Legal Actions Against Linux-DVD authors 346
Teancum writes "Legal actions have already started to happen against the programmers who wrote the DVD-CSS decription routines. This page contains the official response by the programmer, who has had his web site shut down by his ISP. I guess that the DVD Forum doesn't want to see an open source project that can read DVD-Video. More info about the Livid project can be found here. " Update: 11/05 04:33 by H :Check out the latest announcement from his site - eMedia has done a great report on the whole thing - read this.
Re:Down with big business (Score:1)
there is nothing wrong with "Big Business" that isn't already wrong with people in general.
Re:Interesting tidbits on Section 296 (Score:2)
So THIS, silly AC (Score:1)
A lawyer that reads Slashdot is by definition technically inclined enough to realize this. Save the paranoia for the stuff you need to be paranoid about.
Re:Section 296 clauses 1,2 of the Copyright Act 19 (Score:1)
Second, in the US wouldn't 2b violate the first amendment? And would it not violate similar laws in at least some other countries?
Closing the barn door... (Score:1)
Re:Section 296 clauses 1,2 of the Copyright Act 19 (Score:1)
Nick
Re:Didn't stop MP3, won't stop DVD (Score:2)
Of course it would have. Someone would have said, "That won't work. You see, once someone gets a single key, which they will be able to do if they disassemble or just pay attention to what a software decoder does, the whole thing goes ka-blooey."
-=-=-=-=-
Re: 24-inch academy ratio ? (Score:2)
Emailing (Score:1)
this is a bunch of crap. (Score:1)
Re:We need collective memory (Score:1)
Wayne
Re:Questions: (Score:2)
There is little to fear -- the fact that the industry went after the authors already suggests that they're archeologically ignorant of how an information network functions. Before they made their stupid attack, there were perhaps a hundred copies of the source. Now there are thousands, spreading all over with an O(n^2) growth surface area, and they'll never be able to catch them all (my copies are in two secured machines far enough apart that a strategic nuclear warhead couldn't get them both, and no paper trail -- some friendly overseas mirrors would help, though).
If it does come to a court case against the linux-dvd authors, though, it would be great to see organized OSS community resistance -- legal defense funds, PR/letter efforts, source-code T-shirts and such stuff. As the OSS community grows in scope, it will naturally tend to come in contact with more legal pigheadedness, and it would be useful to have some sort of organized defenses (conventional and guerilla types) to cope with an attack.
Can you copyright a number? (Score:1)
it just dawned on me - what we're really talking about here is the key that was found in the Xing code, plus some others that were guessed once it was known.
It's pretty obvious that the guessed ones can't be copyrighted .... being encrypted they haven't even been published so they must be trade secrets .... the only people who could be prosecuted would be people who gave them away ... and no one did, as I understand it, they were obtained by deduction, not reverse engineering or any sort of theft.
On the other hand the original key that was in plaintext in the Xing code was obtained from a copyrighted work ..... can something that's just a number be copyrighted? (I know it can't be trademarked)? Can I copyright '9', or better yet '0'? how about '42'? or '78687622'? can one draw the line (yeah I know it's law, not math and they have different criteria for getting stuff done .... but if some people are going to own numbers I want to stake out some usefull ones before the land rush gets going).
Seriously though it seems that one could 'own' a number in a certain context .... for example '987492837498234898732' in the context of DVD might be a copyrightable number .... but what if I want to use it in a paper on number theory? or it's a large prime I want to use in a paper on primes?
Of course the problem here is that in order for this DVD-number to be usefull it has to be secret but copyright requires publishing - the minute it's published the number loses all it's worth - so maybe we're just looking at lawyer smoke&mirrors
Re: 24-inch academy ratio ? (Score:2)
Re:Bully Tactics (Score:1)
Re:I'm not sure I understand (Score:1)
This has nothing to do with the entertainment industry angry about a bad investment. Entertainment companies are famous for making bad investments. Just ask any investor.
The DVD pricing scheme has marketting 101 written all over it. Always charge MORE for something new. It doesn't matter if the "New and Improved" version is any better than the old one, consumers will pay more just because it's something different. Other industries thrive on this concept. Car manufacturers stay in existance because of this rule. So do computer manufacturers. Entertainment people are just following the pack here.
Moderate down this troll (Score:1)
Re:Didn't stop MP3, won't stop DVD (Score:1)
uh, yeah, right.
do you really think that's all there was to it? you don't think there's any chance maybe the people who did this (or the people who would do this) weren't thinking "This is gonna be cool! Free Movies!" ?
get real
This is the reply (Score:1)
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Re:A lot of issues - reverse engineering and so on (Score:2)
You're missing something - nobody "broke into anybody's house".
If your front door locked is broken by design, then yes, it's illegal for someone to break in. - but it's NOT illegal for that someone to tell you about it, or to inform the lock manufacturer that they make a shoddy product, or to broadcast to the general public that the locks are faulty.
Nobody broke any laws here - they cracked the encryption for legitimate reasons. Your analogy implies that they broke the encryption and started selling pirate DVD's, which is untrue.
