD writables -- it won't play. The strange part is that this method doesn't affect the "real" pirates, the ones who do this as a business and can afford a pressing machine.
--
I (usa citizen) would also like to thank the Soviet Union for their quite essential help in the multinational effort to defeat Hitler. However, I hope the comment by RedGuard was not intended to mean that the USA was of no help to Britain, which would just be an outright lie.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
No one objects to them trying to minimize piracy. The problem is they are taking it too far and these schemes are interfering with the consumers Fair Use of the product. Under which I have the right to make backup copies in case the original is damaged, I also have the right to listen to/watch the product in any format I choose on any device I choose. For example, I can take a CD I have purchases and record it onto a cassette tape and listen to it in my car or at work. I can make copies of my video tapes and take them to a friends house to watch. I can also use a TV tuner card to convert my video tapes to realvideo and watch them on my laptop. All this is very legal under Fair Use and are by no means a bad thing. The media companies want to deny me the ability to do any of these things with DvD's and this is a bad thing. The media companies and upto this point, the courts, are assuming the only purpose of programs like DeCSS is to pirate DvD movies. The reality is, there are no known cases of DeCSS having been used to pirate any movie, so the correct assumption should be that legal users are using it for Fair Use purposes. DvD Pirates are going to make copies no matter what, so the only people who are being penalized is legal users. This was very likely thier intent to begin with.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
While it doesn't clash squarely with content protection, the law says that a consumer can make one back-up copy of a movie, a CD, etc-which they legally own. Obviously CSS and others make this impossible, and you certainly could break thousands of DVDs and require the manufacturer to provide a replacement free of charge. If they don't. or if they charge huge fees, you've got a lawsuit that you're going to win one way or another.
I feel it would be trivial for DVD manufacturers to provide a protection scheme similiar to Sony MiniDiscs which allow one copy to be made from the master, but does not allow duplications of duplications. It doesn't stop all piracy, but sure does put a lid on it to the point that it won't become an extremely serious problem as it has with CDs. Right now, MiniDisc have no PC drive which you could rip songs from your MD to PC, but I'm sure once created, it will also include such protection.
In other words.. Support MiniDiscs, not AudioDVDs. They're smaller than your MP3 player, cost 2$ for 80 minute rewriteable disk's with built in caddy, eliminating scratches, and ReWriteables are supported on all players.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Copy protection can never totaly prevent someone from copying something, only make it so difficult most people can't do it. The problem with DVDs, CDs, and any other digital medium is that all it takes is one person to make a copy of the data free of the copy protection scheme. Then that copy can be spread to an infinite number of other people.
Encyrption is useless until we get implanted chips directly into our brain (and not even then realy) since at some point the data must exist in it's unencrypted form somewhere in the users hardware. And as long as that unencypted stream exists it can be taped and duplicated, be it via some software crack or by grabing the stream going to the output hardware. There may be some quality loss, but if anything the MP3 craze proved that people don't care.
You realy have to wonder what the engineers who designed this stuff and claimed they could make it an effective copy protection scheme were thinking. You'd think people involved in things like encyption and whatermarking would be aware of how they can be broken/bypassed and realize that this is one area where they can not be effectivly applied. Of course it may be that the managment and business drones are the one's pushing for it, but if that's the case then shouldn't the engineer's be the ones to step in and give them the truth of the matter? I think that fact that businesses and organizations can so blindly embark on a such project without giving any thought to what the people who actualy know what they're talking about are saying is a much greater indication of the breakdown of our society than the mass copying of data contained on overpriced plastic discs.
And even that can be overcome. One word: bribery
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Money watermarks exist as an easy way for someone to check authenticity (look for the picture under the right lighting) without adversely affecting the primary image; the watermark is largely imperceptible unless you know what to look for. Likewise, DVD watermarks add something to the image that will normally not be noticed unless you know what to look for (and may need additional technology to observe). Like watermarks on money or checks, they're hard to duplicate and either don't appear in copies (new $ bills), or grotesquely stand out in copies (many copied checks scream "VOID"); new DVD players would look for "watermarks".
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
> You thing pirates don't do holograms? No, but holograms are STILL a good idea. They definately raise the bar to make it a lot more difficult to do.
