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Legal victory for 'DVD hacker'
BBC NEWS:
Legal victory for 'DVD hacker' An appeals court has cleared a Norwegian man of DVD piracy charges. The court upheld an earlier verdict that Jon Johansen, 20, had not broken the law by creating a system that could get around copy protection on DVDs. The ruling is a setback to anti-piracy efforts by the Hollywood studios. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said it was disappointed by the court's decision, saying it encouraged others to circumvent copyright controls. Free to copy The case was seen as a major test of Norway's computer protection laws Mr Johansen, known as "DVD Jon" by the net community, created his program to watch films on a Linux-based computer. He then posted the program onto the net in 1999. His software, called DeCSS, could decrypt disks by stripping the Content Scrambling System from DVDs. The US movie industry had accused DVD Jon of theft. But an Oslo court said in January 2003 that he was free to do what he wanted with DVDs he bought legally. The appeals court has now agreed with the original ruling, throwing out the case of the MPAA. In her 30-minute ruling, Judge Wenche Skjeggestad said Mr Johansen could freely copy DVDs he had bought, adding he had not violated Norway's laws protecting intellectual property. 'Damaging' ruling In a statement, the MPAA said it was disappointed by the ruling, but it is not clear whether it will take the case to Norway's supreme court. "The actions of serial hackers such as Mr Johansen are damaging to honest consumers everywhere. "While the ruling does not affect laws outside of Norway, we believe this decision encourages circumvention of copyright that threatens consumer choice and employment in the film and television industries." The Hollywood studios say piracy costs them $3bn a year in lost sales. Tudor Owen |
I guess a technical clarification is in order. (and also some history :-) )
The purpose of the DeCSS algorithm is NOT to copy DVDs. In order to copy a DVD one DOES NOT NEED to decrypt it, one just need to copy the DVD disk bit-by-bit, just like making a copy of a normal file (or a CD) on a computer. The hardware, and the software, for this are rather trivial and it is what enables mass production of legitimate, and also pirate, DVDs. The purpose of the DeCSS algorithm is to enable access to the contents of a DVD, without requiring the use of an “approved” device to do so. These approved devices are typically the DVD players one buys to connect to the TV, but some software players also exist (mainly for windows operating systems). For a manufacturer to be able to build and sell a working DVD player, it is necessary to apply for a license and obtain the decoding keys. Without the decoding keys, the devices won't be able to read the information on the disk and play the film or whatever is on the DVD. Mr. Johansen wished that it would be possible to watch the DVDs one bought/rented/whatever on Linux, an operating system that is viewed with a great deal of distrust by a large slice of the media business, on a freely- available piece of software (something that is also not viewed in a trusting manner). So, he set out to get the information he needed, by reverse engineering which until recently was quite normal, and also the traditional way to understand how something works. Once he had the information, he built the algorithm and released it, in the hope that it would be used to build some free DVD playing software for Linux. I guess that much of this “issue” with Jon Johansen is the result of a “Shoot first, ask questions later” attitude of an industry that isn't able to keep up with times, technical challenges and social evolution. The issues of Intellectual Property aren't new but are increasingly relevant in today's society, for an example (maybe silly) see the recent thread on Boeing's patent on seating arrangements . For a more serious angle, do some research on the issues of the production of advanced drugs (e.g.:AIDS drugs) by poor countries (the ones that have the most need and also the ones that can't afford the licensing fees demanded by the bio/chem companies). Feel free to disagree or correct me :-) Regards, CS-DNA |
CS-DNA, i think the main issue here is that of being able to copy DVDs. DVDs that are produced commercially are typically dual layer which means they can hold abotu 10GB of information. DVD-Rs by contrast don't have that dual layer ability and therefore only have half the capacity (about 4.3GB from memory). For this reason you can't copy a DVD just by renting a movie, downloading the disk onto your hard drive and reburning it onto a DVD-R because it just won't fit. The DVD has to have its quality slightly reduced and has to be compressed down to 4.3GB. The problem is that the encrypted DVD cannot be compressed. This piece of software effectively allows you to decrypt the DVD data and compress it so that it can be burned onto a DVD-R and therefore we have piracy.
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dvd info
I have bought a copy of dvdxcopy express.It works for me.
You can download a trial copy from http://www.dvdxcopy.com |
Alot of it isn't that easy to find (well at least that's true for the mac). If you do manage to get hold fo some, take a look at the software writers names in the readme files... they're not usually there for legal reasons.
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Rupert S,
That's quite true, but the kind of “pirate” that wants to fit a full DVD onto a medium with less storage capacity is the kind of “pirate” that would copy a CD to a tape to listen on the car or loan to a friend. The Pirates that should elicit most worries are the ones with industrial capabilities, the ones that are capable of making their own masters from commercial DVDs and, subsequently, press industrial quantities of “normal” DVDs. These are the pirates that cause most losses to the media and content industries, and these “industrial” Pirates have nothing to gain from DeCSS. Regards CS-DNA |
The problem with industrial piracy of DVDs is that getting hold of a press is an expensive business. As I understand it, the main area where the film companies is with people copying DVDs onto DVD-Rs.
There's been a recent change in the law regarding this. It is still legal to create backup copes of any kind of data media with the exception of a DVD. The making of a backup means that the wrighful owner of the media may make one, and only one backup of the original media and the backup copy may only be used in accordance with the licence of the media that was copied and by the licence holder of the software. DVD piracy is obviously such a problem that a little while ago, in the USA (and possible the UK, please correct me if I'm wrong), the 'backing up' of DVD media, even in accordance with the above guide lines, was made illegal. |
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