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Fluffeh writes:
"Judge Broderick of New York federal court ruled in favor of AACS, the licensing outfit founded by Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft, Intel and others and has granted the seizure of several domain names, servers, bank funds and social media accounts belonging to Chinese DVD ripping software company DVDFab. Adding to DVDFab's troubles, Judge Broderick also ordered several banks and payment providers to freeze or stop processing the company's funds. This includes PayPal, Amazon Payments, Visa and MasterCard.
Under U.S. law it's forbidden to distribute software with the primary intention of circumventing copyright protection. In its complaint, AACS accuses the 'DVDFab Group' of violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause by selling tools that can bypass their DVD encryption.
As one might expect, a new mirror is already up and running."
(Score: 5, Funny) by snick on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:05PM
li694-23.members.linode.com ?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:06PM
Look, I have some sympathy to defense against people who are blatantly profiting off others work with no value add. You want to freeze bank accounts or block importation, fine. That's a common mechanism in trade disputes.
But the part that continues to get me about things like this is that US courts (and ONLY US courts) have the power to "seize" domain names, because ICANN is a US body subject to US law. And that means EVERYONE on the internet is to some degree subject to US law. I'm troubled that there's still zero international progress on an international successor to ICANN.
Of course, I'm sure the TPP will sneak it's way through congress one of these days attached to a motherhood and apple pie bill, so you'll all be subject to US law anyways.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by theCoder on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:14PM
Were all their domains seized, or just the .com and/or .org ones? Those TLDs are managed by a US company, so it's not surprising that they would fall under US law. I notice the new domain is a .jp domain, so presumably it could not be seized by US courts (but could be by Japanese courts).
The problem with an international ICANN is that as bad as the US is, most other countries are just as bad or worse, often in different ways. It would be nice if there was an international body for this, but I doubt we (as nations) could ever agree to something, at least not something with strong free speech rights. If anything, it would be a body where you could lose your domain name the moment someone more powerful complained, probably with little actual oversight.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:39PM
The solution seems pretty simple to me. We need to completely eliminate all top-level domains, including .com, .org, .net, .info, etc. The only top-level domains should be national domains: .us, .uk, .cn., .ch, etc. The root DNS only needs to resolve those two-letter country codes. Then, each country can operate its own root DNS nodes which resolve the next level: .co.uk, .com.us, etc. Each country can set up whatever DNS naming standards they want (they can have .com.xx, .co.xx, .net.xx if they want, or they can just have domain.xx if they want (small countries might prefer this)). They can enforce language rules if they want, so France can require all domain names to be French if they like. And every nation would have the judicial power it wants over domains within its country domain. But no one country would have any power over domains in another country's namespace.
(Score: 1) by bryan on Tuesday March 11 2014, @06:59PM
But then how will all the registrars get rich by selling everyone .ninja and .whatever TLDs? What you suggest is far too consistent/logical and not enough greedy/real-world-ish. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @10:45PM
...and don't forget about all the defensive domains that must be purchased like bryansucks.ninja and boycottbryan.ninja.
(Score: 2) by neagix on Tuesday March 11 2014, @07:47PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:51PM
Well, unfortunately, what'd probably happen is ICANN would become the registrar for the US. But at least everyone else would be free of them.
(Score: 2) by neagix on Tuesday March 11 2014, @11:16PM
Even now US citizens can register a domain outside US ;)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:27PM
One of the problems is the presence of top-level domains like .com and .org. People just don't bother much with sites if they don't have one of those. Would you be bothering with this site if it were soylentnews.org.vu instead of soylentnews.org? Maybe you would (this is a techie audience after all), but would regular people think of facebook.com.us the same way they think of facebook.com? Or what if Facebook relocated, and was now facebook.co.uk?
If we eliminate all non-country-code top-level domains as I propose, everyone would be forced to think in terms of what country a site is located in. And each site should then be subject only to the laws of that country; if other countries don't like it, they can block sites which don't follow their laws (e.g., neo-Nazi sites would be blocked by Germany, Falun Gong sites would be blocked by China, etc.).
