Re: It's legal to crack Apple II copy protection

[Andy McFadden <fadden@fadden.com>]

Dave Althoff Jr <dalloff@gcfn.org> wrote:
> Because originally, the purpose of DeCSS was to provide a means of
> accessing data to which the author had every reason to believe he had a
> legal right to access...

Your rights to use material you legally own are greatly diminished.  This
situation has now spread to the EU, which caused Elaborate Bytes to give
up development on CloneCD.

> In fact, if duplication is a concern, then CSS isn't a factor, as DeCSS is
> not required to duplicate a CSS-encoded work.  DeCSS is only required to
> *access* an encoded work.  The fact that there are infringing uses for DeCSS
> are secondary; the primary use of that "device" does not infringe on the
> rights of the copyright holder.

You can duplicate the encrypted material, but it's useless without the
original keys.  The keys are stored in a non-addressable block, so unless
you have a DVD drive with hacked firmware there's no way to create a
usable copy without DeCSS.

I would have thought that discussions of copy protection circumvention
would be legal (USA 1st amendment) and removal of copy protection for
private use of legally obtained material would be legal (USA copyright
fair use), since in neither case can any actual harm be demonstrated.
The DMCA is, simply, the victory of corporate money over individual rights.

It's nice that the Librarian of Congress threw the Apple II community a
bone and lets us crack the games to preserve them.  The absence of anyone
with money protesting the idea might have had something to do with it.

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