Yes, you are dead wrong. (Score:1)
"According to CNN, the group was attempting to reverse-engineer a software DVD player in order to create one compatible with the Linux operating system. There is currently no Linux-compatible player."
read http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9911/05/dvd.hac
Yikes! (Score:2)
Not a prime... (Score:1)
Heh, check this out: http://www.theonion.com/oni on3311/microsoftpatents.html [theonion.com]
Re:To The Ramparts! (Score:1)
Take care,
Steve
All for one and one for all. (Score:5)
Re:Section 296 clauses 1,2 of the Copyright Act 19 (Score:1)
Oh Boy (Score:1)
Re:I'm not sure I understand (Score:1)
Defence monies? (Score:3)
I know the FSF has a legal team, but I've never heard that they'd do anything but enforce the GPL. Would they get involved in this kind of thing?
--Parity
Re:Actually, I've wondered about this myself. (Score:1)
I presume that you are refering to copying one tape to another (using two VCR's)? It's not as straight forward as copying using a home VCR due to Macrovision. Macrovision plays with the gain in the VCR, effecting copies but not the TV.
"If they were really worried about pirates, what about screen captures? What about split data streams? What about capturing the signal from the decoder and saving the raw output to a vcr? What about every other possible way to copy something that can be seen or heard? You simply can't encrypt something of this nature, so why try?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that MPEG-2 is compressed. A straight screen or data stream capture would require huge amounts of storage space and make redistribution tricky. I've also heard that DVD-Video also utilises Macrovision, making copying to tape difficult without some additional equipment.
You're right: there is always a way around the system, especially if people are willing to sacrifice image and sound quality. These options increase with time, but by making it harder now, the industry can make bigger profits now.
Personally I don't know why the industry bothers: I would suspect that the average consumer doesn't care for or can't be bothered wih pirating, or they'd be a bigger problem now with current technologies.
Sigh (Score:4)
The emperor has no clothes. Sound familiar? Like the story, nobody wanted to acknowledge that the DVD encryption sucked - it was trivial to crack! I'm sure the people that initially released this knew it was weak. I mean... 4 bytes for encryption?
Now somebody comes out and says "Sir, you have no clothes"... and boy is the emperor pissed! MS did the same thing with hotmail (bad hackers, bad!) - blame somebody else. Security is not about ignoring issues.. it's about confronting them. Make it public.. let people try to crack it. If it stands the test of time... THEN it's secure, and not before then. The movie industry just spent several billions on security training.
--
Didn't stop MP3, won't stop DVD (Score:4)
Once the jinni gets out of the bottle, it's damned hard to get it back in. Lawsuits might harass individuals, but it won't stop the momentum.
The only way I can see this thing being stopped is for a "DVD2" to come out and for "the industry" to obsolete all DVD currently on the market, and if that happened, I'd bet the consumers would raise bloody hell over it. ESPECIALLY considering how long everyone waited to get the freaking DVD standard in the first place.
-=-=-=-=-
Monopolies crumbling (Score:1)
Whoever brought the suit up should be ashamed of themselves.
~spot
illegal? (Score:1)
Re:GOOD! (Score:1)
Umm, hello !
Can you say region codes ?
They already do have to do multiple different runs because the morons don't want your to view a US film in e.g. the UK due to the different release schedules in the cinemas. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that it's not hard to run an NTSC TV and a US DVD player in the UK. Of course most people don't do that since lots of places sell "region free" players with modified firmware allowing people to view region 1 DVDs elsewhere anyway.
Re:All for one and one for all. [fair use] (Score:1)
Whenever the minidisc gets chomped, dropped, boiled.. whatever, I not have my original CD to go and copy back out.
This is perfectly legal. I won't switch to DVD until I can get my fair use out of it. And, just like my CD->MD conversion, I expect perfect quality, digital.
Pan
Link to Copyright Designs & Patents Act 1988 (Score:2)
Devices designed to circumvent copy-protection
296
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection, as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
Interesting tidbits on Section 296 (Score:2)
296 Devices designed to circumvent copy-protection
(1) This section applies where copies of a copyright work are issued to the public, by or with the licence of the copyright owner, in an electronic form which is copy-protected.
(2) The person issuing the copies to the public has the same rights against a person who, knowing or having reason to believe that it will be used to make infringing copies-
(a) makes, imports, sells or lets for hire, offers or exposes for sale or hire, or advertises for sale or hire, any device or means specifically designed or adapted to circumvent the form of copy-protection employed, or
(b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection, as a copyright owner has in respect of an infringement of copyright.
[(2A) Where the copies being issued to the public as mentioned in subsection (1) are copies of a computer program, subsection (2) applies as if for the words "or advertises for sale or hire" there were substituted "advertises for sale or hire or possesses in the course of a business.]
(3) Further, he has the same rights under section 99 or 100 (delivery up or seizure of certain articles) in relation to any such device or means which a person has in his possession, custody or control with the intention that it should be used to make infringing copies of copyright works, as a copyright owner has in relation to an infringing copy.
(4) References in this section to copy-protection include any device or means intended to prevent or restrict copying of a work or to impair the quality of copies made.
(5) Expressions used in this section which are defined for the purposes of Part I of this Act (copyright) have the same meaning as in that Part.
