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MPAA Sues DVD Chip Manufacturers
WhatAmIDoingHere writes "The Motion Picture Association of America has sued two chip manufacturing companies for selling integrated circuits to manufacturers that produce non-approved DVD players."
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FTA: Sigma and MediaTek make chips to decode the Content Scramble System, or CSS, which is the copy-protection system used for DVDs. Their licenses require that they sell only to other CSS-licensed companies.
Let me get this straight. The content scramble system can be disabled with chips sold to companies with licenses to distribute systems with copy-protection? I smell another SCO-styled lawsuit. When will people learn? These chips could be valuable in the development of technology to prevent copy theft, and even then, since these chips are only being sold to licensed distributors, I see that the MPAA, or whoever is in charge of these licenses, could have simply yanked the licenses instead of wasting precious court time and money... that is, unless, the MPAA knew damn well they didn't have a case for revoking these licenses, so they figured they had better make an example of these companies by suing them for lost revenue. It's almost parallel to a police department charging another department for sending drugs or illegal firearms to a third party for analysis. It's totally trumped up! IANAL, but I think with these kinds of cases going around the block, I would like to be one! Lawyers are the only ones who profit from these hyped up dramas!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It's still pretty easy to make DVD player region-free. I mean, it's not illegal to modify your own hardware now is it? Is this where they are going now?
Hmmm.
So it is no longer legal to add additional functionality to a device you are creating? There goes my idea of building a more secure website than my managers asked for, can't have that.
Damien
Aw man, and here I thought they were learning the right lesson from the RIAA's example.
*attemps to keep a straight face*
--- "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." ~ Ben Kenobi, 'Return of the Jedi'
it said proved the two were selling microchips to companies, whose DVD players lack what the MPAA called "appropriate security features.
Give me a break. All of their "security" features have been easily broken by widely known software/hardware out there. In fact the only thing that "security features" do is make the general public annoyed.
Take for example the TV/VCR combo I use in my bedroom. I have no need for a huge TV in there as I have two larger TVs elsewhere in the house. I hooked up an old DVD player to it. The TV thinks that I am trying to copy DVD's and enables Macrovision. There is no way to disable the Macrovision (at least from what I can find on the net) for that DVD player.
Thus I am stuck w/removing the macrovision using available software and reburning so I can enjoy the DVDs I have purchased.
Are you saying that now we can, for example, sue Ford because they produced the car that was purchased by a drunken driver who killed someone?
A book publisher can sue Xerox because one of their copy machines was purchased for the purpose of making illegal copies of books?
A camera maker? Companies that make pens?
that produce non-approved DVD players
...or something?
Of course...because approved piracy/ region modding is okay, but heaven forbid it be done without approval?
Oh dear god, how could a Reuters article make such a stupid mistake?
"...which claims its members loose billions of dollars annually to copyright piracy".
*Sigh*
"The MPAA said the suits against Sigma Designs Inc. and MediaTek Inc. followed testing that it said proved the two were selling microchips to companies, whose DVD players lack what the MPAA called "appropriate security features."
What rubbish! If you want to be a "pirate" (and let's call it something else, please), you can copy a DVD any time you want. Just do a bit-by-bit copy, and voila! A copied DVD. These manufacturers do not enable theft in any way.
And what's with all this Orwellian "piracy" anyway? Those manufacturers don't conform to the precise specs the industry wants, so off with their heads? How about what the consumer wants? Oh, right, we don't count.
The MPAA, recognizing the damage the advent of digital file-sharing did to the music industry, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy.
Also: MPAA provides some actual proof of damages. Next on Fantasy News Network.
Guns: Sacred and necessary
Devices which inadvertently allow consumers to exercise fair use rights: Dangerous and damaging
Sigma and MediaTek make chips to decode the Content Scramble System, or CSS, which is the copy-protection system used for DVDs. Their licenses require that they sell only to other CSS-licensed companies.
The lawsuits really infuriate me, but as long as the DMCA is still around anyone who messes with CSS while tinkering is technically breakind the law, so it's not really a surprise.
"The MPAA, recognizing the damage the advent of digital file-sharing did to the music industry, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy."
I still haven't seen a single piece of documentation that can dirrectly link a damage to the music industry as a result (even in part) by file-sharing.
Your mammas flamebait.
If you live in America, it is indeed illegal to modify your own hardware in order to bypass copy protection or access controls on copyrighted works. Technically, if you take a Sharpie to the edge of a copy-protected CD to get it to play in your PC, you've committed a felony. Download a "crack" or no-cd "fix" for a game? Go to jail. Thank our friend the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which prohibits any circumvention of copy protection or access controls -- and also makes it a crime to "traffic" in the technologies to do so.
Make cheese not war 8:)
If you RTFM, the manufacturers were sued because their licenses prohibited them from selling their chips to non-CSS licensed buyers.
I'm not saying I'm a big fan of the MPAA, but this sounds like a tempest in a teapot. It's not like these companies somehow came up with some workaround and the MPAA was jumping all over them.
Fanatics who don't want to RTFM are welcomed to mod me down.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
There are still people worrying with playback control on DVD players?
Media Player Classic
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/
VLC
http://www.videolan.org/
Pick yer platform
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Who are these DVD makers and what models are they talking about. Pirating minds want to know.
I read the article, and I have to agree this is probably a valid lawsuit. This is purely contract law, not copyrights or patents. The contract the manufacturers signed said they would not produce or sell devices that could be used for copying DVDs. The manufacturers didn't hold up their end of the deal. Yeah, it stinks, but that's the way it is.
We could dress up as Americans and throw tea in the harbor... or sand in their gas tanks... or grenades in their toilets... or...
No, I don't think I'm out of control. I think the industry is out of control, and the government's going right along with it (both major parties).
In other words, "We didn't learn from the backlash against the recording industry, so we'll do it again. Only harder."
Hasn't this been tried with gun makers? Photocopiers?
P2P Software?
How about suing tobacco companies for producing cigarettes that people choose to smoke, or gun manufacturers for making weapons that are used to commit crimes? Pretty crazy world, isn't it?
1 word... never.
More words... Where there is money to be had there is conflict. The MPAA represents lots of money. Even if the courts come down hard on the MPAA it'll figure something else out.
I didn't get to be head of the department because I'm a moron.
I got to be head of the department because I..I..I.I.I'm not moron.
They are suing them for violating a contract. Do you have a contract with Ford forbidding them from selling cars to drunks? I doubt it. But the MPAA apparently has a contract limiting who the chip manufacturers can sell their chips to, and the MPAA claims the chip manufacturers are violating that contract.
"The MPAA, recognizing the damage the advent of digital file-sharing did to the music industry (...)"
And what damage is that? Can they show the numbers? Actual, not estimates...
Stop the world, I want to get out!
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
"If the chipmakers violated their licenses, they have broken the law"
No, they have not broken the law, they have violated the terms of a contractual agreement. If they had broken the law a government entity (fed/state/county/etc) would be filing the charges not a company.
And DVDs would have been less successful if CSS didn't exist? There is proof of that?
Haven't we seen studies claiming that the record industry has not been damaged, e.g. that sales are only lower than the RIAA's flawed and over-optimistic projections? Even studies claiming that file sharing might have a positive impact on record sales?
It seems to me that many journalists these days don't actually investigate or research anything, they just take industry or political press releases and report the spin as fact. Or am I too cynical?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seince when did the MPAA have the right to go telling companies what they can sell. Can't this be used if you make a home dvd? Becase the MPAA does not think your dvd player has enough "appropriate security features" whatever the heck they mean by that they sue. Also can't I just put a burned copy of a dvd in my PC? You can hook your tv into your pc these days. When will they learn...If they just made movies people actually wanted to buy.
