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DMCA bad for Apple Users
Aguazul writes "TidBITS has published a really strong article on the DMCA and on how this is bad for Apple users, with some good links and suggestions for action. The author, Adam Engst, is regularly voted the most influential person in the Mac world outside of Apple, so this is a serious wake-up call to Apple users everywhere."
The content-production companies have the money, so they therefore have the power over government. We're going to get Digital Rights Management, Ecrypted CPUs, Pallidium, DMCA and the like whether we like it or not. This means Apple can either comply, or go out of business.
Whilst the DMCA is undoubtedly bad, it's not just about Apple users - it's bad in full. Bad bad bad, bad to the teeth, bad bad bad bad bad bad!
Can't we all get together on this just for once?
Apple is known as *the* creative people's platform, look at how many sound engineers use Logic or ProTools on Mac, enumerate Avid's video users, Photoshop's/MacOS hardcore DTP'ists...
Now if they can't use some existing copyrighted work in private to flex their creative muscles, they won't be creative anymore...
(I wrote "is known as", it doesn't mean I actually endorse this vision)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Wow, incredible! Thank you for showing me the light. I'm sure that was the most reasonable argument I've ever seen. Gee, and I though I was straight all along; I'm glad you proved me wrong.
"I was raised by a cup of coffee" -Homsar
Hmmm, the link is dead. *Somebody* must not want us to see it...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Hey, that's nothing. My *girlfriend* thought I was straight. Ah well.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock
One has to wonder: if you produce something on your Mac, are you going to be able to tap into all that DMCA pay-as-you-play goodness, or are you going to need a DRM-authorship liscense to distribute your wares that is only affordable to the largest media companies? Something to think about...
In just 14 posts . . . .
Another buddy was being driven to frustration trying to edit digital video on his PC. So, my Mac friend hauls his Mac over, and they go out and buy iDVD.
Turns out that Apple has put a firmware check in the software. When you launch it, iDVD checks for an Apple DVD player, and if it doesn't find one, doesn't load.
"Ah!" My friend says, "I'll just buy a DVD burner...I wanted one anyway!"
But Apple won't sell you a bare drive. If you want a DVD burner, you have to buy a whole new Mac.
An enterprising man made software that would sit between iDVD and a 'regular' DVD burner, and make iDVD think it was an Apple drive. Apple threatened him under the DMCA, and got him to remove his software from the market.
Macs are broken, or otherwise don't work well because they don't have DM. Keeping the public confised is importent in keeping them your customers, if you have crap that is.
What do you expect?... it runs on MacOS.u =off&mod e_w=on&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tidbits.com%2F&submit =Examine
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_
"Don't sweat the technique."
The DMCA is bad, period. Not just for Apple users, but for all citizens. It restricts the public domain, and our fair-use privileges.
Zambozay! My brain must've been eatin' a sandwich!
Well, considering how DMCA is bad for everyone, I can't really see it as a surprise that you would come to the conclusion that it is bad for Apple users as well. ${x | x \mathrm{is an Apple user}} \in P(everyone)$
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
Much has been written about what's wrong with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). After all, it's been used to jail programmers, threaten professors, and censor publications, and because of it, foreign scientists have avoided traveling to the U.S. and prominent researchers have withheld their work. In a white paper about the unintended consequences of the DMCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the DMCA chills free expression and scientific research, jeopardizes fair use, and impedes competition and innovation. In short, this is a law that only the companies who paid for it could love.
<http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20020503_dmca_conseq uences.html
>
<http://www.educause.edu/issues/dmca.html>
<http://anti-dmca.org/>
Just who are we talking about here? Primarily the large movie studios and record labels, who own the copyrights on vast quantities of content and who have been working with one another and via their industry associations, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), to control how we are allowed to interact with that content. Their unity of purpose and storm-trooper tactics have led some to dub them the Content Cartel.
<http://www.riaa.org/>
<http://www.mpaa.org/>
However, the DMCA is merely one link in a chain that's being used by the Content Cartel and many others to restrict access to the shared cultural heritage of the world, and in the process, extract money from our pockets, stifle innovation and competition, and protect entrenched interests.
DMCA and Trusted Systems -- I recently attended a talk by Professor Tarleton Gillespie <tlg28@cornell.edu> of Cornell University in which he made a compelling argument for how the Content Cartel is using the legal force of the DMCA to direct us down a path where content cannot exist outside of a trusted system, which is a set of hardware, software, and file formats that all agree on what the user is allowed to do with a piece of content. (The trust here is between the pieces of the system, because the content owners don't trust their customers at all.) The trusted system's goals are simple - to eliminate all unauthorized uses and create a situation where we pay more for the content we consume.
A trusted system could prevent you not only from copying a CD or DVD, but also from listening to the CD more than a certain number of times in a day or skipping commercials on a DVD or on broadcast television. Along with requiring us to buy new hardware to play such content and buy new protected versions of the content we already own, a trusted system could have another ill effect. That's because it could prevent us from working with content we would create, using tools such as those Apple kindly provides in iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, and iPhoto. In the worst case scenario, Apple could lose not just the Mac's current digital media advantage in the marketplace, but the ability to work with digital media at all. See Cory Doctorow's article on the broadcast flag in TidBITS-642 for more on this disturbing possibility.
< http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06901>
Professor Gillespie illustrated how this could happen with a discussion of the awkwardly named Content Scramble System (CSS), used to prevent people from copying DVDs, and the DeCSS software created by a Norwegian teenager with help from others on the Internet to build a Linux DVD player.
