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Jon Johansen Interviewed
wuzfuzzy writes "Depending on your point of view, Jon Lech Johansen is either your hero or adversary. To the copyright industry, Jon Lech Johansen has been a detriment to their policy of control since the advent of DeCSS (Decrypt Content Scrambling System.) To those who cherish freedom, he has been a pillar of hope in an age when DRM (Digital Rights Management) threatens to overtake mainstream media. After two trials, the courts finally ruled in Jon's favor. However, there is much more to Jon Lech Johansen than DeCSS. In this interview, Slyck hopes to bring to light the many facets of Mr. Johansen, and the numerous projects he is involved with."
...I remember the days when everyone loved this guy, that was, of course, until he applied his skills to slashdot's favorite purveyor of DRM.
When your DVD player tells you "This operation is not allowed" when you try to skip commercials, it becomes pretty clear that DRM really stands for Digital Restrictions Management.
Exactly! When I buy a DVD (not rent) I expect to have complete control over how I view that content. My DVD player has no right to restrict me from fastfowarding through any part of that media.
Any DVD I purchase that does not allow me to fastfoward any part is immediately ripped, stripped, and burned. That's my right. Thank you Jon!
I predict we will have two responses to this guy here:
#1 Lets nominated him for sainthood in the house of GNU.
#2 Lets string him up high.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Right On Jon! I already paid for the DVD I don't see why I should be forced to sit though adverts after that.
Just let me navigate the content of my new DVD in the manner I choose thanks very much!
It is just a pity that the studios/player manufacturers are not going to listen to the public on this matter.
...
Possible but riding his "I wrote decss" thingy won't always pay off.
And when he's forced to apply for a job through normal avenues [cuz let's be honest decss is cool but not the be-all of the computer industry] he'll get the HR run-around.
The best thing he can do is at the very least get a community college diploma or something. That way he has "some paper".
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
In my personal opinion, he isn't a freedom fighter. He's a guy whose making it harder to get the record labels to embrace online downloading as their business model.
Why should tracks I buy from an online music store be more restrictive in what I can do with them than ones that come on red book Audio CDs?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
This paragraph struck me as odd:
"Another myth is that DeCSS is illegal because it uses a "stolen" key. A CSS key is 5 bytes. How anyone can think that it's possible to "steal" 5 bytes is beyond me. 5 bytes do not have any protection under copyright law because it's not an original work. It's probably possible for 5 bytes to be protected under trade secret law, but CSS hasn't been a trade secret since DeCSS was released and mirrored all over the net. Is someone who names their child "Frank" (5 bytes) stealing Frank's name? It's absurd."
If those 5 bytes are a key to unlock something.. ehm.. I think comparing that to someones first name is a bit weird. If someone has my credit-card code, I would say they stole my code.
For the record, as I do not want this thing to be flooded with "Great , go ahead and support DRM", I'm 100% against DRM. They have been spending a thousand times more on DRM-development than what they claim they have lost by illegal copies. DRM is only good if you want to finance the legal department and throw money out of the window, because no DRM will be 100% safe, and all DRM-schemes that I've seen passing by were broken, sometimes even before their official release. Not to mention they cause enormous headaches with their paying customers, and I don't think paying customers are the kind of people they want to piss off.
Why do things have to be so black and white? I don't care one way or the other. DeCSS Jon is marginally better than Mitnick, because Jon actually produces something and is Fighting the Power (TM) and Sticking it to the Man (TM)... and that's a good thing. I don't agree with all that he does, but at least he's out there in the proverbial trenches doing what he thinks is right rather than just stealing music (or credit card numbers, like Mitnick) just because he can. He's also not a famewhore like Mitnick, trying to turn a moment of dubious fame into 3) profit!!! Mitnick proves that Scott Adams is right: people get promoted because management knows their name, and one only gets one's name known when it's attached to some disaster. Thus, companies hire criminals like Mitnick as "security experts" because they've heard the man's name.
I put Jon into the same category as Linus... someone pushing the boundaries of the electronic world, and our rights therein. Someone has to be the pioneer, if mainstream society is to struggle with the issues brought up by the envelope-pusher.
