Re: [dvd-discuss] CA Supreme Court hears Pavlovich JurisdictionChallenge in DVDCCA case

[Ole Craig <olc(at)cs.umass.edu>]

On 09/09/02 at 17:16, 'twas brillig and Tom scrobe:

> On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 11:00:00AM -0400, Ole Craig wrote:
> > 	Without what effect, exactly? Forgive me for bringing up such
> > unwelcome things as unpalatable facts, but the MPAA *won* in NY. This
> > is an even more desireable outcome (from the MPAAssholes' point of
> > view) than bankrupting the other side -- they got a judgement to
> > stand. 
> 
> If they celebrate this judgement as a victory, then they're truly
> stupid. There are roughly 15000 decss mirror sites. They've shut down
> one of them. Great job.

> Does this give them power to sue others? Yes, as the DMCA has been used
> successfully in court (in a kind of atomic test, but hey).

> However, the main point of decss isn't touched in NY, it's touched in
> CA. Because if I can decrypt CSS without paying DVDCCA and specifically
> without signing their licence, then the whole nice DVD scheme
> falls. 

	That's great for folks like you and me; I've been watching
DVDs (and unencrypted VOBs) on my homemade linux media server for well
over a year, thanks in part to Xine, ogle, mplayer, videolan, vobcopy,
and friends. No doubt you have pursued similar avenues.

	That sucks for anybody who wants to *sell* a linux box that
can play dvds, or even sell consulting services for such a box.
(Notice that e.g. redhat doesn't ship with a CSS-aware player app.) I
can't set up boxes similar to my home media server for consulting
clients; that'd bring the criminal penalties into play.

> Prices for DVD players are already dropping through the floor, it won't 
> be long until some upstart Taiwan company looks at the costs of the DVD 
> license and the associated costs of having to put in all of those idiotic 
> restrictions, and decides to do without in order to save $2 per player
> made.
> Which they can do if the CA case is lost. I don't think MPAA would be
> stupid enough to sue a DVD player manufacturer under DMCA. That should
> make even Kaplan go "uh?".

	I dunno; they sued the Big Backbones(tm) over listen4ever,
which struck me as a pretty big fuckup -- except that the site folded,
creating the impression of success without actually forcing anyone to
go to the courtroom. (I would've liked to see the backbone providers
explain to the MPAA which orifice was a proper receptacle for that
suit. Failing that, at least there would have been lots of black humor
material inherent in the ironic lack of backbone in backbone
providers.)

	Moreover, they don't have to sue the manufacturer -- all they
have to do is invoke 1701's "trafficking" clause to nail any would-be
importers.


		Ole
--
Ole Craig * UNIX; postmaster, news, web; SGI martyr * CS Computing
Facility, UMass * <www.cs.umass.edu/~olc/pgppubkey.txt> for public key

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