(A brief aside: DeCSS violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, which ban devices or services that are designed primarily to circumvent copy prevention technologies, that have only limited commercially significant purpose other than circumvention, or that are marketed for circumvention. The DMCA was signed into law in large part to bring the U.S. into compliance with a pair of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties that require anti-circumvention protections in the copyright law of signatory nations. You might think Norway would be included among the nations signing these WIPO treaties, but in fact, only 37 countries have signed on, including the U.S. and Japan, along with the likes of Kyrgyzstan, Gabon, and Paraguay. We're not talking about full international support here, especially in contrast to the 149 signatories to the more general and long-standing Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.)
<http://www.wipo.int/treaties/ip/wct/>
<http://www.wipo.int/treaties/ip/berne/>
In particular, Professor Gillespie focused on three defenses used in the court case filed against Eric Corley, publisher of the hacker magazine 2600, by eight movie studios to prevent 2600 from publishing the DeCSS software. Although Eric Corley didn't create DeCSS, he made it available on the 2600 Web site. His lawyers' defenses focused on ways DeCSS might escape the anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA, which was the law under which the case was being tried.
Let's look at these defenses, all of which the court eventually dismissed in ruling for the movie studios and enjoining 2600 magazine from posting the DeCSS code. A subsequent appeal also failed, and the defendants chose not to appeal again to the Supreme Court (probably a wise move - this particular case struck me as fairly weak).
<http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/2000 0830_ny_amended_opinion.pdf>1 28_ny_appeal_decision.html>
<http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/20011
Create a Linux Player -- The primary defense that Eric Corley's legal team, funded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), advanced was that CSS was reverse engineered and DeCSS written to further the development of a DVD player for Linux, which allegedly had no way of playing DVDs at the time (four players are available now; see the Linux Journal review linked below for details). Unfortunately, the judge deemed the defense utterly irrelevant because the DMCA offers no relief based on motivation. In short, if a technology violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, the purpose for which that technology was created simply doesn't matter. The judge also wasn't impressed with the fact that DeCSS is actually a Windows program, so although it could be argued that it was a necessary step in the creation of a Linux DVD player, it's a weak argument.
<http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=564 4>
The obstacle that actually lies in the way of creating a DVD player is the lack of a key to decrypt the CSS encryption used on DVDs. The only way to come by such a key is to sign a contract licensing CSS from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA), a group made up of companies representing the movie studios, consumer electronics companies, and the computer industry. At $15,500, the licensing cost is not usurious, but the contract effectively prevents individuals and small organizations from licensing CSS. For instance, in the event of a material breach of contract, the licensee is liable for $1 million, and damages can grow to a maximum of $8 million. In addition, the contract prevents licensees from reverse engineering CSS or working in any way counter to the goal of CSS's protection of DVDs.
Put simply, the CSS license is the sort of thing only large companies can reasonably sign, so it's clear that the effect of the DVD CCA contract is to keep newcomers out of the cozy little club. Perhaps that wasn't a likely concern before the age of the Internet, but the rise of Linux and the open source movement shows that small, informal groups organized over the Internet can produce software that threatens the largest of companies.
The end result here is that innovation is stifled. Companies that license CSS cannot, even if they wanted to, produce products that consumers might like to buy, such as DVD recorders that could copy a DVD. That keeps new companies, niche players, or even independent programmers from competing with the consumer electronics giants with innovative features that in any way run afoul of CSS. So although the consumer electronics companies might not have minded consumers copying DVDs, since they would sell the equipment to make that happen, it's worthwhile for them to abide by CSS to eliminates potential competition.
Equally as problematic is that the CSS license's numerous requirements force the consumer electronics firms to be technologically responsible for regulating our movie viewing and copying behaviors for the studios. Signing this draconian contract is an all-or-nothing deal, so the movie studios have cleverly managed to pass off the dirty work of technological regulation on everyone else (they just produce the content; the DVD and player manufacturers must implement CSS). It's a big step toward a trusted system in which all the parties are bound by the CSS contract.
(As an aside, another effect of the CSS contracts is also to move the entire issue from the world of copyright law, where there is at least some presumption of needing to benefit the public, into the world of contract law, which doesn't give a damn about the public good. If this continues to the logical extreme, the concept of copyright, and unauthorized access to any content, could be locked up forever in simple contracts that lie underneath a trusted system's technologies, all backed up by the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions.)
Perform Encryption Research -- Another defense that Eric Corley's lawyers put forth was that DeCSS was created as research into the CSS encryption method, since the DMCA does allow copy-prevention technologies to be circumvented for encryption research. However, the DMCA specifically requires that the encrypted copy be obtained lawfully and that the person performing the research make a good faith effort to obtain authorization in advance. In addition, the decryption tools from such research may be shared only with collaborators for good faith research purposes - in other words, distributing these tools publicly isn't kosher.
Note the words good faith above. In determining whether encryption research is good faith, the judge said the court must determine whether the results are disseminated in a way that advances the state of knowledge of encryption technology, whether the person is engaged in legitimate study of work in encryption, and whether the results are communicated to the copyright owner in a timely fashion. Deciding that none of these tests were true of Eric Corley, the judge dismissed out of hand the claims that DeCSS had protection under the encryption research exception to the DMCA.
Looking past the specifics of this case, consider the ways in which encryption research is considered to be in good faith. You must be a legitimate researcher, have a goal of advancing the state of knowledge, and have at least made an effort to get authorization from the copyright owner. Now think about how these requirements completely disenfranchise the interested individuals and the Internet technical geek community. What does it take to be considered a legitimate researcher - a white coat, thick glasses, and a job with a university, corporation, or government body?
