Hardware Copy Protection Battles 375
substatica writes: "Law.com is running this article on the content industry working to convince congress that not introducing hardware copyright protection ( as well as copy protection built into OS, Software, Web Browsers and Routers ) would eventually lead to the "industry's destruction", as put by Michael Eisner. We've been able to copy VHS for over a decade and they're still making movies. Does anyone really think that the movie industry will be eradicated due to copyright infringment?" Consideration of the SSSCA has been put off a few months, but it will be back. The Register covers one part of the split between content and hardware with this story about Philips getting more uppity about their Compact Disc logo, a follow-up to this story. The Reuters article that the Register refers to is here.
Funny, I just got a letter from my Senator (Score:5, Informative)
He says "Thanks for contacting me to share your thoughts on the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA.) I appreciate hearing from you."
"As you know, this legislation, which has not yet been officially introduced in the Senate, would prohibit the manufacture of digital devices which do not include government-sanctioned copyright-protection technologies. A number of people have expressed concerns that this proposed measure is overbroad and that its restrictions on the duplication and distribution of digital content could be harmful to the technology industry. I understand your concerns."
"As a member of the Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee, I will keep your thoughts in mind should the SSSCA or similar legislation come before the Senate. I will also continue to consider ways to improve our copyright and internet security laws so they better serve the public. Your letter will help me in that work."
"Again, thank you for contacting me. Please let me know if I can be of assistance in the future."
"Yours sincerely, John Edwards"
What scares me here is, the continued work to improve our copyright and internet security laws....
KAOS, ontopic this time (Score:0, Informative)
This doesn't help piracy, it gets you past the stuff you can't skip. (copyright notice, adverts)
It also tells the CD Rom drive to behave like a CD player when playing a CD.
It should then work like a charm, but if you want to rip a protected CD, just play from an external CD player and plug the audio out into your computer's audio in port.
You can then rip Mp3's or OGG if you're a
Re:what's the real point? (Score:5, Informative)
Bad laws have the effect of making more people criminals while simultaneously lowering the respect for laws.
Re:Us vs. Them (Score:3, Informative)
Over the last 100 years we've had mass migration into centralized urban areas and a kind of centralized media culture.
I think it would be terribly interesting if, over the next 100 years, we saw a mass exodus of the intelligencia out of media culture and perhaps even physically out of the US and EU. It sounds far-fetched, and yet there are so many very intelligent students who graduated at the same time as me whose only goal is to get out of the western market lifestyle at any cost because they feel that the nature of ideas has been fundamentally changed, from a kind of forum for the enrichment of man to a tightly-controlled, tightly-protected profit-making establishment serving only this new caste system.
Many of them in the technical fields feel that independent thought is not only threatened, but is dangerous to engage in. Witness Skylarov. It is truly bizarre to hear so many different friends who don't know each other all talking about moving out of the US and the west, because of the current intellictual environment, to the desert, to the jungle, to south america, to asia...
Re:Mandatory Computer Upgrades? (Score:5, Informative)
Not that I'm agreeing with anything in that bill, only that it would not require forced upgrades, etc. as many many many people mistakening state.
Re:Real World Copyright Police (Score:3, Informative)
LA Times today has a great article on this (Score:3, Informative)
Consumer-electronics executives say they don't want consumers who've invested in HDTVs--about 2 million so far--to lose any of the value of their investment. But Preston Padden, an executive vice president of Walt Disney Co., said the impact would be extremely limited. "If the biggest problem to getting this solved is the 13 people who've already purchased HDTVs, I will personally drive the converter boxes to their homes and install them myself."
If it really is 2 million people, Preston Padden has some serious work ahead of him.
Basically, the article says that the studios and networks are desparately trying to get a standard in place for watermarking video before they are mandated to begin transmitting digital signals in just a few months. The article unfortunately doesn't explicitly point out the implications of this technological solution -- that all current computers would have to be made illegal for this to work.
thad