“Attempts to gag the blogosphere from publishing details of a DVD crack have led to a user revolt,” The BBC reports.
“The row centred on a ‘cease and desist’ letter sent by the body that oversees the digital rights management technology on high-definition DVDs,” The Beeb reports.
The Beeb reports, “It requested that blogs and websites removed details of a software key that breaks the encryption on HD-DVDs.”
“The removal of the information from community news website Digg was a step too far for its fans,” The Beeb reports.
The Beeb reports, “As quickly as stories relating to the issue were removed, they were re-submitted in their thousands, in an act described by one user as a ’21st century revolt.’ The site collapsed under the weight of the attack at one point.”
Full article here.
Digg founder Kevin Rose responded in a post titled, “Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0,” writing:
Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…
In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
“not without a purpose, not without a fight”
-street dogs
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, except for maybe a lot of pissed off nerds…..”
When will these Copy protection/DRM loving idiots ever learn. Copy protection has only one purpose, and that is for someone out there to break it. It’s always been that way, and it always will be that way.
Last night was so great. The joy!
Let see if digg gets burried
But how will the nerds survive the loss of digg??? Oh, the humanity…
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bravo to kevin rose. way to back your users!! this is why i use the site and watch the podcast, cause he’s one of us!
I’ve always felt like Digg is a bit of a Quirrel to Microsoft’s Voldemort. Have I gotten the wrong impression of them?
wow… Kevin is my hero.
WHY WOULD ANYONE CARE IF DIGG DIES? OF COURSE THEY WANT THEM TO FIGHT.
Normal public is selfish, they dont care about digg, they just want their codes.
High Definition is just another way to sell the same content over again. Using draconian DRM is going to doom both flavors of High Definition.
Releasing the hack into the wild may just save the two formats in spite of the industry’s attempt to kill them at birth.
hey, I know I am evil incarnate, but comparing me to microsoft?? I have to draw the line somewhere.
The Internet…. still (and hopefully always) the great equalizer.
What a night!
Can’t wait till enough idiots demand free bread and gas and clothes. Communism doesn’t work and the people who work hard trying to make money in the hd-dvd business should be able to set the terms for their product.
What a lame move by digg, they caved in to pressure from their users in an attempt to not cave in to pressure from another source. That’s not heroic, just misguided.
the guys at digg should open up their own site ftp info in the spirit of sharing protected codes –
“I’d rather die, than be a toy.”
-nomenasno
I can just picture a bunch of dorks having a rebellion march (million dork march?).
A pitchfork or flaming torch in one hand and a stack of blank Blueray disks in the other.
“We will not be denied our right to steal content!”
Losers
considering how Digg censors other content ( eg Roughly Drafted articles) who give a flying eff what happens to them.
mac user 47 and Thorin are right — These are no doubt mostly Windows losers clamoring for more FREE stuff. Hell, most of the software they buy– err, STEAL — is obviously “free” to them. And now they want all of their Hi-Def content for “free” as well.
Buncha f-ckin’ scumbags. It doesn’t matter if it’s the “big, bad movie studios” or the “evil record companies” from whom you’re stealing, dipshits. STEALING is still STEALING!
For giving in to a rabid mob of cheaters, losers, and thieves, Kevin Rose officially wins the first 2007 Pandering Spineless Douchebag Award.
This is so not about stealing. At all.
It’s about the free flow of information.
C1,
I’m not really polarized on the issue, you may be right. I was kind of using it for a conveyance of humor. I guess what you are saying is that the issue that sparked the censorship is irrelevant. I understand that, but I do question the need for cracking the code. I’m ignorant as to how badly the encryption cripples the portability of the content. Maybe it goes back to the Jobs / DRM situation. If we are entering an era of personal responsibility, then that suits me. The basis of the issue itself, however, just rubs my fur the wrong way. Peace.
ChrissyOne -This is so not about stealing. At all.
It’s about the free flow of information.
What’s your phone no. little one?
I’d like to say one more thing about this: where do you draw the line? What if someone posted an article about how to build a homemade bazooka, or how to coax a 14 year old girl into the back of a van? Does this information really deserve to flow freely?
@ Thorin
I understand. My position on the issue is that DRM is a fundamentally flawed idea, especially when it’s based on secrets. We’ve seen how difficult it has been to unlock the secret of HD DRM, and now the secret is out. There is no putting the cat back in the bag.
It doesn’t matter if the code is posted on Digg or MySpace or on the front page of CNN. It’s now out there for anyone to find and use. So what was the point of having it in the first place? Every duplicator in China can now copy HD DVDs, and a Digg ban certainly can’t stop that.
If it were true, if you really couldn’t make any money from an un-encrypted media storage method, then how come they can still sell CDs? Real Phillips-compliant CDs have never had copy protection, and they’ve been sold for something like 20 years. Why in the world should we believe that movies are somehow special?
Digg will allow that code, but they will still CENSOR everything else. You can’t Digg roughlydrafted.com because he bashes Microsoft too effectively. They have censored him. And they will continue censoring others. Only when forced, will they capitulate.
“how to coax a 14 year old girl into the back of a van?”
If memory serves me, when I was 15, all I had to do was open the door……I don’t guess that’s what you mean, though.
“What if someone posted an article about how to build a homemade bazooka, or how to coax a 14 year old girl into the back of a van?”
