Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio
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Copy Protection Galore
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I do agree that the more onerous copy protection becomes, the more likely people are to stop buying software all together, or switch to something else.
However, I see it as probably ending the PC as we know it, as anything other than a corporate workstation, or a techies toy. The general public will switch to internet/network appliances.
"Humm yeah, like the threat of lawsuits and jail has forced everybody to stop pirating software and music and pay all required licences...
Every computer enthousiast has broken copyrights law at one time or another (even Open Source zealots sometimes download an MP3 file). Breaking the DMCA won't be much of a problem for anyone (especially people like me, who don't live in the US:)."
Don't be so sure of that. Norway, which last time I checked, was a soverign country and not a US territory, bent over and let the MPAA have it's way with one of it's citizens, the kid who wrote DeCSS. Norway didn't have a DMCA, and what he did there (reverse engineering) was perfectly legal under Norweigin law. What the MPAA branch of the FBI did was lie to some Norweigin cops and they acted.
How does that make you feel,/.'ers who live in other countries other than the USA? I'm from the US, and it makes me sick to think of my country doing stuff like this.
Re:All sites with Linux source code will be illega
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Copy Protection Galore
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"Heh. Except that judges are the only thing protecting us from bad laws.
The problem is the people getting bad, corporate-bought or unconstutional laws passed, not the "rogue judges" who enforce those laws. You're absolutely right about what needs to be done, but lets say we do it-- who will protect us from the DMCA (which is "law", even if it is an illegal one) now? The George W. Bush-appointed supreme court?"
Kaplan and other judges who refuse to obey the law need to be accountable. The DMCA is clearly illegal based on previous precedent, AND the Constitution (which trumps ANY statutory law). Now only did he find in favor of the DMCA, he EXTENDED it (made more new bad law) by putting a gag order on people's speech, AND making hyperlinks illegal.
ALL government, not just judges need to be reigned in. You can vote out congressmen and presidents, but Federal judges are unelected and serve for life. Therefore, their power should be the MOST limited of the three branches. Their sole role should be in striking down bad laws where it conflicts with the Constitution.
"I'm tired of all those "you have the choice" posts... I want to choose what kind of art I want and how I want to watch, listen, ect, it. Not choosing between doing things their way or not at all."
Exactly. And besides, anything that I've bought is my property, and I should have the right to do anything with it that I want to once I've paid my money.
I don't want the MPAA to turn my PC into a CSS controlled device they own and license to me.
I also don't want my hard drive only grudgingly (after checking with Judge Kaplan) allow me to store, read, and copy stuff on it.
Re:And 10 minutes for a driver hack that disables
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Copy Protection Galore
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"Anyone doubt that less than a day, every open-source operating system will have drivers patched to automagically bypass this?"
No, but that's not the point. There never has or ever will exist a protection or encryption scheme that allows the data to be read at all that will ever not be breakable.
The point is that this will invoke the DMCA, as interpreted by so-called "judge" Kaplan (I prefer MPAA pawn as his title) that allows the RIAA/MPAA et all to sue, prosecute, confiscate, etc any tools that allow this protection to be broken.
"You guys are forgetting something about timeshifting - NBC et al want us to be able to timeshift programs, they just want us to watch the commercials along with them. Why would any TV network deliberately prevent some people from being able to watch their shows?"
True. In fact, they are selling devices now that allow you do do just that (TiVio I think).
However, the broadcasters are at best neutral, and did in fact take part in fighting the VCR. You can fast forward the commercials.
The movie and record label industries are the real force behind this.
And DVD does allow them to FORCE you to watch commercials. There are DVD movies out there that won't let you skip or fast forward the previews and commercials. It won't be long until DVD's start interrupting the movie to show you a commercial you can't refuse to watch.
This is all in the future if the MPAA/RIAA are allowed to put their wishes into law (DMCA) and get the government to send goons to enforce it.
"Nit: DMCA was passed by a anonymous voice vote. For all practical purposes, it is unanimous, but we have no idea whom the dissenters were because that was not recored."
It was unanimous. I doubt a single Senator or Representative didn't receive some form of "contribution" (bribe) from the MPAA/RIAA to get the DMCA.
If even ONE Senator disagreed with the voice vote procedure, he/she had the right to fillibuster it, and this would have certainly drawn attention to it.