What we're seeing here is how the DMCA in essence props up the status quo, denying that legitimate research could be done outside the halls of academia or a company's R&D department. Left on the outside are the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers... oh hell, go read the rest of Here's to the crazy ones from Apple's Think Different ad campaign for yourself. Whether we're talking about Apple's target audience or the open source community that has had Microsoft running scared is immaterial. The point is that the DMCA, supported by this court ruling, prevents that sort of person from doing anything that's not sanctioned.
<http://www.apple.com/thinkdifferent/>
Report as a Journalist -- A third defense that Eric Corley's lawyers offered was that posting DeCSS was protected by the First Amendment's protection of the press, and by the First Amendment in general. It took the judge significantly longer to dispose of this defense, since free speech issues are notoriously tricky, but in the end, he concluded that the speech in this case is content-neutral due to the functional nature of the DeCSS code. He then went on to note that regulation of content-neutral speech is acceptable if it advances the government's interests and that preventing the copying of digital works is a government interest due to the existence of the Copyright Clause in the U.S. Constitution and the importance to the U.S. economy of exporting copyrighted materials.
If you haven't looked at the Constitution recently, the Copyright Clause reads, To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Personally, I come down on the side of copyright existing to benefit society through the progress of science and the useful arts, and only secondarily to give authors and inventors exclusive rights. By my reading, the government interest thus lies in promoting the progress of science and the useful arts, and there's no question that the DMCA eliminates progress.
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constit ution.articlei.html>
But I digress. The final result of the case was that Eric Corley and 2600 may not post DeCSS on their Web site or knowingly link their Web site to any other site on which DeCSS is posted. The decision was worded carefully so that linking in general would not be affected by the DMCA, but only in cases where those responsible for the link (a) know at the relevant time that the offending material is on the linked-to site, (b) know that it is circumvention technology that may not lawfully be offered, and (c) create or maintain the link for the purpose of disseminating that technology.
In other words, it's acceptable to link to DeCSS if your intent is not to disseminate DeCSS, but merely to report on its availability, a fact I proved to my satisfaction with a trivial Google search on download DeCSS that provided over 17,000 hits, many of them still functional. You can verify this for yourself; just remember that DeCSS is only for Windows.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=download+DeCSS>
Here's where Professor Gillespie's argument becomes a bit more speculative. Although the court went no further in this case, he suggested that in any future cases in which the legitimacy of linking was called into question, he felt that the court would include in its deliberation the nature of the publication in question. For example, if the New York Times chose to link to DeCSS or some other technology that violated the DMCA (as in fact the San Jose Mercury News and Wired News have, in making the point that a ban on linking is seriously problematic), he felt that the court would have little trouble accepting the journalistic intent of the link. On the other hand, if some silly little electronic newsletter aimed at Macintosh and Internet users were to perform the same action, he was concerned that it would be more difficult to make the same defense. And if TidBITS wouldn't match up to the journalistic level of the New York Times in the eyes of a theoretical court, what about a blogger?
The end result would be that this court's interpretation of the DMCA could have the same effect of stabilizing the large news organizations in favor of the small newsletters and bloggers who are redefining what journalism means in today's Internet-enabled world. Speaking as someone who has done some of that redefining over the last 12 years, that worries me.
Regime of Arrangement -- In the end, Professor Gillespie argues that the true power of the DMCA is not so much related to its effect on copyright but these ways it weaves established organizations like large manufacturing corporations, research universities, and media conglomerates into what Professor Gillespie calls a regime of arrangement.
Don't assume that these established institutions are necessarily being co-opted against their will. Apple's Think Different campaign reads like a manifesto for the very people who are disenfranchised under this regime of arrangement, and yet Apple is a member of the DVD CCA, and, obviously, a licensee of CSS for the DVD hardware and software that comes with the Mac. The open source community has proved the power of teams of independent programmers as an alternative to the traditional software development model, not to mention the ivory towers of research institutions. Distance education hints at the decline of the traditional university, and entrenched media organizations have struggled for years with the way the Internet lets anyone be a publisher.
If there's one theme we take into the 21st century, it's decentralization, and you can see it everywhere. The PC overtaking the mainframe, Napster changing the face of music distribution despite the recording industry's best efforts, DeCSS causing the movie studios conniptions, Linux successfully challenging the mighty Microsoft's server operating systems, even the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - all are examples of the power of decentralization and the ever-increasing clash between these forces of decentralization and the centralized power structures that control everything about our world. I have no answers here, but I'd note that despite the awesome power of both systems, I'm seeing the forces of decentralization making significant inroads.
What Can We Do? I've been attending a number of talks on copyright and intellectual property issues at Cornell over the last year. Almost without exception, the talks are warnings of dark times ahead (obviously, most are slanted toward the academic and library worlds), but at the same time, none have offered any suggestions for how we can work to reverse the efforts on the part of the Content Cartel to lock up our cultural heritage and stifle innovation for the future.
At a recent talk by Alan Davidson of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), I chatted with Alan afterwards about this problem, and he agreed it was a concern, but had no silver bullet to prevent the hordes of well-funded Content Cartel lobbyists from having their way with our elected representatives. I, too, have trouble knowing what will be effective, but I offer these possibilities.
<http://www.cdt.org/>
Spread the word to everyone you know. In most cases, the best argument is probably that the entire situation is a move on the part of big business to make everyone buy new consumer electronics and new copies of all of their content. If the Content Cartel gets their way, it will cost you. In some situations, making the intellectual commons argument - that our culture needs access to its cultural heritage to grow - can be effective, though it's generally too abstract. Try to avoid sounding like a zealot (I know it's hard: every time I hear of the latest attempt on the part of these companies to criminalize their customers, it makes me want to spit.)
Support civil liberties organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and CDT that are working to protect our rights. As you'll see in the PayBITS block at the end of this article, I plan to donate all the proceeds from this article to the EFF to help do my part.
