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RIAA vs Linux and DVDs
PlayfullyClever writes "The entertainment industry has put itself on the fast-track to destruction, using well-proven tactics as explained in Preventing DVD Playback on Linux Like Prohibition in the 1920's. Are their heavy-handed tactics to lock up and control everything we touch signs of plain old human stubborness?" Or more likely- greed.
I did read the friendly article but couldn't quite connect RIAA with Linux and DVDs.
There's no mention of RIAA/music/movie in the article, and hardly any mention of Linux.
So what's happening now? Is it some kind of bullets, leathers and baked beans? Someone please enlighten me.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
.... besides making no sense whatsoever, is depressingly difficult to masturbate to.
Or more likely- greed.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!
You're comparing Linux users who want to watch DVD's to 1920's Americans who want to drink? Let's see what's wrong with this analogy, LOl!
The executives making the decisions don't understand the technology and have fortunes built upon the success of Brittney Spears. They are trapped by their own business models and the only way out is something not only new and unproven but something that they can't wrap their brains around. Net result: fear. Fear of failure, destitution, and the loss of everything they have gained on the work of others. Fear.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
(Someone had to say it.)
Of course not, we slashdot hates the RIAA more than the MPAA.
So you simply substitute organizations, destroys any logical point TOP had, but will cause a lively enough reaction among hte slashdot faithful for a good 20-30 minutes of rabid posting.
TFA states that during Prohibition alcohol consumption fell initially, then rose to heights never before seen. P2P sharing was huge a few years ago. I don't have any data to back this up, but it seems to me that it's taken a pretty big fall. Is there going to be a rise similar to alcohol consumption during Prohibition? On the other hand, I can hardly wait to see Homer the mp3 Baron...
The core issues we are up against are with the concepts of copyright and patent. Corporations want ownership of materials; Private individuals want free access those materials. Therein lies the battle. This is as perpetual as bipartisanship.
See subject.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
There are linux DVD players just that none are free. There are no free legal DVD players ON ANY OS. You know how everyone says MS Office,photoshop,reamweaver etc will never have a linux version because linux users do not pay for software, well that is quite true.
Legal linux DVD player
Stop the BS about people trying to stop DVD playback on Linux. It just makes you look stupid.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The article uses Prohibition as a comparison...but Prohibition was not a product of corporate greed. It isn't like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. got together and said "Let's find a way to prohibit alcoholic beverages so that we can control what America REALLY ought to drink --our product!"
Starting with a flawed analogy usually leads to a flawed article --as it did in this case.
Never look down your nose at others. Someday, someone is bound to see your boogers.
The RIAA - Hollywood - DRM - Linux Suicide Pact
far...out
Shouldn't that be the MPAA, not the RIAA, which would have an issue with Linux circumventing the encryption of DVDs?
How can greed be the motivation when stifling distribution has provenly negative affect on sales. Greed is too convenient... threatened is more appropriate. Could mean suits will have to get real jobs.
Sounds like it would be more the MPAA to me, but I agree with the first post, there isn't much of a mention of any assosication targeting Linux as an opponent needing to be overcome.
I think the only thing that stands in the way of watching DVDs on Linux is the obvious difference in opinions on how Intelectual Property rights should be handled, which was briefly touched upon in the article.
If only end-users didn't copy so many DVDs, Movie studios wouldn't feel the need to encrypt their movies. Of course, I also feel that by purchasing the DVD, I should also be purchasing the rights to view the DVD, which would include decoders for whatever operating system I use, but that's from an end-user standpoint, not a developer/legal standpoint.
At the very least, DVDs should list system requirements if they are going to require more than just the hardware that reads data from the DVD in order to play them.
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
He's talking about the DMCA being as enforceable as Prohibition. The RIAA and MPAA and Linux and DVDs certainly are involved with the DMCA.
Infuriate left and right
The entertainment industry has put itself on the fast-track to destruction
Oh, please. Even the people who don't think they should have to pay for their expensively produced entertainment will have to realize that actual destruction of the entertainment industry will leave them without anyone really professional to rip off. I mean, you don't have to sleep with a copy of Atlas Shrugged to see the basic truth of it. The rubber has to meet the road someplace, and at some point the Peter Jacksons of the world will not be able to raise the cash for a Really Swell Giant Ape Movie.
And before someone says that artistic patronage, bar gigs, miming in the streets and wearing sandals was good enough 2500 years ago, and real artists shouldn't care about financing actors and makeup artists, blahditty blah... oh, never mind. There, I've said it for you. It's not about whether or not there should be a rational way to play your DVD on your Linux laptop. There should be. The problem is the shrill tone (and glee) in comments like the original post. That does not help matters.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
TFA in fact has little to do with linux and even less to do with the RIAA. It contains many mentions of Microsoft and the BSA. It mentions linux once and hollywood once.
However, the article IS very interesting. It makes some interesting comparisons between the effectiveness of the DMCA and prohibition.
Speaking is NOT communication
Some history about the Linux flap:g arfinkel.txt
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/archive/
Some other page I found by accident about file sharing:
http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/howto-notgetsued.php
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'm no fan of Microsoft, the DCMA, or any of the other alphabet-soup copyright clowns, but c'mon. The linked rant is a badly-written and cringe-inducing collection of cliches, pedantry, and glittering generalities. The guy doesn't even understand basic civics, much less macro-economics or copyright law.
There are a lot of good arguments against the DCMA out there. This isn't one of them.
Microsoft bad, Linux good.
And the DMCA... err... makes people... drink?...
Could you restate the question?
That much bias in an article turns me off no matter which side of the fence I prefer.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Not a chance. They fought (and survived) through player pianos, sheet music, record players, radio stations, juke boxes and casette tapes. They'll still be around, greedily fighting the direct-neural-interface players 100 years hence.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I was at blockbuster the other day and rented the Longest Yard, then took it home. Much to my suprise, the DVD blocked the watching of the movie on my computer. I took the DVD to blockbuster, and told them that I was cancelling my blockbuster pass because I was unable to watch movies on my computer (I have no normal TV as everything is ran through the computer using beyond TV). I figured that should put the most pressure on the MPAA. If blockbuster lobbies against MPAA because their revenue basis is dried up, it should make a good battle where only consumers win... i hope.
