Feds Continue To Consider Linux Users Criminals For Watching DVDs

An anonymous reader sent in a link to an article in Wired about the latest DMCA loophole hearing. Bad news: the federal government rejected requests that would make console modding and breaking DRM on DVDs to watch them legal. So, you dirty GNU/Linux hippies using libdvdcss better watch out: "Librarian of Congress James Billington and Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante rejected the two most-sought-after items on the docket, game-console modding and DVD cracking for personal use and 'space shifting.' Congress plays no role in the outcome. The regulators said that the controls were necessary to prevent software piracy and differentiated gaming consoles from smart phones, which legally can be jailbroken. ... On the plus side, the regulators re-authorized jailbreaking of mobile phones. On the downside, they denied it for tablets, saying an 'ebook reading device might be considered a tablet, as might a handheld video game device.'" So you can jailbreak a phone, but if it's 1" larger and considered a "tablet" you are breaking the law.

Comments

Not so fast

[macemoneta]

I've bought a dozen retail DVD players (standalone and PC) over the years, each of which came with a license either in the form of internal firmware or standalone software. I have two DVD drives still in use, both in Linux PCs. I should have plenty of licenses - if that's what they in fact are. The idea that I can hold a dozen licenses and yet not be authorized to play legally obtained content on two surviving drives because someone in the MPAA doesn't like my completely legal operating system is an abomination of logic, reason, and ethics.

Re:duh

[jedidiah]

It's my property. I bought it. It is a thing. There is no license.

THAT was adjudicated for books over 100 years ago.

Me using my own personal property should not be considered illegal or immoral.

SO what. Bypassing DRM to view a DVD is LEGAL Now

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to a little known case against GE, it is now legal to break DRM to watch a move or play a game.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/07/23/29099.htm

>Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act's) anti-circumvention provision," Judge Garza wrote for the New Orleans-based court.
          "The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners."

This referred to GE cracking a hardware dongle to use software. If that's not a violation of the DMCA, then nothing that simply enables use is a violation.

Re:They told me...

[hairyfeet]

Its NOT that "different is unelectable" its "different gets banned from the MSM by the corporate overlords" so that John and Jane Public never hear of it, simple as that.

If you don't believe me look up "John Stewart Ron Paul" and you'll find a video where he just strung together clips of the entire MSM treating Paul as "he who shall not be named" even going so far as to name one two and FOUR on a list but being DAMNED careful to avoid even saying the name who who came in third. The clip ends with a clip of a reporter actually saying to an anchor "We are here talking more about Christie and Palin who aren't even running than in Paul who is climbing up in the polls and appearing here tonight" and the anchor gets a douchebag smirk and says "Well if you get footage of Palin or Christie let us know, you can keep the Paul stuff"

So its actually very simple, its no different than "free speech zones" a mile away from the nearest camera. Since the entire MSM is owned by a handful of billionaires THEY, not you, get to decide who runs, because they control the airwaves, they decide what clips to broadcast of any debate, they can make anyone who doesn't suck the corporate cock come off like a nut or even just make them magically disappear by not even acknowledging their existence.