<http://www.eff.org/>
Between 19-Nov-02 and 18-Dec-02, write to the Library of Congress with any evidence you can provide on whether non-infringing uses of certain types of copyrighted materials are likely to be adversely affected by the DMCA's anti-circumvention mechanisms. To get an idea of what they're looking for, I highly recommend reading Dan Bricklin's Copy Protection Robs the Future essay, in which he talks about his efforts to post an original copy of VisiCalc, the ground-breaking spreadsheet program he created.
<http://www.copyright.gov/1201/comment_forms/>
<http://www.bricklin.com/robfuture.htm>
Express your concerns to your elected representatives whenever appropriate. EFF maintains an action center that makes it extremely easy to write your appropriate representatives. While you're at it, you might ask how it is that an entire industry is allowed to create a restrictive technology like CSS, require highly limiting contracts, and influence legislation (the DMCA). One of the industry witnesses in the Corley case testified that this three-pronged approach was exactly what the movie studios aimed at creating. Ironically, given that the end goal is a trusted system, this sounds a whole lot like the legal definition of a trust, which is a combination of corporations for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices throughout an industry.
<http://action.eff.org/>
I have to admit, I'm worried that none of this will be enough. The Content Cartel has the aura of celebrity on their side - they're protecting the rock stars and movie stars who sit at the pinnacle of today's society. They're the cool kids, whereas the people who campaign for civil liberties are often considered dull and overly earnest. My main ray of hope is that the reason most of the software industry voluntarily gave up copy protection technologies - primarily that consumers hated copy protection - will rise again, but unless we speak out now, all of our content may be locked up in a trusted system protected by the DMCA.
www.christopherlewis.com
The DMCA should take a hint and get off everyones back.
I was watching the making of star wars making of type shows and there were mac's on pretty much every workstation. Now do they really want to lock down a platform that is used to create the movies (media), seems to me that that would reduce the amount of programs to use to create the content.
Is that what they really want.
Now I didn't get to read the article so I may be wrong. (it was slashdoted)
Dan
what about us PC users?
PC, Apple, SPARC, Alpha, whatever...
Creations are creations..
and the DMCA must be abolished!!
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
Straight men don't use Macs.
Umm... The link you posted seems to suggest otherwise. Just look at the pictures. The fact that you appeared to have missed this seems to suggest that YOU are not a straight man.
bah! It's not about bad for Apple users. It's bad for everyone.
What I find funny is how the author thinks that because Apple doesn't have a DMCA-capable OS, that is going to miss out on the "next big thing". I don't know about everyone else, but I am actively encouraged by Apple's stance. Yes, "don't steal music", but no, don't fsck users simply to placate the gorillas in the MPAA and RIAA. Until a system comes along that lets people who have legitimately bought CDs to "rip mix burn", Apple are firmly on the side of the users. Unlike the MPAA and RIAA, they give a shit about their customers.
Anyway, as a result of MS's stance, I look forward to the article about "how the DMCA is bad for windows users".
Also, now is as good a time as any - get your ass over to the Copyright Office and let them know how the DMCA has legitimately infringed on your fair use rights. They've just opened up to submissions: "The purpose of this rulemaking proceeding is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention"
-- james
First of all, you can't buy iDVD separately, so your friend was probably pirating to begin with.
That said, Apple has to pay a licensing fee for for the technology in iDVD and that fee is included in the purchase of the computer (y'know, those overpriced ones?).
So does this.
The computer I use doesn't have anything to do with my sexual orientation, so why don't you go home and suck salt!
before FUDing first check your facts: iDVD is a *FREE DOWNLOAD* and like all the other iApps it explicitly lists it's system requirements in the download page: (see http://www.apple.com/idvd/download)
as for support for third party DVD burners, your "friend" (assuming they exist) could have bought DVD Studio Pro, Apple's retail product for driving such devices.
Apple didn't hammer the guy over the iDVD hack because he was on the side of the little guy, but because his software was killing their sales by enabling users of a freebe iApp to get the same functionality they're expected to pay for from the retail apps.
Thought so.
Consumers cannot vote with their money because the elections are rigged by false advertising. How many people, for instance, know about the effects of DRM and DMCA? How many of those few know that those laws are, in fact, bad for the customer? Ironically the coming DMCA of the European Union is named and openly hyped as a "consumers' right bill". Yeah, it's about consumers' rights alright. Taking them away, that is.
$19.95 at the Apple store. Description says explicitly that the software requires an built-in Apple SuperDrive.
s /A ppleStore.woa/164/wo/GIySX0RXpB1w4aJX2g/1.3.0.3.27 .8.3.11.13.0
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObject
and smell the digital millenium copyright act
Oh, is that what that stench is?
BSD is dying
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NeXT backs BSD technology
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NeXT dies
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Apple backs NeXT technology, and pays money for it.
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Apple is dying
cacav wrote:
> Actually, I read about some manufacturer of an
> external Firewire DVD-RW drive that made a piece
> of software for the Mac that would hack iDVD so
> that it would work with their drive.
>
> It lasted until Apple found out and told them to
> stop altering their software. I can't recall the
> manufacturer, but I think I read about it in a
> MacWorld article last month.
The manufacturer was Other World Computing, and you have related the original version of the story (which broke around August 12th) accurately. In that version, Other World Computing claimed Apple had *requested* that they drop it because it violated the iDVD license, and OWC had complied to preserve their good relationship with Apple.
There was *no* mention of the DMCA, and no need to invoke it as Apple's iDVD license is quite clear.
The DMCA accusation came weeks later and was only based on a quote from Other World Computing's president. There was no quote from any document they received from Apple, no posting of any document as proof, and no confirmation from Apple.
