DVD Situation Takes New Turn

Several readers wrote in to let us know that the maintainer of css-auth has announced the end of his involvement with CSS, while the DeCSS person has removed the source from his website. The source has been removed at the behest of lawyers representing "the film industry".

I've said this before but ....

Locking the door after the horse has bolted is always a bad idea .... it just makes the other users of the stable angry.

Leaving the key under the mat is also a bad idea

Letting amateurs implement crypto doesn't work so well either

But the worst mistake is to alienate a whole bunch of smart people who understand locks by selling them horses but not letting them ride them

In the future if you are basing a business on the use of large secret numbers you had better use really big ones .... and maybe not leave them around where people can find them

Removing the source helps?

Yes, have him remove the source from his webpage, this will fix everything. After all, it's well known that source code can't simply be downloaded like other files, and can't be copied endlessly throughout the net, or else we'd be in REAL trouble...oh wait, it can.

Anyways, I don't see the trouble, DVD will come to linux/freebsd/beos/whatever else in time as it becomes increasingly popular...though it still kinda pisses me off that those trying to help get crucified by the lawyers (so to speak) over it.

Some Legal Analysis

IANAL but my partner and mother are...

Derek was told that he was in violation of the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988, Sections 296(1) and (2). These sections read:

(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.]

Clearly, the DVD consortium would try to demonstrate breach of copyright under clause 2(b) as Derek has published information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection. The fact that we are NOT using this information to actually copy DVDs is IRRELEVENT, simply publishing the information is, under this statute, equivalent to infringement of copyright.

In my opinion Derek would be found liable by the court as this statute stands. Derek is a scapegoat - the DVD consortium have not gone after others who have worked on cracking CSS because they reside in coutries that do not have such a law on the books. Unfortunately, the UK parliament passed this law (no doubt after considerable lobbying by industry groups) and Derek is a UK resident so they went after him.

EVEN if the DVD Consortium was on shaky legal grounds, the cost in time and money of fighting a copyright infringement case is astronomical and I think most people in Derek's position would have done the same thing.

There is no point in arguing over whether reverse engineering is legal, whether this is a breach of free speech; as the statute stands, publishing details on how to circumvent copyright prevention is itself an infringement of copyright, pure and simple.

Nick

It WAS outside the US!!!

Derek Fawcus, the author of css-auth lives in the UK and Jon Johansen, who had DeCSS on his site, lives in Norway. Both had lawyers set on them. Both have taken their sites down.

Nick

Re:Some Legal Analysis

I think there are archived posts by Derek that clearly indicate the goal of this project was to allow the playing of DVD's. His intent can be demonstrated as such, not to "enable and assist" circumvention. Intent is clearly stated as being primary to the offense.

None-the-less, I wouldn't mess with the lawyers either. It's one thing to work on open source software. It's another thing entirely to back your work up with your life savings and criminal record.

Mirrors of the code are here:

http://www.rhythm.cx/dvd [rhythm.cx]

There is a list of other mirrors there as well. Well there will be as soon as people start mirroring it :).

Thanks.

An Open Letter to Hollywood

Let me make myself crystal clear to any "Film Industry" types or representatives lurking here. I just purchased 4 DVDs over the weekend, with the expectation of being able to view them under Linux in the near future (I do not run Windows anymore, at all), and so that I could help in debugging the (until now) forthcoming Linux and drivers and software.

You have chosen to make that difficult, if not impossible. As a result, you will find me purchasing no further DVDs, at all, forever, until such a time as I am able to view them using the platform of my choice in an open and free manner. If you were to check my financial records over the last several years, you would find I have spent thousands of dollars on Laser Disks. Future thousands for DVD releases could also have been yours.

Not anymore.

Not only will I not be purchasing any further DVDs until I can view them under Linux, I won't be purchasing any further movies of any kind, on any medium, from you folks. I am going to rediscover the library as a form of entertainment, and do my best to insure that no further dollars pass from my wallet to yours, either at the video store, video rental store, cable box, or even at the theater.

It is my hope that others will feel, and do, likewise.

