DeCSS, crypto, law, and economics

[alan]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2003, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> John S. Denker writes:
> > The main thing the industry really had at stake in
> > this case is the "zone locking" aka "region code"
> > system.
> 
> I don't see much evidence for this.  As you go on to admit, multi-region
> players are easily available overseas.  You seem to be claiming that the
> industry's main goal was to protect zone locking when that is already
> being widely defeated.

Try selling a regionless player in this country.  It happens, but not in 
public.  Region codes make them tons of money.  (They are economic zones, 
nothing else.)

> Isn't it about a million times more probable that the industry's main
> concern was PEOPLE RIPPING DVDS AND TRADING THE FILES?  Movies are
> freely available on the net, just like MP3s, and the DeCSS software was
> the initial technology that made ripping DVD's possible.  Many people
> would rather get something for free than to pay for it, and DVD ripping
> allows that for movies.  The MPAA obviously is afraid of following the
> RIAA into oblivion.

The think that does not get press is that there is a bunch of money being 
made on the players themselves.  Having DeCSS allows you to counterfeit 
players and avoid the licence fees.

It also showed that they were generally stupid gits since the CSS 
algorythm has only 24 effective bits in the key.  Brute forcing the key 
once you know this takes *seconds* on my PC.  Snake oil makes the discs 
play so much smoother...


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