My personal impression was that the DMCA accusation was an afterthought on the part of OWC's president to make Apple look bad. If Apple really used the DMCA, I want to see more proof than the word of someone with an axe to grind.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
It doesn't surprise me at all that it would go down fast under a vigorous slashdotting, but not because it's run on Macs but because it's run about Macs.
Servers cost money. So anyone building a website will try to use the minimum server power they can get away with. Microsoft will run massive banks of servers because they expect lots of people to connect to them for security patches, bug fixes, security patches, product information, bug fixes, technical support, and security patches.
So here's TidBITS, a site run for the Apple community (which is admittedly small), which only expects traffic from those people who use and appreciate Apples. So they run it on just a few machines. They normally only need one or two.
But then they posted a general interest story, someone told Slashdot about it, and boom! Instant DoS Attack! Find me a one-machine server that has that kind of instant scalability, and I'll buy one.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
...and, of course, name five of their Macintosh using friends, family or colleagues.
#SickNotWeak
Yep... you are right. Cheap shot. It did go down awfully fast tho'
"Don't sweat the technique."
Well, it does not *need* to, but if someone else wants to make Apple's software interoperate with other systems, that sounds like an interesting case of legitimate reverse engineering.
Apple is a hardware company. Software is just a marketing tool to help them sell more hardware.
What is the problem here? Why is this so controversial? Chill out people. The copy is legit. Are you so ready to take the moral high ground that you assume this guy's a criminal?
So you don't like piracy. We are all very happy to hear that. Guess what, though? This isn't a case of pirated software. So bugger off!
I assert ownership of all trademarks and copyrights on this page.
Apple does NOT sell iDVD, they include it for free with Macs they sell that have an internal DVD writer. You an purchase an upgrade to the software but not the software itself.
Apple wrote the software. They can determine the terms under which it's provided, not unlike the GPL and similar licenses. Other vendors do sell such software that you can run on a Mac with a variety of DVD writers.
What's the problem?
to those who see the creative arts as the enemy.
How many tyrants have worked to suppress art? Everyone else needs to wake up and realize that our freedoms are being taken away in the name of "Homeland Security" and other names they give to laws made to sound patriotic or high-minded.
Resist and disobey the corporatist in Washington.
photosMy Photostream
Blah blah blah. Apple apologists always find a way to spin the story in favor of Apple.
That doesn't make it true.
Apple has a long standing tradition of punishing their customers and charging them through the nose for even the most basic services. Here's another true story.
On Classic MacOS you used to have a program called "Hard Drive Setup" for formatting hard drives and to install disk drivers onto them (yes, Mac disks come with a driver partition). Of course, it would only work on Apple-branded hard drives, refusing to format or otherwise touch other drives. This left you with the choice between spending money on overpriced Apple drives, or spending money on (unsupported, less stable) third-party disk tools and drivers.
That was then. This is now. Apple today is still the same old sucks. And the new generation of Mac loving geeks are the same old suckers.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
i did. and, of course, it's very tough to find some fine print that says it requires a super drive.
i ended up spending around $600 for idvd and a dvd-r drive and firewire enclosure only to find out that idvd only supports superdives.
so in fact, apple's application of the dmca is not cool. in my case, i would have loved to have the patch for that and in fact i looked for quite a while and then just gave up.
apple has a nifty os & apps just to sell the hardware. just like m$ has a crappy os to sell office software..
Many products disappear because no one wants them. For starters, the Edsel, New Coke, IBM's PS2 line and Microsoft Bob.
The DMCA and DRM are not mainstream political issues and, most likely, will never be mainstream. That is, elections will not be decided by candidates' stance on this single issue. It just isn't that important to most people.Before someone launches a derogatory rant about the "stupidity" of the American voter, ask yourself why someone with two kids and a mortgage should worry more about copying CD's than about taxes, schools, roads, police protection, etc.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
BTW: we are the largest Mac (but not exclusively so) hosting & colo facility on the planet. Here are some pics on my server.... and yes, it is an old Mac too. =)
I'll probably post an MRTG graph there later today of their traffic volume.
That's called "bending the truth". For your friend to have had a possession of iDVD without having purchased a mac with a DVD burner in built, he must have pirated the software.
Um, no. iDVD is freely downloadable from Apple's Web site.
As for not supporting other DVD burners, there's two reasons for this. One is because Apple wants to propel sales of SuperDrive-equipped Macs, which is within their rights to do (after all, the iDVD software is completely free). Those who want to use external third-party burners may pay big bucks for DVD Studio Pro. The second reason is because Apple needs to support drivers for all those other burners, and they'd rather spend their time right now developing the software. iTunes followed the same curve: it initially only supported Apple-branded CD burners, then gradually expanded its support for third-party burners as the software matured.
However, it is possible to buy a SuperDrive (Pioneer DVR-105) direct from its manufacturer and install it in a G4 Mac. So upgrading isn't completely out of the question, it's just a very narrow range of options.
Yes, slashdot is a great and mighty force before which old and meek Macintosh Web servers must bow. :-)
:-)
(Though it is back up now, and serving 75 simultaneous connection as fast as it can.)
Development resources being what they are, it's taking us quite some time to move to Mac OS X running on a Xserve, which would likely address this problem (and the fact that I can't get email while the Web server is serving so many simultaneous connections).
I suppose asking why Slashdot doesn't automatically cache these linked pages and redirect queries automatically to a cached version if the remote site crumbles under the load wouldn't be helpful?
cheers... -Adam
the picures don't mean anything... plenty of PC and Linux folk use silly images like this for backgrounds and other stuff EVEN when it says shit realted to Apple or PPC. it could even talk about used tampons and guys would still put it up just for the pictures...
besides that doesn't mean that gay men can't create and enjoy these pictures either. they just don't wanna touch them except to put makeup on them.
