🚀 go-pugleaf

In aus.computers.linux Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote:

> I think these tales tend to improve with the telling. The well known 
> Reimerdes case, for example, is painted as the big end of town 
> surpressing the rights of DVD owners to play DVDs on their Linux systems.

> But read the Judge's opinion:

> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/NY/trial/op.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 *303  Plaintiffs,  eight  major  United States motion picture studios,
 distribute  many  of their copyrighted motion pictures for home use on
 digital  versatile  disks ("DVDs"), which contain copies of the motion
 pictures  in  digital  form.  They  protect those motion pictures from
 copying by using an encryption system called CSS. CSS-protected motion
 pictures  on  DVDs  may  be viewed only on players and computer drives
                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 equipped  with licensed technology that permits the devices to decrypt
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 and play--but not to copy--the films.

 Late  last  year,  computer  hackers devised a computer program called
 DeCSS   that   circumvents   the  CSS  protection  system  and  allows
 CSS-protected  motion pictures to be copied and played on devices that
 lack  the  licensed  decryption  technology.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[skip]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Congress  struck  a balance. The compromise it reached, depending upon
 future technological and commercial developments, may or may not prove
 ideal.  [FN3]  But  the  solution  it  enacted is clear. The potential
 tension  to  which defendants point does not absolve them of liability
                                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 under  the  statute.  There  is  no  serious question that defendants'
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 posting of DeCSS violates the DMCA.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

It seems to me that the judge is stating openly that any fair use
problems that might occur are of no concern to the court and that the
letter of the law will be upheld regardless of moral right and wrong.

> which paints a rather different picture. At the end of the day, this was 
> a case about someone making software available whose sole practical 
> function was to enable piracy. The software was not a Linux DVD player, 
> and the average Linux user would not have been able to use it to play 
> DVDs under Linux.

The court document explains that quite clearly, the user needs a MS-Windows
machine and DeCSS to decrypt the DVD into a file, which is then transfered
to linux and played with one of several linux media players. This is
effectively media-shifting much like copying your CD music onto tape
so you can listen to it on your car tape player.

The bulk of the linux DVD player was distributed relatively openly, it
lacked a single plug-in component which was the decryption engine.
Without this engine it could play multimedia files but not DVDs.
The DeCSS source code could be dropped into the media-player code to
make a complete linux DVD player (but most users used the media-shifting
method because it was easier).

If there had been no suppression under the DMCA, the whole thing would have
been distributed as a single unit along with the major Linux distributions.
That's what the authors wanted to do but were prevented from doing.

> While it may be argued that the DMCA makes it difficult or impossible 
> for people to exercise their fair use rights (under US law), I've yet to 
> see a case where someone has been sued for activities genuinely related 
> to fair use. In practice, fair use (and free speech, etc.) have merely 
> been raised as pretexts to justify activities that were in fact simply 
> performed for the purporses of piracy pure and simple.

This is my "pure and simple" reading:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 In late September 1999, Jon Johansen, a Norwegian subject then fifteen
 years  of  age, and two individuals he "met" under pseudonyms over the
 Internet,  reverse engineered a licensed DVD player and discovered the
 CSS  encryption  algorithm and keys. [FN71] They used this information
 to  create  DeCSS,  a  program  capable  of  decrypting  or  "ripping"
 encrypted  DVDs,  thereby allowing playback on non-compliant computers
                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 as  well  as  the  copying of decrypted files to computer hard drives.
 [FN72]  Mr.  Johansen  then posted the executable code on his personal
 Internet  web  site  and  informed members of an Internet mailing list
 that he had done so. [FN73] Neither Mr. Johansen nor his collaborators
 obtained a license from the DVD CCA. [FN74]
------------------------------------------------------------------------

also...

------------------------------------------------------------------------
      ... the  application  of  DeCSS  to  copy  and  distribute motion
 pictures  on  DVD,  both on CD-ROMs and via the Internet, threatens to
 reduce  the  studios'  revenue  from  the  sale and rental of DVDs. It
 threatens  also  to  impede new, potentially lucrative initiatives for
 the   distribution  of  motion  pictures  in  digital  form,  such  as
 video-on-demand via the Internet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

and in conclusion:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 As  the  earlier  discussion  demonstrates,  the  question whether the
 development  of  a Linux DVD player motivated those who wrote DeCSS is
 immaterial to the question whether the defendants now before the Court
 violated  the anti- trafficking provision of the DMCA.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thus the court was presented with two facts: the Plaintiff's actions
had deprived the Defendents of their fair use rights and their consumer
rights. The Defendent's actions had regained those rights and had
deprived the Plaintiff of some profit opportunity.

