Because I want to watch Netflix or whatever else requires it, and that's a value calculation I've made?

Still seems like a false dichotomy to me. Subscribe to Netflix and pirate your content if you have a firm believe in being DRM free while rewarding the creators of content you consume.

Last I checked, the most effective way to pirate content is via a protocol such as Bit Torrent which requires you to also distribute pirated content. And that has legal ramifications, which then requires non-trivial methods to obscure your activities (paid proxy servers, etc). Most of us use Netflix not for ideological reasons, but for the pure convenience of it. Compared to Bit-Torrent,with Netflix you can easily browse titles, watch a bit, switch to another one, or watch whole seasons without waiting for multi-hour or multi-day downloads.

If you are not adverse to piracy, or you believe you have a valid fair use right to access the content, but you don't want to be guilty of distribution (a much higher penalty) then Usenet is probably the best bet.

> valid fair use right

They seem to be making it tricky to rip DVDs/Blu Rays these days (dirty tricks to screw with Handbrake/VLC) so the only way to get a movie onto my media server is to dl from somewhere after I bought the disc. Ironic, no?

BitTorrent traffic can be encrypted. There is no legal attack vector when used.

Encryption just makes it difficult for your ISP to automatically throttle your torrents. Anyone can still download the torrent themselves and see that you're an uploader.

They would have to get all their pieces from you, breaking protocol. They'd also have to be doing this on a large scale. They'd also either be breaking whatever laws you might be breaking, or they are providing you an implicit license.

"They would have to get all their pieces from you"

If you're suggesting that it's only copyright violation if you download a complete work from somebody, you're flat out wrong.

I'm saying that whoever was proving a violation would have to show infringing distribution of a protected work. Bit torrent pieces generally contain a small fraction of the total work, which could easily be fair use. You'd have to show that the person was actually transmitting a protected work against its license. That piece may have been a short clip in a more encompassing work. You won't know until you get more of the context (other pieces).

So, maybe "they" (person/group alleging infringement) wouldn't have to get all the pieces, but it makes their case much stronger. There can certainly be fair use arguments made for transmitting torrent piece sized copies of protected works.

Nope, still wrong (not 'arguably wrong', plain factually wrong). That's not how 'fair use' works - it's not because you send a part (what you call a 'clip') of a work, that it becomes fair use all of a sudden.

I'm not sure what you're reading, but I never said that sending part of a work makes it fair use. I said that there are fair uses that involve sending parts of a work and that proving a single or small number of pieces were transmitted between parties is not ipso facto evidence of infringement.

Look man, like my nan used to say - 'when you're in a hole, stop digging'.

"There can certainly be fair use arguments made for transmitting torrent piece sized copies of protected works."

How is that not 'sending part of a work makes it fair use' ? Yes yes you're using 'argument could be made' weasel words, but that doesn't mean you're not saying it. Here's a Godwin'ing analogy for good measure: 'arguments could be made that the Holocaust was justified. Of course I'm no nazi, I'm just saying that they could be made'. Yeah sure, good luck going on the record saying that and not (justifiably!) be classified as a nazi sympathizer.

Anyway:

"I said that there are fair uses that involve sending parts of a work"

No you didn't, you made some connection between 'the bittorrent technology, which sends pieces of data, and fair use of parts of works'. A connection that is non-existent. The criteria for fair use are wholly orthogonal to the concept of 'cutting up' a work as it is done in a bittorrent transfer. No (reasonable) argument can be made otherwise. There has been litigation on copyright infringement via bittorrent for about a decade now, if this line of reasoning stood any chance, wouldn't you think it had been used by now?

"that proving a single or small number of pieces were transmitted between parties is not ipso facto evidence of infringement"

Yes it is when there is no fair use involved, and there is no fair use claim just because bittorrent sends stuff in pieces.

So legal question, when's the cutoff point? How many packets do you need to get before you've broken the law?

Sadly, the law is not a mechanically applicable algorithm.

The logic here would, in part, be: "we have evidence that you were taking part in distribution of data that violated copyright law; we don't have to download the entire file from you to have sufficient evidence that you would have supplied any arbitrary data on request".

As for any "fair use" claim, one of the specific pillars there is the impact on the commercial value of the work. In that regard, commentary, critique, review, parody, and similar are not the same as wholesale unmodified distribution.

> They would have to get all their pieces from you

Unless you are sharing some packed and/or encrypted media, it's probably streamable and even sharing a part of it is enough to break the copyright laws.