Or you might think he's just some guy, you know?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
But DRM like iTunes' is the most liberal there is
And that's the problem. People don't balk at iTunes DRM. They simply say that it's the best out there, so they're happy. Kind of like saying having a brick dropped on your foot is better than having a bowling ball dropped on your head. People keep forgetting the fact that both options suck.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You paint a picture of an evil corporate-controlled society with black helicopters and spotlights swarming in the night to take away your cherished freedoms.
Have you even been paying attention to the crap congress is up to?
Sure, no black helicopters and spotlights, but only because it's not as effective as passing laws in congress.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You might have said that sarcastically, but a lot of people think this way. This kind of worldview emerges if you follow the current trend of relentless corporate-goverment culture restrictions policies to their logical conclusion.
Separately, I offer two analogies based on the last sentence in your comment:
1) The fact that record labels will not consider selling music online without onerous restrictions underscores Jons point.
2) Saying that iTMS has the least restrictive DRM scheme is a lot like the difference between the Minimum Security wing of a prison (iTMS), and the Maximum Security wing of a prison (the goal of the labels); in the end, you're still in prison.
Governments are not necessary.
Ok, this guy may have some valid ideas about DRM, but I feel that a artist/musician/owner/company... whoever, has the right to protect/use/distribute thier product however they see fit and if someone doesn't like it then they have every right not to purchase it. Wresting control of a item away from it's owner is not a nobal pursuit.
BTW normal consumer actions often police the worst sorts of DRM and Meida lock. Example... Disney once released a DVD were you couldn't skip the previews, they did this once, got slammed by the consumers and stopped doing it. If you want to change something you can do it with dollars.
If this guy is so smart about DRM and the finances of Media Companies, then I suggest he start his own media company and see how long it takes for himto go out of business.
--- Nothing To See Here ---
He's definitely a very talented kid, I mean he wrote DeCSS when he was around 16. Did any of his teachers notice his talents? Of course not. So he takes his skills underground where he meets people like himself. These people are tossed aside by an uncaring system, of course he thinks the way he does. He hates the system because it created him.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
To those who cherish freedom, he has been a pillar of hope in an age when DRM (Digital Rights Management) threatens to overtake mainstream media.
Okay, this is bad.
Have we degenerated to the level of the government that we must use overblown rhetoric, that we don't question such rhetoric?
This is classic Loyalty Oath type stuff--"You Love Freedom, Yes?" "Um.. yeah..." "Then You Love Senator McCarthy."
I have the highest respect for those whom I can view as "pillars of hope", but I also have the highest respect for our language, and shit like this is, at best, abuse, at worst, propoganda.
Drives me nuts. I especially can't stand the Apple DRM fanboys. Oh how I disklike them. Thank God for people like Jon.
The music industry survived for years and years with NO copy restrictions at all. Tapes and CD's could be copied at will. And best of all at the height of "Copyright infringement" and P2P, the record companies are making record profits.
Any yet now we are supposed to accept these lockdowns and be grateful at all for their services? Because as the parent pointed out that's already happening. Let's look at what Apple has done with the power of DRM to brainwash users. Restrict from Internet streaming to local streaming. Restrict from unlimited Lan to 5 users a day. Restrict from 10 burns of a playlist to 7(IIRC), and finally as someone else had pointed out disabled features on Itunes and the Ipod to lock out competitors.
