Copyright Cartel continues work on diabolical scheme

Encryption scheme, that is...

"We can understand that the technology companies and movie studios have become attached to the idea of creating proprietary encryption for optical discs, but it doesn't do much good in terms of the stated objective of preventing copyright infringement, and it has a lot of downside for consumers," says [the EFF's Seth] Schoen.

He and others say success or failure of the approach may hinge on whether consumers will be able to move videos around a home network and among multiple players right from the outset. If they can, they might be more willing to accept the new technology. "It might lead to a higher level of satisfaction for mainstream consumers," Schoen says. "So there will be less pressure from them for unauthorized products that allow backups. But at this point, the details are a bit sparse."

If they can't, individual consumers will find ways to transfer their content anyway, Wallach says. "It is not a matter of if—it is a matter of when. As long as I have the technology in my living room to watch it for myself, I can modify the system to extract the video. They can make it hard, but they can't make it impossible.

"They are living in a fantasy world," he concludes.

Link