Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying

Ynefel writes in with a PC Magazine article reporting that the DVD Copy Control Association is considering an amendment to the agreement equipment vendors must abide by, which would completely ban all DVD backups, whether fair use or not, and prevent DVDs from playing without the DVD disk being present in the drive. The amendment is being voted on imminently and if approved would go into effect within 18 months. Quoting: "The proposed amendment was made public in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD CCA this past March."

Re:There's just one thing I don't understand...

[bdr529]

1. How will that prevent the 99% of existing computer users with DVD-R/Ws from using their compies to backup their dvd

My understandnig is that it won't PREVENT "existing computer users with DVD-R/Ws from using their compies to backup their dvd[s]", but will make it much harder to find software to do so. And will make it harder for existing software to get updated as they (the software vendors) will be in "violation" of a contract...

And 2. How will that prevent the 10% of existing computer users with Divx software from ripping their dvd's?

See Item 1.

Who needs Kaleidescape?

[morgan_greywolf]

Who needs 'em? I got MythTV, dd, DVD ripping tools and Nautilus Burn.

Burning is as easy as:

dd if=/dev/dvdrom of=/data/iso/myfile.iso bs=1024

Right click on iso in Nautilus, click 'Write ISO to CD/DVD' and burn, baby, burn!

Ripping is even easier.

Re:Related Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

From one perspective, I *do* understand where DVD producers are coming from on this. I positively know of at least one person who uses Netflix by backing up the DVDs when they come in, then immediately shipping them out for new ones. While it's a nice trick for improving one's own convenience, it's not really in the spirit of the service. So there are some legitimate arguments against DVD Backup devices.

However, the solution is NOT to ban good devices in an attempt to nail the edge cases. All you're going to do is piss off your customer base. But what should happen if a report stating that backup-piracy is NOT an edge case crosses an important desk? Should that executive then decide to make the problem go away?

NO!

In my entire life, I've only met one person that copied movies - and he was doing it using two VCRs. It was simple, anyone could do it. You buy two VCR's and you record the movie from one onto the other. A grade-schooler could probably figure it out. My point is the same as yours, however, he's the *only* person I've ever known that's done this.

These execs need to be focusing on places like SE asia where burned movies are sold on the street like penny candy. When will they learn to stop biting the hand that feeds them? Do I want to copy my DVD's and CD's? Yes! Why? Because when the original media is scratched it RUINS your enjoyment of that movie / music. I copy as many of mine as I can so that I don't have to worry about it. I also keep burned copies of my CDs in my car to protect me from theft. If some jackalope breaks into my car and steals my CDs... I don't care, I'll just buy a spindle and re-burn them - because the probability of the cops getting them from the thief or of insurance fully reimbursing me for their worth is pretty slim. Ever lent a CD to a friend and gotten it back trashed? Of course you have... that's why copies are great.

As a consumer - if there's no simple, legitimate way to protect the media I've invested my money in then I'll just find another means of acquiring it.

How did he win?

[Nom du Keyboard]

...a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD CCA this past March.

Did he win in court because he pointed out the license agreement didn't prohibit this usage, or did he win on other grounds? If they're changing the license agreement to close up some holes (think GPL 3), he may have a case of unfair and tortorus interference in his business. If he won on other grounds, this might not affect him -- or us, under the same decision -- at all.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm ready to support removing ALL rights from the movie industries. They'd still find a way to survive, and even prosper, but not in the insane taking of public rights they now enjoy.

Remember, everyone who initially came to Hollywood to found the western movie industry did it because they were stealing the use of Edison's patents, and were trying to avoid his enforcers. They were all a bunch of thieves to start with, and that hasn't changed all that much since!

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[CastrTroy]

But it would still allow backups to be made, because that part is illegal, so the clause that contains the part about making backups won't be able to be enforced. However, I still don't know if this works. Stopping somebody from doing something legal is not actually illegal. For instance, I could license you my patent on the terms that you may only sell the product by people ordering directly via telephone. Normally it would be legal for you to sell the product whichever way you want, but since you're agreeing to the contract, you have to abide by it, or you are in breach of contract.

Re:And just how they plan to actually enforce it?

[jonwil]

Basically the issue is that if you can copy a DVD and play it without having the original in the drive (say, to a video juke box), you can obtain the DVD (video store, borrow from mate, whatever else), copy it and give it back. Ergo, you have a copy of the DVD that you can watch without having the original in your possession.
So the MPAA want to stop companies with CSS licenses from producing devices that can be used to violate copyright law.

Re:How would they enforce this at the end-useEASY!

[Nom du Keyboard]

They would enforce it by requiring all playback software to only playback from a physical DVD drive that contained a DVD with a media descriptor block of a type you cannot purchase on blank, writable DVD discs. The media descriptor information is one thing you CANNOT write to on your writable DVD discs. It's set by the manufacturer, and what you buy is what you get.

