Re: [TCLUG:12738] DVD/Reverse Engineering/etc.

[Mike Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

Christopher Reid Palmer wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Scott wrote:
> 
> > Only one other person besides myself seemed to understand that nothing
> > like that happened when VHS machines became readily available, and
> > nothing like that would happen after DVD encryption had been broken.
> 
> I disagree. The difference is analog/digital -- with VHS, you lose quality
> every time you make a descendant copy (actually, you lose quality every
> time you play the tape!). With DVD you can get ver-bit-im (har har)
> copies, and there really is no reason to get the original if you can get a
> copy for free.

Perhaps the question is, when will it be free (or a least cheap) to
download/copy/make DVDs?  I suppose there are people out there
transferring the datastreams of various movies around already (though I
wonder if they used DeCSS or some other method).  The cost of writable
DVD media (not to mention the drive) is fairly prohibitive right now,
although hard drives continue to drop in price.  You could get 10+ Gigs
for $150, and you could store a few movies on that.

However, I'm also not going to spend a week downloading a movie.  No
way, no how.

> The content providers do have a legitimate worry. Their problem is that
> they're trying to solve the problem in the wrong way, because they are big
> and dumb and can't adapt.

Heh, well said.

> A better solution than suing everybody in sight would be to adopt Bruce
> Schneier's Street Performer Protocol.

Enlighten us, O great one ;-)

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 [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088@umn.edu ]