Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You and other jewels by Bruce Schneier

[Josh]

OK, so I am in violation of customizing a disc for my daughter. The only thing AnyDVD is set to remove is the forced previews of other movies. I am not redistributing it, the disc is still being played back in accordance with the terms of their license which is "For private home viewing". But regardless, they do not control my system as gladly watch previews when it comes to my wife and I watching a movie as it makes it seem more like a theater, especially when you have auto-dimming lights and a 46 inch LCD. By the way, isn't this thread about why DRM is so bad and not the legality of AnyDVD? I still don't see the use of AnyDVD in the manner I am using it as proof that DRM has negatively affected me. As said above, it's not something I use for 99% of my DVD viewing because most of my viewing is done on a PS3.

[Ehtyar]

You'd be negatively effected if the RIAA were ever to take you to court for circumventing their DRM with AnyDVD. And if you weren't breaking the law as you are by using AnyDVD, you'd be negatively effected by being subjected to their commercials on a product you already paid for *ahem*.

Ehtyar.

[Josh]

That would be a negative affect of the RIAA not DRM. DRM has yet to negatively impact me, again. The RIAA is the one taking me to court, not the DRM. And last I checked, a preview of "You don't mess with the zohan" is not DRM, but merely content.

[Eóin]

Surely that you need to use AnyDVD to skip the previews is itself a negative effect.

[Josh]

Nope, not at all. Most of them allow you to hit MENU to bypass them but I design a custom disc for my daughter so she can insert and watch without having to worry about menus. I try to make things as simplistic for her as I can so she doesn't have to fumble with our remote or break the player. Just insert a disc and away it goes. Is it a violation? Yes. Do I care about said violation? No. Is it a negative affect? No because most discs are designed so that an adult will be working the controls. To me, there is absolutely no bother in having to do this.

[Carol Haynes]

Surely that you need to use AnyDVD to skip the previews is itself a negative effect.

-Eóin (December 09, 2008, 04:12 AM)

Not really - the DVD is designed to be played in a particular way on a standard DVD player. Using AnyDVD is just a method of circumventing user restriction built into the disc. Not actually anything to do with DRM in windows.

Actually manufacturers are starting to force users to watch intro videos - eg. look at "Charlie Wilson's War" and you have to watch a 4 minute video for UNICEF before you can watch the film - and if you press the menu button at the wrong point it starts again! Personally I hate UK DVDs that have an extended (and extremely loud) 'don't be a pirate' video before every disc with no option to bypass it - to me it is justification for cracking DRM just to get a DVD that allows you to watch the film without a legitimate user being treated like a potential criminal. Of course none of the pirated versions need to inflict such rubbish on viewers so who does it inconvenience?

Having said that just having AnyDVD installed in the UK would mean that should your computer ever be examined by the 'authorities' you would be ASSUMED to be using it for breaking DRM. In the UK just having such software installed on your computer is deemed to be proof that you are circumventing copy protection and are there for guilty of an offense. Not sure what the US law says ...

The fact that the law assumes the presence of a certain software title proves your guilt does mean that the impact of DRM on the computer owner is negative.

[Eóin]

Also movie industries can't get you to implicitly agree to wave your right to being able to make a backup copy of your media. They wish they could of course but no amount of terms or conditions that come with a film can revoke that right.

So the DRM to try and prevent you making that copy serves only to negatively affect the user.

And while we're at it, what about the sony fiasco, DRM in an malevolent form.

[Carol Haynes]

Also movie industries can't get you to implicitly agree to wave your right to being able to make a backup copy of your media. They wish they could of course but no amount of terms or conditions that come with a film can revoke that right.

So the DRM to try and prevent you making that copy serves only to negatively affect the user.

-Eóin (December 09, 2008, 05:15 AM)

In practice they cannot enforce such a law on individuals backing up DVDs, CDs, software discs etc. but in some countries it is illegal to do so. As I said above in the UK is a criminal offence now to use any means to circumvent copy protection - even having software with the capacity to circumvent copy protection is deemed proof that you have used it for that purpose. They don't have to prove you did it just that you had the capacity to do it!

So much for democracy and freedom -I despair these days with what we laughingly call a free society!

