Stan,
That is a very very wise move.. The little extra delay does not bother me a bit.. I've played bad for 20+ years
, what's another week or two..Looking forward to it my friend!
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- Thread starter stan shuffett
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Stan,
That is a very very wise move.. The little extra delay does not bother me a bit.. I've played bad for 20+ years
, what's another week or two..Looking forward to it my friend!
The "I copy DVDs to my hard disk all the time" crowd need to learn a legal thing or 2
Stan:
You are correct -- even if there was a small/nominal fee for the copy protection, it's still worth it, EVEN IF THE COPY PROTECTION ITSELF IS EASY TO BYPASS. Here's why... two words -- "due diligence." It's there, it's easily available for the author to enable, and therefore the courts look at it as a necessary item to prove the author did his/her "due diligence."
Even though copy protection itself is essentially worthless in thwarting the physical act of copying protected media, it's a "check the box" item that courts need to prove you did your "due diligence," in case you ever want to pursue distribution fraud. It's not enough to have the FBI warning header interlude. If the copy protection is available, but the author opted not to have it, it pulls the floorboards out from any case involving whether the author had intended the work to be copied/distributed by third parties.
I know this, because in my line of work (I.T. security), I've been character witness in a couple court cases involving the illegal copying/distribution of protected works. The "but-at-home-I-copy-all-my -DVDs-to-hard-disk-with-no-problems" crowd do not know that the copy protection is not necessarily a physical hurdle (heck, any media copying software easily "looks past" the copy protection as JB points out). Rather, it's a legal one. A sign-post/warning sign, due diligence, and milestone legal "checkbox" item -- all wrapped into one.
If Stan ever wanted to pursue copyright/distribution fraud, he now has the milestone "checkbox" item checked he needs to do so. The DVDs originating from Stan are genuine articles that are not to be copied/distributed without his express written permission. DVDs found without the copy protection (and without Stan's "get out of jail free" copy/distribution authorization letter) are obviously not from Stan's shop, and are therefore fraudulent copies -- even if the embedded FBI header video intro is kept intact / copied into the copy.
Good on you, Stan!
-Sean
Stan:
You are correct -- even if there was a small/nominal fee for the copy protection, it's still worth it, EVEN IF THE COPY PROTECTION ITSELF IS EASY TO BYPASS. Here's why... two words -- "due diligence." It's there, it's easily available for the author to enable, and therefore the courts look at it as a necessary item to prove the author did his/her "due diligence."
Even though copy protection itself is essentially worthless in thwarting the physical act of copying protected media, it's a "check the box" item that courts need to prove you did your "due diligence," in case you ever want to pursue distribution fraud. It's not enough to have the FBI warning header interlude. If the copy protection is available, but the author opted not to have it, it pulls the floorboards out from any case involving whether the author had intended the work to be copied/distributed by third parties.
I know this, because in my line of work (I.T. security), I've been character witness in a couple court cases involving the illegal copying/distribution of protected works. The "but-at-home-I-copy-all-my -DVDs-to-hard-disk-with-no-problems" crowd do not know that the copy protection is not necessarily a physical hurdle (heck, any media copying software easily "looks past" the copy protection as JB points out). Rather, it's a legal one. A sign-post/warning sign, due diligence, and milestone legal "checkbox" item -- all wrapped into one.
If Stan ever wanted to pursue copyright/distribution fraud, he now has the milestone "checkbox" item checked he needs to do so. The DVDs originating from Stan are genuine articles that are not to be copied/distributed without his express written permission. DVDs found without the copy protection (and without Stan's "get out of jail free" copy/distribution authorization letter) are obviously not from Stan's shop, and are therefore fraudulent copies -- even if the embedded FBI header video intro is kept intact / copied into the copy.
Good on you, Stan!
-Sean
Thanks, Sean, for your very thoughtful response. I am more confident than ever that it was the correct route to take.
Stan
Stan
Good move
Stan,
The delay is not a problem for me. Looking forward to learning from your hard work.
Stan,
The delay is not a problem for me. Looking forward to learning from your hard work.
