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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
Regardless of how you feel, the DMCA specifically outlaws this.
"How we feel" is the central tenet of a democratic society. If a law is unjust, it is our duty to defy it.
I don't know how good it is at color corrections but it did a fine job of removing macrovision before my new DVD player came into the picture.
I for one endorse this product if you have the need.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"How we feel" is the central tenet of a democratic society. If a law is unjust, it is our duty to defy it.
:)
As long as you are willing to face the consequences of such actions, yes. Defy away; however, a more reasonable and responsible citizen might suggest that if a law is believed to be unjust, they have a duty to try and get it overturned through legal and ethical means first. If that doesn't work, then I think you have a tea party
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
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.
I agree with the spirit of your post, but the one thing that people overlook in their "government+companies vs. the people" argument, is that companies are made up of people. I think the spirit of what companies do to protect their investments, is to help protect their money. Money which they use to pay their employees, who in turn, contribute to society.
I do, however, agree that these kinds of things suck, and feel that if I own a VHS tape or LP, I should be able to transfer them to whatever media I choose.... But by admitting that I have the ability to do so, also is an admission that I have the ability to still play the original media and am not locked out of it. Granted, I own an mp3 player, and think it would be cool to listen to those old unpublished B sides I have stored away on vinyl when I take the dog for a walk, or any media I own, that for whatever reason isn't considered profitable to some guy sitting in a tower. Artistry in any form needs to be preserved, regardless of popularity or profit. Admirers of "unprofitable" or "unpopular" art, in my opinion have a duty and right to preserve and protect art for future generations, when others won't do it.
To me, copy restrictions amount to nothing more than the censorship of art, and a slippery slope of allowing only a select few to choose what parts of our past carry on into the present. Remember this one thing: "History is written by the winners."
"they have a duty to try and get it overturned through legal and ethical means first."
How do you get a law overturned, without first breaking it and going to court? And what is unethical about breaking an unethical law?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Basically this was sold as a way to prevent anyone from using two VCRs to copy a rented videotape. It (Macrovision) was placed on most commercial videos of Hollywood product from the mid-1980s to the present. Since the 'owner' of the video content had to pay a stiff license fee to Macrovision company, almost no porn tapes from that era had this nonsense added.
Macrovision is a burst of noise added to the vertical sync in the brief period after the current frame has ended and the next frame (a single 'photograph' or still image on the television set) begins. This burst of noise happened about once every ten to fifteen seconds. It caused the picture image to lose sync and 'roll' and/or 'tear up' for a short period of time until the vertical sync stabilization circuitry in the recording process
kicked in and made the picture stable.
This is how Macrovision was able to mess up the video copy without destroying the video integrity when watching the original commercial video tape. The sync stablizer circuitry only was active during the recording period, not during playback. But the video copy was polluted by tearing and rolling every ten seconds or so.
The way to defeat this pollution was/is to use an 1881 sync seperator IC, a track-and-hold circuit, a 4053-type analog 1-of-2 switch IC, and a timer on a microcontroller (or a 555 one-shot timer IC). Use the sync seperator to detect the beginning of the vertical sync pulse. At this time, sample the black video level using the track-and-hold. After sampling, switch the video signal to the recorder (for the content being copied) to the sampled black level for the period before the actual video image analog signal begins. Then switch the recording back to the analog video signal of the original. Your copy will be solid and without tearing and rolling.
Oh my goodness!?! Did I just break your fucking law by explaining this? Oh my, I am sooooooo sorry! Oh well, to quote Emil Faber, "Knowledge Is Good". That's from the first video that I thought was worth copying.
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No one here cares about rights. This is simply macrovision trying to survive. If:
1. Anyone can overcome macrovision protection,
2. It will be useless to even build it in anywhere.
4. No company will by the protection from macrovision.
5. Loss
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?
Have you completely ignored the astroturfing campaign, including TV ads, that attacked Net Neutrality in specious ways? Do you really believe the MPAA did not have anything to do with that?
... and then they built the supercollider.
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When Hollings (D-Disney) was proposing the SSSCA/CBDTPA, I wrote to Pres. Bush and asked him to work against it, and veto it. I spewed a lot of malarkey that I didn't believe, such as "Hollywood liberal elite", "Unnecessary regulation of business", etc...
Putting someone's own prejudices to work for you is sometimes all that you can do.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
The copyright clause in the Constitution allows Congress to enact laws to protect the work of authors only for limited periods of time.
Now, in the Mickey Mouse case, the court said that protection periods on the order of 100 years are OK, but the Court kinda hinted that it might not go along with this much further.
Anyway, the technique of leveraging DRM protections in via a copyright and then having them live forever is rather a slap in the face of the Constitutional limitation on the duration of copyrights.
Of course, Congress does have a weasel-way out: they might say, "oh, we allow DRM to exist forever as part of our powers over commerce among the states."
But in practical terms, DRM forever transforms what is supposed to be a copyright of limited duration into a copyright that lasts for all eternity. And that, is contrary to the purpose, a purpose actually stated in the US Constitution, to promote the arts and sciences, for copyright and patents.
