Open-Source Blu-Ray Now Works For BD-J / Menu Rendering

[araxth]

Blu Ray is ideal for people who don't have high-speed internet, and people who prefer having physical backups. I personally am a little wary of online services, because if ANYTHING happens to them, you'll never get your content back. This is possibly the only thing that seriously bothers me about Steam - you're actually renting the games indefinitely, but you don't actually ever own them. So if anything happens to Valve, you just lost all those games.

I am not really sure about the legal part (i am not a lawyer) but i assume it's pretty much legal to backup your steam downloaded files locally.

[schmidtbag]

I am not really sure about the legal part (i am not a lawyer) but i assume it's pretty much legal to backup your steam downloaded files locally.

It is legal to do that, but it doesn't matter if it requires the Steam client in order to play them.

[Luke]

Law enforcement is easily defeated in the world of computers

Depends where you live, in Germany for instance the clear conscience doesn't save you from the fine you will have to pay for media stuff illegal downloading. And I assume it's the case for the civilized world.

The risk of something like this is close to zero in the US, the very nation behind all the copyright and patent maximalization. My advice is this: refuse to pay for any content due to the behavior of the paid content authors. If you can't get it free, reject it. Use Tor for website work, and peer to peer darknets for torrenting that work like Tor but unlike Bittorrent over Tor don't broadcast your true IP address to fellow uploaders/downloaders . Even if exploits exist capable of bypassing these measures, your government won't admit to having them over filesharing, for fear of tipping off bigger fish.

Refuse to pay fines, refuse to pay judgements-be ruthless in dealing with the copythug mafia! Dispose of any equipment or services requiring offical permission to own or operate. Here in the US, the RIAA was reported to have been unable to collect one thin dime from all those high-profile filesharing lawsuits and gave up. So many people stopped buying CD's because of the music lawsuits that the music industry suffered a huge economic punishment for the lawsuits. As for fines, the FCC has had almost zero success in collecting fines from individuals (not corporations) accused of running pirate radio stations, surely a bigger deal than filesharing. The fines for radio violations are collected by suspending radio licenses-but pirates are not licensed and have nothing to lose, like a cyclist refusing to pay a red light ticket because he has no driver license to hold hostage.

You are going to need Tor anyway because European governments are getting so interested in Internet censorship, and because the TTIP trade deal, if it goes through, will clamp US patent and copyright laws around your throat. Tor and similar tools can poke out the Eye of Sauron and keep your activity concealed from the greedheads in Hollywood. I'd like to see the entire paid media industry bankrupt, so all the independent musicians, news reporters (like myself) and filmmakers would finally be able to operate on a level playing field. The Big bosses are the enemy, so roll up your sleeves for a good fight!

[Filiprino]

Well, blu-ray still has a use. 50 gb rewritable por 5-6 pounds is really good. Dropping a blu-ray is not the same as dropping a hard disk.
Flash devices are more expensive.

[CrystalGamma]

It is legal to do that, but it doesn't matter if it requires the Steam client in order to play them.

I think somewhere in the terms of use it says that if ever Valve were to be unable to provide Steam service (because they went bankrupt or whatever), they would allow everyone to play their games without Steam activation. IIRC.

[randomizer]

I think somewhere in the terms of use it says that if ever Valve were to be unable to provide Steam service (because they went bankrupt or whatever), they would allow everyone to play their games without Steam activation. IIRC.

I think Valve employees have talked about this as an act of goodwill, but the Steam Subscriber Agreement (the document that actually matters, not an employee's hearsay) does not say anything of the sort.

[Ericg]

I think Valve employees have talked about this as an act of goodwill, but the Steam Subscriber Agreement (the document that actually matters, not an employee's hearsay) does not say anything of the sort.

Gabe Newell and Valve Customer Service both have said that in the event of Valve going bankrupt that a failsafe will go off that will ensure that games can be played without Valve. Also, for EA games Steam serial keys can usually redeem the game on Origin, and the same for a lot of Ubisoft games on UPlay.

So, there's not a "binding legal contract" end of it, but if you believe Gabe then you don't have to worry TOO much.

[cutterjohn]

I think somewhere in the terms of use it says that if ever Valve were to be unable to provide Steam service (because they went bankrupt or whatever), they would allow everyone to play their games without Steam activation. IIRC.

yep it was either that or they wrote something about having activation servers up indefinitely....