The court clearly stated that it was unconcerned with the first fact
and made its judgement based on the second fact.

> I still believe it to be legal to distribute or provide an installation 
> service for chips whose sole function is to enable the running of 
> software not licensed by Microsoft, including the Linux OS. It's true 
> that I'm not about to start such a business myself, because of the 
> uncertainties. In practice, I also have to wonder whether there is 
> really a market for such chips, even if they are legal.

Consider that to make a non-approved game and sell it, you only have
a market of people with chipped machines so there isn't much incentive
to make such a game. On the other hand, a market for a chip that won't
play pirated games but will play legitimate non-approved games is only
going to be practical when there are some games out there.

The other problem is that from a technical point of view, a chip that
can reliably tell the difference between a pirated game and a non-approved
game from an independent publisher is nearly impossible to design.
At least, I know a fair bit about how such chips work and I don't believe
there is a way to get something like that working -- someone smarter
than me might know a way.

> Whether Palladium is really the bogy man is hard to tell, given the lack 
> of concrete detail (last time I looked, which was admittedly a while back).

You are better off taking a close look at the Sony PS2 which is the nearest
thing to Palladium that has been released into the market. Now the PS2 is
not really a general purpose computing device (although in the UK it 
pretends to be for tax reasons) but everything that has been done on the
PS2 with regard to bootstrap encryption, could in theory be done to a
regular PC. I think that the X-box was Microsoft's trial run of Palladium
and the X-box is mostly a general purpose PC inside so the technology
and the lessons learned in terms of vulnerability could be applied to a PC.

>> In addition, some
>> people noted that an X-box connected to the network would automatically
>> seek to update itself and even delete software that it detected as
>> foreign (e.g. xbox-linux partitions). I have not seen this first hand
>> but I've heard reports of it. Someone else might have more info...

> I have to wonder about that. It would almost certainly be unlawful for 
> Microsoft to do that intentionally.

You seem to miss the basic premise of all legal systems -- it is only a
crime if you get caught. Microsoft have got away with a lot already so
we can fully expect them to try to get away with more.

> We see to agree pretty much there. However, when I think about the DVD 
> issue, I'm reminded that being a Movie Studio is not a licence to print 
> money. Making movies involves taking big financial risks, and a lot of 
> work. You have no real need to watch movies in general, let alone a 
> specific movie, and there is even less compulsion to watch them on DVDs, 
> so it's perhaps a bit much to insist that you be able to buy a DVD from 
> which you can extract data to use as you see fit.

Well DVD players are a lot cheaper than computers, I bought a cheap
Korean DVD player and just use that for watching movies so in a practical
sense I'm a Linux user but I can still watch DVDs without using either
DeCSS or Linux for that purpose. On the other hand, the price of freedom
is eternal vigilance... there is always someone willing to take away
whatever you might have by whatever means might present themselves.

> Yes, that would be 
> nice, but it would come with a cost. The cost is that piracy is alive 
> and well, and it is difficult to see how it doesn't cut into the incomes 
> of the people doing the work to make the movies.

But it is difficult to see why that is such a critical social concern.

> That in turn must 
> impact on the number and quality of the movies that get made.

Yeah, more movies would get made and they would have wider variety,
more interesting stories and lower production costs. Big name actors
and massive special effects budgets would be the big loser. At the end
of the day, money is not subject to interpretation but "quality" is.

> Even with region coding, which I dislike intensely at an emotional 
> level, I find it hard to produce an object argument to support the 
> notion that the people who created the works in question shouldn't be 
> able to restrict when they are made available in different parts of the 
> world. Turn it around, and ask yourself how you'd feel if you'd done 
> some creative work, and then other people felt they were entitled to 
> tell you what you can do with it.

I release my own work under GPL, except what I do under contract to
someone else which I don't have too much choice about. I have tried to
work my employment situation toward maximising the use and distribution
of GPL software but the current market demands some compromises.

Thanks to the software patenting system, other people ARE in a position
to tell me what I can do with my own work, which is another reason
to stand against USA-style IP laws.

Don't forget that creative work does not spring from a vacuum,
everyone has a debt to those that have gone before them and if all
those debts were paid in full, Disney would barely be covering the
interest on their loan to the Brothers Grimm, who in turn would be
paying the people whose folk stories they borrowed.

> Sometimes there are no right answers.

But there are always wrong answers.

	- Tel