Come on. Coping a movie to my iPod is now terrorism? This isn’t a slippery slope, it’s about maintaining fair usage rights that we’ve always had, until now. Now we’re told that industries are in danger and we should deal with crippled and exploding media to save the precious plastic-box-selling industry. I’m just not buying it.
Those who want to pirate, will pirate aplenty. You can’t stop it. What you can do is make it easy for people to use the media that you sell them, and not put junk in their way for some fantasy of perceived security.
They should comply, Remove it. When it comes back, remove it. When it comes back, remove it…. It’ll always be there and it’ll always get removed.
C1,
No, I’m not equating the two, I was just saying where do you draw the line on what gets posted, that’s all. When you said free flow of information i thought you meant regarding what gets posted on Digg, but now I realize that you actually are talking about the DRM issue. In that respect, I was confused. We are on the same page. I respect and completely agree with your views on DRM. Sadly though, a lot of those protestors are certainly hell bent on stealing content. That goes back to my earlier statement about personal responsibility. DRM will not fix that problem, as you said.
Yeah like Chrissy says whats so great about a movie anyway. Its not like a song you like, one that you can play 100 times a year or whatever. Once youv’e seen a movie 3 or 4 times it becomes boring and just sits on the shelf anyway.
Well, for me it’s about the posting as well. The slippery slope goes both ways – If you ban the site with instructions on how to lure a girl in to van, then you will have to ban the movie The Silence of the Lambs, correct? Then where does it end? You could say that Fight Club is a textbook on how to create a terrorist cell network, so you might have to ban that, too.
What’s called for in these situations is Reason™. Not a mindless set of rules to be applied in like to every situation. People can do this, if they’re pressed, though I agree that it doesn’t always come easy.
-c
C1,
You make another excellent point (as usual), I concede. I guess in the end, if there is to be such protest, I wish it were over a more noble cause. Have a good day.
All very convenient, ChrissyOne, except for the fact that this isn’t really about people “abhoring” DRM so much as it’s about cheap bastards wanting something for free. Sure, some fair use rights are infringed. But how do you counter that with the fact that it’s now possible to “share” something with a billion people nearly instantaneously? Intellectual property owners have a right to actually get paid for the content they produce. Because they have a valid position in wanting to continue to work in the field of their craft. And specious arguments about “people who steal it wouldn’t have bought it anyway” don’t work. If they did, we could apply them to all sorts of commodities, but we don’t. Why? Because if one of these fools stole a BMW from a car dealership I don’t think law enforcement would accept the excuse that:
“Gee, officer, I’m joyriding in this beamer and it’s true that I stole it — but cut me a break. I would never have actually BOUGHT it anyway. So I’m really just exposing more people to the car dealer’s product. Aren’t I to be applauded?”
No way. No how. Intellectual property needs to be protected. It’s part of the backbone that makes the American and western economies so vibrant and responsive. There’s a huge difference between the mantra of “free flow of information” and “paying for something that has a pricetag in the marketplace”. If there weren’t, then the rates that an information database like Lexis-Nexis charges wouldn’t be viable.
Couldn’t agree more. ^_^
“Crack heads” don’t just want to break DRM, “crack heads” want other people to make it easier for them to break DRM. It seems that most “crack heads” relied on Digg to reference access to the code because they too incompetent to transmit and retrieve the code without Digg. I thought “crack heads” were the world’s uber geeks. Not anymore. These “crack heads” are just lazy bahstids.
That is, I couldn’t agree more with Thorin. Sauder, I could take of leave.
@ Sauder
Could you explain to me then how the music industry still makes millions upon millions of dollars selling unprotected CDs?
ChrissyOne,
Good call on the slippery slope argument. I was thinking the same thing myself. I believe that slippery slope is usually a bad argument against anything. It’s too easy to do, and it doesn’t prove anything.
My own thoughts about this encryption is that is doesn’t stop people from doing what they want. If you want to steal, your going to figure it out. No encryption is going to stop you. All the encryption does is make it difficult for me to use my data/movie/music the way I want to. What do the movie studios care if I want to copy my DVD to my hard drive. Why make it such a pain in the ass.
– DT
there is no means by which i can watch an HD DVD on my Mac – which is how i watch all content on my Sharp Aquos.
I see no problem with cracking HD DVDs i purchase so that i can watch them on my TV via my Mac. Its just that simple.
This makes me think of Gail Wynand.
for example – all of my DVDs are ripped to my Mac and i use Front Row to pull them up and watch them. The DVDs sit protected in my basemet, not being scratched or lost or squashed. If i want to let someone borrow my DVD, i can – its my DVD.
I can also watch those DVDs in any other room that will be getting a Apple TV soon.
if this sounds familiar, its because it is 100% the same as your iPod and the music you ripped to it from your CDs that you no longer carry around with you.
“Could you explain to me then how the music industry still makes millions upon millions of dollars selling unprotected CDs?”
I can’t believe how quickly you went for that. Straw man, I say.
It doesn’t matter if an industry “still” makes money selling their wares. It’s still ILLEGAL to steal from them. The question isn’t one of “Yaah, but are they still able to make money?” Rather, the question is “Do they have a right to be compensated for their work/efforts/labor/product?”
You didn’t answer that, and you conveniently tried to shift the discussion away from my original position. Hence, my straw man (or, straw woman, as the case may be) moniker for you.