Damn I wish I had moderator points for your post. EXCELLENT!!!
Copyright protects them from piracy. Hollywood and Microsoft want more than this... They are convinced that $billions per year are lost ot piracy (a number that has been pulled out of thin air) They can't (in a practical sense) find and prosecute all pirates. So they want it to be hard to pirate, hence copy protection.
However, copy protection doesnt' actually stop anyone from copying who really wants to, so they went and got the DMCA, which gives COPY protection stronger legal protection than the copyright that it protects. This is an end run around the Constitutional limits on copyright protection.
Also, they hope to chill the spread of information on how to defeat copy protection by criminalizing it.
"However, this does not mean that the manufacturer or content provider is obligated to provide you with the means to do so. And, because of the DMCA, they can put in specific measures to prevent such things, and prosecute us for breaking them. They aren't prosecuting us for making the copy, they're prosecuting us for breaking the copy-protection."
I agree, the corpers are entitled to try to sell us antything they want to. However, their right to dictate what they sold us does (or doesn't do) should end with the money changing hands. The DMCA, as you said, allows them to do this. It's clearly an Unconstitutional law, as "fair use" is derived from the Constitutions's limitations on copyright and patents.
Unfortunately, it will take a case that is better than the 2600/DeCSS one going before some judge who's house, car, and kid's college educations that haven't been paid for by the MPAA/RIAA.
"It seems to me that if the HD firmware never sees the no-copy message because cfs (or PGPdisk) has encrypted it, then the firmware can't do anything but assume that it's okay to store. Treating all data as no-copy by default would be the only counter-measure to this, and that would defeat the whole point of a HD. I can't see any manufacturer (or OEM or anyone else) falling for that."
If true then it would seem to me that all it would take to circumvent this would be to convert the file to some other format, or even as simply as compressing it (.Zip,.tar, etc).
However, I will not buy such a hard drive. The hard drive has one job: to store and retrieve whatever data I choose to put on it. It does what I tell it to do, when I tell it to do it. Even the master drive is a slave in this respect (horrid pun).
This is as bad as someone selling me a PC that won't power on or off when I push the button, but asks Microsoft for permission first...
"Copy protection schemes simply don't benefit the consumer; until they do, there will be no reason for consumers to support the products that contain these schemes over products that don't. We just need to make sure that consumers do have a choice."
Copy protection schemes will NEVER benefit the consumer. They exist to deny rights and use of your property (and anything that I pay money for is my property no matter what legalise that is attempted).
Sure piracy should be illegal. Pirates should be fined and prosecuted. But corporations and monopoly trade groups should not be allowed to presume guilt upon citizens. Nor should it be illegal to circumvent such attempts at presumption, which is all DeCSS and cracks of this scheme really are.
"..and how much of this Orwellian future have we created ourselves ? Just because we can do it is not a reason TO do it. Techies need to really think before implementing. If no-one wrote copy protection schemes they would be really screwed... Steve (can't find my login stuff)"
Excellent point, but keep in mind, that techies are not all of same beliefs. Sure, something like 95% of all/.'ers are against such a thing, but there are techies out there who probably think this is good.
And you can pay certain people to do anything. After all, the Germans had no poblems finding people to gas, shoot, etc, 6 MILLION innocent human beings as employees of the Nazi regeime. Stalin and Mao murdered several times that, and all were comitted by paid servants who willingly did it.
Re:A Note I Sent About The Hard disk Copyprotectio
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Copy Protection Galore
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"Lets imagine a world where people are not allowed to pirate software. "
I think this scenario is the only way the M$ ".NET" rental scheme will succeed. They have to take control of the hard drive, and thru their control of the Windows OS (which will of course fully utilize this "feature") to make piracy impossible to the average user.
You are right, that this could make Linux and other free OS's more popular, because I don't see a SINGLE Linux develper even thinking about implimenting this in ext2.
However, what if some legal genious like Judge Kaplan (of the DeCSS case fame) declares all ext2 file system using OS's illegal as circumvention devices?
I guess if Linux is outlawed than only outlaws will use Linux. And they will take my copy of Red Hat from my cold dead hands.