Of all the stuff talked about in the article, the only one that made sense was a holographic image (a la the one on Microsoft product ID cards) that would actually be on the ring on the inside part of the DVD itself.
It won't stop people from copying the DVD's (Which is realistically an impossible goal) but it will make it very easy to determine whether a DVD is pirated or not. That will hopefully protect people from being scammed and buying bootlegs unintentionally and it doesn't require some watermarking or encryption scheme that is doomed to fail.
As the article also mentions it will make it very easy for law enforcement to ID bootleggged DVDs. That's the route they need to take. Go after the scum who are actually profiting off of other peoples work. That's who's costing them real money and frankly, that's a whole lot easier to get a handle on than trying to come up with yet another copy protection scheme that just pisses the customer off...
Any kind of robust scheme is going to involve an update to people's players
That's tricky, because the industry doesn't want to break compatibility with the current platforms in homes around the world. "We don't want to make their hardware obsolete," says Brad King, (MPAA).
Wow, I guess these guys really do care about us!
Oh yeah, and pigs really do fly.How often do you actually see it in use? Jeez, Real media is more relevant than Windows media.
It says, "...the Content Scrambling System (CSS) decryption key also resides on the physical disc cannot be copied, and without the decryption key, the .VOB video won't play from the DVD or from your hard disk..."
Wrong, wrong. The DeCSS key recovery attack designed by Frank Stevenson can be applied to the .VOB ciphertext directly as in the DeCssPlus application. You can decrypt the .VOB ciphertext without having to access any of the keys on the DVD. The bottom line is that CSS is a very weak cryptosystem, further crippled by the fact that it is based upon the concept of a trusted client.
Further on in that article, they go on to blame Xing for forgetting "..to encrypt its decryption key." What a load. They didn't forget anything. The bottom line is that in order for software to decrypt the DVD, the player key needs to be in plaintext at some point in the software execution.
This just further reinforces Bruce Schneier's valid point about the impossibility of having a trusted client. Watermarking attempts will eventually fail as well.
In a similar vein, the copy protected hard drives will fail. If there is a demand for drives without protection, wouldn't a company show up to provide them? I don't claim to be an expert, so maybe somone with experience in the field could rebut my theory.
----
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
I'm all for free movies and stuff, but what the fuck is this indignance against companies that want to protect their stuff? I know that they are fat cat billionaire bitches, but they did fund the work.
Yeah, the writers got fucked, the girls with the nice tits and guys with nice asses got the dough.
I digress.
And these people who complain about quality degredation - please don't forget that you will be most likely watching this shit on a standard TV (that has a whole 500 lines of vertical resolution)!
Whatever.
Can we do something a little more productive?
Like killing some fucking cigarette company execs.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Of course, those people are too busy driving porsches and "doing the horizontal mambo" with hot babes.
Wait a second...
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Just whoring for some karma, but it does pose an interesting question.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
It will work only if the player looks at the watermark and takes no action. What if only some (most?) "watermarks" are invalid and the player stops playing if it sees an invalid one?
How long, before DVD players need to be hooked up to a phone line/the net and it phones home to see if it can play the DVD?
Of course, the counterargument to that is that such a player won't sell. True enough. But, what if the Star Wars collection or the Matrix collection is only playable on one of those players? What then?
CBS Evening News reported a few nights back that the UK is seriously considering getting rid of the rights to trial by jury and not being tried twice on the same accusation. Is this report true? Makes it kind of hard to see why we Americans saved you all from Hitler, if you don't end up preserving your freedom anyway. Of course, I may be soon enough wondering why we saved ourselves.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
No, they're after everybody.
If you buy the DVD they are not trying to punish you.
I'll tell you what I did just today.
My 5-year-old daughter has a CD of kiddie songs she loves to listen to. I noticed the CD wasn't going to survive much longer, so I ripped everything as MP3 into the PC and created an el neato desktop icon for the asociated playlist. Now, when the CD gets scratched beyond redemption she'll still be able to hear it. (I do the same thing with my own CDs of course; the wear and tear is considerably less but there is some)
They want to prevent such a thing, so I keep buying the same product over and over again. For movies, for music (they want to make unrippable CDs too, or migrate music distribution to the DVD format), heck, even for books.
So, can you still say I won't be punished if I buy the media?
