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Technology Your Rights Online

Adam Bresson Demonstrates Fair Use at DefCon 313

Posted by timothy from the shameful-that-this-should-be-remarkable dept.
nigelc writes: "Adam Bresson showed how to make copies of copyright-protected videos in a speech at DefCon. To quote the article, 'I hope he's got a lawyer and that they talked to somebody'" From the article, it sounds like Bresson simply used a video conversion box to defeat MacroVision -- something my notorious criminal father has been doing for years.
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Adam Bresson Demonstrates Fair Use at DefCon More

Adam Bresson Demonstrates Fair Use at DefCon

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  • I'm shocked (Score:5, Interesting)

    by A Cheese Danish ( 576077 ) <`nala.galatea' `at' `gmail.com'> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:04PM (#4019655) Homepage Journal

    From the article:

    In his demonstration, Bresson used a device sold online for about $200 by United Kingdom-based Canopus. The box allows people to make copies of videocassettes and DVDs even if the video is locked with software to prevent such tampering.

    Now Canopus [canopuscorp.com] has offices in the US. I figure that Bresson would probably not be prosecuted, basically cause there's no money involved. However, since Canopus has a branch in the US, I wouldn't be surprised if they were sued.

    After all the best way to stop all of us "pirates" is to eliminate the tools we use.

    • The tools we use... (Score:5, Funny)

      by daemones ( 188271 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:07PM (#4019683) Homepage
      ...and we should make sure that all of the copy machines in the MPIAA officies are removed. They're obviously there for copying books anyway; if they want to do that they should have to do it by hand!
      (and then we go after the pens)

      We really do need a nuclear war to put all this in perspective.

    • Re:I'm shocked (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:29PM (#4019851) Homepage Journal
      "After all the best way to stop all of us "pirates" is to eliminate the tools we use."

      I hope that was sarcastic, heh.

      In all seriousness, the way to stop 'unauthorized copying' (I refuse to call it piracy because there are fair reasons to do it) is to find it why people want/need to do it.

      "People are downloading movies off the web, maybe it's beacuse they don't want to pay $20 for a DVD. Maybe we should sell a $10 no-frills DVD."

      "People are ripping DVD's and saving them to their computer. Maybe they're doing that so that they can keep their DVD's safe. We should make it easy for somebody to get a replacement DVD if it gets damaged or lost."

      "People are swapping movies they've never seen before on-line. Maybe we should make it easier to 'preview' the movie to see if it's worth buying on DVD. How about cutting deals with HBO so they can get movies faster?"

      Imagine if they were to use logic like that...
      • This post should be moderated up.
      • "Imagine if they were to use logic like that..."

        Then they would fall back to the old dark ways of marketing, using obsolete reasoning likem "Find out what the customer wants and give it to them." Such anti-progress is unacceptable.

      • Re:I'm shocked (Score:3, Insightful)

        by borgasm ( 547139 )
        I watch movies off the net for a variety of reasons:

        Renting a movie implies driving off campus, finding a video store, renting the movie, and returning it in a timely fashion.
        Problem 1: No car.
        Problem 2: No video rental stores within 5 miles.

        Purchasing DVD's is not out of the question, but buying more than a few a year stresses my budget. I did buy Oceans 11 and Lock Stock...Since I wore out my HD watching them on divx.
        Problem 1: Students' incomes are quite low, and not continuous all year long.
        Problem 2: I need to buy books. Textbooks are expensive.
        Problem 3: 10 DVDs * $20 each = $200. 200 bucks is a large percentage (don't laugh) of my annual income.

        Since the advent of CD's, I have only bought about 3. These CD's were compilations, since most artists don't have an entire CD of great songs. It's not that I enjoy downloading mp3s, but there is no way in hell i will pay $20 for a little plastic disc with 2 decent songs on it.
        As mentioned in another comment, paying for a service to deliver high quality music to my desktop is not out of the question.

        It needs to be always on, and able to stream at 50kb/sec.

        Make it known that you can have any song, anywhere, anytime, and people will pay for this service. I know I would.

        Availablity and price are the two things killing the music and movie industry today. Provide a low cost, easily accessable way to watch movies and listen to music, make it easier and faster than current P2P, and your industry will start raking in money.