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
TFA seems a little disjointed and difficult to follow. Reads more like rambling than any sort of informative article or persuasive opinion piece.
It's too bad we can't moderate the original article Overrated.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
I would say it's more "control" than "fear". Although I suppose you could argue they are afraid of losing control, but that's really the same thing. I don't think the RIAA has any problem with letting Linux users play DVDs; I think the problem (from their perspective) is that Linux users don't want to play DVDs in the way the RIAA wants to let them. Also, most Linux users will reject any proprietary / non-Free solution and worship the ground "DVD-John" walks on. On the other hand, many Linux users don't have a problem using the NVIDIA binaries, so maybe there is a place for proprietary dvd playback software on Linux.
Does anything make sense about this analogy?
The reason why Linux can't play DVDs (legally) is because Linux users want source code so they can modify, fix bugs, etc. There wasn't and still isn't a big enough base of people willing to pay for playing DVDs especially when Windows and Mac users get to play them for free!
Using trusted computing (stay with me for a moment) you could write a very very tiny little program (probably kernel module) that would be distributed as a signed binary, but also available as source (recompiling it wouldn't help, but you could verify what it does) Since the new DVDs (at least blue ray) spits back single use decryption codes, using this software to get one out wouldn't be a big deal, its just that it would need to run under TCPA to get that code. Then that one time key can be used to read and decrypt the DVD. Works fine until you open the door, then the code is invalid and you need a new one.
This would work fine for playing the newer DVDs. Wouldn't keep Stallman and his true believers happy, but at least solves the real issue, which is the inability to play blue ray DVDs under Linux starting next year. There could be plenty of open source software to play DVDs, they'd just need this little binary module. Not ideal, but better than waiting to see if DVD Jon can crack it in a way that can't be fixed by the ability of newer DVDs to "update" the software in the players to invalidate compromised keys.
I just wish they'd hurry up and die from their mistakes so something better can come along.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
For the love of god, don't read that article. I just did and I swear it was so utterly terribly it actually made me dumber. I RTFA from the original post and went away thinking that it would probably be the worst piece of nonsense I encountered this month (I don't read blogs, or I'd encounter a lot more similarly craptacular "articles"), boy did this prove me wrong. I wish I could un-read it.
Either I own my copy of a work, or I don't. If I own it (and not just a license of it), then I have the right to do anything I want to with it, other than selling or giving a copy to someone else (because only the copyright owner has the right to distribute copies).
But if I don't legally have the right to decrypt the information on the disk (because of the DMCA), then it doesn't matter what my ownership rights are, the "keeper of the decryption" owns my ability to do what I want with my copy, and I become subject to a whole slew of behavior-controlling devices such as pay per view, no "fair use", etc.
What this article highlights is that no country or law or organization is going to succeed for very long in creating laws to do the tying, even if they try to use the largest software company in the world (Microsoft). Why not? because tying is not economically viable in the Open Source era where the code itself is fundamentally free.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
It is misleading to say "our brilliant government" passed Prohabition. It would be more accurate to say "our brilliant GOVERNMENTS" passed Prohibition, as it required a 2/3rds majority of votes in both the House and Senate, as well as being ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. Grave mistake though it was, Prohabition was still an issue whose passage was sufficiently popular to overcome the step hurdles against amending the constitution.
The DMCA, by contrast, has shown no such popular support, and did not go through nearly as rigerous a process or well-debated to be enacted into law. That's a rather fundamental difference, and one that renders his anaology to inexact to be meaningful, if not his overriding point.
Crow T. Trollbot
The problem with this argument is, the government doesn't do shit because it "makes sense" or because their punitive solutions "aren't working" any more. If they did things like the prohibition of marijuana would have been history 60 years ago. Instead its still goin' strong after 7 decades. DVD on Linux? Why do you want to kill our children?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
What is the danager here ?; that dvd media etc cannot be played on non-open systems. If so what ?. There is an assumption here that playing movies (or mp3s) is important. It undoubtedly is to some. Let them pay. Meanwhile those committed to openness as a philosophy will continue to invest their time and efforts in intrinsically open media, e.g, wikipedia. The luxury of the times we live in is that there is a choice. Will there ever be 'open' movies ?; almost certainly not. So !?. The oss community will be reduced to reading and coding and listen. So much the better. I for one can live without "pkg_add -r mplayer" !
When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea
You know, because if you were swimming in money you wouldn't do the same thing.
I mean, when Apple makes hardware locks to protect its assets, that's just fine and dandy, but when the MPAA does it, it's greed.
Absolute power and all that.
/me smacks the article with Xine while eating a large trout.
Since when did the RIAA have anything to do with DVD's and DVD playback. Editers???? Hello????? Need more coffee???????
I got nothin'
yeah man, it's the corporations... they're like, taking over and stuff. if we could just like, get together, and show the corporations that we don't need their profit-mongering and extortion and capitalism, then that would show them!
When the ship starts to sink, the ugly side of lesser men is seen.
Eating Tacos like the fall of the Roman Empire ...and other such LSD induced nonesense.
Meeting pretty girl at party like slap in the head with cold fish.
Seriously, learn to argue with a solid analogy or don't try.
Slashdot, free as in beer, and it helps to have one when you read what makes it onto the front page.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Yeah- just call it FUD- fear uncertainty and doubt. "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM"- or in this case, sticking with the same model they've always had.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Submitter, aka PlayfullyClever trying to use the /. crowd's love for linux+entertainment to bump up his google page rank on the site he just registered yesterday?
Why else would TFA have nothing to do with the submission?
Bealtes-Beatles in disguise, with diamonds?
FYI
Domain Name: PLAYFULLYCLEVER.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Updated Date: 30-nov-2005
Creation Date: 30-nov-2005
Expiration Date: 30-nov-2006
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
The RIAA - Hollywood - DRM - Linux Suicide Pact
"The entertainment industry has put itself on the fast-track to destruction, using well-proven tactics as explained in Preventing DVD Playback on Linux Like Prohibition in the 1920's. Are their heavy-handed tactics to lock up and control everything we touch signs of plain old human stubborness? Stupidity? Insanity? A bit of each? How else do you explain their inexplicable actions?"