Of course, some people might object to this whole idea, saying it shouldn't matter what country a site is in, the internet is supposed to transcend nations, etc., but that's all false. It certainly does matter what country a site is in, for legal reasons: should you be able to express yourself freely or not? Well, on a US-located site like this one, you can probably expect a high degree of freedom of speech (just don't criticize the Scientologists!), and it's very unlikely your comment would be removed, and also unlikely you'd get in trouble for it unless you make a comment about shooting up a school, as some unfortunately high school students have learned the hard way recently. If you post something anti-Islamic on a site located in an Islamic country, you can expect to be censored, and if they figure out who you are, banned from traveling there or maybe arrested if you do. It'd be nice if the internet transcended nations, but it really doesn't, as long as different nations exist and have different laws.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fnj on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:45PM
Funny, I have no sympathy for this thuggery. None whatsoever. If I want to store my DVDs that I BOUGHT WITH MY OWN MONEY on hard disk and watch them myself in privacy from there, it's no business of any jackboot. The DVD is a crappy invention in terms of reliability. It so happens, and I know this goddam well having bought into 4 figures of the bloody things, that the reliability is punk, the lifetime is poor (nowhere near as long as VHS tapes), and they often don't play even on first opening the package.
And incidentally these same morons essentially criminalize playing DVDs on linux instead of Windows. DVDFab lets me back the goddam things up and play them FAR more conveniently.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by len_harms on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:54PM
and they often don't play even on first opening the package
What on earth are you doing to your poor DVD's? Out of my not insignificant pile of 2k+ I have maybe 10 or so that no longer play. Those all seem to be early Universal studios DVDs.
I am doing the same as you and format shifting. But to pretend that DVDs are that unreliable is bunk. For burned DVDs I can believe that. For actual store bought ones? I have maybe had 1 ever that did not work out of the box. The store exchanged it and it works to this day 10 years later.
Now having said that I have had issues with the 'mega box' sets. Many times they are packaged poorly and you can see the disc coming apart and 1 out of 5 are bad. I send those back for a refund. The cheap box sets are usually the last hurrah for DVD sales for a series and they are usually crap.
What I am finding is unreliable is the lifetime of the dvd player itself. Some seem to last 4-5 years tops before the laser stops reading anymore. Also some of the early gen blu ray players were straight up over priced garbage. They seem to have got better though.
I do have to say I am enjoying no longer shuffling DVDs around and just using XBMC as a seriously cool player. The new beta is looking real good. Hopefully that one dude is able to finish adding in MAME and a SNES emu to it.
(Score: 2) by nightsky30 on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:18PM
Glad to hear at least their beta is going well, as opposed to that other site!
(Score: 3, Funny) by jimshatt on Tuesday March 11 2014, @10:16PM
They're called kids.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by grub on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:19PM
Wow. I used DVDFab ages ago when DVDs were considered state of the art. Kind of late in the game for this, isn't it AACS?
Trolling is a art,
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:38PM
I use it for my XBMC install. I have a streaming library that I actually want to watch unlike the hit or miss version of netflix (which I also have). I have no issues buying my discs (I have about 2500). I just want to format shift them to XBMC.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:36PM
That should not be the crime. That's just working around the brokenness.
Almost as stupid as making a plant illegal.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Troll) by Taco Cowboy on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:21PM
Care to point to us a smart law in the law book ?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:43PM
There's plenty of reasonable laws out there which aren't idiotic and actually make sense and work towards the public good. Fire codes are probably a good example of this. It's good that we don't have buildings catching on fire left and right, thanks to codes governing how things can be built in buildings. Laws requiring you to pull over so emergency vehicles can pass are a good thing, and you'll think so too when you're being rushed to the ER to save your life.
Unfortunately, some laws **cough**pot**cough** are ill-conceived and only kept around because of corruption. This doesn't mean we'd be better off without any laws at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lx on Tuesday March 11 2014, @06:27PM
That's a nasty cough. You should invest in a vaporizer.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by mcgrew on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:04PM
Dude, don't you know? "When you cough, you're off". Wish I could find some, my dealer's out right now.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:53PM
WA Initiative 502
CO Amendment 64
And no, the laws are not perfect. But, they are a start. We basically told the Feds to stuff it.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Wednesday March 12 2014, @01:51AM
As I've said for years, the solution is to legalize and tax it. Anything else is a waste of resources (and people).
The taxes 'seem' high, but I gather they're in line with the liquor taxes, so...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday March 13 2014, @05:43PM
And the fact that:
"Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper offered a first glimpses into how much money his state can expect to make from marijuana sales, and that figure crushed the initial $70 million estimate by 40%. The state is now slated to make a whopping $98 million by the next fiscal year."
Read more: http://newsfixnow.com/2014/02/21/colorados-marijua na-tax-revenue-much-higher-than-expected/#ixzz2vrj 26Izb [newsfixnow.com]
That much tax revenue is going to make a LOT of other states look twice at their current prohibition laws.
As the worn out saying goes 'money talks, bullshit walks.' This particular bullshit walked a very long distance...
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday March 13 2014, @09:23PM
Wow. I knew it would be plenty (pot is supposedly California's #1 cash crop, and I doubt it's far behind most places) but -- yeah, that bullshit is WAAAAY on down the road. Free money is now raining from the sky, and I'm sure it'll only go up.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:10PM
That's the dumbest comment I've seen in a month, congrats. How about laws against theft, murder, assault, robbery, kidnapping? You're a lucky (or very young) person indeed if you've never been the victim of a crime.
Yes, there are idiotic laws. They're called "victimless crimes" and should not be on the books. But your cry for anarchy is, sorry, simply retarded.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by Taco Cowboy on Wednesday March 12 2014, @01:07AM
As I said, the laws are stupid.
There are carrots and then there are sticks, and 99% of the laws on the books are sticks, just like the ones that you have mentioned.
Laws against stealing ? Of course, if you steal, we gonna punish you. It's a stick.
Laws against murder ? Well ? Care to define what "murder" is ? How about abortion, late 3rd trimester abortion ? Why isn't that "murder" ?
See the stupidity of the laws now ??
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday March 12 2014, @01:27AM
Laws are written by elected legislators. If you don't like a law, lobby to change it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Wednesday March 12 2014, @01:47AM
I think you misspelled "pay to change it". :(
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:42PM
I can't remember the last time I actually handled a CD/DVD. People just don't use them any more.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:07PM
not true!
earlier this year my girlfriend used one to clean ice off her windshield.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:09PM
I do. Last night in fact when I was trying to format shifting the one I bought the day before to my XBMC install. Ironically because dvdfab had not cracked that encryption yet I had to use the player...
Annoying...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @05:53PM
Sure, no one uses DVDs anymore... until they find that the streaming services' licenses for that title have run out and they chose not to renew it because nobody (except you) watches it anymore. Oh, and torrents for it have dried up, since everybody just uses the streaming services... right?
DVDs have one advantage over anything online: you don't have to rely on someone else somewhere connected to the internet who 1) has what you want, and 2) is willing to convey it to you in some manner. Once you have the DVD, you have it. Sure, subject to decay, theft, and vindictive spouses, but those are better odds sometimes.
(Score: 1) by Reziac on Wednesday March 12 2014, @01:54AM
I buy commercial DVDs essentially as backups. Yeah, they aren't perfect either, but it's better than nothing, and I have enough of 'em that they'd be ridiculous to store and back up on hard drives.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by isostatic on Tuesday March 11 2014, @07:14PM
I can't remember the last time I actually handled a CD/DVD. People just don't use them any more.
You meant so say
I don't use them any more
Here's a link to a DVD sales chart for a country in the western hemisphere with about 5% of the world's population2 013 [the-numbers.com]
http://www.the-numbers.com/home-market/dvd-sales/
Over 160 million DVD+Bluerays were sold in the US alone last year, so I don't think your statement "People just don't use them any more" is quite right.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:18PM
Of course they do, you think everyone uses Netflix and TPB? Youth, sheesh... If nobody uses DVDs then why are they for sale damned near everywhere? If they weren't selling well they wouldn't be for sale at all.
Personally, my twelve year old TV is only capable of 720p so I have no use for Blu-Ray and won't until this TV dies. I just got a Blu-Ray/DVD combo of Gravity from Amazon, I'll give the Blu-Ray disk to my daughter to play on her game machine and keep the DVD. Hell, I never got all my VHS tapes digitized before the player died and yes, they're backed up on DVD.
