Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Perry E. Metzger writes: I don't know anyone who trades video files -- they're pretty big and bulky. A song takes moments to download, but a movie takes many many hours even on a high speed link. I have yet to meet someone who pirates films -- but I know lots of hardened criminals who watch DVDs on Linux and BSD. I'm one of these criminals. I'm 100% certain it's happening, today. And -- dare I suggest that the industry is being farsighted in anticipating higher bandwidth, and wants to close the barn door *before* the horse's image is stolen? --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me) http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of Firewalls book) - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
Pete Chown wrote: John S. Denker wrote: Note that in the absence of market segmentation, the society as a whole is worse off. I see what you mean, but do you think it applies to DVDs? The segmentation needs to be in each market, between rich and poor consumers. What we actually have is segmentation between markets, say Europe and the US. Europe and the US have similar income per head, but various obscure factors cause products like DVDs to be more expensive in Europe. The other interesting thing about market segmentation is that it is often illegal. Britain's competition law is being reformed in summer this year. Running a cartel will become a crime, in addition to the current civil penalty regime. It will also become possible to bring private anti-trust suits. In other words we are moving towards the American model of anti-trust. I intend to make a complaint about DVD region coding, and I will wait until the summer because the prospect of going to prison will add some extra pizazz for the defending team. Don't get too excited, though, it isn't always easy to get these things moving in the UK. Read about the Walls Ice Cream case if you're curious... I've tried to do that in Canada, without a lot of success. See this mailing list post: http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/40 Since I'm now teaching English in China, I am not following up on it. See the rest of that list's archive, or ask on that list, to see if others are. One interesting result I did get was having a Canadian civil servant gleefully point me to information on what the aussies were up to. See this post: http://www.digital-copyright.ca/discuss/17 For UK stuff, see: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/9348.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/9357.html - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
On Tue, 7 Jan 2003, alan wrote: Not to mention the two seasons of Futurama that are only available on Region 2 PAL DVDs. (Or the other movies and TV shows not allowed by your corporate masters.) They Live is another film only available from Region 2. Maybe it tells too much about the movie industry... This makes an interesting point. While the argument that market segmenting may increase the ability to provide material in all markets, the fact is that given region coding, the producers of this stuff *DON'T* provide the material in all markets. If their argument, that the increased market size available with region coding enables economies of scale, were actually the driving force behind region coding, there should be no such thing as content available in one region that is unavailable in another. Thus their actions betray that they have a different motive. Therefore the public skepticism regarding the truth of their assertions about their motivations seems fairly solidly grounded on fact. Bear ( who likes a fair amount of stuff that is only available coded for region 6 ). - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
-- I wote: I pirate films routinely Correction. I watch made for TV shows distributed through the internet routinely. Full length films are not shared to any great extent, because their sheer size makes them such a pain. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG gUT7fZ6Trnc/9Kb/H1Fuuj0atdyZ+LqudqxXb84E 4Wfqp3BAtgVYkqbEMsnlaP6ulQPgSL1YCQwZh8LlS - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
Eric Rescorla wrote: No, this isn't true. Say that Americans are willing to pay 50% more for DVDs than Europeans. It would make sense for producers to attempt to segment the market. You are right that producers would want to segment the market, but we have no reason to introduce extra laws to help them. We would only have a reason to do that when segmenting the market results in greater efficiency, not merely greater profits. With DVDs we have a complex situation. Supposedly studios can make more per film, so they can afford to make more marginal films. Also more people are offered films at a price they can afford. Oddly, in practice it doesn't seem to work this way. Films tend to be launched in the US, which is one of the lowest cost markets. Films that do badly could theoretically be released at a higher cost in other markets, to recoup the expenditure through differential pricing. In practice they seem to be dropped. Coupled with this, we have the negative effect on the technology industry that results from DRM. A small efficiency gain for the content industry could become a large efficiency loss for the technology industry. Suppose that open source operating systems were technically able to play DVDs but were prohibited from doing so by law. Suppose also that open source was a much more efficient economic model. You would now have a more classic case of market distortion, which also gives rise to inefficiency. One last point is that governments serve the interests primarily of their own people. So the job of Britain's government is to get me, and other Brits, the best possible deal on films within the UK. This might mean balancing the interests of British consumers against British film