Or it's just a coincidence.
we will end no whine before its time
MPAA DVD FAQ
[quote]
Some computer users say they only want to use DeCSS to view their DVDs on computers that use the Linux operating system. Windows- and Macintosh-based computers can play DVDs, so is it fair to deprive the Linux community?
The Linux argument is a false issue. It has always been in the interest of the Motion Picture industry that there be as many legitimately licensed DVD players as possible, including those using non-Windows operating systems. However the argument that DeCSS was written for Linux players is simply false. The De-CSS utility was written for Windows-based software, not Linux.
Also, the development of two, separate, licensed DVD players for Linux systems - which use the CSS system - were recently announced. Sigma Designs (www.sigmadesigns.com) and InterVideo Inc. (www.intervideo.com) both announced the roll-out of LICENSED, LEGAL Linux-based DVD players.
[quote]
SO they claim the purpose of DeCSS is for copying movies on windows, not for simply viewing them on Linux, intersting..
far...out
I'm sure I'm not the first to comment on this, but what, if anything does the music association have to do with DVDs and DVD playback on Linux?!? Oh yeah, that's right, nothing! It's the MPFuckingAA that are the movie people. Jesus Christ, if you're going to post a tirade about the content industries controlling too much, at least get your fucking industry associations right.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
It'll just keep linux as a hobby OS or server OS (where it should be, but that's due to people not using it due to bad drivers, which is due to it not being a desktop and worth the time for development, and the cycle repeats), and maintain Microsoft's monopoly over x86 architectures (assuming OS X piracy on commodity hardware doesn't go crazy). Same old same old. and there will always be ways around it (and I doubt the RIAA is going to start suing people for installing software to just play DVDs in linux with such a small user base).
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
for most of human history there really was not enough "wealth" (that, whatever it may be, that is necessary to live COMFORTABLY to go around. Sometime in the last century ( I'd guess about 1965) that situation changed. Now it is possible for every human being to live like a human being; there is no longer a true cconomic need for a 'poor' class ...nor is there a need for the hoarding mentality that drivesone to become 'rich'. Unfortunately the strategies that enabled survival and even comfort for the few for the past 10e5 to 10e6 years and before: -grab as much as you can, and try to keep the oher guy from being in a position to even try to get 'any'- are pretty-much hardwired. Furthermore, such strategies are strongly self perpetuating -if anybody uses them, Everybody must, or 'Everybody' is at a great disadvantage.
The present age of plenty may not last. We seem built to tear it down. The only way to save ourselves from a return to the feudalistic tribalisim that may be the ground-state of the human society is if technology manages to go beyond sufficincy of production to such ridiculous supersufficiency that those who are compelled to hoard can grab all they want and there still be plenty to go around. (Of course this must be done without poisoning the planet or burying us in garbage!)
OTOH if we crash back to say sustainable-1850 tech, the old robber-baron minset becomes (for individuals-to-family-size-groups) a survival-in-comfort asset!
Unfortunatly, coupled with the desire to hoard is a desire to control the lives of other people; the Sims probably wont serve this need, so there may be no tech solution to this part of the problem.
I do not yet despair, but I don't see a clear path forward.....
it is nothing more than a group of rich, old, powerful white guys who are afraid of losing their cushy lifestyles. So they make everyone else suffer, same story different generation.
If they were greedy, they'd figure out a business plan that adapted to the new technology out there. But they have clearly shown that they are stubborn and won't accept that the new technology could benefit them. Most likely though, they are greedy, stubborn, and stupid, and just don't realise the impact of new technology.
I personally think Sony/BMG's recent fiasco could've hurt things more, because as opposed to Linux, Windows is a much more common OS among music listeners. Sony managed to bring the concept of rootkits to the masses perhaps even better than SCO managed to scare off Linux users.
As for this article, it's interesting, but quite a bit "scattered" on different thoughts, covering a whole lot of ground on a mere two pages of text. But sure, MS is clearly facing new needs of adapting themselves to the industry they may not have faced since they started sketching on their business model. It remains to be seen if they'll be able to adapt to the new market, but at least according to their recently leaked internal memos, they realize the need of relying less on their traditional style of software development, marketing and pushing. It remains to be seen if they can put this insight into successful actions though. Part of the plans seemed to involve basing more revenues on online ads and becoming a Google, but unfortunately for them, well, there's this not too unsuccessful Google already there.
So I think there'll be some interesting times ahead, even moreso if the Linux community will one day manage to provide a distribution taking a leap in functionality, user friendliness and style, like for example OS X did in the days.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
About two thirds of the adults in the US consume alcohol in some form (beer, wine, spirits) or another. As such, equating prohibition, which affected the majority of the adults in the US, with something currently used by, what, 2-3% of the population (half of which are probably teens), is yet another major fallacy.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Okay this whole DVD decoding thing got started over the ruse that there was no playback device for linux neccessitating decoding and ripping in order to play them. It's a ludicrously lame argument but let's ignore that.
Why does the RIAA not provide a free Linux playback device for DVDs? Sure they would have to pay royalties to the MPEG algorithms folks to offer it. But that would be ridiculously cheap. For that matter they could easily push to get a law taxing all bare PCs with a few cents to pay for an MPEG royalty. Put the algorithm right in the BIOS if you want.
In any case the point is that both sides in this fight are being disingenous. If the issue were really about the lack of a DVD player on linux then the RIAA could fix that. And like wise if the lack of a player were really the reason Linux users have to rip dvds then they could just buy a commercial playback device. Both sides are lieing out there asses.
So cut the crud. this is about whether or not people have the right to rip and secondly if they have the right to re-distribute. In most cases the answer to the first is they should though specific laws make it illegal, and in the second case, no, because it's not fair use to re-distribute copies--lending your own yes, maybe making a mix tape, yes, but not a carbon copy. To put the latter one in persepective should tower records or amazon be allowed to buy one celine dion cd and then just sell copies? What if they just gave them away. Duh, neither is fair use.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
http://xinehq.de/index.php/about is the only one I know of off the top of my head.