Put it this way: Theoretical small business owner makes a living by selling technical journals in digital format via subscription online. If one of his limited pool of, let’s say, 2500 customers decides to upload all of his technical journals to a file-sharing service so that the business owner’s other customers can get them for free, isn’t it a possibility that a sizable percentage of those customers now become “ex-customers”? Isn’t the business owner harmed? By your logic you would have us believe that there’s some “means test” that YOU would use to determine . . . what? If he’s been harmed “enough”? Too much? How many customers would he have to lose to digital theft before it was too many in your opinion? Or more importantly, how many customers would he have to lose before he went out of business?
The basic argumnet is this: Most of the people of this ilk who want the Digg information want it so that they don’t have to PAY for the goods they want to OWN. They’re cheap and they don’t want to PAY for what they acquire.
Information has value. That’s why it’s called INFORMation. Because it INFORMS.
Do you or do you not believe, for instance, that all of the hundreds or thousands of employees of Lexis-Nexis who spend hundreds of thousands of man-hours gathering data and collating information for their clients have a right to their jobs? Do you think it would be proper and acceptable and legal for the entire Lexis-Nexis database to suddenly be made available for free?
Just because it’s “information” doesn’t mean it should be free. If so, then you should set about endeavoring to change the western capitalist economic model. Of which you are a part.
Wow, so *I* went for the straw man? ^_^
This is not about the creators of content being compensated. The music companies do not create content, they distribute it. They are, at this moment, redundant an unnecessary. They can now be removed from the equation.
DRM is a tool to leverage them back into the game, nothing more. This is not very hard to grasp.
-c
The “free flow of information” indeed. That argument is so naive. I am a pro photographer who shares the same intellectual property theft concerns about my images (some of which I risked my life to get) that musicians and record companies have about their intellectual property. For me the sale of CDs of photos (downloaded from the internet) in the back alleys of China or India erodes my abilitiy to 1. make a living from my photos, or 2. reasonably certify image exclusivity to a legitimate, paying client.
I am all for DRM. The battles that the music and movie industries are fighting involve the same principles of intellectual property ownership that concern me and my photos. A legal loss for them sets a dangerous precedent for me. A shift in the cultural view towards intellectual property theft while disingenuously calling it “free flow of information” makes it more likely that people feel emboldened to steal my photos also.
Several decades ago David Brinkley (of Huntley-Brinkley fame – the NBC Evening News in the 50’s & 60’s) was commenting on the Soviet style of “negotiating ” with the West. He summed up the Soviet attitude as follows “what’s ours is ours; what’s yours is negotiable.” Unfortunately for people who actually create intellectual property that same attitude increasingly pervades our society today.
Chrissy One,
You put hours, sweat and tears writing and hopefully perfecting a code that you hope to sell to the masses and someone releases (steals) that code so you are no longer able to profit from your labor and see how you feel about free information then.
P.S. Funny how the MDN Magic Word for this particular submission is ‘moral’.
Well, first of all, I thought the article was tangentially about “movie” companies, not “music” companies. And thanks for not answering any of the contentions I raised.
As for any other topics, it was you who brought up “information”:
“It’s about the free flow of information.”
– ChrissyOne, 10:41 am
And it was me who answered on-topic about . . . information.
Good day.
ChrissyOne:
“This is not about the creators of content being compensated. The music companies do not create content, they distribute it. They are, at this moment, redundant an unnecessary. They can now be removed from the equation.
DRM is a tool to leverage them back into the game, nothing more. This is not very hard to grasp.”
Actually it IS very much about content creators being compensated. The photo agency that markets my work splits proceeds with me. They provide a valuable service that’s worth their cut. They:
1. sell my images to markets I have no access to.
2. they provide the admin to track image sales
3. they have a team of international copyright lawyers to sue the crap out of IP thieves
4. money “magically” shows up in my account every quarter, enabling me to focus on creating more images.
This is basically what the recording companies do for musicians so they can make more music
@Guest01,
You made your point, but fail to see ChrissyOne’s point. DRM does not solve the problem! If they are set on stealing content, they will steal the content. It’s kind of like gun control (doesn’t work), you can tell criminals that they can’t have guns, but they don’t care. They are criminals, they will get the weapons if they want them. Same with the “war on drugs”. Maybe there is an alternative to DRM that will protect the property and not make the experience nasty for the honest consumer, but it hasn’t been found yet.
For the most part, this is what APPLE is doing for musicians. What are the labels doing? They’re buying shelf space for 50 Cent to occupy. I’m wondering why we need them.
This is not about getting the code, or having the ability to steal content, its about showing the world that their scheme is easy to crack, and This is news people, its called the first ammendment, the news is the key, and the news cannot be censored. They need a better scheme.
@ Sauder
You’re right. You totally win.
ChrissyOne: “The music companies do not create content, they distribute it. They are, at this moment, redundant an unnecessary.”
– They offer a service, a convenience, not unlike any other distributor out there.
“They can now be removed from the equation.
DRM is a tool to leverage them back into the game, nothing more. This is not very hard to grasp.”
– Causal relationships are a bit more complicated than what your statement suggests. DRM has multiple uses, and one of the benefits is that it gives companies more leverage. That is not the sole purpose, though.
Personally, I’m completely against DRM, at least in relation to music and videos, and any time it restricts fair use. However, DRM is at the moment a legally protected concept. There are many completely legal ways to challenge the law or challenge the companies. Breaking the law in order to effect change is, quite simply, not a valid justification.
Why do musical artists need or continue to use music distribution companies if music distribution companies are redundant and unnecessary?
Am I to understand that you think that because a music distribution company uses DRM it is OK to steal music?