I get the feeling that in the future the only way I can be free is by eschewing electronic entertainment altogether and only read books and play music with instruments (unles thay mandate "secure guitars" or something). Might be a healthier life, too. Fahrenheit 451 anyone?
"As long as you can get a movie at $19.99 with superior quality and extras, what's the incentive to get a poor version for less than that?"
I'd say there's considerable incentive, judging by my freinds' sizable movie-on-cd collections. There has always been a market for low quality at a low cost. Dr. Skippers, anyone? Store Brands, Geo Metros, Community college. The list goes on.
Stupid like a fox!
What if only some (most?) "watermarks" are invalid and the player stops playing if it sees an invalid one?
If they went with a system like this, none of the old DVDs would work on the new players. That means a lot of people would have a lot of DVDs that were mostly worthless when their old player breaks down.
It seems unlikely that the MPAA would be willing to screw over so many customers. But you never know, they seems pretty stupid.
Stupid like a fox!
vs
Stupid like a fox!
Blockbuster is PISSED that DVDs are only good for about 7 to 10 rentals before they gradually become unplayable without major skipping and such. Then angry renters demand their money back because their rental has unwatchable segments.
And neither can Blockbuster accuse SPECIFIC renters of damaging the discs because NO SINGLE RENTER caused the damage. It's a cumulative effect.
You bet there's a need to back up DVDs. Legal provisions allowing back ups often don't apply to so called "durable media". Are DVDs "durable"? Real life usage seems to say, no.
> How many people around the world do you think
> paid for their copy of Windows vs. the number
> who did pay?
How many people think that mediocre OS is worth the sticker price? If the product is worth paying for, more people will pay. Not all, but more.
I know a good number of movies I think are worth paying $20 for. Sure, people are always going to pirate because they can, but they'll pirate far less if they feel like they're getting a good value. So again, I say, just keep the price of DVD's reasonable, and you'll earn more money than you will have saved after subtracting the costs of copy protection from the very small number of pirates it stops.
Mike Massee
(Drat, pressed the enter key in the subject line!)
Does not the sheer number of copy protection schemes on a single disc strike anyone as ludicrous?
So, on my copy of Star Wars Episode III, I'll have:
* Macrovision
* CSS
* Watermarking
and none of that can prevent me from making an easy copy in any way. A modified player disables macrovision. It decodes CSS when it plays the movie back, and the watermark is irrelevent to an unaware format (pick one, there's tons of them out there and they aren't magically going away)
If I as an individual person can so easily copy a disc, how are any of those things supposed to stop pirates? As mentioned previously, bit-by-bit copies circumvent any means of digital protection. Copy protection is a huge waste of money that threatens to drive the price of DVDs higher.
That's the best anti-piracy tool that the industry has going for it - most DVD's are priced reasonably. Sure I can make a copy, but why would I want to? I'm going to buy movies that I like. The price is right. That's all they have to do, is keep prices reasonable.
Mike Massee
Ah, but that's the thing..
/NOT/ hit your stupid ass?)
There's no money in citizens.. only consumers have money, and then it's a pain to have to deal with million's of them.
The big industries are where the money is at anyways.. You only have to goto a few small groups and the "alternative income" is larger.
Everyone wins, ne?
Besides, consumers are too dumb to run the government. Look at 'em, they all belong to one undesirable group or another.. Dopeheads, rednecks, hippies, etc.. or they like stuff like reality based tv shows, talk shows (Springer?), bad "pop" music and everything else made for the lowest-common-denimenator.
Plus they can't drive (what's the deal with people turning onto a 4 lane highway and going ACROSS the nearest lane to them, in order to get into the furthest lane that they can possibly turn in. You think someone from the opposite side of the road would like to turn the same way and
-since when did 'MTV' stand for Real World Television instead of MUSIC television?
I wish to point out unless they have the DVD disc manually inserted into a DVD player by a MPAA representative that each form of copy protection they try will not work in the long run. One reason is that you can simply make a bit by bit copy of the DVD disc thus bypassing the copy protection. The software industry learned this lesson the hard way back in the days of Police Quest and Leisure suit Larry so I am sure the movie industry will learn it at some point as well. By doing a bit by bit copy of the DVD disc you have the keys the watermarks and a fully playable disc. Watermarks and CSS will not prevent this form of attack and the bulk video pirates are probably already using the attack that I described to mass-produce illegal copies of DVD disks. This will solely prevent the home user of the disc they purchased from being able to make a copy of the DVD disc for legally allowed fair use such as an archival copy. An archival copy is very useful on those G rated movies you bought you kids for their birthday or Christmas.
