Slashdot Mirror
deCSS Listed On Download.com
Abscissa writes "I just discovered that Download.com has listed the hottest illegal utility for "bypassing" DVD copy protection. It won't be long before they get contacted by the motion picture association!" And deCSS is also mirrored on many other, lower-profile Web sites. There's simply no way it can be stopped.
Shades of Fahrenheit 451 :)
no more movies are going to be made, since everyone is going to download this app and become a hardcore pirate, thereby breaking the motion picture industry. Woe is us. I myself have already put out of business a couple of studios by making illegal copies of my massive DVD collection. The MPAA needs to hurry up and sue download.com, cnet and affiliate sites, and everyone that visits them to protect the fragile movie industry.
;)
Sheesh. I can only imagine the witchhunts that will follow once this lil' app gets around now.
Off topic, but I wonder if napster can be configured to transfer *.vob's now?
Demona's Law - "User data expands to exceed available bandwidth." ("User data" being pr0n, mp3's, vob's,
I do wish people would be more careful with the posting on Slashdot. Calling DeCSS an 'illegal' utility immediately gets motion picture lawyers backs up and will possibly have a negative impact on when/if you can happily view DVDs in Linux. This slashdot article is almost as bad as the initial Wired article that seemed to started the problems with Linux DVD development in the first place.
AFAIK, DeCSS is *not* an illegal tool - the development of DeCSS was perfectly legal in the country in which it was developed and it would have been legal to develop it in the US and most other countries [possibly till the Digital Millenium Copyright act comes into force]
DeCSS, at least in its Linux form, is not intended as an aid to making illegal copies, hopefully it is just a means of assisting you in viewing DVDs under Linux.
Even the use of DeCSS in the UK, where there are specific provisions that appear to block it, is in doubt - there are a number of hurdles that someone taking the case to court would need to overcome.
P.S. IANAL, if you are please feel free to correct any mishtakes....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Since copy protection was invented, there have been ways around it.
With DAT there was some sort of digital signature (i forget the TLA) that was written to the tape that ment that the tape had to copied by the machine that produced the master. A box of tricks costing £100 (ish) got rid of that and you could freely copy DATs.
The duplication of CD's used to be protected by the high cost of CD writters but we just copied them to tape and all was fine. CD writters now cost around £180 and everyone is freely coping CD's (either audio or MP3) and distributing copywritted material.
The MP3 audio format was one of the final nails in the coffin. Fast, high quality and small audio files distributed freely are rapidly killing off sales of CD's. Well, so we are lead to believe by the music industry.
All this little application does is break the current encryption/protection method used. I'm sure that within a few months a new format will come out and all the DVD hardware/software/content vendors will adopt it and proclaim it to be secure. A few months later someone will break it and announce who easy it was and how stupid the industry is for using such a weak encryption/protection method. Repeat the cycle. Do until end.
...can be downloaded from the CVS server [instructions on the web site] at: http://livid.on.openprojects.net
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Don't expect companies to perform civil disobedience or be the revolution - that's what individuals are for.
http://home.worldonline.dk/~andersa/download/DeCSS .zip p - auth.tar.gz s /8877/index.html g z . gz and ftp://193.219.56.32/pub/dvd/LiVid.CVS-11.06.css-st uff-only.tar.gz h tml g z and http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/dvd/css/DeCSS.zip
http://douglas.min.net/~drw/css-auth/
http://www.devzero.org/freecss.html
http://home.t-online.de/home/skinner01/decss.zi
http://www.chello.nl/~f.vanwaveren/css-auth/css
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Campu
http://www.angelfire.com/mt/popefelix/
http://www.vexed.net/CSS
http://members.brabant.chello.nl/~j.vreeken/
http://gullii.stu.rpi.edu/dvd/files/DeCSS.zip and http://gullii.stu.rpi.edu/dvd/files/css-auth.tar.