        • Re:I'm shocked (Score:5, Insightful)

          by RollingThunder ( 88952 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @04:05PM (#4021136)
          Purchasing DVD's is not out of the question, but buying more than a few a year stresses my budget. I did buy Oceans 11 and Lock Stock...Since I wore out my HD watching them on divx.

          Problem 1: Students' incomes are quite low, and not continuous all year long.
          Problem 2: I need to buy books. Textbooks are expensive.
          Problem 3: 10 DVDs * $20 each = $200. 200 bucks is a large percentage (don't laugh) of my annual income.
          Meta-Problem: you have no intrinsic right to these products. It doesn't matter that you can't afford to buy them or can afford to buy them. If you can't, you don't get them. Simple as that - or it should be.

          You have a choice. Pay for the movies, or pay for the books - but don't pretend that being short on cash makes it OK to watch rips off the net. It's still wrong.
          • I for one wouldn't argue right and wrong. This is capitalism man! Want to talk about right and wrong there's a guy in Rome by the name of John Paul who you should meet.

            Anyhow. It's like this. Prosecuting 19 year old kids file trading in their college dorm room isn't a great way to make money. It's a great way to get everyone to call you a jerk and never buy your stuff again.

            It comes down to this. The people doing most of the file trading are the people they are trying to sell to. If you put these people in jail or sue them to peices they won't buy your product. So that's a bad idea.

            What you want to do it find out why they feel the need to break the law. Once you know that you know something key about your target audiance.

            I think an execelent point is made. I -=will not=- pay $23 for a DVD. Ever. No way. I'll buy it ten years later if I really have to have it... but never for $23. I don't download movies off of the internet or anything like that (56k is like that :-). If DVDs were 8 bucks a shot though, I'd buy a lot more than 3 of them right now. Overall the movie industry would get more of my money in a given year if that were the case.

            That's what it boils down to. The buisness model is changing. More and more people are unwilling to shell out that kind of money for a DVD. There's still a sucker born every minute though.

        • Re:I'm shocked (Score:3, Insightful)

          by God! Awful ( 181117 )

          Problem 1: Students' incomes are quite low, and not continuous all year long.
          Problem 2: I need to buy books. Textbooks are expensive.
          Problem 3: 10 DVDs * $20 each = $200. 200 bucks is a large percentage (don't laugh) of my annual income.
          $200 is a large percentage of your income? That's BS. It's a good thing you can play DVDs on your $5 computer. It's also lucky that you can leech free electricty from the building next to the cardboard box where you live. And you must be getting one hell of an education with the other $200.

          Clearly $200 is only a large part of your disposable income. Someone (most likely your parents) is paying for your expensive education (unless you're stealing that too). Why don't you quit whining and ask them to buy you some DVDs for Christmas? And while you're at it, ask for a raise in your allowance.

          -a

  • Blah, which some knowhow you can get rid of it (Score:5, Informative)

    by SkipToMyLou ( 595608 ) <b@b.b> on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:05PM (#4019663)
    On some DVD players, you can disable Macrovision by means of uploading a new ROM into the player by burning it onto an ISO 9660 CD-R, or by hitting a secret key combination on the remote. It's mostly APEXes and Daewoos that let you do this; ironic that they are the cheapest yet most hackable DVD players. I have a cute little APEX I scored for $70 at Circuit City... that sucker plays DVDs, VCDs, SVCDs, CD-Rs, MP3s (!), and they kitchen sink. Most DVD players have a "Factory setting" menu that you can get to, but you need to know the secret code. Of course you'd never get goodies like this from the big boys (aka Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic).
    • My older APEX wont play some disney DVDs. The MP3 list is horrible. I picked up a newer APEX at wallmart for 70 bux, its ok, but you have to press the shift button everytime to move around on the onscreen menu. (and it displays Shift in bold green onscreen, ick!) Without the remote it hard to use. It also makes a "broken cd" noise like a computer cd-rom drive thats bad. Whack on the side, and it works for a few hours quitely.

      Im not so sure if its worth the features, if I have to put up with a interface built by monkeys, and hardware thats flimsy.

