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DVD CCA Battle Continues Next Week
from the so-we-meet-again-at-last dept.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to Robin Gross, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation working on this case.
Slashdot : Come on, we're geeks, not lawyers. What does this hearing mean?
Robin Gross : It's important to note that in preliminary injunction hearings, this is pretty much where the game is played. This hearing is crucial in cases like this. Since we've got all these people in town for the RSA encryption conference, we're really calling upon the technical community to support this case and show up at court to educate the media there. Right now, the media focus is on piracy, and we need to turn that around. These folks are not trying to pirate movies, but rather watch the movies that they've already purchased, and continue research on DVD encryption. We're relying to a large extent on experts like cryptologists and programmers in the Linux community to educate their friends and family about encryption, and turn this around so people understand what the defendants are trying to accomplish.
This case is really important for a couple reasons. First, protecting the first amendment and free speech on the Internet. These defendants are engaging in activities that are completely legal in the US as well as in Norway where the plaintiffs are complaining the original sin occurred. A lot of these people are encryption scientists and computer programmers who are simply trying to learn how to play DVDs on their non-Windows boxes. Another reason is that it's really important that people are allowed to reverse engineer computer software. The law in this country, as well as Norway, allows people to reverse engineer software, letting them try to pick it apart, figure out how it works, and then use that knowledge to innovate and build new technology, products and services, and in this case, extending the DVD industry's market.
In a lot of ways, these people want to be DVD customers. They want to be able to buy DVDs and watch them on the computers they already have. So, their choice is either not buying DVDs, or watching them using this patch.
The EFF has their brief and other documents available at http://www.eff.org/pub/Intellectual_property/DVD/.
There are, of course, at least two sides to every story. This afternoon I spoke to Jeffrey Kessler, an attorney for Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, the law firm representing the DVD Copy Control Association.
Jeffrey Kessler : I hope that we prevail. That's all I'm going to say at this point.
Since they weren't talking, I decided to pull on the ear of Douglas Winslow, one of the defendants named in the case. Douglas still has the DeCSS code posted on his site, and he is one of the many defendants that cannot appear in court due to distance and time constraints.
Slashdot: So, the preliminary injunction hearing is next Tuesday. Any feelings?
Douglas Winslow : I feel we have a strong case. It'll be interesting to see what kind of precedent is set.
Slashdot: Are you going to party if the defendants are victorious?
Douglas Winslow : I plan to party either way. I'll either end up watching or burning part of my DVD collection to celebrate the outcome of the hearing.
To be continued by Robin "roblimo" Miller on the 18th...
Don't really wear bells! (Score:3)
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Re:How does copy protection help? (Score:5)
I think that someone who could reprogram the firmware in a consumer DVD drive, could redesign it to return this segment without going through the CSS dance. Then they could extract all of the information on a DVD.
But currently available writable DVDs won't help them make copies because the drives can't write the special sector. I've heard that it is because the sector is burnt out on blank media.
Another difficulty is that currently available DVD writers can only write on a single layer which limits the capacity to an amount less than most DVD movies.
Tired of Suboptimal Technology (Score:3)
Re:Ambiguous language (Score:4)
Ah, child, you're too young to remember old-fashioned flashbulbs. Nothing but aluminum wire in a glass&plastic envelope, and man! were those suckers bright. Nothing, and I mean nothing burns like aluminum in oxygen.
Since this is a geek forum, here's a little science experiment. Wear welding goggles and sunscreen (no, I'm not joking about the sunscreen.) Do it far from anything combustible, like yourself or your car.
Get a little bit of the usual magnesium tape (you can light Mg with a match) and use it to start a small piece of aluminum foil supported by something you don't care about (because it's gonna be ruined.) The glare will be visible from orbit.
Oh, year: wear white or something you don't mind getting bleached by the UV. And trust me on the sunscreen.
DVD CCA & Press (Score:5)
1. Judicial Opinion. I don't care if justices are supposed to be impartial and whatnot, but they do watch the news and I am willing to bet that a fair amount of them study the case before it starts. If DVD can influence the judge in any way they will.
2. NSI Opinion. Remember eToys vrs eToy? eToys worked darn hard to make sure that everyone thought eToy was in the wrong. Because they did it successfully, they got NSI to step in remove the website from its DNS.