We dont have any problem with MS, yet ...
As long as there is rock and roll, we're okay.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Your're living in a self-invented utopia, lulled into submission by our Big Brother media, which is just a servant of the Overlords! This so-called act, passed by the so-called Congress, is in fact a cunning ploy, designed to create a secret police that will track everything that you do with your computers. Just because you've never heard of them, just goes to show how successful they are in keeping in a secret.
I recommend that you do as I do, cover your computer in tinfoil and never switch it on, or plug it into anything. It's the only way, I tell you! Together, we CAN defeat them!
For $200 more - I would get the superdrive. Actually it is really odd that apple is offering a 1ghz without it... perhaps their price point is crap (as they already know). But the 133 MHZ and 32 meg video diff is not worth the $500 USD..
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Great info
I just went there with the full intention of submitting. The problem is that I don't have time to wade through their fairly obtuse, 36K Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies document so that my submission must follow the "format detailed in the notice of inquiry". Specifically, I wasn't able to determine what the proposed class or classes of copyrighted work(s) to be exempted were, nor whether they met the requirements laid out in the scope of term "class of works". Briefly, the term "class of works" means:
Is the CD collection I habitually store in MPEG and/or OGG format a "musical work" or a "sound recording"? Can I just pick one? I don't know.Worse than that, I don't know if I can submit comments at all. If I understand their requirements for argument(s) in support of the exemption proposed, I'm not sure I can say that adding lame, easily circumvented copy proctection to CDs is enough to allow me to ask for an exemption. Here's what they say I need to tell them:
First of all, they'll say that the work is available on cassette and I can copy from that (a comparision between DVD and VHS is buried in that doc). Second, can I quantify adverse effects the lack of an exemption has caused or provide legal arguments in favor of an exemption? I don't know. Do I already have a legal right to use-shift or time-shift copyrighted works I've purchased? Search me; I'm not a lawyer. Do I need to know this before I research arguments towards an exemption? Good question.I'm glad you mentioned the submission form, and I hope enough people with more free time on their hands than me can put together enough arguments that the DMCA ia reviewed and exemptions are provided. I'd just like to point out to people that it's not as easy as filling in a web form with "I need to be able to make my Eminmem MP3s..." They want people to say things like "If the only way to access the complete works of Charlie Parker are via DMCA-restricted means, then we need an examption" and then show them, in a way detailed enough for a government employee to understand, why that is the case.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
"you will only find it for download on warez servers."
You say that like its a bad thing.
Warez are the only check and balance we have against abusive monopolistic pricing.
I find only goofy, geeky types get on their holy, high horse about warez.
Straight men don't use Macs. :-)
Yeah, they don't use emacs either. Yeah, go ahead, -1, flamebait...you know you want to.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
does any real creative mind want to tap into that DMCA pay-as-you-play goodness? I want anyone creating content for me to want me to enjoy it, otherwise I can't in right mind do so. Greed simply makes it not fun for me. So does taking away my freedoms.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
(fiction, for those who don't know what year this is) ;)
:) Anyway, you should get the idea. It's one thing to make a product attractive to a customer to try to separate us from our money, but when it devolves into coercion, then it's time for them to go. Their key demographic is in the 15 to 25 range, and that's the place to get the message out. Starve them for revenue and they will be no more.
September 21, 2006 - (AP) NEW YORK
What has been brewing for several years has finally come to pass: the last of the old, "brick and mortar" record companies has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At a press conference at 09:00 AM this morning, Mark Thompson, Chief Operating Officer of BMG America, announced the decision to seek protection as the record giant reorganizes.
"The failure of our government to offer us adequate protection against the ravages of rampant piracy have driven us to this unfortunate decision," he said.
This comes as no surprise to many industry watchers. Word has been circulating on The Street that BMG has been seeking a buyer for the past six months. Over the fiscal year the stock has fallen to a low of $1.17, prompting rumors of a possible buy by cigarette giant Philip Morris. However, the recent downgrade to "strong sell" by Goldman Sachs last month, it is widely thought, nixed the deal.
Consumers may not be sad to see the media giant go. Shelly MacPherson, chairperson of Parents Against Trash in Our Culture, waxed jubilant. "It's about time," she said. "Look at the kind of music they've been pushing for the last decade. Maybe the people there don't have kids, but some of us actually care about our childen. We want them to have a good upbringing as responsible members of society. How are we supposed to do that with the kind of garbage they kept inundating us with?"
In related news, Internet distributor BeSonic, Ltd. reported record Q2 sales, up 12% to $46M. Other "independent" distributors have reported similar gains, as they continue to lead the charge in the market's recovery. When asked about the news, Ian Frederick, CEO of BeSonic, answered, "Piracy? Hardly. Simply put, they pigeonholed themselves, and turned everyone off. People want choice, in their music, and in the way they use it. Not everyone in the world lives in the Upper East Side nor listens to the same kind of music. They certainly won't buy new equipment just to keep a particular company in business. You have to be flexible in the 21st century, or people will drop you for a competitor in a heartbeat."
- Yes, this is fiction, of course (and if your name matches any of those above, then GET A LIFE and realize it's accidental)
Mod this down, please.
they are betting on Mpeg 4 not ignoring the issue. and frankly, isn't this what the discussion surrounding a trusted computer is all about--trusted in the sense of freedom. will we essentially have separate systems for media and for liberty? it's getting wierd ladies and gentlemen!