(6) The following provisions apply in relation to proceedings under this section as in relation to proceedings under Part I (copyright)-(a) sections 104 to 106 of this Act (presumptions as to certain matters relating to copyright), and (b) section 72 of the Supreme Court Act 1981, section 15of the Law Reform
(Miscellaneous Provisions)
(Scotland) Act 1985 and section 94A of the Judicature
(Northern Ireland) Act 1978 (withdrawal of privilege against self-incrimination in certain proceedings relating to intellectual property);
and section 114 of this Act applies, with the necessary modifications, in relation to the disposal of anything delivered up or seized by virtue of subsection (3) above.
Actually, I've wondered about this myself. (Score:2)
Ok, this may all seem obvoius, and if it is, please tell me I'm just being insane. But what in the hell is going on here? Let me get this straight:
I could go on for a while, but I see that it's pointless. The fact that they're trying to sue someone for their own neglegence is fairly amusing. But the fact is, they lose absolutely nothing by having the keys cracked. They didn't get anything out of it in the first place - so they can't lose anything.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the DVD industry was trying to pull a fast one on movie and publishing studios... you know, "Hey, DVD is encrypted... so you'll no longer have to worry about bootlegged copies of your product." Now they have to save face, and it looks like they don't like it one single iota. If this is the case, I wonder how they explained the DVD->VCR and similar copying techniques once the stream is decoded... Oh well, back to the drawing board.
Shaun Thomas [mailto]Kildosphere.com [kildosphere.com]
What I said on Sunday (Score:2)
Bingo! (Score:3)
Now ask yourself if you want the ability in the coming millenium to make your own desktop movies, your own music CDs, and be able to go on the net and sell 'em to people on your own without going to CBS or Universal Studios? It doesn't matter that much if you're not good, do you want the _ability_ to express yourself in this way?
The alternative is exactly what Bruce says, allowing commercial interests acting as trusts to make it difficult for you to be in the business unless you go through one of the established studios- and there's a LOT of evidence that this is sheer exploitation. I'm not sure how bad it is in film, but in the music industry the exploitation is very very bad, insanely so, outright fraudulent. It's brutal.
The counterbalance to this is ability to produce your own artworks, at several important levels.
- First, it needs to be legal and possible to do the actual artwork. This would compare to being allowed to own recording equipment at all, if you're a musician. This is tough to lose- it would be tyrannical and indefensible to eliminate it, though you'll see just this happening indirectly- you're taxed on blank media by the industries, supposedly to defend against 'pirates'.
- Second, it needs to be legal and possible to distribute your artwork. There are some ways to challenge this, though it is tough. This is the level of ability to record your own work on media that is played on industry standard consumer level players, such as CD players. Soon it will be a question of making your own DVD desktop films and being able to give friends your work to play on their consumer DVD players. I _think_ DVD already punishes independents in that you can't do that yet, you have to be a licensee for huge sums or you don't have ability to record that format and play it on a consumer deck. That's bad, very bad, and it must be changed.
- Third, you need to have the ability to go somewhere and get 1000 CDs/DVDs pressed. Here, CDs have traditionally been strong- there are many small outfits that will burn a case of CDs for you. I think there is a concerted effort going on to make it so no such availability will be there for DVDs. If you have a hit underground rock album and enough grassroots/net distribution to justify pressing them in the thousands, you can do that today. I'm not aware of any way to legally and practically have a hit underground _film_ and press DVDs of it in the thousands, and this is a very serious problem and concern for freedom. We are not talking about pirates here, we are talking about the voice of the artist or independent filmmaker.
- Finally, you get up to extremely heavy distribution. There may be a problem in getting along with the big entertainment trusts, but if you're playing on those levels you already have your own distribution networks and can cut deals from a position of strength, by shipping X many products and saying 'There. I could move 6X as many with your distribution. You can have a cut of that, or you can sit by and I'll get someone else for it or grow until I'm doing it myself'. At this level the artist does not need that much protection as he or she has _arrived_ and is doing business effectively, with extensive distribution already.
That's basically 4 levels. Currently, with regard to CD-Roms, the levels to watch out for are second and third- if new consumer CD hardware refuses to play the existing format, it would be suicidal but would also be a way of 'taking back' control of CD authoring from the independents. More significantly, the people who can press 1000 CDs for less than a grand have to be protected- if they are harassed out of business, the independent would have to try releasing their work on blue dye-CDs pressed one at a time, and that doesn't scale. Access to the industrial duplicators _must_ remain.With regard to DVDs, it looks like the entire first three levels are at serious risk. I'm not certain you can burn the DVD format at home with your own material: THAT has got to change (rejoicing if I'm wrong here, but I kind of doubt it.). By the same token, if you can't burn it you can't give it to a friend, the datasizes are not comparable to the industry offerings, and if it's made illegal to 'pirate' defined as burn movie content onto a DVD (backing up HDs OK but video content, you're not allowed to?) then level two is shot- if you distribute your own work burned in DVD format you could get done for piracy even though it's your own work. Finally, the third level is the volume producers- if they are stamped out in the name of antipiracy it is an incredible imposition on the independent artist, because without that ability to work hard enough to earn the money to ship the commercial grade content on standard media in volume, nobody is ever going to get to stage 4, the stage of jockeying for position and making room for yourself at the table. To do that you _have_ to be able to move the units yourself and present the big distributors with a fait accompli- giving them an unsolicited tape will not cut it, you have to show them your network and the amount of units you're currently doing.
Are we going to let the industry BAN us from producing artworks as independents? (insert 'poetic license' joke here!
