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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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I mean, it's not illegal to modify your own hardware now is it?
It depends on where you live.
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
>The TV thinks that I am trying to copy DVD's and enables Macrovision.
I'm sure you're aware of this, but to clarify: The DVD is marked with a macrovision flag that tells the DVD player to produce an incorrect NTSC signal intended to mess with the automatic gain of a VCR. The DVD player obligingly corrupts the signal. Many TVs have problems with a macrovision-corrupted signal, especially TV/VCR combos.
I have this problem as well, but I get around it by only buying DVD players in which the macrovision "feature" can be disabled. I don't do this to copy DVDs, I do it so I can watch them.
It does make it more difficult for people to produce region free DVD players though, because only authorized DVD players may access the DVD (legally bypass the ACM), and a DVD player will not be authorized if it's region free, at least in the US. (Yes, there are hacks for many DVD players, but they're not supposed to be there, and more importantly, if a DVD manufacturer advertised the feature they'd lose their license instantly.)
It's all about price fixing in the end. And it's legal. Don't you just love it?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
I you're talking about copying to a DVD-R, a bit-by-bit copy would produce an unplayable DVD. The CSS key is pre-recorded and thus the copy can't be decrypted.
"But I'm still like a little kid, see?
I just don't know when to quit."
- Rei
No distribution required. Just having something that by passes the encryption is enough. My understanding of the law is this, If you break an encryption scheme which is used to protect copyrighted material then you've broken the DMCA.
[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.
[
Zenith DVB318 and Momitsu V880. They both upscale DVD's to HD resolution and output the unencrypted result over analog component cables. The DVD consortium (and the content industry in general), state that everything must be either encrypted with HDCP (when using digital outputs like DVI or HDMI), or messed up with Macrovision. The only exception is for component outputs (where the Macrovision algorithm doesn't work), so they contractually limit the legal output resolution over component to 480p for DVD's.
People who were early adopters of HDTV's (i.e. they ONLY have component inputs for HD, no DVI or HDMI) are pretty pissed about the whole situation.
Dan
Bull...
(b) ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS. (1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that (etc.)
and
(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED. (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
Nothing about possessing or using technology that bypasses encryption. Its legal to have, use and modify, just not distribute. Kind of like the GPL.
Contract violation is a civil offense, not a criminal offense. Someone who has broken a contract has not violated the law.
Thanks, Steve.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
It's all about price fixing in the end. And it's legal. Don't you just love it?
To quote Larry Lessig...
Note to citizens: We're permitted to change the law.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
The GPL is a contract.
No, the GPL is a license.
KFG
No, it's not.
1) Modifications you make yourself are NOT illegal under the DMCA.
2) Distributing those modifications (parts or instructions) IS illegal.
3) Making your modifications does not relieve you of the burden of copyright law.
How did you get modded +5 informative?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
Just some points:
1. Home DVD burners (including consumer DVD-R and DVD+R) cannot use CSS encryption. They just physically are not able to do so because the media does not support the burning of the CSS key.
2. Professional burners do exist that can use CSS. These require different media (consumer media won't burn in these) due to the wavelength of the laser being different and a section on the disc to receive the CSS key.
3. The cost of the professional burners and media are considerably more than the consumer units.
The end result is that the studios think their stuff is worth protecting, while the consumer's isn't. It just makes me feel all warm inside.
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.
If you hook a PC up to a TV, or vice-versa, some video cards/drivers are now enforcing Macrovision copy protection.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Err, whoops, you're correct, but that doesn't really detract from the rest of my post.
. html: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_contractL icense), because it differs so greatly from traditional software licenses.
[ The English-language definition of contract is somewhat broader than the American legal definition, but, I was attempting to speak in legal terms. (I _did_ disclaim my non-lawyer status already, though *g*). Contracts _can_ be merely implied, if wikipedia is to be believed; I would call the GPL a weak contract in this sense, since you're agreeing to abide by the rules and regulations set forth in exchange for permissions granted to do things that may otherwise be prohibited, but, it's probably more properly called a license, to distinguish from the traditional oral or written agreement to negotiated terms of exchange. ]
These are some good resources about contracts and contract law:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/contracts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
http
The exact nature of the GPL has been subject to some debate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
That said it still pisses me off in general.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Isn't breaching a contract against the law? Maybe not a criminal offense, but nevertheless illegal.
Depends whether the contract is legal and enforcable or not.
For example, if your contract requires you to break some other law, then it's fine to breach it by keeping the other law, because that contract would not stand up in court.
Try reading the law before you spout off about it. See Section 1201, which provides: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
The anti-trafficking provisions are in addition to the anti-circumvention provisions. See also any published analysis before pontification.
Make cheese not war 8:)
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.........
Who modded this troll up?
He blatantly skipped (a) which makes circumventing criminal. Courts have ruled the DVD-CCA system is an "effective access control system", and short of having the DMCA overturned, circumventing their system is clearly illegal.
His refference to "(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED" is pointless because violating the DMCA is not copyright infringment. There is no fair use defence to violating the DMCA. Saying a non-existant defence is "not affected" is just plain offensive.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.