GODFATHER OF PIRACY
By Alex J. Socorro


When the piracy raised Cain, the first victim was PARI (Philippine Association of Record Industry). Out of desperation, PARI issued a pronouncement that pirated music CDs have poor quality and it may even destroy the CD player. It was a myth that PARI was trying to float, at the time when the new millennium was coming in and everyone was agog with the Y2K bug. Eventually, PARI had lost the battle hands down due to lack of support.

The CD or Compact Disc, a digital media for storing music, is the predecessor of the VCD and DVD. As the digitalized video became in vogue, it was just a matter of time for piracy to prey on it. When video piracy started wreaking havoc, PARI seemed to be content in watching from the sideline because movie producers have more to lose than record producers. A recorded album costs around P300,000 to produce while a minimum of P5 million is needed to make a decent movie. In a sense, the video piracy brought light to the problem where PARI used to grope in the dark. Bong Revilla was tapped to head the VRB (Video Regulation Board) to wage war against the video pirates, a campaign that also covered piracy of digital musical materials.

Being a digital media, the CD, VCD and DVD can store digital information like music, video, graphics or photographs and any other type of file accessible by the computer. Abetting the rampant piracy is the fact that digital information, when copied, can produce an exact copy of the original hence there is not a bit of a difference between a pirated copy and the original.

A movie producer makes a feature film with the objective of earning a profit by legal means. Like a typical merchandise, the movie is sold thru the authorized dealers called theaters. Of the movie ticket that a moviegoer pays, a portion of the proceeds is set aside for the share of the producer and the rest is divided between the theater owner and the government representing amusement taxes.

Classified as merchandise, the movie is protected by a copyright law from illegal reproduction, distribution and exhibition without express permission of the copyright owner which normally belongs to the manufacturer or producer.

With the arrival of the VCD and DVD in the common market, movies have been reproduced and sold in utter disregard of the IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) law. This situation puts the producer in the losing end since the prospective consumers, i.e. the moviegoers, now have the option of watching the films outside of the legitimate theaters which are the legal exhibitors. What makes matters worse is the cheap tag price of the pirated DVDs which sometimes goes lower than P50, including the DVD case and fancy cover.

Opinion in the movie industry is abundant. Most pertain to the ills of piracy but one director, Jose Javier Reyes, pronounced that piracy is the great equalizer because it affords poor people to watch movies in the comfort of their homes. Amid the pros and cons of video piracy, one thing is certain, that of the illegality of pirated DVDs.

Rhetorics aside, technical analysts say that the easy-to-copy DVD is the root cause of the proliferation of pirated DVDs all over the world. And the godfather of video piracy is Jon Lech Johansen a.k.a. DVD JON.

Unknown to many, the first DVDs couldn’t be reproduced due to a Content-Scrambling-System. The CSS method enables the manufacturer and the legitimate distributors to gain exclusive rights to their merchandise without fear of being counterfeited because reproduction needs the key code. That favorable situation persisted until DVD Jon came to fore.

The VCD, also known as Video Compact Disc, is the still existing predecessor of the DVD, which stands for Digital Video Disc. Technically speaking, there is no difference in quality between the contents of a VCD versus the DVD and the only advantage of the DVD is the bigger capacity. It is noticeable that a feature film of 90 minutes would require 2 VCDs while a single DVD can hold even a 2-hour movie. That edge in capacity made DVD the number one data storage at present, not to mention that the DVD has a lock versus unauthorized copying.

Like the proverbial Bill Gates, who, together with Paul Allen, founded Microsoft in their garage, DVD Jon is also a self-trained software engineer who quit high school. At 17 years old, the technical-savvy Norwegian used reverse engineering on the DVD Scrambling System and came up with the DeCSS which is a small computer program that could unscramble the hidden codes embedded in the DVD. Maybe Jon loved the world so much that he disseminated the DeCSS via the internet thereby giving a few the privilege of copying DVDs. But the internet couldn’t keep a secret such that the DeCSS exploded worldwide.

From thereon, manufacturers of the DVD simply waved the white flag. They didn’t care anymore and did away with the tedious and cumbersome encoding process, making it a free-for-all scenario. Thanks or no thanks to DVD Jon. Making the DVD an open-system (no brand barriers, no exclusivity) paved the way to the present video piracy.

But a mischief like that cannot be pardoned just like that. Jon Lech Johansen was tried in his homeland but was later acquitted. However, the case was reopened by the complaints of the MPAA (the Movie Producers Association of America), which may have suffered the most damage, and the US DVD Copy Control Association. But Jon’s was not a lonely voice in the wilderness because the Electronic Frontier Foundation stood by his side. For landmark verdict, the Oslo court issued an acquittal in January, 2004 thus giving back DVD Jon his liberty. Subsequently events saw the complainants hanging their fighting gloves for good.

Piracy is not confined to the local movie and recording industries. Statistics show that piracy is more prevalent in South American and other Asian countries. Illegal and unethical it may be, the sale and use of pirated DVDs only shows the cultural upheaval that the world is experiencing. As technical analysts are wont to say: take away the copyright so technology could march to progress. In the other way around: throw in all the restrictions and technology will stagnate.

Having accomplished the emancipation of the DVD, Johansen, now 22 and residing in the U.S., has trained his eyes on the iPOD. An invention of Apple Computers, the iPOD is a walkman type device with an earphone speaker that can play music. It has a large storage capacity that can hold 2,000 songs for the early models. Being a portable device of the Mac computer, the iPOD can only get music and songs from a Mac computer or from the Apple Computers website. Employing a key code similar to the DVD lock makes the iPOD exclusive to Apple Computers.

And like the olden DVD lock, DVD Jon had done another reverse engineering, this time on the intricacies of the iPOD music. With his small program, any other music in digital format can be stored on the iPOD, thereby over-riding the exclusivity for Apple Computers and turning the iPOD into a hi-tech walkman.
It is another breakthrough that is appreciated by hi-tech music lovers.

At present, there is no solution in sight to the piracy problem so perhaps trying out some unorthodox approaches may be worth the effort. If and when things get out of hand, producers (of movies and music) have the option to exercise direct and indirect means of advertising. Sponsors can be exploited to help cover the cost of production so the product could be shown or played for free. Similar to free TV, expenses for the production of programs are taken care of by the sponsors.

But would it be worthwhile to watch a movie with embedded commercial breaks? Would it be nice to listen to a good song with a commercial pitch as part of the intro or the extro? If the scenario appears disgusting to your taste, don’t blame the producers, just point your finger at DVD Jon instead.

Comments to this article can be sent to ajsocorro@yahoo.com