The _first_ order of business should be getting control of the ability to master consumer DVDs, just as we are able to master audio CDs legally and unharassed. If that means losing the encryption so be it- there are important issues at stake for the millenium. The technology _will_ come, and people _will_ be able to do desktop filmmaking. It's a question of whether the consumer media becomes a wholly controlled property of vast conglomerates, or whether individual artists will be allowed to pursue their artwork using common consumer media for output. You can burn a CD and play it for people (especially if they have a CD-Rom, but maybe even on their CD players.) What if you were only allowed to record on DATs and had to go to Atlantic Records to be allowed to have it made into a CD?
Re:Yes, you are dead wrong. (Score:2)
Quite frankly, I wouldn't be suprised if the "group" broke DVD for whatever reason and then just brought up Linux to deflect the argument somewhat. I hope that doesn't make me a troll.
Re:GOOD! (Score:2)
If they have to press one set for the US and then one other set for everywhere but the US regardless of release codes, that's now 2 smaller runs (40 bit & 128 bit) vs. one larger run. The cost of warehousing the DVD's as they're waiting for the release date is negligible.
Re:Bully Tactics (Score:2)
It's called *capitalism*. This system can't exist without an overwhelming apparatus of lawyers, courts, prisons, police, and so on, all of which function to protect the rich crooks from getting challenged by the little guys/gals.
How many rich people do you know who are in prison?
Yup, awfully small list isn't it?
Chuck0
Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
www.infoshop.org
I don't care about the copying- (Score:2)
Give me either access to the ENCRYPTION if there must be encryption, or make the format so you can burn DVDs with unencrypted data, AND THE CONSUMER DECKS WILL PLAY THEM. I'm serious. This isn't about piracy at all. It's 'content protection', in the sense of "You can't be an artist/filmmaker unless you're big enough to be one of the X many corps which can afford one of the encryption slots. Not many of those! If you're just some schmuck making films, you are NOT ALLOWED to produce standard media. If you try we'll sue."
Does anybody see what is wrong with this picture? Who is working on making this state of affairs STOP and giving artists the right to create and distribute their artworks? This goes waaaay beyond the pale, and it really has little to do with piracy at all. It's just the same as taxes on blank media for consumers to tax independent content creators- only this time it appears that it might be possible to TOTALLY cut off every indie artist/filmmaker from the ability to reach an audience. Is this unconstitutional?
Re:Some confusion... (Score:2)
to do with this
Actually, Derek wrote the following on the Livid-dev mailing list:
Still haven't got full details, but it "potentially violates the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988; Sectiond 296(1) and (2)".
They seem to be using a statute that covers both copyrights and patents so they could be claiming either, or both. This is why I used the terms in the way that I did.
Re:Uhh (Score:2)
Many computers anymore could actually do this in software, though it'd eat most of the CPU time. Then again, if you're watching movies it's pretty unlikely you're doing any other work.
What are you trying to do, add a DVD drive to a Pentium-200? While I suppose you could try it, the money would be better spent on a real DVD player and an upgrade for the computer.
Oh yeah; before I forget, do you have any idea how long it would take to convert a 4-gigabyte movie file to something like, say, an AVI or MPEG, which woulf come out larger still?
That's the problem with the industry. So the encryption was cracked. Big deal. DVD piracy is still impractical. One DVD-RAM disk costs more than a DVD movie. The storage space to hold just one DVD movie on a hard drive will set you back by as much as ten movies or more. A DVD drive costs more than a DVD player. And not enough people have DVD drives that you could recoup costs by selling pirated copies, which you'd never be able to sell anyway because you'd have to put them on DVD-RAM media (4-odd gigabytes is still a huge pain to download even on the most high-bandwidth connections), which are already more expensive than the movies, so to make any profit you'd have to price them higher still, and no one's stupid enough to buy that when the movie can be had legitimately for less.
In other words, you've got four cost-related factors which kill DVD piracy's practicality, at least for the moment. And by the time these are nullified, computers will be powerful enough that the encryption would have been cracked anyway, if it's really as weak as the crackers said.
Re:I don't care about the copying- (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't we ultimately just go for capacity, and leave the encryption/decryption issue out of it? I knew nothing about DVD until this story broke; in my ignorance, I thought it was going to be a lot like CD-ROM, but with far more capacity, and usable for (for example) distributing a whole Linux distribution on one platter.
Just like before, I think we have to clearly illuminate the issue, which is, as always, that some people are always going to be paranoid about someone swiping their stuff.
THAT SHOULD NOT BE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE TECHNOLOGISTS TO SOLVE! That's a MORAL ISSUE.
I've had a VCR im my house since 1985, and guess what I use it for? Time shifting. That's it. If I had a media platter that was re-writable, and could store 15, 20, or even 30 hours of video, guess what? It would be for when I'm on vacation, or don't have the time to record and watch later.
Any dork from the music or mass-media industry that's reading this, spread the word: you're never going to win if you place paranoia and greed above all other motives. You *will* win if you remember who you serve.
Re:Hi! Mr. Lawyer! (Score:2)
You may think it's a trap, but through sheer coincindence, I genuinely did have the source, and genuinely did accidentally delete it this morning. Sigh.
Bully Tactics (Score:4)
Look at the RIAA they made Diamond spend tons of money to fight their claim in court when the RIAA knew all along that they'd lose.