Argh!! This is a professional news outfit, and:
claims its members loose billions of dollars annually
Lose people, not loose. Jeez.
the cig companies lied and covered up and flat out bribed politicians.
they can and should be held responsible.
they prevented the truth of the matter (which apparantly doesnt make any difference anyways) from being known.
gun manufacturers, well they make a obviousely dangerous product. that is already established, cigs were once thought to be to the point of being healthy.
*going to have a smoke*
Yeah, what's next? Suing fast-food companies that people choose to go to?
*can replace humor with sarcasm. It works both ways.
Hmmm.
but not unexpected, over 10% of Americans are functional illiterates and are 68th on the global general literacy (total population) scale
link
turn off that TV and get reading folks
People are so sue-happy now a days. Any little thing, people sue over it now...
What ever happened to the good ol' days where you would just get a couple friends, a couple baseball bats and crowbars, and 'leaving a message' instead of suing...
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
This is all about control. The movie industry wants complete control over the distribution of movies. DVD regions is about controling the distribution of movies. Yes control allows them to maximize profits. They might be able to make even more money with a more open and free distribution, but that is not guaranteed. So to guarantee healthy profits they demand complete control. It is safe and mostly risk free.
Huh?
The MPAA owns CSS. They license it to these companies, and say "You can use our CSS stuff, but only sell it to people on this list". Sell outside the list, break the agreement, get sued. That's what's happening.
This is more like Apple suing Real because Real is using Apple's DRM without Apple's permission, though that's not the same either, but it's closer.
They've been selling these chips forever, and the MPAA has been happily collecting it's royalties for CSS. What I wonder is, why now?
That is, is the REAL MONEY motivating this - that is, the electronics manufacturers who make approved DVD players?
Sony's getting it's ass kicked in the market by WingWong's knockoff brand, because the knockoff isn't crippled. It may be a cheaper, lousier machine, but in the end - it plays that DVD your cousin Beauregard sent you from Region 5.
Hmm.. Despite the rhetoric around here, the entertainment industry only makes pennies to the tech industries dollar. Sony (the maker of CD and DVD burners) is much much larger than Sony (the publisher of DVDs and PS2 games) - hence the 'paradox' that protects us. They will never lobby to outlaw recording and duplication tech, since that's which side their bread is buttered on.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
RTFM = read the fsking MANUAL.
RTFA = read the fsking ARTICLE
We know litigation is the last gasp of industries with outdated models, why else would you actively want to sue the people you are in business with or YOUR CUSTOMERS?
The meteor has crashed, the dinosaur is dying.
Speaking with a family friend who is getting involved in indie film production, the big studios are banking more and more on the one profitable hit out of the ten movies produced and on DVD sales and rentals than ever. Neither of us go to the movies very often any more to see anything produced by a big studio (the last movie I saw was Eternal Sunshine... and before that? Lord of the Rings 3?). I'd just as soon keep my money and see student films or whatnot over repackaged fluff. It all makes it to HBO within a year anyway.
This is one reason I think the studios are balking at going digital, for while it appears to slash their distribution costs, it also enables theatre owners to use the equivelent of an iTunes Music Store for their first-run movies.
Sorry dinosaur, comet has hit. Why sue chip manufacturers? The only image your damaging is your own, makes fuck-all difference to any with either 1) a modicum of nerdibility or 2) anyone with a hobby that is of lower abstract cost than watching fabricated reality (meaning people flock to most benefit for least effort; if the MPAA continues alienative customers, customers will choose other form of entertainment and forget Hollywood ever existed).
It's Darwiniaan (sp?): adapt or die. Lawsuits are not indications of adaptation.
[stock rant]
The press rightly continues to use the word 'piracy' for illicit copying and distribution of original materials. Some think it's a new phenomenon, and hard to square with the traditional image of the Jolly Roger and swashbuckling robbers-at-sea. The use of the word 'piracy' as signifying an unauthorized copy of a manuscript is hundreds of years old, long before modern Copyright doctrine was developed. From http://www.ninch.org/forum/price.report.html:
That's Dr. John Fell (1625-86), who was given the title of Bishop of Oxford in 1675.
[/stock rant]
Now, the word "theft" is the word I object. One cannot steal an idea, one cannot steal the text of a book, one cannot steal the image of a mouse. Even if it is copied and the copy is somehow proven to impact the sales payable to the original creator, it is not theft. The original creator is not denied the chance to continue to sell their creation. It is a crime to infringe the creator's rights of monopoly, but it is not "theft." Rightly, the courts have also recently been pointing out to the MPAA that their aggressive rhetoric is squarely outside the definitions of law.
[
I wonder what the legal ramifications would be if we all started filing these kind of lawsuits in protest of how stupid they are.
What if you modify the hardware in such a way that it does not facilitate copying but does get around other "access controls". The last I checked even the DMCA does not guarantee the movie studios the right to create these little geographic monopolies called "regions". The problem is that most of the hacks to make a DVD player region free also disables macrovision as well. If someone were to hack the firmware of a player to enable region free access but left the macrovision copy protection in place(as long as were at it lets also disable the crap that keeps you from skipping past the FBI warning, etc) I think a good argument could be made that you in fact have not violated the DMCA.
There has GOT to be some legal precedent set somewhere that says "You cannot be sued for making or selling something that is legal when someone else does something illegal, unlawful or otherwise infinging on the rights of others using it."
I should not be liable for murder selling a knife used to kill someone. I should not be liable for murder for selling a car that someone used to kill someone. I should not be liable for copyright infringement for selling a photocopier to someone who uses it to copy books. And I certainly shouldn't be liable for infringement for selling legally licensed chips to someone who misuses them... and neither should these chip makers.
Surely there is legal precedent to such a simple argument.
didn't enter into contracts that restricted who they could sell the contractually licensed products too.
This is garden variety contract law, not some sort of "sue the tool makers, not the lawbreakers" lawsuit.
I love how one month they're (the MPAA) claiming the highest profits they've ever had.
And the next month, "Piracy is ruining the industry!"
I just can't understand how these people think.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Cigarettes will fuck me up, no matter what I do. so selling cigarettes is like selling cyonide sweets, not normal sweets that may make you fat if you eat too many.
Guns were designed to kill things, so I suppose they shouldn't really sue the manufactures for making guns, they should sue the government for letting them.
Media-players should be designed to play media, not prevent you from playing media.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Are you saying that now we can, for example, sue Ford because they produced the car that was purchased by a drunken driver who killed someone?
Actually I would say that was established when people started suing gun companies. But that's not what this lawsuit is about.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
yeah, we're getting offtopic, but...
With tobacco, the interesting part is the "choice" involved. Personally, I don't have a problem with the fact that cigarettes are harmful to one's health, but rather the addictive power of nicotine. That's a legitimate avenue to pursue, in my opinion, as opposed to the ridiculous restrictions on advertising and other means by which government is trying to eliminate smoking.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Are you saying that now we can, for example, sue Ford because they produced the car that was purchased by a drunken driver who killed someone?
They've been trying to do that to the gun industry for years...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The manufacturer broke a license agreement. That's the issue.
this is plain old contract law, period.
This isn't some sinister, DMCA-like assault on a company's rights to sell any product they want. They signed a contract to license certain technology, and they violated the terms of that contract.
