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Does This Article Violate the DMCA?

Posted by michael on from the address-for-C&D-letters-at-bottom-of-screen dept.

An anonymous but adulatory reader sent in: "Grant Gross wrote a truly sterling editorial on NewsForge about the Felten SDMI-crack paper and how the RIAA's attempt to suppress it uses the DMCA in a most unhealthy way. Jim Tyre, one of Prof. Felten's attorneys, read this article and said, simply, 'Grant rocks.'"

12 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. His questions have already been answered.... by dcigary · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At the end of his article he asks why the Major journalism outlets aren't sitting up and taking notice of the Constitutional atrocities that the DMCA are getting away with. Simple, this has been answered before in many other editorials. The Major journalism outlets (CNN for one) is OWNED by the same groups (Time Warner for one) that pushed the legislation through in the first place!

    --
    ...my Karma ran over your Dogma...
    1. Re:His questions have already been answered.... by Bluesee · · Score: 3, Interesting

      errrr... me too! Here is the quote I carried over from the text to start this post:
      She also suggested a more sinister reason most of Big Media doesn't seem to care: "I suspect it has something to do with the fact that there's a lot of media conglomeration now, and a lot of the mainstream media in the U.S. is actually owned by content holders.

      I don't know for how long I've been saying this exact thing. All you have to do is flick on the TV set and watch a half-hour's worth of news.

      But Freedom of Speech! How far have we fallen when Journalists don't even have enough personal integrity to comment on this thing that directly threatens them! I recall the portrayal of Mike Wallace in the movie "The Insider". Was this the last true journalist?

      It's like we're hearing "just shut up and play with all the nice, shiny toys we've given you."

      The important point to make here is that mainstream media is rapidly devolving and losing credibility. One should - as many of the ./ fans here do - avail oneself of sites such as cryptome.org, indymedia, suck^H^H^H^H, and, yes, here, of course (but not adequacy, IMO the wellspring of trolls, the Phil Hendrie of websites). If enough people patronize the important websites, and it happens enough times that You are the Only informed person among your cowworkers, then, with time, the credibility of such sites will rise, DMCA will fall by the wayside, and freedom of speech will reign as supremely as it should with the internet catalyst.

      The battle is about the entrenched, old-school interests trying to maintain a foothold on their source of revenue. But - hopefully - it is the case that they will lose that hold if they fail to change and adopt the curent mindset that prevails in places like this one.

      If they win, and it sure looks like they are winning today, then God help us we have lost a lot.

      But, you know, we have been losing battles daily ever since the mid-70's...

      --
      SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
    2. Re:His questions have already been answered.... by HamNRye · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How many of these people have a real idea what goes on in the average media outlet nowadays?? Not a frikkin' one of 'em.

      Editors push for more "compelling" journalism. i.e. anything that could have nude in the headline. Let face it "New computer law obliterates 1st ammendment" doesn't get read if "City Councilman pays for sex with drugs."

      In most smaller outlets, you find a team of about 8 staff writers (3 of them Dave Barry wannabes) 16 interns (someone's gotta cover human interest) and an AP wire machine.

      The proliferation of computers and information services has the average newsroom reduced to a text processing machine. The bulk of work to be done is just managing all of the information coming in.

      The days of Woodward and Bernstein in the main stream media are over. However, the average American has also transformed into an animal that values attention over privacy. So much of the "saucy" news does the reporter the favor of finding us.

      Reporters complain about having to get out of their chairs anymore... How can journalism survive??

      As a final note, in a year with a state election looming, the capital city's newspaper has only interviewed the Incumbent in the gubernatorial race. That's because we are only 5 blocks from the capital. (Drive to Earley's House?? He'll give a speech here soon enough...)

      On the same note, join the VA anti-rape movement http://www.theonion.com

  2. One good thing about the US... by mwillems · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Hey, I dislike the DMCA and the accompanying infringement on liberties as much as the next guy - probably more, as I am more aware of them. I travel a lot, and that's a no-no (DVD regions). I carry an MP3 player and that too is a no-no (even though I already own 90% of the music I play on vinyl. Eh, yes, vinyl). And I am sitting here behind a Linux PC, whose videolan (vlc) DVD software I have only just got to run, sort of.



