Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
Right, it's not certain. But this is a semantically null statement: Unless you have a mole in the court, that could be said about any case. It's true that the appeals court asked some questions that were widely interpreted as being favorable in a followup document, but their actual questions askd during oral arguments were very much pro-MPAA. It's true that they could be playing devil's advocate, but the queries seemed to be genuine conviction, not intellectual gamesmanship. -Declan On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 02:14:53PM +0200, Lars Gaarden wrote: Declan McCullagh wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2001 at 07:53:38AM -0700, David Honig wrote: At 07:30 PM 6/20/01 -0400, Riad S. Wahby wrote: The DMCA, according to the court, clearly prevents the use of DeCSS and css-auth, even in the case that it has a legitimate use, because it circumvents the access control measures built into the DVD standard. We both know that's an incorrect ruling that will be reversed. I covered the trial and the appeal, and I would not make such a strong claim. Seems like the appeals court is somewhat clued, as they asked more or less the correct questions. But as you say, it is nowhere near certain that the court will rule our way. -- LarsG
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
On Thu, Jun 21, 2001 at 07:53:38AM -0700, David Honig wrote: At 07:30 PM 6/20/01 -0400, Riad S. Wahby wrote: The DMCA, according to the court, clearly prevents the use of DeCSS and css-auth, even in the case that it has a legitimate use, because it circumvents the access control measures built into the DVD standard. We both know that's an incorrect ruling that will be reversed. I covered the trial and the appeal, and I would not make such a strong claim. -Declan
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
At 06:15 PM 6/21/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote: On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, David Honig wrote: My argument, to any judges reading, is that its *not* circumvention if you've bought the damn thing, no matter how you decode it. If you paid for satellite TV but you build your own descrambler, its *not* illegal circumvention, even though your gizmo (legally) circumvents access controls. Get it? [Rhetorically; Riad is not the problem :-] Hint: its only illegal if its fraud. DeCSS has nothing to do with fraud. cp does. Actually, only humans do, cp is not a moral entity. Actually that won't hold up. There is a distinction that you are missing. What is that distinction? Do you legally purchase service from that cable vendor? If so then even building your own cable descrambling box may be illegal if the contract says so (you're depriving the cable company of contractual income, fraud?). 1. yes, contract law always holds; however govt-backed (eminent-domain, spectral allocation) based monopolies should be as open as possible (cf ATT cable in SF) 2. no one has a 'right to income' only the terms of contracts The only(!!!) way that I can see building your own descrambler and getting away with it is if you have no(!) connection to the vendor, hence they have no claim to a 'loss' since you're not buying any service in the first place. Generally a bit provider requires that you have some equiptment to make use of their bits, however you have no obligation to use their equiptment. Bit provider = ISP | DVD producer. Equiptment = cable modem | DVD-licensed player
Re: CDR: Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
Riad S. Wahby wrote: I'm not agreeing with the DMCA, or with the judge's decision regarding DeCSS. Neither are palatable, to say the least. The original question was can this be done legally. The answer is: if someone paid to develop a licensed implementation of the DVD standard, yes. I don't know of any commercial software that will read the data from the DVD and spit out the raw data, encrypted or not, for writing to a CD. The DVD CCA would never license such a piece of software---its use is too clearly geared towards backup or, as they see it, piracy. The DVDCCA license requires that DVD equipment never allow access to the raw digital data. http://www.dvdcca.org/data/css/css_proc_spec11.pdf It is also quite evident that the MPAA was planning to use CSS as a 'hook' to force DVD player/software/equipment manufacturers to sign this license. Essentially creating a licensing regime protected by law. http://www.wipo.org/eng/meetings/1999/wct_wppt/pdf/imp99_3.pdf This ties in nicely with the content manufacturers' dream of a tamed digital environment where neither piracy nor fair use is possible, and everything is pay-per-view, controlled and metered. http://www.4centity.com/data/tech/cpsa/cpsa081.pdf -- LarsG http://eurorights.org
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