See my note "The Rule Against Digital Perpetuities". It's short, so I'll just copy it here:
The Rule Against Digital Perpetuities
It seems to me that in the fight over copyright and digital rights management few have considered what happens in the distant future when the material being protected is no longer covered by copyright. That thought led me to propose the following rule and accompanying pledge.
The Rule Against Digital Perpuities:
No Digital Rights Management (DRM) limitation or anti-copying mechanism may endure longer than the original copyright in the protected work.
The Pledge:
I pledge to neither specify nor standardize nor implement any system that does not conform to the Rule Against Digital Perpetuities.
Use less media. See fewer movies and NONE at the theater. Buy no new music, just buy used CD's.
Golly, you might not be cool, but you won't be a sucker, either. Fuck the media companies that want to ruin our intellectual property system.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I bought one of (WARNING-POPUP) these http://members.fortunecity.com/videotransfer/# a number of years back for about $30. There are schematics available on the internet for equivalent devices built with half a dozen cheap IC's.
As classic video (magnetic) tape only lasts 10-20 years, you cannot expect anything on tape to still be around in 100 years. Without killing the macrovision, there will be no archives other than what might be on (real/reel) film.... Not that I expect congress to leave the dates alone.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
This is another reason why I joined the US Pirate Party. The laws need to be reformed and the DMCA needs to be replaced with a more sensible, consumer friendly version. I'm simply sick of being told what I can and what I can't do with my legally purchased media, as long and I don't like that trying to make it into a rent style system.
We need to form together to help change these laws. I believe joining the Pirate Party may be a start to this. Boycotting also works effectively, but only if enough people do it. Raising awareness of these issues is also a very good thing to do as many people simply aren't aware that it happening until it is too late. Even just trying to talk to your representatives may help things as most of th time they aren't even aware of these types of issues or if they don't listen, then vote for someone else next time. If we can get enough people to realize what is really occuring, then change can happen.
Wow, I can't believe it took this long for someone who actually knows what they're talking about to post! You're right, Macrovision messes with the AGC--you can see the "pulses" outside the legal range on a waveform monitor.
Now, the really troubling point in all this to me is that a time base corrector, without which you can't edit analog tapes, removes macrovision as a matter of course. How are the courts going to "protect" macrovision without making time-base correctors illegal? And if time-base correctors are legal, then all Sima needs to do is start marketing time-base correctors.
My Phillips Matchline VCR from factory removes macrovision from my DVD player. The same DVD player into another VCR generates distorted macrovision colors etc. I wonder if the Phillips DVD Recorders also strip macrovision?
If overturned though it will be interesting. Does it not set a precedence that it could be illegal to create DRM that cannot be bypassed when the copyright has expired?
It's just crap in the vertical retrace interval. The VCR doesn't lose sync, but since the noise exceeds the normal signal level it causes the AGC to reduce the gain, thereby making the picture go dim. If you did not know any better, then you might suppose it to be a mere artefact from the mass-production process {since it is conspicuously absent from home recordings}. If you shorten the AGC time constant on the recording VCR {by unsoldering one capacitor} you won't get the dimming effect. You can also use an op-amp hard limiter circuit {similar to those cheesy guitar distortion pedals everyone was building in the 1980s} to clamp the spikes.
A more thorough way of defeating Macrovision is to use a 1881 sync separator, 4066 quad bilateral switch and some assorted logic ICs {or a microcontroller}. You need to discard about 30 lines from the top of each field, clamping them to no more than 0V but pulling them down to -0.3V with the line sync pulses. If you can manage to leave in the colour subcarrier burst, then so much the better.
As long as you're making fair use of material, which you have an inalienable right to do, then the use of an electronic circuit to remove this copy protection would be classified as Reasonable Force in pursuit of your Statutory Rights.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
>They want it illegal to copy, illegal to break content protection systems, even
>illegal to remove or bypass things like region encoding. They want market regulations.
Yes, lets regulate the work market as well. That way, they can't use manufacturing plants in one "market" to supply another market. They can't press their CDs, say, in Asia and sell them in Europe or USA, that work is region marked to Asia. Want to set up a call centre in India? Sure, but those people's work are area marked for India only, can't circumvent that and have people phoning from USA get help. And so on. SHould work great. After all, why should THEY be able to trade, ship and use workforce freely in the world when normal people and their customers are not!
Is it the "owners" or the "workers" part of the corporation that get the benefits?
Is it the "owners" or the "workers" part of the population that pay the price?
Take a look at wealth distribution and you get the answer: http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts
Bottom 50% ownling less that 3% of the wealth.
Top 1% owning more than 30% of the wealth.
We are seeing an absurd concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few at the cost of the many, and it is getting worse all the time. http://www.faireconomy.org/research/income_charts
Yes, corporations are manned by average people. However, a very small group of privileged people are reaping all the benefits. And the disparity has been snowballing the last decades.
http://www.cbpp.org/9-23-03tax.htm
So don't tell me it's OK for corporations to suck the marrow out of the rest of society because they are made up of people. It's a case of the few getting absurdly rich at the cost off the many, there's no way to get around that fact.