    • > Of course you'd never get goodies like this from the big boys
      > (aka Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic).

      what a surprise, given that the big players were part of the cartel [lemuria.org] that developed the whole CSS bullshit.
      • Some of the big players also sell those players.
        For example this site [ianc.net] shows how to "hack" philips players.

        Philips sold its (music) content business some years ago (Polygram); I think they saw coming the problems that the content providers would get in the digital age, and as a traditional HW vendor they didn't want to get into conflict with themselves.

  • Just use a "video cleaner" (Score:3, Informative)

    by sgtsanity ( 568914 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:06PM (#4019668)
    It cleans up the signal and incidentally also removes the copy protection. Remember kids, the RIAA says that violating fair use is the fifth horseman of the apocalypse.

  • Nothing new... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by levik ( 52444 )
    So, we all knew you could do this. Just like you could point a camcorded at a movie screen, and just like you can hook up your stereo's line out to your sound card's line in to record DRM'ed music.

    The question is, wether or not this satisfies fair use. If you can make a low-quality analog copy of a digital work, is the law not still guaranteeing you the right to use the work fairly in it's original - digital - format?

    • i think it does satisfy fair use, it just doesn't exercise the fullest extent of fair use as you mention. i really think the "content providers" have a right to do whatever they want to protect their works, but they also should have no recourse against any types of fair usage. including decss, anti-macrovision, whatever.

      they don't have to make it easy for you to make a backup of your stuff, but they shouldn't take that right away altogether.
      • My point was that they could attack things like DeCSS, and counter any of its fair use claims by pointing out that you can still get an analog verison (which may be slightly lower in quality, but should satisfy all your needs anyway - if all you are going to do is use it for things like criticism). Since you can grab the analog, they can claim that the fair use defense is meaningless, and invalid.

        Just playing devil's advocate here.

    • EEEK! Just use an internal TV card with WinDVR or some other recording software. I'll admit that I have nbever tried to dub back to tape after this, but with compression from a straight screen capture, I can't tell how Muckrovision would survive...

      Hammy

  • Suprise!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:07PM (#4019674) Homepage
    What?? The movie industry did not crumble? The US economy didn't completely collapse? The sky didn't fall? No darkness?

    So, the MPAA lied about all these things happening if all copys were outlawed and anyone making a copy were not immediately jailed?

  • Anyone can do this... (Score:3, Informative)

    by k0ala ( 199123 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:07PM (#4019679) Homepage
    Any RF Modulator strips MacroVision.. Always has Always Will kinda deal... Same boxes he shamed everyone into buying were picked up at RadioShack and Wal-Mart for less than 35$

    • Re:Anyone can do this... (Score:4, Informative)

      by metatruk ( 315048 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @02:21PM (#4020256)
      Not so. Macrovision works by pulsating the intensity of the video sync signal. This fluctuation in intensity fools the AGC circuit in the recieving deck causing the picture colors to become distorted, and brighter and dimmer. TVs do not contain this AGC circuit, and therefore, are unaffected by macrovision. A more detailed explanation can be found here: http://www.repairfaq.org/filipg/LINK/F_MacroVision 1.html#MACROVISION_016 [repairfaq.org]
    • This would be "informative" if it were true, but it's not. I use an RF modulator with my DVD player; I have to, because my TV is too old to have composite inputs. The way my system is wired, the output from the modulator goes into the input of my VCR. Surprise, surprise: if the VCR's tuner is on, I get the usual Macrovision effects (high saturation, low brightness) on the signal.

      A little thought shows why this is: the Macrovision signal is just a very high-intensity band of very bright signal inserted just after the colorburst signal at the start of some video fields. It's completely in-band (if a little hot) so your modulator will be more than happy to add it to the modulated signal and pass it on down the chain.

  • Why spend $200? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Quixote ( 154172 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:07PM (#4019681) Homepage Journal
    Why spend $200 on a box to make a copy of a DVD, when my sub-$100 DVD player [wired.com] will do it for free? Plus, it has no region coding either. Go Apex!

  • *** Breaking News *** (Score:5, Funny)

    by metacosm ( 45796 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:09PM (#4019693)
    Today, the father of Timothy [monkey.org] of Slashdot [slashdot.org] fame was arrested when his son finally turned on him with a bold and public statement about his fathers criminal past and present.

