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MPAA Fires Back at AACS Decryption Utility
RulerOf writes "The AACS Decryption utility released this past December known as BackupHDDVD originally authored by Muslix64 of the Doom9 forums has received its first official DMCA Takedown Notice. It has been widely speculated that the utility itself was not an infringing piece of software due to the fact that it is merely "a textbook implementation of AACS," written with the help of documents publicly available at the AACS LA's website, and that the AACS Volume Unique Keys that the end user isn't supposed to have access to are in fact the infringing content, but it appears that such is not the case." From the thread "...you must input keys and then it will decrypt the encrypted content. If this is the case, than according to the language of the DMCA it does sound like it is infringing. Section 1201(a) says that it is an infringement to "circumvent a technological measure." The phrase, "circumvent a technological measure" is defined as "descramb(ling) a scrambled work or decrypt(ing) an encrypted work, ... without the authority of the copyright owner." If BackupHDDVD does in fact decrypt encrypted content than per the DMCA it needs a license to do that."
It's not the fact that the decryption key is known and distributed. It's the fact that muslix64's program is capable of decrypting a copyrighted work without permission. That's a violation of the DMCA.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Well, it's not illegal in Canada, for instance.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=122770&pp= 40
Coral Link
&pp=40 works on most (all?) vBulletin boards.
(The default is 20 posts per page)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'm pretty sure muslix64 (or whatever his alias is) HAS remained anonymous. But they can file take-down notices against anyone hosting the thing.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Under section 1201(b) of the DMCA, offering to the public a "technology . . . that (A) is primarily designed . . . for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Section 512(c) is the part that specifies the notice-and-takedown provisions, but it appears to me that it only refers to infringing material.
Note the difference: a circumvention device is not infringing material; it can be used to infringe, but unless it contains copyrighted code, it does not infringe by itself.
Now, naming something 'BackupHDDVD' is probably enough to show its primary design. So, just like DeCSS, it's a circumvention measure. A takedown notice is just the wrong method to bring it down.
Yeah I know we're drooling over the resolution and quality of HD, but as a matter of principle, why note vote with your wallet and don't buy a single HD/BR movie? Or is it OK for us to be treated like criminals, in the hope that we accept such treatment?
I know for sure that I won't be buying any HD/BR media, ever, till this DRM mess is sorted out.
If I buy a HD-DVD, they're giving me permission to watch it. To do so, I have to decode it. I signed nothing at the time of purchase promising to watch it only with players they approve of. By all logic, they HAVE given me permission to decrypt it.
Not quite.
It's a bit easier to use DVDs as an example for this, rather than Bluray or HDDVD, since they're not as well documented.
The movie studios encrypted discs with CSS. They then gave the DVDCCA the power to grant authorizations to decrypt and access those movies. The DVDCCA in turn authorized the player manufacturers to build players that could handle that decryption, provided that they conformed to certain requirements (e.g. respect region codes, add macrovison to the outputs). The permission is granted, therefore, to the disc-playing machine, not the owner or user of the machine, nor the owner or user of the disc itself.
This is why, when you watch a DVD on an approved player, it is lawful with regards to access-controls, regardless of whether the DVD is lawfully made and possessed, lawfully made but stolen, or unlawfully made (and yet still encrypted for some reason). But it is unlawful to watch a DVD on an unapproved player, regardless of the provenance of the DVD.
So no, when you bought the DVD, you did not get permission to decrypt it. But so long as your player is approved, then it isn't unlawful for you to use it -- or for anyone to use it -- without having to be given permission themselves.
I'm pretty confident that the newer generation formats work in substantially the same way.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Good infrastructure? Their broadband options are worse than those in the US!
Communist theory forbids IP as it is private property of a most despicable sort, but last I checked China has copyright, patent, and trademark laws (even if not enforced too much), making them hypocrites, just like they are in saying that they represent the people.
Of course, the US is far worse in this regard, but then again they don't claim to be communist.
A license to perform the work in a private residence is concomitant with the purchase of a copy.