If an artist used their own DRM independent from a music distribution company, would it be OK to steal their music without the artists using an intermediary?
Anyhow, you’re just disgustingly stupid and selfish. Using or taking something that doesn’t belong to you by fair exchange is theft. It is already understood that DRM does not stop theft, it only make stealing almost imperceptivity more difficult. DRM is a minor and insignificant piece of code that impairs the lazy and the simpleminded. Which are you?
By the way, I enjoy music without a thought about DRM. Isn’t that the whole point?
I love people like this Chrissy who want all of the “information” to be “free”. Yaah, and I want all of the people in the world to join hands and sing “Perfect Harmony” from that Coke commercial in the 70’s, so that all of the “honey bees and snow white turtle doves” will all be lovey-dovey friendly peacenik with each other.
Funny, now that I think about it, that advertisement was about, you know . . . SELLING THINGS!!! As in, making a profit. As in, STAYING IN BUSINESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Breaking the law in order to effect change is, quite simply, not a valid justification.”
It’s called “Civil Disobedience”.
And it’s the reason our country is not called “England”.
-c
@ @ ChrissyOne
Aw, sweetie, you’re back! I missed you.
Keep talking, you make me more famous. ^_^
-c
The funniest part about this argument is: It’s already broken! This thing you all are crying for, this protection of revenue, is officially dead. Already! You can’t make this secret again, so it was a failure. Carping about capitalism all day isn’t going to change that.
HD-DVD DRM = FAIL.
-c
Hey Chrissy — why don’t you try actually answering ANY of the positions that people are presenting to you on this forum?
Your debating style of making declarative statements without actually answering anything is clever, but transparent.
Thorin is correct when he writes: “Maybe there is an alternative to DRM that will protect the property and not make the experience nasty for the honest consumer, but it hasn’t been found yet.”
That alternative is what is needed. Because INFORMATION has value and needs to eb protected.
ChrissyOne: “It’s called “Civil Disobedience”.
And it’s the reason our country is not called “England”.”
– <laughs> My point still stands. England was not a democracy, ie., the American colonies did not have the legal recourse that we now enjoy. There are countless other differences as well. I’ll elaborate if you really need the help, but you’re a smart girl, and I think you can figure out the differences quite easily yourself.
In any case, I doubt you are actually suggesting that people are justified in breaking the law whenever they feel it suits them or is more convenient.
Hey, how come software companies still have DRM ? Doesn’t Adobe copy protect products ? Those money grubbing bastards. They probably pay employees with that money!
@ Jessup
I wasn’t aware that I owed you anything. Read my posts, don’t read my posts, reply however you want. This isn’t my site, so I’m not really responsible for how much you enjoy or agree with the content.
“In any case, I doubt you are actually suggesting that people are justified in breaking the law whenever they feel it suits them or is more convenient.”
I’m suggesting they do it when the law is unjust.
If you don’t agree, I don’t care.
I think the point to the Digg story is being lost here. It isn’t about pirating movies. Its about keys being decoded to allow the playback of HD DVD movies on Linux, just like the DeCSS code from the late 90’s which allowed DVD movies to be played on Linux machines.
The MPAA set extremely high royalties for software developers to write DVD players. Thats why there were no open source DVD players on Linux until DVD Jon broke the code.
I’m sure the royalty rates are just as high for HD DVD. This is about playing the movies, not stealing them.
Get a clue.
You guys aren’t getting this at all. I never said music, or software, should be free. If you inferred that, I’m sorry for not being clear enough.
The point is, DRM does not work. Keeping the crack secret is not possible. The fact that it was cracked in the first place, proves the point.
-c
“Hell hath no..’
Sorry, already said that
“I’m suggesting they do it when the law is unjust.
If you don’t agree, I don’t care.”
– That perfectly demonstrates the problem. Who determines whether a law is just or not?
So, stealing is justified only if it benefits you and you can excuse it as an exercise of civil disobedience? How noble and righteous of you, fighting the good fight against commercial exploitation and consumer repression. It’s not like poverty, hunger, and political oppression are real social issues that deserve attention. Why don’t you take your personal crusade public? Your anonymous bellows and faceless pontifications at MDN are not the proper venue for the next Ralph Nader and Martin Luther King of the 21st century. Surely you are not ashamed of public exposure?
Please, don’t complain about a few insults directed toward you. People are exercising “literary freedom”, right? And what could be more fundamental to preserving a free society than the prerogative to express one’s self, right? I’m sure a person with your penchant for liberty and license would absolutely agree, right? I mean, you wouldn’t want to confused with a sanctimonious and hypocritical freak of nature, right, bitch?
I’m glad you enjoy my threads. In my opinion; however, your constant evasion and inability to answer simple questions reveal that you are nothing more than a vapid and unintelligent crank. If you find pleasure in being exposed as an example of foolishness and ignorance, I’m heartened to oblige. Besides, let’s leave it to others to judge the legendary status of your persona, I think that you are inherently biased and blinded in assessment of your own celebrity and stature.
“I never said music, or software, should be free.”
– ChrissyOne
No, you didn’t. What you DID say, however, was:
“It’s about the free flow of information.”
Music. Software. Movies. All digital products. Ones and zeroes. In other words, INFORMATION.
Yes, DRM doesn’t work as currently implemented. But the REASON it doesn’t work proves the point: It doesn’t work because people are out there who want things for FREE! If they didn’t want things for FREE they wouldn’t have much interest in CRACKING the DRM in the first place!