producers. It doesn't mean balancing British consumers against foreign film producers. If no films were made in Britain, the government would logically insist on a completely free market that allowed parallel imports and circumvention measures. I don't speak for Mr. Denker, but the point I think is relevant here is that there are a fair number of situations in which removal of some freedom would result in a superior situation for everyone (Pareto-dominant). I'm not convinced that maximising freedom is the best approach in all such cases. I agree; for example copyright itself is a restriction on commercial freedom in a sense. You have to weigh up the pros and cons in each case. For me the collateral damage from DRM and region locking is simply too great, and so I believe it should be prohibited (or that people should be allowed to circumvent it, which would have the same effect). -- Pete - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
The truly amazing thing about this case is that the crime would not have occured if the studios had used decently-strong crypto. It's ironic that in an age when for cryptographers enjoy a historically-unprecedented lopsided advantage over cryptanalysts, the industry adopted a system that could be cracked by amateurs. This probably wasn't simply due to stupidity in the industry; it is more plausibly attributed to stupidity in the US export regulations which induced the industry to use 40-bit keys. Actually, the scheme was invented in Japan, and the predecessor-in-interest to the DVD-CCA, Matsushita, designed it to be weak because Japanese export laws prevented the export of more than 40-bit encryption. The US had pressured Japan to impose 40-bit crypto export controls. The Japanese laws didn't change, even after EFF's Bernstein lawsuit and commercial firms' political pressure forced US policy to become sensible. Last I heard, crypto export is still a morass in Japan. US law is not the same as Norwegian law. You should not imagine that this case sets a precedent for US courts. Correct, but. One of the basic prongs of the entire DVDCCA trade secret series of cases was that the reverse-engineering had been illegal in Norway. If it wasn't illegal to do it, it wasn't illegal to reproduce the results of it. Since Norwegian courts have determined that it wasn't illegal to reverse-engineer it, there is no case against any of the defendants. Like Matt Pavlovich, Andrew Bunner, and many dozens of other people who DVDCCA have been trying to drag into California courts. You may not have noticed, but EFF and its pro-bono partners have been spending major time on winning these cases. The Norwegian decision will make it much easier. For normal products, market segmentation is neither forbidden by law nor protected by law. ... The law is silent on the issue. This is false. Market segmentation by country is deliberately outlawed by free trade laws and treaties, which exist to benefit consumers by letting them import whatever products they want from other countries. For example, in New Zealand, the DVD region-code system was found to violate their free-trade laws, and therefore New Zealand never permitted one-region players to be sold there. The Coors brewery tried to limit distribution of their beer to certain Western states. They failed. My local liquor store in Washington, DC made a ton of money bringing in semi-loads of Coors, in violation of Coors company policy, and selling them to thirsty expatriate Rocky Mountainers. Similarly, the US Supreme Court recently struck down laws in many US states that prohibited the interstate purchase of wine and other products. These laws were all designed to benefit local producers, at the expense of local consumers. Most of these laws were wrapped up in a cloak of consumer protection against shoddy products or protection of minors but it was easy to pierce that veil to see the monopoly interest. (This is not to say that market segmentation is dead in the US! Many continue. The federally supported Milk Compact deliberately segments the New England market and costs consumers of milk many billions of dollars per year. The federal DMCA has nothing to do with protecting copyrights and everything to do with protecting monopolies, as the judge agreed in the 2600 case. Many state and local laws continue to restrict entry into fields such as lawyering, surveying, haircutting, and even carpentry (union shop laws). Producers are always looking for political opportunities to outlaw their competition, and there are always corrupt people inside governments, who are happy to oblige.) We should try to avoid overwrought arguments about the morality of market segmentation and/or arbitrage. Unfortunately you set the wrong tone by starting as apologist for it. In fact it is easy to demonstrate that _some_ market segmentation is good for society as a whole. The kind of segmentation your graphs rely on can easily be created by *time* segmentation. Producers start off charging high prices for their goods, and then gradually reduce the prices as they ramp up volumes, pay off their startup costs, learn the desires of their market better, etc. This gets the social benefit you desire, without propping up any artificial forms of segmentation. Of course, there are always people who will claim that people aren't free to change their prices up or down over time. (After the earthquake, according to those folks, bottled water should sell for the same price as before, even if at that price the entire supply has sold in two hours, to the people who value the water least.) The closest they could come was to make it slightly hard to get a _multi-region_ player. The manufacturers of player hardware had to do the studios' bidding because of the the controversial (to say the least) anti-circumvention provisions of the 1998 DMCA law. That's not actually true.
Re: DeCSS, crypto, (regions removed??!)
