By A.J. Mayo
[ The opinions expressed by authors on Linux Today are their
own. They speak only for themselves and not for Linux Today.
]
The fascinating developments in the DVD DeCSS affair have been
reported from several angles. However, two points of view seem to
have emerged to the exclusion of other important realities. One
side claims the other are hackers, bent on pirating copyright DVD
material and misappropriating trade secrets in order to do so. The
other side claims that reverse engineering is a legitimate
expression of free speech, and that in any case, a disk can be
pirated simply by doing a bit-for-bit clone, without the need for
decryption.
It is quite clear, I think, that the motivation of those who
have reverse-engineered the inner workings of the content
scrambling system was that darn human curiosity which marks us as a
species. And the Internet has made it pretty darn near impossible
to pop the genie back into the bottle. So why are the plaintiffs
bothering?. At best they would appear to create a bunch of martyrs,
and at worst they will lose control of a valuable trade secret.
In fact, the plaintiffs don’t seriously believe all this hacker
nonsense. They are taking this line for purely pragmatic reasons.
Firstly, labelling someone a hacker automatically puts them, in the
public mind, somewhere on the far side of the law. Secondly, this
case has to be sold by the powerful political lobbyists who run the
US to their Congressmen and Senators. These folks can win votes by
protecting American jobs and wealth from the hordes of Chinese
pirates who will allegedly profit from the hack by creating
container-loads of bogus movies.
Remember, these media folks aren’t stupid. You didn’t get to
head up a company like Disney by being anything less than a very
astute businessman. Disney and Sony climbed their way to the top
over the broken bodies of other, less-nimble companies. They know
all about executing a business plan. The purpose of CSS is not to
prevent piracy. It is to provide the DVD consortium with a lever by
which they can manipulate both the providers of hardware and
content.
What CSS lets the consortium do is determine who will make
players, and on what terms, and who will provide content. If you
can neither encrypt or decrypt the bit stream, you are locked out
of both markets. If you purchase a license to use the technology,
then the consortium has a way of controlling your actions. Want to
sell a player that doesn’t honour region codes?. Hmm, maybe we’ll
revoke your license. Or maybe yes, of course, but you gotta charge
three grand for it. Want to produce content – well, you need a
license to produce the encrypted bitstream that will go on a disk,
or you’ll have to deal with someone who does. This is a handy way
of exercising future control, is it not?. After all, you might be
allowed to produce content only playable in region 1, thus
controlling your distribution, or perhaps competitors of the
consortium members might find unexpected ‘capacity problems’ in
getting their product onto DVD.
But without CSS, this control vanishes and a great many
ricebowls are broken. The consortium always knew that someone would
break into the system. They probably planned exactly what they’d
do, ahead of time.
Firstly, a few corpses are to be left ‘swinging in the wind’.
This reminds the rest of us that these guys are serious. Also it
hurts the EFF, who are going to face substantial legal costs trying
to defend a bunch of ‘John Does’. Picking one John Doe in each
state, and bringing action there would be a good way of ensuring
that the EFF’s limited resources, both in manpower and money, are
stretched to the limit. After all, the playground bullies are big,
powerful fellows. The EFF is kinda like the nerdy kid with a crazy
notion of fairness who intervenes in someone else’s fight and gets
his lights punched out. A bloody nose might make the EFF a lot more
reluctant to interfere in the next playground fight.
Secondly, ISPs are going to be seriously spooked about this and
a lot of pressure will go onto those foolish enough to continue
publishing the material. This pressure will come from the ISP’s
lawyers, who will point out that the future risk of further
lawsuits (from this or other actions) is going to depress the share
prices of the ISP, unless they take firm action on content posting.
So what you will see is a crackdown on the posting of material
which might render the ISP open to legal action, and the
instigation of formal policies regarding such material. This is
nicely self-policing and a handy thing to have in place for the
future.
