Macrovision Wants Old DRM to Work Forever 288
Grv writes "Macrovision's best-known form of copy protection inserts noise into analog video signals to make it difficult to get a good copy of the DVD or VHS recording. A company named Sima has products that eliminate this noise when digitizing such video, as any good digitizer would do. Macrovision argues that this is a violation of the DMCA, and a court sided with them in June. Now the injunction is being reviewed, and several organizations are siding with Sima and Fair Use, including the American Library Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If it isn't overturned, this decision could make it illegal to develop products for making copies of commercial analog recordings."
This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.
Digital, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Digital, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Digital, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. "Digital" and "Millennium" were just buzzwords at the time. Using the two together was simply a crafty ruse to make copyright law stricter in light of new digital technologies. They never use the word "digital" as in binary systems but instead the word "technology".
This Macrovision noise crap is "technology" too, which means it's quite possibly protected. Or at least they say it is. That's the entire problem with the DMCA right there. It's too vague, which means this kind of the opportunistic crap will happen more and more as time goes on and innovation occurs. This is yet another example of how innovation dies at the hands of the DMCA. Again government has failed us in their understanding (or lack thereof) of technical concepts by creating legislation that is incredibly vague. I think they're smoking DOPA.
Thanks for nothing Congress. Vaguely written, hastily thrown together, anti-everyone-but-the-guys-who-paid-you-off legislation is bad m'kay?
Re:Digital, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Digital, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Which, of course, is why the DMCA is so stupid, arbitrary, and completely one-sided.
Re:Digital, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the GPL could be considered "technology", then anything that prevents copying (DRM systems) could be classified as a "circumvention device".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What about market regulation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you completely ignored the astroturfing campaign, including TV ads, that attacked Net Neutrality in specious ways? Do you really believe the MPAA did not have anything to do with that?
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I think AT&T, Comcast, and the rest of the telcos are perfectly capable of hiring a PR firm and buying some TV time. Nothing about that implies the involvement of the MPAA.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Here Here! (Score:2)
I used this tactic (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting someone's own prejudices to work for you is sometimes all that you can do.
Re:What about market regulation? (Score:4, Interesting)
>illegal to remove or bypass things like region encoding. They want market regulations.
Yes, lets regulate the work market as well. That way, they can't use manufacturing plants in one "market" to supply another market. They can't press their CDs, say, in Asia and sell them in Europe or USA, that work is region marked to Asia. Want to set up a call centre in India? Sure, but those people's work are area marked for India only, can't circumvent that and have people phoning from USA get help. And so on. SHould work great. After all, why should THEY be able to trade, ship and use workforce freely in the world when normal people and their customers are not!
Re:Digital, eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see why modifying said value could be so hard for the other drivers...but it probably works on all BT8x8 based cards.
ttyl
Re:Digital, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Macrovision is trivially defeated with a simple, off-the-shelf, $10 video switch that you can buy at any big-box electronics store. Video switches do not have automatic gain control, because they are not "analog recording devices" under the DMCA. Lacking this feature means they are immune to Macrovision. The video output from the switch can then be routed to the recording device of your choice, with Macrovision stripped away.
A better solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A better solution (Score:5, Interesting)
A more thorough way of defeating Macrovision is to use a 1881 sync separator, 4066 quad bilateral switch and some assorted logic ICs {or a microcontroller}. You need to discard about 30 lines from the top of each field, clamping them to no more than 0V but pulling them down to -0.3V with the line sync pulses. If you can manage to leave in the colour subcarrier burst, then so much the better.
As long as you're making fair use of material, which you have an inalienable right to do, then the use of an electronic circuit to remove this copy protection would be classified as Reasonable Force in pursuit of your Statutory Rights.
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Works great and none of that pesky building things.
This will be interesting, Video production houses everywhere will be illegal as analog video TBC's become DMCA violation devices!
So when does the storm troopers start showing up to put a gun butt to the head of everyone that dares clean up the video signal?
