Finnish Appeals Court Rules Breaking CSS Illegal

Thomas Nybergh writes "Due to an appeal court decision from a couple of days back, breaking the not-very-effective CSS copy protection used on most commercial DVD-Video discs is now a criminal act in Finland (robo translated). The verdict is contrary to what a district court thought of the same case last year when two local electronic rights activists were declared not guilty after having framed themselves by spreading information on how to break CSS. Back then, it was to the activists' benefit has CSS been badly broken and inneffective ever since DeCSS came out."

Oh, that CSS

[langelgjm]

For a moment there, I shook my head at the idea of the courts getting involved in webpage layout.

Re:Oh, that CSS

[PinkyDead]

...for a moment there, my heart leapt at the possibility of Bill Gates getting sent to jail for crimes against conformity.

Re:

[menace3society]

Good riddance, I say. If people took all the time they currently spent on presentation and spent it on content instead (thus letting end users decide the way to present it that best suits them), the Web wouldn't suck nearly as much as it does.

"Blague"-o-sphere, I'm looking at you...

Re:Oh, that CSS

[switchfutguy]

i knew some people were intense about WC3 validation, but this is a bit much

Re:

[clarkcox3]

Blizzard get's pretty upset when Warcraft III's online component gets cracked.

Re:

[kylehase]

Yea I thought I'd have to uninstall Greasemonkey.

Better URL

[Anonymous Coward]

A better URL to a non-robo-translated english version is http://www.turre.com/blog/?p=156

Human made translation of Turre Legal's blog entry

[livingdeadline]

There's now a proper, human made translation of Turre legal's blog entry available [googlepages.com]

Re:

[sudog]

Not much of a translation. That link seems mostly to be a rant about how wrong the court was. The best we get of what the court actually *said* was a two-line couple of sentences, and some single-word translations like "seemingly" as though the word "seemingly" somehow makes their judgement suspect.

Sigh.

Linux DVD playback

[Nomaxxx]

What will be the impact on Linux DVD playback? "You're breaking the law by watching them, we'll have to seize your original DVD collection!"

Re:

[livingdeadline]

Well, since cracking CSS is criminal according to the court it seems pretty clear that it's illegal

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

In which case, who will refund Finnish Linux users the cost of their DVD's? Or should they just p2p download a version with CSS removed?

Re:

[Hal_Porter]

Maybe they can get a refund for all the Windows only software they bought too.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Impact is between zero and zilch.

Business continues as usual, people will just show the law the finger. As they have done thus far regarding Lex Karpela. (The nickname of this law in Finland.) Not even the police cares.

Re:

[menace3society]

If the police change their minds, what are the statutory penalties involved?

I don't plan on going to Finland to play Linux DVDs, but I'm curious to know how other states' criminal penalties stack up to the US's (up to five years in jail and a $250000 fine).

Re:Linux DVD playback

[betterunixthanunix]

More likely, "You are breaking the law by watching those DVDs using royalty free software, so we will seize your computer and fine you more than you can afford to make an example of you. Oh yeah, and we are bowing to American business interests in the process."

Re:

[Slashdot Suxxors]

How many Linux users actually use this?

I do

[BLKMGK]

I do, anyone with a Linux based HTPC that can display content from commercial DVDs does. This is NOT good if it's as clear cut as the summary made it sound.

Re:

[TypoNAM]

How about every single Linux user out there that watches a DVD via mplayer, xine, VideoLAN Client, or any other open source DVD/multimedia player?
Most of them simply use libdvdcss [videolan.org] in order to access CSS encrypted content.

Re:

[Keeper Of Keys]

I have an Archos 605 with the "Cinema Plugin" which supposedly enables DVD content to be played back. However, if you copy the raw VOB files from the average DVD onto the player you'll be lucky if it works. A quick run through DVDDecrypter [thepiratebay.org] will sort it out. Fortunately I don't live in Finland.

Re:

[Technician]

How many Linux users actually use this?http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

It boots faster than Vista on a fast DVD drive.

Is linking to it going to get me jail time?

Re:Linux DVD playback

[jlarocco]

There will be no servers hosting DeCSS in Finland.

