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Macrovision Wants Old DRM to Work Forever
Grv writes "Macrovision's best-known form of copy protection inserts noise into analog video signals to make it difficult to get a good copy of the DVD or VHS recording. A company named Sima has products that eliminate this noise when digitizing such video, as any good digitizer would do. Macrovision argues that this is a violation of the DMCA, and a court sided with them in June. Now the injunction is being reviewed, and several organizations are siding with Sima and Fair Use, including the American Library Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If it isn't overturned, this decision could make it illegal to develop products for making copies of commercial analog recordings."
This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.
If these are analog signals, does the DMCA apply here? Is cleaning noise out of a signal considered "hacking" now?
"Wanna watch Erik The Viking?"
"Can't. It would be a violation of the law."
"What Law?"
"The one that prevents us from taking the old video tape I bought of it, which I can no longer watch on newer video devices due to built in DRM and I am prevented from recording onto a computer and removing the old DRM and writing to digital storage which the new digital video devices read."
"Man, obeying the law sucks!"
"No, creating laws which paint people into a corner and then hand them the brush suck."
Ultimately, the way DRM and DMCA is going, you will not have owned DVDs, CDs, LPs, 45s, etc. You will merely have rented them until the march of technology locks you out of enjoying the content any further.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have nothing against the content producers making financial gain from their efforts. In fact, I work for a company that makes a considerable amount of money licensing code to third parties. I'm well aware of the situation that copyright creates, and I'm all for ownership of intellectual property.
That said, ownership is a two way street. I exchange my ownership of the code I produce for the salary my company pays me. I consider it a fair deal - I work a given number of hours in exchange for a one time payment. Once I've cashed the check (before, actually), I no longer own the code that I write. I have no problem with this arrangement. Whether my company sells one copy or a million makes no difference to me, because I've already been paid for the work I did. If the company can't sell my code, well, that's their loss, not mine. Or, if they are obscenely profitable, that's their gain. After all, they bought my code, and they own it. For them to make obscene profits does not impose any additional work burden on me.
However, the movie industry is actively opposed to intellectual property. When you buy a movie from them, they take your money, yet behave as if both the money and the movie are still theirs. You see, they don't believe in property. When you sell a piece of property, you give up any and all claim to the property. The movie industry's idea of a sale is more like an indefinite lease - you get to have a copy of the content for as long as it suits the studio. They feel that if they are not making enough money, they have the right to charge you time and again for the same material. (i.e. new movie on DVD instead of VHS, the "director's cut" version, etc...)
And you are supposed to like it. You pay for the DVD, but you don't own it:
Granted, I know there are ways around all of these, but they are not easy to come by, and require a technical aptitude beyond what the average user will possess. In effect, the studios are "Indian givers" - they aren't satisfied with either your money or the movie - they want them both.
Which, I think is one of the key reasons why I seldom buy movies anymore. It just doesn't seem right to give money to someone whose stated purpose is to explicitly rip off their customers, and goes to great length to defend the practice .
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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Your company isn't paying you for just a single copy of your code - they are paying you to assign them the copyright, so they can make as many copies as they like.
It would certainly be possible for you to pay to media companies to assign the copyright to you, but it would cost a lot more then $15.
The fact that you got modded +5 insightful only illustrates how difficult it is to sort out intelectual property owernship issues. Almost all analogies made with cars or computers or whatever people tend to come up with don't work - this is a different beast and as a society we haven't figured out yet how to deal with the problem of something as essential as culture being a commercial product at the same time. Perhaps our culture isn't all it is drummed up to be?
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