DeCSS Trial finally over: "No high court appeal in DVD-copying case" (1 Viewer)

[David Lambert]

CNN Article sample:

NEW YORK (AP) -- The publisher of a hackers magazine ended a two-and-a-half-year legal battle with Hollywood's major studios on Wednesday, agreeing to drop a case over decrypting and copying DVDs.
Eric Corley, who operates the 2600 magazine and Web site, chose not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a ruling that ordered him to remove links to decryption software written by someone else. Corley's attorneys had unsuccessfully argued that publishing the program was free speech.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the civil liberties group that represented Corley, pledged to challenge at a later date a controversial 1998 copyright law making it illegal to produce or distribute software that could circumvent copy protections.

More follows this at the actual article (see link above).

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I don't think some guys with names like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin would be very pleased.

 

[John_Berger]

Isn't it nice to know that you're a criminal if you try to make a backup of a disc that you purchased? We're expected to back up our hard drives in the event that something goes wrong (and we're chastized if we don't) yet we're forbidden from being able to back up our DVDs in the event that something goes wrong.

What unbelievable idiocy.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

And it will get worse before it gets better...

Fight the good fight against these Draconian laws being introduced by Hollywood and its influence over the politicians in their pockets. They are the enemy of free and fair use.

Dan

 

[John_Berger]

Fight the good fight against these Draconian laws being introduced by Hollywood and its influence over the politicians. They are the enemy of free and fair use.

Well, we'll probably have to fight it somewhere else since this thread wil probably be locked because of the topic of DeCSS. After all, the MPAA had declared that you can't possibly use DeCSS for fair use reasons. Nope. If you use DeCSS you're undoubtedly intending to pirate the movie -- every single one of you.
Yeah, whatever. :rolleyes

 

[Rob Lutter]

I have used DeCSS to make a screensaver with all my favorite movie scenes and trailers... that is perfectly legal as long as I don't distribute it (all the scenes are from my DVDs, I own all the original copies).

 

[John_Berger]

I have used DeCSS to make a screensaver with all my favorite movie scenes and trailers... that is perfectly legal as long as I don't distribute it (all the scenes are from my DVDs, I own all the original copies).

I know that and you know that. Try telling the MPAA that!

 

[Matt Stone]

Upsetting to say the least...thx for bringing this updated to my attention though, David.

 

[Randy_M]

I think there are WAAAAYYYY more pirates out there than you folks think...

 

[John_Berger]

I think there are WAAAAYYYY more pirates out there than you folks think...

I just love how when I start talking about fair-use purposes for DeCSS, I'm always accused of being ignorant of how many pirates there are out there! Sheesh!
To say that every single person who uses DeCSS is a pirate is untrue and disingenuous. There are completely valid fair-use reasons to use DeCSS. Everyone knows what they are, but everyone chooses to ignore them.
I have also noticed that the definition of "pirate" differs from one person to another. One person will say that it's anyone who bypasses copy-protection even if he doesn't distribute. Another person will say that a person only becomes a pirate when the material gets handed out.
If someone uses DeCSS for personal use but does not distribute the resulting AVI files or VCDs, is that person still a pirate and a crimial deserving of the wrath that is directed towards them?
Yes, we are talking about the breaking of an encyption code, so that's different than a straight copy. But the end result is the same. We're prevented from legally backing up our software CDs due to copy protection. That hurts only the end user. We have the stigma of "pirate" attached to us if we dare to use DeCSS even for personal use. That, too, only hurts the end user.

 

[Scott Dill]

I think he just did. This is a pretty well read forum.

 

[Ted Todorov]

I strongly doubt that commercial DVD pirates use DeCSS. Certainly the ones visible to me, who setup almost daily on Wall St. right near the NY stock exchange sell mostly brand new movies like Episode 2 AOTC, which obviously haven't been out on DVD, so the pirated DVDs were made from camcorder tapes or stolen film prints.

Even those commercial pirates who copy existing DVDs, probably use professional DVD stamping equipment that allows them to do bit for bit copies with no need for DeCSS.

So yes, the pirates are out there, but DeCSS is totally irrelevant to the professionals who actually might hurt Hollywood's bottom line.

The DeCSS battle is about control far more than piracy -- as a side effect DeCSS defeats region coding and allows DVDs to be played on "non-approved" players that skip past forced warnings and trailers, allow you to turn off forced subtitles, ignore region codes, etc. etc. None of these things constitute piracy -- they just allow the consumer to watch their legally purchased DVDs the way they wish to, not the way Hollywood tells them to.

Ted

 

[John_Berger]

Unfortunately, it won't make a bit of difference. Obviously, the MPAA firmly equates DeCSS with piracy and criminalization. Ah, well. There are more important things to worry about in this world, I suppose.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I think there are WAAAAYYYY more pirates out there than you folks think...

Yeah, and many of them use VCRs to tape from a tape. I guess that means we should ban VCRs too.:rolleyes

 

[John_Berger]

Yeah, and many of them use VCRs to tape from a tape. I guess that means we should ban VCRs too.

Don't laugh. That was already tried. Thankfully, it failed. But because DeCSS throws a wrench into the gear works - namely the removal of copy protection rather than bit-by-bit copying - that's why the battle is more difficult than when VCRs were attacked.

I also have little doubt that this is why home DVD recorders only have a 4.3 GB (4.7 GB raw) capacity -- no reason other than to thwart direct duplication of DVD-9 or DVD-18. There probably are technical reasons behind it as well, but I doubt that they're the top reasons why we are restricted to 4.7 GB DVD-Rs.

And let's face one truth here -- DVD sales are skyrocketing. Look at Harry Potter! Millions of DVDs have been sold and that's not even copy protected! The people who are using DIVX AVIs (no doubt the courtesy of DeCSS) are not making a dent in the sales of DVDs that people really want, and I sincerely doubt that the majority of people who received "pirated" movies would never have bought the real thing, as the anti-piracy movement always claims. But, I suppose that that's a discussion for another thread -- assuming that it's allowed.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Look at Harry Potter! Millions of DVDs have been sold and that's not even copy protected!

Not Macrovision protected, but still CSS protected.

DJ