Proof that intellectual property in the form of INFORMATION needs to be PROTECTED.
Sauder, as I understand it, based on US laws, it’s “illegal” for me to transfer DRM’d DVD content over to my Mac where I can watch it using my iPod or Apple TV. Sure there are programs that let me do this, but they are currently in violation of the law.
My own use of my own content that I paid them for is restricted by idiotic laws that only make sense if you’re an MPAA lawyer.
DRM is a tool to restrict consumers fair use of their own content more so than a tool to prevent theft. They want you to pay for the SAME content over and over so you can use it in more than one location.
If you treat your PAYING CUSTOMERS this way, is it any wonder so many of them would rather just steal from you than continue to support you with their money?
You’re not listening.
And you presume that, somehow, by the rule of law, you can create a world where people who want things for free do not exist. This is not possible. They will always exist, no matter how good your DRM is or how many laws you pass. You’re fighting for something that is a failure, and since you cannot change human nature, will continue to fail, no matter how virtuous you try to be.
“Who determines whether a law is just or not?”
Well I do, of course. ;P Please go ballistic now.
-c
@mattmattbobatt
I personally find Adobe’s “DRM” a pain in the butt. I use AVID editing systems at work, and also Final Cut Pro and Adobe Studio. These are big, expensive, $50,000+ editors. When they’re down, I can’t get work done. So, to keep them up, we keep them off the internet (plus, that’s what AVID “requires”). Once or twice every year, all the machines get rebuilt from scratch, that’s just the way it works. I can reinstall Final Cut Pro without a problem, they use no DRM. I can reinstall AVID no problem too, they’re DRM works OK. Now Adobe, I have to call on the phone before I can reinstall. This is no simple process, I have to wait on hold, and then get bitched at for needing the code to install from them. They created this system, and it sucks. I get bitched at for wanting to install $2000+ software that I own. I deal with Adobe because I have no other choice.
The same with DRM from record and movie companies. If I want to watch a movie at home, I have to buy something with DRM, I have no choice. If I want to take my DVD, put it on my hard drive, and then watch it on my laptop, I have to jump through 20 hoops. Why, because the distribution companies are so worried about their crap getting copied. Why? I don’t know. Because they’d rather screw with their paying customers than worry about their non-paying customers. This isn’t about free information. This isn’t about me wanting to steal. I just want to be able to watch what I buy.
I’d say that a lot of this deals with the labels “greed”. They aren’t happy with you buying their content once. They want to repackage it over and over again, and buy the same thing again and again. Why can’t I take part of my CD I bought and use it as a ring tone? They’d rather re-sell it to me for $1.99. So there are 15 hoops to jump through to get it on my phone…if it’s even possible. So, your forced to buy it again…that way the execs can buy another home in LA. I’m not some kind of commie/hippy freak, I just feel like there is a bit of extravagance at the upper level of our society. And those people are in control of this information, and they will keep it for the highest bidder.
@ @ ChrissyOne
Keep ’em comin’ honey. You’re doing great!!! =) Don’t forget to mention sex!!!
The idea that “information needs to be protected” and that DRM has to be the solution are two different things. DRM punishes people who PAY for your content and restrict how they can use it. It destroys fair use. Essentially the content provider controls how their customers can use their content, and allows them to charge for every single place they want to watch a movie or listen to a song. So if I want to use the same movie that I paid for on my computer, my TV, my iPod.. I have to buy multiple copies in different formats.
If this is how paying customers are treated, its no wonder there are so many people who don’t want to give the MPAA and RIAA any money at all.
Well, Chrissy, I hope that I’m on the jury judging the fate of the person that beat you into a pulp. I think that I’ll vote to acquit, because I can. I think you being the recipient of a pummeling is a good thing, comic relief, you know. You would agree, right? I mean, if you can make up your own laws, I can, too. It’s only fair.
Jessup (and others who have made the same point):
“Yes, DRM doesn’t work as currently implemented. But the REASON it doesn’t work proves the point: It doesn’t work because people are out there who want things for FREE! If they didn’t want things for FREE they wouldn’t have much interest in CRACKING the DRM in the first place!
Proof that intellectual property in the form of INFORMATION needs to be PROTECTED.”
No, sorry. This is about greedy RIAA and MPAA and other content providers wanting to secure a revenue stream where they can force you to repurchase the SAME CONTENT over and over and over and over again in different formats, essentially money for nothing.
If there’s anyone that wants something for free its the content providers that want your money for free just because there’s a flashy new format that they can recollect your money on.
If I want to watch my HD DVD on my computer or on my future HD iPod, I don’t want to pay for multiple copies of the same content, and if they force me to do so, I’ll either get it for free or not get it at all.
Treat me like a valuable customer and show me some respect, or you’re not getting my money at all.
I think it’s important for everyone to recognize that there are four separate issues being debated here: freedom of speech in revealing the DRM secret, the merits of DRM itself, the justified reaction to DRM, and theft of intellectual property (piracy).
I think many people are getting some of those issues mixed up when responding to people like Chrissy. It’s completely possible to argue for or against one issue while not addressing the other issues. So for everyone involved, please make sure that you are arguing against the point stated and not attributing to people certain positions that haven’t been stated.
Twilightmoon: “Sauder, as I understand it, based on US laws, it’s “illegal” for me to transfer DRM’d DVD content over to my Mac where I can watch it using my iPod or Apple TV. Sure there are programs that let me do this, but they are currently in violation of the law.”