They wanted to scare other companies into not making MP3 players. Had Diamond not been as successful in the past they wouldn't have been able ot beat the RIAA in court.
Because these programmers are most likely not multi-millionaires and can't afford 60k(US) in lawyer fees the hope is for them to just disappear.
Like the guys who wrote HLE, like the guys who cracked NT SP4's "security", the DeCSS guys are going to be pounded until they are forced to disappear or by some miracle are cleared.
LK
Is it illegal in Norway? (Score:2)
Your Working Boy,
Any more info?? (Score:2)
More info please? (Score:2)
In the mean time, let's start some lawsuits.
1) Sue Microsoft, Hollywood and all of the DVD manufacturers for conspiracy to restrain trade. DVD's a big app, and there are no commercial DVD players for Linux, which is the only viable competitor against Microsoft. Coincidence, or conspiracy?
2) Sue whoever got that page shut down for harassment. If the author was within his rights to reverse engineer the code and post it on the internet, threatening him legally should be considered harassment. Corporations like to harass people this way. It's time to start suing them for it.
Re:Austrailian Mirrors etc... (Score:3)
Bruce
Down with big business (Score:2)
Re:Bully Tactics (Score:2)
That must be why Microsoft Windows out-sells Linux by a factor of 10 to 1, eh? Nothing to do with bully tactics by a huge monolithic corporation with deep pockets but bug-riddled product line, eh?
Face facts: It is rarely the company with the best product who wins. Rather, it is the company that is most ruthless in destroying its competitors who wins. This is similar to the way that CocaCola Co. and Pepsico collude to buy up all the supermarket shelf space allocated for soft drinks in order to keep competing products from getting a toe-hold, or the way that General Motors bought out all the electric trolley companies so that they could discontinue service and replace the electric trollies with GM's smelly ugly smoke-belching buses. With the approval of the government. Face it, we have the best government that large multi-national corporations can buy. Too bad the only politician running for President who's willing to say so is John McCain, who stands a bat's chance in Hell of getting elected.
-E
Re:Is it illegal in Norway? (Score:2)
This will provide a pretense for suppressive legal action. Whether they actually broke Norwegian law is largely irrelevant.
Update: (Score:3)
Re:Yikes! (Score:2)
Hoard it in good health, I know I will.
Re:All for one and one for all. (Score:3)
I think that any financial support should be routed through these types of organiations, at least so that the authors don't incurr any income-tax burden. -earl
Re:Contact info? (Score:2)
I also think that filling a corporate inbox with flames is unlikely to affect their legal department. Maybe their sysadmins would quit in frustration and they'd go under from a lack of digital infrastructure... but I doubt it.
--Parity
Getting it And the Current Info... (Score:5)
Well, the replies on livid-dev are just starting. As of right now, not much is known. According to Derek's most recent message, it "potentially violates the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988; Sectiond 296(1) and (2)". You can keep up with the discussion if you want at http://livid.on .openprojects.net/pipermail/livid-dev/1999-Novembe r/ [openprojects.net], which is the archive for the livid-dev mailing list.
Also, to get your own copy of the code, do the following for bash (*csh people, export your variables properly with setenv instead :)
--
Jeremy Katz
Hardly an 'official' response.. (Score:2)
Specifics of violation? (Score:2)
From the posted items, it appears the infringement claims may be based on either copyright or patents or both, and that the jurisdiction may be European. As I'm also not a lawyer, the following information may be highly irrelevant, though I hope it's illuminating.
First, it's not clear that there are legal grounds to pull the plug an an entire website based on alleged but not (at least publicly) specified infringemnt. If nothing else, ISPs may face significant backlash risks for violating common carrier covenants to provide equal service to all without prejudice. My reading of the US DMCA [loc.gov] (Millenium Copyright Act) is that protection against copyright infringment on the part of customers is offered in return for a clarification of common-carrier status, and liability limitations. This is US law and doesn't apply in the UK, but a similar legal tradition exists there.
Second, there is precedent under US law of a similar type of reverse engineering in the case of either Sega v. Accolade [seattleu.edu] or Atari v. Nintendo [lgu.com] (I don't recall which, and it may have been another, but these are the two major cases in the area, and the subject was gaming). The basic premise was that the defendant's hardware require both reverse engineering of software to allow cartridges to run on it, and a literal copying of some small portion (14 bytes?) of code was required by the security or authentication mechanism of the console, including, IIRC, an encoded trademark. These were held to have functional, not expressive, attributes, and the defendents won in both cases.
I suspect a bit of bluster here, and while I wouldn't run for shelter in the information I've provided, I might look to it for some ideas for defense.
Question about liability (Score:2)
If it worked, you'd have a great source that potentially couldn't be attacked anymore than an anonymous post to a newsgroup.
Re:Getting it And the Current Info... (Score:2)
$ cvs login
$ cvs -z3 co css-auth
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
If not, there's probably not a case against them.
Breaking a crypto scheme could be illegal; if you open a package, but to do so, you must agree to a EULA not to do so -- and it's not an important part of actually *using* the product, then you're probably in violation. If there's no such agreement...
I'm not sure I understand (Score:5)
Frankly, I think piracy should be regarded as competition. If you lower your price enough, people are simply not that tempted to pirate. I think most people would buy rather than pirate depending on price.
