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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.
Sadly this story does not get the attention in the media that it really should. Yes there are a few blurs about 'Fair Use' here and there, but nothing that really that is open in the public forum. The only problem is that this is not some simple story, it's a rather hard and complex issue, one that the avg. American wouldn't know about or really give a fuck about. Public apathy will doom us in the end.
Frankly if Sony and Paramount, etc. want to encrypt their media offerings then the should be forced to give a copy of the decrypting key to the Lirbary of Congress to held in escrow. The day that the copyright ends, those keys become public domain. End of story. No endless extentions to the life of the copyright either.
I also feel that copyright should move to be more like patents, 20 years to explot, then 'The End', public domain.
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What happened to 2600's appeal of the court decision about DeCSS? Last time I heard from it, the judge had asked some questions about different forms of free speech, which they answered a long time ago.. and then, no news at all, not on slashdot and not on 2600.com..
Did all media totally lost interest in the case and forgot mentionning the outcome? Or is it really taking so long for the judge to decide?
They have one. It's called a lockpick, and it's perfectly legal. Locksmith's use them all the time. And it's also perfectly legal for you to pick the lock on your own car or house if (say) you locked the keys inside.
OK, we have DeCSS... do we have code that actually ENCRYPTS stuff with CSS? What if people widely started encrypting their own works with CSS, (not as secure encryption, just as slightly-better-than-ROT13) then there would be an obvious reason to have it.
Could decrypting your own work actually be illegal?
sig fault
Upon reading of the 100+ page license for CSS, I had a thought- DMCA isn't protecting the encryption; it's protecting the license for CSS. Wrap a weak encryption around a product, and only allow legal decryption if you agree to an onerous license. It doesn't matter how weak the encryption is, that's not the point. The point is to force agreement to the terms of the license. This seems to have legal ramifications, since if the purpose of the encryption is not to encrypt, but to activate the DMCA and thereby force the licensing terms, then it's not really encryption; it's a licensing ploy. So perchance then it doesn't fall under DMCA anymore, since the intention of the scheme isn't really encryption but licensing?
Curtains for windows?
Try some other programs - I also have not had luck with Xine.
There is the Linux Video Project which produces a DVD player for linux.
There is MPlayer which is capable of playing DVD's...
But the one that I have had the most success with is the VideoLan Client. Despite the name, it is essentially a DVD player for many OS'es, with a built-in CSS decryptor. I have used it very successfully.
One line of questions I'd like to see MPAA answer would be:
1) Do they believe in the fair use rights for consumers?
2) Do they believe in the right for anyone to reverse engineer any technology.
If yes, that would imply that any user or group of users would be allowed to playback any DVD's in any ways they (the consumer) see fit?
How would MPAA suggest a consumer to exercise their rights to create a tool to playback a DVD without infringing on the DMCA?
And how would said tool not end up being a tool for copying as well?
I have looked for this information as well, and while I expect it is available online somewhere, it is not easily located. I searched the the EFF site, but the voting records are either not there or not easily found. Perhaps this is not surprising, since the EFF is a lobbying organization that needs to maintain good relations with the congressmembers and their staff in order to remain effective. What is needed is a more radical branch of the digital free speech movement that identifies and campaigns for sympathetic congressman and congressional candidates, and also actively campaigns against politicans who have shown themselves to be the lackeys and prostitutes of industry.
Slashdot, while a great resource for staying informed, is not a very useful organizing tool. What is needed is an online organizing resource that is more politically active and more radicalized than EFF, a supplement to the EFF modeled along the lines of Sinn Fein vs. IRA militants. Sladly, Slashdot is not sufficient, as we all too quickly move on to the new cool toy/outrage du jour.