– I may be wrong here, so if someone has better information, please let me know.
It is my understanding that here in the US it is illegal to distribute software that circumvents digital protection schemes. However, it is legal to transfer protected content onto your computer or into another format, due to FAIR USE. So if you can manage to get protected content onto your computer, you can do so, you just can’t distribute the software that enables you to do that to others. The loophole would be if you can get that software from somewhere that is outside the US and is not required to follow the DMCA, in other words, download it from a server in France.
As I said, if someone knows why this understanding is incorrect, I would be grateful for the information.
@realist,
It is good that you pointed that out. I found myself in that same conundrum earlier by accident. On some of the points I agree with some individuals, and on other points, well, you know.
twilightmoon@mac.com: “No, sorry. This is about greedy RIAA and MPAA and other content providers wanting to secure a revenue stream where they can force you to repurchase the SAME CONTENT over and over and over and over again in different formats, essentially money for nothing.”
Wrong. It’s only partially about that. And that’s only how YOU perceive the situation.
In your rant against the “big, bad RIAA and MPAA” you conveniently forget to address the “little guy”. You know, the backbone of the American economy: Small business. Point being, it’s not ALL about the RIAA and the MPAA as much as you want to make it out to be. And even if you’re right, so what? You STILL don’t have the “right” to STEAL from others! Which brings us to your other point:
twilightmoon@mac.com: “If I want to watch my HD DVD on my computer or on my future HD iPod, I don’t want to pay for multiple copies of the same content, and if they force me to do so, I’ll either get it for free or not get it at all.”
You DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT to get it for “FREE”! Yes, you can “not get it at all”. Sure. No problem. That’s the “free” market at work. Works fine. But if you do decide to go and “get it for free”, then you . . . are . . . STEALING!
Crying and whinging about the big, bad corporate behemoth doesn’t make your actions acceptable.
uh oh.. the geeks are in formation.. don’t worry, they’re too lazy to do anything… this time tommorow we’ll be seeing more ‘Top Ten Reasons I Love to be in IT’ and ‘Picture of a Frog with Three Eyes’
It is obvious that the only thing that matters to you is what you want and the fact that you want it now. That describes perfectly the attitude of a little child. Why don’t you grow up, freak?
rights are determined by laws.
right and wrong as well.
what of truth? is truth up for a vote? does it have lobyists?
are they here today?
arguing online makes you smart.
arguing in bold makes you smarter.
MTW,
Laws do not determine right and wrong. Laws are a series of compromises that enable a society of people to peacefully cohabit a given space. Laws are designed to make things as fair as possible for everyone, sometimes at the expense of the individual. Sure, sometimes laws fail us, but it is dangerous to endorse an attitude that encourages people to determine for themselves which laws to abide by.
so if a law was passed that made the expression of religion illegal, would you expect all to obey?
I would expect it to go to the Supreme Court. If for some reason that were to fail, there are still other legal avenues to pursue before treason is necessary. Incidentally, religious freedom is not a statement of right and wrong but another example of how people are governed through compromises. Religious freedom is not absolute, but rather, it extends to the point of infringing on the rights of others.
how will people with no regard for the rule of law be controlled?
M.T. Wence: “how will people with no regard for the rule of law be controlled?”
By those of us who care about the law putting the smackdown on you and b-tches like ChrissyOne.
@ @ChrissyOne,
One of the most common attributes of childish behavior is name-calling. HMMM (bitch?, freak?). Look inward, please.
That issue is a good reason why it is important to not enable people to individually determine for themselves which laws should be followed, because then all control is lost.
Shucknuck,
Ad hominem attacks are not necessary if you have a cogent argument. Often times, though, people that do not have a supportable argument resort to name calling and other tactics in order to avoid the issue.
@ Shucknuck
so, if one feels a law is unjust, one may not break it.
but if one feels another is a law breaker, one may take it upon one’s self to enforce that law?
i see.
“so, if one feels a law is unjust, one may not break it.”
– Not when there are a multitude of ways to go about changing a law.
“but if one feels another is a law breaker, one may take it upon one’s self to enforce that law?”
– Through legal avenues, yes.
@ realist
but Shucknuck advocates that we enable people to individually determine for themselves which laws should be enforced.
do you think that law-abiding end users have equal access to the law making process as corporations do?
/can’t stop me/
“but Shucknuck advocates that we enable people to individually determine for themselves which laws should be enforced.”
– Having an opinion about whether a law should be enforced is much different than actually breaking a law.
“do you think that law-abiding end users have equal access to the law making process as corporations do?”
– Yes, and in some respects they have more power by means of the free market. Sure, there are other problems that exist in the law making process and within government, but addressing and fixing the actual problems is a more stable philosophy than breaking the law.
so do you think that no one should try to break these codes?
<impossible>
or that they should be made harder to break?
<unlikely>
or should we just tell everyone to bee nice and not break the law?
Apple managed to get DRM removed from many of its songs without having to resort to breaking the law, breaking the DRM, or making it harder to break.
that’s not what I asked.
crackers will crack. DRM will not stop them. so what is to be done?
Is it getting hot in here? Or is that just me?…..
“so do you think that no one should try to break these codes?
<impossible>”
– I think no one should murder. Even though that wish is impossible, I still think it’s valid.
“or that they should be made harder to break?
<unlikely>”
– Apple has made updates to its DRM, I don’t know why this would be any different.
“or should we just tell everyone to bee nice and not break the law?”