Macrovision has been a standing joke to everyone in the video industry for decades. Their snake oil sounds good to execs, but all the techs laugh
One Fine Day In The Not So Distant Future (Score:5, Insightful)
"Wanna watch Erik The Viking?"
"Can't. It would be a violation of the law."
"What Law?"
"The one that prevents us from taking the old video tape I bought of it, which I can no longer watch on newer video devices due to built in DRM and I am prevented from recording onto a computer and removing the old DRM and writing to digital storage which the new digital video devices read."
"Man, obeying the law sucks!"
"No, creating laws which paint people into a corner and then hand them the brush suck."
Ultimately, the way DRM and DMCA is going, you will not have owned DVDs, CDs, LPs, 45s, etc. You will merely have rented them until the march of technology locks you out of enjoying the content any further.
Re:One Fine Day In The Not So Distant Future (Score:5, Interesting)
They really sincerely believe that people won't stand for it and that the government will stop the content distributors from doing this.
It's sad how much faith they have in people who are genuinely trying to screw them.
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Telling my friends and family this have gotten me accused of everything from lying to fear mongering.
Those old Beatles records you bought years ago, you can't just digitise them so you can listen to them on your iPod. Not with the RIAA's blessing anyway. And TFB if you have something on vinyl which never came out, or in the case of my ELO Out Of The Blue double-LP, was clipped when making the abbreviated CD version.
stormtroopers are standing by
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KFG
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Put another way, how would you feel if it was illegal to maintain your car? I mean, you can buy a new one when it wears out...
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Maybe you live in some fictional world where these sort of things arn't common as hell.
Re:One Fine Day In The Not So Distant Future (Score:4, Insightful)
Try selling a copy of MS Windows on ebay. The RIAA is against the reselling of music as well, but they lost that battle.
If I bought a right to use it, I should be able to get another copy of the medium if mine was damaged or destroyed for the cost of the medium+shipping. Try to get that on MS Windows (Tell them it came with your computer and you want an OEM copy, but will settle for an end-user copy).
So, did I buy MS Windows, or just the right to install it?
Re:One Fine Day In The Not So Distant Future (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can see, the **AA needs to make the decision of what they are selling.
If they're selling me a licence to the song(s)/movie, then it should be reasonable for me to buy a replacement for my existing media at less than the cost of someone without an existing licence. For example, should my CD/DVD wear out (and, believe me, they do), I should be able to take the worn-out medium somewhere, and get a new one for approximately cost price. I can't do this at the moment; the business model simply doesn't allow it.
However, if the **AA is in the business of selling shiny discs, then I should be able to damn well do what I want with my shiny disc. Including, but not limited to, making copies of it (but probably not selling them, due to trademark reasons rather than copyright reasons).
The **AA wants to have its cake and eat it, too. They want to be able to sell shiny discs, and at the same time rent you the content encoded on the media.
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They've made that decision already. As far as they're concerned, what they're selling is a licence to play a specific instance of a specific recording of a specific sound or video event from a specific piece of media.
Or, simply, "See that disc? Buying it gives you the right to play that disc - it doesn't give you any rights to the identical one next to it".
Of course, the law is more complicated and less exact than that - whi
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Also if anybody ever asked you if you had a CD of Pink Floyd do you think they cared about the physical medium or listening to the content.
A physical medium is a delivery device - an outdated one because it costs money - the great thing about digital media is that you can make N copies for effectively free - you can change its format, you can rip a section of it (either a time segment, or only the audio from a movie say) - its more v
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Today, you are saved from this DIY attitude by laws that forbid you from fixing your car (without a license from the maker to use the special tools only they make), forbid you from copying your music for personal use to another medium.
How is music different? It isn't. But the times
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Although I did find this part interesting:
"Today, you are saved from this DIY attitude by laws that forbid you from fixing your car "
Where the heck are YOU living?
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I know the standard OBD2 computer controls that are on every car sold in the US since 1996 are not "protected", even the additional extensions that automakers add above and beyond the federally mandated emissions controls can be read and diagnosed with any decent OBD2 code reader. Fixing computerized problems and fault codes take
Re:One Fine Day In The Not So Distant Future (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost of producing a car has a solid per-item price: Parts plus labour plus whatever other expenses are involved in production. This price will always exist with every copy of a car's design produced because we can't magick up a car out of thin air.