In Rhode Island, an automobile manufacturer (I forget if it was Ford or GM) was sued when a drunk driver killed someone with a leased vehicle. The family of the victim *won*. What's even more scary is that the highest court of RI upheld this.
Utterly insane. It's always someone else's fault.
These companies now refuse to lease cars in Rhode Island.
pardon my ignorance, but how is region coding related to copy protection?
AFAIK you can change the region coding in your DVD player by entering a certain combination of keys with your remote, as detailed by quite a few websites... is this illegal to do? i doubt it.
There will always be a way to copy movies/music and other media. You can never stop it, or my cousin that works at the chip company and sells them under the table to whoever wants them.
LAWS DONT WORK so quit wasting your time and money and quit bitching. Drugs are a great thing to compare this to, they have been illegal for many moons but they are still everywhere because DOING THINGS THE LEGAL WAY DOESN'T WORK! Laws aren't scary until you get caught. No matter how hard you try things the legal way, it will never be as effective as hiring mercenaries instead of lawyers. Maybe we should start saving the money we waste on your cds and dvds and have you all killed by our own mercenary...now that is a plan.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
Can I sue them for My First 50 Dates?
If you think
Look!
I'm sure they've got some harebrained legal theory, but the MPAA is hurting its member companies just to hold up legal fictions.
or we'll see you in court!
"If you mess with us, we're going to take you on, even to our utter destruction, whatever occurs." - Ralph Yarro (SCO)
They could just sent a browser popup or a Messenger window pop up to every IP address on the internet telling the user that the RIAA has filed a lawsuit against them for violating the DMCA by using technology invented after 1965.
Why don't these companies just say they don't make DVD chips/players. The RIAA sells CDs that violate the CD specification and it gets away with it because it doesnt sell 'CDs'. Anyway the MPAAs methods should be illigal, region coding is totally over the line and you are fully within your right to disable/bypass it for fair-use (ie buying DVDs abroad)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"I swear Mr. MPAA lawyerman, I only bought it for schoolwork! It is required in my Art class!"
They do and say whatever is necessary to maximise their personal gain. Pure psychopaths.
Some reasons that tobacco companies used to be sued was the fact that tobacco smoke was harmful to people and a) said it wasn't b) lied about it when the knew it was. Gun manufacturers are sued because of their policies that allow their guns to get into the hand of people who shouldn't legally own guns.
The reason this seems silly is because the MPAA is suing the chip manufactures that don't have ENOUGH security features. This is like putting your stuff in storage and then suing the storage place after a robbery because they didn't have a good enough lock on the door.
Pretty soon you will have to buy DVD players from the motion picture companies, and, lord willing each one will have a different standard and cost several hundred dollars each. Phase 2 will be that you have to buy your television set from motion picture companies as well and these too will all be different and incompatible from one another.
It will be a Federal crime, to hack either DVD players or TV's to do anything other than what you pay the motion picture companies to permit you to do. On/off switches will be made illegal.
Tobacco is a different issue all together. Take Copenhagen snuff for example. It stinks, it is expensive, it makes your breath smell, you have to "spit" all the time when you use it, it makes your lip stick out, it eats your gums away, it stains your teeth and I am sure there is more negative effects. I chew Copenhagen snuff. I have for at least 15 years. Not for any of the above reasons. I chew it because I am addicted to nicotine. The addiction is so strong that I am able to ignore all of the adverse health effects and all of the above mentioned negative effects and still use it. I blame my self for not being able to overcome the addiction. There has not been a trigger yet that has made me quit. The nicotine patch does work to satisfy the cravings as I tried it a few times. Of course I did not go through the gradual declining doses and actually quit tobacco use though.
If the DMCA is Constiutional, then yes, it is illegal to modify your own equipment to play DVDs from another region. This is for either software or hardware modifications or even "secret menus". Stupid yes. But it's the law.
MPAA Sues DVD Chip Manufacturers For Making Things People Want To Buy
Maybe you should go to the doctor to check to see if you have lip/gum cancer.... might that be the trigger for which you seek?
Contracts are considered legally binding. The GPL is a contract. If a court deems a contract to be either enforceable or nonenforceable, it sets a precedent, which is sort of pseudo-law, but you generally do not go to jail or the federal pen for breaching a contract, unless the State, the Federal Government, or a private party files criminal charges against you. Criminal charges show up rarely in business, except for things like shoplifting, fraud, and tax evasion; usually, it's just civil charges, and those are pretty much all private party money exchange (and sometimes a way for the big guy with the good lawyers to screw over the little guy who can't afford a nice lawyer).
I know you wanted a lawyer, but I just like the sound of "I, Anal!" (or is that Aye, Anal! Or.. Eye-Anal!)---don't you?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
All the linux players will use
g z/libdvdread-0.9.4.tar.gz
http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.8/l ibdvdcss-1.2.8.tar.bz2
http://freshmeat.net/redir/libdvdread/17926/url_t
So go get em'
PenGun do What Now ???
So if I use DVDShrink or a similar tool to easily and quickly duplicate or resample DVD's then Julia Roberts goes homeless and has to sell herself for scratch tickets?
I like those odds!
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
I found it informative. I didn't know such beasts existed. Now I (think I) want one.
You write your nine symphonies, then you die.
That's a legitimate avenue to pursue, in my opinion, as opposed to the ridiculous restrictions on advertising and other means by which government is trying to eliminate smoking.
The weight of the cost for government medical care for all of the people who smoke and can't afford to pay their own health bills or afford insurance that will cover it causes my taxes (I'm not a smoker although everyone else in my family is) to go up to support this harmful habit that others "choose" to do. I feel that if others can "choose" to keep this habit, then I should be able to "choose" whether or not to pay the taxes required to support their partaking of this habit.
"I still haven't seen a single piece of documentation that can dirrectly link a damage to the music industry as a result (even in part) by file-sharing."
And if there were? Would the Slashdot, or pirate crowd actually pay attention to it? Having proof doesn't mean that a wrong is suddenly corrected. People aren't suddenly going to go "Oh how could I be so blind? I'll be good from now on."
In fact I'll put up $10 that says that the majority would either:
a) Ignore it.
b) Laugh at it, then ignore it.
c) Proceed to discredit it, no mater how ironclad, just because of it's source.
D) Makes excuses that have nothing to do with what it actually says.
To get recognition for the artistic merit of a project.
To get your project exposed to the people who follow
independant films.
Thanks to Intellectual Property, the feudal system lives!
Hunt thou not in the King's Forest, knave! Double not thy clicks, nor singly if for commerce they be. Scribe ye not the holy GIF format, nor the code of Linux employ within thine enterprise, lest ye suffer sorely in combat with the royal tort attorneys!
Among other choices... Provision+ DVD Decoder I have it on good authority that it works like a champ, although I personally would never own anything like this that would allow me to circumvent a content protection system. :-)
On-on!
so let me get this straight under the DMCA a computer is illegal, Its a wonderful device that can bypass the best of it all.
The MPAA suing chip manufactures for allowing "pirated" copy protection to be played on DVD players? This only shows me how clueless MPAA really is about how DVD's are actually copied.
More or less rethorical, I see this suing hit/act just as a reply to these companies: they are two of the few that sell MPEG2+MPEG4+ARM on-a-chip solution, allowing the user to watch DivX and XVID streams (I have one witch includes one Mediatek 1389GE, the whole aparatus was just 50 euro (16% VAT included)).
May be this was just a desperate action, stopping people enjoing 5 or 6 films on a DVD-R disk in a row. What a paradise.
"Now, the word "theft" is the word I object."
