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DVDCCA Claims Patent on CSS
An anonymous reader writes "After dropping their suit against Andrew Bunner, DVDCCA has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against 321 Studios. This is an interesting claim, because since patents are published, something can not be both patented and a trade secret."
..when so many corporations own patents on so many intangible things that a corporate dynasty like IBM can bring anyone in the world to their knees financially.
Even foreign governments.
Intellectual property in all of its various forms is being abused by the corporate world. The madness is the laws supporting this behavior continue to pass, bypassing the individual and wholeheartedly supporting the corporation.
Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds? There is a balance to be maintained, and our rights are not unlimited, but more and more across the entire globe the individual is lost.
Not to be funny but has anyone considered the implications of all these recent intellectual property rights and how it seems more and more that we're being pushed into the draconian future of Johnny Mnemonic and Shadowrun? The only way you get information is to steal it. The only way for another corporation to get information is to hire you to steal it.
I grow more and more distressed at the world my son will grow up in, the conditions he will consider normal, the laws he will break just by trying to think.
If you disagree post, don't moderate.
The patent lawsuit centers on St. Louis-based 321's flagship products, DVD Copy and DVD X Copy, which have reaped strong sales from consumers and bitter criticism from Hollywood.
For us in the Free World, the command is dvdcp
If it's not on your system already, do apt-get install annoydvdcca_utils
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
for a second there i thought they had a patent on CSS
And I thought CSS was dead..
I mean how many times do they have to crack it before they realise that the cats already out of the bag?
Its been circumvented so many times, how can they hold a straight face while that file for legal action against 321studios?
*shakes head*
-- Jim.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
DVDCCA has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against 321 Studios
Wow, after seeing the MPAA issue hundreds of subpoenas, it somehow didn't occur to me that DVDCCA didn't actually sue 321 studios, but a company named 321 Studios.
Kudos to these guys for the choice of name. It's almost as if they expected to be sued and wanted to make a good joke out of it. Well done!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You did realise that MPEG-2 is patented, right? Both encoding and decoding, yeah? DVD X Copy decodes the MPEG-2 and re-encodes with DivX (MPEG-4). Both are patented and must be licensed.
Does my bum look big in this?
I was wondering which hundreds of studios were infringing the patent, and how...
Holy panic attack, batman!
And I'd only just figured out how to do text shadows today!!
from: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48662&cid=493
"Did anyone else think hat the MPAA was suing three-hundred and twenty one different studios?"
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
This is an interesting claim, because since patents are published, something can not be both patented and a trade secret.
It is not generally possible for idea A to be both a patent and a trade secret. But it is possible for one part of program B to infringe on patent C, and for another part to violate trade secret D.
Or it could be that DVDCCA is admitting that their earlier suit was wrong.
(Or it could be that they're full of s**t...)
We have seen this before, and it was seen before that... Good points, but at least attribute them to the original author, or be original yourself.
"annoydvdcca_utils". Now there's a package I can respect!
If I had modpoints, I wouldn't know if I should mod you informative or funny :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I have a question I hope someone here can answer. Suppose a company is assigned a patent by the USPTO, but not by the patent office in my country. In order for the patent to be assigned to the company, they have to publish their invention. This means that I can find out what their invention is (since it's public), but since the patent doesn't apply in my country, I would not be infringing on the patent by using that information. Is this correct? Why or why not?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Assuming there is a patent for CSS and 321 Studios is not licensing it, I say fuck em, its their own damn fault.
Although, as usual, there is no information as to what patent DVDCCA is claiming infringment on, or what components of DVD Copy and DVD X COPY DVDCCA claims infringe upon that patent. So, until we get more information about this case I suspect the large portion of discussion here will be needless bitching and moaning about patents, lawyers and law in general, with the occasional bad joke about someone patenting suing people and how they are going to sue DVDCCA.
Wait until more facts come in before you assume that DVDCCA is wrong in this case.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Err... Does this go for DVD-to-DVDr copies as well? Just asking...
Yeah. I know you get DVD-players with DivX/XviD-support these days, but nevertheless!