[Michael_S]

The risk of something like this is close to zero in the US, the very nation behind all the copyright and patent maximalization. My advice is this: refuse to pay for any content due to the behavior of the paid content authors. If you can't get it free, reject it. Use Tor for website work, and peer to peer darknets for torrenting that work like Tor but unlike Bittorrent over Tor don't broadcast your true IP address to fellow uploaders/downloaders . Even if exploits exist capable of bypassing these measures, your government won't admit to having them over filesharing, for fear of tipping off bigger fish.

That's fine advice for people tech-savvy enough to visit Phoronix forums, but your average person can't manage that. Relatives of mine who were not as good at internet anonymity got hit with lawsuits over a pirated film and settled out of court for $1500 because it was cheaper than hiring an intellectual property lawyer. I'm not even supposed to know about the settlement, one of the conditions for paying $1500 is that they not disclose the settlement terms with anyone.

Refuse to pay fines, refuse to pay judgements-be ruthless in dealing with the copythug mafia! Dispose of any equipment or services requiring offical permission to own or operate. Here in the US, the RIAA was reported to have been unable to collect one thin dime from all those high-profile filesharing lawsuits and gave up. So many people stopped buying CD's because of the music lawsuits that the music industry suffered a huge economic punishment for the lawsuits. As for fines, the FCC has had almost zero success in collecting fines from individuals (not corporations) accused of running pirate radio stations, surely a bigger deal than filesharing. The fines for radio violations are collected by suspending radio licenses-but pirates are not licensed and have nothing to lose, like a cyclist refusing to pay a red light ticket because he has no driver license to hold hostage.

Refusing to pay only works if you can afford the legal team to back you up when it goes to court. For the 80+% of the population with an annual household income under $100,000, that's not likely. The people most able to take a stand against the RIAA and MPAA are the ones who can most easily just buy the content outright and be done with it.

You are going to need Tor anyway because European governments are getting so interested in Internet censorship, and because the TTIP trade deal, if it goes through, will clamp US patent and copyright laws around your throat. Tor and similar tools can poke out the Eye of Sauron and keep your activity concealed from the greedheads in Hollywood. I'd like to see the entire paid media industry bankrupt, so all the independent musicians, news reporters (like myself) and filmmakers would finally be able to operate on a level playing field. The Big bosses are the enemy, so roll up your sleeves for a good fight!

This is kind of separate - and kind of not - but I'm hoping the various private internet tools get a lot better and I'm trying to find the time to contribute code myself. I think that's the solution. Once most of the important traffic on the internet is peer-to-peer, most of the important data is encrypted in transit and stored on user-owned devices, and most of the encryption used has perfect-forward-secrecy, all the rest of these problems go away.

[Luke]

At my income/asset level you are "judgment proof"

That's fine advice for people tech-savvy enough to visit Phoronix forums, but your average person can't manage that. Relatives of mine who were not as good at internet anonymity got hit with lawsuits over a pirated film and settled out of court for $1500 because it was cheaper than hiring an intellectual property lawyer. I'm not even supposed to know about the settlement, one of the conditions for paying $1500 is that they not disclose the settlement terms with anyone.


Refusing to pay only works if you can afford the legal team to back you up when it goes to court. For the 80+% of the population with an annual household income under $100,000, that's not likely. The people most able to take a stand against the RIAA and MPAA are the ones who can most easily just buy the content outright and be done with it.

No legal team required. I have no legally reachable income or assets of any kind. As such I would have no incentive to settle and every incentive to fuck with them and just plain get nasty. I could respond to a lawsuit by saying "fuck you, I do not have nor will I ever have any reachable assets and can guarantee you will never collect a penny" then let them have an uncollectable default judgement. In short, if you don't have or want legally reachable assets, you can ignore both civil courts and most fines outright, rather than fighting on their ground using lawyers.

The other factor is this: Even if I see a DVD of something I like sold for $3.99 in a discount bin I refuse to buy it as a matter of principle, of not giving money to the pigs who have been suing for filesharing. If you don't want to pirate paid media, then DO WITHOUT IT. I ignore movie content as I do not have the bandwidth to download it and refuse to pay for it, for example. It is people not buying content that is choking the life out of the Hollywood copythugs. Whether people torrent or boycott the content has exactly zero effect on that, and nobody can be sued for refusing to posess copyrighted content.