The act is now dubbed. "Hubert's Revenge". Better?
"One cannot steal an idea, one cannot steal the text of a book, one cannot steal the image of a mouse. Even if it is copied and the copy is somehow proven to impact the sales payable to the original creator, it is not theft. The original creator is not denied the chance to continue to sell their creation. It is a crime to infringe the creator's rights of monopoly, but it is not "theft." Rightly, the courts have also recently been pointing out to the MPAA that their aggressive rhetoric is squarely outside the definitions of law."
How about we simply cut to the chase and simply choose two stock Slashdot paths. Either dueling websters, or just ignore me because I'm an AC.
We both know that there is a group that will accept no answer that runs counter to what they want to do. So once again why are we even bringing up the subject repeatedly on Slashdot? Are more people suddenly going to be enlightened? Is the world going to be a better place after all the talking's done?
if i were to make a copy of a dvd that i can borrow for free at the library, at any time i wish, is that a crime?
if i were to copy a complete book by hand to enjoy again in the privacy of my own home, is that a crime?
The DMCA in the US makes it illegal to use a device that could be used to decrypt encrypted data, to use it, to make it, to obtain it from someone, but not to have it sitting on your mantle-piece. So if you can't make it, or get it from someone else, how do you get it?
Damien
"Actually, regional DVD's aren't about price fixing as much as it has to do with selling rights"
No, it is about discouraging sales and encouraging cracking and duplication. I have many CDs from outside my region. The company does not produce them for my region, and never intends to. I have to "crack" them using a computer utility and then burn watchable ones in order to view the out-region DVDs I bought. What a hassle. It is insane.
", if you buy a region free DVD player, you're stealing from the producer,"
You are not stealing from anyone. It is impossible to steal using such a device.
Yup,
If you listen to the MegaDeath redo then you just plain suck.
Long Live Jonny Rotton
" Any way you slice it, you've stolen. "
Correction: no way you slice it. If theft does not occur, nothing is stolen. If unauthorized duplication is theft, then it is rape and murder too.
What's your point? That doesn't begin to justify the lawqsuits that came out. Since the 70's the Surgeon General Warning's have been on the pack. Only in the early 90's did these suits come about. Oh yeah, anyone know if any individuals got a penny? Very few. Most of the money went to states. It was simply redistribution. If you want to go after them for lying then do so, but to justify extortion this way is a joke. As for guns, if you don't realize that people kill people, perhaps you need to spend some time at the bad end of a gun. Suing gun manufacturers is idiocy. Anyone who would attempt to try to justify it in the current frame of "so many people are being shot" is an extortionist. (Bill Campbell, do you hear me?)
But did they really breach the contract?
I'm just making this up, but presumably Sigma and MediaTek licensed code years ago from the MPAA to allow them to produce chips that can decode DVDs. Later they realize they can create equivalent chips without using any MPAA code, so they do.
Are they restricted to whom they can sell these new unencumbered chips? I dunno. I suppose it depends on the terms of their contract with the MPAA.
You write your nine symphonies, then you die.
Well, it is legal where I live (Norway), but many others can be thrown in jail for this. Nevertheless, I'm not doing it: Even if I can make myself a region-free DVD player, if they don't respect me as a customer enough to sell me one without that crap, they're not getting my money. Those are my terms. I know that it may imply that I can't play some DVDs that refuse to play on region-free players, but again, I don't care, I won't be interested in those DVDs anyway.
Come to think of it, these companies sound like they may be worthy of my business. Anybody know where I can get a region-free DVD player for my box, that is, one that fits in a 5.25" slot?
Actually, I think I could even use a DVD burner... Anybody know of a company that sells that? It needs to work well under Linux.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The CSS license pact has aided the success of DVDs because it has provided protection against illegal copying to copyright owners of movies, television shows and other content sold on DVD.
Yeah, it protects the HELL out of em...
Uhh, care to back that up? I fail to see how making millions of copies of things that have actual cost (DVD players, TV's) makes more money than making millions of copies of things that essentially have no cost (DVD's, Music CD's).
Yes, consumer electronics have development costs, just like music and movies have "development costs".
Maybe I just have a bad memory, but have any gun manufacturers been succesfully sued? I'm not asking about settlements, but actually found liable by a court?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The weight of the cost for government medical care for all of the people who smoke and can't afford to pay their own health bills or afford insurance that will cover it causes my taxes (I'm not a smoker although everyone else in my family is) to go up to support this harmful habit that others "choose" to do. I feel that if others can "choose" to keep this habit, then I should be able to "choose" whether or not to pay the taxes required to support their partaking of this habit.
The real question is, do you vote for people that want to reduce your tax burden when it comes to paying for medical care for people that can't afford it (or for people that not only can't afford it, but are not likely to actually be cured of their problem(s))?
As we continue to increase the burden on our tax system with increases in state-run medical insurance, we seem to continue adding bullshit laws to protect people's health so that they won't increase the burden on the same system. Laws for bicycle and motorcycle helmets, seatbelts, smoking, and so on, often with the "medical care for those that can't afford it" and its associated costs listed as one of the reasons for the legislation. If you really want to cut the cost, cut the benefit.
The reality is that the half-assed system of government-provided medical care costs us more than it would if it were either offered to everyone or offered to no one. I pay more for someone that doesn't (or can't) work to have medical care than I do for my own (even with my wife on the plan), and I can't imagine that my company has more people paying into its insurance plan than the government (though I will admit the company is also adding in a good chunk of money on its own to reduce the costs for employees, it's rediculous to think the government wouldn't take money from somewhere else in our taxes to pay for any cost over-run in medicare, too).
Finally, look at the taxes paid on cigarettes themselves. Most of that money (though it depends on your state; and much of it probably goes into advertising and programs that are supposed to reduce smoking in general) is supposed to go to alleviate the cost burden on non-smoking tax-payers in precisely these areas. Any state in which a pack of cigarettes sells for more than $4 is bringing in more in taxes than the price of the pack of cigarettes (and I'm not even taking into account that a retailer pays less than the ~$2 they charge for a pack of cigarettes in states with little or no tobacco tax).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Using this to claim piracy = theft busts words beyond any reason. It makes these people thieves:
someone who parks in a parking spot, this depriving someone else the opportunity to park there.
picketers and protesters, who steal business.
Bought the last model E4-433 lawnmower at Sears last Sunday? You STOLE someone else's chance to own it.
However, if you put a DVD into the line, and run it through a TBC, you ca nthen re-record it onto a digital target, and make as many copies as you want. Sure: there's some loss, and a good TBC costs several hundred bucks, but IT WORKS.
The MPAA is so full of shit. Grrrr.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It'd probably take a while to find one, because the reason the poster stated for a gun manufacturer to be sued is nearly impossible precisely because gun manufacturers rarely sell guns directly to the consumers. In fact, even Wal-Mart, which was found negligent in its policies regarding sales of guns was not sued, but simply had any license to sell a firearm in the state of California revoked (and therefore one of my favorite jokes about being able to buy a gun but not an uncensored album in WalMart is no longer applicable in California, though it made it even more interesting that you could buy a gun without proper ID, but not an R-rated movie).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
" but not an uncensored album in WalMart is no longer applicable in California"
That is not censorship. Wal-Mart, like any dealer, has a right to choose what to sell and not sell. Those who don't meet their standards are free to sell their stuff elsewhere.
"however I should say that Nader would probably repeal the DMCA, but he won't be getting elected"
Nader's basic government view is that of a fascist: government should control everything. He'd probably change the DMCA so that a much more powerful oppressive government owns the copyrights rather than a few corporations.