Ok I know that I should be patient..I had to look the word up because I thought I spelled it wrong. What was more important was it's definition ..." capable of bearing affliction with calmness"....I CAN"T TAKE IT STAN !!! Send me a bootleg without packaging ...send the proof dvd... Ok ...got to breathe... I think I'm better now..I can stop bothering the postman now..I think.
I hate that u didnt call me in to do the "what not to do" part of your dvd... I am crushed mentally
Even better is a portable media player like a smartphone, laptop, portable dvd player. I plan on coding my Kinister videos into small format to play on my phone to have my son use while practicing.
What video makers need to do is to offer a download service, or a disk, with several encodings of the video. You pay whatever for the access rights to the media, then stream/download what version you want, any time you want. Pay $20, $10, whatever, get a code. Log on to a site (or get a DVD mailed to you if you prefer), any time you want, grab what you need. I want to watch your video on my phone, I click a "small video" link, stick it on the phone. I want to watch on my computer, click on "stream video". You can buy a $10 doll that comes with a code for a year of online gaming, why not do the same with a video?
pretty nice of you to be out ahead of the curve and telling people about the delay and offering a refund if they are unhappy. very nice touch. i am very curious about your dvd and have seen alot of anticipation for it here on the forum but i haven't been alot lately. where can i go to purchase it and how much are you charging? thanks in advance for the info.
No problem Stan. Just send Landon instead! :thumbup:
I need some 9-Ball lessons.
I need some 9-Ball lessons.
Good point. If someone wants to copy a disc they'll find a way.
Isn't that the truth.....locks are for honest people and not bad people.
S
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Guest
Thank for keeping us informed Stan. I look at it as a late Xmas present for myself.
Stan,
In this day and age, you may do yourself a great service by making the DVD a downloadable product.
In this day and age, you may do yourself a great service by making the DVD a downloadable product.
I agree, copy protection is a joke for the most part.
CSS (Content Scramble System) has been totally compromised. However, there are a few that I've ran into that are a bit more tricky. Sony ARccOS has given me problems in the past, but I've gotten past it. Either way, copy protection won't stop anyone who's even a bit computer savy.
On an other note, I was surprised to see that this, had no copy protection either.
CSS (Content Scramble System) has been totally compromised. However, there are a few that I've ran into that are a bit more tricky. Sony ARccOS has given me problems in the past, but I've gotten past it. Either way, copy protection won't stop anyone who's even a bit computer savy.
On an other note, I was surprised to see that this, had no copy protection either.
"Information needs and desire to be free" advocates, bite me.
Ah yes, where would we be without the "information needs and desires to be free" crowd? While the free distribution of information is a noble and admirable effort, it doesn't pay the bills. For those that desire to be reimbursed for their expenses, a little "sumthin'-sumthin'" is also a noble and admirable effort. For them, the "Creative Commons" license means absolutely squat -- dog poop, to be more precise.
I support Stan's effort to be reimbursed with a little "sumthin'-sumthin'." For him, the legal checkbox of due diligence is more important than whether his DVD is "physically able to be copied." The courts don't care "how easy" it is for copy protection to be bypassed. Nope, the REAL question is, "if you intended for your protected work *NOT* to be copied in the first place, did you enable the very protections available to you, free of charge, to show that you intended for your protected work not to be copied?" If yes, you enabled it. If not, you just pulled the floorboards out from under your court case to prove you didn't. The courts would say, "You 'say' you didn't initially desire for your information to be copied, but how do we know you're not 'now' trying to be opportunistic when you didn't initially leverage the very warning sign-post feature available to you free-of-charge at the outset? Is this another 'I spilled my known-hot coffee in my lap, but I want to sue somebody' opportunistically frivolous case in attempt to line my pockets?"
"Information needs and desire to be free" advocates, bite me. No, Stan would not greatly benefit from making his information free-of-charge or downloadable without cost. He would not recoup his investment, in fact. For someone in the business of instruction and wants his name carried forward (instead of being lost in nostalgic buried-in-source-code history of "oh, lest we forget, we should thank Stan Shuffett for making his information free way back in year so-and-so..." useless attribution), it's a mandatory thing.
-Sean
P.S.: oh, btw Stan -- I hope your indication that your release of this information is continued to be acknowledged by the volume of "appreciation checks" you find in your mailbox in the morning. I hope these funds come in handy, and help build your business of helping pool players become better at their craft -- a skill you yourself excel in.
Ah yes, where would we be without the "information needs and desires to be free" crowd? While the free distribution of information is a noble and admirable effort, it doesn't pay the bills. For those that desire to be reimbursed for their expenses, a little "sumthin'-sumthin'" is also a noble and admirable effort. For them, the "Creative Commons" license means absolutely squat -- dog poop, to be more precise.
I support Stan's effort to be reimbursed with a little "sumthin'-sumthin'." For him, the legal checkbox of due diligence is more important than whether his DVD is "physically able to be copied." The courts don't care "how easy" it is for copy protection to be bypassed. Nope, the REAL question is, "if you intended for your protected work *NOT* to be copied in the first place, did you enable the very protections available to you, free of charge, to show that you intended for your protected work not to be copied?" If yes, you enabled it. If not, you just pulled the floorboards out from under your court case to prove you didn't. The courts would say, "You 'say' you didn't initially desire for your information to be copied, but how do we know you're not 'now' trying to be opportunistic when you didn't initially leverage the very warning sign-post feature available to you free-of-charge at the outset? Is this another 'I spilled my known-hot coffee in my lap, but I want to sue somebody' opportunistically frivolous case in attempt to line my pockets?"
"Information needs and desire to be free" advocates, bite me. No, Stan would not greatly benefit from making his information free-of-charge or downloadable without cost. He would not recoup his investment, in fact. For someone in the business of instruction and wants his name carried forward (instead of being lost in nostalgic buried-in-source-code history of "oh, lest we forget, we should thank Stan Shuffett for making his information free way back in year so-and-so..." useless attribution), it's a mandatory thing.
-Sean
P.S.: oh, btw Stan -- I hope your indication that your release of this information is continued to be acknowledged by the volume of "appreciation checks" you find in your mailbox in the morning. I hope these funds come in handy, and help build your business of helping pool players become better at their craft -- a skill you yourself excel in.
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Sean,
Chill out man. No one was advocating pirating Stan's work. Corey is right that it would be nice to have it as a downloadable/streaming product. That doesn't equate to theft or free.
Netflix is bigger than Blockbuster now. Comcast reported HUGE demand and revenues for their On Demand movies INCLUDING the Pay Per Views that are all available for "free" to anyone who cares to look for them.
I am not a lawyer but I did play at being one for a few years in college. There is no legal requirement to add electronic copy protection to your work in order to be protected under the law. Your assertion that someone who elected NOT to place some sort of copy barrier on their DVD gives up their rights and thus has no case in court is wrong. That would be the equivalent of me not being able to have someone charged with theft because they walked into my open front door and walked away with my TV that was not bolted down.
Upon creation the work is protected automatically by copyright. And that's copyright as defined by federal law and treaty in all Western countries. No one is allowed to copy or distribute the work without permission of the author for anything other than a personal backup.
The DCMA expands on this premise to include "file sharing" and other electronic means of distribution. I believe however that the DCMA does make it a crime to "break" copyright protection and I do not know how that is different from the crime of illegally copying the material in the first place.
No one here is saying that they want to or will copy Stan's DVD and make it freely available. So maybe you should take deep breath before going off on people as if that's what they are saying.
We are just anxious to get the DVD after waiting for something like this for so long.
Hi John!
First of all, I want to wish you and yours (and our entire AZB family) a very Merry Christmas, and where that doesn't apply (religious reasons), a very happy, healthy, and safe holiday season! Seriously, from the heart.
Second, you're right -- I should've taken a deep breath before responding. Apologies for the strong words.
But let me explain from which the strong words come from:
1. John, I'm a published author. I understand the copyright laws. I also am an established information security professional (it is part of my line of work). I've acted as character witness in several cases where a published work was either stolen or purchased, then made available to the Internet at large on some of the "warez" sites. In some cases copy protection was enabled, in others it wasn't. In those cases where the author enabled copy protection, the case was pretty much a slam-dunk case. The defendant (author) won the case without much fanfare. However, in those cases where the original author did NOT enable copy protection, the case was not an open-and-shut case. The author had to prove, via archived backups of the original website content offering the material in question (backups of which had to be retrieved from Iron Mountain with certified letterhead from Iron Mountain stating that the backups had not been retrieved/tampered with prior to the extraction date from Iron Mountain's facilities) that the original website never offered the material free of charge, that it was indeed pay-for/commercial material. Because the cases also involved hacking and breach of the website's security, the cases are unfortunately closed -- otherwise I'd offer you some links to the case proceedings.
