[ILUG] copyright law in ireland...

[Conor Daly]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 12:45:01PM +0000 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Garret thought:
> Conor Daly wrote:
> [snip]
> > However, if the playing of such a DVD under linux under "fair dealing"
> > involves the *unauthorised* (eg. DeCss which has not been licensed with
> > the relevant people) then you're infringing on the copyright by using
> > something designed to *defeat* a rights protection measure (assuming that
> > a court upholds the view that the DVD encryption is a copyright protection
> > measure rather than a customer/viewer control measure.  I'd imagine that
> > one could prove in court that the DVD encryption does *not* in any way
> > prevent piracy of the work (a copied DVD will work on any *authorised* DVD
> > player whether Windows or the Sony standalone) then it would be viewed as
> > something *other* than a "rights protection measure").
> 
> Good points. 
> Here's a question. If I own a licensed software dvd player (say a
> windows one) 
> Could I use section 81 of the copyright law to allow me to use the DeCSS
> code from my windows player and make it interoperable with linux? 
> 
I'd say so.  But, probably by using it under WINE or similar rather than
decompiling the code to get at the algorithm so you can rewrite it under
Linux. 
> 
> 
> [snip]
> > 
> > Don't assume from the above that I do or don't support the copyright
> > legislation, I haven't enough detail to make such a choice.  I don't (and
> > won't) buy either DVD Drives or discs.  Partially as a philosophical
> > objection to the whole business of "customer control" but mostly 'cos I
> > won't waste the cash on such stuff yet.  I see the PC mags are giving out
> > DVDs now instead of CDROMs (Now you get ~2Gb of crap instead of 640Mb of
> > crap.  Oh, I know there's some good stuff to be had but that's what
> > sourceforge.net and tucows.com are for...).
> 
> Well I wouldn't go that far myself. Remembering of course that its not
> the DVDs themselves that are copy protected , its the .VOB files written
> on them that are. DVD disks are little more than bigger CDROM disks for
> the most part.
> 
Well, no.  My objection isn't to DVD as a medium but to the use-prevention
measures used by the movie industry and the sale of unnecessary stuff to
people who don't have the knowledge to decide when they're being had.  
<rant>
I object to the way new PCs are supplied by the likes of PCWorld, Dell or
Gateway with DVD as standard on the higher spec machines rather than as an
option for those who *know* that they need DVD drives.  DVD drives are not
*necessary* yet for software installation (even for a 6 CD Suse
installation!) and I perceive no advantage to watching movies on your PC
with the (usually inferior) soundcard and speakers provided compared with
doing the same through your TV set (especially if you hook up the sound to
your HiFi system).  But still, in places like Compustore / PCWorld or
other "high-street" computer outlets where the novices are likely to shop,
you *cannot* get a 750MHz 128Mb 20Gb machine *without* a DVD drive.  If
you want CD only, you have to settle for a 450MHz 64Mb 6Gb machine as well
as dealing with people who cannot *assist* you in deciding what you
want/need but can only tell you "This one has a 20Gb of memory".  
</rant>

So, anyway, I'll get a DVD drive when CDROMs don't hold enough data
anymore but by that time, there'll be a CD shaped storage medium available
that is to CDROM as CDROM is to 1.44Mb floppy.  Can't remember the details
or URL but it promises 10s of Gb on a 12cm disk with synchronous transfer
from multiple storage layers rather than linear transfer as for CD/DVD so 
I'll have to get one of them instead.

-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)