> Anyone can still download the torrent themselves and see that you're an uploader.

Not exactly an uploader, but a peer.

All a downloader knows about his peers, is that they have pieces of that torrent.

> is that they ^^claim to^^ have pieces of that torrent.

Paying for a DRM-encumbered service is not really consistent with a "firm belief in being DRM free".

What do you mean by "as yet non-existent"? I believe Chrome, IE and Safari are all shipping it. It sounds like you can even use Netflix with it, as of last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8159110

Because there will come a day when something they want to watch desperately will require it.

That day will never come[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

I remember the days where they talked about making video cameras that would actually stop recording if they were pointed at a piece of media with special markers in it.

Nowadays people would use some kind of HDCP-breaking digital capture device, and regulating all video cameras is basically impossible with their ubiquity, but it's crazy to think about video cameras being modified against our will to suit the needs of one industry.

Those in power will always try to take control away from us. Don't let them.

It isn't all that crazy, it has already been done to printers:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/229647/counterfeit_money_on_c...

https://www.eff.org/issues/printers

And VCRs too. The original Macrovision technique relied on the low tolerance to noise in the old record-mode AGC circuits on first generation VCRs. But when VCRs improved to the point that Macrovision was ineffective, legislation was passed so that VCR manufactures had to include a special circuit to recognize the Macrovision noise bursts, and emulate the old behavior. (Source: my memory of an old article in an electronics magazine, so the above may be somewhat inaccurate -- the article may have been only referring to proposed legislation, or possibly industry self-regulation).

I remember hooking my first DVD player (I had just received for my birthday) to the family TV via an RF modulator, because the DVD player only output RCA and the TV only had a coaxial input. I tried playing The Matrix (the only DVD I had at the time), and the video constantly faded to black and back to normal every few seconds. In retrospect, I gather that was some sort of DRM implemented in the RF modulator, but I don't know if it has anything to do with what you're talking about.

That's not practical for video in most cases - dedicated pirates will find a way around it, but casual consumers won't bother. Duplicating HD or better video by analog means without significant quality sacrifices is much easier said than done.

Surely you only need the pirates to find a way around it as they will be the ones who distribute the free copies.

Yeah, until the video recorder on your cell phone gets a little nicer.

It would have to get a lot nicer. I work in film and shooting an image of a TV or computer monitor is often a pain, even with high-end cameras, due to interference between the frame rates of the camera and display devices, as well as light intensity. For high quality results the typical workaround is to just throw up a grid pattern on the screen in question and composite in the desired image afterwards.

Is it possible to get results this way, yes of course. Are the results any good, not really. Commercial pirates work with people in the exhibition sector, amateurs rely on known weaknesses in popular disc formats. You'd have to be pretty desperate to rely on streamed media as your 'original.'

Unless the playback hardware is DRM'd and encased in an impenetrable box, you don't need to capture photons and compression waves, just the output at the DAC, which can give you perfect fidelity to the original digital signal.

Yes, but who does that in real life outside the tiny community of extreme hardware nerds? Absolutely such things are possible, but they're increasingly impractical. It's the same reason that people promote widespread adoption of encryption; there's no encryption so strong that it couldn't be easily circumvented at the endpoints by really dedicated sppoks, but the sheer inconvenience is itself a safeguard against mass surveillance.

Only one person has to do it.

Beauty of digital.

As for the spooks, depends on what you mean by "easily".

Edit: According to a video[1] posted on Vimeo (which claims to be from a DMCA hearing) representatives of the MPAA appear to make recommendations on how to do the capture and they provide some tips that will increase the quality of the final product.

For example, hooking directly into the audio output; and, removing other light sources.

[1] http://vimeo.com/4520463

I think you might be confusing whether the DRM will be effective at stopping copying with whether many users will adopt DRM-restricted tools and platforms.

Nope, it will come aliright. You're just taking a black/white dichotomy. But they don't have to make it impossible - just inconvenient.

They can make it inconvenient to access the analog hole, but they can't make it very inconvenient to play the DRM-free copy once someone has captured it.

It will be the same problem as with current DRM techniques. It works now because it's still not fragmented yet. You will have your content available with your computer with particular updates and browser versions and for some reasons, it will never work with some combination of hardware + OS + driver + browser + country (especially with phones) and the result is people are going to pirate it anyway because it just works all the time, as always.

users wont, content producers, publishers and companies will publish want DRM.