By Rip Linton
Companies that publish copyrighted works on paper have missed
the boat so far. They need to get with the program and start making
it more difficult to produce illegal copies of their works. Should
the MPAA and the DVDCCA be successful in these cases, publishers
should take notice.
First, they need the “Book Magazine Newspaper Copy Control
Association”, which will be known as the BMNCCA. And, of course,
they will need the “Print Publishers Association of America”, to be
known as the PPAA.
All media produced by members of the PPAA will be printed, with
an ink and on a paper that will insure the content is only visible
under a special light. The ink will be patented and licensed by the
BMNCCA and will be different for each region that the media may be
sold in. (This is the region coding.) The paper also will be
patented and licensed by the BMNCCA and will have a component that
would disappear under light modulated by a specific code, under any
other light the content will be blocked with garbage. (This is the
content blocking system, known as “CBS”.)
The media will come shrink wrapped with a license that you
accept by opening the shrink wrap. The license will state that:
- 1. The media remains the property of the publisher.
- 2. You are only allowed to read it within the terms of the
license. - 3. You are not allowed to reverse engineer any part of the
system. - 4. A whole bunch of other things that are written in language
that makes it very hard for you to understand what you have agreed
to.
The media will be packaged in a shrink wrapped box so that you can
only see the license after you have paid for it and left the store.
Should you not agree with the terms of the license, you will be
allowed to obtain a refund by sending the unopened package to the
publisher.
Next, the BMNCCA will license, at a large fee, manufacturers who
will produce the lights required to view the media. All
manufacturers will place the circuitry in their lights for the
region code of the country where the light will be sold.
Finally, the BMNCCA will license the modulation codes to utility
companies which causes the light to make the CBS invisible.
Now we get to the good part. My favorite author has written a new
fiction novel which is published by a member of the PPAA. I have to
read this novel. I buy a light and buy the novel. (oops, I buy the
right to read the novel within the terms of the shrink wrapped
license.) I live in a house that is served by an electric utility
that sends the proper modulation code so all is well.
Six months later, the local electric utility service gets
unreliable. I install a wind powered generator to provide
electricity to my house. Now, I no longer receive the modulation
codes so all I see when I look at my novel is the garbage produced
by the CBS. I cannot read my novel. I decide to figure out what the
modulation codes are and how to add them to my wind powered system.
I can use the light and read my novel. (oops, I keep doing that. I
mean the publishers novel.) I call this solution DeCBS. I am sure
that other people also use their own electric generators, so I
share the information with them.
The results. I have violated the DMCA and the terms of the shrink
wrap license. The PPAA and the BMNCCA will sue me, and everyone
else who spread the codes, claiming that the codes will allow use
of a digital camera to make unencrypted copies of protected media.
These copies could then be printed in the clear on plain paper, or
even shared via the Internet.
If this seems far fetched, I suggest that you think hard about what
fair use and freedom of speech really mean should the MPAA and the
DVDCCA succeed.
I realize that the above does not consider the fact that DeCSS
“could” be used to play movies placed on other media, such as a
hard drive. I feel that issue compares with copying a music cd onto
a cassette tape. Yes, it could be done but so what? Isn’t that what
fair use is all about? DeCSS is not needed to put the movie on the
hard drive, only to view it after it is there.