3. Public Opinion. DVD CCA is not an idiot and realizes that people may be the deciding key in the case. If the laywers for DVD can convince the judge that the public is against DeCSS (maybe by Xpert witnesses and such) or show that the public does not yet have the DeCSS source code enough to prevent CSS from be a trademark anymore they win the case.
The DVD CCA is doing an excellent job at its game. We (open sourcers) are doing miserably. Does anyone know of any article in FAVOR of us at any major news site? Probably not. I on the other hand have seen articles decrying us in my local paper (Minneapolis Star Trib, Pioneer Press) and heard about it on local radio stations. Nowhere (outside of
Laws be dammed, history has shown that public opinion often decides cases. (If it didn't we would probably have far less supreme court cases and the thing about that cuban boy Elian - wouldn't exist)
Re:How does copy protection help? (Score:3)
That's the main point - the CCA encryption does't prevent (or even hinder) copying, but prevents a non-authorised player from playing the film, as every frame is encrypted, and supposedly only "authorised" players whose manufacturers/writers have paid their dues to the CCA receive details of the encryption used and the keys. This has two immediate effects:
- Only people willing to buy their way into the CCA can produce software or hardware to play -LEGALLY OWNED- DVD disks
- the world can be divided up into DVD "Zones" where movies from another Zone can't be played on your player - thus, if the
.us version costs half as much as the .au, then you STILL need to pay the .au asking price, as the .us version just won't work (assuming you don't just set your box to .us and forget about buying .au movies, of course :+)
What it comes down to is that the movie industry wishes it was still back in the days of movie theatres, where you pay per view, per seat.YES, you can change the zone - but under the new spec, this can only be done a small number of times before the unit needs to be sent back to the manufacturer for the count to be reset.
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Let's make a clear statement (Score:3)
Re:Why? (Score:3)
The only other way to make a copy, with a pre-written segment, would be if you could decrypt, and then re-encrypt, using the pre-written segment as a guide in some way. (Maybe it's written where the key is expected.)
The only catch would be if people built their own DVD players/recorders, in which you could simply jump over that segment, or if they were able to manufacture their own blanks, in which case they wouldn't have to pre-write anything.
Re:How does copy protection help? (Score:5)
Absolutely nothing; and that is a critical point here.
Do you mess around with the Sony Playstation any? We'll, Sony engineered their hardware to prevent you from using copied Playstation CD in their systems. As I understand it, Playstation CDs are written with intentional checksum errors that are corrected when you attempt to copy them. The Playstation hardware looks for the errors; if they aren't there, it won't attempt to run the code on the CD.
We'll, didn't take long before some smart folks figured out how to get around it. The process involves soldering in a small microprocessor chip (a PIC) in the right place in the Playstation. The system checks tries to check for the checksum errors and the PIC says "it's cool - just go ahead." It's a $10 modification.
Sony doesn't send a cadre of lawyers to beat up people who do this. First off, they don't have a legal leg to stand on. The people who buy the consoles can do what they want with them and, if they want to solder chips inside - well, that's their right. Sony just makes hardware and sells hardware; you buy it and they are happy.
It's not the same with the DVD folks. The issue to the DVD guys isn't the encryption; the encryption technology is a means to an end. Rather, they want to control who can play DVDs in order to maximize profits. They make their money by licensing the decryption technology - other people make the hardware/software. That's why the Linux community wasn't important to them; it didn't seem like a big revenue source.
The reason they're mad (and sueing) is that they thought they could milk this decryption licensing cow a little while longer than it turned out they could. However, a bunch of smart people managed to shorted the cows life a bit. The DVD encryption folks don't have a leg left.
Re:How does copy protection help? (Score:3)
Dress up day (Score:5)
I think we have a very strong case here. A reaffirmation of the first amendment and a good pounding out of internet law. I think the precidences set by winning a case like this will be beneficial to all of us.
On thing though... I jokingly mentioned to other defendants that I might attend this trial in a Metalica T-shirt with spiked up hair. That's what we call a bad idea. It's dress up day. We all need to look, hrmm, somewhat "professional". Remember, we're talking to a bunch of suits here.
Please, come if you can. Your presence will be felt by the judge, the plaintif, and us frightened (angry?) defendants. Hopefully we can really change some attitudes about open source here.
