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Managed Copy Enabled Blu-Rays Coming Soon

Justin Kerr — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:39:20 -0600

The first Managed Copy enabled Blu-Ray disks will be hitting store shelves soon, unfortunately, it will be well ahead of any hardware that can make use of it. For those that haven’t heard of Managed Copy, it is a system that allows you to make legal copies of Blu-Ray disks, but spawned versions of the content are very heavily protected by DRM. Any user trying to play the copied version needs to contact the studios DRM servers which decide if you can watch it, and even how many times it can be copied.

Dedicated Blu-Ray hardware isn’t expected to implement this feature anytime soon, but PC jukebox software will likely be available within the next few months to take advantage of the fact that all disks sold after December 4th will need to be compliant. It remains to be seen if this is true of just new releases, or if the entire back catalog of Blu-Ray disks will eventually be updated. Either way, expect it to be a confusing mess until packaging updates roll along in the Spring.

Many wonder if Managed Copy will satisfy consumers ever increasing demands to “liberate” their digital content from the medium, but consumers historically haven’t embraced solutions that trade one DRM implementation for another. This is especially true when competing technologies such as those from Slysoft accomplishes the same thing, and without any additional usage restrictions.

Want to learn more about HD Video Encryption? Check out our White Paper for the low down.

College Student Hauled Off for Hacking Game Consoles

Paul Lilly — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:58:10 -0500

Jailbreak your game console and no one is likely to take notice. But make a home business out of jailbreaking consoles for others and you may draw the attention of Homeland Security.

At least that's the case for Matthew Crippen, a 27-year-old Cal State Fullerton liberal arts student who was arrested by Homeland Security authorities on Monday. Crippen was picked up for allegedly violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

"Defendant Matthew Crippen willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage and private financial gain, circumvented a technological measure that effectively controlled access to a copyrighted work, more particularly, used software to modify a Xbox machine's Optical Disc Drive so it would circumvent the anti-piracy measures contained on the original unmodified Optical Disc Drive," U.S. attorney Thomas P. O'Brien wrote in the indictment (PDF).

In a telephone interview with Wired.com's Threat Level, Crippen maintains the purpose of his jailbreaking business was to allow patrons to make "legally made backups," not for piracy.

The indictment charges Crippen with two counts, and if convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison.

Image Credit: hackerstickers.com

Big Content Finds Perpetual Access to DRMed Content Laughable

Pulkit Chandna — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:54:21 -0500

DRM protection has been a bone of contention between content owners and anti-DRM activists. The latter party’s contentions seem to be becoming quite popular with content providers, with many music download services, including the august iTunes, opting for DRM-free music. However, DRM hasn’t been eliminated as a lot of downloadable content, including streaming/downloadable videos and streaming music, is still fettered by DRM protection.

The Copyright Office is currently deliberating upon allowing fresh exemptions to its rules that forbid DRM cracking – enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Steven Metalitz, a DC-based lawyer, who represents Big Content – a collective term for DRM-loving individual content owners and their organizations like MPAA and RIAA, reckons users should not be allowed to crack DRM protection even if an online store shuts down its authentication servers.

“We reject the view that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so,” he wrote in a missive addressed to the Copyright Office’s top legal advisor.

It is quite unrealistic to expect online stores to perpetually maintain their DRM servers. But it is ludicrous to assume that shutting down of an authentication server or the whole online store is reason enough for the user to surrender his ownership rights.

Image Credit: DRM Converter

Blu-ray gets a Legal Disk Copy Solution – But at What Cost?

Justin Kerr — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:39:09 -0500

Movie pirates have often justified their DMCA violations by claiming that “they were just making backup copies”. And while this might seem like a reasonable enough explanation for cracking the copy protection on your new Blu-ray disk, it is in fact, highly illegal. It’s taken over three years, but “Managed Copy” is hoping to finally put the backup issue to rest by allowing users to make legitimate backup copies of their Blu-ray disks as early as next year.

For those of you who are thinking that this sounds too good to be true, it does indeed come at a cost. Current Blu-ray players will most likely not be able to decode the copied disk, and although this feature will be included in new players, that doesn’t help people with older hardware. The number of copies will also be heavily restricted, carry an unknown price tag, and if you want a PC friendly version, the result is a DRM-laced, Microsoft only file. This leaves iPod’s, Zune’s, and other platforms out in the cold. This might change before next year, but it seems increasingly unlikely when you consider that the authenticity check requires an internet connection.

I suppose something is better than nothing, and while Slysoft clearly has the superior solution,at least this one is guaranteed to be legal!

So, do you think Managed Copy will catch on?

(Image Credit: Engadget)

Byte Rights: Change You Can Back Up?

Quinn Norton — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:21:18 -0600

Whew, that was quite an election, but my hope muscle is hopelessly strained and my change gland is exhausted. So I’m turning to a new pastime: second-guessing the Obama administration’s next moves.

I’m long on questions. Will his new trade representative continue forcing DMCA-like laws on our partners? Will his appointees to the Department of Justice prioritize IP cases? What legislation will he support regarding copyright terms, patent reforms, orphan works, and DMCA reforms?

Will there be a new registrar of copyrights? If there is, do we get to see him or her mud wrestle with the IP Czar and the new Patent and Trademark honcho? Oh, I think so.

Don’t get me started about privacy, open source, net neutrality, etc., because the truth is, Obama doesn’t have a record here, just campaign talk.

Obama stated his DMCA position to CNET this way: “As policymakers, we... ensure that the protections we place on intellectual property... encourage invention without hindering innovation that builds on previous work or unfairly limiting consumers from using the goods they purchase in a way that is fair to creators.”

He has also confirmed that he loves cute puppies and America.

That leaves us reading the goat entrails of American political prognostication: advisors and donors. The donors were the usual suspects. According to Opensecrets.org, TV, movies, music, and publishing coughed up $12.6 million for Obama and another $21.6 million for other Democrats in Congress. Cha-ching!

But get in line—everyone gave Obama boatloads of money. If you look at who’s had Obama’s ear, there’s Eric Schmidt of Google, Duke professor Arti Rai, Daniel Weitzner of the W3C, and other pinch-yourself, “No way!” good people. Obama’s even a friend of Larry Lessig. Except there’s not much evidence he’ll listen to them either. It’s safe to say his technology advisors didn’t support retroactive telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping. Neither did Obama—until he voted for it. Lessig was among his vocally disappointed tech supporters.

So IP good guy or bad guy? Probably both. Surely though, considering his brilliantly organized campaign and savvy technology advisors, he has a clue.

Whatever Obama does with our series of tubes, he doesn’t get to plead ignorance.

Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications. Her work has ranged from legal journalism to the inner life of pirate organizations.

MP3tunes Founder is off the Hook, but the Battle for the Cloud Continues

Justin Kerr — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:10:50 -0500

It’s hard to read a music industry headline these days without finding the words “lawyer” and “lawsuit” somewhere in the body. This time however, the legal cannon of EMI was pointed not just at MP3tunes.com but also its founder Michael Robertson who is likely sleeping much easier this week. A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit against Robertson, but is still allowing the case against his company to continue. Suing the CEO of a company is considered a fairly dirty tactic within the industry but is often an effective means to help intimidate leaders into a settlement. The lawsuit continuing through the courts goes right to the root of MP3tunes current business model which allows customers to upload their music to “digital lockers”. Customers are then able to access their collection on nearly any web enabled device. According to Robertson the case against MP3tunes is unique. Specifically, “it will determine if it is permissible for consumers to store their music in online commercial services for everywhere access, directly analogous to the way they currently store documents, photos, and other personal data in cloud services." The verdict on this case could set an interesting precedent when it comes to storing your copyrighted data in the cloud. Fair use is an evolving definition which is too important to be left to stakeholders to decide. The question here is will the legal system allow common sense and the greater public good to prevail?