Information may have an initial cost in its research / discovery / creation. But it doesn't have any per-item cost. Effectively, we can magick up as many copies of information as we want with impunity; nobody will be hurt by our copying of it, short of the original producers losing potential profits.
What sort of profit margins do you think a company should be able to make on a product that costs them nothing to produce?
Now, consider that if the customer already effectively owns the information, but is locked out of accessing it via a practical means like not being able to move it to a new format. You're arguing that they should have to pay the company that originally produced the information for a license to access it on a new format, even though it gives them absolutely no benefit that they wouldn't already have had they not been locked out of it artificially by the original producer?
This is why a lot of people argue over the use of the word theft in place of copyright infringement. One deprives the owner of their own property, the other does not.
PS: If you believe that allowing unlimited copying of information would destroy many businesses, you're probably right, but I argue it would be better for humanity as a whole. I also think the market needs to evolve with the times, and there are plenty of suggested ways to do that out there. I suggest reading The Digital Art Auction [digitalproductions.co.uk] for one of those methods: It allows unlimited copying but also recoups production costs and profits for artists, keeping them in business.
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Yet.
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Or perhaps encouraging how little they care about watching Buffy: Season Three in 2018.
Re:One Fine Day In The Not So Distant Future (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bad analogy (Score:2)
As much as I dislike the DMCA, as posted earlier, your story won't happen under the current DMCA as it exists now. Interoperability is one of the exceptions that the DMCA allows for in creating circumvention tools. Of
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Not good (Score:2, Insightful)
I thought that the DMCA did that already. These products are knowingly removing DRM from an original tape. Regardless of how you feel, the DMCA specifically outlaws this. According to TFA, the problem is that the means by which the program strips DRM is through converting it to digital and by outlawing the program the judge could outlaw AD conversions.
Re:Not good (Score:4, Insightful)
"How we feel" is the central tenet of a democratic society. If a law is unjust, it is our duty to defy it.
Re:Not good (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as you are willing to face the consequences of such actions, yes. Defy away; however, a more reasonable and responsible citizen might suggest that if a law is believed to be unjust, they have a duty to try and get it overturned through legal and ethical means first. If that doesn't work, then I think you have a tea party
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Disobeying laws is sometimes the most moral, reasonable, and responsible thing to do. Ask Gandhi.
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How do you get a law overturned, without first breaking it and going to court? And what is unethical about breaking an unethical law?
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Most likely by attempting to show that it violates some other law or previously established right. Economical methods such as boycotts are also available.
And what is unethical about breaking an unethical law?
I didn't suggest there was anything unethical about breaking the law, just that one stays within the accepted bounds of ethics while attempting to remove the offending law. Don't go around killing innocent people to make a poi
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You'd want to publicize it, of course.
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But don't take it from me. Take it from the wise folks who started this country:
and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right thems
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Right - it is not DRM. It is AI (Score:2)
Simply a nuisance which many would not bother to circumvent, but by no means a strong licensing enforcement mechanism like DRM.
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shocked (Score:3, Interesting)
They are just trying to screw you over again and again and again. Fortunately I don't live in a country with the DMCA or equivalent, but I sympathise, I hate getting screwed over by companies and the government when their working against the people.
Re:shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
I do, however, agree that these kinds of things suck, and feel that if I own a VHS tape or LP, I should be able to transfer them to whatever media I choose.... But by admitting that I have the ability to do so, also is an admission that I have the ability to still play the original media and am not locked out of it. Granted, I own an mp3 player, and think it would be cool to listen to those old unpublished B sides I have stored away on vinyl when I take the dog for a walk, or any media I own, that for whatever reason isn't considered profitable to some guy sitting in a tower. Artistry in any form needs to be preserved, regardless of popularity or profit. Admirers of "unprofitable" or "unpopular" art, in my opinion have a duty and right to preserve and protect art for future generations, when others won't do it.
