[kwlug-disc] are you going to be a criminal?

[unsolicited]

Lori Paniak wrote, On 06/04/2010 9:40 PM:
> On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 20:54 -0400, Chris Frey wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 08:35:38PM -0400, John Van Ostrand wrote:
>>> Digital locks could make a hostage of your own content. At least without
>>> a anti-circ law I could legally reverse engineer it and get my data. With
>>> such a law, does the Open Office .DOC compatibility become illegal?
>> I don't think so:
>>
>> 	41.1 (1) No person shall
>>
>> 	(a) circumvent a technological protection measure within the
>> 	meaning of paragraph (a) of the definition "technological
>> 	protection measure" in section 41;
>>
>> Then:
>>
>> 	41.12 (1) Paragraph 41.1(1)(a) does not apply to a person who
>> 	owns a computer program or a copy of one, or has a licence to
>> 	use the program or copy, and who circumvents a technological
>> 	protection measure that protects that program or copy for the
>> 	sole purpose of obtaining information that would allow the person
>> 	to make the program and any other computer program interoperable.
>>
>> To my understanding (I am not a lawyer, mumble, mumble), that seems to
>> clear a Word user who wanted to port his documents to OpenOffice, even
>> if Microsoft added DRM to .DOC files.
> 
> ?! 
> 
> Is this the current bill under discussion?
> 
> So is the content of a movie DVD a "program"?  Certainly lots of Java
> and other software on there.  If I bought the DVD, I definitely have a
> license to use it (apparently that's all I bought).  Hence, do I have
> permission by 41.12 to make it interoperable with MoviePlayer on my
> ubuntu laptop or Mythbox?

To my understanding, yes.

> Sounds like a loophole to me.

Not really. You can't tell anyone how to do it. You can only do it for 
yourself.

Which, of course, means you can't learn from someone else how to do it 
- they weren't allowed to tell anyone. You have to come up with it all 
on your own.

Oh yeah, and if you use software along the way ... well, because the 
software can be used in that way, or as part of a solution, it too is 
probably illegal.

Arguably, even the firmware on a disc drive that enables a disc to be 
read, would become illegal.

A la the whole HDMI thing ... you are not allowed to use the 
'software' if you don't make sure that the next thing up the line also 
promises to adhere to the restrictions.

This is why HDMI content can't be recorded externally. e.g. I expect, 
why Rogers PVRs no long have disc drives - only hard drives. And 
there's no means to get the content off the hard drives and off the 
device. (No doubt the material is encrypted, even on the hard drives.) 
Oh, and there's no longer any provision for external hard drives.

Last time I looked, there are all sorts of USB and Firewire ports on 
the Scientific Atlanta boxes, but Rogers deactivates them. Whether by 
the access code (ip address) they download, or some other manner, I 
don't know.

At one point you had to buy your box from Rogers. Later I saw that you 
can buy a box elsewhere, but you have to call up Rogers for them to 
activate it. i.e. Give them the MAC address. Network wise this makes 
sense (think DHCP static reservation). I suspect, though, that if they 
don't see, from the MAC address, that appropriate restrictions are in 
place, they won't activate you / permit your device on their network. 
And that's all that digital TV is, an IP network. And all that a 
digital terminal, or internet modem is, is a node on that network.

So, in the end, you pay twice for access to the same communications 
infrastructure - as an ISP, and as a video content provider. How 
ludicrous.

Let's just get fibre to the home and be done with it.

I also heard on the news that the real growth for cable providers will 
be in content provision - video on demand, specialty channels, content 
acquisition, production, and tailoring. Bad, bad, move - keep 
communication infrastructure, and content provisioning, separate. 
Otherwise, this is tiered selling, and hostage taking.

I expect this is extrapolated and true for cell / data provisioning as 
well.

For example, there is an unlimited data plan for PayAsYouGo, but only 
if your device goes through their proxy - which injects their own ads, 
etc. If you just want straight internet access, the plan doesn't 
apply. So $0.05 per page, with no limit. Of course, 'page' is a moving 
definition. Take a typical web page today - pulls contents from many 
different addresses - each address within the page ultimately 
presented to you would be, I suspect, a 'page'. That screen page you 
just got was more than $0.05.

Larceny.