"Actually, they don't need DFAST to screw Joe Sixpack out of taping his PPV WWF Killermatic Funfest. Macrovision already puts copyprotection crap in cable set-top boxes (ohhhh, so that's why they want you to get the digital cable and the converter box bigger than a VCR!). Go digging in thier SEC filings and you will find that very few cable operators use the features and they warn that "consumers may react negatively." Nothing like a good sugar coating, eh?"
Of course, Macrovision is easily bypassed with a simple video stabilizer, which you could (I think still can) buy at Radio Shack, and certainly thru the net.
But of course, the DMCA (as interpreted by Judge Kaplan) would now make selling, using, plans for such a device, or even POINTING at such a device around illegal.
All sites with Linux source code will be illegal..
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Copy Protection Galore
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"And if you store data using Ext2 filesystems, or ReiserFS filesystems, or BSD filesystems, or... ad infinitum, and don't mark blocks as protected, this prevents me from storing data on the disk precisely how?"
Simple... The MPAA/RIAA will go back to their favorite puppet, "Judge" Kaplan and get Linux/BSD and anything else that can use ext2 illegal as a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. Furthermore, the Linux source code, as it contains this "illegal" code.
Scary shit. This demonstrates how dangerous rogue judges are, and why the power of the judiciary needs to be curtailed and accountability increased.
"I'm really getting sick of the Entertainment industry's attempt at a stranglehold over all information and content. In the end, I think or at least can hope, that a no-vote with the wallet/purse/whatever by consumers will put a stop to this nonsense."
You are correct, but I'm more concerned with somehow getting between them and their politicos they have bought. There needs to be some kind of public outrage. But how this can be done, I don't know. We ARE only fighting those who control 99% of the media, that 99%+ of the public consume. It will be a hard case to make, because what they are doing is technical in nature.
Also, Hollywood keeps lobbying for a German-style "RIAA Tax" on all media. In which case, they will get your money whether you buy from them or not, so long as you continue to buy hard drives, PC's, and CD-R media.
"This mechanism would require the cooperation of all hard-drive manufacturers, who could find themselves under increasing pressure for consumers not to cooperate, and even if this were implemented in *all* hard drives (and the fact that the world is already full of hard drives which don't implement it), it only takes one person to break it (a'la DSS), and its all over."
Will consumers cry foul? Remember, most "consumers" are dense enough even about normal politics to allow someone like Jewel Kilcher, or Sarah Jessica Parker influence their thinking.
Techies will cry foul, but I think that the legal departments of Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate will cave in fear of Sony, AOL Time Warner, et all.
In fact, it won't surprise me to see AOL Time Warner and other RIAA/MPAA affiliated megacorps start buying the hard drive manufacturers.
"Its also illegal for underage consumption of alchohol. Speeding is illegal. Jaywalking... And now they are going to put people in jail for 25 years for copying a daytime talk show on their VCR so they can watch it after work. Sounds to me like America is becoming owned by coporate interests."
The US is becoming a dictatorial police state in every respect. Government and corporations are larger and more intrusive than ever. And they are becoming indistingushable from each other.
And BOTH parties are in on it. The DMCA, perhaps the worst law passed since Prohibition, was passed UNANIMOUSLY.
To be honest, I can think of no solution. We can try to fight it, and should, but unless some of the people in power act to check the erosion of the Constitution, I'm afraid we are on the way to a slave state, and an eventual revolution.
"Besides, such a thing would put such a damper on PC sales as to make the last quarter look like a windfall... "
I think this is exactly what Hollywood INTENDS. After all, the PC is the most powerful recording device and multimedia player ever invented that they never had any control over.
"It's like a DVD. It stores the data encrypted. You have to have a valid decoder (issued by the encryption autority) to decode the data. There is the possibility of something like DeCSS being created, but only is the encryption scheme is as stupid as CSS."
All copy protection schemes are weak and stupid, and are breakable. Especially when the device has to have built into it the mans to decrypt it, or else it's useless. This means that it is relatively easy to reverse-engineer or circumvent it.
The point is, that the DMCA adds the threat of prosecutorial action to the strength of CSS or any other protection scheme. In other words, modify your hard drive to let you copy, move, rename, open, etc, ANY file you want (which every hard drive sold before 2001 presumably would allow you to do) carries with it criminal activity.
Sure the crack for this will be out before the hard drive lands in some unsuspecting Joe-Schmo's new Presario, but it will be illegal. The addition of ANY type of copy protection scheme (even if they used 2-bit encryption) invokes the DMCA.