In the meantime, perhaps you should reflect upon your own strategies, and consider the following carefully.

• This action is not aimed at commercial pirates, but individuals. Pirates can already mass produce DVDs of their own:
  
  • Without css decryption, using the analog out, redigitizing, and mastering the non-encrypted result. Loss of quality: minimal.
    
  • Running Microsoft Windows and any one of several widely and freely available Windows utilities for ripping DVDs.
    
  • By placing a video camera (digital or otherwise) in front of the screen, digitizing the results, and pressing the DVD.
    
  
  
• The folks working on the css decryption and Linux DVD stuff are trying to make a product they have paid for work with Linux. The law clearly allows this, even if they do not have the same deep pockets to defend themselves with that the film industry does to make their lives difficult.
  
• Those of us wanting to watch DVD under Linux do not, for the most part, have any interest in pirating DVDs. While I am sure there are exceptions, the vast majority of pirates already have such tools available under Windows (see above). By alienating Linux and FreeBSD users you people in the film industry have alienated some of the most technically savvy folks in the world -- the very demographic group most likely to embrace an emerging technology such as DVD, and a by and large well paid group with lots of disposable income to spend on your product. Nice shooting, Tex.
  

Wrong approach

It appears many people on /. are advocating the wrong approach to dealing with this, namely spreading the code far and wide. This is doomed to fail, because we're being driven underground, and prevented from engaging in perfectly legal activity...the reverse engineering of CSS for the purposes of compatibility. Spreading the code around in the absence of someone willing to take responsibility for maintaining it is not going to help in producing a Linux/OpenSource DVD player. Running underground is acting like the pirates they want to paint us as.

I can understand Jon and Derek's position. When the laywer hounds of hell are after you and you're in the hotseat, it's perfectly natural to turn and run. Is there a larger organization (with deeper pockets and/or staff lawyers) that'd be willing to take a stand with Jon and/or Derek to fight for their rights? Perhaps we could get the FSF or the EFF interested. Probably the EFF more so than the FSF, but still do we wish to give up our rights simply because we're unwilling to fight for them?

and a way forward ...

In my opinion Derek would be found liable by the court as this statute stands. Derek is a scapegoat - the DVD consortium have not gone after others who have worked on cracking CSS because they reside in coutries that do not have such a law on the books. Unfortunately, the UK parliament passed this law (no doubt after considerable lobbying by industry groups) and Derek is a UK resident so they went after him.

EVEN if the DVD Consortium was on shaky legal grounds, the cost in time and money of fighting a copyright infringement case is astronomical and I think most people in Derek's position would have done the same thing.

I agree - and I think that this also points to how we get around this .... bend, don't break .... there are lot more of us than them (the lawyers) what should happen now is that someone else should pick up the torch, move the sources under CVS elsewhere and continue work on linux DVD .... don't make a big deal about it .... but also realise that eventually the lawyers will come after you, when they do you raise a stick, then bow out gracefully and pass the torch ...

Re:Questions... Does anyone know the answer?

1) Why are both of these groupd getting picked on, it seems to me only one was trying to pirate content.
2) What does DeCSS have to do with users who just want to play their disks in their computers? Does making a player cause CSS to be defeated?

You can't play an encrypted disk without decrypting it. It's just that simple.

A DVD player (software) works a bit like this:
Pass decryption code to DVD drive
DVD Drive accepts it, starts streaming out decrypted MPEG data.
Player decodes said data, displays it.

A DVD Pirate works a bit like this:
Pass decryption code to DVD Drive
DVD Drive accepts it, starts streaming out decrypted MPEG data.
Pirate takes data, writes it to hard drive.

So you see that the process is really the same, it just depends on where you want to put the final data. (This is a bit simplified from reality..)

3) I'm all for free information here, but there seems to be a lot of people whining about some guys who knew damn well their work would be used to rip off content.

The downside is that you couldn't do this much any other way. The DVD consortium isn't giving out any more decryption codes, therefore nobody else gets to write a DVD player without paying through the nose for it. Naturally, those free spirits out there think this is BS, so they just worked around it.