Amusing (Score:4)
Movie makers trying to turn it around? (Score:4)
(Start of article)
"Norwegian" DVD bomb a minor incident
First Hollywood postponed releasing new DVDs. Then several DVD-manufacturers filed against a group of hackers, among them a 16-year old Norwegian. But now Hollywood doesn't care that the DVD-codes are broken.
When 16-year old Jon Johansen and the rest of a hacker group found the codes necessary to copy DVD movies and distribute them on the Internet, it created a riot in the film industry.
To trial...
Several manufacturers postponed the release of both discs and new players to find new ways to encrypt them. The companies filed suit against the 16-year old and the rest of the group that took part in the production and distribution of the software, without gaining ground.
Johansen removed the link to the software from his home page, by his own saying because he didn't have time or resources to fight.
As expected...
Now the large movie studios in Hollywood say the software that removes the copy protection is a minor thing.
- We expected the protection code to be broken sooner or later. We were actually surprised that it took so long, says vice president of Warner Home Video, James Cardwell, to CNN.
- There is little or no gain in hacking our products. Blank DVDs cost more than our already made discs, and it takes hours to download the movies over the Internet, claims Cardwell.
DeCSS...
DeCSS is the name of the software that makes it possible to copy the discs directly from a DVD-ROM player to a computer's harddrive. the DVDs have a capacity of 4,7GB, which makes it impossible to copy it to a regular CD. Other software also available on the 'net makes it possible to alter the DVD-files to a regular CD format.
Since the VHS format for VCRs was launched, movie piracy has been a huge problem for the movie companies. They hoped that DVD would finally end this. Now it's clear that copying DVDs is as easy as copying regular videotapes.
(End of article)
Besides the usual mistakes about what this is all about, it seems that the movie industry is now trying to calm things down, turning around a bit. Trying to calm down the fire, maybe?
Re:Easier said than done (Score:3)
Another reason I am holding off is that the local video rental stores around here have a couple dozen titles on DVD. They carry a few thousand titles on VHS. They also charge more for a DVD rental than for a new-release VHS rental. Until the selection on DVD gets better and the price comes into line, I am not that interested.
BTW, with no VCR, how do you record something off broadcast/cable/sattelite if you want to watch it later? Until DVD's are a read/write medium, they aren't really a replacement for a VCR.
Didn't we already fight this court battle once? (Score:4)
That is when the software companies sued a few companies that were making archival copies of software. The judge in that case said that people can make copies of software for archival purposes. And that customers were allowed to defeat anti-copy measures that the manufacturer had installed on the media (floppy disks at the time.)
The case was a joke then and it is a joke now. The manufacturers what us to goto them for the hardware and software that are needed to play their movies. I bet that if the players didn't have this encryption scheme that they would be less than $75 right now.
So what somebody has broken the encrytion scheme. If they didn't want someone to do this they should have _patented_ the technology. Now they are whining in court that someone in Norway is giving away their trade secrets.
Well BooHoo, that person never signed an agreement with the companies that he wouldn't give away trade secrets. If that person had been an employee of the company then this argument would make a lot of sense.
Now they are claiming that all of us had agreed to not reverse engineer the software because of the shrink wrap agreement that comes with every player. I am so glad someone is finally trying to sue someone over shrink wrapped licenses. This will expose them for the sham that they are.
I don't agree to any contract that I haven't signed. Especially one that I don't even see until after I have already purchased something. Especially when these agreements effectively say that I can't do anything to the company if their product causes me harm and that the product isn't actually suitable for anything. And that I don't really own the product that I am holding in my hand and that I had just paid my good hard dollars for.
Of course I can sue the software company if I use their product in the way that it was marketed and it causes me harm. Of course I own the product and all of its bits if I paid money for it. And I own all the little bits on my own computer.
I will be so glad when the judge throws out the shrink wrap agreements for the sham that they are.
Open letter to the DVD CCA (Score:5)
I wish to inquire of you how I may return my extensive collection of DVD movies I
have acquired over the past year. I no longer wish to possess them, despite their
vastly superior quality, number of options, and other market-changing,
market-creating attributes. I wish full refund of my movies, less a reasonable fee
collected because I have viewed them a few times each.
