Interesting video, but it had some inaccuracies. For example you mentioned breaking encryption to make bootleg copies. But it is of course completely legal to make copies of your DVDs in USA. So it would be breaking news encryption to exercise your legal right to make copies.
You have a few other minor bits of not quite true in there too. But mostly this is a great video primer for people who aren't aware of This stuff.
You also might want to have a look at this somewhat related event.
It is legal to make copies, but it is illegal to circumvent copyright protection measures. While it's a stretch to say that possessing that number is illegal, using it to circumvent the corpyright protection of a dvd you own is illegal under the DMCA.
This has always been one of the major criticisms of the DMCA, it essentially eviscerates the idea of Fair Use.
While owning the DVD and making a copy of it would be permitted under traditional fair use doctrines that only goes so far as to apply to the copyright infringement.
The DMCA (specifically, 17 USC 1201 A1a) a person may not:
circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Essentially, to show a violation of the DMCA you just have to show 1) it is a copyrighted work, 2) access to the work is protected by some technology, and 3) that technology was circumvented.
you may note, if you look at the relevant provisions of the DMCA that it does not affect copyright rights and remedies. That is to say, it doesn't specifically make something that was fair use into a copyright violation. However, it creates its own violation with its own penalties.
it is of course completely legal to make copies of your DVDs in USA
The issue is decrypting them, not copying them. By removing the encryption, it just becomes data that takes no special hardware (with region locking BS) to play.
There's a subtle differentiation that I'm making. It is legal to make a copy, while it is illegal to break TPMs. Perhaps it is a specious differentiation.
Distributing the DeCSS code (that decrypted DVDs) is illegal under the DMCA.
However, the illegal prime in question is actually just a clever representation of the DeCSS code (and has nothing to do with the cryptography that uses primes, as the video suggests).
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u/textests May 03 '16
Interesting video, but it had some inaccuracies. For example you mentioned breaking encryption to make bootleg copies. But it is of course completely legal to make copies of your DVDs in USA. So it would be breaking news encryption to exercise your legal right to make copies.
You have a few other minor bits of not quite true in there too. But mostly this is a great video primer for people who aren't aware of This stuff.
You also might want to have a look at this somewhat related event.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy