Famed hardware hacker Bunnie Huang announces his newest project and goes into detail about how trouble from the DMCA was the impetus. He comments that unchecked power to license freedom of expression should not be trusted to corporate interests. The project, NeTV2, is being crowdfunded.
I'd like to share a project I'm working on that could have an impact on your future freedoms in the digital age. It's an open video development board I call NeTV2.
It's related to a lawsuit I've filed with the help of the EFF against the US government to reform Section 1201 of the DMCA. Currently, Section 1201 imbues media cartels with nearly unchecked power to prevent us from innovating and expressing ourselves, thus restricting our right to free speech.
At Boing Boing : Innovation should be legal; that's why I'm launching NeTV2
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @01:21PM (24 children)
... then your solution is transient.
As always, real solutions to society's problems are technical.
It doesn't matter what the law says you can do; it only matters what you can actually do—that's what separates criminals from the rest of the herd: They understand that they can actually do whatever they can get away with.
In a Free society, the non-criminals use this same insight for constructive purposes.
It doesn't matter what the law says; it only matters what the enforcers can actually enforce. If most people have access to a technical solution that evades enforcement activities, then a law is pointless and will be abandoned.
Uncle Same gave up on the Prohibition of Alcohol, because people could brew beer in their bathtubs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @01:53PM (14 children)
GNU GPL.
Yeah. That's right. A tweak to legalese gave you a free software movement so influential that your corporate overlords embraced Linux which is now installed in billions and billions of devices worldwide.
Legalese changed the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @02:16PM (1 child)
I disagree.
I don't think it had anything to do with the GPL.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:03AM
You're welcom to present your case, however:
Linux wasn't the only openly licensed OS out there, not even the only Unix like one. But it (the one under GPL) is the one that took over the server and a big chunk of the embedded space.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @02:47PM (11 children)
Long before the GPL, people were sharing code. Knuth famously released his groundbreaking, advanced typesetting suite in 1978.
Stallman just tried to force this sharing by writing it into copyright law.
The BSDs (and the Apache-licensed software) have been enormously influential, and form the core and growing userspace of the operating system developed by the largest computing corporation in world history: Apple, a corporation that still makes headlines by releasing its work as open-source software.
Indeed, the GPL has never been well tested in the court system, which is the only place where legalese can be actually reified as enforceable law. It's usefulness is more convention than reality, proving that FOSS is more cultural than legal or technical.
People like sharing their stuff; they want others to support their work. People like getting stuff for free. People want to fix bugs and scratch their own itches. The implication is clear: Open-source software is a natural consequence of this Universe.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @05:36PM (8 children)
How terrible that you can't take Free Software and make it proprietary. What a travesty this is!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @05:39PM (7 children)
That's true Freedom: Voluntary Association.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:17PM (3 children)
Incorrect. True freedom is being able to do whatever, thus slavery is a result of "true freedom" and it just happens that the slaves were not able to prevent the masters from enslaving them. They are free to revolt and break free, and the masters are free to kill them.
This "true freedom" idea is really just anarchy so you should drop the high minded idealism. GPL/Apache/BSD are all examples of GOOD freedom where people are able to create software and apply the license they prefer. That is voluntary association, and if someone says you can't make proprietary software out of their freely available software then tough nuggets. While you're working on your ideologies try imagining a world where capitalism isn't the end-all be-all where everyone needs to bow down to the almighty "business".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:24PM (2 children)
So, your definition is bullshit.
You've been hoist by your own petard; your argument is a straw man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:21AM (1 child)
Yes welcome to why you're ideology is so fundamentally flawed. Amazing that you think it implicates me. If only we were all saints who would never violate the well being of one another!
At least we can get some amusement tossing virtual vegetables at you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:25PM
What about "straw man" don't you get?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:46PM
oh, stfu! noone forces you to use gpl'd software. there are plenty of mac-using sellouts pushing Slaveware As A Service apps leeched from bsd licensed shit. you can join your fellow whores.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:06AM (1 child)
Free association is alive and well with GPL. Nobody forces you to use it as part of your project.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:38PM
Both the GPL and Apache operate under free association. It's just that the GPL's set of free associations is smaller than that of Apache's.
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Monday May 14 2018, @05:42PM (1 child)
QUOTE: Indeed, the GPL has never been well tested in the court system
Hasn't it won every test it was subject to? In many countries?
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought it had.
When people stop contesting an issue, because the lose every case, isn't that a definition of "well tested"?
If not, what do you think is missing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:17PM
On just 13 May 2017: [theregister.co.uk]
The judge concluded that the GPL constitutes a contract, even though the FSF's long-held position is apparently that it is not a contract. In the judge's decision, there is talk of how other copyright cases
Also, such a case is subject to appeal, and nothing related to copyleft case law has ever made its way to the Supreme Court.
Furthermore, as the U.S. dictates world policy, especially regarding copyrights and contracts, that strongly suggests that the GPL's standing the world is still not very secure.
From what I know, there have been a number of settlements, but those are not judgments that form case law.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday May 14 2018, @05:38PM (6 children)
If your solution is to tweak obscure legalese then your solution is transient.
And yet somehow I get the distinct impression you are the "violently imposed monopoly" guy.
Isn't your whole thesis that we should be using contracts for everything?
And aren't contracts just tweaked obscure legalese?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @05:50PM (5 children)
... of interaction, including agreements about how that contract will be enforced.
In contrast, law by legislation (such as the DMCA) is an imposition, more or less unilateral; not only can it be changed by the whim of the next legislative body (which can be targeted by special interest groups), but it's also only as useful as its enforcement is practical, a fact that frequently escapes the fantasies of bureaucrats, who mistake the laws of man for the laws of nature.
Get it yet?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:25PM (4 children)
Yes we get it, you're still a dummy pushing an agenda so hard you're eyes are stuck.
I think most people are done trying to have a rational discussion with you since you've developed a personal litmus test for "voluntary agreements" and refuse to acknowledge the limitations and frequent edge cases where your new version of society completely breaks down and/or reverts back to centralized governments. So at least I will stick to the first sentence, you're a dummy with a rigid brain but we all have hope that one day you'll grow a bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:38PM (3 children)
Anyway, I don't really understand what your rebuttal is supposed to mean or what it's based on; it looks like a word salad for "Let's agree to disagree."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:04PM (2 children)
Nope, I'll agree you've got blinders on. I find all your reasoning to be naive and actively harmful, agree to disagree is saved for opinions where both are potentially valid. Your reasoning is simply flawed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:07PM (1 child)
That sounds more like your world view is being poked. Better censor your opposition.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:40AM
Ah yes, the sensitive conservative who can't stand someone criticizing their ideas and must roll out the persecution card. #sad
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 14 2018, @06:44PM (1 child)
It won't be abandoned. It simply will not be enforced any longer. Just as it is illegal to bathe without authorization of a physician. Or to buy toothpaste on Sunday.
The only way to get rid of a bad law is to actually ENFORCE it.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @07:11PM
That's the nature of politics; that's the nature of authoritarianism. It's totally unprincipled.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Monday May 14 2018, @01:48PM (8 children)
This looks like a case of trying to come up with an actual reason to list on a lawsuit instead of a viable product. And if you want to reprocess HDCP "protected content" it isn't exactly hard. They know enough people run into reasons, they don't really stop you. They just want to stop the marching morons. I got my HDMI splitter / stripper for a few bucks on Amazon, not like I had to trawl the dark web and use cryptocurrency or some leet hacker tricks to repurpose some existing hardware, thing came out of a little box marked "Made in China" ready to go. Safe bet Bunnie already has such a box himself.
Would the world be a better place if the book and movie industries would join music in being DRM free? Yes. Will they? Eventually. Will there be a fair amount of pain along the way? Of course.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by urza9814 on Monday May 14 2018, @02:56PM (7 children)
As a lone hacker creating some one-off prototype, no. But if you want to sell that as a product that's a whole different game.