:P
--
When I'm good I'm very good, when I'm bad I'm better, But when I'm evil you better run
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
>The reality is, there are no known cases of >DeCSS having been used to pirate any movie, so >the correct assumption should be that legal >users are using it for Fair Use purposes. DvD
;^) and the quality is very
No known court cases you mean? If you're denying
it happens then you have very blinkered vision - there was a thread on Slashdot a few months ago
where several people happily admitted trading ripping DVDs over their University network.
A movie fits quite nicely on a CDROM when compressed with DivX
watchable (apparently, so I've heard etc. etc 8^)
--
C-YA
Jon
The DVDisc was around for some time before the Industry decided on a format, then they introduced that stupid region encoding, which, in fairness, isn't an issue 96% of the time, but is just another method for price control. (I cannot seek out a cheaper DVD in Australia because the Studio's/Distributors control what goes into the Australia Market as opposed to what is avaliable in the US, UK, Europe Canada etc...)
And then there is the studios. In Australia (Region 4 for those who are interested) you can Hire X-Men on DVD, no issues, but you cannot buy it. There are many films, plenty from Fox, that are like that. Why??? Because Fox have decided, in Australia anyway, that is is more profitable to not release a DVD for sale because ??? Well, there is no reason given other than DVD apparantly is less profitable than Video. If that where the true case (and DVD has pushed the price of video's down nearly 20% here) why would any studio release DVD's, they are about making money after all.
My point is that DVD offer a lot to the comsumer in principal, but very few studio's/distributators offer ANY of it.
Trav
Leg Godt!
We'll get them from Canada instead. Then the US can blame Canada!
Even a perfectly copied DVD video would contain watermarks that would prevent a DVD recorder with a watermark detection chip from playing the bootleg copy.
He's right! (If you copy it onto, say, a record.)
"And like that
What I'm wondering is why shareholders with a clue aren't sueing the respective companies for 'fraudulent' behavior, considering copy protection is just a scam!
Like, are they so afraid of P2P technology, that movie sharing and such, will rise that watermarking is worth the effort?
It almost seems like the corporations involved are mixing their signals!
Are they trying to prevent pirate/bootlegs? Why would watermarking prevent that?
Are they trying to prevent people from copying content they legitamately own? Why would watermarking prevent that?
This is ludicrous!
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
stealing and copyright infringement are two different things, they are both illegal and argueably wrong but different nevertheless.
I think some form of copyright control is good. (I think that the watermarking of DVDs is not such a bad thing) But it seems that with advancing media technologies and legislation (dmca) we are moving (we're not there yet) to extreme forms of copyright control with pay-per-view/listen/read/use. I think that that kind of extreme copyright control is bad for society. It hinders the availability of information and the free availabilty of information is IMO something that helps a civilization advance.
Towards the end of the article explaining how the industry would watermark DVDs, "Linticular Holograms" are briefly mentioned. Google didn't turn up any useful results on what they were. Does any body here know well enough to explain it?
--- Computer science is about computers in the way that astronomy is about telescopes. -???
On the other hand I do believe that some watermarks verses any other type of protection have some small practical use. Distortion resistent watermarks can help scanning software identify restricted material. If it were applied in MP3's as an example the recording industry or whenever they forced to, would do the filtering by useing a black box to test so many bytes from a file in an automated system to block that material or to shut down the offending server within an hour of detection.
Today (sunday's) China Post (Taiwan print edition, no link) has an article about Taiwan having developed local DVD pickup heads for DVD-R drives.
The above post says DVD hardware is tightly controlled. Well, tightly is an adjective that is a bit vague to describe the real-world situation here. Japanese might be a better descriptive term, ie, the DVD hardware market is controlled by Matsushita and Sony and their karaoke buddies.
Now, Taiwan claims to have an independent source of DVD-R hardware IP. That means, the whole DVD hardware regulation playing field has been altered.
