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Correct me if I'm wrong but the only things we can really do to combat this increasingly absurd breakdown of intellectual property law is to teach people how to

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only things we can really do to combat this increasingly absurd breakdown of intellectual property law is to teach people how to safely and effectively pirate things, and raise awareness that the problem is copyright itself. The only way I see this changing anytime is through a massive cultural shift in our views toward intellectual property, and I think the only way we can make that happen is by bringing it to the forefront of people's minds. I'm not sure, but I think making piracy easy and appealing is essential to taking the wind out of the sails of the enormous entrenched interests that seek to lock down IP. Ultimately copyright is a tool that serves those who can buy up copyrights a whole lot more than it serves artists, and that fact is very corrosive to our society. Artists and creatives still need protection and support, but Disney and Amazon can go fuck themselves. Basing our economic system in the digital world on artificial scarcity doesn't make any sense and artificial scarcity itself is morally incorrect. P.S. Since people may ask if I have any concrete solutions. No, not really other than I think everyone would be better off if copyright and patents were limited to something sane like 10 years with no option to extend that time.

__s 4y ago
Concrete solution is an HDMI adapter splice that can record to a USB drive whatever passes through it
- rolobio 4y ago
  This may not always work, data going through HDMI is frequently encrypted. If you try to capture the data between a Blu-ray drive and a TV (for example), it will be encrypted.
  - f1shy 4y ago
    But there must be a point, where you still have full digital original signal, but decoded. It has to be possible.
    - xeromal 4y ago
      I believe the private keys are in the TVs themselves. Not sure how accessible the keys are.
  - everforward 4y ago
    I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that you can get cheap Chinese HDMI splitters that strip the encryption. I would think it has to be relatively easy to decrypt given that the Blu-Ray player has to either send a decryption key to the TV via the HDMI cable, or the TV has to already have a decryption key that could presumably be skimmed.
    - tehwebguy 4y ago
      From what I can tell the splitters essentially convince the playback device to play by relaying whatever HDCP messages the TV sends: Playback Device (Roku etc) | | Splitter ------ Unauthorized Player (Recorder) | | Authorized Player (TV) Without this the Playback Device will show a black screen, an HDCP error message or something similar, but even with the splitter & an authorized player it seems the content can be encrypted. Since the TV obviously has the capability of decrypting the content it seems like there should be a way to split the signal somewhere between the main TV board and the display panel(s), which sounds like a big deal. Or maybe someone could make an incomplete splitter / recorder that just needs a legit Samsung board attached to it?
      - everforward 4y ago
        I did a Google because I was curious, and some of them do indeed strip the HDCP. I think what you're saying is basically what's happening. The HDMI splitter pretends to be a display/TV, so the playback device sends encrypted data to the splitter, which decrypts it and forwards the decrypted part over the HDMI connections. From what I could find, it's usually the cheap HDMI splitters that emit unencrypted data over the HDMI ports. That kind of makes sense; they implement HDCP inbound because they have to, but they leave HDCP off the output ports because it reduces their manufacturing cost. I think you can't just "forward" the encrypted packets, because then both outputs on the splitter would try to communicate back to the player, causing issues. The splitter has to MITM the connection. https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/remove-hdcp-hdmi-signal/ https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/remove-hdcp-hdmi-s... has some cursory info, and links to HDMI splitters that strip HDCP (not an endorsement of whatever you do with them, just an interesting device).
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Although Blu-ray encryption was cracked back in 2007. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41...
    - dylan604 4y ago
      But backdoor keys for authorities will not suffer this problem. Trust me. /s
    - than3 4y ago
      That's not correct. Version 1 of their system was, they quickly fixed it to the chagrin of many Linux desktop users (who just want to play and watch the movies they paid for on the hardware they own). So we're back to the state of you don't actually have property rights in any of the things you own or paid for.
