Slashdot Mirror
Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying
Ynefel writes in with a PC Magazine article reporting that the DVD Copy Control Association is considering an amendment to the agreement equipment vendors must abide by, which would completely ban all DVD backups, whether fair use or not, and prevent DVDs from playing without the DVD disk being present in the drive. The amendment is being voted on imminently and if approved would go into effect within 18 months. Quoting: "The proposed amendment was made public in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD CCA this past March."
This amendment is NOT an amendment to the law. It's an amendment to the license agreement between the association responsible for the DVD standard and the companies that create DVD products. As such, its only direct impact on the consumer is that DVD Backup products will have their licenses revoked. Which would make it that much more difficult to excercise our fair-use rights to make a backup of the media and/or space-shift the media.
I think that Kaleidescape is right to worry in this situation. The change to the license agreement appears to be a direct attack on their business. Which, if successful, would represent irreparable harm to the market at large. The convenience aspect of digitally ripping the media cannot be understated. With such devices on the market, consumers are able to place their physical copies in storage while still having easy access to their media. Most of us do it with our CDs without giving it a second thought. Why should our movies be any different? (I know that I can't be the only one who has shelf-space problems with CDs, DVDs, and Video Games.)
As a party being directly harmed by an artifcial monopoly, I certainly hope that Kaleidescape takes this to court should it be approved. Consumers have a right to use their bought and paid-for media as they like. The DVD standard shouldn't be used as a bludgeon to take that away. If Kaleidescape is unsuccessful in their suit, I would hope that a class-action suit could be initiated for the harm caused to consumers.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
suck cock already.
Whether I buy a movie or not is not dictated by whether I can pirate it. It's by whether I can a) play it, and b) want to watch it. Stop making shitty movies and I'll buy/rent more (speaking of renting my last 6 or so rentals were all shitty despite being "highly rated" so I'm a bit pissed off).
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
go to your favorite movie rental place... of the hundreds of movies on the new release wall we saw 3 that interested us
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
It'll be just as effective, no? (or did these yahoos forget about those little A/V out ports on the back of each player?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
is the DMCA. It should be changed to address the rights of consumers to make copies for PERSONAL use. All these assults on our rights by business is way out of control.
They don't intend to enforce it against you the individual who has enough clue to be able to do this for themselves.
I think they've looked at the Kaliedescape product and the video iPod and reckon that within a few years, such items could be as commonplace as the DVD player is today. And as soon as the movie can be seamlessly, easily copied from the medium it's distributed on by even the least technical person, the studios start to lose control of what happens to it - something which the MPAA appear to be absolutely terrified of.
The idea of this is to prevent such products ever hitting the marketplace, and thus maintain control.
Also how will this relate to products like the PSP and iPod? Where people can convert there DVD to a mpeg stream for viewing on the go?
And just how long will this magical content protection system last against the now angry black, grey and white hats of the world? Please, because I am just dying to know.
We could make this discussion about the lack of quality movies nowadays, but if you have 11 unlocked doors and 1 locked door, just where do you think we (humans) will want to get into most?
When are they going to learn that enacting unfair restrictions like this will only degrade people's respect for other, perhaps legitimate, restrictions? As others have noted, any such total ban on copying will largely be ignored by those with the means. And those who don't have the means to ignore and get around the restrictions will simply stop buying DVDs if they cannot easily view their purchase on the device of their choice.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Sorry to reply to myself, but I have a few more thoughts on this that really didn't fit in with my other post.
From one perspective, I *do* understand where DVD producers are coming from on this. I positively know of at least one person who uses Netflix by backing up the DVDs when they come in, then immediately shipping them out for new ones. While it's a nice trick for improving one's own convenience, it's not really in the spirit of the service. So there are some legitimate arguments against DVD Backup devices.
However, the solution is NOT to ban good devices in an attempt to nail the edge cases. All you're going to do is piss off your customer base. But what should happen if a report stating that backup-piracy is NOT an edge case crosses an important desk? Should that executive then decide to make the problem go away?
NO!
What that exec is looking at is what I like to call a "Crisitunity". (Shamelessly stolen from other sources.) It's a crisis that presents new opportunities. All that's needed is an analysis of the problem to see where a workable solution might be introduced.
The first question to ask is: "Is this piracy about the money?" I think in most cases you'll find the money to be a secondary concern. Consumers like value (thus why they won't pay for an electronic copy of Pirates of the Carribean when they can get a physical copy for the same price), but they are willing to pay for the media under most circumstances. Ok, then why are they performing backup-piracy?
The obvious answer is: Convenience. Consumers are getting used to having things on their own schedule. Tivos allow them to shift television to a more convenient time. DVDs shift blockbuster movies out of the movie theater and into the convenience of the home. MP3s make jogging or travelling with your music a no-brainer. Gameboys/PSPs let consumers take their interactive entertainment on the go. Laptops let internet surfers work while they sip a latte at Starbucks.
