Death By DMCA 414
Dino writes "There's a good article in the IEEE Spectrum, titled 'Death by DMCA', which talks about how whole classes of devices were eliminated, and how others won't even see the light of day as a result of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One example is ReplayTV's TiVo-like devices which featured sharing capabilities, along with automatic ad skipping; the company was sued to bankruptcy, and the reincarnated device supported neither sharing nor ad skipping."
It was never about piracy (Score:5, Informative)
This is about controlling what you watch and how you watch it. It's about protecting their advertising revenue. It' about making you buy a new copy of your favorite content every time they change formats.
here's the proof that they're evil (Score:5, Informative)
In 2003, 321 Studios, of St. Charles, Mo., launched a software product called DVD X Copy for these more typical DVD owners. The company built in aggressive measures to prevent piracy, including an antipiracy splash screen that appeared when viewing any copy and watermarks that would enable copies to be traced back to those who made them. The management at 321 Studios hoped that these cooperative measures would stave off Hollywood's wrath.
The company was wrong. Before the DMCA, 321 Studios would have been on relatively safe legal ground. From the time of the Betamax case, U.S. courts had made it clear that copying devices were legal so long as they had any substantial lawful use. But the DMCA changed the rules. When the movie studios sued 321 Studios, the Hollywood contingent did not argue that any of their movies had been unlawfully copied. Instead, it said that the product circumvented a "technical protection measure," which in this case was the Content Scramble System (CSS) on DVDs.
The CSS is the scheme Hollywood uses to encrypt movies on DVDs. Decryption requires a key, which manufacturers of DVD players obtain by signing a license with the DVD Copy Control Association, a consortium of movie studios, including Fox and Warner, and technology providers, such as Intel and Toshiba. This license, in turn, forbids licensed devices from making digital copies of DVD content or from offering playback modes that the studios disapprove of. (DVD recorders can copy only unencrypted digital material, such as home movies.) The licensing rules and DMCA put companies like 321 Studios in a quandary. If they signed the license in order to obtain the CSS decryption keys, the document prohibited them from using those keys in software capable of copying a DVD. If they didn't sign the license and forged ahead anyway, deriving the CSS keys on their own, they risked prosecution or a civil suit under the DMCA for circumventing the CSS. After consideration, 321 Studios opted to go forward without a license. The DMCA quickly washed away DVD X Copy. After the movie studios prevailed in court in 2004, manufacturers pulled DVD X Copy and similar ripping tools off the U.S. market.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane (Score:3, Informative)
oops (Score:5, Informative)
Re:dvd software for copying (Score:3, Informative)
The article is incorrect regarding ReplayTV. (Score:5, Informative)
One example is ReplayTV's TiVo-like devices which featured sharing capabilities, along with automatic ad skipping; the company was sued to bankruptcy, and the reincarnated device supported neither sharing nor ad skipping.
I don't think SonicBlue actually went into bankruptcy, and its ReplayTV product was purchased by Digital Networks North America Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of D&M Holdings U.S., Inc. They own things like the Denon, Marantz, and Boston Acoustics brands as well as Rio and ReplayTV.
SonicBlue 5000-series models supported internet and local program sharing and both manual (Show/Nav) and automatic commercial skipping as well as a 30-second FF button (QuickSkip). The commercial skipping features navigate between marks which are created at the start and end of commercial advertising blocks that the unit detects and marks at show recording time (it isn't just a simple time skip). Those units still perform as they did when initially purchased.
Current 5500-series models still mark commercial blockss while recording and still fully support both Show/Nav (manual movement between block markers) and QuickSkip, so manual commercial skipping and the 30-second FF is still present, but the automatic commercial skip has been removed. Also, the internet sharing capabilities were removed.
I believe a 5500-series ReplayTV can be made to temporarily regain both automatic commercial skipping and internet sharing capabilities if the disk is reimaged with a 5000-series formatted disk, but I can't personally vouch for that (I own a 5000-series box myself).
The Police Bay (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Non-U.S.'ers not safe either (Score:5, Informative)
Umm a couple points, one he was in fact arrested after Norwegian law, just never convicted. Secondly, the woman leading the investigation against him, Inger Marie Sunde, need no help from the USA to be a 1984-happy control freak. She's tried to ban anonymous email (yes, she wanted to outlaw using free webmails like Hotmail or Yahoo from Norway), she's managed to outlaw anonymous cell phones and registration without showing ID, she's been airing thoughts about requiring ID to use a webcafe, every time there's been something like the RIP act in UK or the data retention act in EU she's all for it and in the broadest scope possible. Her latest suggestion is to allow copyright holders like RIAA and MPAA direct access to subscriber information without police or court oversight, and I mean absolutely none at all.