The gist of the whole thing: They wanted to protect DVD security through secrecy. That's always a bad move. The DVD encryption was broken, plain and simple.

Not expecting anyone to steal the horse when the lock on the barn was all rusted is just stupid. :-)


---

Source and Binary now available. - Download Away

Added a binary as well...

source [134.173.94.44] binary [134.173.94.44] Mind moderating this up one or two so it shows in thread lists for people with higher thresholds :)

Re:Why is indust stopping me frm seeing DVDs I PAI

Well for one, you own nothing aside from the right to view the movie in your home. It's encoded on the shiny little disk you purchased, but so far as your rights go, it's the same as goes for commercial software.

While i don't understand why the movie industry insists on this, I do understand that it's their right to determine proper usage, because they paid for it's creation and hence, it's their property.

If you don't like their terms, you can.

1 - Use that Windows partition for something.
2 - Buy a regular DVD Player.
3 - Boycott DVD and stick with the inferior, yet more open VHS.

That's probably not what you want to hear, but, you know, lifes not always fair. Perhaps this'll cause a "GNUMS" (GNU Movie Studio) to spring to life? Doubt it!

PS

Moderators: I'm only stating it the way i see it. Please don't relegate me to troll-dom because of that.

The 'bozo bit' on Mac filesystem.

Any Mac people here? Well, for those who don't know, every file on the Mac has a number of attribure bits associated with it. One of them was called the "No Copy" flag. If set, the OS and copy programs are supposed to respect it and not allow the file to be copied. No one paid any attention to it. Not the copy programs nor even Apple's own OS. It was widely ignored, thus eventually acquiring the name 'bozo bit'.

Meet region coding and CSS crypto. DVD's version of the bozo bit. Well, like it or not, legal or not, moral or not, (it no longer matters), the code to break CSS and region coding is 'out there'. It cannot all be recalled. Ever. The genie is out of the bottle. Trying harder to contain distribution will only encourage others to spread it further, deliberately, from nations out of your jurisdiction yet as easily reachable by anyone, anywhere on the earth as if if were on a floppy next door. The DVD consortium has failed to keep its trade secret. And since they took NO ACTION TO PROTECT their protection scheme such as patenting it, they have little justification to go after hackers for breaking it. They do have a case against Xing since Xing signed an NDA to keep DVD crypto info secure and did not. But there's no basis for a suit against anyone else on this matter. That's a risk that comes with keeping trade secrets. The DVD consortium took a risk and lost. Life's a bitch ain't it? Eventually lawyers will give up their futile pursuits and regions/CSS will be viewed the same way we all regard the 'bozo bit' on HFS and the 'allow copy' flag on audio CDs today. Namely, no one will care because movie companies will still be making lots of money just like the music industry still is today. How could the latter happen? CDs have no crypto, no region coding, CDR burners can be had for under $200, CDR media is at 89cents and falling. The music industry should be horribly dead by now as a result. Guess what? It isn't. Neither will the movie makers be. This is much ado about nothing.

Re:Some Legal Analysis

Dave and I hashed this out via email, but here it is anyway. :)

I think that the law makes the act of circumvention, in and of itself, regardless of intent, illegal:

b) publishes information intended to enable or assist persons to circumvent that form of copy-protection

To me, the code clearly circumvents the copy protection algorithm. I'm not saying it's a good law... No matter the intent, it seems that the code is illegal in the U.K.

Re:Why is indust stopping me frm seeing DVDs I PAI

This is in reply to the first 5 people who've posted...

The movie industry isn't forcing you to buy or use windows. You can purchase a DVD player for your TV and bypass the whole computer thing. It is a convienence that player-back software exists. It's made it to the Mac and Wintel so far, and will probably not come to Linux anytime soon.

For one, there's a huge installed base of both machines and OS's.

For two, there's no way of gauging the Linux installed base. Yeah, there have been so many downloads and so many purchases, but how many people use it on a daily basis, compared to the other two groups?

For three, all the mainstream press talks about Linux's use in the server arena. Servers don't need to play DVD movies. So, why would the movie industry want to create a player for a server?