I've been ranting about this for almost two years now. The release of DVD writers into the market has been criminally slow and it's precisely because of these akward attempts to control the market like a pet in a cage which were facilitated by the Japanese ownership of all the DVD laser and associated hardware IP.
Once things start coming out of Taiwan, you've got a whole new ballgame. You say, the US will stop them from being imported? Hah! Here's is where it gets fun. How far will the US go to punish the Taiwan tech market? Taiwan is already kicked out of the UN. What next? No more military support, okay, so Taiwan goes back to Mainland China. Ha ha ha. Problem solved, guess not.
who sees that they're just going to use this watermarking to break compatibility with old players in about 3-5 years? Yeah, It's new DVD 2.0, with better picture quality and sound. Just buy a new player and your entire movie collection again.
Well, We all know that George Lucas wont release films on DVD, Rather than risk 'people pirating' his movies, he simply wont release them in all their digitial glory. Which is why there is no Starwars DVD's, or better yet, a DVD collectors pack.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
And watermarking the content helps with this how? There's no reason the pirated DVD's won't be identical (including the watermark) to the real thing.
Somebody should propose a law making it illegal for media providers to purposefully use technological means to restrict consumers' fair-use rights.
I agree. I think the MPAA and the RIAA should be given the prestigous "US-constitution-wrapped-around-a-brick-thrown-thr ough-the-window" award.
Watermarking as in money-watermarks? I imagine large company's can buy 'watermark' time. A subcinscious can of Coke on your screen ;)
After that a penguin.
Or do I really misunderstand their idea of watermarking??
---
Privacy is terrorism.
if watermarking could work well
without wasting wonderful quality
written with which
wakes worldly senses well
which in turn lets
wastful companies
widely welcome our money
without wilfully exchanging to us
that wonderful data in
its epiphany of width and depth
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
This is true. Well, no, not really, but it got really close.
If the MPAA "fought technology with technology" by utilizing CSS that would be fine with me. Great, ok, so people can copy movies, we'll just make it HARD. Thus fewer people will copy movies. Lets leave trading movies P2P out of this, the time involved is prohibitive with most people's connections (56k is still the standard right?).
But when they start using lawyers to press felony charges on kids... they start looking bad. Now, don't get me wrong, they are legaly within their rights. But remember, there are three major court systems in this country. State/Local courts (on the MPAAs side), Federal Courts (also on their side, at least for now), and the Court of Public Opinion. That last one is getting pretty pissed off at them and the RIAA.
We'll see... I think it's going to take one nasty arrest of an otherwise perfectly respectable looking white collar pre-law student with a 4.0 and a lifetime membership in the debate society to destroy the MPAAs credibility with the general public. After that, their lawyers won't be able to stand up to the grassroots outrage.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Technology will prevent illegal copying of DVDs
The only property that is worthy of the name is tangible property. Anything else, ideas, inventions, formulae, equations, drawings, pictures, etc... are up for grab. If you can't chain it or lock it up or put a fence around it, it does not belong to you. Like it or lump it.
People yearn to be free. Anytime somebody tries to control other people's liberty, they get burned. The French have a saying for this, "Chassez la nature, elle revient au galop" which, roughly translated means "Chase away nature, she'll charge back gallopping." Nobody can stop people from transferring and copying files unless Big Brother enacts an Orwellian form of government. And if that happens, we'll all rise up and kick his arse.
The intention is not to prevent you from anything, but to increase the severity of your "crime" artificially. After all, one who "cracked" three protection schemes to "steal intellectual property" must be a habitual criminal.
Current copy protection schemes are based on law and court decisions, not on technology. The role of technology in this game is solely supportive. It doesn't matter whether a protection scheme is breakable or not, or how much time and resources it would need to break it. What matters is that an accusation can be constructed easily from pure existence of such a scheme, however flawed it may be. Its existence makes you "break", "crack", and "pirate" the things protected by it -- how could you have copied if you didn't?
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
If you read the article the purpose of watermarking is to allow only 1st generation copy, like minidisc does. A dvd-r unit should remove the watermark when recording the dvd, therefore, if you try to copy that dvd-r you just made, it will fail. That, of course, will be bypassed pretty soon.