    But I think we must be a bit moderate in the discussion. It's not all bad! At least copyrighted media and windfall "fat cat" profits ensure lots of money spent on technical development and media development. And after all, you can sell anyone anything you like at any conditions you like, as long as you have a contract (and you are not a monopoly).



    And most importantly: One great thing about the USA is that you can sue. It is easy enough, and you can win against vested interests. The existing liberties we have (you are allowed to tape a TV program onto your VCR) were brought about in the courts in the '60s and '70s.



    It seems to me that the most important thing is to make people aware. I did a little unscientific poll last week, and asked 10 acquaintances who own a DVD player if they knew about the deliberate regionalisation that makes it impossible to, say, pick up a DVD in London and play it in Toronto. And guess what. Eight of them had no idea. Of those eight, four refused to believe me. Do the poll yourself and you will probably find the same ratios.



    Then I asked them if they knew you are not normally allowed to play DVDs on a Linux machine. This time none of them knew.



    As long as the industry manages to hide this stuff, we will never see free media. I do believe that as soon as Joe Public gets inconvenienced, DMCA or not, we will not see these infringements for long. So let's ge tthe word out there.



    Michael

    --

    ---
    BDOS ERR ON A:>
    1. Re:One good thing about the US... by bungo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      impossible to, say, pick up a DVD in London and play it in Toronto. And guess what. Eight of them had no idea. Of those eight, four refused to believe me. Do the poll yourself and you will probably find the same ratios.

      Just checking with the people in the 6 desks around me, every one of them was aware to the
      DVD regions.

      Of course, the reason is I'm not in North America and therefore I had to get my DVD chipped
      to play region 1 DVDs. Most people in region 1 aren't affected by the region encoding, where
      as people outside are. DVDs here come out later, are more expensive and usually have less extras than the region 1 DVDs.

      Whatever the issue is, I doubt many people who aren't directly affected by it are aware of it.

      Now, if they are unaware of an issue, but you make them aware, but it doesn't affect them,
      then my guess is they really won't care about it anyway.

      As long as the industry manages to hide this stuff, we will never see free media. I do believe that as soon as Joe Public gets inconvenienced, DMCA or not, we will not see these infringements for long. So let's ge tthe word out there.

      Well, make the word that they are loosing their freedom of speach, not they they can buy DVDs
      in London, and you may have a chance making them care.

      --
      "The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
  3. Advice to publish the next anti-copy circumvention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting
    The best way to publish the next anti-copy
    circumvention device estudy/article/hint is to
    encrypt the text under a "new invented"
    anti-copy algorithm "very difficult" (like a
    rot13 or caesar-n) and keep the algorithm
    secret. Then publish the encrypted text and
    say explicitly it is copy-protected and that
    you require registration to have access to it
    with arbitrary subscription conditions at you
    own criteria.


    Then if demanded under DMCA ask "how can they
    demonstrate without violating DMCA?"


    P.S.: For example, the linux package "bsdgames"
    includes a tool called "caesar" to automatically
    decrypt any text encripted with caesar-n cypher
    (rot13 = caesar-13). Nice game.

  4. So what do you do? by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Interesting
    So Big Media is owned by content owners and really don't give a flying fuck if the first ammendment gets walked all over. So what do you do? Maybe you start a little periodical and scrape by from printing to printing, reporting on stuff Big Media won't touch. Maybe you also set up a web page so your readers can get more coverage between printings. Maybe then you push the limits by reporting on something that would violate the DMCA. And as Corley is finding out, then you get fucked up the ass by the guys who own Big Media.


    A small outlet's going to have a hard time coming up with the cash to defend itself. While we believe code is speech and you can't cover the issues 2600 does without it, Big Media owns the public and the public is where all these wars are fought these days. If the public isn't bitching loudly, you can get away with pretty much anything in the courts and all you need is a shitload of money and more time than the guy you're sueing can spare. Your case may be completely without merit, but even the threat of it can shut someone up, SLAPP laws be damned and apparently juristiction be damned too.