    Supportors of the DMCA where quoted as saying "We are very happy a public supporter of the DMCA has finally come forward from the slashdot crew movement"

    :)

  • I hope he gets charged with infringement... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Temsi ( 452609 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:12PM (#4019718) Journal
    ...and gets tried and aquitted in open court.

    We very much need a test case with a judgment in favor of consumer rights.
    We need a legal case to which we can point, when we're arguing what our rights really are...

    Personally, I've used one of those anti-macrovision boxes (I got mine for $50) and it works great. I didn't create the technology, and I've only used it in the privacy of my own home, excercising my 'fair use' rights as a consumer, so I should probably be safe.

    The methodical corporate destruction of consumer rights must be stopped.
    • IMHO, it's just as valuable if he's found guilty. Remember, there are two ways to change a law. One is through getting it circumscribed or thrown out in court. The other is getting it repealed through public outrage.

      I don't want to wish the guy into jail, but perhaps widespread public outrage would be better than mere circumscription of the DMCA. With an acquittal no doubt fair use would be improved a little, but only to the extent of defeating Macrovision for your own non-infringing purposes in your own home. Region coding and Track-0 on DVDs would remain untouched. Security disclosure would remain a crime.

  • MacroVision Defeating Hardware...?!?! (Score:5, Informative)

    by philovivero ( 321158 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:15PM (#4019744) Homepage Journal
    I was at Best Buy a few days ago and found a device into which you plug any two audio/visual devices, and which stated that it would "even out erratic signal levels, enabling the VCR to get a clean image again."

    It is a MacroVision-defeating hardware device, prepackaged, for $50 or so.

    I was actually a bit astounded that someone hadn't come and stomped on the balls of this company.

    For my money, though, it's VideoLan Client [videolan.org] or nothing.
    • It is a MacroVision-defeating hardware device, prepackaged, for $50 or so.

      I was actually a bit astounded that someone hadn't come and stomped on the balls of this company.

      Well, I can't see how something like this could be illegal (or at least upheld in any court). I bet that nowhere on the package did they even mention Macrovision. It's just a thing that makes the signal clearer, which can have many legitimate uses. The same stuff is bound to be in any reasonably high-end video editing suite too.

      AFAIK, Macrovision removers haven't been illegal at least until the DMCA. But does the DMCA outlaw them? They're not exactly digital...

  • History (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:15PM (#4019748) Homepage
    This brings to mind an interesting question:

    Has there ever been an industry which has survived solely on the basis of legislation?

    The recording and software industries suddenly find themselves without the natural protections of severely limited bandwidth or formats which discourage copying. As such, their business models (which have only really existed for the last few decades) seem dangerously out of date, especially on the music side. Video games and movies are still somewhat protected by large size, but with the proliferation of available bandwidth this seems only like a matter-of-time issue (although non-console video games and other computer software have some other outlets, the effectiveness of those recourses is also open to question).

    So, it appears that their only tool to perpetuate their current business model will be legislation like the DMCA. Can anyone think of an industry where this survival-by-lawyers tactic has worked for more than a few years? Or are they destined to slide out of business as they know it?

    Of course, we live in a historically litagous time where the law and lawyers have more power than ever, so maybe part prescindent isn't relevant. It seems entirely possible to me that they could stave off any sort of mass-advancement just be completely crushing those who oppose them (am I going to risk any real threat of a massive fine just to copy a few CD tracks?).

    If the RIAA had owned the buggy industry in 1900, I think we'd all still be whipping our horses to get to work in the morning.

    • Re:History (Score:5, Funny)

      by maxwell demon ( 590494 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:20PM (#4019780) Journal
      Has there ever been an industry which has survived solely on the basis of legislation?
      Lawyers?
    • Has there ever been an industry which has survived solely on the basis of legislation?
      • "Title insurance"
      • Workers' comp insurance
      • Tax preparation

      I'm sure you can think of more.

    • The Post Office
      Amtrak
      Nuclear power
      Remodeled houses in the inner city

      These are all the recipients of heavy, heavy subsidies. USPS is now theoretically independent, but try putting a UPS or FedEx package into your mailbox.