You see; I feel I can no longer, in good conscience as a law-abiding American
citizen view these wondrous disks legally on my computer system. Though I
bought or was given as a gift each DVD legally, as well as own legal copies of the
DVD hardware and decoding software from my computer manufacturer, I have
installed two components onto my computer since it was purchased that, I fear,
jeopardize the legality of viewing DVDs on it.
Most relevant, I possess a copy of deCSS, the program you are undoubtedly
familiar with that allows users to copy DVD movies from their handy DVD-ROM
disk into unwieldy, 6+ gigabtye files on their hard drives. I downloaded this
software in the hopes that it would enable me to view my copy of The Matrix more
fully, or enjoy DVD movies with fewer problems due to disk access errors. It has
proved far to cumbersome, however (I only have 3 gigabytes of free space, which
are rapidly becoming full with MP3s from MP3.com and from my own CD
collection (MP3s don't skip during dancing at parties, you see).
But furthermore, I have followed the slow progression of the production of a
reliable and hardware-independent Linux/*nix DVD Player. The other component
I have modified my computer with, you see, is a secondary hard drive from which
I can boot the Linux operating system instead of Windows. Ideally, I would like to
use Linux as my primary operating system.
Your recent letter to the LiVid (DVD for Linux) developers and the creative
programmers who released deCSS, however, has me concerned. It seems that
there is no possibility that any development in a Linux DVD player would be, by
your definition, using secret technologies via reverse engineering, despite the fact
that the CSS technique was not patented. I fear that because I wish to view DVDs
on Linux, and that any Linux implementation would be illegal, that I can no longer
in good conscience view DVDs on any Operating System running on my
computer-it is, after all, the same computer which could view them illegally in one
OS, so how could viewing the same DVD in the other OS be possibly legal? What
if I upgraded my Linux partition one day after a DVD solution had been reached,
possibly 'illegally', and accidentally entered into Linux, failed to recognize the
difference, and played a DVD of mine? I would fear that the police would be
knocking at my door instantaneously, and this time they wouldn't be asking me to
turn down my music (or which Jazz singer that was, anyway?). Having no recourse
to achieve my fair-use of the DVDs which I have purchased without entering into a
legal gray-area, I wish to return my discs and receive refunds for them.
Please indicate the shipping address to which they should be mailed, and when I
should expect reimbursement of their cost and the rather large cost of shipping my
substantial investment into what I had hoped would be a brave new world of
theatrical experiences.
Regretfully,
Does this make pirating impractical? (Score:3)
that it is because the sector is burnt out on blank media.
Interesting... Does this mean you cannot create a DVD that is playable in an umodified player without specially prepared media?
If this is the case, then cracking the DVD encryption scheme would only make it possible to play a movie, or to copy it to a hard drive. You would not be able to burn a DVD that was playable in a DVD player, only other DeCSS based software players.
A cautionary tale (Score:4)
I've been working on new and interesting ways to almost kill myself.
As you may or may not know, I have this passing interest in metalworking. I've always wanted to build a rocket to the moon, and I figure that I'll need to know how to weld, cast and machine metal to do it. So I built a small foundry, according to a series of books entitled "Build Your Own Machine Shop From Scrap". Book one is "The Charcoal Foundry". Which I built. It's low-capacity; I can cast about a quart of molten aluminum. (Albeit poorly.)
Anyhow, back when I lived in Oklahoma, I bought a whole bunch of scrap aluminum from my welding instructor. (8 or 9 VW Bug transmission housings) And I also picked up some other large castings from work (IBM 3390 disk-pack housings) that were being thrown out.
These pieces are too large to fit in my tiny little crucible, so I would smash them to bits with a sledgehammer. But parts of the scrap were too heavy to be smashed, no matter how hard I tried. There was a paragraph about this in the foundry book, that suggested building a fire around any castings that were too heavy to smash with a sledge, and heating them till they were soft. I decided to try this.
So, last night, I crept down the road in the inky blackness to an abandoned barn that's slowly succumbing to the Mississippi foliage and has a large pile of broken timbers. I dragged the wood out to the road, and came back for it with the truck. Then I built a bonfire of the dry timbers, interspersed with VW transmission housings and 3390 disk pack cases. Lacking somewhere better, I built the fire on the 12x12 concrete pad that forms my back patio.