But only we techies will be able to use these cracks, and we are a small minority of the "consumer" public.
Eventually, the threat of lawsits and jail time will force us to stop doing what we want to with our own PC's, and as a consequence, will stifle the grassroots innovation that created the whole electronics and computer industry to begin with.
There never would have been a technology boom in the 90's if not for all of us who embraced computers in the 70's and 80's for the love of it. Now control over the PC is being taken away.
"Fight fire with fire. We need to push for legislation that forbids the sale of technology whose primary purpose is access control and which also has the effect of denying fair use rights. I wish I had more to say about it, but that pretty much sums it up."
I agree with you. The "Fair Use" principle is in fact, gleaned from the Constitution, and there is no legal way for any statutory law, or a consensual contact can deprive you of those rights.
Hardware that is being sold for the express purpose of circumventing Constitutional rights should be illegal, or at least, it should be perfectly legal for the OWNER of said hardware to modify it in any means necessary to do for himself what is actually legal in the first place.
The fact that books were once freely available in libraries.
The fact that there ever WAS legal means to copy or record ANYTHING.
That there ever was such thing as a personal computer, where you could install or use any OS, or program you bought, copied, or were given.
That you were ever sold software, music, or videos instead of renting them.
That you ever could OWN a copy of software, music, or video.
It's time to wake up, folks. Yes, we techies will be immune to crap like this because we have the knowhow and the chutspa to do it, as there will be a break discovered in this "secure" protection, just as there always is with ANY "secure" protection.
But what is different now is that it is ILLEGAL to even try to do such a thing, or even have the tools in your posession to do this. What is most scary is not what the DMCA is now, but what it will become in 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, or a century from now if it is allowed to stand.
It's time to get out there and vote. Call and write your politicos. Contribute to candidates who support your positions. IT people could be a very powerful lobby if we'd just get out heads out of our servers every now and then and do something.
For one, I will NOT buy a hard drive with this shit on it. I encourage everyone else not to as well. I will not pay for something meant to store data on it that is going to second-guess every copy, move, and open command I send it.
If the market refuses to buy these things, they will stop making them.
DMCA, the MPAA, and the RIAA HAVE to be stopped. The future of our profession, our country(s), and our livelyhoods depend on it. If the DMCA is allowed to trample the individual's right to innovate, then the whole IT industry will fail.
"Now, if a school has just paid out thousands of dollars for this program and a student can easily break thru it, don't you think they would want to know this? Why wouldn't they challenge the students to do this so they could probably go back to the company and say "Look, your software sucks, we want our money back"
This is exactly why they WONT blame the software. Undoutably some slick marketer conned the school (and taxpayers) out of thousands for this so-called "security" program (as if some third party program will allow idiots secure a system better than a competently installed and administered server).
Why won't they blame the teacher? Why the teacher has a UNION... They will either have to file charges, or defend themselves in some court.
It's far easier to punish the student. Minors basically have no rights, and schools can punish students pretty much at will.
Basically the school's administration drones took the easy way out. And the easy way is NEVER the right way. The only harm this kid caused was to expose wasteful spending by a PUBLIC institution.
I hope this case gets a lot of bad publicity for this school, and these administrator types get theirs.
Damn. I've been playing AD&D since the early 80's, and damn I wanted to see this movie.
Now it looks as though it will be a waste of money. Why hasn't anyone made a great sword-and-sorcery fantasy movie since Conan the Barbarian? It's a great genre, and seeing as fantasy books are selling better now than ever, a great one would make a ton of money...
The D&D franchise has been dying ever since Lorraine Williams (who hated game players) forcibly took over TSR and ousted creator Gary Gygax. If there hadn't been something special about it, it would have died totally long ago, it's almost stayed around despite mismanagement.
This situation is caused by the fact that enviro-wackos have prevented any new power plants from being constructed in California in over 20 years, while at the same time population has more than doubled. The fact that this crisis has been reached only NOW says a lot for how much more efficient power use is now than it was then.
There is no economic reason for this, power companies lose money when people use less power. It's sad, this is the UNITED STATES, and our whole technology industry needs power, not to mention modern civilization.