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
This is not necessarily a contradiction. The CSS algorithm (or business model!) could be patented and published, and the player keys could still be a trade secret.
IANAL.
The trade secret approach would be dead in the water. Trade secrets provide protection against leaks, where employees disclose information that they shouldn't, but not protection against people reverse engineering, rediscovering, or reimplementing something.
The only thing left is patents.
It would be interesting to see if this approach works. If the case is won by the DVD CCA, it provides a strong argument against the DMCA -- patents alone would provide sufficient protection for at least some copy control technologies. If it's lost, then they've lost one more layer of protection.
I'd have to see the patents, but I'm a little doubtful that they really have CSS patented. The mechanisms involved are not revolutionary. Patents don't protect an end product -- just a particular process that yields that end product -- so I'd be suspicious that a patent would either not cover the work being done or would not be valid.
May we never see th
or am I the only one who feared someone was claiming a patent on Cascading Style Sheets?
Of course the same thing cannot be both patented and a trade secret, but the method that CSS uses to "protect" content can be patented, while the actual keys used can be trade secrets. RSA used to be patented, but the secret keys people used were secret anyway.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
As an Ex-Employee, I can say this: They are fully expecting to get shut down. Many of their internal business practices are "Profit before perfection" and it shows. They plan on getting as much buck as possible before any bad rulings shut them down. looking for the basis of XCopy? check out IfoEdit (freeware!!!). GamesXCopy? look for GameJack (gamejack.org) combined with Daemontools! Step 1: release barely-functional software. Step 2: Step 3: Profit! Nearly everything they have is un-original. Only the transcoder for re-compressing MPEG2 is original. Burning system? why, that is CopyToDVD. Reading? BlindRead, with CSS hacks. They claim that they are fighting for the users, but fire an AVERAGE of 30 people per month. This is from a total of around 180! Fellow Slashdotters, beware! This is NOT a company to feel sorry for. Instead, we need to rally behind the idea that open-source versions being legal. my 2-cents... btw: anon so that old friends don't get the boot too.
What do you mean something cannot be patented and also be a trade secret?
Our store-bought legislators have allowed software to be patented, copyrighted, trademarked, and be a trade secret all at the same time!
The algorithms in a patent may not actually work as described, because there is no requirement to prove them for correctness or submit a working program. There may be subtle modifications required to get it to actually work. However, if you implement a working program that does the the same thing you can be sued for infringement.
Second, the patent language is usually so obfuscated with legalese, redundancy and excess verbosity that the patent is of little use to someone who wants to build a working program.
The lack of a requirement to publish source code, combined with the obfuscated patent language, allows software to effectively remain a trade secret even after it has been patented.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
This is an interesting claim, because since patents are published, something can not be both patented and a trade secret.
Copyright
Trademark
Trade secret
Patents
Methods
Designs
"Intellectual Property" without further elaboration
Companies would like to try "all of the above". They want all of the protections, while giving nothing in return. What's even worse, is that I think many politicans and such actually believe that they're doing the right thing to "promote the science and arts" by doing so.
Unfortunately, in the capitalistic society money is equated with results - i.e. the more IP protections, the more revenue generated from IP, and thus the more invested in IP, and the higher the investments, the further the science and arts are promoted.
The flaw in the argument is that progress is equated with profit. In that context, the Linux kernel would be "worthless", the only value would be what value IBM, Red Hat, Tivo et al manage to add, not in the kernel itself, since that isn't what generates profit. And yet it's beyond a doubt a great scientific achievement.
In the same way, that music that simply makes your heart tremble with pure joy, is "worthless" unless it generates profit. Or that beautiful painting or statue or carving or any other object made for the art's sake, not for the money's sake.
Yes, money is a means to promote science and arts, scientists and artists need to put food on the table as well. But it is hardly the source of scientific interest or artistic inspiration. Money is simply one part of many - like education, culture, status, access to related works of past and present - in order to realize those desires.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Seen it before. Is that karma going to
support the goat guy or the tubgirl? Ugh.
Jeez. What next? Expecting us to read the article? C'mon, this is Slashdot.