In shrink wrap software (which I hardly ever have to buy anymore, thank you FSF and Linus et.al.!), I would buy just about any title at $20 or less. I'll even go up to about $60 for something like Quicken (where's the Linux version, Intuit? -- BTW, I've sent them letters swearing that I'll not upgrade again until they make Linux version. What could any future version do that my current one can't?)
In movies, at an average price of $20, I seem to be content enough to buy them.
I can't help but be outraged, however, at the fact that DVDs, which cost them FAR less to make than videocassettes, are consistently more expensive! I have stuck with VCRs for now because of that (well, and because I expect HDTV to be the "must" for upgrade to DVD -- why get a DVD and feed it to my 24-inch academy ratio 3-inch mono speaker TV?).
I guess I'm saying it should be a linear programming problem to compute the price at which they get the most money rating rate of sale against rate of piracy. I don't care how much technology they throw at it. If it can be viewed, it can be copied somehow, even if it's sampling the voltages at the CRT! Give it up. Keep it open and make it cheap. People will pay then.
Re:What can we do to help? (Score:2)
While I don't presently use linux, it can't hurt to have more than one DVD program floating around - the one that came with my computer isn't particularly impressive IMHO.
Re:Yes, you are dead wrong. (Score:2)
> The DVD-on-Linux movement appears to have caught the attention of a Norwegian group calling itself Masters of Reverse Engineering (MoRE), who then reverse-engineered a software DVD player from Xing Technologies and discovered an unencrypted key that could be used to unlock DVD movies.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Decryption routines.. (Score:2)
Are they basically locking in a limited number of companies from producing decoder boards, based on the FINITE number of keys available, even if ther already is 'space' keys for such a purpose such as future expantion?
And the irony is... (Score:3)
And the irony is, the movie industry will end up suppressing access by the honest people who would have ended up buying DVDs to play under alternative OSes. But the crooks who want to make massive bootleg issues undoubtedly already have the code, and won't have it posted on a web site where it's easily spotted and stamped on. The pirates will thrive, but sales won't be increased.
They would have been better off not using encryption in the first place.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Re:Update: (Score:2)
I do wonder if the ISP has the right to take down sites in this manner. Unless somewhere in their contract, they cannot remove sites if legal (and suspicion of being illegal wouldn't fit here, unless in contract). If they recived a court order, they defininately could. Otherwise, I'm not sure.
Re:Didn't stop MP3, won't stop DVD (Score:2)
Right, instead of blaming themselves for developing such a lousy encryption scheme and not putting it ou for public comment to find out if it's lousy or not, they're saying, "We designed a lousy encryption scheme and kept it private but now these people have disclosed that it was a lousy encryption scheme therefore we must sue them rather than take the blame."
That whole "accountability" thing is a sham in the industry. No corporation, whether you want to talk about Sony, Microsoft, IBM, Ford, probably not even RedHat now that they have stockholders to be responsible to, nobody will take responsbility for doing something stupid or "wrong" if they can instead sue some poor schmoe in attempt to pass the buck.
-=-=-=-=-
Good thing I got a copy while it was still there. (Score:2)
It's your own damned fault. Treat customers like cattle, and they're going to respond like this. Treat us with a little respect, release some linux sources (or a binary) for a DVD player, and we'd all be much, much happier. Oh, well. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Re:Down with big business (Score:2)
It strikes me that most of the more-advanced nations in the world are largely profit-oriented. Societies that have stagnated or withered away have been disproportionately communal; witness the Utopian movements, most indigenous tribal cultures, the more Socialist states, and so forth -- which have largely disappeared or been defeated. To fade away is not progress.
To The Ramparts! (Score:2)
We need make our displeasure known using peaceful and legal means. I can't over-emphasize that. Beyond that we need to work out a strategy, and get the Linux businesses involved in supporting legal defense. Sit down now, think about what you can do, and do it today. Tell reporters. Call your congressman. Picket a video store if you can't think of anything else!
Thanks
Bruce
That's a UK law (Score:2)
:)
Re:Defence monies? (Score:2)
Even if nothing comes of -this- case I could do worse things with my money than joining the EFF. Thanks for the reminder, I think I have a check to write now. (Besides I want the book...
--Parity
Re:Question about liability (Score:2)
Besides, there are probably copies on thousands of user PC's. There is no real danger of it being lost.
Also; do anyone of us really have the moral right to legally endanger (potentially, OC)./ or its creators? No!
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
It may be rather easy to, say, run over your neighbor's cat, or for that matter your mayor, or to set fire to City Hall. It's also trivial to repeatedly mail-bomb somebody. None of these are legal, despite the fact that they may be easy.
Since breaking the encryption was a non-trivial task requiring completely voluntary, openly discouraged effort, whether or not it was "easy" is no defense at all.
Overall, this is not a security issue; it's one of legality. If the decryptors violated a license agreement, or conspired to distribute this with the intent to facilitate duplicating copyrighted works, then they're likely in the wrong. If they did not, then again the difficulty or lack of it has nothing to do with it whatsoever, legally.
Re:Hi! Mr. Lawyer! (Score:2)
Re:Decryption routines.. (Score:2)
Talk about stifling development. For all they know, someone out there could be able to make a player that is somehow optimized, and can decode the data on a 286, but they'll never know, becouse they don;t have the money to buy a key..
