[7783] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: DeCSS and first sale
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ben Laurie)
Thu Sep 7 11:38:59 2000
Message-ID: <39B78555.EE67C150@algroup.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 13:08:53 +0100
From: Ben Laurie <ben@algroup.co.uk>
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To: John R Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Cc: Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>, cryptography@c2.net
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John R Levine wrote:
> CSS is entirely about subverting first sale, since the only useful thing that
> the CSS crypto does is to assign each DVD a "region code" so that the DVD can
> only be played on players with the same region code. (As has been widely
> noted, if you want to pirate a DVD, you just copy the bits, no crypto
> needed.) The reason that they use region codes is that movies may already be
> on DVD in the US while still in theatres in Europe, or vice versa, and they
> want to prevent people from sending DVDs from one place to the other and
> undermining theatre revenues. If I were the movie industry, I'd want to
> prevent it, too, but if I were a judge interpreting the copyright law, I'd
> look to the first sale doctrine and say "tough noogies".
That's not quite the only reason for region codes: regional price
differentials are also important to revenue. :-)
Cheers,
Ben.
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