Sorry, I just messed it up. What the DVD Recorder will do when copying is to set a "no more copies allowed" bit in the dvd-r you create. The watermark will remain there, ofcourse. Attempting to copy you dvd-r will fail.
Strange. I used paragraph tags, and it looks fine from here. Not sure why you're only seeing one big block of text.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
You bet it was their intent. You see, all the things you say you want to do with your movies are things that can become profit centers for the media companies. You want to be able to watch a movie on your laptop, perhaps while you're on a plane? Sure, we can help you with that. Just plug your laptop into this Ethernet port here, key your credit card number into the seatback terminal, and you'll have your choice of hundreds of movies, all for one low price, to watch while you fly. Did your DVD get damaged? Oh, sorry about that, but don't worry, they're cheap, so you can just buy another one. Do you need excerpts of this film for a presentation? No problem. For a small licensing fee, we can supply you with a package of pre-selected promotional clips. It's the same story for any other form of media. All this furor over piracy is just an attempt to make sure content is locked down, not from pirates, but from anyone who might want to use it in other than the strictly prescribed way. The media companies know full well that this won't stop pirates. All it will do is limit what everyone else can do with media content, providing the companies the opportunity to sell those rights back to consumers. Don't believe for a second that these guys are stupid. They aren't. They know that if they lay out all their reasons for locking down content, it would become clear that they're trampling all over people's fair use rights, so they hide behind the piracy argument. Not only does this obscure their true motives, it facilitates a heavy-handed crackdown on anyone who gets in the way. It's all about the money. For every way you might use media content, there is an opportunity for profit, if the media companies can erect an electronic toll booth. The more of these toll booths they can set up, the more money they can extract from you. DivX was one attempt to do this, but it failed because there was an alternative: DVDs. Sony's plan to authenticate PS2 games and lock them to one machine will be another. Restrictions on when and where you can play SDMI-protected music files will be another, as will the concept of limited-time-use books on CD-ROM. I'll even dust off my crystal ball and predict some others: PPV movies will be un-recordable, unless you pay a higher fee. Actually, SkyPix, a failed DBS venture in the early 1990s, was going to do this using Macrovision. If you paid a lower fee, Macrovision would prevent you from recording the movie. For a higher fee, the Macrovision would be turned off. For anyone who's wondering, this was done by sending instructions to the customer's receiver. You'll become unable to fast-forward through commercials recorded on your PVR. The networks have hated the fact that viewers could zap commercials on taped shows. Now, they finally have a way to stop it. How will they manage it? My guess is they'll say that their schedules are copyrighted material and demand that if the PVR makers want to use them, they'll have to meet their demands. Some shows will, like PPV, become un-recordable. The technology to do this has already been mandated for digital set-top boxes by the FCC. This will let the content owners sell copies of these programs to consumers who would otherwise just tape the shows. Music fans will be given the "opportunity" to buy different listening rights for their favorite songs. For one amount, you can listen on your home computer/stereo system, for a small additional fee, you can copy tracks to your car's audio system, and for yet another small fee, you can download songs into a portable player. But forget about sharing your tunes with your friends. These songs will only play on devices licensed to you. The fees won't be any lower than what you pay for standard CDs, even though the music companies' distribution cost will decrease dramatically, but that's OK because you're paying for the "convenience" of instantly downloading albums from the Internet. Electronic books won't be sold to you; they'll be leased. Are you in college? All you have to do is pay a subscription fee to whichever publisher your school has selected, and you'll always have access to its most up-to-date texts. But don't forget to get that payment in on time, or all your textbooks will suddenly disappear. Oh, and about those used textbooks, it was always a pain to go back to the bookstore and sell them at the end of the semester, wasn't it? Well, don't worry, that's no longer a problem, since you have nothing to resell anymore. Now repeat this aloud three times: "It isn't about piracy--it's about maximizing profits." Careful, though, because I believe that fact is a trade secret, so you might get sued if you say it too loudly.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
no big deal, it was getting to easy ripping DVDs allready
--rock me like a huricane? NO rock you
k, i don't quite know if i understand this hologram thingy. Is it just a sticker that the consumer can look at and tell if it is fake, or is it detected by the DVD player and that tells the player whether or not to play the disk? if it is one not the other and the other hasn't been invented and it is a good idea, then it's mine and i 0wN it...
