Privacy Digest

Why MPAA Should Lose Against RealDVD - Via EFF.org Updates:

Earlier this week, the motion picture industry sued RealNetworks over its RealDVD software. The MPAA companies also asked for an immediate temporary restraining order (TRO) to block Real from distributing the product, which allows consumers to copy their DVDs onto their personal computers for later playback.

There are many obvious reasons why this is a short-sighted and futile gesture by the studios (as Jon Healey of the L.A. Times points out), but let's focus just on the fatal flaws in their legal theory. (We've posted the key legal documents, including TRO briefs, for those who want to read them and form their own opinions.)  read more »

MPAA, RealNetworks Wage Court Battle Over DVD-Copying Software - Via Threat Level:

RealNetworks and the Motion Picture Association of America are suing one another over whether movie fans can copy their DVDs.

The Tuesday lawsuits came the same day RealNetworks released RealDVD, a $30 application allowing movie fans to easily make copies of their DVDs using their computer.

The Seattle company asked(.pdf) a federal judge to fend off a legal challenge brought the same day by the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA -- the litigation and lobbying arm of the Hollywood studios whose grip on the DVD is at a crossroads -- is demanding(.pdf) that a judge block(.pdf) the sale of RealDVD.

"RealNetworks’ RealDVD should be called StealDVD," said Greg Goeckner, the MPAA's executive vice president and general counsel. "RealNetworks knows its product violates the law."  read more »

And Walmart Makes Three: Another Music Service Plans to Shut Down DRM Support - Via EFF.org Updates:

Following in the footsteps of MSN Music and Yahoo! Music, Walmart has notified customers that it will be shutting off its DRM servers in less than two weeks. Walmart's been selling DRM-free music since February, but anyone who bought music before that date will not be able to transfer those songs to “unauthorized computers,” or access the songs after changing operating systems. Walmart, like MSN and Yahoo!, advises customers to back up their music to a CD if they want to be able to access it in the future. So, Walmart customers get to invest more time, labor and money in order to continue to enjoy the music for which they have already paid.

We’ve warned music fans for years that they could lose their DRM-wrapped music if vendors decided to withdraw support for it. So we're not surprised that three major vendors have done just that. What is surprising is that Walmart has not learned from MSN Music and Yahoo! Music's experience and made some effort to make things right with its customers.  read more »

New Lobbying Group Calls for Internet Filtering - Via Threat Level:

A just-formed lobbying group of content producers, equipment makers and internet gatekeepers said Thursday that internet service providers should embrace filtering.

Behind the lobby are AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom and the Songwriters Guild of America. Among other things, the lobby, called Arts+Labs, says "network operators must have the flexibility to manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file-trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers."

The creation of the lobbying group came almost two months after the Federal Communications Commission issued an open invitationto ISPs to filter for unauthorized copyright material. The Aug. 1 invite was buried in the text of the FCC's stinging rebukeof Comcast for throttling BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer traffic.

AT&T and NBChave already made it clear they support blocking streams of unauthorized works, for obvious reasons. NBC and the songwriters want to get paid for their works. and AT&T supports filtering because it could reduce high-volume, peer-to-peer traffic.

And Cisco has the means to produce filtering equipment, while Microsoft has recently secured a patentto watermark music and track it through the internet.  read more »

Hollywood Control of DVD-Copying at Crossroads - Via Threat Level:

RealNetworks caught Hollywood by surprise when it privately informed the studios two weeks ago that it was releasing, by month's end, a $30 application called RealDVD allowing movie fans to easily make copies of their DVDs with their computer.

As expected, heads spun as executives began to wonder whether the studios were losing even more control of the coveted DVD and its $16 billion in annual sales.

Hollywood is already reeling from open source DVD decryption software that is free on the internet. It also says it's losing billions in sales because of BitTorrent tracking services like The Pirate Bay that allow users to upload and download decrypted movies and other content for free.

With RealDVD, Kaleidescape and other mainstream services, Hollywood's already loosening grip on the DVD is at a crossroads.  read more »

The Latest on DVD Copying - Via EFF.org Updates:

Real Networks has received quite a bit of attention thanks to the launch of its Real DVD software, designed to allow people to copy their DVDs to their hard drives for later playback. (Why is that a big deal? Because Hollywood DVDs are encrypted with CSS, and if you decrypt them without permission, the motion picture industry's lawyers may come a-callin'.)

Today there are two approaches for those who want to make and distribute DVD copying tools. First, you can just build a DVD decryptor, the U.S. court cases that have held that the distribution of those products violates the DMCA notwithstanding. Despite those legal precedents, there is no shortage of free, easy-to-use tools that take this approach, including Handbrake (Win/Mac/Lin), DVD Shrink (Win), or MacTheRipper (Mac). (The motion picture studios argue that anyone who uses these tools violates the DMCA, as well.)

The other approach is the one pioneered by Kaleidescape:  read more »

EA's Spore Spawns on BitTorrent - Via Threat Level:

Less than a day before it release, video game Spore began making the rounds Thursday on the usual BitTorrent free sites like ThePirateBay, Mininova and others.

Spore, an Electronic Arts game, is Will Wright's long anticipated follow to The Sims.

"Spore starts a player out as a single-cell organism swimming around in a primordial soup," according to Spore's web site.  read more »

The online music rip-off - Via PC Pro: Blogs & Analysis: Features:

The perils of DRM-riddled music that we've been buying for years are now starting to come to light. Stuart Andrews finds out what's gone wrong.