-everphilski-
See subject..
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
It's a poorly written, poorly reasoned screed, similar in content and quality to a high school writting assignment about how the "evil RIAA/MPAA/Microsoft are doomed. I can't understand for the life of me why it was posted to the front page.
I think this guy is a little whacked.. He story is written in the same tone as Dr. Evil's life story... He fails. My grade on this paper F. If maybe he could have actually talked about something other than opinion, the only thing true in this article is that the prohibition did happen..
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Am I missing something? I've been watching DVDs on several Linux systems for years. In fact, Linux is the better DVD player, because it allows me to skip the "unskipable" ads and FBI warning nonsense. In fact, I quite value mplayer for its no-nonsense approach - DVD in, mplayer on, movie starts. I never understood why regular DVD players shove you to the menu when obviously watching the movie is what you want to do - the menu can always be available on a button press.
:)
So, the RIAA... eh, wait. That's the recording industry ass. - sure the author didn't mean the MPAA? They're the 2nd row bad guys here, the DVDCCA is the licensing org and the one that's been suing Linux people around the globe.
So with those bugs fixed, there's still the problem that it's friggin 2005 and we already won this battle almost 2 years ago when the DVDCCA lawsuit was dropped. I should know I was there. Except that I never got my "I was sued by the DVDCCA and I all got was this T-Shirt".
So to make a long rant short: What the fuck is "stuff that matters" about this article? It might've been news 3 years ago.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Obviously the submitter didn't RTFA, so here are some real links: Here Here and here
A DVD from Blockbuster is a read-only device. How is it going to know its in a computer? Your computer fucked up, if anything. Chances are your computer was misconfigured or something was wrong with the DVD (some form of copy protection gone haywire?)
...
And despite of your little tirade at Blockbuster the majority of us watch movies on the television
-everphilski-
I'm confused What absolute advantage did the US attempt to maintain during Prohibition. Taking a stab at it, I'd guess "Morality", but it seems to me that the US was trying to make up for a lack of morality, which is why the law was felt to be necessary.
I have to work hard to be that incoherent. Even if I'm already drunk.
Thanks for reminding me to clear my history and cookies!
I thought the article was supposed to be a well-thought out argument about how the DMCA isn't working. Instead it quickly degenerated into anti-Microsoft rambling that wasn't in any way related to the DMCA or DVD-playback.
No, I will not work for your startup
"""
In the one area where the US had an absolute advantage, we have lost it. We held an absolute advantage in technology until we started exporting jobs to countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Mexico and China. Once the cat was out of the bag, our friends became our economic foes.
"""
No - international trade is not a zero-sum game and this completely fails to take into account the rule of comparative advantage. Further, the dynamic of the system is not country vs country, it's company vs company. Further - as though you'd be 'friends' with someone by practicing protectionism in a doomed attempt to keep their nationals locked out of the industry. This paragraph is spectacularly ill-informed.
As other posts state the connection between 20s prohibition and linux being unable to play DVDs isn't made either.
Bad essay!
Believe with me, my saplings.
Too good: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43029
copy of text from above link:
LOS ANGELES--The Recording Industry Association of America announced Tuesday that it will be taking legal action against anyone discovered telling friends, acquaintances, or associates about new songs, artists, or albums. "We are merely exercising our right to defend our intellectual properties from unauthorized peer-to-peer notification of the existence of copyrighted material," a press release signed by RIAA anti-piracy director Brad Buckles read. "We will aggressively prosecute those individuals who attempt to pirate our property by generating 'buzz' about any proprietary music, movies, or software, or enjoy same in the company of anyone other than themselves." RIAA attorneys said they were also looking into the legality of word-of-mouth "favorites-sharing" sites, such as coffee shops, universities, and living rooms.
It puts the lotion on it's skin, or else it gets the hose again.
When they got into producing content, they slipped us a root kit on a CD.
Time and media shifting is becoming an issue because its becoming possible.
What the **AAs don't want is to give us ownership of the 1,440 minutes a day.
They fuck over the content originators, those artists who make the content, they make their money by screwing them with impossible contracts (its like an offer that the artist dare not refuse,) production costs and distribution costs which the artist has to pay for. They are the last 'Ugly Capitalists' who control the means of production.
Then they fuck us over by selling us the idea of Brittany Spears and claiming to still own the music out of Brittany Spears' mouth.
I've said screw 'em before and I just was a voice in the wilderness. Now I'm producing my own content. All of it. And with the internet and cheap production and post production tools, they can KMFA.
PodSafe forever forward.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
*fap* *fap* *fap* *fap* *fap*
The MPAA is not preventing you from playing DVDs under linux. AFAIK, anyone can license the DVD codecs and release a commercial player. In fact Linspire has done just that:
p hp?product_id=11804
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.
Of course it wouldnt make much sense to give away a licensed DVD player for free if you have to still pay the royalties for each copy, so yeah, they have to charge for it. There are other companies that are also working on linux based DVD players, though I dont follow it, so I dont know what state they are at. Maybe someone can post some links.
However, I would wager that even the most wonderful commercial DVD player for linux would sell like crap and people would still gripe about playing DVDs under linux. The thing that prevents people from legally playing commercial DVDs under linux is their aversion to paying for software, not some MPAA/DMCA conspiracy.
Which is quite silly really. Have you bought a stand-alone DVD player? Then you have paid the royalties for that capability. Even the windows-based DVD app that came with your video card probably wasnt bundled for free either...
Amazing how quickly you're willing to give up the control over your living room.
I don't want others to prescribe me what I have to do in my own four walls, and that is what TCPA (without 100% key access by the buyer/user) is about!
RTFA. How does an article about Linux DVD playback only mention "Linux" three times? (One in the title -- so really only twice!)
You are absolutely correct.
Digital technology is releasing the labels' stranglehold over distribution, but they are still very firmly entrenched in their influence over what gets played on the radio and on MTV. This gives the major labels enormous influence in entertainment marketing - furthered by their promotions of world stadium tours and the like.
Grassroots promotion does happen, but it is the rare case, and up-and-comers still want to strike that golden payday, ride in the back of the limo, and trash hotel rooms without reprise.