"Lawyers are certainly responsible for a lot of these messes, but not because they talked people into filing the suit."
They are responsible for all of it. If they all said NO to frivolous lawsuits, the problem would pretty much vanish. Self-representing lawyerless clients are a not the problem.
If someone spills hot coffee in their lap and there is no one to file a frivolous lawsuit over it, does it make a sound?
I guess it isn't only Slashdot readers that didn't pass grade school English class.
Of course, had this been written by a Slashdot reader, it would have said, "...it's members loose billions..."
Without literacy, all is lost.
It was founded by a German immigrant to the United Kingdom, and is currently a UK company headquartered in London.
I guess the British are also functional illiterates, eh?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
FYI The GPL is not a contract, it is a license. There is a difference which has been written about by the FSF as well as Groklaw.
What the MPAA is doing to these chip manufacturers sounds a lot (to me) like what Microsoft got into trouble with the DOJ for doing. Enlighten me if I'm way off base... W.E.P.
As a citizen you're permitted to try, but for each penny you'll willingly spend to change it you'll willingly give two (buying products) to those who want to keep it as it is. If not, you'r a public domain addict or a "criminal".
What a wonderful world...
to vote with your wallets? I'm suggesting, not buying DVDs of MPAA products. If the industry thinks it's losing money because of chips that are too feature-rich, wait til they lose money due to lack of sales period.
If you live where I live, it's illegal to possess or use a WiFi interface.
And you're looking for logic in the law? Technical clue?
You have to take the first part of your sentence, "In Rhode Island" and then put the rest of the statement into proper context.
It is kind of like saying, "In Texas, a bunch of citizens shot a drunk driver dead when he killed someone and the highest court in TX gave them a reward for saving them the trouble of handling the case."
Voting them all out of office, now that's change I can believe in.
If the chipmakers violated their licenses, they have broken the law [...]
If one of the contract provisions is illegal, the party to the contract is not bound by it, and may violate it with impunity.
Unless there is verbage to the effect that some rights granted to that party conditional on his performance on that provision, and are voided if he can not perform on his side due to laws to the contray, he doesn't lose the rights granted. The illegal provisions are by default separable.
At least that's how I, who ANAL, understand it.
The primary function of the CSS and its licensing regime is not to inhibit unauthorized copying (although it does make it - along with fair use - slightly more difficult for the non-techies among the general population).
The primary purpose is to support both shady and explicitly illegal business activity: Regional pricing / price fixing and inhibition of international resale, regional distribution timing and availability control, and regional content censorship.
This could be construed to make adherence to the contract terms that require sale of chips only to licensees who build products that adhere to the regional coding schemes unenforcable.
= = = =
I just realized: It might be possible to bring a suit against the MPAA/CSS scheme in international courts under GATT!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If I use the words of another, how does this stop the author from making what you call "full usage" of the words?
I love how on this site that you can make an analogy with DeCSS and automobiles and be modded to +5, Insightful, but if you make a comparison between theft and copyright infringement, it is an instant -1, Troll.
We DO NOT have the right to purchase them on our own terms; we do not have the right to copy them freely.
Without the ability to reproduce portions of a motion picture in some form, how can a film critic create a work of criticism? The opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which upheld the constitutionality of a second successive copyright term extension to match that of a foreign government, also hinted that any federal statute that substantially abridges the applicability of a fair use defense would run up against stricter First Amendment scrutiny.
You might want to take a peak at MAI v. Peak (9th cir., 1993) where the court held that loading software into RAM puts a "copy" in RAM. Now, I don't know how DVD players work, but if any part of the process stores the underlying code, even for a moment in time, there *may* be an argument that circumventing ACM is a DMCA violation, because without doing so, the "copy" (in RAM) couldn't be made. Welcome to the weird, wacky world of law, technology and metaphysics.
You seem to have a very limited understanding of product pricing, fixed costs, variable costs, marginal revenue, and basics like reading annual reports. Just because the marginal cost of a DVD or CD is minimal doesn't mean the fixed cost doesn't represent a very high percentage of the sale price. Some neato little charts. Sony gets almost as much revenue from financial services as they do from their music division. Their game and movie divisions, though, have been improving (especially in terms of net profit), but are still no match for the electronics division which is as large as all the other divisions put together.
Someone, somewhere, needs to reverse-engineer this technology and publish the results. Then grey-market chip- and DVD-makers won't have to license anything unless they want the precious "DVD" logo on their box.
:(.
Of course, this will only work after the relevant patents - if any - have expired
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"The original poster was correct. The "pirate" has only infringed the "temporary right of monopoly on distribution of copies"."
Another word for "social contract". Basically the artist has agreed with the terms of the "social contract" and released their works under it. Piracy however is basically some members of the society saying "we don't wish to honor our side of the social contract we signed".
"In a human rights sense, this is an artificial "right" (no direct harm is inflicted on the originator of the idea because a copy of it has been made). The original purpose of granting this lucrative "right" was to encourage the production and distribution of more works by creators."
If there was no "harm (implicit or otherwise)" then why do we need to "encourage". In a "real rights" world there wouldn't need to be "artificial" incentives to create works.
"Now, of course, the creators of works see little of the monetary gains derived from temporary monopoly status; most of the revenue goes to the distributors."
Do they? I made this post and it falls under copyright. Were's my money? Here's a hint for you. Copyright is for everyone, big and small.
"And, unfortunately, a rational and logical analysis of whether the copyright system ought to be changed in some way to possibly encourage more creation of higher quality works will be heavily influenced by the industries that make money by virtue of the current system."
It will also be influenced by those who are misinformed about what copyright law is, and the history of copyright.
(actually, URLs). /. story about this subject which teases us by not disclosing:
This the second tantalizing
exactly WHO are the makers and vendors of the liberalized equipment containing the subject chips?
(I quit looking after the first 50 posts.)
Guess that means an open-source DVD player is illegal.
Such a ban would be "restraint of trade" in a country who's government isn't just the corporations bitch.
Funny. I thought crappy music played on the radio several times a day and overpriced CD's were the cause.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
Tweaking your own box is just a misdemeanor. However, if you and two of your buddies sit around and talk about how to do it. but don't do it, that is a conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, which is a felony crime. Another four years of the Shrub, and it'll make you an enemy combatant.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Man, its getting bad when even news articles spell LOSE wrong....
You can lose money.
A shoe string can come loose.
They mean different things...and are pronounced differently...PLEASE get it right...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
From TFA, second-to-last paragraph: "The MPAA, recognizing the damage the advent of digital file-sharing did to the music industry, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy. [emphasis mine]"
This is a damned bad sign. I know it's popular to bash on the media, but really, they're supposed to print objective fact rather than opinion. The fact that this article simply claims that P2P has damaged the music industry, rather than attributing it as an opinion of someone else's, says to me that we've already lost that particular part of this fight.
Really, they could (and should!) have said something like "The MPAA, agreeing with the music industry's claims that file-sharing has caused it massive damage, has waged an aggressive campaign against movie piracy." By phrasing it as they did, Reuters seems to be claiming that it's simply an established fact that P2P has hurt the RIAA.
And it's probably too late to fix that.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
OK. Show me the 'copyright expiration field' in the DVD/CSS format.
Actually, I don't KNOW that it's not there, because I've never looked at the specs. But I'm absolutely sure it's not, because otherwise we'd have seen 'clock hacks' to bypass "protection" long ago. The lack of a 'copyright expiration field' might be taken as an indication of intent to keep extending copyrights forever. (I suspect it's really negligence, but I'll bet the MPAA never gets sued over their negliegnce, only chipmakers.)