Other than that, there won't be any change. I've been watching DVDs under Linux in the United States for years and have never had a problem.

Unless you call up your local copyright police, report you're "illegally" watching a DVD, and then let them watch you play it on an "unapproved" player, there's no way for them to prove you've broken the law. Short of that, if it ever comes up, point to your regular DVD player and claim you've only used it to watch movies. Burden of proof is on them.

Re:

[egork]

In other news in Germany a prosecutor has refused to start criminal investigations against private filesharers, as he sees an abuse in the way lawyers use this process to find out the identity of those sharers. The lawyers then would drop the criminal charges and start a civil case where they can earn money. In a criminal case there is not much they can earn. The said prosecutor was himself in turn sued for refusing the cooperation.

How long until the futility and the craziness of chasing and criminalizing o

Re:

[Technician]

What can people do? The best would be a flashmob where everybody using Linux in USA would just call the "copyright police" and denounce themselves in one go.

I've pretty much done that with SONY. I picked up a copy of Open Season and couldn't play it due to the new copy protection experiment they did. When they had the backlash, and offered free replacement DVD's, I called them and ordered my replacement. They asked what player I had trouble with. I told them, Mplayer on Linux. I got my copy in the mail

criticized

[Fri13]

On Finland, it is now a criminal act to play/copy DVD by using libdvdcss but if you download same movie from P2P network, it is just criticized. If you upload movie to network, it is criminal act.

So, if you do not want to be a criminal and you use GNU/Linux, download your movies from P2P network, if you dont like to use codeina (included on Mandriva Linux) to buy codecs.

Re:criticized

[Wookieblaster]

In other words it more legal to download a movie illegally than watching it from a DVD (also illegal). Oh my.http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/26/1357257#

Re:

[Darkness404]

Wow.... So now, not only using "piracy" do you get A) Free content B) No DRM C) Faster content (if what you are downloading hasn't been localized for where you live) but now it is more legal then buying a DVD and watching it?!?! And people wonder why "piracy" has grown.

Re:criticized

[weicco]

You missed a little, but crucial point. You must download non-encrypted version of the movie from P2P network. If you download encrypted one, you are still breaking the law if you are watching it without properly licensed player. And you must download it by using a client which doesn't share the same file you are downloading.

This law, Lex Karpela as some might call it, is really confusing but luckily I don't have to deal with it. I do live in Finland but I own a standalone DVD player and buy all my DVDs :)

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know of any encrypted movies being traded on P2P networks?

Re:

[Sloppy]

If you download encrypted one, you are still breaking the law if you are watching it without properly licensed player.

I don't know Finnish law and haven't read the court's decision (how's that for a disclaimer prior to spouting off?), but I wouldn't just assume that buying a DVD and using a licensed player, is enough to make it legal. It may be that all CSS-scrambled DVDs are now illegal to watch in Finland, regardless of the player device.

Even in USA, it's pretty murky. The issue just hasn't come up,

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

On Finland, it is now a criminal act to play/copy DVD by using libdvdcss

In Finland, we are not going to give a shit about these laws. Not now, seemingly not before, and most importantly not in the future.

Re:

[houstonbofh]

There is also Fluendo as a source for codecs, and they will have a DVD player "soon." And LinDVD is available from some sources as well. Of course this will all change with the next case...

Re:

[initialE]

The next step is to get the judge to declare all decryption devices illegal. And then to make a press release stating that the judge is claiming you must turn in your DVD player because it contains illegal software or firmware within it.

Copy Protection?

[Sparr0]

I take offense at the blurb's description of CSS as "copy protection". CSS has nothing to do with copying, it is "playback protection", just like almost any other sort of encryption.

Re:

[somersault]

Audio/video copying (at least between formats) is usually a form of playback but with some duplication of the playback results. The only reason they have added this crap is to stop copying anyway, it's obvious that it isn't intended to stop actual playback for 'legal' uses.

Re:

[russotto]

Audio/video copying (at least between formats) is usually a form of playback but with some duplication of the playback results. The only reason they have added this crap is to stop copying anyway, it's obvious that it isn't intended to stop actual playback for 'legal' uses.