That aside, I fully agree with you. Distribution has been by far the largest barrier of scale preventing competition from entering the market. With today's technology, a small promoting firm could conceivably sign some talent and start making a big splash in the music business...
Basically, I agree with your post, but I think there is still a missing link in the indie label distribution model: how would they get payment?
I think it's OK to drop the major labels, they have no useful function left. But a music downloaded for free will put no bread on the artist's table, no matter if he's independent or contracted to a RIAA affiliate.
So, how can an independent artist market his works on the internet? We have some donwload-for-pay schemes that charge $1/music, resulting in the same $15/album you pay for a CD. In the end it's a bigger rip-off than buying the CD in a store, you get the same musics for the same price, but don't get the physical media and the music is in a lower quality lossy compression. Let's say an artist is willing to sell his music for $1 per downloaded album. I know of no system that will let him do this while getting a reasonable assurance that his music won't be redistributed at no charge by his customers.
All Your Jokes Are Belong To Y2K
DVD encryption is about old bandwidth assumptions.
You can rip DVD's without breaking the encryption; the only thing ripping them does is rduce the overall payload size.
It's perfectly functional to image copy a DVD to another DVD (which is what the pirates do, when they are not simply shutting down the legal assembly line production at 6 PM, and running off another 20,000 copies between 8 PM and 12 AM from the legal masters).
It's also perfectly functional to make something that looks to the system like a DVD drive driver, but actually operates from a disk image instead of real DVD hardware, so you can take the image copies of a DVD and feed them into your completely legal commercial DVD player software.
The *ONLY* thing that DVD encryption does is:
(1) make it hard to decide which bits you need to move from machine A to machine B so you can watch the whole movie, and
(2) defeats compression of the cleartext DVD contents (which is minimal, since it's already a compressed format), and
(3) prevents transcoding to an alternate lossy format to reduce the transfer size (which is *supposedly* something the MPAA et. al. don't care about anyway, as they are apparently not concerned with digital-analog-digital copying, which the DVD encryption can't prevent in the first place)
In other words, it's about keeping the bandwidth required to move DVD content from point A to point B as high as possible to adjust the economics of digital copying to artifically inflate the costs relative to the benefits.
And guess what? These bandwidth assumptions are no longer valid.
If you are willing to take the approach of the pseudo-DVD device driver, you don't need DeCSS, and that converts everything from a DMCA violation to a simple copyright violation.
-- Terry
One quick problem with that: nobody plays DVDs for free. On Windows you have to buy the codec. On the Mac I assume you either have to purchase a codec, a player, or it's included in the price of the OS.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
The value advantage I see is that America doesn't seem to export much by way of physical goods. The only thing it exports is so called Intellectual Property. That only has as much value as the other governments are willing to allow America to have, so we get things like the DMCA and software patents.
Software patents are like America claiming a load of once common land for its own corporations then trying to convince others to accept this. Get in there and make the claims first!
So why do other governments play along? Presumably the trade agreements that let them sell their physical goods to America. It's an interesting deal. Physical goods one way. "Intellectual Property" the other.
The value advantage is artificial though. Intellectual Property is very ephemeral, and if people start noticing how silly some if it is and threatening not to vote in their governments again it could lose value quite quickly. Then America would lose its artificial value advantage in its exports.
I'm gonna write a new song and play it at a hippie jam fest. I can't wait to see the look on those little Eichmanns' faces when they hear this crunchy groove!
Sometimes my kids want a CD. I won't control their choices, but they have to listen to a lecture from me about the evil they would support: RIAA harassing customers, exploiting artists, milking their back catalog and not spending nearly enough money finding/deveoping talent.
The MPAA hasn't [yet][ gotten so bad, so I still spend north of $1000/yr on DVDs.
...marginally coherent and irrelevant submissions from PlayfullyClever in one afternoon. Perhaps Cmdr T should read *all* the submitted material before posting? Just a thought. :)
I'd say the day for 'garage movies' is already here, considering the success of Star Wreck...
r000lz
I wonder if prohibition actually created crime, as the article states, or simply provided new opportunities for criminals? That is, did prohibition cause people who would have otherwise been law-abiding citizens to go into crime, or did people who would have been into extortion, prostitution, gambling, etc., simply add alchohol distribution to their list of activities?
Hmmm I have doubts about every statement you made. In the past I tried copying a dvd video_ts folder to my hard drive then opening is in apple's DVD player and in VLC player and it comes out as gibbersish. I tried copying this to a dvd and it was still gibberish when played. So how do you successfully make this transfer?
Second, i'd love to be able to open a disk image as a device on my macintosh since many dvd content re-authoring programs like mac-the-ripper will only address physical drives. How do you do this.
I HATE CLEAR CHANNEL!!!
In that it is ongoing, and will continue to be so for the forseeable future.
The guy is a functional illiterate, or so ADD he can't remember the beginning of the sentence he wrote before finishing the end. Ugghh.
Could be there is a valid point in all of this, but I don't see how TFA advances it. What crap!
IANAL.... Actually, I'm not sure if either violation is applicable....
Isn't the DMCA just to prevent people from selling cable "descrambler boxes" and such... It only prohibits technology, devices, etc whose **main** use/purpose is to circumvent copyright protection. The decrypting of a DVD for playback purposes seems like it would be legal -- this is normal use of DVDs. (all commercial DVD software does this anyway).
However, "ripping" (and decrypting) a DVD to a file is a bit more questionable... This use directly disables the copyright mechanisms (where the main application would seem to be illegal reproduction) and the DMCA would appear to apply.
And wouldn't copying encrypted DVD images to a large harddisk (e.g. for a video server) be considered Fair Use? (Fair Use laws allow copies of copyrighted works to be made for the purpose of increasing computer performance)... For example, the mere fact that when you are viewing a copyrighted webpage, multiple copies exist in the CPU caches, a copy in the main memory, another in the swap-file on the harddisk, a copy in a file on the disk (browser cache), an image exists in the video-card buffers, and potentially pieces exist in the network card buffers... Thus your computer is storing *multiple copies* of a copyrighted work... This is all fine and perfectly legal, since these copies are temporary and whose sole use is to increase system performance -- not related to illegal reproduction.