I was moderately safety conscious. I built the pile as far from the house as I could (which wasn't very far). I took the propane tank out of my grill and moved it to the other side of the house. I had the garden hose pouring water continuously into the grass. I had my kitchen fire extinguisher and welding gloves near at hand. Thus prepared, I lit the fire.
It took a while for the fire to catch. I was concerned that the pile had too many castings and not enough wood, and that the fire wouldn't spread all the way around. But eventually it was getting pretty hot, and I could break up some of the smaller castings with a light blow from a steel bar.
So I pulled out the big guns, and tried to hit one of the large castings with the sledgehammer. It broke, but it also sparked and sputtered and caught on fire. The metal was on fire. When metal burns, it has a flame that's quite distinctive from a wood flame. Wood burns yellow and red; metal burns white-hot like a welder's spark. I could definitely tell that there was a metal fire at the base of my bonfire.
Now, I knew that magnesium will burn, and titanium too. I knew that sodium and potassium will burn in water. I didn't know that aluminum would burn. I never really considered that the castings would ignite. Perhaps aluminum needs to be a magnesium alloy to support combustion. I don't know. Whatever it was, it was burning.
Metal fires are tremendously hotter than wood fires, which caused the rest of the pile to rapidly ignite from a nice controlled bonfire, to what I can only describe as a raging inferno from the depths of hell. Oh shit. So I grabbed the already-running garden hose and I tried to put the fire out. Unfortunately, this typically made things worse. Metal burns so hot that when water touches it, the water vaporizes explosively, showering the area with molten, burning metal droplets. The rate at which metal burns is limited by its surface area, and breaking up a molten metal glob by pouring water on it accelerates the process.
So I grabbed the chemical fire extinguisher and tried to use that. Which worked, somewhat. But a small kitchen fire extinguisher has about 4 seconds worth of charge in it, and did not appreciably diminish the fire before it coughed and ran empty. Ah, shit.
Fires, as I recall, are categorized into four classes: A, B, C, and D. I was planning on having a Class-A fire: paper and wood. Class B is an oil or grease fire; Class C is an electrical fire. But what I really had was the worst of all: Class D, a metal fire. They make special fire extinguishers for Class D fires. Unfortunately, I didn't have one.
At this point, the flames were shooting up about 15 feet into the sky. Every so often, the pieces of burning aluminum would pop, throwing sparks and metal droplets everywhere. To complete the scene, also note that I had the stereo turned up inside the house, so as you visualize it, remember that BB King is wailing in the background.
I did what I could. I had a big steel pole that I used to knock the fire apart, to dissipate the heat. I used the hose carefully to try to cool the fire down. I wore the welding gloves and dragged the burning timbers away from the fire where I could safely douse the wood with the hose.
People stopped by and offered to help. They had seen the sparks and flames from the road, shooting above the house. They offered to call the fire department, an offer that a wise man would have readily accepted. But if I were a wise man, I wouldn't have done this in the first place, now would I?
So I asked them to standby on the offer to call the fire department, and said I thought I was getting it under control. I was basically wrong, since the worst explosions, the ones that shot molten metal directly at the house, were still yet to come. But the fire was quieting down somewhat.
(The house is brick. But the roof is not.)
The problem that I had was that there was no obvious way to finish putting out the fire. I removed pretty much all the burning wood from the fire, and separated the metal fire into smaller fires, but how to put out the burning aluminum? All I had was water and a steel pole, neither of which really seemed to help. In hindsight, I also had a shovel nearby, which probably would have been the best tool. Hindsight is a marvelous thing, no?
So, with a combination of patience (just letting the metal burn itself out), and cautious, gentle spraying with the hose, I got the fire out. In the end, no damage to the house, no serious injuries. My patio is a mess, my fingers are a little singed. (I later discovered that the concrete under the fire was destroyed to a depth of 3-4 inches.) My scrap metal supply is largely vaporized. I have a large new supply of humility, and a moderately good story.
I'm sure there's some deep lesson in this cautionary tale, but I'm not precisely sure what it is. I guess the big lesson is that aluminum burns. Forget that they make engine blocks and piston heads from the stuff. It burns, I know.