Perhaps the voters in California will become less friendly towards the Sierra Club this summer when they have no air conditioning in 100 degree heat. As bad as it is in winter, this is NOTHING compared to summer power demand.
Slashdot Mirror
I do agree that the more onerous copy protection becomes, the more likely people are to stop buying software all together, or switch to something else.
However, I see it as probably ending the PC as we know it, as anything other than a corporate workstation, or a techies toy. The general public will switch to internet/network appliances.
Either way, this is NOT good for Microsoft.
"Humm yeah, like the threat of lawsuits and jail has forced everybody to stop pirating software and music and pay all required licences... :)."
/.'ers who live in other countries other than the USA? I'm from the US, and it makes me sick to think of my country doing stuff like this.
Every computer enthousiast has broken copyrights law at one time or another (even Open Source zealots sometimes download an MP3 file). Breaking the DMCA won't be much of a problem for anyone (especially people like me, who don't live in the US
Don't be so sure of that. Norway, which last time I checked, was a soverign country and not a US territory, bent over and let the MPAA have it's way with one of it's citizens, the kid who wrote DeCSS. Norway didn't have a DMCA, and what he did there (reverse engineering) was perfectly legal under Norweigin law. What the MPAA branch of the FBI did was lie to some Norweigin cops and they acted.
How does that make you feel,
"Heh. Except that judges are the only thing protecting us from bad laws.
The problem is the people getting bad, corporate-bought or unconstutional laws passed, not the "rogue judges" who enforce those laws. You're absolutely right about what needs to be done, but lets say we do it-- who will protect us from the DMCA (which is "law", even if it is an illegal one) now? The George W. Bush-appointed supreme court?"
Kaplan and other judges who refuse to obey the law need to be accountable. The DMCA is clearly illegal based on previous precedent, AND the Constitution (which trumps ANY statutory law). Now only did he find in favor of the DMCA, he EXTENDED it (made more new bad law) by putting a gag order on people's speech, AND making hyperlinks illegal.
ALL government, not just judges need to be reigned in. You can vote out congressmen and presidents, but Federal judges are unelected and serve for life. Therefore, their power should be the MOST limited of the three branches. Their sole role should be in striking down bad laws where it conflicts with the Constitution.
"I'm tired of all those "you have the choice" posts... I want to choose what kind of art I want and how I want to watch, listen, ect, it. Not choosing between doing things their way or not at all."
Exactly. And besides, anything that I've bought is my property, and I should have the right to do anything with it that I want to once I've paid my money.
I don't want the MPAA to turn my PC into a CSS controlled device they own and license to me.
I also don't want my hard drive only grudgingly (after checking with Judge Kaplan) allow me to store, read, and copy stuff on it.
"Anyone doubt that less than a day, every open-source operating system will have drivers patched to automagically bypass this?"
No, but that's not the point. There never has or ever will exist a protection or encryption scheme that allows the data to be read at all that will ever not be breakable.
The point is that this will invoke the DMCA, as interpreted by so-called "judge" Kaplan (I prefer MPAA pawn as his title) that allows the RIAA/MPAA et all to sue, prosecute, confiscate, etc any tools that allow this protection to be broken.
"You guys are forgetting something about timeshifting - NBC et al want us to be able to timeshift programs, they just want us to watch the commercials along with them. Why would any TV network deliberately prevent some people from being able to watch their shows?"
True. In fact, they are selling devices now that allow you do do just that (TiVio I think).
However, the broadcasters are at best neutral, and did in fact take part in fighting the VCR. You can fast forward the commercials.
The movie and record label industries are the real force behind this.
And DVD does allow them to FORCE you to watch commercials. There are DVD movies out there that won't let you skip or fast forward the previews and commercials. It won't be long until DVD's start interrupting the movie to show you a commercial you can't refuse to watch.
This is all in the future if the MPAA/RIAA are allowed to put their wishes into law (DMCA) and get the government to send goons to enforce it.
"Nit: DMCA was passed by a anonymous voice vote. For all practical purposes, it is unanimous, but we have no idea whom the dissenters were because that was not recored."
It was unanimous. I doubt a single Senator or Representative didn't receive some form of "contribution" (bribe) from the MPAA/RIAA to get the DMCA.
If even ONE Senator disagreed with the voice vote procedure, he/she had the right to fillibuster it, and this would have certainly drawn attention to it.