I don't disagree with you. This is indicative of another problem the US is refusing to face. Back in 1992, Clinton tried to make health care reform a national focus. AS A NATION, we turned our backs on the whole issue, and it has come back to bite us badly. IMHO, health care costs are in large responsible for migration of jobs overseas. Not that I necessarily cared for Clinton's plan, BUT WE REFUSED TO EVEN DEBATE THE MATTER! Our bad!
The entire field of intellectual property NOW needs the same kind of national debate. We are in the process of screwing over our national competitive posture by pretending to stay with existing ways.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"music companies who claimed they should be held liable because of how their software was used"
... as soon as companies are held liable for the use of their products ... I'm going to sue sue sue!
I had a few cousins who died from accidents involving these car manufacturers and others
I wouldn't want to be manufacturing guns or knives right now!
While I generally agree with what you said, the selling of saturday night specials into poor neighborhoods was not just idiocy it's evil. Do some searches on Google and read up on this. I think even most pro-gun people will agree this should not be allowed.
Sigma and MediaTek make chips to decode the Content Scramble System, or CSS, which is the copy-protection system used for DVDs. Their licenses require that they sell only to other CSS-licensed companies.
I'm curious...who holds these licenses in question? Or rather, who are the licenses granted from? The MPAA? The article isn't well written enough to tell.
If it's not the MPAA, then it's a silly lawsuit, since the companies haven't broken a contract with the MPAA, but rather with the license holder.
Can anyone fill in the gap? (Or am I just too dense to see the forest afore the trees?)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Somehow you overlooked the killer:
1201.(a)(1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
If "No person shall circumvent" doesn't outlaw use, what does it do?
(a)(1)(A) doesn't care about fair use as it doesn't reference copyright at all -- it never defines this violation as any form of copyright infringement. So, sure, your use might be fair, but that just gets you off the hook for infringement. If you circumvented, you still violated (a)(1)(A). It's a blatant and grotesque end-run around fair use, no question, but I wouldn't want to rely on (c)(1) to defend against it.
There is plenty of legal precedent. Not to mention that it's just common sense to most people. But why would you expect legal precedent and common sense to matter? Where were you when the DMCA was passed? Ever heard of the INDUCE Act? It just gets worse and worse... Legal precedent and common sense mean nothing to the RIAA and the MPAA, because they have politicians (Oren Hatch) in their pocket, and they can get laws passed no matter how ridiculous they are. But, the good news is that the DMCA and especially the INDUCE Act are so incredibly nonsensical that trying to really enforce them would be comical. The INDUCE Act makes peer-to-peer software, DVD burners, iPods, and even hard disks illegal. No, I'm not kidding. Seriously.
I guess the British are also functional illiterates, eh?
Well they do often mispell common words like "color" and "center", and most of them don't even know the proper terms for common items like elevators.;)
"Copyright is a legal monopoly. Maybe someday we'll ditch the free market for information..."
You do realize what you just said is a contradiction in terms?
It is a monopoly, it is a free market of information... well which do you think it is?
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
A nation can survive on Marketing and Lawyers for only so long.
Hospitals all over the nation are closing their emergency rooms due to in-ability to sustain operating costs (un-insured patients, which is the politically sensitive equivalent of non-paying patients), physicians are taking massive paycuts (even when you factor in Cost-of-Living) when they move to a less lawsuit prone area of the country. Companies are hiring engineers (who trained in America!!) and skilled labor in other countries, then shipping the finished project to the US for sale. Bridges and buildings, ships and chemical plants are all using non-union workers who are given greencards for the duration of the project. Factor in reduced farm subsidies, the national deficit, and annual Congressional payraises.
That's generally the ancient Russian formula for Revolution.
In Oktober....
Currently I have absolutely no problem buying a DVD. You get hours of unique content for a mere $10-$20 US. I happen to own over 70 titles myself.
That said, stories like this really get my attention because I don't want to support an organization that stifles fair use and technological innovation just so they can earn a few extra dollars (which goes directly to the producers and a few select others, not the stuntmen/gaffers featured in the sympathy ads that play in movie theaters these days).
MPAA be warned... don't get too greedy. I'd hate for my movie collection to become dated just like my CD collection (I don't download or buy, I avoid).
Oh yeah... you guys owe me money for Dumb and Dumberer, Jurassic Park III, and Vanilla Sky.
Yes, I know it's been said before, but this is like saying "My Brother was murdered and the murder weapon was a kitchen knife, I'm now going to sue the manufacturer of that knife."
Only in America (I hope)
So they sued ESS, and now Sigma Designs and Mediatek, which are, AFAIK, the only 3 companys selling chipset for Divx capable DVD players ?
Hum... what are the odds...
Mediatak probably wont give flying shit to the MPAA since they are a taiwanese company probably making the bulk of their sales to cheap ass asian manufacturers.
American company Sigma Designs is going to have to play ball though...
"you told us cigarettes would kill us, but we chose to smoke them anyway, and now we're dying, we're suing you!"
its more a case of :
"you told us cigarettes were GOOD for our health [40s-50s-60s? adverts], when they're actually FATAL, and you even KNEW that at the time, so we're suing!"
which is a bit more sustainable imho. and fwiw- IAAS.
Yay free market economy! The fact that we need our DVD players approved by anyone tells me the system is broken.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
You have a seriously [broken] mind if you think its ok to take someones work and cheat them out of the result of that work.
Semantic issue: There's a difference between full use of a work and full use of the privilege to exclude others from using that work. I would have understood your position had you said "full usage of the exclusive privileges under the copyright bargain," rather than "full usage of that idea" as in your comment. Your phraseology implies that an idea carries with it a natural right to exclude, when in fact, the copyright bargain as we know it is a legal fiction enacted by governments in order to give authors a monopoly in exchange for the fruits of their labor.
But when I reproduce a work first published in 1927, whose author died and was buried in the ground in the late 1930s, whom am I cheating? When I import a DVD player and DVD movies from a foreign country, whom am I cheating? When I buy a DVD at Wal-Mart and make a copy on my laptop's hard drive, with no intent ever to distribute that copy nor to play it to the public, whom am I cheating?
As no government can legislate morality, do you plan on taking this argument down the legal path or down the ethical path?
Also, small differences can be important, CF lightning bolt vs lightning bug, and being unable to cross a chasm in two smaller jumps rather than one.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I like this idea. Should drive the price of big Flash cards through the floor as well. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Case of been there, done that?
What keeps you out of sunny Georgia? Got a 15yo pregnant? Prefer mud on your dipstick? What?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It sure hasn't aided me and a lot of other Australians I know who, because of CSS, wouldn't be able to import a bunch of titles that just aren't available in Australia. Sure, have your CSS, but at least make sure all the titles are available for all regions, or you're just asking for your stuff to be pirated.
Of course, the fact that its practically impossible to buy a DVD player that ISN'T region free these days makes the above point moot (the Sony region DVD players are also deliciously ironic given their position within the MPAA (yes, yes, different part of the company, whatever).
That whole statement reeks of pro-control MPAA-press release evil to me.
Obviously, the system is broken.
Chances of getting it fixed through conventional paths? Zippo. You then have three choices: live with it, break the law or break the system.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Why don't these companies just say they don't make DVD chips/players.
Because the technology is patented, and the only way to get the rights to manufacture the chips without waiting until A.D. 2018 or so is to license it from the DVD standards group.
