Japan: Police Arrest Journalists For Selling DVD-Backup Tools 252
Modellismo writes "Last week four journalists from Sansai Books were arrested for selling, through the company website, a copy of a magazine published last year (with a free cover mounted disc) focused on how to backup/rip DVDs. They violated Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Law that recently has been revised to make illegal the sale of any DRM circumvention device or software. It's interesting to note that Japanese cyber police could arrest the Amazon Japan CEO, too, as the online giant is selling a lot of magazines, books and software packages for DVD copy and ripping: exactly what put Sansai Books' staff in trouble."
Re:libdvdcss ilegal? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Japan: (Score:5, Informative)
Have you actually read one of these magazines? I have a few of them here and they are quite incredible from a westerner's point of view.
I have a couple that are all about downloading, one focused on BitTorrent and the other on Share and Winny. They have huge lists of web sites that index warez, films, TV shows and porn, each one rated for you. They explain how to download and set up emulators, how to burn Playstation 2 games to DVD and chip your console, how to use a Nintendo DS flash card and so forth. On the first page there is a tiny warning about not breaking copyright laws, then 90 pages of how to break copyright laws.
That is the real story here. The fact that the police picked this particular bit of software as their way of prosecuting these guys is just an aside. Personally I love those mags but I can understand why the police were under pressure to find a way of taking action.
Re:libdvdcss ilegal? (Score:5, Informative)
And if you click on the word "cyber" at the top of the article you linked, it takes you to wiktionary [wiktionary.org] where it says:
Etymology
From cybernetic.
Cybernetic comes from Greek meaning "steer" or rudder. It basically means the study of feedback control loops.
Re:not in the USA (Score:3, Informative)
yes, and on the subject of the far east, it is pretty much worse than the USA, it is practically social, political, and cultural foundation of the society:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol [wikipedia.org]
these guys can do no wrong. it's like the british monarchy also ran apple, ibm, microsoft, google, ge, and gm. this is way beyond special treatments and regulations in your favor. it's not even corporatocracy. it's more like corporate monarchy
someone: what's the term for this insane level of assimilation between political, corporate, and aristocratic power?
tentacle linux (Score:0, Informative)
"The Hardware is crippled for the sake of Microsoft. Period.
Secure boot is Microsoft's attempt to maintain computer OS market share as their influences is being stripped away by the likes of Google (Android) and Apple (iOS). With HTML5 on the way, we will have WEB based applications that rival desktop versions, and run on ANY device. The OS is just a layer to get to where the real work gets done, information exchange.
AND the worst part is, secure boot doesn't actually fix the problem it pretends it solves. It can't. This is the whole DRM of DVD's and BluRay all over again. Look at how well that is working out.
DRM is broken by design."
- http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2985953&cid=40681007 [slashdot.org]
"Richard Stallman has finally spoken out on this subject. He notes that 'if the user doesn't control the keys, then it's a kind of shackle, and that would be true no matter what system it is.' He says, 'Microsoft demands that ARM computers sold for Windows 8 be set up so that the user cannot change the keys; in other words, turn it into restricted boot.' Stallman adds that 'this is not a security feature. This is abuse of the users. I think it ought to be illegal.'""
- http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/07/17/2326253/richard-stallman-speaks-about-uefi [slashdot.org]