    As big corporations have both major parties in their pockets, the only way that this is going to change is if there's a mass voting out of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and frankly the public are sheep so that's never going to happen. I'm doing my bit (None of my guys got over 1% in the last election.) Are you?

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  5. Re:DeCSS and Linux ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This last assertion of yours is something I've been wondering about for a long time. We've heard tons of comments about how professional pirates can just make direct bit-for-bit copies using an industrial-scale DVD duplicator. But I seem to recall reading that virtually all DVD blanks available to the general public are manufactured in such a way that the space on the disc where the CSS keyblock is supposed to be written is pre-burned (e.g. with all zeros). This makes it impossible to do a true bit-for-bit copy (including the keys) onto those blanks -- and so in order for a small-time pirate to make them work, he'd have to decrypt the .VOB files using DeCSS and then burn the resulting decrypted streams to disk.

    So I'm wondering -- is it the case that professional pirates also have access to non-mangled, totally blank DVD blanks? And is it possible for ordinary consumers to obtain such blanks for their DVD burners? Or are most folks limited to crippled blanks a la the "for music only" CD-R blanks that respect the Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) that came out of the whole DAT fiasco a few years ago?

    Of course if non-mangled DVD-R blanks are available to the public, that puts yet another gaping hole in the MPAA's "piracy" arguments.

    --HJR

  6. The DMCA scares me by ColGraff · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I just want to say, I think the DMCA is the scariest thing Congress has done in a long time. It's being abused so much, it's begining to interfere with freedom of speech, as with this incident. If people would just apply the standard of criminal intent when judging DMCA violations, it wouldn't be so bad, but they don't. The result is that legitimate work which is in no way intended as a criminal act is treated as one.

    RIP, first amendment. You were loved.

    --
    I'm the stranger...posting to /.
  7. Re:DeCSS and Linux ... by rgmoore · · Score: 3, Interesting
    No, DeCSS allowed Windows users to decode (not play) DVDs. Since Linux didn't have the needed the needed DVD filesystem support, the software had to be run on Windows. Not sure if Linux has this support now, but it didn't then.

    Well, the article does actually use the word allows (i.e. present tense) and DeCSS most certainly does allow users of Linux to decode and play DVDs today. I use it for that myself, although the players are still comparatively primitive. ISTR that even at the time that the suit over DeCSS was started there was experimental UDF support in the 2.3 kernel series, so Linux users could watch DVDs, albeit not on a production kernel. And there are actually some DVDs that are in ISO9660 format and not UDF and thus are readable under what was available on a stock Linux system at that time. My copy of The Matrix, for instance, is an ISO9660 disk.

    Furthermore, the comment about "decode (not play)" is a complete red herring. The disk must be decoded before it can be played (duh!), so your distinction between the two is completely bogus. This is actually the complaint about the DMCA. By wrapping together their copy protection scheme (decoding) with the steps necessary to use the product (playing), and by making tools to break the copy protection scheme illegal, content providers thus place unreasonable restrictions on noninfringing use- like the effective inability to watch DVDs under Linux.

    --

    There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.

  8. The government is crooked, not stupid! by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2, Interesting


    I keep seeing posts claiming that major news organizations aren't making a big deal about the DMCA because they are owned by conglomerates. Well yes ... and no. You can bet your a$$ that a major deal would be made if the government went after them. The US government isn't that stupid. They will go after Dmitry Skylorav, but never Ted Turner. Any good bully knows to pick on only the weak - never the strong. So as long as the US government applies the law selectively we won't here much about it from the big five. Since selective prosecution is the Modus Operandi of the US government, we won't be hearing from the major news organizations on the DMCA ever, I assure you.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  9. DMCA trumps the 1st amendment? by Cinematique · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Maybe I'm missing something here... but I was under the impression that the United States Constitution had to be directly amended before a law revoking a right or behavior defined within it's text, could be set into place.

    Example:
    *Amendment XVIII - Prohibition of the sale of alcohol.
    *Amendment XXI - Repeal of Amendment XVIII

    Where in the DMCA does it state that Amendment I, my right to freedom of speech, has been repealed?

    • Article I.
      Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

    I thought the Constitution trumped congressional bills, executive orders, and court precedents...