Well, no, that's not obvious. Seeing as they're also using it to enforce region coding, which means stopping actual playback in some countries.

This court decision is just more proof that there's no way we can prevail through the legal sy

Re:

[somersault]

Yes, I was thinking about the region coding when I said that. The whole point of region coding is to stop people in certain markets copying and selling cheaply to other markets (for example it's often cheaper to import CDs from the US than buy directly from Amazon.co.uk), it's not because there is something inherently wrong with a westerner watching Anime, or a frenchman watching American blockbusters :p

Re:Copy Protection?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

well, sort of.

The idea of region encoding is so that they can set different price points (and release dates) for different parts of the world.

They can sell a DVD in region 6 (China) for the equivalent of $2 (say) because that is the maximum price that the market will bear. The region encoding stops someone from buying up 10,000 DVDs at $2 and then importing them to the US and selling them for $10. Making $8 profit whilst still significantly undercutting the discs that the studios want to sell in the US.

It also means that they can stagger the release of a movie around the world, and then stagger the DVD release whilst keeping people from getting DVDs from one of the earlier regions into one of the other regions whilst the movie is still in the theatres there (thus creating extra ticket sales from the people who just have to see the movie more than once and can not get it on a DVD yet)

Re:

[somersault]

Yeah I mentioned that in another post, I did already get that. I guess that's why I said 'legal' instead of legal up there too. I don't think they should be allowed to stifle a free market in that way for things like music and video. When it comes to more dangerous stuff like vehicles I guess you'd want to be pretty stringent about what you let into the country, but I can't see a good case for limiting entertainment imports.

Re:

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Ah, I must have misread your post - I thought that you were implying that people could make & sell illegitimate copies into other markets, and was pointing out that the copies need not be illegitimate - legitimate copies intended for another market are what region encoding is there to stop; if you are going to start copying the discs, you might as well entirely strip the region encoding off them at the same time.
For vehicles; I think you will find that it is national import regulations that keep dangero

Re:

[somersault]

Nah I was just trying to think of an example where it would be preferable to control imports, but I guess it is different because it's the receiver blocking imports rather than the sender blocking exports..

Re:

[poetmatt]

One day businesses will learn that forced price discrepancies like that kill your business long term. If the jackasses stopped looking so short term they'd realize that. /works for a global engineering company //we just rolled out equal global pricing...no more shopping around, which is what happens when it's not equal...plus other confusion internally too

Re:Copy Protection?

[Pig Hogger]

One day businesses will learn that forced price discrepancies like that kill your business long term.

One day, geeks will learn that businesses are run by business types who don't give a flying fuck about the long-term but want their profit **NOW**.

Re:

[poetmatt]

Actually, I run my own business, and I think long term, and it pays off every time.

Not every business is stupid enough to think short term, just the ones that want to be big now and die out just as fast.

It's only the fault of the companies that give shareholders majority control thus failed long term thinking in the first place.

Re:

[mpe]

It also means that they can stagger the release of a movie around the world, and then stagger the DVD release whilst keeping people from getting DVDs from one of the earlier regions into one of the other regions whilst the movie is still in the theatres there (thus creating extra ticket sales from the people who just have to see the movie more than once and can not get it on a DVD yet)

Or at least that is the theory. In practice most of the planet has region free DVD players, which are not catching on in t

Re:

[PPH]

Its primarily reason #2 (staggered release) rather than reason A (keeping cheap imports out of wealthy markets).

If reason A were valid, then we'd see a demand for DVD players (black market) in Region 1 patched to play other DVDs. That's almost unheard of. Most American customers don't even know what a 'region code' is. Go overseas* and practically every back alley electronics shop (and many High Street ones) advertise region free players.

*Yeah, I know. My definition of 'overseas' reveals my US-centric po

Re:

[dwater]

> Go overseas* and practically every back alley electronics shop

I've only seen them advertised as such *in the USA*.

Everywhere else I've been (apart from the UK, I think) assumes that they will play any region. I guess you might get some such markings on the box, if you look for them, but it's not otherwise advertised.

