[KLUG Advocacy] The TEACH Act...

Bryan J. Smith advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
Thu, 02 Jan 2003 17:34:49 -0500 (EST)


???> Like Bryan said awhile back, as long as an analog loop exist (and
???> EVERYTHING boils down to analog, right ;) )  you can circumvent
???> DRM measures.

Actually, you'd be surprised how much that is true.  Especially when it comes to
smartcards and the like.  [ Long story ]

But it's still difficult for the common man to deal with it.  It's kinda like
gun control, legal owners suffer while illegitimate owners easily dodge the pun,
bullet, pun.

Quoting Adam Williams <awilliam@whitemice.org>:
> Sure, but legally it is more complicated than that.  Taking "reasonable"
> means to protect your copyrighted material makes the person violating in
> obvious violation of the law.

I would, instead, entrust the user.  Since 2/3rd of Americans respect
intellectual property and purchase legal copies, even in the age of the Internet
(and _no_less_ than before), I just don't know WTF the problem is?

Oh yeah, that's right, it's "new profit models in the digital age."  Because
companies have sold legislators on the idea that "fair use" only applies to
pre-digital media.

I'm not making this crap up.  Hit Google and do some searching on reports of how
IP owners can make more money in the digital age.  But a key to doing so is to
remove the "analog loopholes."

Put simply, they want the "share it like a book" mentality must be changed to
"sharing a book is piracy."

> Thats why I think a software mechanism in something like an operating 
> systems VFS layer (everybody has one these days) is the right way to do
> this.  Sure it can be exploited - but then your exploiting it, which
> would be illegal (at least depending on where you live).  And the lawyers
> could eat your flesh red off the bone.  

According to one survey I saw awhile back, 98% of IT Professionals simply want a
_reliable_ capability that allows them to track and notify users, as well as
themselves, of when they need to purchase additional licenses for IP.  The
problem with most tools, especially from the vendor, is that they are self-serving.

In fact, this really gets me to the *REAL*PROBLEM*.

Consumers are _are_more_honest_ than the companies they buy products from!!! 
_Especially_ if the company has a large marketshare, because the only way to
"grow" (let alone hold on to that marketsahre) is to exploit the consumer.  And
in the digital age, this means creating laws that affect _every_ consumer
negatively, even outside their markets.

One only needs to look at "Big Media" to see why.  At least with "Big Tabacco,"
you had a _choice_ to smoke or not (well, some people who argue about
Second-Hand Smoke will differ, but that's another story ;-).  But with "Big
Media," their lobbying efforts are affecting _everyone's_ rights.

> Burying some proprietary fascist cheap deep in the bowel of the computer
> is the <i>fool proof</i> way to do it, but I think presents real technical
> and civil problems.

No.  The problem with government mandated proprietary mechanisms is that they
serve the proprietary vendor, not the public or the general ethics of the
situation.  It's the general problem with _any_ government mandated mechanism,
lobbyists get ahold of it and define it, not the public.

The market must create its own.  There _are_ dissenters in the "Big Media" camp.
   They _are_rare_ and the least powerful, but they aren't stupid.  The public
needs to tap them.

And we need to show them the "Linux guys" are the most respectful people of IP.
 Even Microsoft knows that!

> And as for the analog loop argument.  Thats easy to fix.  HDTV displays
> will have encryption all the way to the display circuitry.  Sure you
> could implement an anolog trap in there, but it would be alot of work.

The problem is that any "intelligent" HDTV device must decrypt at some point. 
So you can capture that stream.

In fact, in the whole 2600 v. MPAA argument -- the MPAA was _totally_toasted_
when the MPAA basically "took the 5th" when questioned if the illegal video
captures that they found on the Internet were created with DeCSS, or with such
an "after-decryption" buffer ripper.

Based on the fact that DeCSS itself cannot rip DVDs into a useful form without
additional processing, and the overwhelming number of videos that have already
been ripped by such "after-decryption" buffer ripping programs that had
_already_ existed for Windows prior to DeCSS, the defense argued the MPAA
lawsuit against 2600 over DeCSS has _nothing_ to do with illegal distribution. 
The judge _did_ note that fact and, at one point, understood _exactly_ what the
defense was saying.

[ It should also be noted that the NYTimes ran nearly an _identical_ article and
link to DeCSS like 2600 did.  But the NYTimes wasn't sued.  The MPAA won the
2600 lawsuit 100% because of the minimalistic violation terms of the DMCA, even
though he stated the MPAA had no proof that DeCSS had ever been used to
illegally decrypt any videos. ]

> A camera picture of the screen?  Your not going to be able to do much
> with that.  Screens are difficult to photograph,  and they can
> technically be made much more so.

All you need is a HDTV device on your PC.  People aren't going to pay a lot for
hardware decoder boards when they already have the power in their CPU.  Basic
"software-modem/scanner/printer" mentality.

> Currently you can genlock your video output.  But with the next
> generation of displays I pretty much guarantee that you won't be
> able to do that without a licensed device.

But if it is software, you might.

> DRM is going to happen, the question is how.

Give me DRA, "Digital Rights Awareness."  That's what Americans want, because
they just want to know what they can and cannot copy legally.

-- 
Bryan J. Smith, E.I. (BSECE)       Contact Info:  http://thebs.org
[ http://thebs.org/files/resume/BryanJonSmith_certifications.pdf ]
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