Stop feeding the vampires (Score:2, Informative)
You don't want your future to be full of crippleware and DRM implants that doesn't let you blink durng comercials then don't buy into those products.
People are nuts for ipods, but for a few bucks less they can buy a very nice PDA that does everything an ipod does and a whole lot more, include not getting easily scratched.
Stop buying crippleware that locks you out of 90% of what the technology is capable of. Don't buy Sony or Disney DVD's since both have figured out how to defeat DVD ripping software.
Don't buy online music from the majors unless it is DRM free.
Certainly don't buy into the happy horse shit that is HD-DVD and Blue-ray and send a message that the consumers don't want to be jerked around along with the bastard children that CDR and DVDR media turned out to be. How many formats are there now and how often do you have compatability problems with various players and recorders.
Do rent movies instead of buying them. Quit giving them the extra $16, or aleast trade them around to others. How many times are you really going to watch most movies.
Do buy extra harddrives and rip all your DVD's to them with all the command locked comercials, legal threats, extras (crap) removed
Do insist on companies releasing acurate game demos before you buy and non-restrictive/invasive online activation schemes
Do insist that your hardware belong to you and be general so it can be used to do about anything.
Re:Open Source is the ANSWER! (Score:2, Informative)
if you support linux then you support terrorism/communisim... in fact if you support linux you support everything and anything that isn't american,,,
some people actually believe that crap.
Re:more proof the RIAA/MPAA are insane (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, well, you're making it clear now that you're trolling, but I will respond once more, anyway, since I believe some of your thoughts basically coproratist crap and should be shown as such, lest some poor newb mistake you for a realist and be misled... besides, I have a few minutes during commerical ...
It may be common, but that makes it neither right nor actually legal. Fact is, once you resort to legislating that your victims must purchase your product, you are no longer in the business of business, you are in government, which is precisely the problem here (and in other areas of business and government as practiced in the US, and - I don't doubt - in Switzerland).
Let's get one basic thing established before I go on to show that these corps - thru the DMCA and other measures - are in fact attempting to use the Law to force citizens [corps like the term "consumer" but for obvious reasons I reject that moniker in this case] to purchase their product regardless of the quality of the product or the desire of the [alleged] consumer for that product - that one item is this: No corporation has any inherent Right to the output of my work, nor to my property, nor to anything which is inherently Mine. [note that this applies also to individuals, but I am using "coroporation" here to a point]
If you cannot agree to that, then you may as well just run your "debunk" script on the rest of this a move on, but I suspect that [despite your assertion that you live in that weenie commie Switzerland place] you might agree that you do in fact have a right to own your own property?
Very well then.
Allow me to present to you the reality of the [television] media biz:
The TV biz does not market shit to you, the consumer. they market you the consumer to the companies that buy the advertising.
They, the media companies, draw you into "their" audience by offering you something they suspect (rightly or wrongly) you will watch. Then, once they have established [thru the raitings systems] that you are watching, they sell the fact that you are watching to other corporations. You are their audience, whcih is the actual product they produce. Their product is not content, since they do not get paid directly for any content - they get paid for providing viewers to companies like Coke, Pepsi, McD's, Budwieser, et al. That's it. It's very simple. Thier cash flow is from the advertisers, not from the viewers.
Do you get it yet?
Actually, no. They are in denial. They are asserting that "you are watching" and that if you don't, they will sue you, or charge you criminally. That is a bit different from addressing the problems inherent in their business models. Quite different.
If their goal was to get you to pay for content, they could just charge you directly, as many of the non-mainstream media outfits do. The resort to legistlation is a complete non-sequiter to prevent them [the networks] from bearing liability to their actual customers - to wit: the corps who are paying for the ads.
If the network sells ads, and you do not [that is: they cannot force you to] watch, the media corp could [arguably] be considered in violation of the contract with their advertisers. A real contract. They are attempting to shift their own liability to their hapless victims - the audience. This too, is a red herring, though, as we shall see...
It might make sense to look at the contract between Coke and NBC [randomly selected examples].
Coke pays NBC to broadcast some ad over it's network during some time when NBC is claiming some-