dvd. the newest way for us consumers to give money to sony, viacom, and friends.
crystal-clear picture, stunning audio, extra scenes too crappy to make it into the theater release: a film-lover's dream. high prices, playback restrictions, impossibility of copying: a studio's dream. a match made in heaven (at least the bankers' and marketers' heaven) - or so it seemed.
only something went wrong: the hackers cracked the code. and they told the public how to crack the code, and wrote a program called decss.
suddenly, you could buy a dvd from blockbuster in the us and watch it in europe, and the studios couldn't stop you. suddenly, you could rent a dvd from kozmo and skip the commercials, and the studios couldn't stop you. suddenly, you could borrow a dvd from your best friend and watch it without paying the dvd cca a dime, and the studios couldn't stop you.
in theory, anyway.
actually, the code was crufty and only a few people could actually get it to work. but still, the studios were scared.
scared of what?
scared of piracy, blared the press releases. the return of captain hook and long john silver and whoever else. armed not with sabers but with copies of decss. lusting not after gold but after copies of movies. flying not under the jolly roger but under the gpl. piracy.
of course, that's silly, and the studios know it. you can copy a dvd without ever decrypting it. and you can even decrypt a dvd without decss. but the studios are still scared.
if not piracy, scared of what?
losing control. the studios want ultimate control over every aspect of your movie-watching experience, and they think that dvd technology will provide that.
in the 1980's, the newest technology was not dvd but vcr. vcr, the tehnology that now makes the movie industry zillions of dollars. but, in a famous lawsuit known as the betamax case, the studios sued to stop vcrs because they were afraid of time-shifting.
time-shifting. the technology that lets you record a program during the day and watch it later that night. and the studios were scared of the control they'd lose.
but big corporations love control. control leads to power. power leads to money. money leads to more money. and this makes big corporations very happy, for ethics and morals are way less important than money.
this is why channel 1 and zapme! are in our public schools. this is why occidental petroleum would let hundreds of native u'wa people kill themselves if oxy could get some oil. this is why the maxaam corporation shows no respect, not for its human workers, nor for the environment in which we all live.
but this overvaluing of money and power is also why the a16 protest in washington and n30 protest in seattle. it is also why students across the nation are fighting sweatshops domestically and abroad. it is also why the green party is running candidates who are not beholden to corporate interests.
resistance is building. distributing decss is just a tiny part of it.
do your part. learn about the issues. download and distribute the css_auth code. hand out flyers explaining the issue. what the studios don't understand can hurt them.
copyright © 2000 michael castleman. verbatim copying of this document is permitted in any medium, but changing it is not allowed.
if, for whatever reason, you must send me a nasty threat letter full of legal mumbo-jumbo, my school will be glad to help you stalk me.