I read him a little different than you did, it's not the next big thing, it's survival he's worried about. He has realized is that Apple as a creative platform is doomed if the "Content Cartel" has it's way. He understands that everyone loses when content can not be coppied because it perishes and we are all that much poorer in the future. He also tells us the currently proposed means of achieving the goal of copy protection also furthers goals of entrenched content providers by limiting the number of new entrants through propriatory formats, patents and the DCMA's anti-circumvention clause. What he's put together from all of those broad, bad for everyone laws and methods, is very specific bad news for a company like Apple who's market has primarily been the artisians that create in the first place. He has realized that Apple is getting put on the outside of the "copy enabled" world because Apple represents too large a source of likely competition to the Cartel.
It's hypocritical of Apple to wake up now after so many years of feeding the cartel that will eradicate them. For years Apple has been more expensive than other computer platforms because, in part, they were paying licensing fees for the privalidge of creating works of art in propriatory formats. The time to object was long ago when the deviding lines were made between those who could create and those who could not. By pushing its own patents and copyrights, Apple has strengthened the had that now threatens to crush it.
The obvious solution the author overlooked is free software and formats. He does not even mention them as he wallows in the "artist must be paid" logic that inevitably favors the cartel. From the Rosetta stone to VisiCalc, the authors were paid to create. The conditions the authors worked under were determined by the society they lived in. If we seek to screw others and think it's right to do so, we can expect to be screwed. When we seek to exclude, we create the conditions of our own exclusion.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This isn't a case of pirated software.
I must be. Apple only gives away iDVD with the purchase of a superdrive. It says so on their site.
All of this complaining is like me bitching because the free games on my Samsung phone won't copy onto my friend's Motorolla phone. It's whiny crap. They use the software to sell the hardware. It is not "free." It comes with a hardware purchase.
My CD-RW came with a very limited version of Toast. Does that make that version of Toast free? Can I "buy" a copy of it and then bitch that it doesn't work with another drive?
Grow up. If you want to burn DVDs w/out using a superdrive, don't bitch that you can't use superdrive bundled software. Go buy some DVD burning software.
iDVD is software for your superdrive -- period. It is not general purpose DVD authoring software.
t'nera semordnilap
It is also a 10+ year old 66Mhz PPC 601. That is more likely the issue as opposed to the fact that it has fruit on the front.
In fact a server with fruit on the front in the same facility servers this high traffic site, and another here also runs the voter info site for Washigton state... and it pulls in well over 5 million hits on election night.
Webserving doesn't take that much horsepower if the CGI's and databases are absent or minimal. Of course if you could tap the horsepower consumed by pinheaded Linux ditto-heads bashing single-button mice and other Macintosh-isms you could probably power a mid-size city for a few months.
It runs on webstar troll. Mac OS != Mac OS X, WebStar != Apache.
Palladium just means the capability is there if you want it--if you're in gov't for example. It won't stop normal people from ripping their CDs to MP3 in normal mode. But if you need to establish a trusted network for some unusual reason, you can.
Why did you take out the PayPal link at the end? Especially in an article about the content cartel dinosaurs. Here it is again:
If you liked this article, go ahead and send the guy a few bucks. You accomplish TWO goals with you donation: 1) you prove that voluntary payments work, and 2) you make a donation to the EFF (you know, the one you've been meaning to make for a long time now).
I sent him a few bucks already.
"Copyright law is only tolerated because it is not applied to the majority of minor offenders"
;-) caches you will start getting sob stories appearing of how Junior was thrown in the cells and fined several grand merely because he couldn't wait to listen to the new -->insert band here<-- album.
I can't for the life of me remember where this quote came from, but it's true. If they start going after every kid with some mp3s of his favourite band instead of concentrating on those with 50GB music, film, pr0n
It's a shame that it will take things like that to initiate the public backlash, but rest assured, it will happen.
We can only hope that it starts before it's too late.
Look no further than the failure of DIVX; and the impending failures of Musicnet/Pressplay/Movielink; and the fact that (yes, patent-encumbered, but freely copyable) MP3 remains the standard for audio on the PC despite years of effort by the music industry to block it and (tens? hundreds?) of millions of dollars spent promoting first Liquid and a2b, then SDMI, and then Windows Media as alternatives; and the prevalence of region-free DVD equipment in every region but 1; and the consumer backlash against a very small number of copy-protected CDs to see that you're dead wrong. People do vote with their dollars, every day.
sulli
RTFJ.
"It just isn't that important to most people.Before someone launches a derogatory rant about the "stupidity" of the American voter, ask yourself why someone with two kids and a mortgage should worry more about copying CD's than about taxes, schools, roads, police protection, etc."
Why indeed? However presuming that it will stay limited to just such, were the historic record, as well as human nature, argue otherwise is foolish. DRM can be applied to ANY type of content. Watch TV? Listen to radio? Use software? Read an E-book? There is no limits except economic, and will. And most galling of all. The consumer will foot the bill for their own bonds. All those other things are important, but let's not trivialize the issue. For not only are our wallets under assult, but the idea of innocence. You're a crimminal as well as a consumer. The DMCA as he mentioned in the article WILL have reprecussions far beyond the consumers ability to "copy a CD", and it threatens the rest of the world, for stupidity never stays within bounds. Follow his conclusions to their conclusion. The US company that your "consumer with two kids" works for is no longer the leader because ANY research that one thinks in the slightest conflicts with the DMCA is suppressed. The publisher that can no longer publish anything that one deems "conflicted" with the DMCA will suffer. There is plenty more because we all ceased to be "isolated" a long time ago, and Americans can no longer depend on isolation to any degree to be an adequate defense. The majority can feel a sting, as much as a virus can inflict a sting, small though it may be.