      Tobacco survives only because of its lawyers; they survive currently in a legislative environment hostile to them.
      • The Post Office
        Amtrak
        Nuclear power
        Remodeled houses in the inner city
        Tobacco

        The USPS is financially independent; that's why it costs so damn much. Amtrak is being pushed in that direction, but it just costs too much to survive. These aren't industries that wouldn't survive without legislation, however. There are a lot of shipping companies that do quite well- you listed UPS and FedEx. The government doesn't keep them afloat. There are several rail lines that are doing well, too. Washington just wants to make sure that niche services like first class mail and passenger rail are universally available.

        All the nuclear plants I can think of are owned by power companies. The government regulates the hell out of them but doesn't own them.

        The remodeling industry does not survive because people are forced to get new kitchens every few years. Many cities that suck, however, are understandably interested in urban renewal.

        Tobacco survives because they sell something people really want. Their lawyers are just there because of morons who whine when they get cancer, as if they didn't do it to themselves.

        All of these industries are full of companies with good business models. Amtrak and the USPS would lose money without the support and/or protection they get, but they get it because Washington wants to make sure those services are provided.

        None of these industries have failing business models and so need legislative protection. Washington doesn't want to insure that we continue to get crappy top 40, they just want to continue to get campaign contributions.

        • I would love to see some statistics showing that the USPS is pricey. I was under the impression that the service should actually cost more but that they have to get any rate hikes approved by congress or the treasury or something, and that's why they are so low.

          Think about it. Would you carry something across the country for me for 37 cents?

          I could be wrong here, but I think the USPS (letters, not packages) is very reasonably-priced.
          • USPS actually does pretty well. A couple/three years ago they profited a billion dollars. Of course, that's with creative accounting- they had a big round of financing that they're still paying off, and email is really hurting them.

            Where their real cost comes in is that they're a public service. A letter across town costs you just as much as a letter to the far tip of the Aleutians. They're not about to shut off the routes that cost too much to service.

            If they streamlined, or recieved federal funds, we could probably still pay 20 cents an ounce- for local mail. So mail on high volume routes subsidises the sparse ones. 37 cents an ounce seems cheap, but my point was that USPS isn't government funded, so its prices are realistically high rather than artificially low.

    • Re:History (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )
      > Has there ever been an industry which has survived solely on
      > the basis of legislation?

      yepp, the law industry.

      see, most laws are drafted by lawyers ("law expert advisors to congress"), then litigated in front of a lawyer/judge panel by opposing/collaborating lawyers (attornies). a perfect closed system, works like charm.

    • Re:History (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jeffersonebell ( 248978 )
      >> If the RIAA had owned the buggy industry in 1900, I think we'd all still be whipping our horses to get to work in the morning.

      Or if a few (say 5 or so) large companies owned the automobile business, we'd still be driving to work in 2002...
      • My dad was into conspiracy theory, but sometimes he was on the money with it.

        Before WWII trolleys were more common in cities. After WWII with the surge in spending on cars, the auto industry came in and bought up all of the trolley infrastructure they could. Now we use cars and buses, and bigger cities have subways. I guess San Francisco still has trolleys, maybe a few others.
        • Before WWII trolleys were more common in cities. After WWII with the surge in spending on cars, the auto industry came in and bought up all of the trolley infrastructure they could. Now we use cars and buses, and bigger cities have subways. I guess San Francisco still has trolleys, maybe a few others.
          No kidding! Here in Minneapolis, there was a great streetcar system up until the early 1950s (not that I'd know, but I've read quite a bit about it). The mayor and city council were notoriously corrupt, with ties to organized crime. They got rid of the streetcar system and gave the resulting new road contracts to their cronies. One of the excuses they gave for getting rid of streetcars was the rising cost of maintenance and the trolleys were falling apart. Well, roads take quite a beating in these MN winters and require just as much, if not more maintenance. Also, our trolley cars were sold to areas that still had streetcars. It's a rumour that some of them are still running in San Francisco to this day.

          Now we're spending close to $1 billion of yours and my tax money on an under-capacity, over-budget, light rail transit system on a route where it's not needed the most. That's progress.
    • "Has there ever been an industry which has survived solely on the basis of legislation?"

      This is kind of 'against the spirit' of what you're asking, but here is an example: The radar/laser detector industry.

      Their lifeblood is the anti-speeding laws. Without such legislation, there would be no demand for radar/laser detectors because the police wouldn't be trying to clock you.

