DRM only makes media useless if it cannot be decrypted. What makes it legal for my commercially made DVD player to decrypt a disc, but not for libdvdcss to do it? DVDs don't have labels saying that use of libdvdcss is not allowed. If both are being used only to watch the video in the appropriate region, is there any meaningful legal difference between the two CSS decryptors? Can a copyright holder say "this disc may only be decrypted with libdvdcss; use of any other software is unlawful circumvention"?
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This conversation has been moved to chat.– Pat W. ♦Commented Oct 17, 2022 at 13:37
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1 Answer
This is explained in the law.
(1) (A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
The law also defines two expressions:
(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner
and
(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
Wording in a license is not a technological measure. It means that there has to be something in the hardware or software that enforces (the seller's understanding of) the license, and one can argue that it constitutes an embodiment of the exact license terms.
It doesn't matter whether you prefer to circumvent a particular filter that tests whether an installation is legal and would prefer to substitute one of your own making, Congress passed a law, and if you don't follow that law, you are in violation of the law (presumably that is obvious).
A question possibly suitable for Politics SE would be "why did Congress pass this particular anti-circumvention provision, what political facts gave rise to this section. From the LSE perspective, the law is the law, there is no why.
answered Oct 15, 2022 at 15:00
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Why is it automatically assumed that the copyright holder is okay with me using a commercial DVD player (either as hardware or software) but not libdvdcss?– SomeoneCommented Oct 15, 2022 at 23:24
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The ROT13 was the technological protection measure, not the license. The license was just a standard copyright license and notice that I revoked my prior agreement (which I can do as a minor).– SomeoneCommented Oct 15, 2022 at 23:25
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Because the standard process of producing DVDs creates DVDs that can be played by any commercial player without any circumvention, but not by libdvdcss. Commented Oct 16, 2022 at 18:57
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@Someone ROT13 almost certainly does not qualify as an "effective" technological measure. Perhaps, you could say that it's a technological measure, since technically, an algorithm (albeit a simple one) is a sort of technology. However, you'd have a very hard time arguing that ROT13 meets the definition of "effectively controls access to the work".– BrandinCommented Oct 18, 2022 at 7:07
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@Brandin CSS doesn't exactly effectively control access to a DVD either.– SomeoneCommented Oct 18, 2022 at 14:03