Re:

[clickety6]

Or they could just release the Chinese region DVD with only chinese soundtracks and chinese subtitles... that would be a much more effective protection for most people! :-)

Re:

[Anonymous Cowpat]

that would deny them the english-speaking-and-don't-want-a-badly-dubbed-version market in China. Why deny yourself that market when you can use region codes to keep that market and still stop the discs moving around.

Re:

[PPH]

That's not the way it works out. Region coding prevents certain region's consumers from buying legitimate content and promotes copying/downloading to satisfy their demand.

Its called the law of unintended consequences [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[dwater]

Living in China, I get DVDs for next to nothing (USD0.5). They're usually crap quality[1], but they do the job most of the time.

If the purpose of region codes were to allow a 'title' to be sold here at a lower price than in the US (say), then surely we'd see them for sale; but we don't. Such a policy requires that every title be sold in every market, at least the identical DVD as other places, but preferably, with region specific subtitles/audio.

[1] They are crap quality usually deliberately since they try

Re:

[Haeleth]

The whole point of region coding is to stop people in certain markets copying and selling cheaply to other markets (for example it's often cheaper to import CDs from the US than buy directly from Amazon.co.uk),

Um, what? Please enlighten me -- where, exactly, does "copying" take place when I legally purchase an original, authentic DVD from abroad instead of waiting 6 months and then paying double for the local release?

Indeed, the people who actually engage in copying DVDs invariably remove the region coding

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

For many of the anti-IP zealots on Slashdot (I don't know if you are one of them), the first step to understanding the situation would be to realise that the judges, economists, lawyers and so on who work on these matters are not simply tools of some industrial conspiracy. There is a solid basis in economic theory for intellectual property, just as there is for physical property, and this is one of the reasons why there are laws protecting IP (another is the notion of moral rights to one's creative works, w

Re:

[rts008]

First off, that was a really good post. Well laid out, reasonable and rational. Good job!

However...
I am not an 'anti-IP zealot', even though reading my posts on the subject would indicate I may be one.
I can only speak for myself, but I feel I am not alone here:

It's about negotiating. A starting point to be refined.

It's /., so here's a car analogy:

You have a car you want to sell, maybe for as much as you can get for it. I am interested in buying it as cheaply as possible.
You start out asking $6,000.00 for th

Re:

[Haeleth]

the idea of abolishing it (or intellectual property generally), as many Slashdot zealots favour, is generally viewed as an extreme and nonsensical position.

So, I would hope, is the idea of making it perpetual, with the punishment for infringement being lengthy imprisonment followed by utter ruin -- which is the view many entertainment-industry zealots favour.

People espouse extreme views because it's the only way their voices are likely to be heard, and because they find the views being held by their opponen

Re:Copy Protection?

[mdmkolbe]

CSS prevents copying a DVD to a video tape or other format. But it does nothing to prevent duplicating (i.e. copying) the DVD using another DVD because doing that doesn't require cracking CSS.

In the days before DVD burner's were common, CSS may have been effective copy protection, but now days it just keeps people from playing it in the wrong country. Country codes mean that it is and was at least in part intended to be playback protection.

Re:

[somersault]

Fair enough. Playback protection IMO should be illegal as they're just trying to exploit certain markets by charging them far more than would be acceptable or affordable in other markets. Letting the market choose shouldn't really be illegal, at least in the case of entertainment. Other things like food could maybe affect the economy or stability of a country (if you are expecting to go to war then you'll probably be wanting to grow your own food!)

Re:Copy Protection?

[Kjella]

But it does nothing to prevent duplicating (i.e. copying) the DVD using another DVD because doing that doesn't require cracking CSS. In the days before DVD burner's were common, CSS may have been effective copy protection, but now days it just keeps people from playing it in the wrong country.

The CSS key is written to sector 0, and if I remember correctly regular DVD recorders can't write to sector 0 and regular platters have sector 0 filled with zeros. So no, you could not make a 1:1 copy using a regular DVD burner. I honestly don't remember or care, it might be illegal but it's been about two lines of commands to get it in any recent Linux box.

