Feds Continue To Consider Linux Users Criminals For Watching DVDs 423
An anonymous reader sent in a link to an article in Wired about the latest DMCA loophole hearing. Bad news: the federal government rejected requests that would make console modding and breaking DRM on DVDs to watch them legal. So, you dirty GNU/Linux hippies using libdvdcss better watch out: "Librarian of Congress James Billington and Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante rejected the two most-sought-after items on the docket, game-console modding and DVD cracking for personal use and 'space shifting.' Congress plays no role in the outcome. The regulators said that the controls were necessary to prevent software piracy and differentiated gaming consoles from smart phones, which legally can be jailbroken. ... On the plus side, the regulators re-authorized jailbreaking of mobile phones. On the downside, they denied it for tablets, saying an 'ebook reading device might be considered a tablet, as might a handheld video game device.'"
So you can jailbreak a phone, but if it's 1" larger and considered a "tablet" you are breaking the law.
They told me... (Score:5, Insightful)
They told me if I voted for McCain, we'd see a technology incompetent administration increasingly beholden to media conglomerates... and they were right.
the govt does not have any room to talk (Score:4, Insightful)
Government Mafia (Score:-1, Insightful)
Of-course this is nothing else but government Mafia, which works with the industry and protects that industry and expects serious kickbacks, there is no other way to understand this but corruption.
All government involvement into business activity is corruption, there are no exceptions. Protectionism, special considerations for some businesses and not for others, special taxes for some businesses and not for others, special licensing deals, special relations with the Federal reserve, Treasury, special relationships with the departments, regulators, FBI, Congress, Senate, SCOTUS, POTUS, all of it.
All government intervention in business activity is corruption.
duh (Score:2, Insightful)
SNAFU (Score:5, Insightful)
The law is still fucked up, nothing to see here
'ebook reading device might be considered a tablet, as might a handheld video game device.'"
And if some corporation pays enough, it also might be considered a tractor.
Re:so how locked in will they let pc's get? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Greetings and Salutations;
America, alas, has WAY too many laws. I think this is a side effect of the recent foolishness that has defined a corporation as a "person", and, the unregulated ability of lobbyists for the industry to flood the government with cash to get laws which hurt the consumer and help business passed. I certainly agree that artists should be compensated for their output - after all, their creativity is exactly what we are paying them FOR. However, the only profitable part of the recording industry is to produce content.
Perhaps the best course of action would be for a groundswell of support by consumers to get the law repealed is the correct answer here.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Re:duh (Score:2, Insightful)
To be precise, it IS illegal to play a dvd on an unlicensed system because, well quite frankly, liddvdcss never paid the license fee and reverse engineered the rather crappy css encryption.
I know that isn't what slashdot wants to hear, but the FBI is there to enforce these kinds of laws, and this IS illegal.
FTFY. There is nothing "fair" about the situation. Legality and ethics are orthogonal scales, as this clearly illustrates.
Time to stop supporting them. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time to stop buying these game consoles that cannot be hacked and these DVD's they don't want us to watch.
I have resisted setting up the DVD player since we moved (4 months ago) because the restrictions placed on me (Macrovision!) by the manufacturer inconveniences me. If I could buy a DVD without previews that I could have playing within 10 seconds of loading into the drive, I might be interested in spending money, but it just annoys me and I would rather not support an industry that treats their customers this way.
Re:12 days til we toss out the Bush Administration (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter who's nominally in charge. The puppets dance to the tune of the hands controlling the strings.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
What license? Why do you need a license to write your own code? Reverse engineering has always been legal. Or are you talking about patent violations? I agree it is not legal in the US to violate patents, and we could be sued for it. It is not criminal though, and not really FBI's job to go after civil disputes.
And FYI, the article is about breaking DRM, not about patents or copyright. Breaking DRM is criminal. But there are exceptions like jail breaking your own phone (god, I am repeating the summary). The question is why is there no exception for breaking DRM to simply watch the content you legally own? These two sound pretty similar to me.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
this IS illegal.
In the eyes of the gov yes, in the eyes of joe citizen consumer who paid for their media and who thinks its beyond rediculious no to be able to play a dvd movie on a dvd drive in a computer with out breaking a law or watch that same dvd on other devices by extracting the information into another format its not. I'm one of them and I could care less about insane laws that make criminals out of citizens that want to use THEIR OWN PAID FOR PROPERTY as they wish in their own home/residence.
Yay old people! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's technically true.
However, that's only illegal because we invented "better" laws to make something that was already illegal (unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material) "more" illegal (breaking the encryption used to prevent the former).
Politicians need to stop rejecting these "we need better tools" lobbyist-created laws and tell them to use the perfectly valid tools they already have in place. I know this will never happen, but wishful thinking. Being illegal - in terms of the letter of the law - is a pretty binary thing. I think content producers should have every right to sue people for distributing their material, but we don't need to give them stuff to make gumming up the legal system with their stuff any easier.