Doesn't really give much info on the linked page about what exactly this thing is, but what I'm imagining is something kinda like a Roku with HDMI passthrough and maybe some nice dev tools. Someone else (Huang and his lawyers who are already planning this fight) takes on the legal liability of producing and selling a device to do the actual decryption, then other coders can just throw their app on the ready-made device. And since it's a single common device, you get a larger potential market along with the reduced legal liability. Seems like a decent test to find how many people might have an idea but get scared off by the legal or technical obstacles, which also seems to be the entire point of the lawsuit. So it seems like a great way to demonstrate their concern if it works.
I'd also add that just because you can order something cheaply direct from China doesn't mean it's legal for sale in the US. I can order illegal prescription drugs direct from China too. When people use the word "innovation" in this context, they mean commercial products. Nobody gives a crap if you come up with some brilliant device in your garage that can't ever be shared because of potential lawsuits. You won't change society or our world even a little until you can sell thousands or millions of the thing.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday May 14 2018, @04:51PM
Looked a bit more and apparently it's a PCI-E card that comes with some dev tools. So that's interesting...I suppose it's positioned more as a prototyping tool, which makes sense.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday May 14 2018, @05:23PM (5 children)
The point is just design your product to overlay on an unprotected signal and expect people with a clue to "know" how to use it with protected content on the down low. As long as you aren't uploading HBO content to bittorrent nobody is likely to bother you. DRM is just to stop idiots from making copies and annoy the paying customers with senseless restrictions and random incompatibilities. And stop me from watching DVDs or BDs on my Linux box. Yea libdvdcss is available if you know where to look. That part works just fine but try sticking a dozen random DVDs in and expect the menus to work? DVDs are so old the patents are expired and they still don't play reliably. Rip? Oh that isn't a problem if you just want the main feature dumped into a file. It is using one like it was intended that is the problem, usually because of the infernal copy protection. Not holding my breath for BD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:09PM (3 children)
In the case of video, DRM has nothing whatsoever to do with preventing copying, and everything to do with enabling studios to collect royalties from equipment manufacturers, which they would otherwise have no ability to do so.
Take movies for example. A small number of companies produce most of the movies. This puts them in a position to collaborate on a DRM scheme. By ensuring that all their movies have DRM, these companies get to set the rules for all the playback equipment—these rules include a "protect^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlicensing fee" from the manufacturers. Anyone who makes playback equipment and does not play by the rules simply can't play the latest movies and that equipment inevitably fails in the market. This DRM has legal teeth because of the DMCA and similar laws elsewhere in the world, making it illegal to sell (in many countries) if you circumvent the DRM scheme.
Controlling the playback equipment enables these companies enforce their rules on downstream equipment vendors (such as television manufacturers) as well, in basically the same manner ("That's a nice TV you're making. It'd be a shame if your customers couldn't watch our movies with it...").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @06:44PM (2 children)
Yep, reminds me of the many times I've heard complaints from people buying a new movie and getting pissed they can't play it because their DVD player is 5+ years old.
We should just keep pirating as a socially shameful thing, although there are edge cases that I find extremely acceptable. Play testing a game since demos are no longer a thing mostly, previewing media, accessing media that made easily available (region restrictions etc.)
I'm sure many people would take issue with what I find acceptable, but the main point is that DRM punishes the legitimate users and makes the world a worse place. Relying on people to be 90% decent folks who will pay when they can is infinitely preferable to the police state mentality we've got going on now.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday May 15 2018, @04:42AM (1 child)
Copying is socially shameful? That's the "funny" part of the DMCA. I can't think of any natural person who considers personal copying to be actually shameful.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday May 16 2018, @10:56AM
The irony is that it's thanks to DRM and DMCA restrictions manifesting themselves in totally unacceptable ways, such as the above mentioned 5 year old DVD player being unable to play a new release, that people now feel copying is not shameful. Most people, when confronted with the necessity to buy a new DVD player just to see some DRMed-to-the-max new DVD release, when their current player works perfectly fine, are going to download a pirate copy instead.