To me, copy restrictions amount to nothing more than the censorship of art, and a slippery slope of allowing only a select few to choose what parts of our past carry on into the present. Remember this one thing: "History is written by the winners."
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Is it the "owners" or the "workers" part of the corporation that get the benefits?
Is it the "owners" or the "workers" part of the population that pay the price?
Take a look at wealth distribution and you get the answer: http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts. html [faireconomy.org]
Bottom 50% ownling less that 3% of the wealth.
Top 1% owning m
No one cares about rights - it's Macrovision (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Anyone can overcome macrovision protection,
2. It will be useless to even build it in anywhere.
4. No company will by the protection from macrovision.
5. Loss
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I've had a SIMA Color corrector pro for years. (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know how good it is at color corrections but it did a fine job of removing macrovision before my new DVD player came into the picture.
I for one endorse this product if you have the need.
Its about who owns what. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have nothing against the content producers making financial gain from their efforts. In fact, I work for a company that makes a considerable amount of money licensing code to third parties. I'm well aware of the situation that copyright creates, and I'm all for ownership of intellectual property.
That said, ownership is a two way street. I exchange my ownership of the code I produce for the salary my company pays me. I consider it a fair deal - I work a given number of hours in exchange for a one time payment. Once I've cashed the check (before, actually), I no longer own the code that I write. I have no problem with this arrangement. Whether my company sells one copy or a million makes no difference to me, because I've already been paid for the work I did. If the company can't sell my code, well, that's their loss, not mine. Or, if they are obscenely profitable, that's their gain. After all, they bought my code, and they own it. For them to make obscene profits does not impose any additional work burden on me.
However, the movie industry is actively opposed to intellectual property. When you buy a movie from them, they take your money, yet behave as if both the money and the movie are still theirs. You see, they don't believe in property. When you sell a piece of property, you give up any and all claim to the property. The movie industry's idea of a sale is more like an indefinite lease - you get to have a copy of the content for as long as it suits the studio. They feel that if they are not making enough money, they have the right to charge you time and again for the same material. (i.e. new movie on DVD instead of VHS, the "director's cut" version, etc...)
And you are supposed to like it. You pay for the DVD, but you don't own it:
Granted, I know there are ways around all of these, but they are not easy to come by, and require a technical aptitude beyond what the average user will possess. In effect, the studios are "Indian givers" - they aren't satisfied with either your money or the movie - they want them both.
Which, I think is one of the key reasons why I seldom buy movies anymore. It just doesn't seem right to give money to someone whose stated purpose is to explicitly rip off their customers, and goes to great length to defend the practice .
Flawed analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
It would certainly be possible for you to pay to media companies to assign the copyright to you, but it would cost a lot more then $15.
The fact that you got modded +5 insightful only illustrates how difficult it is to sort out intelectual property owernship issues. Almost all analogies made with cars or computers or whatever people tend to come up with don't work - this is a different beast and as a society we haven't figured out yet how to deal with the problem of something as essential as culture being a commercial product at the same time. Perhaps our culture isn't all it is drummed up to be?
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First of all, ownership and intellectual property are the terms used by the MPAA and RIAA. They want it characterized as ownership when it comes to their rights, but not when it comes to the rights of the consumer. Their advertising is deliberately deceptive, "Own it on DVD today". So, they do want you to think of it as ownership - except when it comes to exercising your rights. Then, they say that different rules apply.
It's not my analogy - it is the MPAA's, and it is not just flawed, but deliberate
Re:Flawed analogy (Score:4, Insightful)
(I don't know why it's ignoring my italics here--you italicized "bought," just for reference.)
Your statement is correct, but it seems to me that your italics stopped a bit too soon. It should be: "[You] bought a copy of the movie."
You bought the copy, not the movie. If you want to spread peanut butter all over it and eat it for lunch, that's your business. If you want to snap it over your knee, also your business. Plus of course all the more practical uses. You can also sell your copy, or borrow it to a friend.
You can argue about whether or not this is fair, but that is the current reality. You DO really own what you buy, you just think you have bought more than you have.