And still Apple DRM fanboys and people ignorant of how damaging DRM can be talk about how great it is . Well from here it sure as heck looks like real world DRM implementation suck and are only getting worse. Itunes 5.0 is going to be locked down so tight you can only listen to your songs in a locked room in the presense of an authorized Apple Rep.
btw I should mention I have no problem with Itunes and besides the Ipod being expensive have no problem with it either. This prasing of DRM and accepting your software being locked down has to stop.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Beyond a certain point, key length doesn't really matter. It's the alrogithm that produces those keys that will get cracked.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Ok, I've kept pretty silent about the whole DRM issue for a long time, because it doesn't really affect me. Since when was the "right to be entertained" a fundimental human right? I'm tired of hearing people whine, "I should be able to do whatever I want with my DVD." You bought a liscense, because that is what was sold to you. Just because I buy a book does not mean I can "do whatever I want with it." I can't copy it 50,000 times and sell it. I can't distribute it all over the internet. If you don't like what you're buying, stop buying it. Stop it with the childish ranting which is really rooted in your inability to break the entertainment-addiction.
most of you sound something like this, "my entertainment dealer won't let me steal entertainment(drugs) from him for myself or to give to my friends. So, I'm really mad at him and I'm gonna find all sorts of creative ways to steal from him anyway."
Whew, that said, I'm all for the freedom to develop and test new technologies. I just think there are better ways to stop DRM. Don't buy their liscenses. Don't buy anything from them until they sell exactly what you want. Otherwise, don't whine.
So I was sitting here thinking about how I like to fast forward through commercials, and use adblock, and such, when I had a strange thought. So, I thought I would play a little Devil's Advocate, and toss it out here for comment.
:)
Think about how it is when you buy a magazine. The publication is chock full of advertisements. You can cut them out, but probably not without ruining at least one part of text. Fast forwarding a DVD is kind of like flipping past an ad page without reading it, but being as the technologies are different, I'm not quite sure how to compare them. So, what makes the magazine scenario different from the DVD one?
In addition to the comment above, I offer another idea that makes some bit of sense: What would it cost to buy the same magazine without advertisements? I'm thinking quite a bit more, and I doubt I would pay for a magazine that cost $20-$50 (depending on content, of course). There are conflicting ideas about what a DVD "actually" costs to make, but if you think about how it would probably cost more if there were no advertisements, I think you can kind of see why they make you watch those advertisements.
To me, it all boils down to the fact that a business is a business, and the only purpose of a business is to make money. If, in order to make money, a business has to agree that it will make a consumer watch someone else's add, then the business will do it in a heartbeat. It may suck for the user, but as long as they buy it anyway, it doesn't matter.
Anyway, just thoughts. Respond if you wish, but I'd rather hear interesting arguments than rehashed, tired quotes and flames.
This just shows how the MPAA has brought this on themselves. When DVDs first came out, what was the point of CSS? Average people couldn't make copies of DVDs until pretty recently. Was it forethought regarding the copying capability of the public? Hardly. It was about control. They wanted to be able to control the format. They wanted to be able to sell licenses of their product to DVD player manufacturers. They are still doing this today, but their grip is slipping.
Look at WHY DeCSS was created:
The MPAA and their cronies pushed the boundaries of good business, and got called on it. They thought nobody could do anything about it, so they didn't even consider backing down. I don't know of ANYONE who likes to sit through the crap they are forced to sit through on DVDs. The problem is, people are willing to put up with the inconvenience because there are no other options. Now there are, so MPAA - reap what you sow motherfuckers.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The problem is, you're effectively telling apple you like their DRM. They don't know you're removing it - they just add you to the big list of customers they can present to the record companies and say
'See? people are accepting our DRM, and if any nasty people manage to buy your music without DRM, or listen to the music they paid for on too many computers, we can lock it down harder and people will still accept it!'
DRM won't get lighter, or less restrictive, only more so. And you buying it under those conditions just lets them get away with tightening it for the vast majority of people who don't know who to remove it.
Give it 20 years, and people won't remember they used to be able to play records or CDs how and where they liked. They'll have forgotten they used to be able to resell old CD's once they were tired of them. They'll have forgotten that they could make backup copies of what they owned.
Some of those things are already going, like the ability to play it on your OS/device of choice without jumping through hoops. Some have gone already, like being able to resell your copies.
Buy iTMS music if you like their DRM, but don't remove it and then kid yourself you're beating them. You're just paving the road to greater restrictions later. And by the time we can't crack the DRM (or it becomes so legally dangerous to do so) it'll be too late to complain, lobby and change it, because most people will think that's how it's always been.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.