Also, couldn't one claim their video server as a backup device?
Now if you load up your server and then sell/lend out your DVDs, things quickly start getting questionable...
Disclaimer: I do not own/use any such video server... I'm only trying to point out that some laws actually grant more rights than people realize... (although likely not so with the Patriot Acts).
We are weakening our own freedoms by thinking that the DMCA makes everything illegal.
Well, personally, I don't like them, as I think the copyrights and
patents are overly restrictive
got enough support ( yeah, probably with money ) to get them passed
and enforced
This seems all in line with the "ownership society" philosophy, which
I think is shallow, elitist, status quo oriented, and maybe even evil.
The problem is
have got. This is what is there. So, what is anyone going to do
about it that will be better than we have now?
It is clear that there are lots of great competing ideas but nothing
that gets out there, well explained, convincing, and with any hope
of implementation. There is no leadership, there is no organization,
and there is no clear understanding to the people who produce things
about how they are supposed to be compensated for their creations.
Not just the entertainment industry either. And yes, I would
probably call myself a socialist, but I do not endorse anything
socialist that oppresses or removes reward from the people who
do things
everyone to be their most productive.
couldn't quite connect RIAA with Linux and DVDs.
For one thing, DVD Audio. For another, movie soundtracks. For another, one of the four major record labels (Sony) is also a major movie studio, and two more major record labels (Warner and Universal) were recently spun off from movie studios.
you could write a very very tiny little program (probably kernel module) that would be distributed as a signed binary, but also available as source (recompiling it wouldn't help, but you could verify what it does)
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense (if I understand fully what you mean) to security-aware people. Either the source code compiles to the *very* *same* *binary* (the one that's signed), or it doesn't. If it does, okay. If it doesn't, how would you know that the binary does the same things that the source is insinuating?
So it all bascially boils down to this: either you trust the vendor of that binary blob, or you don't. I don't want to trust them anymore than necessary, that's why I always run untrusted binaries from within thin FreeBSD jails, just in case the binary wrecks havoc with the system. But if they include and require kernel module blobs, the best jail won't help you at all :(. Unless you can run it under some virtualizer like qemu or xen...
Now, what would you do? Right: just avoid this binary crap, and insist on completely open source software that *you* can audit and compile with your own tools from scratch. Everything less than this should mean to the content provider: "thanks, but no thanks." and perhaps even a class action suit for discrimination (perhaps not in the US, but who knows, maybe other countries have better anti-discrimination laws anyway?).
Insist on open source. No binary blobs! (ATI, nVidia et al: hint, hint!)
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
spits back single use decryption codes, using this software to get one out wouldn't be a big deal, its just that it would need to run under TCPA to get that code. Then that one time key can be used to read and decrypt the DVD. Works fine until you open the door, then the code is invalid and you need a new one.
Couldn't you just save the code somewhere? The DVD would still have the same data on it which would still use the same algorithm for decryption so you should be able to use the same code to decrypt it (maybe this functionality would have to be provided seperately to the signed binary otherwise the binary wouldn't get signed?)
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
The last time I checked, software does not have rights to freedom given that it is a non-entity. It is property of its creator.
The problem with copy protection on DVD Video is that the law prohibits you from becoming the author of DVD Video software in countries that have implemented the DMCA or foreign counterparts, and for well over 99 percent of affected people, DVDs aren't worth emigrating for.
There are no free legal DVD players ON ANY OS.
But there are those that look free because they are bundled with the purchase of a DVD-ROM drive. Problem is DVD-ROM drives come bundled with DVD Video player software for Microsoft Windows, and you can't order one bundled with DVD Video player software for Linux instead.
"The tighter you close your fist Lord Vader, the more systes will slip through your fingers" -Leia Organa
As such, equating prohibition, which affected the majority of the adults in the US, with something currently used by, what, 2-3% of the population (half of which are probably teens), is yet another major fallacy.
When pulled over and asked, only 2-3% of car drivers admitted to speeding.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
er DeCSS isn't a codec. It is a decrypter.
It appears you missed the point. At least one court of appeals has ruled that since October 1998, when the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was enacted, it has been unlawful to distribute DeCSS or similar decrypters in the United States.
IIRC a standard MP4 codec is used.
For one thing, DVD uses MPEG-2 video and Dolby Digital audio, not MPEG-4. For another, because MPEG-2 video and Dolby Digital audio are patented, it is unlawful to distribute Free MPEG-2 video or Dolby Digital audio decoders in the United States.
The FSF considers ANY kind of linking (dynamic or static) of a gpl program with a closed source one as being a derived work.
Communication between programs when they use a carefully defined stream I/O interface (such as files, pipes, or sockets) is thought not to constitute linking. If you put your proprietary CSS handling software in a separate process, it is "mere aggregation", which does not fall subject to the "viral" aspects of the GNU GPL.
Disk Image: not a ".dmg", but a bit-for-bit copy of the raw disk into a file that is then treated as a raw disk.
Note that I don't condone piracy, but you should probably be more aware of the capabilities of your OS, as delivered by it's manufacturer, to do legal and legitimate operations on raw devices and files.
Since you are a Mac person, to get at the raw device or associate a raw device with a file without opening it, you are actually looking for "hdiutil -nomount" and "hdiutil -create -srcdevice".
In FreeBSD, you'd be looking for "mdconfig".
In Windows, Linux, Solaris, and so on, there are other ways of making the OS treat a file on one FS as a raw device; a little digging in the documentation on any given OS should enable you to find what you're looking for.
-- Terry
a DVD Playback mechanism for DVD's is because they have nothing to do with movies, they're the Recording Industry Artists Assosication. You're thinking of the MPAA.
The MPAA has nothing to do with DVD playback, it's all about the requirement for an MPEG2 Decoder, which is patented and requires a license from the Motion Pictures Experts Group.
>>And it's a quibble, but there is no "fair use" provision in US law. "Fair use" is a defense...the law doesn't mention it at all...
... is not an infringement of copyright."
Try 17 U.S.C. sec. 107
The doctrine of Fair Use has largely been codified as law.