It's like the arguments claiming that it would be legal to drive high if we legalized marijuana: of course it's not - that's both a DUI* and reckless driving. You don't need to add a new law for driving high because it's already illegal under other laws. Distributing copyrighted content that you're not the rights-holder of has been illegal since we introduced copyright, so adding the DMCA** was completely unnecessary.
* There are slight differences between DWI and DUI, and the meaning varies slightly from state to state. Many places are intentionally vague on the meaning of "under the influence" to (rightly) catch non-alcoholic substances that impair one's ability to safely operate a vehicle.
** The law is fundamentally flawed anyway, as it's outlawing a specific implementation of an undesired behavior. It would be like making murder by bludgeoning someone with a lead pipe illegal. Great - I'll just use a knife instead. You're trying to stop the murder, not the misuse of lead pipes. As such, it'll be obsoleted by the next major round of technical advances.
Re:12 days til we toss out the Bush Administration (Score:4, Insightful)
The same excuse we always get. If Bush were still in charge, the /. readers would be cursing him. But since it's your guy, it's the lame "well they're ALL corrupt".
Re:They told me... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd just like to tell them to consider this [alachuapolitix.com] while they're at it.
Since when is the mere act of possessing or using free software on a strictly local basis a fucking crime, anyway?
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how LAWS work.
If the government has declared something illegal you just can't use "But sir, I don't agree with said law" and walk away from the crime without any consequences.
Is the government wrong? Probably, but you should focus on changing the government to change the laws rather than just breaking the law and hoping for the best.
Re:12 days til we toss out the Bush Administration (Score:4, Insightful)
He missed his real calling as a standup comedian.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the government wrong? Probably, but you should focus on changing the government to change the laws rather than just breaking the law and hoping for the best.
Should you? It is unlikely that you will succeed, copyrights and patents have support from both sides of the spectrum. Right wingers think "people are taking stuff for free" and left wingers think "people are ripping off artists".
Meanwhile, no one is likely to prosecute you for watching a DVD you own. What exactly do you gain from not doing that?
Re:They told me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:12 days til we toss out the Bush Administration (Score:5, Insightful)
The same excuse we always get. If Bush were still in charge, the /. readers would be cursing him. But since it's your guy, it's the lame "well they're ALL corrupt".
I don't remember where I first heard it, and I'm pretty sure I'm not saying it correctly, but "Politicians are like litter boxes - they need frequent changing, and for the same reasons." Similar sentiment.
what they consider tablets is crap (Score:4, Insightful)
“ebook reading device might be considered a tablet, as might a handheld video game device.”
I can sort of see the logic of an ebook reading device, but a handheld video game device? No.
Smart Phones are Mini tablets. They can run the same OS, same Apps. (IOS & Android). This is only shows how stupid the people in charge are.
Bingo. This is the precise point of law. (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL. But selling you a locked box you cannot open is self contradictory. The idea that you sold me something (not licensed...sold) and I can't access any part of it runs counter to every principle of private property. What if I sold you a suitcase and said, "By the way, dude, there is a locked compartment in it to which I have the key. You can't open it to take the brick out of it. So you will have to carry my brick wherever you go or I will sue you and have the authorities arrest you for theft if you break into my private compartment in your suitcase and remove my property. It is a complete fallacy to contend that I would retain any claim to that compartment if I sold you the case. And you would be well within your rights to break the box and take out the brick. To say otherwise runs counter to the very nature of the process of 'sale'.
The DMCA is beyond a miscarriage of justice it's a coat-hanger scrape job on the lady herself. Has this absurd provision ever had a constitutional test? I do not think any US Attorney has brought a case against a person for watching a DVD with unlicensed encryption software. Or for backing up a DVD. They went after the hapless dcss coder with a vengeance as I recall. But a schmo watching a DVD on Linux? Can anyone recall a case? I can't. Please correct me if I am wrong. IMHO a law no one can or will prosecute is no law at all.
Re:the govt does not have any room to talk (Score:4, Insightful)
In all three of your "examples", you twist the meaning and the tone of Obama's statements to further your own anti-Obama agenda.
> Bump in the Road
His statement was not directly about the embassy murders, but about the violence in general in the Mid-East recently.
> Not Optimal
He was being sarcastic, using Jon Stewart's words back at him in a very sarcastic tone. A transcript of that conversation would be very misleading because Obama's tone is obvious when you listen to it.
> UN Speech
Obama never even mentions the embassy murders in this video! He was only talking about the uprisings over the film and how censorship is bad and does not say word one about the embassy murders.
