Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Courts Government News

Other Fair-Uses For DeCSS? 26

Posted by Cliff from the what-the-DMCA-would-make-illegal dept.
Kagami asks: "In any discussion of the DMCA, CSS, and DeCSS, I've only seen two reasons mentioned for why someone would need to work around CSS: 1) to play DVD video on hardware with no licensed support (usually under Linux) and occasionally, 2) to use clips from a movie as part of a presentation. I kept expecting someone else to mention that that's only the tip of what the DMCA's encryption-breaking ban makes illegal. Surely I'm not the only one that's had other reasons to modify the content of a DVD I own?" Can you think of other purposes to which DeCSS might be put to use that might be considered "fair"?

"In my case, I've made decrypted copies of DVDs on my harddrive three times so far, for the following reasons:

  • The movie 'The Truman Show' simply refuses to play on this sytem, or at least the disc I had did, regardless of player software used. It would always stop immediately after the copyright message. Presumably there was some problem with one of the index files, menu files, etc. Using DeCSS, I was able to play the VOB files themselves with no problems... but under the DMCA, watching 'The Truman Show' on this computer (running Windows, mind you) is illegal.
  • I purchased a music-video single DVD (Utada Hikaru, 'Wait and See ~risuku~') and found it significantly more convenient to play it off my harddrive than to reach for the disc everytime I want to play one single video... but under the DMCA, making it more convenient to play discs I own is illegal.
  • Another music-video DVD I have (Hamasaki Ayumi's music video collection DVD) features a menu system from which one can select any one of the videos to view, but fails to include a 'play-all', jukebox style function. I decrypted the music video portion of the disc into two huge files on my HD that will play non-stop from beginning to end... but under the DMCA, watching my music videos without stopping to select each one individually has become an illegal act.
Now tell me ALL OF THAT makes sense...

So, anyone else here have similar stories? I'm sort of surprised I haven't seen a list already... or did I just miss it?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Other Fair-Uses for DeCSS? More

Other Fair-Uses for DeCSS?

Comments Filter:
  • I purchased a music-video single DVD (Utada Hikaru, 'Wait and See ~risuku~') and found it significantly more convenient to play it off my harddrive than to reach for the disc everytime I want to play one single video

    I find it significantly more convenient to keep Britney Spears locked in my basement, available 24/7, rather than have to reach for a disc every time I want to see her perform.

  • If you did that, you could save the rest of us a lot of grief.
  • I find it significantly more convenient to keep Britney Spears locked in my basement, available 24/7, rather than have to reach for a disc every time I want to see her perform.

    Not the same thing at all. More similar, you own a Britney Spears CD but do not have a portable CD player. You therefore copy it to tape for the times you are out jogging. Under Canadian law, this is quite definitely legal. This may not be legal in the U.S. but most people think it should be on the basis that you are paying for the right to listen to the music. Furthermore, nobody is going to listen to your CD while you are out jogging because it is your CD.

    The question comes down to whether we are buying a license to watch the DVD (or listen to the music) or whether we are buying the DVD (or CD) itself. If we are buying the DVD, we can do whatever we want with it, for our own personal use. Heck, we can make a profit by providing public viewings of it, etc.

    If we are buying a license to watch the DVD, we should be allowed to watch the DVD however we choose. I do not recall being asked to sign a contract stating that I would only view the DVD using licensed hardware. Provided that I can only watch one copy of it at a time, the use should be legitimate.

  • I have several Anime titles that have scenes in the that are just gorgeous and It would be nice if I could get a frame to use as wallpaper or kill a tree and make a wall poster -- but oh no, I can't-- and I can't just do ALT+PrtScn (under w9x) to do a screen cap because most DVD playing software and hardware uses video overlay mode.

    My DVD Player (SigmaDesign Hollywood+) even offers a screenshot button, to boot, but I can never use it becuase "This DVD is copyrighted".
  • Are you insane?

    Perhaps you should reread the parent post... Very slowly...

  • I don't care to figure out which side is true, but I've put it up on my decss mirror. Just check my .sig.
    -----
  • I'd use DeCSS to watch the UNCENSORED Region 2 copy of Eyes Wide Shut which I'd have bought LEGALLY in Europe and are entitled to watch.

    Now I'm european and I really liked the movie. Could you tell me how butchered your "regular" version was? (I assume it is the US version)

  • If you want to write DVD player software without paying licensing fees, DeCSS is useful.

    Consider WinAmp. They were able to assemble a really cool MP3 player without too big of an upfront investment. Had they needed to pay a licensing fee for their MPEG decoder, they would need to assemble the money for a fee and probably wouldn't have started writing it. I remember when WinAmp was first out. All of the other options, commercial or no, just plain sucked. Hence, since a very early version, I have been using WinAmp. ;)

    Also, from a data preservation standpoint, DeCSS is useful. Say 50 years from now, everybody's using RFCVDs (Really fscking cool versitile disks) instead of DVDs. Say you want to read them. Do you think that the DVD intelectual property holders are going to play nice when the DVD format dies and release the specs? You may have a disk that you can't play. And since the DVD consortium also doesn't want you to do a quality digital copy, you can't even transcode it to a RFCVD.
  • What if DVDs aren't around in 20 years?