David Honig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Up to this point, I agree with everything you have said. The EBay advert could have been selling cp because there was nothing about playback implied. Presumably you would copy your DVD files from CDs onto a hard drive and then play them back. As the ad said, perfectly legal. You don't need to decrypt to copy. That's true. However, in order to read data from a DVD, you must first authenticate to the DVD player. This is before any decryption takes place. This is a cryptographic handshake mechanism using a key. If you do not perform this handshake, it is not possible to read the data. You are correct that this does not involve decryption. It does, however, involve circumventing a part of the DVD protection mechanism---the one that protects the raw bits from being read off the disk. DVD player software does this handshake directly. It is not handled by the operating system, nor should it be, according to the DVD CCA. No mechanism will be licensed by the DVD CCA that allows the raw bits to be accessed, according to another post on this thread. Thus, you must access the raw bits using unlicensed software---i.e. a circumvention device. To summarize: dd if=/dev/dvd of=pirated.file *does*not*work*. You must first run some sort of program to authenticate with the drive. Then you can dd as much as you like. The problem is with the authentication program---by the DVD CCA's licensing standards, no such program can be legit. Thus, according to the current 2600-MPAA decision, what is being sold on EBay is illegal, assuming that it does what it claims to do. -- Riad Wahby [EMAIL PROTECTED] MIT VI-2/A 2002 5105
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
At 02:36 PM 6/21/01 +0200, Lars Gaarden wrote: The DVDCCA license requires that DVD equipment never allow access to the raw digital data. http://www.dvdcca.org/data/css/css_proc_spec11.pdf If you buy the media (and more importantly, the license to play the content) you can use any hardware/software you like. Period. [1] That some folks (usually synthetic, ie, corps) pay a fee for IP from whoever is irrelevent. The record-pressers can't tell you whose needle to buy. Well they can, but you can ignore them. If you've cleanroom rev-eng'ed what you need to interop. E.g., DeCSS. This ties in nicely with the content manufacturers' dream of a tamed digital environment where neither piracy nor fair use is possible, and everything is pay-per-view, controlled and metered. Where a remotely-readable meter logs all licensed entertainment that's entered your brainstem each month. Tilting at windmills made of sand, DH All the normalities of the social contract are abandoned in warJack Valenti MPAA pres, in LATimes on Kerry's war crimes .. [1] That remote-music storage dotcom which required you to have a meatspace CD before letting you play the content should have needed *no* license, permit, or blessing from the producers.
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
At 01:48 PM 6/21/01 +0200, Lars Gaarden wrote: David Honig wrote: Not if you have lawfully paid for the content. As read by the MPAA, the DMCA enable them to sell you a locked house and then drag you to court if you try to pick the lock. Look everyone, I know the judge at the current level of the legal system needs a lobe job. Why should I take him seriously? If a cartridge doesn't have (C) SEGA in it, it won't play... ergo, (C) SEGA is not protected. Didn't the original IBM BIOS use this trick. e.g, look for a 'copyright ibm' string in the BIOS image? Dunno. (PS: Note that the (C) SEGA string may be my gisting.)
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
At 11:15 AM 6/21/01 -0400, Riad S. Wahby wrote: The EBay advert could have been selling cp because there was nothing about playback implied. Presumably you would copy your DVD files from CDs onto a hard drive and then play them back. As the ad said, perfectly legal. You don't need to decrypt to copy. That's true. However, in order to read data from a DVD, you must first authenticate to the DVD player. This is before any decryption takes place. This is a cryptographic handshake mechanism using a key. If you do not perform this handshake, it is not possible to read the data. Yep. But that's not implied by the (probably totally exploitive, BTW) ad. You are correct that this does not involve decryption. It does, however, involve circumventing a part of the DVD protection mechanism---the one that protects the raw bits from being read off the disk. My argument, to any judges reading, is that its *not* circumvention if you've bought the damn thing, no matter how you decode it. If you paid for satellite TV but you build your own descrambler, its *not* illegal circumvention, even though your gizmo (legally) circumvents access controls. Get it? [Rhetorically; Riad is not the problem :-] Hint: its only illegal if its fraud. DeCSS has nothing to do with fraud. cp does. Actually, only humans do, cp is not a moral entity.
