DeCSS, From the Beginning

An anonymous reader sent in a link to a presentation given by Tom Vogt at HAL 2001. He reviews the whole CSS/DeCSS mess from the beginning, which makes a it a nice backgrounder for people who are wondering what the Sklyarov, 2600 and other cases are all about.

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Summary of IP laws and the problems with them.

[cbr372]

IP law is a system of law describing what people can and cannot do over Internet Protocol-based networks. The MPAA and RIAA (Motion Picture Associaton of America and Recording Industry Artist's Association) decided that IP-based networks were a bad thing, since it became possible to transmit files over the networks containing copyrighted materials (data) without authorization.

The problem is that you can't really state that something like that is illegal, without making IP itself illegal. Take voice over IP (voIP) as an example. You could theoretically say something, a catch phrase, that is well known from a movie that the MPAA would consider copyrighted - would that then make voIP illegal ? No, of course not.

So the RIAA and MPAA are really fighting a losing battle here. Even if they ban IP-based networks entirely, what about BBSes? Or even if they banned electronic communication entirely, what's stopping you from cutting CDs with copyrighted materials on them and swapping them with other CD cutters? They could try and ban CD-Rs, but there'll always be SOME way of getting information to people without paying the corporation which holds the rights to that information.