Did Divx also have this limitation?
They may have a case ... sorta (Score:2)
Now, it's my understanding that to read DVD's, you must utilize their encryption/decryption key system. Now, not knowing which system they use
It could be that the only way a Linux DVD player could exist would be to write code that works with this patented system. You can either license it, or steal it. This may lead the Forum to believe that there is only one way to write code to work with their system, so it MUST be a copyright violation.
God forbid another programmer can do the same thing you paid millions for without using your code. *shrug*
Anyway, I'm sure they have enough to completely ruin the lives of anyone that doesn't follow their rules or license their technology.
I've been a long time DVD supporter and my continued support will be directly effected by how the DVD Forum handles this situation.
A lot of issues - reverse engineering and so on (Score:2)
The first one is about the legality of reverse engineering. I was surprised to not seeing any comment about it in /. Lets not be mistaken, this is completely different of getting reference code (such as in the MP3 case). In some countries reverse engineering is explicitly prohibited. Many manufacturers put clauses of usage in their licenses stating that the owner of the device is not allowed to reverse engineer it. I dont know the situation in Sweden, or any specific country for that matter.
There is one thing that is not as discussed as it should, and is the legal defense funds for the OSS developers. Legal advice can be quite expensive. I remember all the fuss over MIDI sequencers months ago. Their work is legal - everyone is entitled to write their own interpretation of someone else's music - but it takes a lot of lawyers to prove it. The industry has enough money to pay the best lawyers, and they to their job very well. Its very easy to take out a web page - just a call from the lawyer frightens the ISP. OSS advocates should take steps to have the same weapons on their side.
Also I read about someone else complaining that the protection was very weak, and it was easy to break. Fine - if your front door is unlocked it does not make legal to steal your home. This is not a legal defense. However, what could we do to stop it? Maybe the OSS community can come up with a strong mechanism to replace the current one. I'm sure it can be done. There is no point in keeping the algorithm secret - it can be always reverse engineered. The design of a really strong protection mechanism could be done by an OSS team, and it could be offered to the standards body. It could be the best 'proof of goodwill'.
This leads us to another point - the reason to do it. It's a tool to watch DVD movies in a Linux box, or it's a tool to generate copies of DVDs? The Internet community (and some /. readers) must bear in mind that this protection is fundamental for the entertainment industry. We would have no Star Wars Trilogy without it :-) As someone else said, in this case it's better to have protected content than to have NO content.
There is also a lot of smaller issues that aren't clear at all. Patents, rights of distribution, and so on. All of this must be cleared. It will be much better for the Internet community to solve this in the legal arena, so we can keep doing what we do best.
Re:Decryption routines.. (Score:3)
The actual multimedia (audio/video/etc) data is encrypted with a single key, unique to that title, called the "title key". You need the title key to watch the movie. Each movie gets a different title key.
The title publisher puts many copies of the title key on the disc. Each copy is encrypted with a different manufacturer key (and not with the title key, so you don't need the title key to decrypt it).
Each DVD player manufacturer is given one of those manufacturer keys. They then build their DVD player with the capability to decrypt their copy of the title key, allowing you to play the movie.
The crack was assited when some company forgot to encrypt their copy of the title key -- they storied their copy of the title key in unencrypted form. This let the DeCSS people unlock a disc without knowing how CSS worked, which made the reverse engineering of CSS easier.
Since then, the DeCSS people have cracked more then one hundred additional manufacturer keys. Apparently, the CSS manufacturer keys are very easy to break.
It is worth pointing out that the DeCSS people would have cracked CSS eventually, even without help. The screw-up by that company just made things quicker.
The DVD people are now suing anyone they can get in their sights in an attempt to close the barn doors after the horse has wandered off. Typical knee-jerk corporate reaction.
That is my understanding of all this. I could be wrong.
Re:A lot of issues - reverse engineering and so on (Score:5)
The record and video industry has been crying about this for years, but I think it's still a red-herring. Their real purpose is to make it difficult for you to be in the business unless you go through one of the established studios. They don't want artists to be able to do their own distribution, electronicaly, and keep all of the profits.
Thanks
Bruce
hmpf. (Score:2)
Why do i find this irritating? It removes the possibility for the site-owner to say: "okay, you think i'm violating the law? sue me."
The way ISP's behave now bully's will always achieve their goal because the people who are willing to stand up for their rights are taken away the opportunity to do so. Even if the content of a certain site was violating a law, the offended party should take it up with the owner of the site, and not the ISP who is merely responsable for the network connection.
Re:I'm not sure I understand (Score:2)
The fact that they did not release a linux version to begin with was foolish. This, coupled with the fact that there is no recordable DVD format capable of recording a full movie means that the industry should not worry. If they are really worried they should simply not make home DVD players capable of reading large recordable DVD's when they come out. This wont stop large scale professional pirates or computer users however nothing will stop the large scale guys and computer users aren't a _huge_ segment of the market.
In the end the entertainment industry should just stop being such a pain. The grateful dead allowed fans to make copies of performances and then give those away and it did not stop the dead from becoming one of the wealthiest bands in history.