Utterly and hilariously wrong.
No such license ever, ever, ever exists. The reason being that it is impossible to license something that you haven't got to begin with. Copyright is a limited collection of rights; it does not apply to every single thing in connection with a work. In particular, the right of performance is a part of copyright. But only of public performance. Copyright holders have no right whatsoever to control private performance. Not having that right, they cannot license others.
Everyone has the right to privately perform any damn thing that they like. It's a part of free speech, and is not limited by copyright. Public performances are what's limited by copyright. Public performances are the performances that can be licensed.
If you're going to complain about my knowledge of the law, it would help if you knew something about it first.
In any event, we're not talking about copyright law, per se. We're talking about circumvention law, which for all anyone knows isn't even pursuant to the copyright power. It is its own beast, and in the case of DVDs at least, it operates as I have described it. The UCC is irrelevant to this discussion, as is anything other than 17 USC 1201 et seq.
I agree that much of the DMCA is very bad, but I think that it's vital that people understand just how bad, without suffering from any misconceptions, such as yours, in order to get support for copyright laws that we can actually be happy with, if not proud of.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Close. The misnomer "Intellectual Property" is typically a trifecta - Copyright, Patent and Trademarks. It would be difficult to bring a trademark suit into this matter since the author of this tool is not misrepresenting their tool under the auspices of a tool trademarked by another company.
Patents are an easy one. If the AACS encryption is covered by patents(which it probably is) there's a good case for patent infringement. I won't go this particular here. As far as I am concerned, if the encryption can be broken by information release by the patent holder outside of the realm of a patent application, it's fair game.
Copyrights are a tough nut to crack. Without the DMCA, the tool would probably fall under fair use. With DMCA provisions, it would most likely qualify as an 'circumvention' device. Very sad, but under existing law, it's unavoidable.
Solution?
1) Ignore the laws. Release the software from an unfriendly neighbor country.
2) Lobby.
3) Lawyer up.
4) Start shooting lawmakers.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
DVD Decrypter is easy to find, but Lightning UK was forced to stop development and take down the original site because of legal threats. Fortunately he continued to develop the excellent burning portion of the program with ImgBurn. As a result of the legal threats DVD Decrypter itself is now outdated as it cannot handle the some of the latest copy protections without assistance. RipIt4Me is a much better option for the latest DVD releases.
Can't even have a movie day at the Library with materials in the library (although you can still read to children there...)
Technically, under the DMCA, you have to brainwipe the children afterwards.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
AES is just encryption. AACS also specifies a lot of key handling procedure.
So no, it's not just AES, but IMO that doesn't make their claim much more credible.
Actually, I own the disc, AND I own a copy of the contents, which I can use in any way not restricted by copyright. I don't own the copyright on the contents, but it is certainly an "authorized copy", and I've purchased it, I own it, and I have rights to use it in certain ways. When copyright law talks about "owner of an authorized copy", it isn't talking about the copyright owner, it's talking about ME.
But because the movie industry is losing SO much cash hand over foot we now have to purchase the special rental copies from suppliers at roughly £40 a copy. We can`t afford to buy as many dvd` - so they lose more money. Go figure...
Well, in this case, you should be blaming the Screen Actors Guild or whatever unions control talent. The rental versions cost more because a big chunk of the additional money goes to the actor's unions (SAG, etc). This was negotiated years ago when the unions realized what a cash cow videotape movies for home use was. The studios have to honor the contract to keep from getting sued.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
While we're all spending time here grumbling about it, how about spending 2 minutes contacting your representative -- Support Rick Boucher and John Doolittle's FAIR Use Act, which is a good first step at removing some of the entertainment industry's most draconian anti-innovation weapons and chipping away at the DMCA's broad restrictions on fair use. Take action now and tell your representative to help restore balance in copyright now: http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=271
Just use Backup HDDVD (which is in Java) along with this key: 0xAA856A1BA814AB99FFDEBA6AEFBE1C04