Adobe claims rtmpdump 'can be used' to infringe

http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/notice.cgi?NoticeID=25159

by abl • 17 years ago

17 8 17 years ago

lucumo2• 17 years ago

SourceForge has removed the homepage of the program, but Yahoo still has a cached copy[1].

From the page: "A small dumper for media content streamed over the RTMP protocol. Supplying an rtmp url will result in a dumped flv file, which can be played/transcoded using ffmpeg/mplayer, etc. Download scripts for BBC's iPlayer and hulu.com streams are included."

It seems like they chose to describe it as an infringement tool that can be used for other things (debugging?) as well.

[1] http://74.6.239.67/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=rtmpdump&...

amalcon• 17 years ago

I'd just as soon they admit what the tool is for. Does anyone really long for the days when everything had 'For educational purposes only' written on it?

That is to say, I find no problem with the tool itself. I have had occasions where it would be helpful to legitimately use something like it for debugging. My concern is with the legal system that encourages them to lie about why they built it.

DarkShikari3• 17 years ago

Are you implying that it is somehow illegal or "infringing" to dump a data stream being sent to your computer to a file?

I cannot imagine what insane logic could lead to such a conclusion. If we were using this logic 20 years ago, VHS recorders would have been deemed illegal.

lucumo2• 17 years ago

> Are you implying that it is somehow illegal or "infringing" to dump a data stream being sent to your computer to a file?

No, what I'm saying is that if you write a script to dump Hulu.com files and advertise it on the main page of your project as a main feature of how you can use it, you really shouldn't be surprised that people think the main use of your program is to infringe.

ZeroGravitas• 17 years ago

A summary based on what I've read elsewhere:

rtmpdump is a stream recorder that can save videos streamed by Adobe Flash's RTMP protocol

Adobe has a more "secure" version of that called RTMPE

surprise! it's not really secure. Analysis: http://lkcl.net/rtmp/RTMPE.txt

Quote: "the Adobe RTMPE algorithm tries to provide end-to-end secrecy in exactly the same way that SSL provides end-to-end secrecy, but the algorithm is subject to man-in-the-middle attacks, provides no security, relies on publicly obtainable information and the algorithm itself to obfuscate the content, and uses no authentication of any kind."

So the DMCA anti-circumvention provision makes this software illegal in the US, even though the "protection" that has been circumvented is laughable.

Apparently that could be a basis for a challenge, i.e. nothing has been circumvented as there is no protection there in the first place.

(Odd note: the examples of content that could be infringed are shows on a British channel. As far as I'm aware this software is legal in the UK)

Adobe claims rtmpdump 'can be used' to infringe

Related Stories