Wow, they have a fight on their hand. A Slashdot story from just over five years ago claimed Microsoft had already patented it! (As an aside, check out the /. user ids in that old post)
When first looking at the story title write up, I was aghast to see that someone would try to claim that they had patented Cascading Style Sheets.
/. should give up on story titles and descriptions and just post raw HTML links. When submitting a story, at least try to imagine that people aren't as obsessed over the whole DVD thing (or whatever you're reporting on) as you and might not automatically know or care what "DVDCCA" is. It would have taken one well-written sentence to provide the context.
Aside: Perhaps it would help if these story write ups contained slightly more than zero information? If we have to read the article to figure out what the story is even about, perhaps
They all should stop filing suits againsta each other. Instead they should file the suit against USPTO, blaming it for the unfixable stupidity, for using the broken law system. USPTO bad business practices is a danger to strategic interests of USA in general.
Less is more !
There is not a single accurate or redeeming point to your post.
To knowingly provide incorrect embodiments in a patent application would be fraud. It is therefore an advantage to develop your embodiment before you know all the facts. It is, however, assumed that someone skilled in the art (a moron, in other words) would be able to figure out how to create an infringing implementation that worked. If that can't be done, then the patent will be rejected.
In any event, any extra "knowledge" required to get something patented to work could hardly be considered a trade secret. Furthermore, trade secrets are not IP and have no legal protection. If someone implemented such a "trade secret" to get a patented technology to work, they'd be in violation of the patent, wouldn't they?
If you wanted to preserve your "special edge" as a trade secret you would have to believe no one will figure it out on their own. You would not, then, disclose hints through patents that would lead competitors directly to your jewels.
You truly are ignorant.
What rubbish. Wrong.
DISTINGUISHING PATENT AND COPYRIGHT SUBJECT MATTER
Not sure I agree on the hardware equivalent of software test for patents, things are not that cut and dry most times.
That's an interesting idea about downmods counting extra, I wonder if I should test it out with my capped account, assuming they still have the karma cap at 50. A trolling spree in the name of science....
but in any case, I would love to go back to sucking each other's 3" dicks, but I got kicked out of anti-slash for having an 8" one. I just don't fit in with the other trolls with that thing, and I have no social skills so its not like I could find a woman to use it on. So, I have nothing better to do than post uselessly about how karma works.
Patents on standards create artifical economic barriers. The only legitment use of patents on standards is to re-inforce manopoly power. Good examples of this are Microsoft's XML patents.
The good news is the European Union has reconized that patents in public standards are not valid.
Please see the Rambus patent case.
*sigh* It's posts like this that cause me to loose my faith (if one could call it that) in Slashdot and the moderator system. At best, this post should be mod'ed Funny. At worst it's an anti-OSS troll.
There is no such package as annoydvdcca_utils on Debian or any other Linux distro. Not even Google can find it, as another reply points out. And the only mention of "dvdcp" on Google is some Coupon Program from Netflix.
Has anyone found the actual patent on the USPTO site yet? The only thing I found relating to a DVD copy protection scheme was this Intel patent, but the method described by the patent doesn't seem to resemble CSS at all...
Yikes. It's fundamentally impossible for something to be a trade secret and patented. A patent demands that a thing be disclosed in the "letters patent" submitted to the USPTO.
:)
This, by it's nature, contradicts the idea of it being a trade secret since, by definition, it would have to be completely disclosed.
I wonder if this is grounds for DVD Jon to file a lawsuit.
BTW... *PLEASE* when posting to this section, give the patent number involved. It's damn frustrating to guess.
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
A patent provides the exclusive right to make, use, and sell the invention listed in the claims section of the patent. Generally, claims are drafted so that theyy encompass functions - HOW the software works. The goal of claim drafting is to describe the invention broadly enogh to get the most possible coverage, but not so broadly as to describe prior art.