Damn I wish I had moderator points for your post. EXCELLENT!!!
Copyright protects them from piracy. Hollywood and Microsoft want more than this... They are convinced that $billions per year are lost ot piracy (a number that has been pulled out of thin air) They can't (in a practical sense) find and prosecute all pirates. So they want it to be hard to pirate, hence copy protection.
However, copy protection doesnt' actually stop anyone from copying who really wants to, so they went and got the DMCA, which gives COPY protection stronger legal protection than the copyright that it protects. This is an end run around the Constitutional limits on copyright protection.
Also, they hope to chill the spread of information on how to defeat copy protection by criminalizing it.
"However, this does not mean that the manufacturer or content provider is obligated to provide you with the means to do so. And, because of the DMCA, they can put in specific measures to prevent such things, and prosecute us for breaking them. They aren't prosecuting us for making the copy, they're prosecuting us for breaking the copy-protection."
I agree, the corpers are entitled to try to sell us antything they want to. However, their right to dictate what they sold us does (or doesn't do) should end with the money changing hands. The DMCA, as you said, allows them to do this. It's clearly an Unconstitutional law, as "fair use" is derived from the Constitutions's limitations on copyright and patents.
Unfortunately, it will take a case that is better than the 2600/DeCSS one going before some judge who's house, car, and kid's college educations that haven't been paid for by the MPAA/RIAA.
"It seems to me that if the HD firmware never sees the no-copy message because cfs (or PGPdisk) has encrypted it, then the firmware can't do anything but assume that it's okay to store. Treating all data as no-copy by default would be the only counter-measure to this, and that would defeat the whole point of a HD. I can't see any manufacturer (or OEM or anyone else) falling for that."
.tar, etc).
If true then it would seem to me that all it would take to circumvent this would be to convert the file to some other format, or even as simply as compressing it (.Zip,
However, I will not buy such a hard drive. The hard drive has one job: to store and retrieve whatever data I choose to put on it. It does what I tell it to do, when I tell it to do it. Even the master drive is a slave in this respect (horrid pun).
This is as bad as someone selling me a PC that won't power on or off when I push the button, but asks Microsoft for permission first...
"Copy protection schemes simply don't benefit the consumer; until they do, there will be no reason for consumers to support the products that contain these schemes over products that don't. We just need to make sure that consumers do have a choice."
Copy protection schemes will NEVER benefit the consumer. They exist to deny rights and use of your property (and anything that I pay money for is my property no matter what legalise that is attempted).
Sure piracy should be illegal. Pirates should be fined and prosecuted. But corporations and monopoly trade groups should not be allowed to presume guilt upon citizens. Nor should it be illegal to circumvent such attempts at presumption, which is all DeCSS and cracks of this scheme really are.
"..and how much of this Orwellian future have we created ourselves ? Just because we can do it is not a reason TO do it. Techies need to really think before implementing. If no-one wrote copy protection schemes they would be really screwed... Steve (can't find my login stuff)"
/.'ers are against such a thing, but there are techies out there who probably think this is good.
Excellent point, but keep in mind, that techies are not all of same beliefs. Sure, something like 95% of all
And you can pay certain people to do anything. After all, the Germans had no poblems finding people to gas, shoot, etc, 6 MILLION innocent human beings as employees of the Nazi regeime. Stalin and Mao murdered several times that, and all were comitted by paid servants who willingly did it.
"Lets imagine a world where people are not allowed to pirate software. "
I think this scenario is the only way the M$ ".NET" rental scheme will succeed. They have to take control of the hard drive, and thru their control of the Windows OS (which will of course fully utilize this "feature") to make piracy impossible to the average user.
You are right, that this could make Linux and other free OS's more popular, because I don't see a SINGLE Linux develper even thinking about implimenting this in ext2.
However, what if some legal genious like Judge Kaplan (of the DeCSS case fame) declares all ext2 file system using OS's illegal as circumvention devices?
I guess if Linux is outlawed than only outlaws will use Linux. And they will take my copy of Red Hat from my cold dead hands.
"Actually, they don't need DFAST to screw Joe Sixpack out of taping his PPV WWF Killermatic Funfest. Macrovision already puts copyprotection crap in cable set-top boxes (ohhhh, so that's why they want you to get the digital cable and the converter box bigger than a VCR!). Go digging in thier SEC filings and you will find that very few cable operators use the features and they warn that "consumers may react negatively." Nothing like a good sugar coating, eh?"