Hi, I dont know if this is relevant to the discussion, but in Sweden (not a region-1 country) people where so pissed at the regionsystem (and the fact that most computer geeks could go around it, but the average person could not) that the whole region concept had to be removed. Ie. this forced the large companies to rethink and nowadays we have commercial region-free DVD players in most stores. It's a bit of a laugh that they now list Region free as a feature to increase sales. Regards, /m - __,,,^..^,,,_ Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he wont bother you for weeks. --unknown - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
Pete Chown [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: One last point is that governments serve the interests primarily of their own people. So the job of Britain's government is to get me, and other Brits, the best possible deal on films within the UK. This might mean balancing the interests of British consumers against British film producers. It doesn't mean balancing British consumers against foreign film producers. If no films were made in Britain, the government would logically insist on a completely free market that allowed parallel imports and circumvention measures. Maybe. Not necessarily if that meant that no new movies ever got made. Now, the UK isn't a big enough market for this, but consider what would happen if the US said listen, free drugs would be great for consumers so let's get rid of all drug patents. This would probably dramatically increase social welfare at the moment, since there are quite a few people who would buy drugs if they were cheaper. (It's of course not Pareto dominant). However, it seems likely that this would have such a negative effect on future production that it would lower social welfare in the future. -Ekr -- [Eric Rescorla [EMAIL PROTECTED]] http://www.rtfm.com/ - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
On Wed, 8 Jan 2003, Pete Chown wrote: One last point is that governments serve the interests primarily of their own people. So the job of Britain's government is to get me, and other Brits, the best possible deal on films within the UK. This might mean balancing the interests of British consumers against British film producers. It doesn't mean balancing British consumers against foreign film producers. If no films were made in Britain, the government would logically insist on a completely free market that allowed parallel imports and circumvention measures. Ah, but you're forgetting the whole globalization issue. Governments aren't answering to their own people any more; they're all striving to become a part of the new world order where a norwegian can be brought to court for a supposed violation of american copyright laws or where the Russian Dmitri Sklyarov can be jailed in the USA for DOING HIS JOB IN RUSSIA. We're moving forward into a glorious new world where governments can impose laws upon their own people, not by the fickle and divisive will of those governed, but rather in response to international treaties and agreements with other nations promoting global unity and harmony. Cryptography is a part of that wonderful vision... if the people of different nations can be prevented from communicating effectively with one another, or exercising their freedoms in ways that affect one another, then effective opposition to global unity may be reduced, and we can all become better servants and markets to our corporate masters. All power to the dromedariat! Bear PS. If you happen to be mentally defective, you may not recognize the foregoing as sarcasm. Please take this into account when composing your reply. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
Nomen Nescio wrote: John S. Denker writes: The main thing the industry really had at stake in this case is the zone locking aka region code system. I don't see much evidence for this. As you go on to admit, multi-region players are easily available overseas. You seem to be claiming that the industry's main goal was to protect zone locking when that is already being widely defeated. Isn't it about a million times more probable that the industry's main concern was PEOPLE RIPPING DVDS AND TRADING THE FILES? Well, zone locking helps curb this because it *reduces* the market for each copy. The finer the zone locking resolution, the more effort an attacker needs to make in order to be able to trade more copies. Cheers, Ed Gerck - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
Karsten M. Self [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: on Tue, Jan 07, 2003 at 04:10:27PM -0800, Eric Rescorla ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: However, if he can price discriminate, he can sell two copies, one at 3 and one at 6. This makes it profitable for him to produce the book. ...and the usual mechanism is to produce various versions of the book: - A premium hardcover. - A trade paperback. - A pulp paperback. - A premeium, leather-bound, acid-free archival quality, hand-signed, and specially illustrated, collectors edition. Well, that's certainly one option. However, there are certainly other examples, such as senior citizens discounts. Where I see a fundamental conflict on the two classic cypherpunk issues of free access to data, but protection of privacy, is this: - Much of the fair use / DRM industry activity seeks to limit access to data which is inherently public. - Much of the privacy debate (now wrapped in the mantel of national security, though marketing data still plays a major role) seeks to make public data which is inherently private, anonymous, or both. I see the traditional cypherpunks line in both cases as being more closely aligned with natural state -- how things would be without major intervention -- and thus more sympathetic. I think part of the point here is that legal measures to enforce price discrimination might well be Pareto-dominant in some cases. When there is a conflict between liberty and Pareto dominance, economists get a headache. [1] -Ekr [1] Obligatory reference. Amartya Sen On the impossibility of the Paretial liberal. -- [Eric Rescorla [EMAIL PROTECTED]] http://www.rtfm.com/ - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pretty Good Update for E-Mail Privacy
At 10:03 AM 1/7/03 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8488-2003Jan3?language=printer washingtonpost.com Pretty Good Update for E-Mail Privacy snip Are there any reasonably up-to-date comparisions of PGP and GPG around? *Especially* with regard to the setup and UI issues. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[p2p-hackers] Anonymity tutorial at MIT, Wed Jan 15, 7-10pm (fwd)