    - compsciphd 4y ago
      bluray encryption was never "cracked". even the above link is clear that it wasn't a crack. just that the encryption mechanism was well understood, but it requires a device key to generate the volume unique key (VUK) that is necessary to decode each individual disc. VUKs can't be revoked, but they are unique to each disc (pressing). device keys can, and when they are, they can't be used to generate a VUK any longer. so one has 2 options, a database of VUKs that others generate (don't need a device key then) or getting a device to give up its key so that one can generate VUKs onesself. The problem with this is, that that key (if made public) will then be revoked itself. i.e. I don't consider this being cracked, this is the encryption working exactly as designed.
  - pferdone 4y ago
    Look at the FeinTech splitters for example. I’ve thrown everything from BRs to streaming at them and they can handle it all.
CabSauce 4y ago
This is often suggested on HN anytime there's some minor issue with streaming. Piracy isn't a solution to anything. Yes, there are issues with intellectual property, but most of the issues aren't with movies/TV/art. Without people paying for these things, studios won't invest vast sums of money in them and we wouldn't have the vast amount of high quality content we have today.
- nickthegreek 4y ago
  Pirating is the solution if you want to watch Final Space in the year 2025.
  - CabSauce 4y ago
    Sure. I guess in this very narrow situation where the content is no longer available, I don't have an issue. But the person I responded to seemed to be suggesting stealing content as some sort of broad solution to an undescribed issue.
    - kwhitefoot 4y ago
      The problem is that you don't know which things need to be downloaded until they disappear.
    - megous 4y ago
      Anyone can also do both if they like. Buy and download to have an archival copy.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    All three seasons are available for streaming on hindilinks4u and probably a lot of other places so it's not yet lost.
- virtual_void 4y ago
  I think you’re presenting a false dichotomy here. Piracy has always been there and studios still make a lot of money. People are still willing to pay for things, they just want a copy of the thing that they paid for so that it cannot be stolen from them later. The only answer here IS piracy.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> The only way I see this changing anytime is through a massive cultural shift Solutions like that or, "if everyone would just _", or "everybody needs to _" will never happen. Just my own rule of thumb.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  Never? Like universal suffrage, civil rights, (mostly universal) education, the Montreal Protocol, seatbelts, airbags, anti-lock braking. Nah, you know what, forget it, give up, shits fucked and people are dumb. /s Edit to add: unleaded fuel, catalytic converters, emmision standards, one third of owner-occupied homes in Australia have rooftop solar, the widespread acceptance of anthropogenic induced climate drivers.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    You're talking about issues solved either through a critical mass of people wanting change or legislation. I'm not saying do nothing.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
      They're the same thing. Cristal mass is "if everyone would just". Legislation largely works because those subject to it largely agree to abide. If everyone would just agree to stop using the old thing / start doing the new thing.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        I'm not following. Everyone agrees that smart (surveillance) TVs suck but nobody is willing to take their money elsewhere. I'm the only person, in my social circle, who cares about this issue. How do we get to a critical mass of people when we are starting from essentially 0? I think it takes time.
      - MrPatan 4y ago
        Critical mass is "if enough people would just" Other stuff, like communism, really requires "if everybody would just". An arbitrarily small number of defectors will make the system tip towards collapse.
vasco 4y ago
In Europe you can vote for the Pirate Party in several countries, including for European parliament. There are problems with such parties at the local level because it's hard to unite on other issues, but at the EU level, the Pirate Party representatives consistently have presented (in my view), the most technically correct interpretations of internet laws and regulations for example, all the topics around data privacy, etc. They are not "hurr durr I wanna get free stuff" at all, and most other representatives remind me of my grandpa that had no clue what a computer even was. To me, donating and voting for people who are technically correct is a way better way to effect change than just trying to have some mass coordination around piracy / boicots, those never work. Outside of Europe I have no idea what something effective would be. Unfortunately the patent / copyright apparatus is very very strong and the political pressure US groups put on the world is very hard to combat. A good book about the subject of patents and this apparatus and how they basically muscled the world into abidding to US lobbies, including massively fucking poor countries with respect to pharmaceutical patents is "Information Feudalism: Who owns the knowledge economy?" https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism
- slim 4y ago
  US pirates https://uspirates.org https://uspirates.org
User23 4y ago
US Copyright law explicitly protects your right to create backups.
- _siis 4y ago
  but it does not protect your right to bypass any digital security mechanism to do this, or to disclose how you did this to anyone else by threat of law. They lobbied for laws to explicitly prevent this, and given the strict constructionalist nature of the current courts, its unlikely we'll regain or be able to enforce these rights in this capacity without significant intervention by policy makers.
  - User23 4y ago
    If anyone has Lexis I’d love to know if there’s any caselaw on the intersection of the right to make backups vs the anti-circumvention provisions. One could certainly argue that making a lawful backup isn’t a circumvention.
    - 29083011397778 4y ago
      Not a lawyer, but have been curious about this before. Last I checked, format shifting is legal in Canada. Breaking even the known-broken DVD encryption, however, is illegal. We also appear to still pay a blank media tax. Considering I back up important documents to blank CDs every few months, the Music And Film Induatry of America [0] is still being paid, and so I pirate with a (relatively) clear conscience. [0] Not the real acronym, but this one allows me to call the media conglomerates the MAFIA for a bit of a giggle
dickfickling 4y ago
asking for a friend: what's the safe and effective way to pirate things in 2022?
glitcher 4y ago
> ...teach people how to safely and effectively pirate things > ...making piracy easy and appealing is essential This sounds a little too naive to me. Every platform that has made significant progress towards these goals has run into massive legal opposition. And then it becomes an ever changing, moving target cat and mouse game between opposing sides. Not to mention the dangers of malware, etc lurking within sought after content - how can you guarantee safety? I agree that copyright itself needs reform, but looking back over the last ~25 years and how big corporations have become more advanced at fighting online piracy, I don't see piracy as the central mechanism to create the big cultural shift you speak of.
dumpsterdiver 4y ago
How would you teach people to safely and effectively pirate content when you can't ensure that all participants are benign actors?
charlesrocket 4y ago
Yep, this model went off the rails. Its not enough I limited to where I can consume it, you can just take it away from me. MO drives making the best noise so I am down listening it all day long.
muffinman26 4y ago
There's an even simpler solution: Prefer physical media that plays on systems that can be repaired. You only have to buy a DVD once. There's no subscription fee. You can easily lend it, (or borrow one from the library). You don't have to download any untrusted software or learn how to configure it, and the creators still get paid.
TimJRobinson 4y ago
This is where I see NFT's being beneficial. Instead of 1M people spending $10 on a piece of content, they all get it for free, and 10k people spend $1k to become VIP fans with additional perks, maybe royalties on merch sales, and the ability to re-sell that VIP status. This is IMO the most internet native way to produce content. Copyright on digital media is a legacy technology that we don't need in world where distribution is basically free and unstoppable.
- compsciphd 4y ago
  except there's no need for blockchain to do that, if it was desired, it could be done entirely by the IP owner (think owning ultraviolet / movies anywhere rights and being able to transfer them to another account).
  - TimJRobinson 4y ago
    And then you miss all the composability with existing tools and platforms which is most of the point. It's like saying why use stripe when you could just build your own payment system. Crazy that HN still misses that permissionless composability is the key benefit of blockchains.
JohnHaugeland 4y ago
you can buy physical media?
namelessoracle 4y ago
They plan on de-anonymizing the internet and making you have a unique id that identifies you to get on. They can then leverage that to punish you for piracy. This is the long term plan, and pretty much nothing is being done to oppose this, and many people on this site who work for big tech are working to accelerate it.

