Not so. Essentially it protects a copyrighted work from being viewed.
That's a rather perverse approach, but okay, I can see that. The copyright holder is not given the right to do that by copyright law, which only gives them control over (strangely enough) copying. It could be argued that a license prevented the work from being viewed in this fashion, but that doesn't seem to be the case (and such a license would have to be up-front and before the sale as per the UCC).
In other words, I can't sell you a book and then tell you that it can only be read under certain conditions - unless I obtain your agreement to abide by such conditions before the sale.
But if you make the ring yourself, and give it to your friends, then you've broken the law (DMCA)
The DMCA specifically allows reverse-engineering for purposes of interoperability, BTW, which is clearly the case as DeCSS was a necessary first step toward making DVDs viewable under Linux.
So they're not being sued for copyright infringement. They're being sued for distributing software which de-encrypts DVDs. It isn't clear that this even falls under the DMCA, as CSS doesn't protect the copyrighted work from being copied, but rather the profits of the people who produce decoders. The MPAA is still trying to put forth the Big Lie that CSS has something to do with copy protection.
The companies who bring you DVDs are entirely within their rights to license them however they wish. If you do not like the license, then DON'T BUY THE GOODS.
They are also required (at least in the US) to make such licenses up front, before money is exchanged. (How can I decide whether I like the license when I have to buy the package just to find out what the terms of the license are?) Shrink-wrap style "licenses" constitute illegal modification of terms of sale after the sale, and aren't worth the plastic they're printed on.
Copyright isn't relevant unless somebody actually obtained from the DVD CCA the actual software that they use and copied it. Instead, somebody wrote their own code from scratch which did the same thing.
Consider a similar situation from a few years back - a PC operating system called DR-DOS. It did much the same thing as the better known MS-DOS. It did not violate Microsoft's copyright, even though it was compatible with MS-DOS.
As many of you will know, Microsoft defeated it by changing an add-on product called Windows so that it would not run on DR-DOS. They could not have defeated it in court, because it was a perfectly legal product.
But what exactly does the decoder ring feature protect?
Nothing. It doesn't prevent me from making a copy. It doesn't even prevent me from giving those copies away to my friends who have their own decoder rings. All it does is require anyone who wants to read it to either know the native language (essentially impossible for the "real" case of DVDs) or possess a decoder ring.
Had the DVD CCA patented their encryption method, they might have a case - then making a decoder would probably violate the patent. Obtaining a patent requires that they make the process public, though, and as weak as it is, it is understandable why they chose not to.
No, reverse-engineering a Celica, making more, and selling it as a Celica would be a violation of Toyota's trademark, not their copyright. Whole different beast.
Selling it as a generic car wouldn't violate any trademarks or copyrights, but might well violate patents. And you wouldn't be likely to find any buyers....
Version control system embedded in the file system? Yikes. Been there, done that, hated it (with TOPS-20 and VMS). I think you ended up with something like;1,;2, etc. appended to the ends of your file names (transparently unless you went looking). It was a pain trying to clean up, though. Might be okay if you can turn the damn thing off for most of the file system - I'm only interested in version control for a very, very limited subset of my files.
As for setting the clock, there have been control panels available for a long time that do this (I use Network Time).
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Not so. Essentially it protects a copyrighted work from being viewed.
That's a rather perverse approach, but okay, I can see that. The copyright holder is not given the right to do that by copyright law, which only gives them control over (strangely enough) copying. It could be argued that a license prevented the work from being viewed in this fashion, but that doesn't seem to be the case (and such a license would have to be up-front and before the sale as per the UCC).
In other words, I can't sell you a book and then tell you that it can only be read under certain conditions - unless I obtain your agreement to abide by such conditions before the sale.
But if you make the ring yourself, and give it to your friends, then you've broken the law (DMCA)
The DMCA specifically allows reverse-engineering for purposes of interoperability, BTW, which is clearly the case as DeCSS was a necessary first step toward making DVDs viewable under Linux.
So they're not being sued for copyright infringement. They're being sued for distributing software which de-encrypts DVDs. It isn't clear that this even falls under the DMCA, as CSS doesn't protect the copyrighted work from being copied, but rather the profits of the people who produce decoders. The MPAA is still trying to put forth the Big Lie that CSS has something to do with copy protection.
-Doug
Oh, we can only hope. B^)
You're right, I had forgotten about the BIOS issue. I thought it was an outside company (Phoenix) that had reverse-engineered it, though.
-Doug
The companies who bring you DVDs are entirely within their rights to license them however they wish. If you do not like the license, then DON'T BUY THE GOODS.
They are also required (at least in the US) to make such licenses up front, before money is exchanged. (How can I decide whether I like the license when I have to buy the package just to find out what the terms of the license are?) Shrink-wrap style "licenses" constitute illegal modification of terms of sale after the sale, and aren't worth the plastic they're printed on.
-Doug
Copyright isn't relevant unless somebody actually obtained from the DVD CCA the actual software that they use and copied it. Instead, somebody wrote their own code from scratch which did the same thing.
Consider a similar situation from a few years back - a PC operating system called DR-DOS. It did much the same thing as the better known MS-DOS. It did not violate Microsoft's copyright, even though it was compatible with MS-DOS.
As many of you will know, Microsoft defeated it by changing an add-on product called Windows so that it would not run on DR-DOS. They could not have defeated it in court, because it was a perfectly legal product.
-Doug
But what exactly does the decoder ring feature protect?
Nothing. It doesn't prevent me from making a copy. It doesn't even prevent me from giving those copies away to my friends who have their own decoder rings. All it does is require anyone who wants to read it to either know the native language (essentially impossible for the "real" case of DVDs) or possess a decoder ring.
Had the DVD CCA patented their encryption method, they might have a case - then making a decoder would probably violate the patent. Obtaining a patent requires that they make the process public, though, and as weak as it is, it is understandable why they chose not to.
-Doug
No, reverse-engineering a Celica, making more, and selling it as a Celica would be a violation of Toyota's trademark, not their copyright. Whole different beast.
Selling it as a generic car wouldn't violate any trademarks or copyrights, but might well violate patents. And you wouldn't be likely to find any buyers....
-Doug
Version control system embedded in the file system? Yikes. Been there, done that, hated it (with TOPS-20 and VMS). I think you ended up with something like ;1, ;2, etc. appended to the ends of your file names (transparently unless you went looking). It was a pain trying to clean up, though. Might be okay if you can turn the damn thing off for most of the file system - I'm only interested in version control for a very, very limited subset of my files.
As for setting the clock, there have been control panels available for a long time that do this (I use Network Time).
-Doug