Re:

[gnuman99]

You can get "special" burners for $1000 or so that will write to those sectors. Someone posted it on a similar discussion months ago. You can search for those types of authoring dvd writers.

It also doesn't stop pirates these can easily afford these special burners or just get a DVD shop to press real DVDs for them from the original "master" they bought for $30.

Re:

[Pofy]

>So no, you could not make a 1:1 copy using a
>regular DVD burner.

But the issue is not if you can make a copy of the complete DVD. What is protected by copyright is the work, the movie. So the questions is, is the work, the movie, copy protected. You can copy the complete movie without any problem. What the protection do is that you can't access/play the movie in certain players that in addition to the movie also wants a key in specific places. So the protection does not stop copying at all, it stops t

CSS was all about region coding, not copying.

[argent]

CSS doesn't even slow down the class of people who were the main copying threat back when CSS was devised in the late '80s and early '90s. Copying and passing around DVDs over computer networks wasn't even on the horizon... people were treating software released on CD instead of floppy as being more protected just because it would take too long to download... and writable discs didn't come out until 1997. CSS doesn't do anything to stop people who can read the data off the DVD and create a new master from it to create counterfeit DVDs (often in the same factories in Asia that were making the originals), and that's what copy protection was about back then.

Re:Copy Protection?

[ultranova]

The only reason they have added this crap is to stop copying anyway, it's obvious that it isn't intended to stop actual playback for 'legal' uses.

I seem to recall the very people who passed Lex Karpela saying that they don't know what it actually forbids and allows. Given this, I think the only thing it actually intends is to help are the profits of Karpela's then-boyfriend, movie director Olli Saarela.

Oh well, just the usual corruption associated with politics, coupled with the also-usual outright lies and attempts to suppress the understandably critical reaction from the citizens by blaming it on "outside forces". Finnish politicians at their finest indeed...

Re:

[Pig Hogger]

The general Norwegian reputation for social-democratic nanny-states rubs off on Finland so much that no one realizes that they are far from being social-democrats, but instead are hardline right-wingers; let's not forget that during World-War II, they were on the nazi side and they pretty much kicked soviet ass throughout the whole war.

Re:

[menace3society]

In point of fact, it doesn't stop someone from copying at all, does it? You can make and burn a disc image even if it's protected by CSS, can't you?

Mind you, I don't know for sure since i've never tried it, but that how it appears to work.

Further proof that the RIAA/MPAA/etc are not interested in rights per se, but only in control.

Re:

[dwater]

Indeed.

It's only effective at stopping a casual attempt at copying - sort of like a little sign say, "Do not copy". The real teeth are in the law(s) behind it.

This makes me wonder why they don't just forget about CSS and just print "Do not copy" on it - it'd be a hell of a lot clearer.

Headline incorrect - CSS breaking is still legal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the headline is incorrect - the court did NOT rule that breaking CSS is illegal but distributing the software to accomplish this is illegal - breaking the copy protection for private use IS STILL LEGAL.

So nothing changed really - media is just screwing over the whole thing as usual.

Re:CSS breaking is still legal

[JesseMcDonald]

the court did NOT rule that breaking CSS is illegal but distributing the software to accomplish this is illegal

That's merely a technicality. The vast majority of people are neither able or willing to discover and exploit the weaknesses in CSS for themselves, so making it illegal to distribute the known antidote(s) has the same effect as making it illegal to "break" CSS in the first place.

What good does it do you to be permitted to break the copy protection for private use if no one can legally tell yo

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

My original comment is still valid, here's an excerpt from the Finnish law:

"Mità 1 momentissa sÃÃdetÃÃn, ei sovelleta, jos tekninen toimenpide kierretÃÃn salaustekniikoita koskevan tutkimuksen tai opetuksen yhteydessà taikka jos teoksen kappaleen laillisesti hankkinut tai haltuunsa saanut kiertÃà teknisen toimenpiteen teoksen saamiseksi kuultavilleen tai nÃhtÃvilleen. Teoksesta, jota suojaava tekninen toimenpide on kierretty teoksen saamiseksi kuul

So the quality of security matters not, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's the case, why not just protect everything with ROT-13 and make it illegal to 'crack' it. Seriously, it the logical step. Why spend millions developing the latest copy protection when you can simply use the law to help you pretend what you've got is good enough.