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
At 03:37 AM 6/16/01 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can anyone figure this out? It's a link from the ebay splash page, so it's high profile. Is it DeCSS? Why would it be? You don't need DeCSS to copy the files on DVDs.
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
At 03:02 PM 6/20/01 -0400, Riad S. Wahby wrote: David Honig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why would it be? You don't need DeCSS to copy the files on DVDs. No, but you do need to authenticate with the DVD-ROM drive. To do this, at least under Linux, you have to invoke the proper ioctls, and Linux is a well known anti-american operating system. :-P do a cryptographic authentication procedure with the drive. Code to do this is covered under circumvention device in the DMCA according to the 2600-MPAA case. Not if you have lawfully paid for the content. If you don't do this authentication, the drives I have worked with will just spit out zeros instead of the real data. If a cartridge doesn't have (C) SEGA in it, it won't play... ergo, (C) SEGA is not protected. GAME OVER. Cheers, dh
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
David Honig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Linux is a well known anti-american operating system. :-P :-) Even so, the fact that it's Linux isn't the point. The fact is, you have to do some hardware handshaking before you can read the data. It just happens that it's via an ioctl interface in Linux, and I only mentioned that as a specific example. Not if you have lawfully paid for the content. Not really. Part of 2600's claim is that DeCSS and css-auth allow people using operating systems without officially licensed DVD player software (with development cost starting at $20k just for the license to implement the standard) to view DVDs that they purchased. The judge didn't buy it; it doesn't matter that they legally paid for the content, they're accessing it illegally via a circumvention device. The DMCA, according to the court, clearly prevents the use of DeCSS and css-auth, even in the case that it has a legitimate use, because it circumvents the access control measures built into the DVD standard. If a cartridge doesn't have (C) SEGA in it, it won't play... ergo, (C) SEGA is not protected. I don't see how this applies to what I was saying. The reason I tagged this on is to show that one must authenticate if one plans to read the data. Thus, the EBay offering has to use some sort of authentication mechanism. If it uses one that is not officially licensed (read this: upwards of $20k development cost), it is illegal, according to the court. I'm not agreeing with the DMCA, or with the judge's decision regarding DeCSS. Neither are palatable, to say the least. The original question was can this be done legally. The answer is: if someone paid to develop a licensed implementation of the DVD standard, yes. I don't know of any commercial software that will read the data from the DVD and spit out the raw data, encrypted or not, for writing to a CD. The DVD CCA would never license such a piece of software---its use is too clearly geared towards backup or, as they see it, piracy. -- Riad Wahby [EMAIL PROTECTED] MIT VI-2/A 2002 5105
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
On 20 Jun 2001, at 15:16, David Honig wrote: do a cryptographic authentication procedure with the drive. Code to do this is covered under circumvention device in the DMCA according to the 2600-MPAA case. Not if you have lawfully paid for the content. have you filed an amicus curiae brief explaining this? If so, how come the case isn't over yet, with the 2600 people victorious. If you don't do this authentication, the drives I have worked with will just spit out zeros instead of the real data. If a cartridge doesn't have (C) SEGA in it, it won't play... ergo, (C) SEGA is not protected. GAME OVER. Cheers, dh I'm not certain the judges will see things that way. The fact that you need something like DeCSS to view DVDs ON A LINUX BOX might not prove decisive to a judge who might consider the possibility that you could view them some other way, say, with a DVD player. Alternatively, Linus Torvalds could sell his soul and say that source for linux DVD players will NOT be open. I'm not justifying this kind of logic, mind you, just saying that I think it's quite likely that that's the way the ruling is likely to come out. George
Re: eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?
At 03:47 PM 6/16/2001 -0500, Joseph Ashwood wrote: Sounds to me like it's just a plain binary copy. The software takes the data off the DVD, and puts it on the media, when it runs out of space it asks for more media. If so it not very useful. Lots of such free utilities out there for that. As keyser-soze notes, in a reply with an incorrect subject line, if you want to put DVD originated video content to CDs for subsequent flexible viewing (PC or DVD player) you need to convert it to another format (VCD/SVCD). You can also make .avi or mpeg4 files for PC viewing from them (it seems the vcdhelp site referenced by keyser also has material for that.) steve