I don't mind if RIAA and MPAA win the battle. In doing so they will give up the war. Intellectual property is a tolerated infringement on individual rights. Always has been. When IP laws go to far, the people will act because they are being oppressed. Right now, it's not all that bad. I think most of the community on Slashdot can see it becoming that way.
Once things go to far, Politicians will be unelected. Judges will be appointed to force reversals of decisions. Constitutions and charters will be ammended. And IP laws will go the way of slavery, debtor's prisons, jim crow laws, and voting literacy tests in a rather permanent way.
Of course, I'd like it better if RIAA and MPAA and others simply backed off. Of course, some people don't realize the horse has been out of the barn for a long time...
$G
-- $G
When satellite engineers employ security measures, they do so to protect one single service and are acting purely out of self interest. If effective it's in their best interest that the technique doesn't become a standard so competitors can't do as well. When a company like Microsoft, who doesn't have music and film divisions and aren't acting to protect anything they make, integrates DRM they're acting more like a wing of the government. Is MS getting "endorsements" from the media oligarchies to force this on consumers?
We should have a law which makes it illegal to falsely label a bill.
;-)
After all, there's the "Truth in lending" law, the "Truth in labeling" for consumer goods. Why not a law to enforce truth in presenting laws for the government to pass? Would anyone have voted for "A bill to revoke privacy laws and to reduce your civil liberties" ever pass? It did.
A Bush in the office is worth two as governors.
I think it is a shame we can no longer trust those we elect to office. Instead of looking forwards to someone coming into office we now just pray that they don't do something terrible while they are there. Shouldn't the common man at least have confidence in who has been elected?
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
Well, I think that there is a need for Special Legal Priviliges is a good thing.
You make a product that is NOT defective, you make a product that in the hands of those acting in a proper way IS NOT dangerous.
Someone takes said product and uses it improperly. Someone pushes for you to be held on criminal charges. The courts say that there is no criminal neglect on the part of your company.
So what happens? A bunch of lawyers decide to make your product go away through litigation. They get togeather and sue the living shit out of you and your company.
It happened with the tobacco companies, it's happening with the gun industry, and it's about to happen with companies that make food with fat in it.
I'll bet that if Congress says computer and OS makers don't have to put DRM in hardware/software the RIAA and MPAA will take Dell, Apple, Gateway, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc to court so fast with a brigade of lawyers it'll make your head spin.
If they want to go after Remington and Nabisco, you think Dell and Apple are safe?
You do realize that the User Friendly cartoon you're alluding to was a joke, right?
May we never see th
They have the right because they are free to develop whatever technical means they like. If they want to make it difficult for you to do something, more power to them.
The part of all of this that is BAD is the dmca providing legal protection for anyone on the other side of the fence.
The parent's description of the Satellite TV wars is a perfect example. You can pirate satellite TV if you want, but it's a constant battle between engineers and hackers (heh, what's the difference)
I just realized that gossip functions like a p2p network! One infinitely more efficient because it rarely relays pr0n! Better get a 6 new laws to make it punishable by death and stoning.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Tobacco companies BLATANTLY LIED about the health risks of tobacco for YEARS. THey lied in front of congress, they lied in court, and they lied to all the people who they were selling cigarettes to. AT the same time they KNEW they were causing cancer, they were telling people cigarettes were HEALTHY and GOOD FOR YOU.
The big tobacco lawsuits you see now are not so much about how cigarettes are sold now, but about what led up to now.
Gun manufactueres.. this is not as clear cut.... but to say that they should have none of the blame is rediculous; where do they think all their weapons of death go? many of them KNOW that their guns are ending up with gangs and kids, and they DO NOT CARE. That's negligence.
The Cable TV Company in Victoria, British Columbia, started doing some questionable billing practices; they upgraded everyone's package for 'free' for a few months, then started billing them if they didn't call in and request NOT to be upgraded.
This was later deemed illegal.. however.... well before this happened...
there was a cable revolt. Thousands of people called in and cancelled their cable. It took a week or two before the company buckled and said it would no longer use this method of marketing because "their customers have spoken"
That is voting with your money.
Voting with your money WORKS, but it has to be enough people. If only 5% "vote" against something... that's far from majority, so the company won't care.
It was a bad idea. People still drank and broke the law so they eventualy got rid of it. Perhaps the same thing will happen to the DMCA? we can only hope...
The picture of Playmate Kelly Monaco on my desktop right now would prove you wrong. I'd email it to you as proof, but of course you're an AC.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
1984 Some idiotic journalist says Apple is dying
|
1989 Another idiotic journalist says Apple is dying
|
[...]
|
2001 Yet another moron thinks Apple is dying and writes an article
|
2002 Some stupid Anonymous Coward still believes in the dying myth
Apple: going out of business since 1984!
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Surely if it was going to be that bad for Apple they could just haul ass to Canada, continue to sell Macs to the remainder of the world from there and wait for the next American revolution!
You can also use the Pioneer DVR-103 or 104. They both work with iDVD. I bought a DVR-104 and it works with iDVD. Also, iDVD is part of the standard installation on some Macs that don't ship with a Superdrive, such as my Quicksilver G4 733. Although Apple doesn't officially support this practice of installing your own Superdrive later, it does work and it's a cheaper alternative to buying a new Mac with an internal Superdrive. For drive compatibility, one of the best sites to check is http://www.xlr8yourmac.com
You do know the DMCA is a law, not a feature. You might be thinking DRM. Dummynuts.
It's not because they CAN be misused, but because it is believed the companies in question actively KNOW and secretly PROMOTE the illegal use of their product.
They *want* to sell more guns, even if they are sold to criminals, and will look the other way whenever possible.
A glue company is not negligent because people can sniff glue; it IS negligent if it is knowingly selling bulk glue to glue pushers on the streets of Brasil.