However, if you put a DVD into the line, and run it through a TBC, you ca nthen re-record it onto a digital target, and make as many copies as you want.
Which is why the DMCA regulates TBCs, banning VCR makers from bundling a TBC with a VCR (17 USC 1201(k)).
Sure: there's some loss, and a good TBC costs several hundred bucks
I've seen budget TBCs at RadioShack for $30.
Still, I guess the MPAA can't afford to expand the DMCA against TBC makers because it would expose the DMCA to a First Amendment attack, as restricting TBCs restricts speech in video form.
Number one sony found out the hardway.
It is legal to mod to use anything legaly aquired.
Note the word legaly aquired have burntcopy have never been tested in court to see if a dvd is a video or software. All dvd I have seen come with a script based menu and sometime games. The problem here is that you have the right to backup any computer/psx/psx2/xbox program/game for you own use no matter what the disk says and to use mod chips to use the backup as long as you still have the master and don't sell it or copys And this includes the media to make it work.
So as long as you only copy DVDs with a menu you should be fine but you will really be fine to copy a DVD with a game ie you were backup up the game not the video just the video got copyed while you were at it. Basicly sooner or latter this will be tested in court but the test cases normally says it stands ie a converter from one region to region free would be pefectly fine as long as you own the disk to make it play ie 1.2 floppy converted to 1.4 media format does not have to be the same on the backup as the master.
Sony lost there fight media produces have overlooked the results of this and then have made major mistakes basicly any dvd with a game is copyable for backup no matter what the licence says here.
This is wrong in austalia
2) Distributing those modifications (parts or instructions) IS illegal.
Because you are allowed to Distributing modifications and instructions to allow people to play backups on different size media than what it came on ie 2 4g dvd on a 8g or a 8g dvd on 2 4g.
Yep a nice grayline reason why I am alowed legally to have a rom copy of a snes game I own to play on my computer because my snes is stuffed because I am using the backup. Distributing instructions on rom reading is not illegal but giving roms to other people here is.
They have never been prepared to take on the mod making company in australa after they nuked sony in court all the way to the high court of australia and won every time all the way threw.(once at the high court of austrlia there is nothing more that can be done) Note you can get a Regon X addon for the playstation 2 here as well yep it plays all regons and it just plugs in no opening of case or anything.
The important thing is legally aquired here steal a DVD and use it you up the creek one of the reasons why DVD not from the region 4 or all regions don't get stollen copyright infringement as well as Theift ie if region 4 or all regions it is just theift. It is a good thing to mix in with a dvd collection if you have a person taking them.
a) Are you implying that gun manufacturers proliferated guns into poor sections of cities? Links please. And something credible, like say with actual press credentials. Nothing from some PAC group or socialists rags. b) Perhaps they were targeting (pardon the pun) business owners who were tired of being robbed.
The suits are the latest legal action by the Motion Picture Association of America, which claims its members loose billions of dollars annually to copyright piracy. How does one who can't even spell write for Yahoo!?
If we are really concerned about correct language, & I know that I am, then we should be spelling them:
* loos or loose
* looz
Wee shood be spelling things foneticly.
Note: I'm from BC, Canada, so the spellings that I suggest represent the way that I pronounce them, not necessarily the entire world.
testing out my trending skills
Okay slightly offtopic but from article refering to P2P software "They had been sued by movie and music companies who claimed they should be held liable because of how their software was used."
So that should mean if the MPAA had won that one that they would then be open to suits stating "They made the movies which made my little Johnny go and kill some people."
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
They both upscale DVD's to HD resolution and output the unencrypted result over analog component cables.
I thought the only legal DVD video formats were 640(,704,720)x480 or 320(,352)x240, so it wouldn't make much sense to "upscale" those--you wouldn't get any better quality than the original SD video. Or are there DVDs being distributed in HD now?
This is a damned bad sign. I know it's popular to bash on the media, but really, they're supposed to print objective fact rather than opinion. The fact that this article simply claims that P2P has damaged the music industry, rather than attributing it as an opinion of someone else's, says to me that we've already lost that particular part of this fight.
But if you think about it, file-sharing is damaging the music industry. Why? Because millions of people are discovering that they don't need to be slaves to the labels anymore. Issues of income during a particular year aside, the loss of control over their customers is serious damage.
The real danger is equating the music industry with the music scene. For a while, these were pretty much one and the same; the Internet is changing that, but as long as the RIAA can get people to believe that the welfare of music itself is dependent on the welfare of the industry, things aren't likely to improve.
And that's just the thing that is going to kill the competitive posture of the US. Copyright extension and Draconian Media Contoll Authority doesn't really help the media industries, in the long run. It just helps them get lazy, and prevents them from adapting their business model to the realities of electronic distribution.
More nimble companies will arise in Asia (and no doubt elsewhere) that will have new business models that both allow for electronic distribution and keep artists paid/creating.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I have 2 Panasonic and both are Region Free and I
would have never bought em if they didn't.
This must have been a fine roomful of folks in control: "About 250 executives from Hollywood studios and home-electronics companies gathered at the Bellagio in Las Vegas earlier this year to toast their soaring fortunes, thanks to the phenomenal success of the digital video disc. Major studios sold a stunning $9.4 billion worth of DVDs to retailers last year, proof that DVDs now bring in a majority--52 percent in 2003--of Hollywood's revenue." (Newsweek July 5, 04)
So isn't THAT a hoot. These are same maroons who fought videotape under the premise that it would RUIN Hollywood (sorry, there are more than enough folks making crappy movies to do that already). But VHS opened up a multibillion dollar business expansion for them. And now they fight DVD tooth & nail (i.e. buried 321 Studios, r.i.p., etc.) and continue to beat on every other possible means of DVD fair use.
So they are basically in a position to print money. But in spite of that they are too incompetent to actually run very profitable companies. Keep in mind that many studios have fiscal issues and none of them are really phenominally profitable. So that must mean they must "somehow" "lose" cash. Hmmm, I wonder where.
"I tried to sleep my way to the top, but my alarm clock always wakes me right up" - TMBG
In some countries, the use of DVD regions is held to be a sign of a cartel, and so it is not legitimate to provide this restriction... So i suppose they can point to that...
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
MPAA sues sand for contributing to silicon chips used for piracy!
Supoenas served in Death Valley, the Gobi Desert, and the Sahara. None were served in Iraq for obvious reasons of security.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Just curious since we are sort of on the subject of DMCA and encryption. If I make something and I put weak encryption on it (let's say all I do is XOR it with a number that is hard-coded in the source), and then somebody breaks that encryption through relatively trivial means, does that mean they are violating the DMCA?
"The NRA says 'guns don't kill people, people do.' But I think that the gun helps. You know? I think it helps. I think that if you just walked around going 'Bang!' you wouldn't kill too many people would you? You'd have to be really dogdy on the heart for that to work. I think that people should just try that. Walk around going 'BANG, BANG, BOOM, RATTA TAT, BOOM, RATTA TAT, BOOM!' I think that they should just try it." - Eddie Izzard
For the PC, you can decrypt and burn a DVD to a blank disc. This disc will be playable in nearly ANY DVD player Because of the country I live in, I cannot tell you how to do this.
:D. Assuming DVD is small enough to fit your disc (DL or otherwise).
:D.
That is, Norway
Step 1. Open DVD ripper of choice. Check "remove Macrovision", "remove RCE/REA". (CSS/region coding will disappear anyway). Hit "Start".
Step 2. Open Nero. Put all files on DVD. Burn.