__s 4y ago

Concrete solution is an HDMI adapter splice that can record to a USB drive whatever passes through it

rolobio 4y ago
This may not always work, data going through HDMI is frequently encrypted. If you try to capture the data between a Blu-ray drive and a TV (for example), it will be encrypted.
- f1shy 4y ago
  But there must be a point, where you still have full digital original signal, but decoded. It has to be possible.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    I believe the private keys are in the TVs themselves. Not sure how accessible the keys are.
- everforward 4y ago
  I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that you can get cheap Chinese HDMI splitters that strip the encryption. I would think it has to be relatively easy to decrypt given that the Blu-Ray player has to either send a decryption key to the TV via the HDMI cable, or the TV has to already have a decryption key that could presumably be skimmed.
  - tehwebguy 4y ago
    From what I can tell the splitters essentially convince the playback device to play by relaying whatever HDCP messages the TV sends: Playback Device (Roku etc) | | Splitter ------ Unauthorized Player (Recorder) | | Authorized Player (TV) Without this the Playback Device will show a black screen, an HDCP error message or something similar, but even with the splitter & an authorized player it seems the content can be encrypted. Since the TV obviously has the capability of decrypting the content it seems like there should be a way to split the signal somewhere between the main TV board and the display panel(s), which sounds like a big deal. Or maybe someone could make an incomplete splitter / recorder that just needs a legit Samsung board attached to it?
    - everforward 4y ago
      I did a Google because I was curious, and some of them do indeed strip the HDCP. I think what you're saying is basically what's happening. The HDMI splitter pretends to be a display/TV, so the playback device sends encrypted data to the splitter, which decrypts it and forwards the decrypted part over the HDMI connections. From what I could find, it's usually the cheap HDMI splitters that emit unencrypted data over the HDMI ports. That kind of makes sense; they implement HDCP inbound because they have to, but they leave HDCP off the output ports because it reduces their manufacturing cost. I think you can't just "forward" the encrypted packets, because then both outputs on the splitter would try to communicate back to the player, causing issues. The splitter has to MITM the connection. https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/remove-hdcp-hdmi-signal/ https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/remove-hdcp-hdmi-s... has some cursory info, and links to HDMI splitters that strip HDCP (not an endorsement of whatever you do with them, just an interesting device).
- DennisP 4y ago
  Although Blu-ray encryption was cracked back in 2007. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41...
  - dylan604 4y ago
    But backdoor keys for authorities will not suffer this problem. Trust me. /s
  - than3 4y ago
    That's not correct. Version 1 of their system was, they quickly fixed it to the chagrin of many Linux desktop users (who just want to play and watch the movies they paid for on the hardware they own). So we're back to the state of you don't actually have property rights in any of the things you own or paid for.
  - compsciphd 4y ago
    bluray encryption was never "cracked". even the above link is clear that it wasn't a crack. just that the encryption mechanism was well understood, but it requires a device key to generate the volume unique key (VUK) that is necessary to decode each individual disc. VUKs can't be revoked, but they are unique to each disc (pressing). device keys can, and when they are, they can't be used to generate a VUK any longer. so one has 2 options, a database of VUKs that others generate (don't need a device key then) or getting a device to give up its key so that one can generate VUKs onesself. The problem with this is, that that key (if made public) will then be revoked itself. i.e. I don't consider this being cracked, this is the encryption working exactly as designed.
- pferdone 4y ago
  Look at the FeinTech splitters for example. I’ve thrown everything from BRs to streaming at them and they can handle it all.

CabSauce 4y ago

This is often suggested on HN anytime there's some minor issue with streaming. Piracy isn't a solution to anything. Yes, there are issues with intellectual property, but most of the issues aren't with movies/TV/art. Without people paying for these things, studios won't invest vast sums of money in them and we wouldn't have the vast amount of high quality content we have today.

nickthegreek 4y ago
Pirating is the solution if you want to watch Final Space in the year 2025.
- CabSauce 4y ago
  Sure. I guess in this very narrow situation where the content is no longer available, I don't have an issue. But the person I responded to seemed to be suggesting stealing content as some sort of broad solution to an undescribed issue.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    The problem is that you don't know which things need to be downloaded until they disappear.
  - megous 4y ago
    Anyone can also do both if they like. Buy and download to have an archival copy.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  All three seasons are available for streaming on hindilinks4u and probably a lot of other places so it's not yet lost.
virtual_void 4y ago
I think you’re presenting a false dichotomy here. Piracy has always been there and studios still make a lot of money. People are still willing to pay for things, they just want a copy of the thing that they paid for so that it cannot be stolen from them later. The only answer here IS piracy.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

> The only way I see this changing anytime is through a massive cultural shift Solutions like that or, "if everyone would just _", or "everybody needs to _" will never happen. Just my own rule of thumb.

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
Never? Like universal suffrage, civil rights, (mostly universal) education, the Montreal Protocol, seatbelts, airbags, anti-lock braking. Nah, you know what, forget it, give up, shits fucked and people are dumb. /s Edit to add: unleaded fuel, catalytic converters, emmision standards, one third of owner-occupied homes in Australia have rooftop solar, the widespread acceptance of anthropogenic induced climate drivers.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  You're talking about issues solved either through a critical mass of people wanting change or legislation. I'm not saying do nothing.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    They're the same thing. Cristal mass is "if everyone would just". Legislation largely works because those subject to it largely agree to abide. If everyone would just agree to stop using the old thing / start doing the new thing.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      I'm not following. Everyone agrees that smart (surveillance) TVs suck but nobody is willing to take their money elsewhere. I'm the only person, in my social circle, who cares about this issue. How do we get to a critical mass of people when we are starting from essentially 0? I think it takes time.
    - MrPatan 4y ago
      Critical mass is "if enough people would just" Other stuff, like communism, really requires "if everybody would just". An arbitrarily small number of defectors will make the system tip towards collapse.

