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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!
5 bytes covers 1,099,511,627,776 possibilities, which is a little harder.
It rather depends on how difficult it is to test each possibility.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
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.
Slyck.com Interviews Jon Lech Johansen
April 4, 2005
Thomas Mennecke
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.
Jon Lech Johansen became well known for his role in the development of DeCSS. Jon spent 3 long years in the Norwegian courts proving his innocence. The American movie industry pressured the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit to press charges against Jon Lech Johansen in 2000 for allegedly bypassing the CSS copy protection on DVDs.
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.
Describe your role in the development of DeCSS. Was is a group effort or were you the mastermind behind it?
DeCSS was written by 3 people: a German developer, a Dutch developer and myself. The reverse engineering was done by the German.
From time to time I see people repeat the claim that DeCSS was only made possible because a DVD player manufacturer forgot to "protect" their DVD player. This is a myth that is perpetuated by people who don't understand how computers work. Code obfuscation only slows down reverse engineering, it doesn't block it.
What was the motivation behind creating DeCSS?
The motivation was being able to play DVDs the way we want to. I don't like being forced to use a specific operating system or a specific player to watch movies (or listen to music.) Nor do I like being forced to watch commercials. 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.
Did you ever expect the level of legal entanglements; and for it to become as popular as it is today?
No and no.
How difficult was it do break the CSS encryption? What did it take to break the encryption?
Technically DeCSS didn't break CSS. Breaking a crypto algorithm requires revealing and/or exploiting a method that's faster than brute force. DeCSS simply implemented CSS the same way as a normal DVD player.
CSS was however broken by Frank Andrew Stevenson: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/FrankStevenson/ index.html. Many DVD decryption tools today exploit the weaknesses in CSS that he revealed.
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.
Was there at any point during the DeCSS trials when you felt you were in serious trouble, or were you confident throughout that you would emerge victorious?
I was confident throughout.
What was the expression(s) on the face of the movie industry when you were finally acquitted?
The MPAA's (or rather, the MPA, which is the international arm of the MPAA) Norwegian lawyer was present for most of the first trial. I don't remember if he was present when the judgment was handed down, but if he was, he was probably wearing his standard grumpy look.
For the acquitt
From the interview:
People who claim that the iTMS DRM is a "good compromise" have naively bought into the impending doom propaganda.
He has a point - the DRM that comes with iTunes is already creeping up in restrictions from the point at which you first agreed to it. Perhaps you should take another look and think again if it is really worth it to you?
I remember all the comments here about how no one would buy anything with DRM attached... but then it turns out that yes, most of Slashdot indeed would buy it willingly. How very dissapointing.
Beep beep.
the most interesting thing he's done recently in my opinion was hacking the VC-1 codec from SMPTE into VLC. Something that provides real hope for linux and mac users trying to view WMV9 encoded video content
not to belittle the rest of his accomplishments, but I feel this one has the greatest possible advantage in legitimate terms
Business Voyeur
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.
To those who cherish freedom, he has been a pillar of hope
Since when did George Bush's writers start submitting slashdot articles?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
The best example of this is the DVD of "Master and Commander". It forces you sit through 10 minutes of advertising of other films before you get to the main menu!
I found this requirement to be shockingly obnoxious.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
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.
For me the paper was largely useless to start with. The point is people really are asshats and will simply stroke you off for not being comformant with "the list".
... well it proves how immature he is. School is as useful as you make it. If you just treat it as a 9-5 it can be very ineffective. But if you treat is as playground of knowledge and use the time to learn as much as possible you leave school with the ability to pick up new things, etc, etc, etc..
I have companies like IBM, Sony, BitMover, etc... using my software and yet I'm unfit to work for them... That basically tells you that the people who "do work" and the people who "do hiring" are not the same and don't talk.
Not trying to ride on JJ but if he's trying to be hip by saying "school is useless"
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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.
"Arguing with unreasonable people who hide behind anonymity is a waste time, so I don't bother."
Sounds like he's not a member of Slashdot.
So what. I wrote an entire BBS when I was 12 [going on 13 at the time] in pascal while teaching myself C, I was reading TAOCP and understanding quite a bit at age 17 ...
... these are all things you do in high school and college.
By 2002 [when I hit 20] my LibTomCrypt library had already international attention behind it. I've since traveled the to europe twice, been to california twice on various work related contracts because of the attention I got.
He's not the only kid with "neato hobbies".
What makes him so special is he got sued. I'm sure if RSA or something tried to sue me that would make me "uber slashdot cool" and you know what... I'd still go to college.
Cuz despite all the bitching and moaning you do learn things. Sure a good 30% or so of my teachers were clueless, but you still pick up things you wouldn't on your own in an unstructured environment.
Does JJ know calculus? Alegbra? Chemistry? Literature?
Sure you can teach yourself math [for instance] but the likelyhood of missing key concepts is much higher [and it takes longer to learn the basics in my experience with crypto for instance...].
If anything he should have leveraged his fame to get scholarships or something. At least that would be productive...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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
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.
1. Put in movie, wait until it queues up 2. Press Stop 3. Wait 3 seconds 4. Press Stop again 5. Press Play 6. Movie will begin at 00:00:00 Problem solved. Seriously, try it.