I was reading a newspaper article the other day which exposed the proposals of the UK government to use lie-detector tests (polygraphs) on people claiming state benefits if they suspect fraud. The result of the test would be used to decide whether to suspend payment of benefits (not a criminal case in court where you have the chance to defend yourself). Add to that the benefits agencies apparently have already been using voice print analysis on telephone calls to determine whether callers are lying ... not that they tell callers that they are doing it - in fact they say calls are recorded for training purposes. Big Brother really is out there now and in the UK he hears you, drags you off the street without warrant and throws you into prison for up to a month (and wants to make it 3 months), wants to use lie detectors (which are proven to be inaccurate) and uses CCTV so that the average UK citizen is apparently filmed up to dozens of times each day! Communist China is beginning to sound less repressive than the UK.

[f0dder]

Having said that just having AnyDVD installed in the UK would mean that should your computer ever be examined by the 'authorities' you would be ASSUMED to be using it for breaking DRM. In the UK just having such software installed on your computer is deemed to be proof that you are circumventing copy protection and are there for guilty of an offense. Not sure what the US law says ...

-Carol Haynes (December 09, 2008, 04:46 AM)

Why would you have it installed if you aren't using it to break DRM, anyway? Both region code protection and CSS/ARCCoS count as DRM in my book.

[Carol Haynes]

To back up your DVDs for personal use, to rip them for use on portable media players & wifi media/network players connected in the home to TVs etc., remove user restrictions (so that you can get straight to a menu rather than sit through 5 minutes of ads and warnings about pirates and terrorism), remove regional encoding so that non-US citizens have access to region 1 DVDs that are not published outside the US etc.

All of these are to me legitimate usage of a purchased product and don't have to be used for sharing or piracy purposes.

[f0dder]

Carol: they might be legitimate purposes, but still involve circumventing DRM.

[Carol Haynes]

Quite - which is why DRM is a bad thing. It forces users to circumvent it to make fauir use of the products they purchased. (The legality of doing such things is moot because for 99.99% of people it is unenforceable.)

If MS refused to implement DRM for music publishers and movie studios there would be little point in the entertainment industries implementing all the forms of DRM on their discs.

Surely the lesson that everyone all agrees on is that DRM only actually affects legitimate customers - if nothing else it steals clock cycles constantly (even when you are not using DRM protected data) on Windows Vista, it locks you out of purchased downloadable products when the supplying company stops supporting past purchases and it makes purchased media at best irritating to use and at worst incompatible with systems (and in the past even standalone DVD players caused problems with discs).

The regional encoding system on DVDs (another lame form of DRM) is stupid in the extreme and only breaks world trade agreements and allows for price fixing/market rigging - not only that it is absolutely simple and legal to break - all you have to do is buy an extra DVD drive for your PC and set the region to which ever region you want. With consumer level DVD players/recorders the only thing regional encoding has produced is a market for third parties (found with a few clicks in Google) to produce mini handsets to unlock DVD players so that purchased consumer DVDs can now be fully unlocked for a few pounds - why create that market in the first place? Just give genuine consumers genuine products at reasonable prices.

Just think how much research and development money has gone into DRM by so many companies. Without it they would make more profit and probably be able to halve the price of every product sold. And has any one yet found a DRM system that actually stops, or even slows down, the mass duplication and sale of illegal copies? You only have to go to any car-boot sale or any street market in the UK to find someone selling knocked of DVDs!

[f0dder]

Amen.

The DRM systems have tended to take some months to break, though. But before that kind of breakage, there's alternate means for the pirates... cam recordings in movie theaters (often with perfect audio, and often with professional recording gear), DVD screeners, whatever. And I'm sure the big-scale copying plants run by pirates have means to produce copies of protected media before the protection is cracked letting the average Joe make a backup/pirate/whatever copy.

[40hz]

By the way, isn't this thread about why DRM is so bad and not the legality of AnyDVD?

-Josh (December 08, 2008, 10:58 PM)

You can't divorce the issue of legality from any discussion about DRM. DRM is a legal issue.

Being able to circumvent DRM by installing what amounts to a benign rootkit is in, IMHO, sorta missing the point.