This message is encrypted with ROT-26 and is for Norwegian recipients only. Decrypting the above instructions is a violation of the DMCA in the US
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why? Can't you unleash money?
More bad laws. The public servant should be replaced with corporate puppet for the great many senators and representatives in the US congress.
I like to watch old movies. ( wait, there is a point ). I was watching a movie from the 1944 ( http://imdb.com/title/tt0037366/ ) called "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo". They refered to cigarettes as "coffin nails" ( in the scene with Van Johnson and Robert Mitchum, where they are on the carrier, the carrier has just left port and is headed out to sea at night ). Anecdotal, and only one data point, but at least the script writer ( and presumably Van Johnson / Robert Mitchum ) knew. I'd bet other instances could be found both in and out of entertainment.
emt 377 emt 4
IIRC, regional pricing schemes are against international commerce treaties signed by the US
Also, IIRC, international treaties signed by the US automatically become laws in the US
Connect the dots with how contracts with illegal clauses lose enforceability and actually the MPAA may be shooting itself in the foot big time with this lawsuit
The primary purpose is to support both shady and explicitly illegal business activity: Regional pricing / price fixing and inhibition of international resale, regional distribution timing and availability control, and regional content censorship.
Sounds like racketeering to me....
. there used to be a sig here.....
Is this just a coinincidence that these are also the makers of the most used chipsets for Divx enabled DVD players? I wonder.
Big-screen TVs have to apply an internal scaler to incoming standard definition signals. Otherwise they'd have problems with visible scan lines. If you can feed the TV a high-definition signal, you can bypass the TV's internal scaler or at least have more control over how the scaling is done.
For example if your DVD player has a better scaler than the TV, then you probably want to use that instead. This is similar to S-Video output on a Laserdisc player, which in theory provides no benefit but in practice lets you choose between the player's comb filter and the TV's comb filter.
Even if your DVD player's scaler is the same quality as the TV's, doing it in the player is probably still a better choice. The DVD's scaler gets to work with the original digital image. The TV's scaler starts with the SD video which has already gone through a lossy digital-analog-digital conversion.
A similar option is to modify a DVD player to output SDI, which is the sort of fully-digital unencrypted standard definition video normally used in video production environments. You can feed SDI into an outboard scaler -- companies like Extron and Key Digital make these -- or use an SDI input card to make a computer-based scaler.
The solution to a monopoly is competition.
Who is the competitive provider of electric power? Who is the competitive provider of local low-latency high-speed residential Internet service? Closer to the topic of this article, who is the competitive provider of novels used in twentieth century literature classes in universities? How would somebody surmount these government-enforced entry barriers?
Um, aren't they already? By some extension, that's technically what is happening now, with the various IP groups purchasing their congresscritters to define what "fair" is.
It seems to have missed your notice, but the simple presence of copyright is a limitation on the market. Ergo, your comment about "ditch[ing] the free market" makes no sense -- we don't have one now, how could we ditch something we don't have?
All I'm trying to say is, if you want a free market, espouse a truly free market. What we have now with all the legal tangles is anything but.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
There is no law preventing you from generating your own electricity and selling it to your neighbor.
Wouldn't selling electric power to my neighbor or to the power company require me to go back to school and take out a second student loan to pay tuition in order to learn how to generate electric power and sell it to my neighbor or to the power company? Or do there exist plug-and-play household solar power generators? Google didn't help.
If you produce more power than your home consumes and you run your power meter backwards, the local utility is required by law to pay you for it at the same rate they'd charge you for power.
I didn't know I could sell power back to the incumbent. Thank you. But wouldn't it still require an allegedly oppressive contract with the incumbent?
there is nothing preventing you from providing local low-latency, high-speed residential Internet service, either. Five years ago I put together a wireless ISP for my entire subdivision
Now that you have said the word "wireless", I have something to latch onto for Google research. Thank you. (after several minutes of using Google) I did some research into fixed terrestrial wireless and found an article about BroadLink. But there's one thing: what little information I could find on the site is nearly useless to ISPs that want to become a BroadLink partner and sell dishes to local customers. How would one learn more about this? And wouldn't managing a new business require that I go to a business school, taking out a second student loan? And how would I come across the land to put my antenna on?
In other words, I admit that my examples failed. Thank you for pointing out that I had misplaced the entry barriers in my argument; instead of at the municipal government level, they turned out to be at the education finance level. However, there are some other public utilities that I can't easily think of how to replace with small-business competition, such as the water company (as some state laws prohibit collecting rain on one's land) the natural gas company (as many customers own gas-powered appliances and couldn't afford to replace them with electric appliances even if I were to supply electricity for free), and the phone company (in the areas whose terrain interferes with fixed terrestrial wireless). What would you suggest to replace these? In addition:
You ask "who is the competitive provider of novels used in twentieth century literature classes in universities?" There is no law preventing you or anyone else from authoring any number of texts on any number of subjects you like.
It appears you have shifted the discussion from twentieth century novels to textbooks about twentieth century novels. Because each university has a different set of copyrighted novels that it chooses, many universities insource these textbooks; one of its professors writes such a text giving an overview of the novels, and the university press prints it and sells it to the bookstore. Can you help me find keywords that would help me use Google to discover another inroad to this market?
If you'd have spent half the effort you spent making all the above excuses actually looking for ways to solve a problem rather than looking for more excuses
I see those two activities as one in the same. What do you consider the more polite way to get other people to help me discover alternatives by tossing out relevant keywords such as "sell power back to the power company" and "fixed wireless", other than by explaining a few ideas that I know don't work, which you have called "making excuses"?
But complaining is easy and work is hard.
Without a job, I can't earn the money I need to invest in one of these businesses you describe. How would you suggest I find a job related to my computer science degre
after having "RTFM"
/. with small genetalia," it became clear that you yourself are a l33t snob of /. who "welcomed" (read as: taunted in teenage angst-style manner) others to mod you down; specifically, as overrated.
:P
It's not because I disgareed with you; your points are quite valid and worth noting for those didn't read the article.
I modded you down because when you used sentences like "Fanatics who don't want to RTFM are welcomed to mod me down." and "Overrated: Moderation used by the l33t snobs of
And that is exactly what I did. This cannot come as a surprise to someone like you who surely has been modded down as overerated before, either.
Or maybe I just did it because I have small genetalia...
Look, I'm getting tired of expending my effort to solve your problems. I've made my point and disputed yours. Spend your effort solving your problems on your own instead of coming up with ever more excuses to throw this way. You make mountains out of molehills in an excuse to keep yourself from having to exert effort, and then you complain about how you're oppressed by everyone else. It's pathetic.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Spend your effort solving your problems on your own
Yes, I admit that you have called me pathetic. Still, no matter how much "effort" I apply, I lack the investigative skills to make that effort fruitful. Thus, my core question remains: How can I learn to solve my problems on my own?
1. Define the problem ... 2. Research what needs to be done ... 3. Recursion ... 4. Continue until all problems are solved.
I have in fact followed much of the problem-solving method you outline, but being an imperfect human being, I have encountered obstacles in the research step. A question of "how do I find out how to find out how to find out how to find out ... how to X?" leads to infinite recursion. To put it more boldly, given the problem "I have not succeeded at research often enough", how would one apply step 2 without overflowing the stack?
In the end, you'll either have a working solution or you'll have discovered your original goal was unworkable, unacheiveable, or unmarketable
When I whine on Slashdot, I'm merely expressing that my goal was unreachable within my available resources, asking readers what I could have missed in my research. In other word: This very conversation is research. You are step 2.