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
On a different note, I'm not really worried about this at all. The new watermark is going to be dependent on hardware support. People don't want watermarks. So guess what's going to happen to the first manufacturer to enforce watermarks? That's right, nobody's going to buy their burner. And if they allow watermark detection, but don't enforce it at the hardware level, then you can damn well bet that somebody (Me, for example) is going to write a burning program that won't enforce it at the software level.
So, like I said, I'm not worried about it. Once consumer grade DVD burners catch up, I'll be able to backup my DVDs. (No, that's not a euphamism for pirating them.) And the pirates in China will still be able to make their bootleg copies, for whatever it's worth to them. All in all, this isn't really going to affect anybody, unless they go out and buy a watermark-enforcing piece of hardware. And even if they do, I bet it'll be a fun hack to remove the watermark detection from the circuit.
-Jade E.
Slashdot story: Self-Destructing DVDs: Son of DIVX
There's not much info there, but you can also check SpectraDisc's own site.
Scary, huh?
-Jade E.
"The reality is, there are no known cases of DeCSS having been used to pirate any movie, so the correct assumption should be that legal users are using it for Fair Use purposes."
Excuse me? I must assume that you were being ironic.
The reality is pretty much the 180 degreee opposite.
Don't get me wrong, I like a good free movie as much as the next guy, but there some pretty self-serving elements to this debate. The primary purpose of DeCSS and the plethora of tools which depend upon it is to rent&rip movies.
"Theft," "fair use," "piracy," "infringement," et cetera, et cetera... apparently no one, either here or in the legal profession, can agree on what those concepts mean. No standard exists; I will act as if the concepts don't exist and copy to my heart's content, and use circumvention methods when necessary. Boo-yah.
The coolest voice ever.
Before anybody freaks out.. bear in mind that this is not a troll/flame.. Well.. not intended to be anyways.
This article is going to bring out the 'Why this/that' arguments about bad laws and such. I only want to point out that they are going after people that are STEALING movies. If you buy the DVD they are not trying to punish you. They are also doing exactly what many people in here asked for, fighting technology with technology.. Instead of sending waves of lawyers out they are trying to make it less 'plausable' to steal. Now, if they are trying to take away any fair use then I am going to complain, but to make things harder to steal is called security. My personal thoughts on the impact? None.. people will STILL be able to rip movies off DVD'd and download them over the net. It only takes ONE person to destroy there encryption scheme.. it takes hundreds of lawyers to defend the people.
I can't speak for anything else, but the Dreamcast failed because Sega dropped it. It was doing well in the US and Europe, with plenty of number one sellers (virtua tennis, shenmue, and phantasy star onlinee, to name a few). Backwards compatibility with a good system (and the DVD player) is about all the PS2 has going for it, as its library of games is WEAK.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Maybe this will stop the IRC spammers trying to get me to download "Scary Movie" off their home ftp daemon.
Tuvok: "Captain, long-range sensors are detecting the unauthorised copying of a digital versatile disc."
Janeway: "My God! Computer, Activate the Emergency DVD-Protection Hologram!"
EDPH: "Please state the nature of the copyright infringement"
Tuvok: "Unathorised DVD duplication, approximately 600,000 kilometres off the port bow."
Paris: "We can be there in less than 2 hours at maximum warp, Captain"
EDPH: "There is no time. EDPH to Engineering!"
Torres: "Engineering."
EDPH: "We need the Quantum Slipstream drive online right now. There is a copyright infringement in progress."
Torres: "Unbelievable that some people still think that they retain all of those so-called 'freedoms' that plagued Earth in the early 21st century. Slipstream drive will be operational in approximately 20 minutes."
Kim: "Uh, didn't the slipstream drive kill us all the last time we used it, and we only survived due to some bizzare storyline involving a stolen Borg time-machine or something?"
Janeway: "Don't worry Harry. All hands, Condition Red! Man battle stations and prepare the quantum torpeedos. We'll stop those criminals or die trying!"
Seems like to me that the MPAA is grabbing at straws here...we'll try this, we'll try that and what not. Maybe the next scheme will be Mission Impossible-esque "This movie will destruct in 5 seconds...4...3...2...1...42...?
And then we'll figure out how to program a virtual bomb squad.
