On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:58:56 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:03:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> 
>>> Right. That's why I said "DMCA notwithstanding".
>> 
>> Problem is, we can't choose to ignore DMCA.  I'm not sure I follow you
>> here.
> 
> I meant my opinion/analysis was "DMCA notwithstanding."  Not that the
> actual law is. I.e., I don't know enough about DMCA to say how it might
> have changed the landscape, so if you ignore the DMCA, then what I said
> is valid. :-)

Oh, I see - makes sense now.

>> Taking Jeremy's suggested idea, I purchase a program that's developed
>> to run on the Mac, but I don't have a Mac.  If my intention is the
>> important one and my intention is to run it on a Linux-based PC, would
>> it be legal for me to reverse-engineer the program in order to
>> recompile it to run on Linux?  I would seriously doubt that, and I
>> think a challenge on that basis would ultimately fail in court.
> 
> Sure. But this is the argument made by DeCSS authors: Nobody had a
> license to play the legally-purchased DVD on a Linux machine, so they
> circumvented the protection to make that possible. Of course,
> distributing a program that not only played the disk but made it
> possible to copy it was the bigger problem, I think. Makes it hard to
> separate out the different concerns in the court cases.

Well, that also assumes, though, that it's legal to play the disc back on 
whatever device you have if it has a DVD reader.

But the play/copy argument is something I've had at work (for that 
matter), electronic distribution of training materials where you've put 
some restriction on it using technological means to prevent copying 
doesn't work because most modern OSes don't distinguish between "open to 
read" and "open to copy" (since "open to copy" implies "open to read").  
That's where the whole CSS copy protection (and most if not all others) 
fall down - in that if you can open something to use it legally, someone 
will find a way to do so to make a copy of it.

And ultimately, of course, trying to put a restriction on it like that 
inconveniences legitimate users but those who are determined will find a 
way around it.  The whole idea of copy protection (and consequent 
litigation ala RIAA and MPAA) is problematic from a technological 
standpoint for this reason.  The ones that *AA need to go after aren't 
the casual downloaders, but those who actually *profit* by selling 
illegal copies of the content - like the street vendors common in many 
urban areas (I hear about ones in New York, for example, but don't know 
how much of that is urban legend and how much is actually happening).  
Those are the people cutting into the profits.  The 7 year old who 
downloads 20 or 30 tracks using a Bittorrent client probably wasn't going 
to buy the product anyways.  But the guy who purchases an illegally made 
copy of the disc from a street vendor *is* paying for the product and 
cutting the artist (and the *AA folks, though they're of less concern to 
me because they don't really add any value, just cost IMHO) out of the 
profits.

Jim

Post a reply to this message