Of course, Macrovision is easily bypassed with a simple video stabilizer, which you could (I think still can) buy at Radio Shack, and certainly thru the net.
But of course, the DMCA (as interpreted by Judge Kaplan) would now make selling, using, plans for such a device, or even POINTING at such a device around illegal.
"And if you store data using Ext2 filesystems, or ReiserFS filesystems, or BSD filesystems, or ... ad infinitum, and don't mark blocks as protected, this prevents me from storing data on the disk precisely how?"
Simple... The MPAA/RIAA will go back to their favorite puppet, "Judge" Kaplan and get Linux/BSD and anything else that can use ext2 illegal as a "circumvention device" under the DMCA. Furthermore, the Linux source code, as it contains this "illegal" code.
Scary shit. This demonstrates how dangerous rogue judges are, and why the power of the judiciary needs to be curtailed and accountability increased.
"I'm really getting sick of the Entertainment industry's attempt at a stranglehold over all information and content. In the end, I think or at least can hope, that a no-vote with the wallet/purse/whatever by consumers will put a stop to this nonsense."
You are correct, but I'm more concerned with somehow getting between them and their politicos they have bought. There needs to be some kind of public outrage. But how this can be done, I don't know. We ARE only fighting those who control 99% of the media, that 99%+ of the public consume. It will be a hard case to make, because what they are doing is technical in nature.
Also, Hollywood keeps lobbying for a German-style "RIAA Tax" on all media. In which case, they will get your money whether you buy from them or not, so long as you continue to buy hard drives, PC's, and CD-R media.
"This mechanism would require the cooperation of all hard-drive manufacturers, who could find themselves under increasing pressure for consumers not to cooperate, and even if this were implemented in *all* hard drives (and the fact that the world is already full of hard drives which don't implement it), it only takes one person to break it (a'la DSS), and its all over."
Will consumers cry foul? Remember, most "consumers" are dense enough even about normal politics to allow someone like Jewel Kilcher, or Sarah Jessica Parker influence their thinking.
Techies will cry foul, but I think that the legal departments of Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate will cave in fear of Sony, AOL Time Warner, et all.
In fact, it won't surprise me to see AOL Time Warner and other RIAA/MPAA affiliated megacorps start buying the hard drive manufacturers.
"Its also illegal for underage consumption of alchohol. Speeding is illegal. Jaywalking... And now they are going to put people in jail for 25 years for copying a daytime talk show on their VCR so they can watch it after work. Sounds to me like America is becoming owned by coporate interests."
The US is becoming a dictatorial police state in every respect. Government and corporations are larger and more intrusive than ever. And they are becoming indistingushable from each other.
And BOTH parties are in on it. The DMCA, perhaps the worst law passed since Prohibition, was passed UNANIMOUSLY.
To be honest, I can think of no solution. We can try to fight it, and should, but unless some of the people in power act to check the erosion of the Constitution, I'm afraid we are on the way to a slave state, and an eventual revolution.
"Besides, such a thing would put such a damper on PC sales as to make the last quarter look like a windfall... "
I think this is exactly what Hollywood INTENDS. After all, the PC is the most powerful recording device and multimedia player ever invented that they never had any control over.
"It's like a DVD. It stores the data encrypted. You have to have a valid decoder (issued by the encryption autority) to decode the data. There is the possibility of something like DeCSS being created, but only is the encryption scheme is as stupid as CSS."
All copy protection schemes are weak and stupid, and are breakable. Especially when the device has to have built into it the mans to decrypt it, or else it's useless. This means that it is relatively easy to reverse-engineer or circumvent it.
The point is, that the DMCA adds the threat of prosecutorial action to the strength of CSS or any other protection scheme. In other words, modify your hard drive to let you copy, move, rename, open, etc, ANY file you want (which every hard drive sold before 2001 presumably would allow you to do) carries with it criminal activity.
Sure the crack for this will be out before the hard drive lands in some unsuspecting Joe-Schmo's new Presario, but it will be illegal. The addition of ANY type of copy protection scheme (even if they used 2-bit encryption) invokes the DMCA.
