|
Digital
pirates will always sail the binary seas
Macrovision
Corporation proudly declared yesterday that
they made a "unilateral content protection
system" to stop DVDs from being copied.
I'm sure that's wonderful, but Macrovision's
potential clients need to enter the reality-based
community. Digital piracy is always going
to happen. Prevention techniques may become
more clever, but they will just be additional
obstacles for the computer-literate to overcome.
An
example of this, the one Macrovision thinks
they've beaten, is Jon Johansen. Five years
ago, the 16-year-old Norwegian, along with
two friends, devised computer code that
allowed people to copy DVDs. This delightful
little bit of hackery sent the Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA) into a five-year
conniption and thrilled budget-conscious
movie watchers everywhere.
Trying
to stop digital piracy is futile. Witness
Napster. The Internet file-sharing program
was shut down by the Recording Industry
Association of America after a series of
road trips to various courthouses. In the
time since the end of the original Napster
(a pay-to-download version has recently
come out), dozens of new file-sharing programs
have been created. The verb "napsterize,"
meaning "to download, usually illegally"
has even become part of Online conversation.
OK, I'm joking about the last part. The
only conversations "napsterize"
are used in are my own.
In
a creative attempt at social engineering,
the MPAA has been running short ads during
movie previews. These ads highlight "behind
the scenes" workers, the average-Joe
types who, the ads imply, are being driven
into the poorhouse because of the evil pirates.
Ad
campaigns and file-sharing programs aside,
the root issue is that the best and brightest
script kiddies and l337 h4x0r5 ("hackers"
for the illiterati) will always get a kick
out of giving the Man the finger. And gods
know, as long as Metallica thinks I'm going
to pay $18.99 for a copy of St. Anger, I'll
be raising the binary jolly roger. Happy
napsterizing!
Daniel
Linck Savino is the assistant opinion editor
for the Online Forty-Niner.
|