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
The media you paid for isn't owned by you, you just paid a fixed amount for the right to use it for an undetermined period. The media-player you just paid for isn't owned by you either, you have paid a fixed amount for the right to use... blah blah blah. Basicall: spread your legs further for this big corporate d**k, please.
That's why all media I "own" is served by the Pirate Bay and other torrent sites.
No revocation possible, I can pass it to my heirs. They can use whatever system they want to watch the content etc... Paradoxically if you want to own content don't buy it. Get it from the pirates, the benefactors of humanity.
The RIAA/MPAA is never going to see another cent from me ever again. Should the artists start selling directly to consumers with none of this DRM bullshit I'll bite. Otherwise I'll walk towards the pirate bay never to look back again.
Re:duh (Score:4, Insightful)
How does one gain being right or lawful? Since when is the law always right?
I'd rather be right and unlawful then lawful and wrong. History has many examples of injustice where people have upheld the law now matter how much suffering it caused mankind.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
liddvdcss never paid the license fee and reverse engineered the rather crappy css encryption. I know that isn't what slashdot wants to hear, but the FBI is there to enforce these kinds of laws, and this IS illegal.
This has nothing to do with license fees or with reverse engineering. You have the right to reverse engineer CSS and write your own DVD playing software. You are only a criminal if you tell me how to do it.
Yes, you read that correctly: you are a criminal if you explain to someone else how you defeated a copy restriction system. Unless you are a researcher, publishing your work in a journal (no, your blog does not count), because as we all know, scientific journals are supposed to sit around on shelves in university libraries collecting dust. Oh, yeah, and researchers never make their code available to anyone, and should you dare to make a hyperlink to some other person's webpage that explains how to crack a restriction system, you are also a criminal. Or maybe not, because Google has plenty of those links, and nobody has prosecuted them.
Get back to your corporate job, citizen. What the hell are you doing programming your computer without being paid for it, and why the hell would you share your knowledge or skills with other commoners? Why can't you just be like everyone else and separate your work from your hobbies?
Re:They told me... (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters, Republicans think the U.S. wasn't founded on separation of church & state, and that women, minorities, homosexuals, or anyone else that isn't a straight, white, Christian male are generally inferior. They also want you to think your body is something to be ashamed of and that abstinence-only education is the way to go despite mountains of data.
You really love that Kool Aid. Think about this for a second. You act as if we couldn't sit here and generate equally retarded and dishonest tropes for Democrats. Same party lines, same BS, different day.
They're not that different. 95% of what they supposedly disagree on is bullshit they don't really care about. They have to differentiate on party lines to get their half of the votes.. that's it. Anything more 'radical' than that and any congress would prevent them from doing it... and they know it.
We've got two guys that both believe in the great wizard. Both are anti-gun. Both are wealthy politicians. They're nearly identical on health care, but one will pretend he's not for political reasons. Neither are going to actually fix our debt or substantially improve our tax situation. Neither gets to bomb Iran. Neither is going to do anything significant with social security or medicare. Neither get to kill or fund PBS by being elected. Neither are actually going to "get tough" with China. Neither gets to decide on a budget. We're out of Iraq and we're leaving Afghanistan in the next year either way. Bullshit aside, neither has a strong economic plan for the next four years other than, "let it do what it's doing".
It's not that we're apathetic, we're just disillusioned, because we know "different" means "unelectable". All the rest is just about being manipulated by two old PR machines.
Re:Time to stop supporting them. (Score:5, Insightful)
I immediately copy with Magic DVD Copier - it removes the "Cannot get to the menu until you watch our ads and antipiracy notice" nonsense, and I can choose to copy the movie only.
I skip the middleman and download the movie directly. If they're going to treat me like a fucking criminal, I'm going to act like a fucking criminal.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:12 days til we toss out the Bush Administration (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll gladly take that over 4 more years of Obama.
Re:12 days til we toss out the Bush Administration (Score:5, Insightful)
Typically, people who deliberately attack a group as a whole rather than a particular member of it do, indeed, fit that pattern. Happens in nearly every single field. If you hate Apple, then Apple is "abusing the patent system." If you like Apple, then they're "just doing what the system requires them to do." And so on and so forth (I could give probably a dozen examples off the top of my head). It's not a certain pattern, but it is extremely common, especially among Internet commentators. If you look for it, you'll probably see it quite often. Happens because we want to defend someone we like, but when they do something clearly bad, we can't do it directly, so we deflect it towards a group as a whole to make it seem less evil (or sometimes some other party entirely, as in the Apple-patent example).
Re:They told me... (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the OP was trying to make the point that there's no fucking difference between Republicans and Democrats, their all beholden to their political sponsors
With an example that does not in any way support his claim.
You, on the other hand, are trying to defend your party of choice...