    I'll give a rather timely anecdote:

    Way back when (in the mid '60s) there was a bunch of records from Firestone during the Christmas season. I grew up listening to these. Unfortunately, records are no longer being made, record players are almost as hard to find, and the media itself has been degrading for 30+ years.

    As a present to my parents this year, I've purchased a set of records from Ebay, recorded them to my machine, filtered out the pops/clicks, and then burned them onto a CD.

    Let's advance this to 20+ years from now when my kids want to make me a copy of the special edition of "Army of Darkness". It isn't being made on [insert future technology], and DVD players have gone the way of the dinosaur. What if my kids wanted to copy the DVD to [insert future technology] so I can enjoy the movie in my old age? I still own legal copies, and in the case of music, this is perfectly legal under the home recording act.
  • people who have built collections of films and records are facing the same problems, the media is detorating, the player are wearing out, and replacements are becoming harder to find, much less obtain. Many people are copying their old records to tape or CD, and thier old films to videotape, to preserve them.

    Off-topic, but I would expect VHS tape to eventually deteriorate as well. Possibly faster than film.

  • Some truth about DeCSS (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27, 2000 @09:54AM (#598320)
    Not fully related to this story, but ontopic. Slashdot refused to publish this true story, so go find out yourself: http://www.geocities.com/decs str uth/decsstruth.txt [geocities.com]
  • That text is full of religious-war content.. FreeBSD vs Linux.. DeCSS vs Speedripper.. Linux vs everything else.. GPL this, Linus that.. puh-leeze! Quit the slander. This is of help to no one.
  • This leads to an idea about a fallback position on DECSS: as a copyright owner, you are allowed to encrypt copyrighted material, but only if you deposit the keys with (say) the Library of Congress. When copyright expires, the keys become publicly available.

    You'd have to be careful to word this law in such a way that it couldn't be construed to apply to things like encrypted personal email... because beleive me, some government agencies would try!

  • I find it significantly more convenient to keep Britney Spears locked in my basement..

    ... and remember to put a Simplex lock on your basement door, as it is a piss-poor yet legally enforceable access restriction device under the DCMA

    ObOntopic: I'd use DeCSS to watch the UNCENSORED Region 2 copy of Eyes Wide Shut which I'd have bought LEGALLY in Europe and are entitled to watch. Add to that the french dub of La Vita È Bella, whose R1 DVD does not include a french dub.
    ---
    Inanimate Carbon Rod thanks you for your support. See you in 2004!

  • Agreed. What about collectors and people who try to preserve old works?

    Let's look ahead 20 years in the future; DVDs are antiques, and are left obsolete by a new (but not backwards compatable) media format.

    You have amassed a sizeable collection of your favrate DVD movies over the years, you've hung on the your old DVD player all this time and you still like to watch your collection from time to time.

    One day, you decide to watch, let say, The Matrix on your original DVD. You pop your copy in your player, but instead of the viewing the Matrix, you find that your player just died.

    DVD players are so rare now, that there's no way you can get a replacement without consierable difficulty and expense, if you can get one at all. You decide to try to repair it yourself, only to find that you can't, you can't even get the parts.

    Bad news, your only DVD player is dead and irrepairable. Worse news, since you can't get another one, your DVD collection just became a set of paperweights. Unless you backed-up your DVD collection to whatever the future format is, you practialy lost a large part of your movie collection too. To add insult to injury, much of your collection is so old that it is no longer in production, you can't buy a new copy at any price.

    Back in the present, people who have built collections of films and records are facing the same problems, the media is detorating, the player are wearing out, and replacements are becoming harder to find, much less obtain. Many people are copying their old records to tape or CD, and thier old films to videotape, to preserve them. In fact, there are contunuing efforts to preserve old flims and music, and a couple of thing that the people who do this have had to deal with are deteareating media and paying back the media without destroying it. Of course, you can't play it back without the player.

    Decss might not seam (to some people) to be anything more than a tool for copying DVDs now, but it could become instrmental to preservation efforts in the future.
  • how butchered your "regular" version was?
    In the R1 version, the orgy scene in the mansion was censored. The R2 version seems identical to me for the version I've seen in the cinema. There are lots of nude women standing around in front of the camera and they cover most of the sexual performances. The worst thing is, they stand very still, like statues. Then again, what can you expect from a cut-n-paste image anyway? BTW, this far my pals have been purchasing DVDs from good ol'US as they are uncensored versions. But not this time. Wonder if there are more cases like this?
  • (obligatory IANAL)

    at this moment, I know the situation you describe is COMPLETELY legal in the Netherlands for books, paintings, songlyrics and generally just about any copyrighted work. This case of personal copying is also allowed for complete works. Please note that the situation changes as soon as you start selling stuff.