– That’s easy. Of course we should, but the law should still be enforced.
If DRM is so useless, then companies will stop using it. If DRM is so bad for consumers, people will stop buying it. As I said with the Apple situation, there are completely legal ways of handling these situations. The free market has a tendency to work many of these things out.
fair enough, but only if the free market is truly free.
do you not think that those who crack these codes do us all a service? by doing so publicly, and vocally, they alert us to the compromise, rather than unknown law breakers in clandestine hideaways, stealing content with no exposure?
that is HAS been done, proves that it CAN be done, and if not by those who did it, then by someone. eventually.
is this not the perfect example of a flawed system? legal backup does not change this fact.
POWER IN NUMBERS!
now if the humans could just overthrow the stupid american government…
MW: CHARGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Holy crap, this thread has roared onto 3 pages!
Oh, and Dorian, I don’t steal content, I pay for what I own from CDs to iTMS to DVDs, I just am very irate that the companies that sell me those products want to continually gouge me for the same content over and over and over. I want a happy medium where they get their money, and the customers can do what they want with their own media (watch it, store it, back up, etc, on whatever format they like).
MDN “interest” as there apparently is a lot of interest in this topic!
@ TT
No, it’s me. ^_^
For many years (during the 80’s and 90’s), I adhered to the false premise of “The free flow of information…”
Quite frankly, taking that premise as an *absolute* is farcical.
If you PURCHASE a DVD/CD and want to back it up, rip it to different formats, and use it how you want, I have no problem with. And yes, DRM makes this difficult for those who honestly do this.
If you then give copies of said CDs/DVDs away, it is stealing – plain and simple. The average consumer could care less about the codes to crack DVDs. They buy the DVD, put it in their player, and watch it – no codes required. People who want something for free, on the other hand, do.
It’s pretty much a morals issue: You either steal it or you don’t. It’s that simple.
You can’t stop the signal, Mal.
“If you then give copies of said CDs/DVDs away, it is stealing – plain and simple.”
Actually you’re mostly wrong. You can give a copy to a friend and it’s perfectly legal, that was worked out way back in the 80’s the LAST time the industry cried in terror at the awesome sharing power of – The Cassette Tape.
If you *SELL* said copies, then yes, it’s piracy.
Real life is ahead of lawmaker’s ability to understand it once again. Please refer to Ted Stevens for an example of this.
You seem to think that advocating lawfulness will just make it happen. Well, that’s okay if you’re talking about not stealing a BMW. You steal a BMW, and either you get away with it, or you don’t, they get their car back, you pay fines and go to jail.
But no matter what happens, BMW is in business the next day. And this is where the analogies start falling to shit.
It only takes one theft, one person, to take the whole thing down. That’s it, it’s over. For the whole system. And no matter how tight the secret is, it’s just a secret, and it will get out, as long as one single human being is somehow part of the equation.
As a content provider, I would never place my trust in such a system. These systems are created to make profit for their creators, creators that know full well their systems can and will be compromised, sooner or later.
But their creators are nowhere to be found on the day the music dies. They’ve made their money, and they cry about the vicious hackers that spread evil, but they take no responsibility for their failed fortress. They just take the money.
So have your DRM. Pay a company millions to provide a lock that will be broken in a month. After all, that’s capitalism, baby. That’s what we’re all about.
-c
Don’t forget people that a HD/Bray movie can still be copied to a standard 4.4gig blank DVD. It has nothing to do with file size, and having such a high quality source will only make the copy better. Just play the HD/Bray DVD on a normal HD/B player, while plugged into the cheapest standard def DVD Recorder you can find. The cheaper ones don’t usualy have macro/copy protection. Primitive way to do it but it will work (not always depending on your gear) Hell we’re all used to watching DVDs that have been shrunk to half there size anyway, who realy cares about high def. And if the High def TVs are so great as they claim why not just stick a good quality Video camera in front of the screen. No copy protection on earth can stop that. I mean if you’re realy that keen to copy that crap movie that all your mates will be tired of after the 5th viewing anyway.
“1. sell my images to markets I have no access to.
2. they provide the admin to track image sales
3. they have a team of international copyright lawyers to sue the crap out of IP thieves
4. money “magically” shows up in my account every quarter, enabling me to focus on creating more images.
“
you argument doesn’t reall ywork in the case of music/movies
1, 2, & 4 = iTunes
WRT 3, get a lot of money from those lawyers?
I know it’s been like two days since someone commented on this one, but I just read all the posts and I have my two cents to throw down. In the long run DRM ends up hurting the paying customer more than anything… why is this?
The paying customer takes their DRM’ed item home, and expects it to play nicely with all of their various electronic devices. But for example, in the case of a DVD, for the longest time it would not play in a computer running Linux. Should we not allow someone to use their own personally owned copy of something in any way they wanted to (assuming they don’t pirate the material) ?
I’ll compare this to buying a piece of fruit (sounds crazy, but bear with me), after I’ve payed for my fruit and bring it back to my home, I legally can do just about anything to that piece of fruit, i can throw it, eat it, take photos of it, give it to my dog, cook it, the list goes on and on.
So why is it, that when I bring home House Season 2 on dvd, and I want to watch a copy of it on my Computer, iPod, laptop, AppleTV, Zune, Tablet PC, mobile phone… or any other non “dvd player device”, without physically having the disk in (aka I ripped a copy to some other form of storage) that means I’m technically breaking the law…? It just doesn’t seem right, I payed for the disk, so I should be able to use it anyway I want, i could throw it out, light it on fire, just stare at it all day, or maybe, just maybe, I could watch it from my iBook in my dorm room, without having to worry about my $300+ investment in various movies is going to get destroyed?