He brought up a fact. How is that trying to defend anything other than reality?
by bringing up some obscure appointment that happened 30 years ago
An obscure appointment that happened thirty years ago which just happens to be relevant to the discussion right now.
as if the current administrations hands were tied and they could do nothing to stop it... when you know for a fact that's not the case.
Speaking for me, it's possible, but I don't know it's a fact. I don't know anything about the library of congress or much about the Obama administration's influence over it.
Keep towing that party line and the next thing you know we'll all be monitored 24/7 by our government overlords and the president will be able to order US citizens deaths without so much as a pen stroke... oh wait... fuck... Good job buddy. Hope your children enjoy the world you made them.
I think you argued against yourself there: you suggest that he shouldn't justify the administration because things will happen that already are happening.
I think there are a few steps you skipped over from thinking that Obama was better than McCain to 1984. I'd suggest that Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, Communist, whatever is not the problem. Nor are special interests. The problem is the voters. They willingly gave up their rights. You could have zero lobbyists, no parties, a million parties... doesn't matter. If voters are scared into being willing to give up their rights for security against some boogeyman like terrorists, someone is going to offer them that deal in exchange for votes.
Obama and McCain were both willing to do that, sure, but given that situation, I'm glad we at least got healthcare out of it. I also suspect McCain and the republicans would have repeated Bush's play of cutting taxes without reducing spending. "No fucking difference?" This is the same slashdot that thinks there's a world of difference between Windows Vista and Windows 7, right? There are differences between anything. Neither option may be completely perfect, but that doesn't mean there aren't important distinctions between the two.
Re:They told me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Democrats don't have failed social engineering programs. They worked as intended, they have kept their base.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
How to overthr^H^H^H^H^H^H^H take over the US (Score:5, Insightful)
These are actually steps for the taking over of ANY democracy full of greedy shits and morons, but I've written it specifically for the US of A, reword as necessary for use with some other alleged democracy: (Note, a violent overthrow is never effective in a large, prosperous country, and there's no reason to try, especially when it's likely to be so ruinous to you, and unlikely to be successful in the face of the massive amount of force the military could bring to bear. Also, if you follow these steps, you'll find there's an easier, quieter way, unlikely to get you jailed or killed, AND, more importantly, it doesn't risk harm to the precious GDP the somnambulant populace keeps churning out each year...)
Step 1. Get a bunch of rich assholes together, convince them to form a conspiracy to rule the United States of America. (Or if you're rich enough, and you're enough of an asshole, do this all this by yourself.)
Step 2. Through a program of massive brib^H^H^H^H campaign contributions, buy control over the Republican Party.
Step 3. Through a program of massive brib^H^H^H^H campaign contributions, buy control over the Democratic Party.
Step 4. Attain control over the news media in the country; use it to distract the country from the fact that you now own the government, for all intents and purposes. Have the parties grind the government to a halt, and paralyze public discourse by chumming the political waters with bullshit that doesn't matter, like the use of the word "retarded" or, well just about any other thing, pretending that cultural minutia are somehow a more important topic of discussion than national policy. Bombard people with warning after warning about how much danger other nations' "extremists" present, so you can continue to ensure the cowardly populace will quake with fear and cede their rights to your puppet government if only it will keep them safe, as they quietly piss, not only all over themselves, but also all over the sacrifices made be the great patriots who wrested our country first from the hands of the English, then from those of the Native Americans, then from the French, the Mexicans, the Russians, and finally from the Polynesians. (No, I'll pull no punches here, as you can see.)
Step 5. Use the control you've corruptly achieved to ensure that each party picks ONLY people whom you are okay seeing get elected, to nominate for public office.
Step 6. Have the "elected" officials you own appoint people to the Supreme Court of the United States who will support continued power grabbing by the legislative and executive branches, since the power the "elected" officials have is now really YOUR power, and you want to maintain and expand it until you're not only above the law, but so far above it that you are in effect, a king.
Step 7. Use the legislature you now control to ensure that certain groups of people are continuously disenfranchised, and are in a position either to starve, or have to work like virtual slaves, such as "illegal" immigrants, blacks, and anyone who can't see for himself the value of a good education.
Step 8. Use the court system you now corruptly control to issue judgements that ensure people have progressively less freedom every day, to keep money flowing into the coffers of the corporations you control, such as the movie and music industries. This will also increase the freedom and power you have through your ownership and control of corporations, which are now classed as "people". (Forgetting of course, that these "people" are functionally immortal, and cannot be punished the way a real person can, by being jailed, for instance.) Periodically siphon money out of the system through taking advantage of the poorly regulated financial sector, robbing people of their retirements, and laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands, while they continue to slave away until they're dead.
Step 9. Reduce funding for education, because, AND NEVER EVER FORGET THIS: education is your enemy. By this point, you can do most of this remotely, from som