Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for your hard work. On the DMCA realm, I cannot wait for the Green v. DOJ case to bear fruit. If it succeeds, the DMCA anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions will be ruled unconstitutional altogether. Last we heard about the case was the oral argument for the appeal on 9/12, but it left a sour taste in my mouth. The judges were most focused on whether Green had standing to bring the case (becaus…
I know it's a lot to ask, but would you mind providing some additional background as to the different sides and the potential outcomes / ramifications of this case? You seem to have a lot of context in this area. Could this lead to a VCR/DVR future where we're once again able to record or download steaming content? Platforms and DRM have taken us a step back from the freedoms we once enjoyed. I would be overjoyed to…
The reality is that tech companies are winning this war, technologically, because asymmetric cryptography works--so there isn't some secret key embedded in the devices that you can merely extract and use--and the industry is getting better about not causing regressions. The big battle over unlocking cellphones from 5-10 years ago? That was nothing more than a gambit (which worked, btw) to change the process rules, because no one is actually using technological techniques to supply unlock codes anyway (it is now all via, shall we say... "light corporate espionage" ;P).
In a world where I am allowed to make a jailbreak that doesn't mean I can make a jailbreak, as we can see in the war with Apple: the reason there aren't jailbreaks for modern iPhones right now isn't because of DMCA fears. We live in an awkward time where bugs can be features :(. The real "practical" changes are thereby going to have to come from proactive regulation that prohibits certain forms of protection or corporate behavior, not attempts to defend the rights of users to publish what they can find and build. I would more watch Right to Repair, or the various antitrust lawsuits (including my related Apple one).
(Note: I know I didn't directly tackle whether anything anyone is doing might help you backup your streaming licensed content, but I also appreciate you didn't directly ask me anyway ;P. I have not heard of such, but I don't pay as much attention to that kind of content. The issue in Green and Huang's cases, though, is about being able to publish information and tools that might help you rip such content, and the reality is you can likely already do that and to the extent to which people start only letting locked down devices with encrypted cables access content, I think you will see companies win that in the next 5-10 years and the legality of publishing a workaround won't matter as there won't be any workarounds to publish. And whether it is legal to do that backup for content no one even pretended you can "buy" seems orthogonal to the efforts I have seen or been involved with.)