2. Your analogy, "That would be the equivalent of me not being able to have someone charged with theft because they walked into my open front door and walked away with my TV that was not bolted down" fails on several levels. First, you can't (and don't) apply physical premises security with digital security -- they are completely different animals, subject to different laws. As a professed law student, you should know that. Let's analyze why. You can leave your front door open, with a "Welcome" mat prominently displayed outside the front door, and you are *still* protected by law. The authorities would call you a numbskull for leaving your front door open, but they would still pursue any property theft to the extent you have proof that something was stolen. This is never in question, because the premises are, afterall, private property. By leaving your front door open -- "Welcome" mat displayed or not -- you are not "publishing" the contents of your premises to the world. Publishing information, on the other hand, is governed by different rules. By offering information to the public in the form of publishing media, you are indeed doing just that -- publishing it. It's no longer "private" or "confidential" information. Thus, it raises the difficulty of recovering financial losses should the information be illegally copied and distributed unless the author has taken all necessary steps to prove that the information was paid-for information at the outset.
Let me share with you a particular case I'm intimately familiar with. The defendant initially published some information in the form of a CD. For a period of time, the defendant offered the CD without any copy protection, and it was freely downloadable for a short period of time. The product included disclaimers for copyright protection, digital ownership rights, etc. The defendant's intent was to offer the product for a limited time, as an initial "loss leader" for the purposes of generating some buzz in the marketplace. The defendant later changed the download policy to a "paid-for" product. However, the product was already in the wild, being copied and distributed like wildfire. The defendant tried to enforce their "digital ownership rights" and "purchasable product" rights by pursuing some of the folks copying and distributing the media. Long story short, the defendant lost precisely because the initial media lacked any sort of copy protection. The defendant could not prove that they didn't intend for the media to be copied/distributed at the outset. Admittedly, the "gray area" offered by that "initial free download" period also put a damper on their case -- but the lack of any sort of copy protection enabled on that media absolutely killed it.
3. Let's call-out the pink elephant standing in the room. Whenever we see the phrase, "in this day and age," used in the same sentence as "downloadable," we know what that means. Even though the specific word "free" is not used, the implication is there -- it drips in buckets. I got into an argument some time back with a young twenty-something about this. He had asked me where he could get software product so-and-so for his computer. I pointed him to the vendor website, where it was readily downloadable, after he pays a nominal fee. I assumed by just pointing him to the vendor website, that would be that and all decisions are up to him. He came back to me later, and said that I must've not understood him, because he did say "downloadable." I told him that the vendor offers the software in downloadable form. We went back and forth on this, with me not understanding what he was talking about, until he took me to a computer for me to prove to him that the software was "downloadable." When we got to the page where it asks for PayPal information before it offers the download link, he goes, "Aha! See? I want to be able to 'just' download this product." Apparently, to him, "downloadble" meant FREE -- no cost. And later on, I ran into this same situation again and again. "Downloadable," "in this day and age," apparently means FREE. So whenever I see people using these two phrases in the same sentence, I know what the implication is. The sad fact of "this day and age" is that people expect information to be FREE. The whole concept of financial compensation for an information product apparently is becoming dinosaur age. The perception is that the author is "not offering value" (or diminished value) unless the information is readily available, at no cost to anyone who wants it.
I support authors who want a little something to recoup expenses for publishing the material. And shucks, perhaps that little sumthin'-sumthin' is a little more than the publishing costs themselves. What's wrong with a little capitalism to help one's business of offering that information in the first place to survive?
Anyway, I hope this helps explain a little behind-the-scenes of why I feel the way I do. I'm in Stan's shoes -- published author and all. I get it. Those that've never published anything are quick to assume the altruistic stance that "information needs and desires to be free." While this is a noble cause, it doesn't pay the bills for those offering the material in the first place.
Again, apologies for the strong words at the outset, and I sincerely wish the happiest, healthiest, and safest holiday season to all!
-Sean