But only we techies will be able to use these cracks, and we are a small minority of the "consumer" public.
Eventually, the threat of lawsits and jail time will force us to stop doing what we want to with our own PC's, and as a consequence, will stifle the grassroots innovation that created the whole electronics and computer industry to begin with.
There never would have been a technology boom in the 90's if not for all of us who embraced computers in the 70's and 80's for the love of it. Now control over the PC is being taken away.
"Fight fire with fire. We need to push for legislation that forbids the sale of technology whose primary purpose is access control and which also has the effect of denying fair use rights. I wish I had more to say about it, but that pretty much sums it up."
I agree with you. The "Fair Use" principle is in fact, gleaned from the Constitution, and there is no legal way for any statutory law, or a consensual contact can deprive you of those rights.
Hardware that is being sold for the express purpose of circumventing Constitutional rights should be illegal, or at least, it should be perfectly legal for the OWNER of said hardware to modify it in any means necessary to do for himself what is actually legal in the first place.
The fact that books were once freely available in libraries.
The fact that there ever WAS legal means to copy or record ANYTHING.
That there ever was such thing as a personal computer, where you could install or use any OS, or program you bought, copied, or were given.
That you were ever sold software, music, or videos instead of renting them.
That you ever could OWN a copy of software, music, or video.
It's time to wake up, folks. Yes, we techies will be immune to crap like this because we have the knowhow and the chutspa to do it, as there will be a break discovered in this "secure" protection, just as there always is with ANY "secure" protection.
But what is different now is that it is ILLEGAL to even try to do such a thing, or even have the tools in your posession to do this. What is most scary is not what the DMCA is now, but what it will become in 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, or a century from now if it is allowed to stand.
It's time to get out there and vote. Call and write your politicos. Contribute to candidates who support your positions. IT people could be a very powerful lobby if we'd just get out heads out of our servers every now and then and do something.
For one, I will NOT buy a hard drive with this shit on it. I encourage everyone else not to as well. I will not pay for something meant to store data on it that is going to second-guess every copy, move, and open command I send it.
If the market refuses to buy these things, they will stop making them.
DMCA, the MPAA, and the RIAA HAVE to be stopped. The future of our profession, our country(s), and our livelyhoods depend on it. If the DMCA is allowed to trample the individual's right to innovate, then the whole IT industry will fail.
"Now, if a school has just paid out thousands of dollars for this program and a student can easily break thru it, don't you think they would want to know this? Why wouldn't they challenge the students to do this so they could probably go back to the company and say "Look, your software sucks, we want our money back"
This is exactly why they WONT blame the software. Undoutably some slick marketer conned the school (and taxpayers) out of thousands for this so-called "security" program (as if some third party program will allow idiots secure a system better than a competently installed and administered server).
Why won't they blame the teacher? Why the teacher has a UNION... They will either have to file charges, or defend themselves in some court.
It's far easier to punish the student. Minors basically have no rights, and schools can punish students pretty much at will.
Basically the school's administration drones took the easy way out. And the easy way is NEVER the right way. The only harm this kid caused was to expose wasteful spending by a PUBLIC institution.
I hope this case gets a lot of bad publicity for this school, and these administrator types get theirs.
Damn. I've been playing AD&D since the early 80's, and damn I wanted to see this movie.
Now it looks as though it will be a waste of money. Why hasn't anyone made a great sword-and-sorcery fantasy movie since Conan the Barbarian? It's a great genre, and seeing as fantasy books are selling better now than ever, a great one would make a ton of money...
The D&D franchise has been dying ever since Lorraine Williams (who hated game players) forcibly took over TSR and ousted creator Gary Gygax. If there hadn't been something special about it, it would have died totally long ago, it's almost stayed around despite mismanagement.
This situation is caused by the fact that enviro-wackos have prevented any new power plants from being constructed in California in over 20 years, while at the same time population has more than doubled. The fact that this crisis has been reached only NOW says a lot for how much more efficient power use is now than it was then.
There is no economic reason for this, power companies lose money when people use less power. It's sad, this is the UNITED STATES, and our whole technology industry needs power, not to mention modern civilization.
Perhaps the voters in California will become less friendly towards the Sierra Club this summer when they have no air conditioning in 100 degree heat. As bad as it is in winter, this is NOTHING compared to summer power demand.