Many took it a step further and abandoned optical media. That's what I did. I never upgraded from DVD to Blu-Ray, and now I see no reason to bother much with either, not with the likes of YouTube and Netflix streaming 1080p content.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday May 14 2018, @07:41PM
No, the point is:
Not sell a product that does something vaguely related. Not sell a product that lets some hacker create a one-off prototype. Sell an actual goddamn product that actually, intentionally decrypts a signal as part of its core functionality. That's how you force it to be legal. One guy making gin in his bathtub would never have overthrown prohibition. It had to become a pretty common occurrence. It had to become widespread enough that arresting everyone involved was obviously impossible.
It's ALREADY legal to use that decrypted signal for plenty of reasons, it's just not legal to GET it, and they use that fact to take away the rights that we already have. That's a big part of why fair use is dying, and once it's impossible in practice it's going to be a piece of cake to ban it in law as well because nobody will care anymore. So we need people to be able to legally and openly sell products which allow you to do things that you are already legally allowed to do. If it's only a few "hardcore hackers" that are exploiting some bug or undocumented feature who are doing it...well, the media just has to say that phrase and 80% of the country will be in favor of banning whatever it is or locking up whoever is publicly doing it, simply because it's a "hacker" tool. If you can get a court to look at a specific product which gives a pretty broad range of functionality and give a blanket declaration that it is legal, or legal when used to circumvent DRM for a legitimate purpose, then that opens up entire new markets. And it reduces the need for every hacker to reinvent the wheel or import sketchy grey market goods just to play a goddamn video.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday May 14 2018, @01:55PM (5 children)
Seriously, what on Earth is this thing?
There's lots of talk about freedom and HDMI, so I assumed it might be something to do with stripping HDCP, but there's no mention of HDCP. Is it about doing real-time video processing? If so, why doesn't it just say so?
supports overlaying content on encrypted video signals. What?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @02:28PM (4 children)
It hijacks one part of the protocol to give the user some control over it.
For example, you could add annotations to a Government's propaganda feed, pointing out the lies, without having to break the encryption.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday May 14 2018, @02:38PM (3 children)
Ah, there it is.
The BoingBoing article uses the word 'overlay' exactly once - the rest of the page is an opinion piece on copyright law.
I like Bunny, and just like everyone here I agree the DMCA goes too far, but it seems like this 'product' is just a cute vehicle for talking about copyright reform.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Monday May 14 2018, @02:59PM
[...] but it seems like this 'product' is just a cute vehicle for talking about copyright reform.
I thought that was the whole point. The Boing Boing page is mostly commentary about the DMCA, the problems it produces, and how this device can be used strategically to take a swipe at the DMCA. The Crowd Supply page goes into more of the technical specifications and the details of the expected product. The restrictions have not been growing steadily although they have grown consistently. If we wait too much longer, there will be no way out from some of the nastier provisions because there has been no push back. Now, with this device, there is push back in those one or two areas.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
The device includes everything needed for any kind of real time video manipulation and encryption stripping, it just isn't programed to do this. It looks like excelent value way of getting a very powerfull FPGA though if you have any video manipulation projects planned. For example I have seen an FPGA used to combined multiple HDMI streams into one for playing networked games split screen. You could also do things like map a projector onto a non flat screen using this (globes etc.).
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday May 15 2018, @09:12AM
So in reality it's going to be bought and used as an HDCP-strip device, it just won't be marketed that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 14 2018, @02:03PM
Kindly remove the dupe link. Was either of those supposed to point somewhere else perhaps?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday May 14 2018, @09:22PM
Author of TFA picked a word that rhymes, but is not correct.
INNOVATION SHOULD BE OPTIONAL.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday May 14 2018, @10:24PM
I like the feature to repair broken handshakes. That would be useful. It looks like an interesting project. I can think of a few uses for it. But really, yep, looks like a a necessary business endeavour to illustrate the harm of DMCA when it's inevitably used against his product as a weapon to crush innovation.