"[F]air use of a copyrighted work
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
No, the private individuals want access to property they've already paid for. Corporations want control of property that isn't theirs without consent, and expects the owners to pay them for them to take control. Somewhat different battle here.
Actually, that's just what some private individuals want. A few of the rest just want free stuff.
Yes, in my view, that's a big difference. I think that we have the right to watch DVDs we have bought with any operating system and with any region code, but certainly I don't generally have the right to use copyrighted material for free.
The majority of filesharers (let's be honest, most people aren't just downloading stuff they've paid for, or other legal items) want reasonably priced access to content, or at least access at a price set by a competetive free market. That's the real problem: the media rights holders are used to having a monopoly, and thus being able to charge whatever they wanted. Sure, there are multiple record labels, but only one tends to release any given piece of music. So if you want to listen to Nirvana, you had to buy it through Geffen (or Sub Pop, for their first release). Same principle for movies.
I don't think that competition should be understood that way. If people think that Nirvana CDs are too expensive, they can buy other music. If the price was really too high (in terms of the market) and significantly more CDs were sold if they were cheaper, it would be in the interest of the record company to sell them more cheaply, and they would probably do so. Maybe prices are a bit too high, but probably not much too high, otherwise other bands and record companies who sell cheaper CDs would have much success (for example if CDs by Nirvana and Britney Spears were sold for $1000, hardly anyone would buy them, but there actual price is probably more or less reasonable).
There are arguments for everyone having to be able to buy basic food items at an affordable price, but I really don't think people have a right to get CDs of a specific band at a low price. No one *needs* a specific CD. If they think it is too expensive, they don't have to buy it. There are quite a lot of bands that offer free songs on their website. If it was more profitable to sell CDs cheaper, they would be sold cheaper, I think in this area the market works quite well. I don't think it makes sense to call the fact that you can buy most books only from one publishing house and most CDs only from one record company a "monopoly" because for any area there are many books and for any style there are many songs and bands (it would be different if certain elements were patented and people were prevented from writing stories with certain storylines or songs with certain formal properties - that hypothetical case would rightly be called a monopoly).
And no, that amount is nowhere near zero. It doesn't need to be free to compete with piracy. But it obviously needs to be less than $20 for a new movie and $15 for a new CD.
Yes, but the market price for CDs and DVDs is significantly lower if they have to compete with piracy, and understandably record companies don't want that. They cannot eradicate piracy, but they can make it more difficult with legal means, which weakens their "competitor" piracy and therefore allows them to keep higher prices (but not arbitrarily high prices - since no one has a vital need for specific CDs and DVDs, the prices have to be competitive in any case, they just do not necessarily have to be able to compete with piracy).
I think record companies would be insane if they just put up with illegal redistribution, and I think it is their right to sue people for copyright infringement. But people should not allow them to take measures that restrict the rights of legal users.
Why reach back 80 years when we have a current example right in front of our faces? If the neo-facists get their way, future columnists might be able to use an abortion prohibition to, as another example of a bad idea.
I agree. But I have perhaps an even more compelling argument against this:
Why on earth would I, or should I have to install a kernel module just to watch movies? Sounds like a totally unnecessary security [and perhaps stability] risk factor to me.
" I have to disagree with this. This is about power. The record companies want to dictate how you use their product. They cannot get over the idea that once you purchase something it no longer belongs to them."
Sort of like GPL. GPL licensers want to give away software but still maintain control of it.
Vote for Pedro
I've never not been able to play a DVD with linux.
microsoft is also playing that game. you want a license for this DVD software, bubba. fine, here it is -- only you can't sublicense or show it to anybody, and there is no sort of add-on, and it has to run in layer 0.
oh, that means it won't work under OS Linux? gee, too bad, guess you screwed yourself by not being locked-down, then.
that's why you don't have licensed DVD players on your distros. and why the MS so-called open license for their file system for office doesn't really mean anything when you look at it, it's just words with nothing behind them.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Nobody plays DVDs for free. You paid the CSS and codec license(s) when you purchased the DVD.
How's that for an end-around on those consortiums' logic?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
What is black and white and stomps greedy record excutives with steel-toed cleats when ever you piss him or her off?
A record-excutive-stomping pengiun.
What? I never said it was going to be funny.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Slashdot News Formula:
MPAA + Linux + RIAA + Movies + Music + Microsoft = News
I'd suggest you read your own sig...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Using trusted computing (stay with me for a moment) you could write a very very tiny little program (probably kernel module) that would be distributed as a signed binary, but also available as source (recompiling it wouldn't help, but you could verify what it does) Since the new DVDs (at least blue ray) spits back single use decryption codes, using this software to get one out wouldn't be a big deal, its just that it would need to run under TCPA to get that code. Then that one time key can be used to read and decrypt the DVD. Works fine until you open the door, then the code is invalid and you need a new one.
That won't work, because DVDs aren't tied to a specific TC key. If you have the code to play the DVD, you can just turn off TC and compile and run the code, since the TC module isn't actually necessary to play the file. Once DRM servers tie media to your specific TC, though, you're right. You're going to have to hack the hardware or find the bug in Windows that lets you boot your TC, overflow a buffer in Windows and get Linux loaded without modifying the state of the TC. It worked with 007 on the X-Box, and I have high confidence in the low quality work Windows programmers push out daily, and that Microsoft gleefully signs. Media will always be freely playable.
They're not. Because you're talking about the MPAA. The RIAA, while no less scummy than the MPAA, doesn't deal with movies and DVD players -- they do audio. They're the ones doing most of the suing of Grandmas and 9 year olds throughout the country.
I think you're wrong about that, and I'll prove it with my Open Source Beer:
Mash grain at 150 degrees in 80 oz. water for 20 minutes. Sparge with 80 oz. water at 170 degrees. Add extract, 1 1/2 oz. Nugget, 2 tsp. gypsum. Add water to about 3 gallons. Bring to a boil. Boil for 15 min., add 1/2 oz Nugget. Boil for 30 minutes, add 1/2 oz Perle. Boil for 15 minutes (total 1 hour boil).
Cool to 75 degrees, then pitch yeast.
Ferment for about 1 week, rack to secondary, add 1 1/2 oz. cascade.
