You're wrong. I'm not sure how to prove it, but maybe this excerpt from the Fraunhofer letter will do it:
From your publications and your web-site we learn that you distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders that use the MPEG Layer-3 standard.
Our files do not show that you have a valid license agreement with us. This means that the products infringe the patent rights of Fraunhofer and THOMSON.
Period. They didn't ask what algorithm they were using, so Fraunhofer's lawyers are obviously under the impression that their patent covers any method of MP3 encoding. It's a complicated situation, and I'm sure you could debate the scope of the patent, but Fraunhofer's claim must be pretty credible, because a whole lot of MP3 encoders dissappeared when they sent these letters out.
The RIAA does not own MP3. MP3.com does not own MP3. "No one" does not own MP3.
"Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V." owns MP3. The patent is here.
Okay, that's an oversimplification. The patent only covers an encoding algorithm, not the format itself, and Fraunhofer may have some obligations to license it under certain terms. But for practical purposes, any MP3 encoder that is not distributed with Fraunhofer's blessing is probably illegal.
Having said all that, I still don't understand what you mean when you say that the RIAA and MP3 are both going to drive themselves out of the market. What market? Are we going to go back to clockwork music boxes instead?
This is called the Anthropic Principle. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it here yet. Basically, the Weak Anthropic Principle states that: "We shouldn't be surprised to discover that intelligent life is extremely improbable. Even though 100% of the universes we know contain intelligent life, there may be many universes that do not contain intelligent life, and therefore cannot be observed by us by definition."
FWIW, the Strong Anthropic Principle, which is not nearly as widely accepted, basically states that "A universe can only exist if it is observed, therefore only universes with intelligent life exist."
I was trying to come up with a nice analogy to illustrate this concept, but I'm drawing a blank, so I'll be content to just put a name on it for now.
ummm... this is exactly what *any* dialup or LAN connection does in win9x
That's not correct. AOL installs itself at the driver level. If you look at the devices on a typical Windows machine with AOL, you'll see something like:
I came up this idea when I was ten or so, right about when the phrase "virtual reality" appeared. Although my version involved magnets and iron filings. (Don't ask...)
By the way, in response to the many that have already posted about it, this gadget would actually eliminate motion sickness if used properly. AFAIK, motion sickness happens when your eyes and your inner ear are getting conflicting signals. Usually people solve this problem by changing what they're seeing, (by leaving the cabin and going up on deck, or turning off Quake, for example,) but fixing the input from the inner ear to match what they're seeing should work just as well.
Anyway, this gives me the opportunity to bring up something a little off-topic... What ever happened to head mounted 3d displays? A few years ago, they were supposed to be the wave of the future; there were even a few consumer devices with game support. (I always wanted to play "Magic Carpet" in 3d...) But they were clunky and expensive, because A) LCDs were lousy and costly, B) it was hard to get driver support, and C) computers had trouble pushing the polygons quickly enough anyway.
Now we have much better LCDs, MS-imposed standard driver interfaces, and ubiquitous 3d accelerators. So where the hell are my head-tracking 3d goggles?!? I'm not talking about specialized hardware, I'm talking about a $300 "Head Blaster" from Creative Labs or Diamond. (Or more likely, both.)
Wouldn't they enhance the gameplaying experience immensely? Am I the only one who thinks so?
I hope somebody knowledgeable reads this before we have 2000 comments, because I'd really like to know the answer.
What law is this guy accused of violating?
If he was selling pirated copies of Windows 98, then I would be satisfied by vague justifications like "violation of copyright." But this is not a straightforward case. I know that in the U.S., the DMCA explicitly makes it illegal to "crack" copy protection (under some circumstances), but that law was only passed recently, and I'm not aware of any corresponding laws outside the U.S. So what's the deal?
A coppied DVD is NOT broken. The encryption only effects playback.
Er, well, technically that's right. You could copy a DVD without copying the protected area, and you would end up with a perfectly valid encrypted copy that can't be played on any DVD player. (Because the keys are missing.)
The entire point of the encryption is to keep you from playing DVDs with different country codes.
Region coding has nothing to do with CSS. The "region code" is just a single byte on the disc, it's entirely up to the players to enforce it.
CSS is there to prevent digital copying of a DVD. Nothing can stop you from copying the encrypted data, of course, but you can't copy the keys, and without the keys, the disc is unreadable. A DVD drive will only let you into the protected area if you provide it with a valid player key, which (in theory) would only be found in licensed, MPAA-approved DVD players.
DeCSS provides access to unencrypted movie data without enforcing the copy protection, which is why the MPAA is pissed off. I really wish that Slashdot readers would understand that DeCSS does in fact make it possible to copy DVDs, so we could stop arguing about it, and instead focus on the valid reasons why the MPAA and company are wrong.
I know it's often trivial to remove the region coding from a DVD player, but the key-reading-block is a whole other ballgame. (Remember that the region code is designed to be changeable, so hardware makers don't have to use different ROMs for different regions.)
I've never seen any hardware or software that allows you to read the keys off of a DVD, and I suspect it doesn't exist. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary, I'd (sincerely) like to hear it.
Sure, DVDs without encryption are perfectly valid. But where are you going to get the unencrypted stream? Licensed DVD players (HW/SW) go to great lengths to prevent you from saving the unencrypted data. DeCSS, of course, doesn't. Hence the concern.
Assuming that someone has the physical capability to make DVDs, they don't need the CSS decoder.
No, that's precisely the point. It doesn't matter if you're a warez dood or a commercial authoring house, DVD reading hardware cannot be used to copy encrypted data. The only way I can see to copy a DVD would be to use DeCSS to gain access to the decrypted data, or to use DVD hardware that does not enforce the protection. (And such hardware would obviously not be granted a key by the DVD Powers That Be, making it useless as a general purpose DVD reader. I don't know if cracked drives like these exist, but I'm inclined to think that I would have seen them by now if they did.)
I'm talking out of my ass here, and I'm too tired to lace my comments with the many disclaimers that they deserve, but I haven't seen any information to the contrary yet.
I've seen this too, on a lot of discs. The DVD standard doesn't require that anything be encrypted at all. In my experience, only the main feature is ever encrypted (as opposed to trailers, menus, etc.), and even then it's usually only used on Hollywood movies.
My PC is a bit of a mess right now, but I made a cursory attempt to play a segment of Free Enterprise off of my hard drive. (Incredible movie, by the way.) I ran into a lot of unhelpful error messages, although my Creative PC-DVD player did tell me that "This program cannot open a file that is copy protected." So it isn't quite that easy to bypass CSS.
From the link you posted (which was generally very informative):
...the decryption key is stored on the disk, at a place where it isn't directly readable on an ordinary PC DVD drive.
Later...
...sufficient for copying a DVD: just copy all of the sectors and the key information.
Huh?
Based on the information in the article, it still seems to me that a DVD drive will only provide an encrypted key for a particular player, based on that player's own key, and will not under any circumstances provide the entire key area. (Which you would need to copy an encrypted DVD.)
Actually, as I read Bogk's comment again, it seems that his point is that you do need a "crack" to copy DVDs, it's just that DeCSS is not that crack. The analysis of the key exchange system that appeared anonymously about a year ago was sufficient to break the copy protection.
If my understanding of that is correct, then it may have interesting legal implications for the DeCSS case, but my basic point is still true: Assuming strong encryption and a bug-free implementation (neither of which actually happened), CSS should, in principle, prevent DVD copying.
IE just ate my original lengthy response to your comment, so I'll be brief. (I typed an URL in a different window, and it decided to open it in this one for no apparent reason... Grumble.)
Despite the prevailing opinion on Slashdot, it's my impression that you can't actually do a bit-by-bit copy of a DVD. The DVD reader hardware simply won't allow you to read the decryption keys off the disc. (It will only use them internally.) So if you tried to simply copy a DVD, you'd end up with a whole lot of encrypted data and no keys to decrypt it.
Of course, this assumes that the hardware enforces the security. I don't know how hard it is to find "rogue" DVD drives, or to modify standard drives to allow copying, but I suspect it's not very easy... Correct me if I'm wrong.
Disclaimer: The MPAA / DVD CCA is still wrong. Illegal copying is by no means the primary purpose of this software, and it certainly isn't the software's only use, which I believe is what the MPAA's lawyers would need to prove. We should just bear in mind that allowing easy copying of DVDs is a necessary side effect of open source DVD playing.
I'm sorry, I don't get it. Maybe I'm just dense. Why do all this "morphing" and optimizing at runtime, instead of at compile time? Binary compatibility with existing processors is a nice feature, and I'm sure it will help Crusoe get a foothold in the market, but why can't we at least have the option of bypassing the emulation when native software becomes available? (Or does the Crusoe already allow this? The reports haven't been clear on that.)
used to bouy up new shows like (yecch) Malcom in the Middle...
Hey, don't knock MitM. Any show with an all They Might Be Giants soundtrack is cool enough, but it's also the first series that I've ever seen to realistically depict the life of a "gifted" kid. In the premiere, there were a whole lot of lines that were word-for-word identical to my own experiences. I don't know how well that'll play in the mainstream, but it's something that a lot of/.ers can appreciate.
Speaking of smart kids, here's my favorite "Simpsons" moment:
(Homer fiddles with Lisa's perpetual motion machine, growing increasingly frustrated) Homer: Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
Hm. You're saying we can't use this effect to communicate, which is true. However, information is still being transmitted -- we just have no control over what it is.
Exactly... except that I would argue that "random information" is by definition not information. It's sort of the exception that proves the rule: you can "communicate" faster than the speed of light, but you cannot possibly "communicate" anything useful.
That's pretty wrong. AOL does offer a reasonable approximation of a TCP/IP connection, and it does so by default. I'm not even sure it's possible to disable it.
The catch is that it's not PPP... it's actually done at the driver level. Essentially, the AOL application pretends to be a NIC. Of course, this only works on Win95 and MacOS, but AOL is only available on those platforms anyway, right?
What Lucas expects: Mainstream folks will buy TPM on VHS because they don't care about format. Star Wars geeks will buy it on VHS because they have no other choice. Then, when it finally comes out on DVD, Star Wars geeks will buy it again, because, well, they're Star Wars geeks. (And as a bonus, that DVD will probably be more effectively copy-protected than today's discs.)
What will happen: Most mainstream folks will still buy TPM on VHS, although probably not quite as many as Lucas expects. Very few Star Wars geeks will buy it, because they're insulted by Lucas' position on DVD. (And for that matter, a lot of them didn't like the movie very much.)
The video release will bomb. (By that I mean, it will fail to completely shatter all sales records, as a Star Wars movie is expected to do.) Lucas will still make a lot of money off of it in the short term, but the embaressment will severely damage his future prospects.
Keep in mind, George Lucas is a pretty dense fellow. This is the guy who came up with Jar Jar Binks.
In other words, Direct3D started out as a simplified version of OpenGL for gaming, but it has gradually overlapped more and more with OpenGL?
Perhaps that's why Microsoft and SGI are folding Direct3D into OpenGL? (I make no claims that this will ever actually happen, of course, but that is the plan.)
That makes it sound far more of a webpage problem than a newsgroup problem, and they say not to visit a SINGLE newsgroup? IQ Test Plz....
No, no, you're missing the point... See, that newsgroup is (I'm guessing) where the exploit was discussed. So if no one reads that group, no one will know that the exploit exists, and the problem will go away!
I'd say it even more strongly than that: Win95 does preemptively multitask, and it absolutely does have protected memory. The only caveat is that 16 bit apps (which are awfully rare these days) run in a single memory/process space.
You can complain all you want about the implementation, but from a design standpoint, Win32 pretty much has all those features that Apple has failed to deliver in the MacOS for years now. And it does it with a much greater degree of backward compatibility than the MacOS provides. (As a matter of fact, most of Win95's problems stem from way, way too much backward compatibility.)
I don't mean to turn this into a MacOS vs. Windows flame war... I'm just pointing to Windows as an example of an OS that has managed to include the features of a modern OS without breaking backwards compatibility. Apple could have done the same with MacOS, but they didn't, and it would be interesting to hear why.
The real problems start when you try to implement those features while staying backwards compatible with a legacy API.
Microsoft did just fine. Win98 has all those "buzzwords", and it arguably provides more backwards compatibility than the MacOS. But it only comes in one color.
Slashdot Mirror
This is all covered in the MP3.com article that I linked to: http://www.mp3.com/news/095.html
Okay, everyone take a deep breath.
/10/19/1543219.shtml
The RIAA does not own MP3. MP3.com does not own MP3. "No one" does not own MP3.
"Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V." owns MP3. The patent is here.
Okay, that's an oversimplification. The patent only covers an encoding algorithm, not the format itself, and Fraunhofer may have some obligations to license it under certain terms. But for practical purposes, any MP3 encoder that is not distributed with Fraunhofer's blessing is probably illegal.
Here's some background:
http://www.mp3.com/news/095.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/98
Having said all that, I still don't understand what you mean when you say that the RIAA and MP3 are both going to drive themselves out of the market. What market? Are we going to go back to clockwork music boxes instead?
Good idea, but those letters are already taken. SI is case sensitive.
M = 10^6
m = 10^-3 (Remember mm's?)
k = 10^3
K = Kelvin (!)
I found this link through Google: http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/di ctunit/dictunit.htm#prefixes (Warning, the page is much larger than it has any business being.)
This is called the Anthropic Principle. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it here yet. Basically, the Weak Anthropic Principle states that: "We shouldn't be surprised to discover that intelligent life is extremely improbable. Even though 100% of the universes we know contain intelligent life, there may be many universes that do not contain intelligent life, and therefore cannot be observed by us by definition."
FWIW, the Strong Anthropic Principle, which is not nearly as widely accepted, basically states that "A universe can only exist if it is observed, therefore only universes with intelligent life exist."
I was trying to come up with a nice analogy to illustrate this concept, but I'm drawing a blank, so I'll be content to just put a name on it for now.
Network Adapers:
Ethernet Adapter
Dial-up Adapter
AOL Dial-up Adapter
It works at that level, not at the PPP level, like every other ISP. (Because, of course, AOL doesn't use PPP.)
I came up this idea when I was ten or so, right about when the phrase "virtual reality" appeared. Although my version involved magnets and iron filings. (Don't ask...)
By the way, in response to the many that have already posted about it, this gadget would actually eliminate motion sickness if used properly. AFAIK, motion sickness happens when your eyes and your inner ear are getting conflicting signals. Usually people solve this problem by changing what they're seeing, (by leaving the cabin and going up on deck, or turning off Quake, for example,) but fixing the input from the inner ear to match what they're seeing should work just as well.
Anyway, this gives me the opportunity to bring up something a little off-topic... What ever happened to head mounted 3d displays? A few years ago, they were supposed to be the wave of the future; there were even a few consumer devices with game support. (I always wanted to play "Magic Carpet" in 3d...) But they were clunky and expensive, because A) LCDs were lousy and costly, B) it was hard to get driver support, and C) computers had trouble pushing the polygons quickly enough anyway.
Now we have much better LCDs, MS-imposed standard driver interfaces, and ubiquitous 3d accelerators. So where the hell are my head-tracking 3d goggles?!? I'm not talking about specialized hardware, I'm talking about a $300 "Head Blaster" from Creative Labs or Diamond. (Or more likely, both.)
Wouldn't they enhance the gameplaying experience immensely? Am I the only one who thinks so?
This is what the MPAA's case is based on. Before the DMCA, DeCSS would have been completely legal. It may still be, but the case is a lot tougher now.
I hope somebody knowledgeable reads this before we have 2000 comments, because I'd really like to know the answer.
What law is this guy accused of violating?
If he was selling pirated copies of Windows 98, then I would be satisfied by vague justifications like "violation of copyright." But this is not a straightforward case. I know that in the U.S., the DMCA explicitly makes it illegal to "crack" copy protection (under some circumstances), but that law was only passed recently, and I'm not aware of any corresponding laws outside the U.S. So what's the deal?
CSS is there to prevent digital copying of a DVD. Nothing can stop you from copying the encrypted data, of course, but you can't copy the keys, and without the keys, the disc is unreadable. A DVD drive will only let you into the protected area if you provide it with a valid player key, which (in theory) would only be found in licensed, MPAA-approved DVD players.
DeCSS provides access to unencrypted movie data without enforcing the copy protection, which is why the MPAA is pissed off. I really wish that Slashdot readers would understand that DeCSS does in fact make it possible to copy DVDs, so we could stop arguing about it, and instead focus on the valid reasons why the MPAA and company are wrong.
I know it's often trivial to remove the region coding from a DVD player, but the key-reading-block is a whole other ballgame. (Remember that the region code is designed to be changeable, so hardware makers don't have to use different ROMs for different regions.)
I've never seen any hardware or software that allows you to read the keys off of a DVD, and I suspect it doesn't exist. If anyone has any evidence to the contrary, I'd (sincerely) like to hear it.
Sure, DVDs without encryption are perfectly valid. But where are you going to get the unencrypted stream? Licensed DVD players (HW/SW) go to great lengths to prevent you from saving the unencrypted data. DeCSS, of course, doesn't. Hence the concern.
You have an broken copy of the original DVD, missing the various unique keys and signatures that your DVD player will not let you read.
Nobody (including me) seems to really understand this. Is there an accurate FAQ somewhere that covers this in detail?
I'm talking out of my ass here, and I'm too tired to lace my comments with the many disclaimers that they deserve, but I haven't seen any information to the contrary yet.
I've seen this too, on a lot of discs. The DVD standard doesn't require that anything be encrypted at all. In my experience, only the main feature is ever encrypted (as opposed to trailers, menus, etc.), and even then it's usually only used on Hollywood movies.
My PC is a bit of a mess right now, but I made a cursory attempt to play a segment of Free Enterprise off of my hard drive. (Incredible movie, by the way.) I ran into a lot of unhelpful error messages, although my Creative PC-DVD player did tell me that "This program cannot open a file that is copy protected." So it isn't quite that easy to bypass CSS.
Based on the information in the article, it still seems to me that a DVD drive will only provide an encrypted key for a particular player, based on that player's own key, and will not under any circumstances provide the entire key area. (Which you would need to copy an encrypted DVD.)
Actually, as I read Bogk's comment again, it seems that his point is that you do need a "crack" to copy DVDs, it's just that DeCSS is not that crack. The analysis of the key exchange system that appeared anonymously about a year ago was sufficient to break the copy protection.
If my understanding of that is correct, then it may have interesting legal implications for the DeCSS case, but my basic point is still true: Assuming strong encryption and a bug-free implementation (neither of which actually happened), CSS should, in principle, prevent DVD copying.
IE just ate my original lengthy response to your comment, so I'll be brief. (I typed an URL in a different window, and it decided to open it in this one for no apparent reason... Grumble.)
Despite the prevailing opinion on Slashdot, it's my impression that you can't actually do a bit-by-bit copy of a DVD. The DVD reader hardware simply won't allow you to read the decryption keys off the disc. (It will only use them internally.) So if you tried to simply copy a DVD, you'd end up with a whole lot of encrypted data and no keys to decrypt it.
Of course, this assumes that the hardware enforces the security. I don't know how hard it is to find "rogue" DVD drives, or to modify standard drives to allow copying, but I suspect it's not very easy... Correct me if I'm wrong.
Disclaimer: The MPAA / DVD CCA is still wrong. Illegal copying is by no means the primary purpose of this software, and it certainly isn't the software's only use, which I believe is what the MPAA's lawyers would need to prove. We should just bear in mind that allowing easy copying of DVDs is a necessary side effect of open source DVD playing.
I'm sorry, I don't get it. Maybe I'm just dense. Why do all this "morphing" and optimizing at runtime, instead of at compile time? Binary compatibility with existing processors is a nice feature, and I'm sure it will help Crusoe get a foothold in the market, but why can't we at least have the option of bypassing the emulation when native software becomes available? (Or does the Crusoe already allow this? The reports haven't been clear on that.)
Speaking of smart kids, here's my favorite "Simpsons" moment:
(Homer fiddles with Lisa's perpetual motion machine, growing increasingly frustrated)
Homer: Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
That's pretty wrong. AOL does offer a reasonable approximation of a TCP/IP connection, and it does so by default. I'm not even sure it's possible to disable it.
The catch is that it's not PPP... it's actually done at the driver level. Essentially, the AOL application pretends to be a NIC. Of course, this only works on Win95 and MacOS, but AOL is only available on those platforms anyway, right?
What Lucas expects: Mainstream folks will buy TPM on VHS because they don't care about format. Star Wars geeks will buy it on VHS because they have no other choice. Then, when it finally comes out on DVD, Star Wars geeks will buy it again, because, well, they're Star Wars geeks. (And as a bonus, that DVD will probably be more effectively copy-protected than today's discs.)
What will happen: Most mainstream folks will still buy TPM on VHS, although probably not quite as many as Lucas expects. Very few Star Wars geeks will buy it, because they're insulted by Lucas' position on DVD. (And for that matter, a lot of them didn't like the movie very much.)
The video release will bomb. (By that I mean, it will fail to completely shatter all sales records, as a Star Wars movie is expected to do.) Lucas will still make a lot of money off of it in the short term, but the embaressment will severely damage his future prospects.
Keep in mind, George Lucas is a pretty dense fellow. This is the guy who came up with Jar Jar Binks.
In other words, Direct3D started out as a simplified version of OpenGL for gaming, but it has gradually overlapped more and more with OpenGL?
Perhaps that's why Microsoft and SGI are folding Direct3D into OpenGL? (I make no claims that this will ever actually happen, of course, but that is the plan.)
I'd say it even more strongly than that: Win95 does preemptively multitask, and it absolutely does have protected memory. The only caveat is that 16 bit apps (which are awfully rare these days) run in a single memory/process space.
You can complain all you want about the implementation, but from a design standpoint, Win32 pretty much has all those features that Apple has failed to deliver in the MacOS for years now. And it does it with a much greater degree of backward compatibility than the MacOS provides. (As a matter of fact, most of Win95's problems stem from way, way too much backward compatibility.)
I don't mean to turn this into a MacOS vs. Windows flame war... I'm just pointing to Windows as an example of an OS that has managed to include the features of a modern OS without breaking backwards compatibility. Apple could have done the same with MacOS, but they didn't, and it would be interesting to hear why.