Let's face it. We're an economy that's addicted to convenience. So much so that we will spend unnecessary money just to make something more convenient. Which should raise the flag of new opportunities. If consumers are so addicted to convenience, then why not find ways of providing it? Online movie distribution seems like the most promsing answer. Yet if you log into iTunes (analogous to DVDs in the store), Vongo (analogous to Netflix), or MovieLink (analogous to Blockbuster) you'll have a duece of a time trying to find a movie worth watching. And if you *do* find a movie worth watching, you may feel that the price is too high without a physical backup to protect your investment.
Thus the truth is that the movie industry is killing themselves through risk-adversion. The music industry already made that mistake once. One would think that the movie industry could try paying attention.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm not sure who modded you +1 interesting, but it should have been -1 troll. Wait till you live in a local that doesn't offer broadband. Or you don't have the money to pay for all those price "on demand" movies when you want to watch a movie that you've already watched. Your basic assumption seems to be that since it doesn't affect you at this second in time, you don't care about it. That's a pretty shortsighted viewpoint to take - and one that's going to see your rights taken away in a hurry.
Sorry, but this is not true. It's not what you drive can read, but what it can write afterwards. For example, your drive can read the media descriptor block on your DVD, but it can't write the block of your choice onto your writable disc. To demand that a DVD must be in a drive, enforced by the drive hardware itself, with a media descriptor that you can't buy on blank discs, or write with any consumer writer, would require the original physical disc to be present for playback. The way around this is to rip the content with an unauthorized player, for which the will then try and sue you. Lawyers will make lots of money over this, notoriously insecure movie studio execs will sleep soundly over this, and the average person's life will become incrementally more difficult than before in a constantly ratcheting spiral.
DRM needs to be banned at the federal level, as an impediment to Fair Use and other consumer rights. Until the public at large is willing to make this a top priority, this garbage will continue.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
(Emphasis mine) No! It's not their money, it's your money. Unless, of course, you never buy or rent movies, or go see a movie in the theater. But rest assured, the MPAA and friends subsidize their DRM efforts (tech and lobbying) with increased prices. That's what I find particularly irksome: if you buy a DVD (or HD-DVD or BluRay), part of the cost goes to cover the expense of its DRM. We're paying for stuff we don't want. Nobody requested DRM!
I hate to repeat the standard mantra, but... no DRM, lower prices and better content and all this "piracy" would just go away. I mean, we all know it can never be totally squelched, but can easily be made unprofitable enough to be marginalized.
The proposal is an amendment to the agreement that all DVD hardware manufacturers must agree to to get access to the DVD standard's specifications. The proposed text FTA:
This, as the article notes, is at essence designed to put Kaleidescape out of business. This is bad; however, the real idiocy might be with the latter half about "persistent copy" making. It is trivial (although not trivially cheap) for a consumer to assemble a dedicated computer with a DVD drive, massive storage, TV video output, and free open-source software to duplicate the functioning of a Kaleidescape Jukebox. The DVD-CCA might use this to try and retroactively remove this capability from the market... despite that I don't see how it might be possible to do so without removing either DVD drives or TV-out computer components.
Of course, I'm not sure that this amendment can prevent someone from making a Kaleidescape-like jukebox; while less elegant, it wouldn't be hard to redesign the Jukebox to use a standard 1-bay 5.25" DVD drive -- at which point, a manufacturer need not be a signatory to the DVD-CCA agreement, but merely buys (bulk, OEM) DVD drives as a component. Therefore, the only impact of this amendment (unless they try to ban the DVD drive — which I don't rule out) is a slight delay (until someone does this) and to try and put Kaleidescape out of business... which, as the company president notes, is likely to be held unlawful.
I suspect it boils down to someone stupidly and criminally trying to be vindictive against Kaleidescape for having previously beaten the DVD-CCA in court. This should go well....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
If you buy a book, can you lend it to a friend?
Yes.
Can you invite you friends over to watch a DVD?
Yes
Can you donate your unwanted books to a library?
Yes
Can you even play a music CD with others in the room?
Yes
Without Fair Use, the answer to all of these would be NO.
No it wouldn't. None of these uses count as public performances, broadcasts or copies.
Fair use means that you retain the right to make copies for a number of reasons. It is not a right in itself. It's a limitation of rights of the copyright holder. i.e. if they sue you, fair use is a defence.
Given all the DRM/DCMA/Patriot Act rules, half the stuff I do on my computer is probably illegal. Lucky for me, words on paper have never prevented me from doing any of it and I doubt putting more words on paper will either.