It is possible for the same claim to cover several (or many) different implementations. Take for example an automotive rearview mirror. If my claim says the following:
I claim a mirror for use in an automobile, the mirror being generally rectangular in shape and mounted in a central position at the top of an automobile windshield.
then everyone knows that if they make a generally rectangular mirror and mount it in the position decribed, they infringe. BUT - if someone makes a ROUND mirror and/or mounts it on the car door (side view mirror), they do NOT infringe.
With software, if you describe functionality that no one has done before, you can get the exclusive right to implement that functionality in your patent. You MUST disclose the BEST WAY KNOWN TO YOU AT THE TIME YOU FILE YOUR APPLICATION of achieving that functionality. There is no way to claim the implementation you disclose as a trade secret.
HOWEVER - let's say that after your patent issues, you develop a new implementation that still performs the same function. You have patent protection for the function itself. You ALSO have the right to protect the NEW implementation (not disclosed in the patent) as a trade secret.
I am not going to argue the policy of whether this is a good or bad thing. I am just here to tell you that this is the current state of the law in the United States. Save your flames for the SCO threads please.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
and the player keys could still be a trade secret
What player keys? Thanks to cryptanalysis, it's possible to recover a disc's keys within seconds.
The exact same post already appeared at least twice, one on 2004/01/25, and one on 2003/09/24. It's annoying that there are people who can only cut-n-paste text portions each time a subject happens. The previous posts were here :
l ?tid=155&tid=992 812
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/01/25/1541255.shtm
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79769&cid=704
Some days, slashdot looks like bots are responding to other bots, with us humans only reading the debate...
And no, I'm no a bot and I haven't posted this in the past.
This rebuff doesn't work. If my grandma if 102 yrs old and has smoked 60 a day since age of 12 with nary a cough, does that mean smoking isn't harmful? It COULD mean that, of couse - but maybe it happens to be an exception.
So I looked up the patent:
METHOD FOR MINIMIZING PIRATING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED COPYING AND/OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS OF/TO DATA ON/FROM DATA MEDIA INCLUDING COMPACT DISCS AND DIGITAL VERSATILE DISCS, AND SYSTEM AND DATA MEDIA FOR SAME, #6,684,199
and here is the method they claim:
(a) reading the mixed data from said media;
(b) detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed data;
(c) comparing the predetermined errors to the at least one authentication key or component thereof;
(d) authenticating the at least one of the media and the data in the mixed data responsive to the comparing step;
(e) removing the predetermined errors from the mixed data via a decoding operation resulting in substantially the data; and
(f) outputting the data as at least one of audio, video, audio data, video data and digital data substantially free of the predetermined errors.
They elaborate on a number of those points, but they don't on "detecting the predetermined errors from the mixed media."
I tried but failed to include a snip in here from libdvdcss-1.2.8, css.c (distributed under the GPL) , but here's the general idea:
int _dvdcss_unscramble( dvd_key_t p_key, uint8_t *p_sec )
{
if (p_sec[0x14] & 0x30)
{
some funky math involving pluses, minuses, and bitwise operations
while (p_sec != p_end)
{ do a lot more funky math to determined the correct data, incriment P_sec }
}
return
}
Now, the question I have is this: If they computed the decryption for the entire block, for every block (whether or not it has errors), and not just blocks that had that 0x30 bit on in 0x14, and then decided which of the two blocks was a valid block, the encrypted one or the decrypted one, would they in fact be 'detecting predetermined errors' (as is not very well described in the patent)?
THANKS for 321 warning... they tried to recruit me.
I am an expert in most of the fields they care about : cdr + dvd burning, mpeg, css, copyprotection, etc.
I expressed the SAME CONCERNS, and was not impressed by how they came across.
BUT THEY OFFERRED a lot of money in salary about 10 days ago or so.
Now I will laugh at them if they call back.
THANK YOU THANK YOU I am serious.
As you seem to be well-informed, how about setting up a web site which explains all of that in detail? I don't know that all of that info can be easily found, certainly not in one place, and the whole story on how various recording schemes work would be useful to many people.
Next they will try to enforce reading books only in approved places such as libraries. It will be illegal to use an unapproved magnifying glass to see the text more clearly. You may read only under an approved light source.....
None of that will stop you using the photocopier, an entirely separate issue.