Re:So the quality of security matters not, then?

[Aetuneo]

This post in encrypted with rot-26. If you are able to read this text, you have violated the law by circumventing the encryption.

Sorry, it had to be said.

Re:

[houstonbofh]

But the EULA terms are inside the encrypted text, and unenforceable.

Re:

[dwater]

That's stupid.

Why not just print on the DVD (or whatever), "Do Not Copy"? If they're going to enforce it all with law anyway, what's the point in doing anything more than that?

Re:

[mpe]

What's the difference between encrypting and encoding? Is passwordless encryption anything more than a mere encoding of the data?!

What many people insist on calling "codes" are actually ciphers anyway. The difference is that actual codes are linguistic whereas ciphers are mathematical. Anything which uses a machine has to be some sort of cipher...

Let's just call ASCII a way to cipher text!

It would be more accurate to have this mean "American Standard Cipher for Information Interchange" since it's a si

Re:

[Mental Maelstrom]

What I wanted to get to was:

In case brute force decryption attacks, which do not disrupt external systems, are illegal:

1. Encrypting and decrypting are algorithms for encoding and decoding which use an external variable, a key
2. A brute force decryption attack is a decoding algorithm with no key, which produces the same result as the decryption algorithm with a key.
3. Therefore, applying certain data decoding algorithms is illegal.
4. Therefore, some forms of transferring data from one format to another is illeg

Madness

[growse]

The more we criminalize the behaviour of those who try to reverse-engineer or break security features, the more we are saying "we give up" to those looking to capitalize on breaking them, and the less secure we'll become.

Re:

[elronxenu]

So ... the terrorists have already won?

Re:

[growse]

Of course. They have government-paid employees to spread terror for them. It's the ultimate victory.

So it's illegal? What does that mean?

[fishbowl]

Crossing the street on foot against a signal is illegal.
Killing a family with an axe is illegal.
Decrypting CSS is illegal.
Having weeds in your yard taller than half a meter is illegal.

Does one word sufficiently characterize all these crimes?

Re:

[houstonbofh]

I would say the crossing and the weeds correlate, and the RIAA would say the axe and the copy would correlate. And while I think this statement is funny, I also think it is not far from true.

old news?

[davek]

I can't believe this is still in the news. It's been cracked so long, it has already spawned the successful careers of several pre-bubble programming magicians from RIT.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/19/1148249 [slashdot.org]

Not Cascading Style Sheets... d'uh

[Crazyswedishguy]

I was slightly confused at first, and from the comments I see I wasn't the only one. For those who didn't at first know what the post was referring to, it's not Cascading Style Sheets, but Content Scrambling System.

Content Scramble System (CSS) is a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme used on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs. It utilizes a relatively weak, proprietary 40-bit stream cipher algorithm. The system was introduced around 1996 and has subsequently been compromised.

CSS: Content Scrambling System [wikipedia.org]

One appeal left

[Aggrajag]

The defendant can still appeal to the Finnish equivalent of Supreme Court.

Re:

[Chemicalscum]

If they loose that, they can still take their appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

Re:

[Aggrajag]

I don't think that Russia's prime minister Vladimir Putin has anything to do with Finland's court system.

Re:

[afabbro]

In former Soviet Russia, Putin...oh, never mind.

Re:

[Aggrajag]

Sorry about that, in Soviet Finland the joke gets you! And Putin has taken your refridgerators...

Playing DVDs breaks CSS too

[crosbie]

We can bear in mind that since copying a DVD doesn't involve decryption, copying is a mere copyright infringement.

However, what is 'breaking CSS'?

If 'breaking' is decrypting then playing DVDs also decrypts them.

If you have a decryption device (DVD player) and an encrypted intellectual work (DVD) subject to copyright (and DMCA/EUCD) then the Finnish court must also rule that operating a DVD player is illegal.