    • Has there ever been an industry which has survived solely on the basis of legislation?

      The dry cleaning industry is trying to do it now. Discount dry cleaners are hurting the smaller independently owned cleaners and they are banning together to try to stop the big chains from going in. It seems that the discount guys are charging the same for women's clothing as they do for men's and that has these smaller guys in an uproar.

      But in the case of the dry cleaners they are trying to stay in business via legislation where the entertainment industry is just trying to keep from being ripped off. Its not like the RIAA or the MPAA is preventing independent artists from distributing their work and making money. They aren't doing this to stifle competition. Maybe long term if they get their way then it would be difficult for an independent artist to produce and sell work without their representation but I don't think that is their goal. Even today if an artist were to sell his own MP3's for $.50 a song, those songs if good would be all over the P2P networks and he'd be just as pissed as Hillary Rosen.
    • Has there ever been an industry which has survived solely on the basis of legislation
      Automobiles. You think the roads you drive on appear without legislation?

      Airlines. You think the airports appear without legislation?

  • Bruce Perens??? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by philovivero ( 321158 )
    Sorry for the second post, but the article sez:
    In late July, HP convinced an employee to drop plans to demonstrate at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention how to break coding in DVD players that prevents them from being played outside a particular geographical region.
    Are they referring to Bruce Perens? Why didn't I hear news of this cancellation if so?

    What happened there?

  • So what (Score:2, Interesting)

    by shepd ( 155729 )
    There is no law on the US books that outlaws defeating Macrovision.

    Macrovision is in the analog domain, and the much touted copyright "protection" law is only in the digital domain, hence the name:

    Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

    So he broke no law. So who cares?

  • If it has Macrovision don't copy it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @01:35PM (#4019902) Homepage Journal
    I would think a tape with macrovision means the manufacturer doesn't want you to copy their tape.
    You want to copy it for backup purposes.

    I think I see 3 problems here...

    I think before any DMCA type stuff is added to any kind of media, the media producer needs to be held accountable for replacement. I've never seen this happen however as most of them simply tell you "Return this to your place of purchase"

    Problem is, the place of purchase has no easy way of RMA'ing defective merchandise.
    Wait a minute!
    *light bulb*

    I think I see an easy solution to all this. When you purchase something you should be able to anonymously register your product online (HINT HINT!) When it goes bad, you go online, login, report it bad and get a POPRMA# (place of purchase return merchandise authorization #)You take your bad merchandise back to the store with your POPRMA and the store validates the POPRMA and destroys the media.
    Now that the media producer has a valid POPRMA, they just mail you a new tape.

    Unfortunately, reality is record companies (major labels) are all bloodsucking thirsty vultures that would eat your grandparents. They would soon as rather write off the sale with no recourse than be held accountable for it.

    Despite all the good the internet can do, greed, jealosy, and evil are still a part of the human collective. Despite how easy of an idea this may be to implement, these negative instincts are rooted in the core of many peoples brain. You get a lot of money, you want a lot more. Bob has big nose, you want one bigger.

    So until mother terasa is running the Media moguls, we're all fucked.
    • So until mother terasa is running the Media moguls, we're all fucked.

      ..and, since she's dead anyway, there's not much hope for us.

      Is there?

    • QUOTE:
      I think before any DMCA type stuff is added to any kind of media, the media producer needs to be held accountable for replacement. I've never seen this happen however as most of them simply tell you "Return this to your place of purchase"

      So here's a scenario for you: You buy the latest NSync album. Fair enough. But you REALLY hate NSync, right? So you "scratch" the media to render it useless. You take it back to the store for a replacement. Becuase you hate media companies so much you repeat this process ad nauseum.

      Lather, rinse, repeat. Soon no more media company... and no more NSync!

    • This would never work because all of the recording and motion picture industries stances are based on contradictions and they are not likely to give those up.

      Your purchase of a video or album gives you a license to the material. But if the media is damaged, you have no recoruse but to buy ANOTHER license to the SAME material.

      The industries blow hot steam about copying and how much they lose to copying. Yet they collect a "royalty" on the sale of blank media, regardless of what the purcahser uses that media for. They receive payment for the sale of a product that they had absolutely NO connection to AT ALL. Its free money to them.

