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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.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I heard at one point that it was a voice vote. Now, I would hope that Congress wouldn't be so irresponsible to pass such huge legislation in a way that didn't leave us with any record of who voted for and against it, but if they were responsible, we wouldn't have this damn thing in the first place. And it does serve as an explination as to why it's so hard to find a voting record.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
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.
2600 says it was a voice vote, as well as unanimous.
In 10 years I hope to get artificial vision implants, because of my poor eyesight.
Imagine, I can watch something, then use my built-in TiVO in my bionic eye to watch again and again.
Think the DMCA means I can't go to a movie theater or watch a DVD?
"So it begins... The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
Today is day one at SIGGRAPH, and there has already been a course on Public Policy issues, including mentions of Sklyarov, DeCSS, the Felten case, and others.
During the presentation, USACM co-chair Barbara Simons announced that tomorrow ACM is going to release a "declaration" strongly in Favor of Felten, and that ACM is going to take a strong stance on the Felten case. The group is starting to worry that the anti-circumvention provisions are getting close to "criminializing" a lot of work being done by ACM members, and they think that some of the papers being submitting for an upcoming conference are close to doing the same thing Felten did and that there could be trouble. They said that ACM is going to take some strong anti-DMCA stances.
Check out the web site in the morning for the declaration. It's not up yet, but it will be up at http://www.acm.org and/or http://www.acm.org/
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
I just bought a new Linux PC as my main desktop machine. Nice box: and it even has a DVD drive. Finally, I can watch the DVDs I bought (and paid for) in my office.
Not. I found a DVD player alright (xine), but all it will play is one DVD, that is not encrypted (ghost in the shell). I have watched it twice already.
Now I'd really like to watch the others that I bought. But the suits say I cannot. Worse, the American suits - I am neither American, nor living in the USA. And yet, I cannot find a downloadable player anywhere that works.
Another issue: my DVDs are also a mixture of regions 1, 2 and 3! I know the suits will say that this is bad of me, but I live in Canada and work in Hong Kong and London (UK). So naturally I do not restict my buying behaviour to the time that I am home.
It's not FUD. Sowing FUD is "creating unreasonable fear of what might happen". This is annoyance at what HAS happened..
Michael
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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
DeCSS was part of an attempt to make a Linux DVD player. The DVD Consortium, however, is using the DMCA to go after everyone who makes a DVD player without buying a $10,000 license from them. That's what it's all about--that $10,000 dollars that they have no right to force out of programmers in the first place. All of this "pirating" nonsense is just the MPAA trying to justify their actions by making the programmers out to be pirates.
The DMCA is a wicked law, and a blatant usurpation of our basic Constitutional rights. It must be fought.
Does anyone have a list of which senators and representatives voted for the DMCA? I tried the LOC, but all I got was when it was passed, not the voting records.
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?
You are missing the entire moral ground here. Pirating DVDs is *illegal* and no one should do it. Anyone who really understands this issue would agree. But DeCSS is simply decryption code that has a multitude of perfectly legal uses.
Unfortunately the media giants have pressured the goverment to make decryption itself illegal if the work is copyrighted. Panty-hose can be used to cover your face during a bank heist BUT YOU CAN STILL BUY THEM! Rather than prosecuting people for encryption algorithms they should be prosecuting the people using [ DeCSS | Napster | CD-R Drives | insert evil technology here ] to illegally trade in copyrighted works.
That is called being impartial. Endorsing the misinformation that the media giants are spewing about the "evils" of DeCSS is not.
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 just pulled out several DVDs from my collection and read them. None of them have the disclaimer you mention. They have the following: "This product is authorized for sale in U.S.A. only. This DVD is [or "these DVDs are" for 2-DVD sets] for private home viewing only. They are not authorized for any other use. All other rights reserved. Distributed by blah blah blah..."
In their own legal disclaimers, they gave me explicit rights to private home viewing. No limitation is given for licensed players. The verbiage varies, but no mention is made on any of them for licensed players; therefore, I have the right to use any player I wish as long as it's for private home viewing.