http://www.dvd.eavy.de/css-auth.tar.gz
http://www.eavy.net/stuff/dvd/css-auth.tar.gz and http://www.eavy.net/stuff/dvd/DeCSS.zip
http://www.dynamsol.com/satanix/DeCSS.zip and http://www.dynamsol.com/satanix/css-auth.tar.gz
http://www.dvd.eavy.de/DeCSS.zip
http://frozenlinux.com/civ/decss/
http://www.humpin.org/decss/
http://www.unitycode.org/
http://dirtass.beyatch.net/decss.zip
http://members.tripod.lycos.nl/jvz/
http://www.free-dvd.org.lu/
http://www.angelfire.com/in2/mirror/
http://mclaughlin.orange.ca.us/~andrew/
http://batman.jytol.fi/~vuori/dvd/
http://www.zpok.demon.co.uk/deCSS/CSS.html
http://plato.nebulanet.net:88/css/
ftp://alma.dhs.org/pub/DVD/
http://www.d.umn.edu/~dchan/css/
http://www.logorrhea.com/main.html
http://people.delphi.com/salfter/LiVid.tar.gz
http://www.theresistance.net/files.html
ftp://193.219.56.32/pub/dvd/LiVid.CVS-11.06.tar
http://merlin.keble.ox.ac.uk/~adrian/css/index.
http://www.dvd-copy.com/
http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/dvd/css/css-auth.tar.
http://www.sent.freeserve.co.uk/css-auth.tar.gz and http://www.sent.freeserve.co.uk/DeCSS.zip
ftp://ftp.firehead.org/pub/ (very slow - 33.6 line)
http://members.tripod.co.uk/bap/css/css.html
http://www.tasam.com/~fenkt/dvd/
ftp://eris.giga.or.at/pub/hacker/crypt/DVD/
http://therapy.endorphin.org/DVD/
http://www.discordia.de/decss/DeCSS.zip and http://www.discordia.de/decss/css-auth_tar.gz and http://www.discordia.de/decss/LiVid.tgz
But we still have many businesses (including the motion picture industry) which are still operating under the old industrial age rules. Those rules favor protecting property to preserve scarcity to help assign higher product value. That we can copy movies with no real overhead, threatens the scarcity, which in turns lowers the assigned value of the product. They see the need to try to protect their property, so that they can continue to retain value assigned to it. A great example of the extreme of this mindset was Disney (until recently) which not only protected their IP, but actually would take products off the market for extended periods of time to drive up the 'value' (by making the product more scarce).
The Electronic world compensates. Its just the beginning of the new economy, and what we are seeing is that the wired folks are starting to act in a new way. Notice the increase of attention regarding issues of intellectual property and privacy. Both of these issues have to transition to a new set of rules in this new economy and we have a conflict of the old-economy businesses and the new-economy public. Expect to see more of this for the next few years.
The popularity of DeCSS (in our community) and the proliferations of MP3s are just two examples of the new rules in action. DeCSS is a correction to the old rules, and MP3 is the principals of the new economy in action. Not that most people have any idea that this is going on. Like rules of any economy, they 'just make sense.' We like MP3s cause it just makes sense to distribute and collect music this way.
Of course, I could be just blowing smoke.
No, you are wrong.
...
The idea was to prevent the wholesale copying of DVDs like the CD problem they have in Asia.
No, you are wrong.
Wholesale pirates have access to commercial grade DVD copying and pressing equipment, which as another poster noted is not affected by CSS at all.
Furthermore, wholesale DVD pirates have the option of recording from the analog output, redigitizing the result with only a small loss in quality, and pressing as many unencrypted DVDs as they wish. Minimal effort, minimal cost. Given the kinds of pirated movies that have been sold in the past (taken with a video camera in front of a screen for crying out loud!), quality is not a very important issue to pirates.
CSS is designed to restrict playback and limit fair use as provided for under the law, including but not limited to making backup copies or moving the data to a more convenient medium.
The MPAA has plenty of legal recourse, and muscle, to go after wholesale pirates. CSS is an effort to make an end-run around laws permitting individuals fair use, something the MPAA and movie studios can't stand, but have absolutely no LEGAL method of stopping (except by encryption and excersizing the draconian new rights they have been granted in the US through the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which was snuck through on a voice vote during the height of the Clinton/Monica sex scandal.)
As I noted in another post, I will not be giving any money, directly or indirectly, to Hollywood until such a time as DVD is supported under Linux and their witch hunts stop. Yes, this means I'm making allot of use of the public library, local book stores, and local theaters and comedy clubs. Now that I'm hooked on the latter, I will probably be much less inclined to watch movies again even after the MPAA cleans up their act (should that optomistic expectation actually ever happen), as plays and comedy acts have actually turned out to be much more entertaining than any movie I've seen in the last several years. But that's another story altogether
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