Just a post to undo a mistaken mod.
That patent was filed in 1999. CSS was developed in 1996. So that can't apply to DeCSS. And it was filed by the RIAA, not the MPAA.
who can't read. You fit right in here.
As a person with a rare disease that cannot be cured , only treated (symptomatically).
Orthopedics (bone medicine, such as limb straightening) is necessary, and means that I can walk, and will all my life.
Audiology (hearing augmentation) means I can interact with the world without a translator or sign language - used to be hearing aids sucked, now they don't.
Antibiotics - are a necessity in my life b/c I'm incredibly susceptible to respiratory infections.
EKG - I will (100% chance) eventually experience heart murmur &/or mitral valve leakage. Newer & better EKG tech will save my life.
And check out BioMarin (google), Genzyme, Novazyme, and their products Aldurazyme (alpha-L-iduronidase) and others. They're charging a lot - but only b/c there's so few patients helping them recoup their losses. But these drugs are incredibly innovative. If BioMarin & the others mentioned didn't have patents, (and the protection of the Orphan Drug Research Act), the competition would split up revenue until R&D costs far outweighed any potential of profit - and the expensive drugs that keep these MPS patients alive past the age of 18 wouldn't exist at all.
There are other examples, but the point is this: the patent system is broken, I agree, and the pharma co's are in many ways untrustworthy. But they do have a serious value, and they've kept people like me not only alive - but living in mainstream society where our intellect can contribute rather than locked away in a long-term care facility, unable to walk, communicate (hear), etc. So unless you have a debilitating medical condition or know someone who does, or you work in the field, shut the fuck up - you obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
Should it be? Or should it be determined by need?
There is no place in the world more AIDS-ridden than Africa. However, Africa is a poor continent, and can't pay up full price. Nevermind it has the world biggest market for these drugs.
Guess what, patents are being used to make sure they don't get any medicine at all.
Admit it. Drugs is a bad example to prove your point.
In fact, I think the drugs angle on patenting shows that patent-law now is as equally corrupted as copyright-law, when compared to the original intents of these laws.
We'll just have to bow down and kiss boot for our corporate-overlords one day or another anytime soon now. What? That's a problem?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I believe it was Heinlein who said that the best appreciation of his art he ever got was found in "Make Payable To:".
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
If they wanted to, they could simply say that as of tomorrow, no more CSS licences would be given, and that the current companies are a permanent ogliarchy for the next 10-20 years (or however long remains of that patent).
Or they could charge unreasonable amounts of money, or have completely unreasonable restrictions, clauses and so on. Since it's a completely voluntary licensing agreement, most anything can be put into a contract and deemed valid.
That's why it doesn't help much to have legal rights - even if part of the DMCA would be struck down, and it would be legal to e.g. put back-up features into a player, the DVDCCA can simply put in their licensing terms that the players can not provide that functionality. No official, legal players could have it. The DMCA is just the icing on the cake to go after the hackers who never had, and never will have a license to begin with.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Your idea is not yours. Did you get student loans to get your Phd? Did you get government grants? Universities are subsidized very highly by the taxpayers of industrialized nations so much that one could make the argument that all academic research belongs solely in the public domain.
Do you think that Grandma really needs to have her tax dollars subsidize your research so you can cash in?
Look, if you want to have a completely free market research system, you can, but that means all government grants for research should end. If you are so good that your ideas will be profitable, you wouldn't need government to protect them.
Oh, and by the way, the Constitution says: "for a limited time..." I bet that with India pumping out 1,000,000 Phds a year, American companies could get rid of IP and find plenty of people to do your research.
This is my sig.
... Came out as the looser right?
And the makers had no way to use an algorithm that didnt NEED such obscurity (i can name three better, not-too-strong, security algorithms that wouldnt need obscuring at all)?
I mean, thats exactly why they were, and still are, PLAIN STUPID.
NO SIG
I thought they were trying to say they'd patented Cascading Style Sheets! Phew, that was close...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
AC karma whores are very strange people.
this same post in its original form
--rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Less. It's the new more.