      Hell, piracy is economically BETTER for the recording industry. If they sell fewer CDs and pay the artists LESS but make up the difference in the "tax" they collect on blank media sales.
  • Don't sue me but.... I bought the Dazzle Hollywood DV Bridge a few months back and well, I haven't had a single problem with Macrovision. I actually bought it to put some old home movies onto my flat-panel iMac. Then I decided to put some of my out of print VHS movies onto DVD. I don't know if they have macrovision or not but they worked fine. Then I remembered about Macrovision and attempted to copy the DVD "Go" to VHS from DVD player to VCR. That didn't work due to Macrovision but when I used the DV Bridge as a pass-through it worked just fine.

    This is a rather nice side effect so now if I ever get motivated I can make some music videos or something for fun.
  • Defeting macrovision is nothing new, but the more the relitive ease of doing so is brought out into the open, perhaps the less these 'anti-copying' schemes will appear.

    I had my worst experience with macrovision with an old TV with a VCR built in. The VCR broke, and I bought a new stand alone unit thinking I'd play it through the TV. But, it went through the TVs circuits and of course, the picture was screwed up.

    I ended up buying a new TV. Now why should I be punished by this system for watching tapes that I OWN, that I'm not copying, and that I'm doing nothing illegal with?

    I hope these people stop treating consumers like criminals.

  • Video Stabalizer (Score:2, Interesting)

    by j_kenpo ( 571930 )
    Ive used the device for the past fews years to defeat Macrovision, and for legitimate purposes. The tool itself is not illegal. Since the TV in my room doesnt have composite or component inputs on it, I have to run it through my VCR. When I first got my DVD player, I noticed my video would fritz out, so I put a stabalizer in line with it to eliminate the problem. Now I can watch DVD's no problem, and what do you know, its not being used illegally. I doubt the company could be sued, since this kind of technology has legitimate purposes, such as Time Base Correctors in video decks and editing stations. So I doubt the manufacturers of the tools would be sued... but in this day and age of MPAA payed lawyers, I wouldnt doubt it, but theyd be shooting themselves in the foot when their editing decks no longer have SMTPE sync capabilities.

  • Without this stuff, my DVD would be useless... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @02:35PM (#4020359) Journal
    Both TVs in my houses are aging units that only take input from an AV cable. I need to either use an old VCR that can withstand that cheap protection crap, or what I'm using now, a 5-switch RF modulator/SVideo/RCA plug box.

    Fsck that protection crap. If I didn't think it was futile, I'd never by DVDs out of protest....

  • Potter has no DVD Macrovision (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Harry Potter DVD without Macrovision

    New Scientist has an interesting article which reveals that super-popular Harry Potter movie which was released on DVD in May, doesn't have Macrovision copy protection at all.

    Macrovision's video protection can be found from virtually all DVD discs and commercial VHS tapes. Protection mechanism basically messes up with video sync signal and makes the video signal "unstable" so VCRs and DVD-recorders (stand-alone ones) can't record the video signal. And selling such VCRs in the U.S. which would circumvent this copy protection is illegal.

    Now, since market is full of small "black boxes" that remove the Macrovision signal for you -- if you're interested, you can buy one by using this link -- Warner has obviously thought that it might actually be cheaper not to include the Macrovision on the disc and see how it effects on piracy. Adding Macrovision copy protection costs appx. $0.05 a disc. Macrovision is removed at least from USA and UK release versions of the DVD.

    See http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/3039.cfm

    ac

  • Leave 1201 out of this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2002 @02:52PM (#4020489) Homepage Journal
    IMHO, IANAL, stddisclaimer.h, etc... (Oh, and I couldn't tell from the article whether this was really about Macrovision. But I feel like preaching about Macrovision today, so here goes...)

    Using or trafficking in equipment that defeats Macrovision, is not a violation of DMCA.

    The most obvious reason for this would be that such equipment has so many uses, that it would be difficult to argue that it is "primary intended" (DMCA language) for bypassing the access control. Most of these things are used in ways that aren't even a little bit gray; lots of people need them just to get their equipment hooked up sanely. I think that if anyone tried to sue someone over this, they would lose badly.