And if you believe this has never happened before, you're wrong. The so-called "music blank CD's", which are the only sort your audio component CD recorder would ever accept use exactly this same trick! A music writable CD-R is identical to a computer CD-R, except that it has a special media code that the audio component CD-R recorder recognized, and this indicated that a tax (up to $0.30/CD-R) was charged for this otherwise identical recordable media. It worked there, and would be hard to defeat here if the content industries can force through legislation mandating its use in all equipment and players sold in this country.

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[AKAImBatman]

Why would you need a license to make an exact bit for bit copy?

*You* don't. The company that makes the backup device needs a license to the DVD/CSS technology in order to play back the backups made on the device. So in order for the device to exist in the first place, the manufacturer has to meet the licensing requirements. Something that Kaleidescape does.

Re:Related Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

I know more than one person who grinds through netflix rentals as fast as he can burn them.

In fact, I very typically rip a rental DVD to my HD as soon as I receive it. The reason I do so is that these DVD's are scratched to hell and my player doesn't like them, but my DVD-ROM does. My DVD-ROM is, however, awesomely slow to spin up and seek video DVD's, so I just play it right off the HDD. When I'm done, I delete them. Sometimes not immediately, but I do.

Not that they're going to effectively take that away from me, and I suppose I'm already a criminal. And I know two wrongs don't make a right, but I seriously can't muster the tiniest amount of sympathy for the CCA and the MPAA, given their past and present behavior.

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[TheWanderingHermit]

Yes, it doe make them less competitive. I'm not saying it isn't. To me it seems more of a cruelty on the consumer.

They just don't care and will accept anything *ANYTHING* the media cartels can push through congress.

I don't think so. I remember when CDs came out. Vinyl was about $8 per album and CDs were about $16 per album. CDs were cheaper than vinyl, but at the time, it was hard for people to react in any way since home burners were not available at that point. Once they were available, blank media became popular, then, finally, there was Napster. While I think there are always greedy people who will take what they can for free, most are willing to pay a reasonable price for it. Napster was, among other things, a rebellion against the high price of CDs. Even though the prices had not gone up in the roughly 2 decades CDs were out, people still felt they cost more than a fair price. That's why iTunes is so popular. While it includes DRM, $.99 a song is a much more reasonable price to most people.

I remember back in the days of my Apple //e when almost everything was copy protected. Eventually companies gave up on protection because they realized it wasn't worth the money and effort and those that were going to pirate would do so anyway. In that case, they didn't push too hard but realized their version of DRM wasn't worth it. On the other hand, now, the MPAA is pushing too hard. They tried that with VCRs when Jack Valenti told Congress that VCRs were to the movie industry what Jack the Ripper was to women of 19th century London. Eventually, though, they realized they could not control the public and found ways to profit from a new business model. The more they push the public, though, the quicker the public is to pirate or find ways to copy or circumvent the "protective" measures.

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[walt-sjc]

The contact isn't between the consumers and the DVD group, it's between the DVD group and DVD licensees. You will still have the right to do backups and other fair use activities, just no hardware will be available to help you do it.

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[AKAImBatman]

You can't do that without special equipment or breaking the encryption. The CSS system (redundancy ahoy!) uses a special track which does not exist on rewritable DVDs. In fact, DVD drives have special commands for reading the track. The information on that track is encrypted with a set of "player keys". The Player Keys are contained within licensed software, and are used to decrypt the disc key track. The disc keys are used to decrypt the title keys, which are the actual keys used to watch the movie.

In addition, the DVD drive has to authenticate a CSS disc with its own encryption checks before it will allow the disc to be read.

DeCSS works by brute-force cracking the encryption. (CSS uses a 40-bit key.) So it's not really possible to create a *legal* backup of a DVD disc without a license and equipment from the DVD CCA.

Re:Yeah, this will stop me!

[Chris Tucker]

"And that Phillips player is illegal, under their licensing agreement. All region players have been subject to more than one crackdown, with the threat of pulling their license to manufacture in the balance."

Well, I suppose I'd better order THIS [amazon.com] as soon as possible before the DVD CCA shuits down Amazon.com and/or Phillips!

Re:Related Thoughts

[gosand]

Do I want to copy my DVD's and CD's? Yes! Why? Because when the original media is scratched it RUINS your enjoyment of that movie / music.

Here's another example: I have a 2 year old daughter, and she watches Signing Time DVDs. They teach her sign language, which was fantastic. She was communicating with us before she could talk, and she really learned a lot. She still watches them on occasion. I also recorded some Sesame Street episodes and other shows she likes (Jack's Big Music Show is pretty funny) with my DVD recorder. I rip all of this stuff and convert it to divx files. Then I can burn lots of different stuff to one DVD, and have it ready in the DVD player. If it gets scratched up, we still have the originals. When my wife had to fly with her once, she was able to take a portable DVD player that supported divx and keep her entertained on the plane. (I am sure the other passengers appreciated THAT). It has really been a lifesaver. Technically illegal? I am not entirely sure, and I don't really care.

Re:For those who don't RTFA

[AKAImBatman]

You can modify your DVD's ROM to read it. But how are you going to write it without a shiny plastic disc containing the CSS area?

If you answer "DeCSS", my answer is going to be "DMCA". And that's why you can't sell a 100% legal backup device without a license from the DVD CCA.