Let us know what you think.

Absolutely Scrabulous!

Thomas McDonald — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:00:00 -0500

There’s a game that’s become part of my daily regime. It’s one of the first things I do after firing up the laptop over my morning coffee and the last thing I do before shutting down the laptop with an evening gin. It never takes more than a few minutes, and I do it throughout the day, like answering email. In fact, it is answering email, except with little lettered tiles.

Yes, I am completely addicted to Scrabulous (www.scrabulous.com). Email games are certainly nothing new, but good, well-supported, free email games that a wide variety of people can play without any initial purchase are pretty rare.

Everyone, even your mom, knows how to play Scrabble. And Scrabulous is a brilliant, fast, free, easy-to-use, and feature-rich conversion of the game with both live and email play. (Just keep track of who you’re playing against if you juggle multiple games at once. You don’t want to throw down “ZYMURGY” with a hearty IM cry of “BITE ME!” and then suddenly remember your mom, and not your college roommate, is on the other end.)

This is a game by fans, for fans, which is why it’s the most popular game on Facebook. And that’s really pissing off Hasbro and Mattel, the companies that acquired various rights to the game after a tangled history of deals and bankruptcies. (You didn’t think they actually invented it, did you?)

You see, Scrabulous has almost a million registered users and a large number of them access the game through Facebook. When Mattel launched its own Facebook version of Scrabble it attracted about 2,000 players. Such a thing cannot stand. Summon the lawyers!

Thus far, Facebook has refused an order to remove Scrabulous, but just how long are Hasbro and Mattel going to squat on classic game designs and snarl like a dog guarding a pile of juicy bones? I would bet that everyone playing Scrabulous already owns a Scrabble board. Scrabulous just helps users connect their boards electronically, and that in turn will… sell more Scrabble boards. It’s a bold new world, if the game giants can just figure it out.

Update: Since this editorial was written, the Scrabulous app has been removed from Facebook, although the Scrabulous.com website remains available. Hasbro is currently suing Scrabulous' creators.

Thomas L. McDonald has been covering games for 17 years. He is an editor at large for Games magazine.

IP Rights Fairy Tale

Quinn Norton — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:00:00 -0500

Not very long ago, in a land not at all far away, there was a little company called Blueport. It held the copyright on a piece of software that the US Air Force liked using for logistics. Blueport protected its software with a time bomb—a bit of code that made the software self-destruct when the license expired. That date was approaching, and Blueport wanted to negotiate a new license with the USAF—and you know, get paid.

Instead, it got a bit of the ol’ shock and awe. The Air Force not only didn’t pay up, it paid big contractor SAIC ($2.5 million in lobbying in 2007) to reverse engineer Blueport’s program and disable the time bomb. The Air Force also paid SAIC to rewrite the program, and by rewrite I mean simply cut and paste any of the original code that seemed useful.

Unsurprisingly, Blueport sued. The facts of the case were never disputed—the government not only violated copyright, it turned the DMCA out on a street corner. But the Air Force had an ace up its sleeve—the “Uh uh, no you don’t” defense. It asked the judge to throw out the case based on sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity is a legal principle that states that no one can sue the government unless the government gives them permission. In the 18th century, when the country was just a wee whippersnapper, we passed the 11th amendment to create sovereign immunity.

It doesn’t have anything to do with who’s right, just who’s allowed to sue. The government can waive immunity, but nothing in the DMCA or copyright law says, “Yeah, OK, we’ll play by these rules too.”

At the same time this was occurring, the government was arresting people for DMCA violations, using trade negotiations to force DMCA laws on other nations, and generally moralizing about the whole thing a lot.

But that was that. The government cannot ever be sued for violating its own DMCA or infringing on copyright. So there are your rights when dealing with the government—a pretty grim little fairy tale.

Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications. Her work has ranged from legal journalism to the inner life of pirate organizations.