No, it ends when the market says it does. If DVDs become obsolete and players hard to find, it isn't because Hollywood walked into every electronics store in the world and threw their merchandise on the ground. It's because a new format has become more popular and stores aren't interested in stocking something that hardly anybody buys. They shouldn't be. (Though that said, I also find it hard to believe that you would not be able to find a DVD player anywhere, but we'll ignore this for now.)
With that said, Hollywood has absolutely no say on how long I can legally use my purchased DVD. The fact that (in your example) all of my players broke or were thrown away as obsolete or what have you, and I can no longer play that DVD, is likewise not their fault.
Again, argue as much as you want over whether or not this is how it should be, but at least for now it's how it is. Understanding what it is you bought is critical to any understanding of the issues involved.
Not disagreeing with you, but books are very simil (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not disagreeing with you, but it's not really that different from a book, the one exception being fair use of excerpts.
You pay for the book, but you don't own it:
When a new version comes out (like the English versi
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Yes, you own the copy of the book.
The only restrictions on it is is use in various forms involving making it available for the public. Of course, you can't make NEW copies in several cases either. Ownership has nothing to do with copyright though. It applies equally regardless of if you would own the book or not. That is irellevant.
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However, the value to the buyer is MUCH MUCH less than the value to the producer: it's certainly not worth the $2mill development cost to the buyer. So you charge what the buyer is prepared to pay, say, $5K.
But with no concept of licensin
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Study the US Fair Use [wikipedia.org] laws for what you can do with your copy of the copyrighted material you bought.
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However, the studio that filmed that movie incurred huge costs - just look at the budgets of todays movies. Granted, some of those are over-inflated due to stupidly-large salaries paid to higher execs
DMCA... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wo what the hell has that got to do with VHS.
It's not digital, nor it contains encryption.
The Macrovision curse (Score:5, Informative)
Macrovision is a burst of noise added to the vertical sync in the brief period after the current frame has ended and the next frame (a single 'photograph' or still image on the television set) begins. This burst of noise happened about once every ten to fifteen seconds. It caused the picture image to lose sync and 'roll' and/or 'tear up' for a short period of time until the vertical sync stabilization circuitry in the recording process
kicked in and made the picture stable.
This is how Macrovision was able to mess up the video copy without destroying the video integrity when watching the original commercial video tape. The sync stablizer circuitry only was active during the recording period, not during playback. But the video copy was polluted by tearing and rolling every ten seconds or so.
The way to defeat this pollution was/is to use an 1881 sync seperator IC, a track-and-hold circuit, a 4053-type analog 1-of-2 switch IC, and a timer on a microcontroller (or a 555 one-shot timer IC). Use the sync seperator to detect the beginning of the vertical sync pulse. At this time, sample the black video level using the track-and-hold. After sampling, switch the video signal to the recorder (for the content being copied) to the sampled black level for the period before the actual video image analog signal begins. Then switch the recording back to the analog video signal of the original. Your copy will be solid and without tearing and rolling.
Oh my goodness!?! Did I just break your fucking law by explaining this? Oh my, I am sooooooo sorry! Oh well, to quote Emil Faber, "Knowledge Is Good". That's from the first video that I thought was worth copying.
Mostly correct (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mostly correct (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, the really troubling point in all this to me is that a time base corrector, without which you can't edit analog tapes, removes macrovision as a matter of course. How are the courts going to "protect" macrovision without making time-base correctors illegal? And if time-base correctors are legal, then all Sima needs to do is start marketing time-base correctors.
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Also, wasn't it possible to just run the signal through an RF amplifier to sufficiently remove the effects of copy protection? Perhaps it normalized or 'smoothed out' the vertical sync noi
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I often play CDs on my DVD player, so most of the time I leave it plugged in through my VCR to my living room sound system. But every fucking time I try to watch a rented DVD the screen starts flashing to that blue "no signal" screen, and I have to reach back and swear to myself as I pull the plug out of the VCR, unplug the VCR from the TV, and plug the DVD player into the TV. Since there is
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Yes.
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Damn it!
so... angry...
