US editors: Look at what is going on in congress (IMPORTANT)

[trythil]

This seems to be way to over the top to be passed.

They said that about the DMCA, too. Guess what -- it passed!

As far as your other questions:

IT DOESN'T MATTER. I don't see why this is so hard to understand.

If this passes, future technologies will have these safeguards built in. AT SOME POINT, you may want to upgrade -- say, to make use of a new technology. (This is not a fantastic scenario; new compression technologies routinely require more processing power, for example.)

But the new devices you can buy will be locked down like this, and thus will you have to submit to these limitations. Or not use those technologies at all, and thus limit yourself.

As far as the "well, it'll just be broken" argument goes:

Really people...

I've been around quite a while and seen this kind of crap has been tried to implement against the tape recorder, cassette tapes and VCRs... IT NEVER WORKS and is just plain stupidity... I've not yet know any of this kind of crap to ever stop people from recording, copying, etc...

EXACTLY. It DOESN'T -- people find ways around it.

BUT, two points:

Why would you ALLOW it to happen in the first place?

Why are you so complacent? (Besides the fact that you're Canadian.)

Oh come on, is it really that surprising?

Yes, it is. I'm amazed at the number of people here who can't seem to see past stuff like the above, or cannot/will not apply this legislation to fields outside of AMVs. Like software development. (Given how much free/open source stuff is used here, I find that quite surprising, too.)

[SnhKnives]

in Soviet Russia....DVD RECORDS YOU!

[Vlad G Pohnert]

[BUT, two points:

Why would you ALLOW it to happen in the first place?

Why are you so complacent? (Besides the fact that you're Canadian.)

Well, the answer to that would be because your such a rebel

Vlad

[trythil]

Another thing:

Breaking these measures only gives the MPAA/RIAA/whoever credibility when they say "We need this to protect our products from pirates".

We know that's bullshit. But by breaking their legally sanctioned protections -- no matter how stupid they are -- you are helping them.

Why does anyone think this is a good course of action?

[trythil]

[BUT, two points:

Why would you ALLOW it to happen in the first place?

Why are you so complacent? (Besides the fact that you're Canadian.)

Well, the answer to that would be because your such a rebel :wink:

Vlad

No. Exactly the opposite.

I'd rather live with laws that make sense -- in this context, laws that actually strike a balance between the interests of big media and the individual creator.

This law doesn't, which is why I want it gone. I'm trying to point out the evils of such a bill to get more support.

That isn't rebellious behavior. That's just democracy -- or, well, that's what democracy should be.

[Vlad G Pohnert]

Another thing:

Breaking these measures only gives the MPAA/RIAA/whoever credibility when they say "We need this to protect our products from pirates".

We know that's bullshit. But by breaking their legally sanctioned protections -- no matter how stupid they are -- you are helping them.

Why does anyone think this is a good course of action?

Who says anything about breaking them... I don't agree with them, but I don't go out of my way to break them... I think we are all guilty of breaking them in some way (even thier employees are probably guilty of that probably)...

So as long as they think we are "stealing" thier profits (every penny) they will always be fighting to have total control over the video/audio media. And that's something they will never have unless everyone give in (and tjat's not gonna happen any time soon).

Vlad

[madbunny]

It works like this:

A law is passed that seems to make sense to most people, and generally lets you control what happens. Say for example: A password for your television that lets you block out the Sopranos so your kid doesn't watch mobsters doing their thing, or the porn channels when you're not home. Most people don't really have a problem with that idea conceptually. The problem is that if you take that very same idea 'just a little' further to the next device say your Tivo, that tells it it can't record those same shows if they're blocked, that also makes a sort of sense right? Now using those same analogies, imagine that a show is broadcast with an automatic blocking flag: say for example the Grammies, or a live concert that might be resold later on. Suddenly, you can't record what you want, it is no longer something that you can control. In other words, an outside person is deciding what you can and can't keep. It isn't a huge step past this to imagine that motherboards will have similar chips in them. Imagine if your soundcard stored your DRM instead of your hard drive, would you really notice? So long as it didn't impact you, would you even care?

Can this sort of thing be hacked? Sure. I have a software program that uses a hardward dongle (really, that's what it's called) but whenever I put it on the back of my students computers they steal them for some stupid reason, leaving me with 3K of useless software. Solution: a crack. I'd rather just have skipped that step in the first place.

Personally I see that argument that piracy is stealing from the major media as a bit sketchy, but still logical. They want to protect their interests. Their interests naturally being the ability to make as much money as is humanly possible. If there was a way they could get you to just send them money for nothing at all I'm sure that would be just fine for them.

As I understand it, one of the major sticking points on the whole HD-DVD and Blu-ray high def disks isn't the technical issues so much as the wrangling over the Digital Rights Managements that are to be put into them. You can also bet that as the US goes increasingly digital in it's broadcasting that these things are going to come up more and more.

For everyone that figures they'll just stick with the tried and true: remember things change. Before x-vid and H.263 there was Mpeg. MP3 might be around for a while, but what happens if Ipod no longer accepts mp3 instead of some better format?

[trythil]

Another thing:

Breaking these measures only gives the MPAA/RIAA/whoever credibility when they say "We need this to protect our products from pirates".

We know that's bullshit. But by breaking their legally sanctioned protections -- no matter how stupid they are -- you are helping them.

Why does anyone think this is a good course of action?

Who says anything about breaking them... I don't agree with them, but I don't go out of my way to break them...

When was the last AMV you made with ripped DVD footage?

If inane copy protection mechanisms didn't exist, you wouldn't have had to do that. If we had a more balanced copyright mechanism -- Lessig's proposal that derivatives of copyrighted works be allowed given that flat 1% of net profits from derivative works shall be held in escrow for a copyright owner is a good place to start -- you wouldn't necessarily be violating international copyright law, either.

But they do exist, and we have to break them to do what we want to do. Thus does the cycle continue.

The way to fix this is to fix it at its root, not sit back and wait for cracking tools.

So as long as they think we are "stealing" thier profits (every penny) they will always be fighting to have total control over the video/audio media. And that's something they will never have unless everyone give in (and tjat's not gonna happen any time soon).

The answer to that, again, isn't to wait for cracking tools and procedures to emerge. The answer is re-education, and petitioning for change is part of that re-education process.

Obviously, that petitioning obviously can't involve reasons like "I want to be able to distribute as many copies of X's work Y as I want, for my monetary profit" -- I think we can say that that's wrong. What we can say is wrong are the usual problems, because they always exist: restriction of creativity, innovation, and so forth.

[trythil]

Another thing:

Breaking these measures only gives the MPAA/RIAA/whoever credibility when they say "We need this to protect our products from pirates".

We know that's bullshit. But by breaking their legally sanctioned protections -- no matter how stupid they are -- you are helping them.

Why does anyone think this is a good course of action?

Who says anything about breaking them... I don't agree with them, but I don't go out of my way to break them...

When was the last AMV you made with ripped DVD footage?

If inane copy protection mechanisms didn't exist, you wouldn't have had to do that.

I should have preceded that with "Did you have to break CSS to do this? If so, you've gone out of your way to break them."

[devilmaykickass]

I'm praying that it does get passed.

0o Why?

I really hope that was a typo.

No, it wasn't a typo.

And "why" you ask? Because like Otohiko already stated, in Soviet Russia, the rights copy you.