--- begin forwarded text Status: RO Mailing-List: contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]; run by ezmlm Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 23:38:14 +0100 (CET) From: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [p2p-hackers] Anonymity tutorial at MIT, Wed Jan 15, 7-10pm (fwd) -- -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://eugen.leitl.org 83E5CA02: EDE4 7193 0833 A96B 07A7 1A88 AA58 0E89 83E5 CA02 http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net -- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 22:58:53 -0500 From: Roger Dingledine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [p2p-hackers] Anonymity tutorial at MIT, Wed Jan 15, 7-10pm [Please forward anywhere you think might be interested. And if you're a p2p-hacker in Boston, come and meet some of the others.] I'm doing a tutorial on anonymity designs, as part of the MIT I/S series of talks this January. It will be along the lines of my Blackhat and Defcon talks from August, but going into more detail. We'll likely have some form of refreshments. The room is plenty big, so feel free to show up, and bring plenty of questions. I'll adapt the material based on audience clue and interests. Please forward this to other relevant/interested lists. Why is anonymity so hard? Roger Dingledine Wednesday, Jan 15, 7-10pm MIT Room 54-100 (http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?locate=bldg_54) Open to the public With reasonable anonymity designs that are decades old, it seems clear that we should have a reliable, secure, and ubiquitous anonymity network by now. But apart from the purely technical challenges, there are social barriers as well. The complexity of distributing trust, problems funding the infrastructure or getting volunteers to run it, and challenge of making users comfortable all conspire to make deploying a strong anonymity system very difficult. I'll start with a crash course on anonymity designs, and compare ease of deployment based on the above issues. I will focus on Mixminion, a new message-based anonymous remailer protocol and Onion Routing, a low-latency stream-based anonymous communication system. I'll also spend some time talking about the link padding / dummy traffic problem. Throughout, I'll share some intuition about how to break these systems and how to fix them. ___ p2p-hackers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers --- end forwarded text -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
Isn't it about a million times more probable that the industry's main concern was PEOPLE RIPPING DVDS AND TRADING THE FILES? Well, zone locking helps curb this because it *reduces* the market for each copy. The finer the zone locking resolution, the more effort an attacker needs to make in order to be able to trade more copies. Huh? DVD region coding doesn't prevent this at all; ripped decrypted DVD mpeg files could be played anywhere. The DVD region code scheme would, however, be mildly effective in reducing the utility of (encrypted) DVD images by making them playable only on players from the original market. But as others have pointed out, there aren't any consumer DVD writers that can write out an entire image, so this wouldn't happen anyway with current products. By the way, import region-free DVD players *are* available, quite legally, within the US, as are non-region 1 disks. Kim's video in NYC is one source. They are all unfamiliar off brands, however - you won't find Sony or Matsushita (deliberately) producing one. The main reason such players aren't more popular or commonly available here is not the DMCA, but rather lack of consumer demand. Most popular movies are available and cheapest on a region 1 version of the release. It's people outside North America who buy most of the multi-region players, primarily to take advantage of the region 1 market. North American consumers of multi-region players and other regions' disks are mostly just fanatics like me who have less mainstream taste and want the few disks that aren't available for region 1. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics
John Gilmore wrote: For normal products, market segmentation is neither forbidden by law nor protected by law. ... The law is silent on the issue. This is false. Market segmentation by country is deliberately outlawed by free trade laws and treaties, which exist to benefit consumers by letting them import whatever products they want from other countries. For example, in New Zealand, the DVD region-code system was found to violate their free-trade laws, and therefore New Zealand never permitted one-region players to be sold there. Can you cite a reference for that? I saw a claim about it on the opendvd.org web site some time back and tried to confirm by talking to the NZ embassy in Canada and then to someone in NZ that they referred me to. No-one I spoke to knew of such a law or ruling. New Zealanders I've spoken to do say players sold there are typically region-free. Australia's Competition Commissioner has done some good stuff on this: http://www.accc.gov.au//fs-search.htm To quote two speeches from that site: Difficulties between the pro-competitive community and Intellectual Property Mr Ross Jones, Commissioner Australian Competition Consumer Commission | Australian consumers are currently suffering from an international cartel that | restricts their access to digital versatile discs (DVDs). The cartel, headed | by major film studios in agreement with the manufacturers of DVD players, has | divided the world into regions. This ensures that DVDs on sale in Australia | will only function on a DVD player licensed for region 4 that includes Australia. | The stated aim is to protect cinema ticket sales by preventing people viewing | movies on DVDs in their homes before distribution to cinemas. The Australian | subsidiaries of US film companies have been requested by the Commission to | explain their actions. It will then decide what action can be taken. Globalisation and Competition Policy Professor Allan Fels, Chairman Australian Competition Consumer Commission | The Commission has requested the Australian subsidiaries of United States film | companies to explain why their regional restrictions on DVDs should not be deemed | a breach of the Trade Practices Act 1974. ... | | The Commission believes RPC is anti-competitive with Australian consumers lacking | a choice of DVD videos and possibly paying higher prices. These documents are a couple of years old. Does anyone have more recent news from Oz? In particular, how did the cartel respond to these questions and has the Commission actually taken any action against them? - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