vasco 4y ago

In Europe you can vote for the Pirate Party in several countries, including for European parliament. There are problems with such parties at the local level because it's hard to unite on other issues, but at the EU level, the Pirate Party representatives consistently have presented (in my view), the most technically correct interpretations of internet laws and regulations for example, all the topics around data privacy, etc. They are not "hurr durr I wanna get free stuff" at all, and most other representatives remind me of my grandpa that had no clue what a computer even was. To me, donating and voting for people who are technically correct is a way better way to effect change than just trying to have some mass coordination around piracy / boicots, those never work. Outside of Europe I have no idea what something effective would be. Unfortunately the patent / copyright apparatus is very very strong and the political pressure US groups put on the world is very hard to combat. A good book about the subject of patents and this apparatus and how they basically muscled the world into abidding to US lobbies, including massively fucking poor countries with respect to pharmaceutical patents is "Information Feudalism: Who owns the knowledge economy?" https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism

slim 4y ago
US pirates https://uspirates.org https://uspirates.org

User23 4y ago

US Copyright law explicitly protects your right to create backups.

_siis 4y ago
but it does not protect your right to bypass any digital security mechanism to do this, or to disclose how you did this to anyone else by threat of law. They lobbied for laws to explicitly prevent this, and given the strict constructionalist nature of the current courts, its unlikely we'll regain or be able to enforce these rights in this capacity without significant intervention by policy makers.
- User23 4y ago
  If anyone has Lexis I’d love to know if there’s any caselaw on the intersection of the right to make backups vs the anti-circumvention provisions. One could certainly argue that making a lawful backup isn’t a circumvention.
  - 29083011397778 4y ago
    Not a lawyer, but have been curious about this before. Last I checked, format shifting is legal in Canada. Breaking even the known-broken DVD encryption, however, is illegal. We also appear to still pay a blank media tax. Considering I back up important documents to blank CDs every few months, the Music And Film Induatry of America [0] is still being paid, and so I pirate with a (relatively) clear conscience. [0] Not the real acronym, but this one allows me to call the media conglomerates the MAFIA for a bit of a giggle

dickfickling 4y ago

asking for a friend: what's the safe and effective way to pirate things in 2022?

glitcher 4y ago

> ...teach people how to safely and effectively pirate things > ...making piracy easy and appealing is essential This sounds a little too naive to me. Every platform that has made significant progress towards these goals has run into massive legal opposition. And then it becomes an ever changing, moving target cat and mouse game between opposing sides. Not to mention the dangers of malware, etc lurking within sought after content - how can you guarantee safety? I agree that copyright itself needs reform, but looking back over the last ~25 years and how big corporations have become more advanced at fighting online piracy, I don't see piracy as the central mechanism to create the big cultural shift you speak of.

dumpsterdiver 4y ago

How would you teach people to safely and effectively pirate content when you can't ensure that all participants are benign actors?

charlesrocket 4y ago

Yep, this model went off the rails. Its not enough I limited to where I can consume it, you can just take it away from me. MO drives making the best noise so I am down listening it all day long.

muffinman26 4y ago

There's an even simpler solution: Prefer physical media that plays on systems that can be repaired. You only have to buy a DVD once. There's no subscription fee. You can easily lend it, (or borrow one from the library). You don't have to download any untrusted software or learn how to configure it, and the creators still get paid.

TimJRobinson 4y ago

This is where I see NFT's being beneficial. Instead of 1M people spending $10 on a piece of content, they all get it for free, and 10k people spend $1k to become VIP fans with additional perks, maybe royalties on merch sales, and the ability to re-sell that VIP status. This is IMO the most internet native way to produce content. Copyright on digital media is a legacy technology that we don't need in world where distribution is basically free and unstoppable.

compsciphd 4y ago
except there's no need for blockchain to do that, if it was desired, it could be done entirely by the IP owner (think owning ultraviolet / movies anywhere rights and being able to transfer them to another account).
- TimJRobinson 4y ago
  And then you miss all the composability with existing tools and platforms which is most of the point. It's like saying why use stripe when you could just build your own payment system. Crazy that HN still misses that permissionless composability is the key benefit of blockchains.

JohnHaugeland 4y ago

you can buy physical media?

namelessoracle 4y ago

They plan on de-anonymizing the internet and making you have a unique id that identifies you to get on. They can then leverage that to punish you for piracy. This is the long term plan, and pretty much nothing is being done to oppose this, and many people on this site who work for big tech are working to accelerate it.