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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.
They told me if I voted for McCain, we'd see a technology incompetent administration increasingly beholden to media conglomerates... and they were right.
I'm sure hoping for some good changes.
The law is still fucked up, nothing to see here
'ebook reading device might be considered a tablet, as might a handheld video game device.'"
And if some corporation pays enough, it also might be considered a tractor.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
What unlicensed system?
Everybody who's playing DVDs on Linux already has a license, because they have a licensed DVD player in the computer, and already paid the Microsoft tax.
The patent holders can't ask for more than that.
Don't watch DVD, download higher quality .mkv from pirate bay instead.
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.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
IANAL. But selling you a locked box you cannot open is self contradictory. The idea that you sold me something (not licensed...sold) and I can't access any part of it runs counter to every principle of private property. What if I sold you a suitcase and said, "By the way, dude, there is a locked compartment in it to which I have the key. You can't open it to take the brick out of it. So you will have to carry my brick wherever you go or I will sue you and have the authorities arrest you for theft if you break into my private compartment in your suitcase and remove my property. It is a complete fallacy to contend that I would retain any claim to that compartment if I sold you the case. And you would be well within your rights to break the box and take out the brick. To say otherwise runs counter to the very nature of the process of 'sale'.
The DMCA is beyond a miscarriage of justice it's a coat-hanger scrape job on the lady herself. Has this absurd provision ever had a constitutional test? I do not think any US Attorney has brought a case against a person for watching a DVD with unlicensed encryption software. Or for backing up a DVD. They went after the hapless dcss coder with a vengeance as I recall. But a schmo watching a DVD on Linux? Can anyone recall a case? I can't. Please correct me if I am wrong. IMHO a law no one can or will prosecute is no law at all.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
I immediately copy with Magic DVD Copier - it removes the "Cannot get to the menu until you watch our ads and antipiracy notice" nonsense, and I can choose to copy the movie only.
I skip the middleman and download the movie directly. If they're going to treat me like a fucking criminal, I'm going to act like a fucking criminal.
These are actually steps for the taking over of ANY democracy full of greedy shits and morons, but I've written it specifically for the US of A, reword as necessary for use with some other alleged democracy: (Note, a violent overthrow is never effective in a large, prosperous country, and there's no reason to try, especially when it's likely to be so ruinous to you, and unlikely to be successful in the face of the massive amount of force the military could bring to bear. Also, if you follow these steps, you'll find there's an easier, quieter way, unlikely to get you jailed or killed, AND, more importantly, it doesn't risk harm to the precious GDP the somnambulant populace keeps churning out each year...)
Step 1. Get a bunch of rich assholes together, convince them to form a conspiracy to rule the United States of America. (Or if you're rich enough, and you're enough of an asshole, do this all this by yourself.)
Step 2. Through a program of massive brib^H^H^H^H campaign contributions, buy control over the Republican Party.
Step 3. Through a program of massive brib^H^H^H^H campaign contributions, buy control over the Democratic Party.
Step 4. Attain control over the news media in the country; use it to distract the country from the fact that you now own the government, for all intents and purposes. Have the parties grind the government to a halt, and paralyze public discourse by chumming the political waters with bullshit that doesn't matter, like the use of the word "retarded" or, well just about any other thing, pretending that cultural minutia are somehow a more important topic of discussion than national policy. Bombard people with warning after warning about how much danger other nations' "extremists" present, so you can continue to ensure the cowardly populace will quake with fear and cede their rights to your puppet government if only it will keep them safe, as they quietly piss, not only all over themselves, but also all over the sacrifices made be the great patriots who wrested our country first from the hands of the English, then from those of the Native Americans, then from the French, the Mexicans, the Russians, and finally from the Polynesians. (No, I'll pull no punches here, as you can see.)
Step 5. Use the control you've corruptly achieved to ensure that each party picks ONLY people whom you are okay seeing get elected, to nominate for public office.
Step 6. Have the "elected" officials you own appoint people to the Supreme Court of the United States who will support continued power grabbing by the legislative and executive branches, since the power the "elected" officials have is now really YOUR power, and you want to maintain and expand it until you're not only above the law, but so far above it that you are in effect, a king.
Step 7. Use the legislature you now control to ensure that certain groups of people are continuously disenfranchised, and are in a position either to starve, or have to work like virtual slaves, such as "illegal" immigrants, blacks, and anyone who can't see for himself the value of a good education.
Step 8. Use the court system you now corruptly control to issue judgements that ensure people have progressively less freedom every day, to keep money flowing into the coffers of the corporations you control, such as the movie and music industries. This will also increase the freedom and power you have through your ownership and control of corporations, which are now classed as "people". (Forgetting of course, that these "people" are functionally immortal, and cannot be punished the way a real person can, by being jailed, for instance.) Periodically siphon money out of the system through taking advantage of the poorly regulated financial sector, robbing people of their retirements, and laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands, while they continue to slave away until they're dead.
Step 9. Reduce funding for education, because, AND NEVER EVER FORGET THIS: education is your enemy. By this point, you can do most of this remotely, from som