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DeCSS, From the Beginning

Posted by michael on from the once-more,-with-emphasis dept.

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.

5 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Public Discourse and IP by hrieke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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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  2. Re:Stealing is stealing by shanek · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I wonder how all you who support this and the similar BS would feel if someone put out simple instructions for a tool to unlock and start any car, especially yours.

    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.

  3. CSS Encrypter? by kreyg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

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  4. CSS uses DMCA to protect license, not encryption by NanoProf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

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  5. One line of questions I'd like to see MPAA answer by Mekanix · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?