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Legal copying of HD-DVDs on the way?
That could change. According to Macworld the content companies may be ready to bend just a little, adding a "managed copy" provision to the licensing of AACS -- the HD DVD content protection system -- which would allow for homemade copies, albeit at a higher cost.
"The idea is that the content companies could charge a premium according to how many copies are allowed, Ayers said. It remains a possibility that consumers, if given the chance to make three copies of "Spider-man 2" could give those copies to their neighbors, which technically would qualify as low-volume piracy."
Given the fragility of DRM in general, and growing consumer awareness and dissatisfaction with the limits DRM attempts to impose, this move could be seen in one of two ways. Either the content producers are starting to realize that home consumers are not the source of piracy problems, and probably shouldn't be alienated given that they are the source of revenue driving the industry -- or -- This is simply a stop-gap measure being implemented by an industry who sees the walls are crumbling, but is powerless to truly understand why. Our cynicism tends to push us towards the latter answer but, maybe that's just our skeptical nature?
Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsMichaelMay 25th 2007 6:57PM
No, what they want to do is get everybody currently working to eliminate this crap encryption to poke their heads up, so they can swoop down and cart them off to jail.
gestaMay 28th 2007 9:28AM
I'm translating an Finnish article (from mikropc.net): Helsinki court decided to release two men, who knocked limits of (finnish) copyright law. Law is against "breaking effective copy protections". Effective equals to at least protection found in DVD.
Webmaster of a encryption-cracking related website and creator of one such program turned themselves in just to test the law. Police took the case under investigation and finally district attorney raised a case against these two men.
Men were released because court didn't see copy protection in DVD-disks "effective enough", because protection was originally cracked in 1999 and decryption programs can be downloaded from internet. According their lawyer Mikko Välimäki from Turre Legal this can be considered "Remarkable decision in whole Europe".
"Technical protection isn't effective anymore when anyone can download a program thet bypasses it from Internet. I interpret this verdict to be independent from technology used.", Välimäki told in their press release.
And now to the delicious part:
Välimäki would generalize this verdict to new hd-dvd and blu-ray-disks. Decryption is legal after someone figures out how to do it. (and releases it to the web)
-greetings from Finland =)