Now to switch gears for a second, for those of you saying that DRM is cracked only because people want things for free. I agree, there are a ton of greedy people (on both sides) that just want things at a minimum of cost. I’m not saying that its right, but it exists, and there’s not much that can be done to change the basic instincts of people.
I am hard pressed to think of any form of DRM that has held up to the “crack test”. There are many reasons why, some people just do it to say “Hey I cracked Blu-Ray”, some people do it to make a profit out of ripping off the distributors, but then there are those that do it for a legitimate reason (the only one I can think of is the DVD keys for Linux based players).
But getting back to my main point…. Take a look at CD’s, almost no DRM, they all can be easily ripped into a digital format (WAV, MP3, AACS, whatever tickles your fancy) and then placed on any computer, music player, or any other device that supports that filetype. So why can’t we have the same thing for movies? or even ringtones? It really irks me that Verzion prevents me from using my own personal music as a ringtone. Why should I pay $5.99 for a 30 second crapp version of a song I already own? I bought it once, why pay again?
Maybe this lil analogy might help, lets imagine gas was DRMed. So i buy fill my lil red gas can up at the Local BP, go back to my car and find out that this “BP” type of gas doesn’t work with my car, but I can buy gas through “carGasDist” at three times the price that I just payed at the BP. If this were to happen in real life, people would be massively upset.
I guess my main quirp is why is it legal to rip CD to my hard drive, but digitizing my DVD collection is illegal (ripping dvd’s requires breaking the DRM built into the disc thereby breaking the DMCA). And I don’t have a problem with low forms of DRM (iTS anyone?) but wait, didn’t just confess my hatred of DRM? Yes I did, but the one in iTS is quite easy, reasonable (5 computers at a time), and if you really want to, you can burn your tracks to an audio cd, then re-rip them so they work on your squirt zune.
And my last final point, there is one ultimate enemy of DRM, it’s the scary world called analogue. Somehow, someway, you can always take a digital signal and make it analogue, whether it be the 3 colored cables coming out of your DVD player, a screen capture of a PDF, a HD-DVD playing on an LCD TV with a HD camera taping the TV…. with this, there will always be a way to defeat DRM. There are amazingly smart people working on both sides of the fence to try to create new DRM, and ones trying to crack the latest update. DRM’s WILL be broken eventually, they require storing things in RAM, and when that happens, some person smarter than me figures out what the RAM is storing and reverse engineers it. Even DRM’s such as Adobe’s, I’m sure if you do a search for cracks or keygens or serial databases, you’re bound to find exactly 425,402,323 offers for every product known to man.
In the long run of things, I think this battle per say will never be over. However, companies should be checking themselves to see if what they are providing and at what cost is still fair to the consumer, otherwise eventually enough people will get fed up and just move on.
Couple of things – see http://lessig.org/freeculture/ for a brief history of copyright and the commercial world.
See also Harvard study on the effects of P2P on sales in real world. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4206.html
The vast majority of content creators, music, film, video etc do not get much benefit from the big guys in distribution. Deals are very one sided, unless you are a large player or get anointed as the ‘next big thing’. Remember that the primary means of auditioning music and film are, until recently, controlled by the big distributors. Radio and TV. Here the diversity has shrunk – radio plays the same playlists all over the world. Remember also that by traditional means only 8% of the total catalogue is available, so even if you want to buy it – you can’t (out of print, stock etc). It is more about control and market manipulation for profit maximization than about distribution of the creative content. If it were otherwise we would have seen the big five selling on-line ages ago. Instead it took a computer company to do the obvious. Lastly, itunes/apple have proved that people are willing to pay for creative material on-line (billion songs etc). The problem for the big five is that it does not fit the old business model which was very comfortable – we pick the winners, let you get a glimpse on our radio stations, spend a fortune over-marketing to an increasing jaded public and charging it back to the content creators, and battling for market share with each other. Then comes the internet, p2p, internet radio and suddenly people are looking a lot wider in their tastes and revisiting the less obvious releases of the past (long tail). Doesn’t fit the business model so try to stamp it out. In reality the market will decide and the successful businesses will adapt to the wishes of the public. Sure there will be some who will go to lengths to avoid paying a single cent for anything and be happy with awful quality but they not the majority. Most will do the Easiest thing and demand quality and value for money and no hassles when they want to show/play it to a friend or two. Trying to smother this under layers of DRM which inhibit ease of use, cost a fortune to develop, and divide the market into Betamax/VHS, bluray/hddvd, fairplay/zoon/wma camps, will simply slow the growth in the market and push people toward the easy solution – get the ripped copy from p2p. Technology produces change, sometimes disruptive change. Large organizations do not change easily (the big five). So they resist, using all of the established, methods that they can. History is littered with examples, The car and the horse feed and support industries and later rail, telephone and post, aircraft and sea travel, and interestingly, TV and cinema. What will emerge will not be about “rights”, “morals” or heaven help us – legislation, it will be about GIVING THE MARKET WHAT IT WANTS. Easy access at the right price.This is capitalism 101
ps I am a content creator with a publishing deal…so I have seen how it works.
Cheers M
Rules are made to be broken
and there will always be protections and always be people who want to break them.
thumbs up to those people who almost cracked it