-sirket
Only one thing to do... (Score:3)
1) Everyone, get a copy of the source. If you can legally serve it up (meaning no patent issues on the encryption) do it. Basically, spread the information so far and wide that it's useless to go after anyone, because it would take more money than even the entertainment inductry has.
2) Figure out how to start a good legal defense fund. DVD on Linux would be a Good Thing.
This said, I do have a few issues with the people who cracked the decryption. Making it possible to save the unencrypted movie on a hard disk was unnecessary and uncalled for. It's possible to rite a player without that capability, and that's what they should have done, at least at first. Were they trying to get into trouble by writing that capability into their software right off the bat?
And yes, I know it's Open-Source, so someone else could easily have written software to copy the DVD movie. But the people who cracked the decryption shouldn't have been the ones to do that, if only as a gesture of goodwill towards the industry. The capability would always be there for someone who wants to do it, and the original hackers come out of it looking at least tolerable to the indistry.
Both sides are in the wrong this time, albeit in different ways. But I'm sticking by the hackers, who are wrong only by virtue of a rather shortsighted design mistake, rather than the industry which, which is wrong due to undue technophobia, a healthy dose of greed, and the inability to see that copying DVD's to another DVD is pointless since a single DVD-RAM disk costs more than most DVD movies. It's cheaper just to buy it legitimately, so piracy is pretty much pointless.
Except, I suppose, for potentially wrecking the idiotic "tiered-release" schedule the entertainment industry uses. But that's no big loss.
I may be wrong (Score:3)
All of you that are dragging Linux into this are really doing something bad for Linux. You need to be careful, lest if become regarded as the "renegade" OS... "Linux users don't respect intellectual property, look what they did to DVD." I'm not saying that, but it could be said in a boardroom somewhere.
I really don't think that the movie industry singled out Linux when thinking of copy-protection schemes... They were just more concerned with Windows users, because, face it, that's where the primary market is. Most industry publications have Linux relegated to the server closet, and just recently has it's head started to pop out. It would have happened had more and more people started using Linux on the client side.
But that's a separate argument. The fact remains (in me view) that Linux was not involved, it was simply people demonstrating that after all their hard work, the copyprotection scheme used by the movie people was flawed.
We need collective memory (Score:4)
To make our displeasure known is not enough. We need to know and remember who did what. We need, basically, a database that knows that on such-and-such date such-and-such firm threatened/sued/shut down a programmer/group/site because of this-and-that. In this way people in position to pressure the offending organization will know if it needs pressuring (and, for example, has a history of hostility towards, say, MP3s).
Of course, there will have to be a significant threshold to cross before some action gets into such database. We don't want script kiddie complaints that their ISP shut them off for trying random 'spoits to end up in there.
And yes, I understand that it is likely to end up being known as "The Slashdot Black List".
Kaa
Re:Is it illegal in Norway? (Score:2)
My web page (Score:3)
the terms and conditions of use say that they
are allowed to disable it if they feel like it.
But see below.
I've just had been supplied with information on
the relavent bit of the Act, and it's seems to
be about circumventing copy protection mechamisms.
I'm supprised we have such lunacy in our Law.
Thus that page may well fall foul of English Law.
So don't bother the ISP, they are taking a
reasonable course of action.
I guess I basically need to visit a Solicitor
on Monday.
Derek Fawcus
Re:Only one thing to do... (Score:2)
Copyright allows for certain kinds of "fair use" copies to be made. These includes some copies made for personal use which have no monetary impact on the copyright holder, or short excerpts for use in criticism.
Re:I'm not sure I understand (Score:2)
VHS copies are pretty terrible second or third generation.
I do think that prices suck ass. In places like Japan, CD's are priced so high people rent them.
Legal Not an Excuse (Score:2)
Address the issue - not pass laws to try to make it disappear. I just had a lengthy discussion with somebody this afternoon about what "legal" means. Legal doesn't mean anything. You need to address the issue - ie: why did I kill you? instead of passing a law saying it's wrong. The latter will not stop me. Education will. Which one is the cheap solution, and which one is the best solution? I'll let you be the judge
Besides... the movie industry knew how important it was to make this format secure, and they blew it. If I entrusted billions of dollars into something on the premise that somebody wouldn't do it because it's illegal... that ought to be a shooting offense.
--
Re:Update: (Score:2)
Re:GOOD! (Score:2)
Is the issue at hand the fact that the industry created their own 40-bit crypto algorthym and someone reverse engineered it, or is it that they're upset that someone released a program that essentially allows the duplication of their CD.
Reverse engineering in order to create a playback mechanism in Linux is one thing, and they probably wouldn't even mind that. Piracy/copyright violations are not.
It's THEIR movie. They own it. They paid the actors to make it. They risked millions of dollars in marketing. They deserve the rewards it brings.
It would have cost us, the consumer, more money if they had decided to release 128 bit encrypted titles in the US and 40-bit encrypted titles to the rest of the world. That's two smaller runs rather htan one larger run. Sure you can yell about the export laws but they're a different subject.
If you don't agree with the law, don't be and ass and break it just because you can. Write your congressman. How many outraged slashdotters do that? Or do you just preach to the quire here? I stand in favor of patents, I just think that the system needs to be revised in the computer age. Just shortening their lives would be a good thing.
moviebone has a good take on this whole thing (Score:2)
http://www.moviebone.com/arti cles/1999/11/crypto.html [moviebone.com]