"Sometimes nothin' is a pretty cool hand." - Cool Hand Luke
Of course this CSS system is supposed to allow them to release them in different places at different times.
Of course 90% of the time the first place will be the US. I mean why else is USA zone 1.
Of course what people will do is buy their DVD from the US. Just get a DVD Player which allows them to switch zone or buy one from the US.
Of course the MPAA gets mad a gets a solution passed in congress.
Ban the exporting of DVDs. So of course smuggling DVDs will become normal. You just need to get one DVD out and you can make a LOT of copies too sell.
Of course at airport they start looking for DVDs just like they look for certain drugs, guns and bombs. The MPAA introduces another copy protection "feature" scented DVDs. This allows them to train dogs to sniff baggage looking for smuggled DVDs.
This I think is the logical end result of all this.
Why not make a DVD that you could only copy once? The CSS or whatever wouldn't kick in until after the copy has been made--and both the copy and the original would have CSS on it. That would enforce copyright, whilst allowing fair use copying.
So ya wanna email me, eh? Change
Let's say I had a habit of ramming my car into brick walls. Would it last that long?
Suppose I had a habit of slamming my CPU with a sledgehammer. Who's to blame for when the thing no longer works?
It's the same thing with ALL CDs, not just DVDs. I have an Amy Grant CD with two corrupted tracks. Yanno how they got that way? It fell to the floor of my closet amongst the dust bunnies, and stayed there unnoticed for two years. You really do have to take care of your CDs if you want them to take care of you.
So ya wanna email me, eh? Change
I used to work at a small local video store and we had a polisher and some clear covers to go on DVDs to prevent scratching and we never had any problems.
I live my life by the moon, if it's high play it low, if it's harvest go slow, if its full then go. -Nelly Furtado
It will be interesting to see, in the longer term, how these types of schemes are affected by fair use claims like RIAA vs. Napster and DVD Cabal vs. 2600. I.e., will it be permissable for content owners to go ahead and encrypt/restrict their content in such a way as to prevent fair use? My bet: Until/unless we can develop some friendly-faced people who do not look like me, but instead look like everyday people, the public and the courts (as well as the legislatures) will continue to think of those of us pushing for freer access as just a bunch of thugs wanting to bring down the order of things as it's know today. The Good Guys did a fantastic job of this sort of thing -- lining up friendly-faced plaintiffs -- in case like ACLU v Reno (the Communications Decency Act case), but I have yet to hear about such a diverse and socially respectable group of plaintiffs assembled for a challenge to the DCMA.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
Re:My thoughts.To Hack or Not to Hack, hack,period (Score:) Most people do not understand the purpose of DeCSS, as it was written to get access to legal purchased DVDs, of which you have a legal write, under archival copyright laws, the DMCA, to reproduce, from the master DVD a copy, but since it was written for the sole purpose of copying via a LinuX required computer, and that their was no issued driver from this established "open source" protocol, MS's Billy-Boy Gate's ( and Pauly Allen ) and the DVD manufacturers have committed a RICO act( world criminal issue, FTC, SEC, WIPO ) for the sole purpose of destroying the "open source" movement, as has just been declared by MS VP, paraphrasing that LinuX "open source", we write HOLIX tm (Hm), will destroy satellites" and start WWIII, and are total criminals....So all you "open sourcers" are you ready now to disconnect yourself, once in for all from Gate's and his fascist "Win-Nosers" and Microsoft-heads", that have destroyed 50 % of the world's productivity, namely the handi-capped who absolutely can not have their computers crash. So all those that do not realize that a "declaration act of war" has been declared against the 70 percent of the world now using some form of UNIX/LinuX, "open source", you better understand this, by law all dedicated users producers of MS Windows products are legally and criminally responsible for any action that MS Gate's and Allen have committed under a RICO act, and further, those that have agreed with their acts are guilty of "associative RICO", with fines and jail time, so I would be careful what I state in ICQ, chat-rooms, and insta-messaging, as it is legal admissible as empirical evidence, especially under RICO, as my RICO experts have informed me....THE "HyTDRA Hacker", very old 2600/c member ( Phone Phreaker, originally )and proud of it....P.S. DSD will soon replace DVD, as it can store 64 times mor music and video on a standard CD-Rom....so the issue is moot, period.
Nano tech groups