Tell me, without disks how do you get movies on your hard drive? Pirate them all?
Nobody buys DVDs, sheesh. Kids.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @10:58PM
Dear WizardFusion
Please go back to /. Beta where you belong.
You are the type of pointless, ego-masturbation commenting turd that we intended to leave behind.
Sincerely,
Everyone else on the internet.
(Score: 2) by unitron on Friday April 25 2014, @01:13PM
Dear Anonymous Coward
If you are going to use such disparaging language, at least create an account and stand behind your words to that extent.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 5, Informative) by Soruk on Tuesday March 11 2014, @02:48PM
... can be found at http://www.dvdfab.cn/ [dvdfab.cn].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @06:35PM
As far as I know, "DVDFab HD Decrypter" (on the bottom of their Download page at the dvdfab.cn site) is still the ONLY regularly updated FREE OF COST ripper for DVDs that includes necessary fixes for new DVD copy protection schemes. Believe it or not the manufacturers are still twiddling with them.
Am I wrong? Is there any other free of charge DVD (or BluRay) ripper that can handle current copy protections? What do Linux users do to decrypt DVDs and/or BluRays?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:21PM
http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html [videolan.org]
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:34PM
I use Brasero. I'm not big into Linux, but I run Linux Mint in a virtual machine to rip the DVD. The ripped file is then sent back into Windows via a shared folder. I then run the iso through a program on Windows. Usually XBMC. I'm not sure what Brasero uses under the hood, but it's fairly decent.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:54PM
I am a huge fan of MakeMKV. There is a trial version for windows that you need to keep updating to keep it free (as in keep it up to date and it rolls along happily) - and a free linux version. It shifts both DVDs and BluRays perfectly on both linux and windows.
The only catch with it is that it doesn't compress the output file, it merely shifts the data into a matroska container. On that note though, it's not exactly hard to bust out HandBrake and then pick and choose exactly what you want, how compressed you want it and the like. It's a perfectly winning combination in my books.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @09:30PM
Cool, thank you Fluffeh. I also just found a guide / repository for integrating MakeMKV with Handbrake... http://negativo17.org/handbrake/ [negativo17.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @06:09PM
As far as I know, "DVDFab HD Decrypter" (on the bottom of their Download page at the dvdfab.cn site) is still the ONLY regularly updated FREE OF COST ripper for DVDs that includes necessary fixes for new DVD copy protection schemes. Believe it or not the manufacturers are still twiddling with them.
Am I wrong? Is there any other free of charge DVD (or BluRay) ripper that can handle current copy protections? What do Linux users do to decrypt DVDs and/or BluRays?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:40PM
This.
http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html [videolan.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:47PM
Also...
http://www.videolan.org/developers/libbluray.html [videolan.org]
http://www.videolan.org/developers/libbdplus.html [videolan.org]
There are ways to get at least some commercial, regular, Bluray disks playing with the library along with key, configuration file and/or certificate. But you won't find those at videolan.org. Bluray Plus is not working with commercial Bluray Plus disks at all as far as I know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:20AM
I don't think I know anyone who has moved to bluray. Optical discs were a crap idea, who wants a new version of it?
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11 2014, @07:18PM
It keeps saying 12 when I refresh the page, but there are more like 22 comments. The Threshold setting reads "0:12" and if I leave it alone and hit "Change", THEN I get the full list with "0:22" comments showing. Anyhow, that's how I ended up double posting.
I don't think it's a caching issue; that selector box seems to be trouble.
(Score: 3, Funny) by nightsky30 on Tuesday March 11 2014, @08:23PM
Selector!!!! Damn You!!!
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Tuesday March 11 2014, @09:44PM
like guacamolé only tastier.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 1) by Cyberdyne on Tuesday March 11 2014, @09:53PM
Any time I read about frozen funds, I think bitcoin. Shoulda coulda woulda... but failed to.
(Score: 1) by oao894 on Saturday March 15 2014, @02:59AM
I found DVDFab restored business at http://www.dvdfab.cn/ [dvdfab.cn] to serve existing customers.
The injunction is ridiculous, people have the right to deal with things they bought for personal purpose. Let's go to http://www.ilikedvdfab.com/ [ilikedvdfab.com] and support it!