    But the more interesting (and important) reason that it's kosher, is that Macrovision shouldn't count as a "technological measure that effectively limits access." (This argument didn't apply to CSS.) The error that Macrovision adds to a signal, is something that people sometimes had good reason to correct, even before Macrovision was invented. Surely, inventing Macrovision can't retroactively cause certain existing devices to become illegal, under DMCA. If your access control exploits a weakness that some peoples' systems may or may not have, it shouldn't count as "effective." DeCSS was developed to counter CSS. TBCs were not invented to counter Macrovision.

    I think this is important, because of the stupid copy protection methods that some publishers are trying to use in the realm of music. Some of them seem to rely on bugs in popular CD-ROM firmware (e.g. iMac's) and/or particular ripping programs (e.g. Microsoft's) and may be completely impotent and transparent to more fault-tolerant and robust software that deals with errors smarter. (Software written by the kind of people who don't trust things to work just because they never fail. Do you ever check the return value of close()? ;-) It would be silly if someone were to invent a copy protection scheme that happened to work on 80% of installations, and then got to argue that it "effectively controls access" -- thereby causing the other 20% of users to retroactively become criminals.

    So don't ever give an inch on this Macrovision crap. If MPAA wants to try to go after someone for good ol' fashioned infringement, that's fine. But if anyone brings up DMCA to try to suppress TBCs, they deserve -- ahem -- hardship.

  • Here at the epmf [dasmegabyte.org] we've been exploiting our fair use rights for years. Surely there's a lot of people who think what we do -- carve up video, stick on somebody else's audio, and put a goofy front end on it -- is artistically worthless. After all, we're using somebody else's hard work, purloined from vhs, cd, laserdisc and dvd, without compensating them.

    It takes a specific definition of art to allow synchronous audio - video collage to be its own entity seperate from both the source video and the source audio. Sure, the timecode and scene list of our average video boils down to less than 75k...but it completely changes the context of both the audio and the video source. I can't think of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" any more without imagining Vampire Hunter D -- and as any good postmodernist will tell you, a change in context equates a change in meaning and therefore, in my definition of art, a seperate entity.

    A painting emulating the style of Chuck Close is not a violation of copyright. A close to exact, hand painted copy of a Close painting is probably okay too. But a photograph of a Close painting, besides being tastlessly ironic, is a violation of his copyright.

    If, at a coffeehouse, I hear your song and come up with a clever parody of it, I'm not guilty of copyright infringement. If I record my parody, I'm probably not guilty of anything. If I record you singing it, then speed it up a few hundred cycles per second so you sound like a chipmunk, I might have broken the law. And if I compress your singing using psychoacoustics, and leave it otherwise untouched, I'm a criminal.

    I know it seems strange that I'm not arguing that I should be able to make copies of my own work...that seems to be the usual Slashdot line on Fair Use. But I don't care to do so...buying another copy of The Seven Samurai is not a big deal. What is a big deal is the idea that eventually all popular culture will be essentially locked away in copyright law for the 75 years...the better part of my lifetime.

    Fair use laws are supposed to protect artistic interpretations, which in the digital age are bound to start with close to perfect digital replicas of the original. Losing our rights to work and create entities with new value is far more dangerous than losing our rights to copy our shit...it's new interpretations that cause us to rise above the trappings of a repetitive popular culture.
  • The only place that is really suffering from region locking is the US. Over here it's not something that hits the news, it's something that everyone does every day.

    Over here almost all DVD players can bypass region encoding, and a many can bypass macrovision.

    There are dozens of websites with details of how to disable region codes. Most just need a particular sequence of keypresses on the remote. You would have to try very hard to buy a player that couldn't be made multi-region.

    We are region-2, but I would say that 50% to 75% of the DVD's in most peoples collections here are region-1. Even British-made films are released as region-1 only because region-2 is too small a market to make it worthwhile.

    Region-2 is shrivelling to nothing, and I'd be suprised if the other regions were different.

  • From the article...
    After Bresson's talk, ElcomSoft defense attorney Joseph Burton gave a talk about the ElcomSoft case at DefCon, which ended on Sunday.

    "I hope he's got a lawyer and that they talked to somebody," Burton said of Bresson.

    Defense lawyers are still lawyers... Hence the shameless plug...

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