You can't have it both ways. Well, unless you allow a copyright holder to usurp the law and say "Decr

The weakness of CSS is not the issue

[jandersen]

If you leave the door to your house open and go away on holiday, is it then legal for anybody to enter and take your things away? I don't think so - the presence of any copyright protection, even if it is just the words "Don't make a copy", means that you are not meant to do it, of course.

The only real question is whether there should be any such thing as copyright and what form it should have. I don't believe the CSS was ever meant to be a real encryption as much as a device that makes it clear that there

Actually the issue is about badly designed laws

[jesterzog]

Take the analogy with the house again: if the door is open, you can explain away your presence in the house - you went in to see if everything was OK, or whatever; but if there is a lock, even the flimsiest kind, you will have to break in, and it will be clear that you didn't come in just by accident, "because you thought they were home".

Surely what it really comes down to, however, is whether they actually had a right to put the lock there in the first place, or a right to order you not to break it. If

Re:How?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to reply but apparently /. comment engine is even worse than Diggs.

The headline is WRONG - it's NOT illegal to break the CSS content protection for PERSONAL use - it's completely legal. Period.

This ruling is not about viewing the movies on Linux or any other device but spreading the DeCSS program itself.

So bottom line:
Decryption of movies to view them on Linux was not and is not even after this ruling illegal.

Unfortunately Slashdot fails and posts every piece of FUD they can get their hands on without any verification.

Re:

[zappepcs]

I have wondered a few times, what if you built your own encryption/decryption software/hardware, then decoded a DVD, further, encoded it in your encryption scheme and shared this with a small group of friends who also have the same hardware/software.

Would you be compelled to allow the **AA et al to have your keys and view what you have on DVD, or would that be against the law for them to do? What works for them should surely work for the private individual regarding encryption. Yes it's not exactly a workab

Re:

[h4rm0ny]

So they have basically concluded that it is legal to do something, but to help someone else do this legal thing, is illegal.

Re:

[linhux]

This is from the blog post translation:

"The Court of Appeal still insisted that the CSS system itself was originally designed to prevent copying and therefore any tampering with the encryption whatsoever - so decrypting the DVD for the purpose of watching is illegal."

Re:

[mpe]

Basically, this is an issue of "doing things against the wishes of copyright holders is illegal" after our equilevant of the RIAA strongarmed a law through.

Most likely doing things against a small selection of copyright holders. Given that it would be hard to find an actual person aged over about two and any corporate person who isn't a "copyright holder". It would not be suprising if the majority of copyright holders (or at least the majority of those prepared to express an opinion) were opposed to all s

Re:

[TheP4st]

Wow... With your flawless logic and profound argumentation you have succeeded in turning me into a RIAA supporter for life.

Re:

[Tuoqui]

What golden rule? He who has the gold makes the rules? Sorry but that might have flown back in the day when we had to kiss the kings feet...

Now if you're talking about do unto others... well maybe some people would wish to give away their things for free (look at Linux) because they think that by giving things away someone will take it and improve on it and in turn give it away too.

Re:

[zrq]

And nothing can change that fact that piracy is and will remain stealing!

Sigh. No, it is not stealing, it is copyright infringement.
Both illegal, but they are different laws.

Re:

[Jaime2]

In my opinion creating systems that restrict the use of media beyond the limits of fair use is the equivalent of stealing that "extra profit" from hundreds of millions of people. It is often called "extortion".

What life-threatening consequenses could it have to justify allowing media companies to create an artificial monopoly in an arena where their distribution services are no longer required? So they stop making movies, big deal. People have shown for thousands of years that they will create entertai

Re:

[toriver]

You mean you do not see the difference between a near-zero cost duplication of binary data and taking a physical object belonging to someone so that they no linger have it? What the FUCK are you doing reading a technical site with such a lack of understanding?

Anyway, that is not at all what this is about, but decryption of data you PAID FOR in the form of a DVD.

Re:

[dvice_null]

Most people probably noticed that the summary has two links. One to the latest news and one to a year old event. The actual event happened May 22rd, 2008, so the story is only a few days old.