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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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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.
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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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.
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.
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.