Also for three, there players available for Solaris, *BSD, Openserver, Unixware, Netware, BeOS, Irix, AIX, or HP-UX? I'm guessing not. And for them to create a *nix port solely to serve this market would be a huge waste of resources given the potential returns.

(Still stuck on 3...) Rather than just running ahead and writing that program, was this brought up in a more political sense, such as letter-writing, email, phone calls, etc? I doubt it was, to any extent, maybe one or two here or there. Maybe some programmers could have done the movie-watching community a favor by signing a NDA, and created binaries for the said platforms, with the industries okay. Was that tried?

Four, you can do whatever you want with the disc itself. Burn it. Use it as a frisbee. microwave it. It's the IP on the disk (the movie) that you need to show some restraint about... :)


Now for five. DVD playback probably will take longer to make it to Linux than it would have before. Why? Because of this. More and more, I notice around here (not singling anyone out, so don't get down on me too hard) a mentality of "I don't want to pay for something if I can get the same thign for free" or "Who cares about intellectual property".

Those attitudes are not condusive to getting the industries okay on releasing spec's (and liablility for implementing a playback mechanism) for DVD. They can easily view those two statements as saying, "I'd rather watch a free pirated movie than acually buying the DVD, especially if they're the same exact movie... I'll even copy it for all my friends, too."

You really have to watch yourself when stepping around the giants of any industry... you may not realize that you've stepped on their toes until it's much too late.

All done for now.

Re:What I own

Well, that's why I put the gun example in there. :)

People will interpret similar scenarios differently depending on where their passions lie. You can argue that guns are for target practice, and you can argue that the CSS code was for viewing. Other people with other passions (anti-gun control or pro-profits) will argue that you are wrong.

(I agree that the gun example might be a bit overboard since we're talking about human _lives_ in that case, but I bet the DVD consortium ranks the importance of their profits almost as high as a human life or two...)

Ah, but is CSS Copy Protection?

Bear with me a second:

CSS does nothing to prevent the outright copy of a disc. The keys survive copying procedures just fine.

CSS does, however, prevent interoperability with non-approved hardware.

Since reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability is a common and legal practice, and since interoperability could not be achieved outside of a procedure that rendered the colluding cartel's enforcement mechanisms ineffective, the breaking of the CSS encryption scheme is not necessarily a violation of copy protection law.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

DVD was/is/will be cracked

Past: First let me note. Pirates had already solved their problems with DVD. I have seen several pirated DVDs in the last monthes. So it is stupid to consider that this program has given some breakout in this field.

Present: The fact that such program is probably breaking the law gives several serious doubts. First there is a problem that reverse engineering is defended by the law of several countries, in cases when there are compatibility problems or needs to integrate new third-party features. Law only goes against such crack tools when authors suffer "significant material damage". Real one, well counted bucks. Not the abstract problem of how "dangerous" can be deCSS.

Future: DVD will end the same way CD ended. When CDs started, such guys as Sony claimed it to be a blow against piracy. As we see now piracy got a Hell of money exactly due to CDs. The fact is that DVDs, just as CDs, are a mean to spread information openly and massively. It is a practical nonsense to try to restrict the distribution of such stuff by means meant to be individual and private.

However the problem does not end just here. Right now the producers of information for mass consumption entered a field that may overturn our values of today. Those same supposedely defended by our dear capitalism.
You buy a DVD. Do you possess it? Or are you renting it for a "one time fee"? And what are your rights on having a rented piece of information? Can you borrow it, sell it? Can you manipulate it? Can you destroy it?
I don't want to go in details here. But if anyone analyses the problem DVDs and other media present today, then one will note that we are facing not a problem of "capitalist" ownership. In fact what we are facing is an attempt to feudalise the ownership of media. You have no right to own information. You cannot use it above a restricted set of permissions. You become an servant (hostage) of the information lords.

Selecting the correct legal ground to stand on

I believe that the prohibition on circumventing copy protection will eventually be found unconstitutional.

However, there appears to be a lot of confusion as to what legal ground we are standing on, and I'd like to start a discussion to shake that out. What legal principles make the creation, distribution, and use of DVD decryption programs legal, and under what circumstances.