    //rdj

  • A case study in poor encryption approaches? (Score:3)

    by nellardo ( 68657 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2000 @08:31AM (#598327) Homepage Journal

    A class on encryption would reasonably have both demonstrations of decryption and assignments in performing decryption. As the first widely used consumer encryption format, not cracking DVD in a class on encryption would be a serious lack. DeCSS itself would be used in an assignment to crack DVD as a benchmark to compare students' work to. I.e., to get a good grade, you have to do it faster than DeCSS, clearer, maybe accounting for reasonable future extensions to CSS and so forth. Makes a great first assignment, especially in a low-level course.

    In an encryption course, CSS is an excellent case study in the weakness of low-bit keys and the fallibility of security through "obscurity". It's also a good example of the tradeoffs inherent in encryption:

    • security vs convenience. Greater security requires less convenience and vice versa.
    • cost vs robustness. Greater robustness costs more to produce. CSS is a solution designed to be as low cost as possible while still satisfying the MPAA.
    • obscurity vs cryptographic strength. A simple algorithm may be "secure" while obscure, but will fail compared to a more complex one with mathematically provable cryptographic strength.
    In fact, I'd be really surprised if cryptography courses aren't covering it already.

  • Violence -> OK in the US, censored in europe
    Sex and nudity -> Censored in the US OK in europe.

    Crappy movies, OK everywhere :-(

  • Off-topic, but I would expect VHS tape to eventually deteriorate as well. Possibly faster than film.


    True, but many old movies were shot with celuloide film that used nitrate based pigments. These materials are unstable, and many older films are already rapidly detorating.

    Another thing, film lasting longer than VHS doesn't mean anything if you can't find a player to view the film with.
  • just became a set of paperweights

    I'm kinda hoping they'll be "Highly collectible antique Americana" usuable as coasters in Millennium inspired theme restaurants. Probably be worth $20-30 bucks each (of course bread will be $50/loaf.)

    Of course, AOL has this market covered, but it's a thought.

    --
  • This leads to an idea about a fallback position on DECSS: as a copyright owner, you are allowed to encrypt copyrighted material, but only if you deposit the keys with (say) the Library of Congress. When copyright expires, the keys become publicly available.


    Only problem with that is if the copyright holder should "accidently" lose the keys, you'd still be unable to decypt the material (at least, not without serious diffaculty, and, even then, there are no garuntees). Also, having the decryption keys doesn't help if the only copy of the work is lost or damaged beyond all possable repair.

    A better idea would be to require that an encypted copyrighted work be completly decrypted, and then completly archived into the public domian, after the copyright expires.

    Of course, for this to do any good, copyright has to be brought down to reasonable lengths, the copyright extenions in the sonny bono act need to go, and the DMCA needs to be repieled or throughly rewritten. Either way, copyright needs to go back to being in the athuor's (and, after expration, the public's) benifit, not just the publishing company's.
  • This leads to an idea about a fallback position on DECSS: as a copyright owner, you are allowed to encrypt copyrighted material, but only if you deposit the keys with (say) the Library of Congress. When copyright expires, the keys become publicly available. If this provision is not followed, the work reverts to the public domain, and it's fair game for any decryption strategy that can be applied.

    This doesn't address the fair-use issues, nor does it deal with the current draconian anti-circumvention provisions, but at least it prevents the locked-up-with-thrown-away-key situation, and restates the traditional position that copyright is a time-limited protection from a work going into the public domain.

  • Another reason for the DeCSS is the Region Codes.

    When the movie comes out in the US on DVD, it usually is just coming out in Europe on the theater. Because we are region 1 in the US, Europe lets say is Region 2 (I don't know for sure if they are or not). Because their hardware or computer software is set for Region 1, they have to wait to buy it until it comes out there on DVD. Then the price is jacked up about $10 or so. This is another way for the studios to make money. If you create a DVD without paying the big bucks for the Region code, you cannot play it on your hardware DVD players, or in your computer.

    It would be nice to play a DVD in Linux.

  • Of course they are! They even control the press (e.g. Times-Warner) to make sure that no article could ever be written in favor of fair use and reverse-engineering.

    Sounds like a really good reason for an anti-trust crusade to me, where every actor, journalist or musician that ever got shafted by the moguls could testify that MPEG videos, MP-3 audio clips and personal websites with links are good and empowering tools that allow them to promote themselves however they see fit, without the interferences and copyright-stealing contracts they are coerced into signing by the media corporations.


    --
  • The central feature of both our schemes is that works should be put in a kind of "escrow" to protect the public's fair-use interest, and to ensure that the work becomes publicly available when it goes out of copyright.

    I think that you have proposed a much more feasible approach.

Slashdot Top Deals

According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.

Close