Take yourself back to the days when everyone bought only CDs. Imagine what you'd have thought of a store that sold discs that might work on your CD player now, but weren't guaranteed to work on next year's models. Imagine that some required you to phone the music store on a regular basis to reassure them that you were the legitimate owner, and were that store to go under, all the CDs you bought from it would one day cease playing. And once you started buying music from this store, you found yourself locked into a system that discouraged you from buying from a rival store down the street. Why, you might think, would you have bought anything from a place like that? Well, if you're like millions of people in the UK, there's a strong chance you already have.  read more »

EFF Urges Copyright Office to Fix Digital Music Mess, but Carefully - Via EFF.org Updates:

In comments filed today, EFF joined with other public interest and consumer groups in urging the Copyright Office to clarify the process for licensing digital music services, but to steer clear of larger digital copyright controversies. The comments were filed in a rulemaking involving the Section 115 compulsory license for "digital phonorecord deliveries" (DPDs) that has been dragging on since 2001 (read the July 16, 2008 "notice of proposed rulemaking" for a summary of the tortured history of the proceeding).  read more »

Sun's OMS Video codec project is a means to an end - Via Linux.com :

Sun Microsystems is setting out to create an open source, royalty-free video codec. Given the considerable head start of well-known, royalty-free video codecs like Dirac and Theora, you might ask why the world needs another. The answer, according to Sun, is the process the company will use to develop it -- starting with a full-on, careful examination of the patent situation.

I spoke with Gerard Fernando and Rob Glidden about the project, which was unveiled in April. Fernando is a senior staff engineer at Sun, and Glidden is the company's global alliance manager for TV and media.

Fernando says the video codec idea dates back to 2005, when the Open Media Commons (OMC) initiative was launched by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. It just took a back seat to OMC's first large-scale project, the DReaM digital rights management (DRM) system.  read more »

Innocent Customers Potentially Dragged Into Legal Battle Over Satellite TV - Via EFF.org Updates:

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal court Friday to reject efforts by Echostar to get the names and addresses of every customer that purchased a free-to-air satellite receiver. Echostar claims that the receiver can be modified to pirate DISH satellite TV programming. EFF argues that Echostar's demand, which seeks all purchasers regardless of whether they actually pirated DISH TV, would violate user privacy and leave innocent purchasers vulnerable to bogus legal threats.  read more »

DRM for Streaming Music Dies a Quiet Death - Via EFF.org Updates:

Yet another nail has been driven into DRM's coffin, this time for streaming audio (PCPro has a nice overview of the state of DRM for digital music).

Two of the leading on-demand streaming music sites, iMeem and LaLa, are not using DRM on their audio streams, instead sending the music as MP3s dusted with a dash of obfuscation. This is significant because both sites have been licensed by all the major record labels -- the very same record labels that were just last year pushing Congress to require DRM on all noninteractive webcasts. So it looks like the RIAA companies have changed their minds, dropping DRM requirements for the on-demand streaming music services.

This should put an end to legislation to mandate DRM on noninteractive webcasters. After all, why should these webcasters be in a worse position than the free, on-demand music services like LaLa and iMeem?  read more »

E-Passports Signed, Sealed, Delivered -- But Not Like You May Think - Via Threat Level:

LAS VEGAS -- Two years ago security researcher Lukas Grunwald showed how the chips in new electronic passports could easily be cloned.

Grunwald's attack, however, was limited in that he hadn't found a way to alter data on the tag in a manner that could not be detected. Data on passport chips is hashed and digitally signed by the issuing country. Changing data on the passport chip would change the hash, indicating that the chip had been manipulated and thus invalidating it.

Dutch security researcher Jeroen van Beek, from the University of Amsterdam, recently made headlines when The Times in London reported that he could get a "cloned and manipulated" passport chip to be recognized as legitimate by passport readers.  read more »

The Last HOPE - July 18-20, 2008 - Hotel Pennsylvania - New York City :

For those of us who couldn't make the conference or could only listen in(On their radio station) to some of the seminars. Here is a whole bunch of recordings of many(maybe even most or all) of the seminars.

They have 16kbps for low fidelity audio, 64kbps for high fidelity audio. So no matter what your connection speed there is something for you.

Something tells me that their bandwidth is going to be busy for a while, since this was also mentioned on SlashDot today.

(Read Original Article .)

Congress Bows to Big Content, Scapegoats Higher Ed - Via EFF.org Updates:

Last week, after months of intensive wrangling, the House and the Senate finally agreed on a final version of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Buried in this massive bill, which touches on virtually every aspect of education, is a little provision requiring campuses to develop “plans to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including through the use of a variety of technology-based deterrents.” Those deterrent include bandwidth shaping and traffic monitoring, but also use of filtering technologies such as Audible Magic. “To the extent practicable,” colleges and universities must also offer legal alternatives for file-sharing, such as music services like Ruckus.

There are at least three major problems with this.  read more »

EFF Opposes MPAA's Selectable Output Control FCC Petition - Via EFF.org Updates:

Public Knowledge, joined by EFF as well as the Consumer Federation of America, the Digital Freedom Campaign, the Media Access Project, the New America Foundation and U.S. PIRG, yesterday filed an opposition [PDF] to the MPAA's FCC petition seeking a waiver of the ban against selectable output controls (SOC) (we have an explanation of what a "selectable output control" is on our Digital Video issue page).

EFF has long opposed selectable output controls. The basic premise of those who back SOC is that content owners should be able to decide not just who can watch their content, but how they can watch it.  read more »