Thirdly, the US can use this case to leverage their new DMCA
copyright act. You can bet that behind the scenes, a lot of
political pressure is being put on countries to ‘harmonise’ their
copyright protection with the terms of this act. It would be very
desirable to put the status of reverse engineering on a sound legal
footing; preferably, one which makes the practice illegal. See the
damage which could happen if we don’t do this, you can hear the
diplomats and trade representatives saying. Of course, countries
who bow to US pressure might be able to avoid costly trade
sanctions or wild accusations of dumping in the future. Its kind of
like protection money paid to the mob to prevent your windows
getting smashed. That’s why the Norwegians hauled the 15 year old
boy in for questioning. He’s a minor, but his father might make a
good target. In any case, you can bet the US whispered a few words
into Norwegian ears. That ‘scientific whaling’ you folks like to do
– shall we take this up in the UN again, or do you do as we say.
Your choice….
You would think that making reverse engineering illegal would
hurt the US as much as anyone else, since the practice is rife
amongst US companies (e.g Informix engineers pull the latest
release of the Oracle relational database apart, to see how it
works). But of course in an already litigious society, it probably
won’t make much difference. Lawsuits in the US are launched for
objectives often only tangentially related to the suit, viz Caldera
vs Microsoft.
So what will happen?. The plaintiffs will probably win. The code
will still be out there, and downloadable. But the status of
hacking CSS will be perfectly clear, so any players or content
produced by exploiting the hack as opposed to properly licensing
the technology are clearly contraband and can be confiscated at the
border. Sure, there’ll be Linux DVD player software, but anyone
trying to build and sell a dedicated player based on that will find
that the unit can’t be sold legitimately. The same goes for
content. That, I think, will please the plaintiffs nicely.
Meanwhile, time marches on. DVD audio is the next battlefield.
Clearly the encryption system for that will be changed to something
much stronger. It will probably still be broken. But the legal
precedents have been set, so it will take a *lot* of courage to
defy them.
As for us consumers, we’ll continue to be led by the nose.
Although DVD doesn’t record – and, you can bet, recordable DVD
units, when they finally arrive, will not allow you to create
‘proper’ DVD content, playable across regions – and although the
picture quality is only marginally superior to VHS, we’re buying
the players in droves. The next step is for Hollywood to ensure
that new content only appears on DVD – or appears months earlier on
DVD. So your local Blockbuster has a copy of Toy Story 3, but only
on DVD?. Guess its time to buy a player, Martha.
DVD audio is then the next logical step. Yeah, sure, five
channel surround sound. Most people just have a couple of
ill-placed stereo speakers. Doesn’t matter. If the DVD players also
play DVD audio as well as CDs, then once they are out there, you
can stop producing content on CD. Latest Madonna album?. Gee, we
only have that on DVD audio. CDs won’t be out till next year. Not
much call for them these days… Now you have recovered control
over the content channel again. Piracy is still possible but you
have much stronger legal sanctions against it. And those damn
upstart ‘two guys in a bedroom’ record companies?. Well, now
they’re gonna *have* to come talk to Sony because, gee, they can’t
get a content pressing license any other way, and in any case, the
equipment is soooo expensive (after all, you control the hardware
manufacturers and one thing you don’t do is make cheap recording
units – after all, who needs to record five channels of surround
sound, anyway). Yup, we’re not making the mistakes we made with CDs
again. If they wanna make copies, let them use Minidisc. Everyone
knows that’s not as good as the original, so that’s fine. So Martha
and Jack can make audio copies to Minidisc to play in the car, and
tape the school play on digital video. Which would be of broadcast
quality – but they can’t copy it onto DVD and send it to their
friends. Or if they can, only within the domestic US, cause its
region coded.
And CD-RW?. Well, you know, the disks can’t be played in a
normal CD player. Not enough contrast in the media. Funny how that
little technical problem couldn’t be solved, eh?. Ah, yes, this is
the world the studio execs want!.
Well, folks, this is what US world domination is all about. With
things like DMCA and UCITA, the playing field can be tilted even
further in their favour. How they must chuckle to hear Europe
preening itself as a centre of technological excellence. They know
damn well that although Swan, an Englishman, invented the first
practical lightbulb filament, and demonstrated his invention a year
earlier than Edison, it was Edison who got the credit. And the
money. And so it goes… Of course, you could be a Luddite and not
buy a DVD player. But realistically, that just makes you a fringe
radical, like those strange folks who don’t own a TV, or who don’t
buy genetically modified food, and so forth. (Incidentally, I can
think of perfectly good reasons for not buying a TV or eating GM
food but the point is that taking this stand, especially in the US,
marginalises you. That’s not generally a good career move).