1. 2. 3. phew.. okay. i feel better now.
Is that what it's supposed to do (Score:3, Funny)
Is that what they are trying to do. I never can tell, the window that pops up to tell me what DRM scheme is being bypassed flashes by WAY too quickly for me to catch it.
Go America go go go (Score:2, Interesting)
This is just a drop in the bucket. I'm curios to see if I'll live to see it publicly recognized, that having a law, writing that ownership on an idea exists, is fundamentally wrong. The problem is so elemental that many people will have to die before this thruth comes forcefully to light, just like it was with communism.
With so much outsourcing for the actual work, with services so expensive, America more than anyone is dependent on the cash flow from copyright. To make matters worse, the society is bas
Does anybody out there know ... (Score:3, Interesting)
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"There seems to be no discernible difference between VHS and VHS-HQ. Manufacturer reporting of this information was inconsistent, and it became clear that consumers would have difficulty in discerning if the units they were purchasing were equipped
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Tivo bends the rule a little. (Score:2, Interesting)
Well Duh!!! (Score:2)
Sarcasm aside, the thought still stands: of course they don't want old copy protection to stop working. To them that would be a gigantic flashing neon sign saying "FREE MOVIES HERE!" (Never mind that copyright law is the protection they need/want/have, not Digital Rights Manglement.)
Macrovision (Score:2, Insightful)
The copyright clause in the Constitution... (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, in the Mickey Mouse case, the court said that protection periods on the order of 100 years are OK, but the Court kinda hinted that it might not go along with this much further.
Anyway, the technique of leveraging DRM protections in via a copyright and then having them live forever is rather a slap in the face of the Constitutional limitation on the duration of copyrights.
Of course, Congress does have a weasel-way out: they might say, "oh, we allow DRM to exist forever as part of our powers over commerce among the states."
But in practical terms, DRM forever transforms what is supposed to be a copyright of limited duration into a copyright that lasts for all eternity. And that, is contrary to the purpose, a purpose actually stated in the US Constitution, to promote the arts and sciences, for copyright and patents.
See my note "The Rule Against Digital Perpetuities" [cavebear.com]. It's short, so I'll just copy it here:
The Rule Against Digital Perpetuities
It seems to me that in the fight over copyright and digital rights management few have considered what happens in the distant future when the material being protected is no longer covered by copyright. That thought led me to propose the following rule and accompanying pledge.
The Rule Against Digital Perpuities:
No Digital Rights Management (DRM) limitation or anti-copying mechanism may endure longer than the original copyright in the protected work.
The Pledge:
I pledge to neither specify nor standardize nor implement any system that does not conform to the Rule Against Digital Perpetuities.
video production equipment illegal now? (Score:3, Insightful)
You can kill someone with a hammer; are they gonna make those illegal too now?
There's a consumer based solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Golly, you might not be cool, but you won't be a sucker, either. Fuck the media companies that want to ruin our intellectual property system.
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What about the cheap fucking bastards who want to illegally distribute anything they want? Do you honeestly think they are blameless in this? You have two extremes fighting each other and both are saying fuck the guys in the middle.
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But I like seeing movies in the theater. If they came up with a copy protection scheme that kept me from being able to see movies in the theater, I'd be bummed. Seems unlikely, though.
DX-11 (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice... (Score:5, Informative)
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Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to form together to help change these laws. I believe joining the Pirate Party may be a start to this. Boycotting also works effectively, but only if enough people do it. Raising awareness of these issues is also a very good thing to do as many people simply aren't aware that it happening until it is too late. Even just trying to talk to your representatives may help things as most of th time they aren't even aware of these types of issues or if they don't listen, then vote for someone else next time. If we can get enough people to realize what is really occuring, then change can happen.
Just buy a Phillips VCR (Score:4, Informative)
If overturned though (Score:3, Interesting)
Open letter (Score:3, Insightful)
While you were busy making life hard for legitimate customers, I downloaded four movies that had been Macrovision-scrubbed for my convenience.
Sincerely,
Ha Ha Ha!
PS: Eat a dick.
Illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)