Allow secondary to ferment for about 1 week. Rack to priming bucket, adding about 5 oz. priming sugar (preferred) or dry malt extract. Bottle. Allow about 30 days before refrigeration.
THIS RECIPE LICENSED UNDER THE GPL.
There you go!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Here is how I see this whole issue. I find the people at the RIAA and MPAA very arrogent. They act like the only products that are worth anything are their feeble offerings to the communitee. The work done by the software industry as a whole has no value to them. Thats really arrogant. The fact is it took 15 years to build Linux. Thats more time then it took to write any of the songs and movies that these jerks are peddling. And the people of the Open Source community give away their work. Yet these people consistently try to undermine that generousity by trying to exclude them. Greed is exactly what it is.
I'm just going to take this chance to thank the Open Source community and the Linux community for all the work they have done. In my book you guys are the most generous and kind people in the world for what you've given to the rest of us. I wish you all great success in the future. As for those who oppose you. Suck it up and live with it.
Yeah, this crap came up on my PC too. I canceled it, and ripped it like usual with DVD Decrypter. Watched it with PowerDVD, liked it, shrunk it with DVD Shrink and burnt it with Nero.
:).
Sure, I'm admitting to piracy. Im also admitting I'd rather have a DVD that has a "pirated appearance", but actuallys FUNCTIONS doing what I need it to do. I'm not spending $30 to buy this on DVD just to find it wont play. Also, with DVD Shrink I can pull out all the bullshit advertisements at the start.
Will they ever learn? Probably not, but as it is, pirates probably make more money off me than the MPAA
"Only the Government can do Prohibition! Corporations can't prohibit anything! Long live the private market! Long live DRM and TCPA! Long live the RIAA!"
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The original author was an idiot. Or at least, if he wasn't, he was simply spouting buzzwords in a (successful) attempt to make the Slashdot front page. The relevent organization is the MPAA, but it's the RIAA who gets the Slashdot hate at the moment, so that's why the RIAA was used.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Put down the moonshine and re-study your history. The Prohibition movement was far from a majority; they were an extremely vocal minority, sufficiently large and well organized to be able to swing elections, and motivated by a religious belief that the ends justified the means, pushed a large variety of bad science about the degree of harm of alcohol. The analogy to the prohibition may not be that bad after all, although the religious right in general and the intelligent design movement in particular are probably closer to the prohibition movement than the copyright forces.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
DVD Audio doesn't use CSS.
Are you sure? DVD Audio discs have a lossless part (for DVD Audio players) and a Dolby Digital part (for compatibility with DVD Video players). The lossless part uses CPPM, while the Dolby Digital part uses CSS.
Movie soundtracks aren't distributed on DVD.
O rly? In addition, the songs are on movies themselves, and record labels have a duty to their shareholders to protect exclusive privileges in the songs that they license to movie studios for use in movies. Besides, even if MPAA operations and RIAA operations were completely separate, with no popular music ever licensed to appear on a DVD Video title and no holding company owning both a movie studio and a record label, the article would still be relevant: Where's the DVD Audio player that runs on Linux?
Wow. You are a complete and utter moron. Can you not understand that the price you paid for your iBook is not just for the ibook itself, but the software included with it? To put it another way, how does one actually "buy" DVD Player.app? Ponder that. I'll apply your MORONIC thinking in another example. "Funny. I bought an NEW CAR and it came with a CDPLAYER called CDPLAYER which plays CDs. I didn't have to pay extra. I didn't have to go buy it, it was just there." repeat after me. IT IS PART OF THE FUCKING PRICE.
Look, the article author clearly meant MPAA. Not RIAA. RIAA members use CDs for the bulk of their output. As far as DRM is concerned, their output of encrypted online files far outsells and outwieghs their output of DVD Audio disks. They haven't been a pusher of any of the lawsuits concerning DeCSS. They are not the people trying to ban Free Software DVD players. You are being disengenious by pretending that the RIAA was what the author intended to say, or that the RIAA is actually seriously relevent in this fight. The RIAA is not suing people for making programs used to play DVD Audio content. The MPAA has done so in the past, and presumably will continue to do so. The MPAA is lying about why programs like DeCSS exists on its website, the RIAA's anti-piracy fight has limited itself to the unauthorized mass distribution of its products, except for a brief, precedent setting, skirmish about hardware in the late nineties which had nothing to do with DVDs, CSS, or the DMCA.
You can pretend otherwise by trying to find tenuous (and redundant) links between the RIAA and DVD technologies - I never said, after all, that RIAA members never distribute DVDs - but the fact is the RIAA is not the center of the DVD CSS decryption controversy, it has little to do with it, and anyone who writes an entire article about that and talks about the RIAA as if it's the prime mover in the issue is seriously propogating nonsense.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I suggest you look up what an anology is. What I said was at best a metaphor. I was referring to human nature when it comes to polling them about illegal activities. Not comparing downloading music to speeding.
Do you really think polls of illegal activities are valid? Most people don't confess to wrong doing to others out of the blue when asked by a stranger and secondly law enforcement doesn't catch everyone who commits a crime so no one really knows the numbers.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I don't think the above is true... it's NOT "perfectly functional" to simply image copy a protected DVD to another DVD, because protected DVDs have keys hidden on them in areas that normal DVD readers don't access. Only settop boxes access these areas where the keys are stored, and must be manufactured to be capable of this only by dint of being licensed to do so. The deCSS code revealed that the keys were only 40-bit, which makes them brute-forceable by a standard desktop within a day or so, but there are now even more sophisticated approaches to breaking the encryption that succeed within seconds. Point being that this all occurs as a workaround to the fact that the keys are unavailable to computer software interfaces, and that those keys are not copied in a straight imaging of a DVD and so results in a disk that is unplayable in a settop DVD player (albeit the disk can be played by computer software that uses the mentioned approaches to cracking the keys).
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
You need to copy the whole disc, sometimes there is also a audio_ts folder (for audio only discs) which also has to be copied.
If you have every file in the video_ts folder copied, it will play.
Second, use disk utility to create a new disc image, you select the size (get info in finder first) and away you go.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer