Eventually the free ride will end at pirate bay and it'll most likely end with those guys either going to prison, going in to exile or ending up dead
Seriously, do you really think that the MAFIAA would have the guts to kill them? That would send their arguments about the pirates being the criminals into the toilet. That would simply be a very stupid thing to do. And we don't have the death penalty here.
Look, possession of a stolen object makes you culpable in the crime.
AFAIK, in Sweden, mere possession of an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work is not illegal. It is the act of duplication that is. This is different from theft, where mere possession of stolen property is illegal (IANAL though).
Sweden has some sort of private copying right, but I don't know if it applies to downloading movies or songs.
Whether it applies or not depends on whether the duplication source was acquired through legal channels (note that a copy obtained through private copying is not considered a source obtained through legal channels). In addition, the sphere of people that you can distribute to is very narrow, and the copyright holders are supposedly compensated through the levies on recordable media. I said "supposedly", because I would guess that the levies are distributed according to some top sales list, which may not necessarily reflect what people are sharing.
So now The Pirate Bay will be sued for copyright infringement of cease and desist notices? After all, they publish all such letters (with mocking replies) on their web site legal page.
Of course it is. It is a thinly veiled threat that you may be sued for copyright infringement if you continue to use his software. That it likely wouldn't stick (IANAL though) is an entirely separate matter.
The unaccountable segments of the EU, the EU commissioners, are the ones that keep putting forward the motions to "harmonize' copyrights with the USA entertainment lobbies' demands.
I agree, although the commission also does a few good things. After all, they are the ones usually involved in complaints about Microsoft abusing its monopoly powers.
Then show us an open source media player that uses open source DRM to protect the media from being "improperly" (according to the copyright holder) used. I've seen "open source" DRM solutions before, and they are usually meant as a base implementation to build your proprietary solution from. It enables multiple proprietary solutions to be compatible, but still no end-user client that enforces DRM while keeping the source code open has appeared.
DRM technologies work on essentially the same principles as PGP.
With one not so minor difference: DRM requires that you give the key to the attacker to allow for the legitimate uses, enabling the key to be intercepted and used for (in the distributors eyes) illegitimate purposes, while PGP requires that the attacker does not possess the key for the content to stay secure.
Yes, both are based on encryption, but that's about it.
I was merely pointing out that there exists a system to keep those who don't have the key from decrypting the data.
That is pretty irrelevant in this discussion though, as DRM requires that you give the key to the attacker so that he can use the material in those ways that you want to allow, but still obfuscate it enough so that he cannot use the key to unlock the content for purposes that you wouldn't like.
What you are talking about is support for logic bombs. You could go and ask Microsoft, but don't expect any FOSS with logic bomb support. The fact that the source is available is a strong deterrent to implementing such mechanisms, as even if you managed to hide one in the source, it would likely be found on a closer inspection, and you can bet on that loads of developers would inspect the code after the first instance of such a bomb goes off.
Personally, I think that open source DRM is utterly impossible. This is because DRM is not about Alice sending Bob a secret letter, with Eve trying to intercept it, it is about Alice sending Bob a secret letter that she only wants Bob to be able to use under certain conditions she has specified. In other words, the recipient is also the attacker, but since the intended use of the content requires the decryption key, the key is sent with the material, and the DRM relies on the key being obfuscated away where Bob cannot find it.
It may be correct considering the literal expansion of the acronym DRM, but in common usage, file permissions are not considered to be DRM, just like encrypting your emails with PGP isn't considered to be DRM either. Using DRM to include such technologies is just clouding the issue.
so the only alternative is hard-disk based recorders (without the service like with TiVo), but those are really expensive compared to a simple DVD+R recorder.
I agree, DVD recorders with built-in hard-drives are ridiculously expensive. A unit with a 250 GB drive costs almost $500. Most computers today have ample hard-drive space, and usually also a DVD writer. Add a tuner card for $100, and you have a working HDD-equipped DVD recorder, only more useful, as it can also be used to strip commercials and encode the material into XviD. For me, a standalone DVD recorder, with or without HDD, would be almost worthless.
That said, I love my standalone DVD player with DivX support, a Philips DVP-3142 that I got for $40. That's value for money.
I get about 7.5-8 hours on my disks. Quality isn't bad at that compression either.
Eight hours of MPEG2-encoded video? I record TV (SDTV, PAL, 720x576) at what WinTV2000 calls DVD Extra Long Play, which is MPEG2 at 3 Mbit/s. After removing the commercials, I usually compress them into 1 Mbit/s XviD. After I have done that, around eight hours fits into a DVD, with a picture quality almost indistinguishable from the original MPEG2 material.
A DVR is all very well but however big the disk in it it will eventually be full and you have to start deleting stuff to make room.
That's why I use my desktop computer as a DVR. Plenty of room, and if I need more, I can just buy another 500 GB hard drive for $100.
The other issue is that this is probably a lot less appealing to people in the states due to the adverts every 10 mins. Who wants to have a permanent copy of your favourite film that has so many interruptions.
I use a frame-accurate MPEG2 editor to strip out the commercials. This makes recorded video much more enjoyable, as even if the source originally had commercials I don't see them any longer. And I don't have to waste space storing commercials that I don't want to watch.
In fact, people are routinely released "on their own recognizance", ie, nothing more than a promise to show up for the trial, if the offense is relatively minor and they think you probably will show up.
I don't think that the severity is very relevant. What is relevant is that you are not a danger to other people, you are not in a position to destroy evidence, you are not likely to leave town and you are likely to show up in court.
The easy way around that would be for manufacturers to make MP3 players "write only" via the USB port -- so files cannot be read back once transferred (only erased or overwritten).
Though that would disable the dual use of mp3 players as portable storage devices. I'm not sure that everyone would like that. Some manufacturers advertise this ability as an advantage.
Media owners see it as a "licence" to use, not ownership.
But they surely like to use the word ownership in their advertising. Who hasn't seen "Own XYZ today!" type advertising for a movie or some music? Add to this fact that you buy it just like you would buy any material goods, which makes it feel like ownership to the customer. They want to have the cake and eat it too, in having ownership that isn't ownership but rather some twisted form of renting.
If you have a horse carriage business, and I invent the car and sell it, then your horse carriages will soon get worthless. Am I a thief for making your horse carriages worthless?
Of course you are. Horse carriage manufacturers have a right to earn money for their work, and by facing competition from your cars, you are stealing their profits. You should go to jail for putting the starving horse carriage manufacturers out of business.
If it wasn't obvious, the above is meant as sarcasm.
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Seriously, do you really think that the MAFIAA would have the guts to kill them? That would send their arguments about the pirates being the criminals into the toilet. That would simply be a very stupid thing to do. And we don't have the death penalty here.
With size comes inefficiency. Frankly, I cannot say I ever heard of an efficient large organization.
AFAIK, in Sweden, mere possession of an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work is not illegal. It is the act of duplication that is. This is different from theft, where mere possession of stolen property is illegal (IANAL though).
Corrected it for you:
Downloading any kind of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal in Sweden since July 2005.Whether it applies or not depends on whether the duplication source was acquired through legal channels (note that a copy obtained through private copying is not considered a source obtained through legal channels). In addition, the sphere of people that you can distribute to is very narrow, and the copyright holders are supposedly compensated through the levies on recordable media. I said "supposedly", because I would guess that the levies are distributed according to some top sales list, which may not necessarily reflect what people are sharing.
So now The Pirate Bay will be sued for copyright infringement of cease and desist notices? After all, they publish all such letters (with mocking replies) on their web site legal page.
Of course it is. It is a thinly veiled threat that you may be sued for copyright infringement if you continue to use his software. That it likely wouldn't stick (IANAL though) is an entirely separate matter.
I agree, although the commission also does a few good things. After all, they are the ones usually involved in complaints about Microsoft abusing its monopoly powers.
No, it's 108,000 records/hour.
Fixed it for you.
Then show us an open source media player that uses open source DRM to protect the media from being "improperly" (according to the copyright holder) used. I've seen "open source" DRM solutions before, and they are usually meant as a base implementation to build your proprietary solution from. It enables multiple proprietary solutions to be compatible, but still no end-user client that enforces DRM while keeping the source code open has appeared.
With one not so minor difference: DRM requires that you give the key to the attacker to allow for the legitimate uses, enabling the key to be intercepted and used for (in the distributors eyes) illegitimate purposes, while PGP requires that the attacker does not possess the key for the content to stay secure.
Yes, both are based on encryption, but that's about it.
That is pretty irrelevant in this discussion though, as DRM requires that you give the key to the attacker so that he can use the material in those ways that you want to allow, but still obfuscate it enough so that he cannot use the key to unlock the content for purposes that you wouldn't like.
What you are talking about is support for logic bombs. You could go and ask Microsoft, but don't expect any FOSS with logic bomb support. The fact that the source is available is a strong deterrent to implementing such mechanisms, as even if you managed to hide one in the source, it would likely be found on a closer inspection, and you can bet on that loads of developers would inspect the code after the first instance of such a bomb goes off.
Personally, I think that open source DRM is utterly impossible. This is because DRM is not about Alice sending Bob a secret letter, with Eve trying to intercept it, it is about Alice sending Bob a secret letter that she only wants Bob to be able to use under certain conditions she has specified. In other words, the recipient is also the attacker, but since the intended use of the content requires the decryption key, the key is sent with the material, and the DRM relies on the key being obfuscated away where Bob cannot find it.
It may be correct considering the literal expansion of the acronym DRM, but in common usage, file permissions are not considered to be DRM, just like encrypting your emails with PGP isn't considered to be DRM either. Using DRM to include such technologies is just clouding the issue.
I agree, DVD recorders with built-in hard-drives are ridiculously expensive. A unit with a 250 GB drive costs almost $500. Most computers today have ample hard-drive space, and usually also a DVD writer. Add a tuner card for $100, and you have a working HDD-equipped DVD recorder, only more useful, as it can also be used to strip commercials and encode the material into XviD. For me, a standalone DVD recorder, with or without HDD, would be almost worthless.
That said, I love my standalone DVD player with DivX support, a Philips DVP-3142 that I got for $40. That's value for money.
Eight hours of MPEG2-encoded video? I record TV (SDTV, PAL, 720x576) at what WinTV2000 calls DVD Extra Long Play, which is MPEG2 at 3 Mbit/s. After removing the commercials, I usually compress them into 1 Mbit/s XviD. After I have done that, around eight hours fits into a DVD, with a picture quality almost indistinguishable from the original MPEG2 material.
That's why I use my desktop computer as a DVR. Plenty of room, and if I need more, I can just buy another 500 GB hard drive for $100.
The other issue is that this is probably a lot less appealing to people in the states due to the adverts every 10 mins. Who wants to have a permanent copy of your favourite film that has so many interruptions.I use a frame-accurate MPEG2 editor to strip out the commercials. This makes recorded video much more enjoyable, as even if the source originally had commercials I don't see them any longer. And I don't have to waste space storing commercials that I don't want to watch.
I don't think that the severity is very relevant. What is relevant is that you are not a danger to other people, you are not in a position to destroy evidence, you are not likely to leave town and you are likely to show up in court.
Though that would disable the dual use of mp3 players as portable storage devices. I'm not sure that everyone would like that. Some manufacturers advertise this ability as an advantage.
But they surely like to use the word ownership in their advertising. Who hasn't seen "Own XYZ today!" type advertising for a movie or some music? Add to this fact that you buy it just like you would buy any material goods, which makes it feel like ownership to the customer. They want to have the cake and eat it too, in having ownership that isn't ownership but rather some twisted form of renting.
Of course you are. Horse carriage manufacturers have a right to earn money for their work, and by facing competition from your cars, you are stealing their profits. You should go to jail for putting the starving horse carriage manufacturers out of business.
If it wasn't obvious, the above is meant as sarcasm.
It is? I never heard that one before.
and similarly if you take a ride on a train without a ticket.So what do you call that, stealing the train? Never heard that one either.
Ever heard of a VCR, or equivalent (such as a DVD recorder, PVR, etc)?