Some ideas from a non-lawyer (meself):

First off, programs such as DeCSS and livid cannot be created or distributed for the purpose of unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works. Regardless of what you think about copyright law, and freedom, no court is ever going to sign off on the use of DVD decryption programs for this purpose; it's a counterproductive and losing argument.

However, there are certain legal uses of copyrighted material which become impossible without the utilization of DVD decryption programs.

Let's try this:

DVD decryption and viewing programs are created and distributed to facilitate legal, fair use of copyrighted material, and for the private, legal display of copyrighted material.

FAIR USE:

Section 107 of the United States Copyright Code specifically recognizes the right to extract sections of copyrighted materials for such purposes as criticism, comment, and news reporting.

DVD decryption programs are, by definition, the only method available to the public of accessing a true, accurate, undegraded copy of copyrighted material distributed in the DVD format, for the purposes of legal manipulation of this material for protected free speech activity, including fair use.

In addition, Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright code permits libraries and archives to reproduce copyrighted works in their entirety, for certain purposes. DVD decryption programs are the only method of making a true and accurate copy of such material for this legal purpose.

These rights are recognized in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which contains the following language, with regards to the unauthorized circumvention of copy protection:


OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED: Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products.


Therefore, the creation, distribution, and use of DVD decryption software for these legal purposes should, in theory, still be legal.

PRIVATE DISPLAY:

The legal owner of a physical copy of a copyrighted work has the right to view their copy.
DVD decryption programs are distributed for the purpose of legal, private viewing of DVD programming.

COMPUTER SOFTWARE:

Section 117 of copyright law:

... it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:

(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine, and that it used in no other manner, or

(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that such archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

The contents of a DVD disk consist entirely of computer instructions and data, and therefore should be considered as a computer program for this purpose.

In short, the acquisition and use of a DVD decryption tool is the sole existing method for persons to exercise their rights under copyright law to make a legal backup copy of their DVD software, and to exercise their right to use it in certain computer environments.

Comments?

Re:Ah, but is CSS Copy Protection?

I think you are making some sort of confusion. If your statement about CSS preventing interoperability, then CSS is illegal. CSS can be interpreted as a mean to spread a monopoly in a given market segment

Hurm. Yes, that's very interesting.

Suppose for a moment that car manufacturers designed a new standard for gasoline pumps that required a special set of grooves to line up in order for the gas to cleanly flow.

Sure, they could dress it up as environmentalism, or as an attempt to prevent gasoline not deemed quality enough for the engine to burn, but the bottom line is that it would be an attempt to control who could sell gas, who could receive gas, and how much everything would cost for all parties involved.

Money is not necessarily power, but power invariably forms wealth.

Now, suppose I analyze the groove design on the pumps and create an adapter for any old pump to fit my car. Am I now violating the industry's right to prevent me from purchasing gasoline they don't want me to? From where could Detroit gather this power?

Standard Oil would have killed for something like this.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Why is indust stopping me frm seeing DVDs I PAI

The movie industry isn't forcing you to buy or use windows. You can purchase a DVD player for your TV and bypass the whole computer thing.

So they aren't forcing us to buy Windows but they are forcing us to buy extra hardware (a TV DVD player)? This is basically saying the same thing.

Unless there is something that is patented in the DVD playback process then there is nothing that should stop anybody from making a player if they can figure out how to do it. Just because all the current players are closed-source and industry controlled has no bearing on the creation of a reverse engineered open-source player.

This is analogous to the commercially available Playstation emulators. Is Sony mad about that? Sure they are. Does it matter? Heck no. And the list goes on! The PC you're typing on is as cheap as it is because of the revolution that Compaq started when it reverse engineered IBM PC's.

All of your arguments assume that we are required to ask the great and mighty movie studios if they will please allow us to make a nice little closed source player for our equipment. Yet, there is no such requirement.

I do agree that folks should not copy videos illegally. However, the ideas of "don't copy" and "play where I want to" are mutally exclusive. Just because "play where I want to" allows copying and copying is bad, does not imply that "play where I want to" is also bad.