legality

[Kyzer]

On 2 May 2011 21:26, Chris Davies <chris at roaima.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 30/04/2011 15:01, Jon Davies wrote:
> > Listing a whole pile of stream sources in an unencrypted file cannot
> > possibly be "effective" under the definition in the act.  So reading
> > and interpreting that file, and selecting a stream from it, cannot
> > possibly be a violation of the Copyright act.
>
> Under that same reasoning, the reading of "encrypted" rtmp streams could also be acceptable under law. But I get the clear feeling that it's not just the US DMCA that treats such attempts as illegal but also the not-quite-the-same-honest-guv equivalents under European law.

The US DMCA laws hinge on "effectiveness" of technological protection
measures, which means a court decides rather than a mathematician. For
example, using full encryption based on a secret key embedded inside a
chip that needs someone to cap it and decode the ROM matrix with an
electron microscope is "effective", even though once you break out
that key, the encryption is broken completely.

As far as I know, the BBC's RTMP streams are not encrypted. It is
possible to encrypt them, but the BBC choose not to.

The BBC use SWF Verification on a minority of their streams. It works like this:

You: can I have this program?
BBC: You appear to be in the UK, so yes you can.
BBC: Here is some of the program.
BBC: By the way, are you definitely the Adobe Flash plugin, running
http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/10player.swf ?

-- if you use rtmpdump --
You: Yes, I am.
BBC: OK, here is the rest of the program.

-- if you use flvstreamer --
You say nothing.
BBC: OK, as you didn't answer, I'm going to stop sending the program.
You: Can I have more of the program?
BBC: Yes, you can.
BBC: Here it is.
BBC: Are you sure you're 10player.swf?
You say nothing.
BBC: OK, stopping now.
You: Can I have more please?
BBC: Yes.
... and so on.

It is possible to be more "effective" than this, even with the
existing software that the BBC use. They willfully choose not to use
more effective measures. As I'm not a lawyer, I can't say what a court
would make of it. I'm only speaking from a technical perspective.

Regards
Stuart