Apple sells movies online which you can put on your ipod. So then should all their customers be sued. And then also sue Apple for encouraging this :)

I think this will make more people pirate movies. Why pay for it if you’re going to be introuble anyway.

2. Private copying is most likely a fair use, as is private distribution. The statute is section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act (Fair Use). Although there aren’t any cases directly on point, it is pretty widely acknowledged that private copying is a fair use. In Sony v. Universal, the Supreme Court held that private copying of television shows by betamax recorders for private home viewing was a fair use under the copyright law. The same is likely to be true with regard to private, noncommercial copying of CDs, DVDs, etc. However, digital rights management protections and anti-copying technologies prevent these types of fair uses.

3. Fair use is not a right, legally speaking, it is a defense to copyright infringement.

I guess Smaran is talking about civilised countries like some in Europe :-)

In germany for example the german equivalent of copyrightlaw (Urheberrecht) allowes you to make copies for private purposes[1]
And it even has a special provision with regards to handicapped people[2]

(Note that the MAFIAA is lobying hard to take away more and more Customer friendly clauses of the law)

[1] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html
[2] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__45a.html

2 questions:
1. based on what case or statute?
2. what makes it private?

So if you want to copy a DVD, it makes sense to simply duplicate the DVD, encryption and all as one big binary blob. Then the result is another DVD that would look identical to the original DVD and would play just fine on home recorders.

The encryption on the DVD only needs to be broken to play the DVD. This is done everyday in every retail DVD player. Then the issue becomes — can you break encryption in order to provide compatibility with existing DVD players. Theoretically, the DMCA allows decryption for purposes of compatibility.

However, what encryption IS used for, is controlling the distribution and editing of the source material and the manner in which you can watch the DVD.

Distribution: DVD’s and their players are broken into regions. This allows companies like Fox to implement plans like the one previously announced, to release very cheap DVDs in China to compete with pirated DVD’s, while theoretically disallowing those official, Fox-issued DVDs to be exported from China to the US, where they might be sold for a few bucks.

Editing: Given the easy of video editing on today’s computers, if someone wanted to, they can easily sample either video or sound — creating audio mixes that could be redistributed via MP3. Sampled snippets or frames of the video could be reused in other material — some sites could display several seconds of a video, to “prove a point” in another film or for editorial support on a website. Sometimes merely a few small scenes are very controversial or popular. Think of movies like “Eyes Wide Shut”, where American viewer were treated to a sanitized “R” rated version with some “tasteful” sex-club scenes were edited out, but the rest of the world was treated to the full “X” version with those few-second scenes left in.

I could easily see those few seconds being sampled from a decrypted DVD and played on the net as a newsworthy object of how bogus the censoring in America was (is). You can see much more than what was in that movie if you go to a real sex-club in a large city. It isn’t a big deal — really, honest! But that small scene could easily be made available if the entire DVD weren’t “Access-controlled” under the DMCA.

Then there are the viewing restrictions: making you sit through the FBI & Interpol warnings, sit through previews and/or advertisements — essentially, lead in material. If you didn’t have such restrictions, you could have a “Video-Jukebox”, that holds 100, or so, DVDs. The Video DJ could program in the start and end times of video fragments they want to play, and perhaps string together a whole collage of video fragments for people to view as a background during a party — or to string together for any other purpose (collage of sex-scenes, collage of one actor, etc..). In a way, its would be a way of way of “sampling”.

I believe the DMCA restricts breaking “Access controls”, and isn’t limited to breaking “piracy prevention” measures.

This company is likely breaking the required viewing restrictions — do the movies exported to the iPod-player force the user through the initial menus/ FBI warnings, etc…? As I understand it, no. So they’ve hurt the MPAA’s desire to force us to watch the “mandatory” material at the beginning of a DVD.

The iPod isn’t special. A high-end video jukebox company allowed people to buy a high-end player (10-20 thousand?) that allowed “caching” of recently played movies on the player so they could be replayed without inserting the DVD. The MPAA sued them as well. Idiots.

None of the above reflects what I believe customers should be allowed to do with their DVDs. In fact, I would support them being treated in a similar fashion as CD’s. But if the world ran according to my wishes, the world would be rather different from what we have today…:-)

-l

Until enough people in this country get fed up and get their govenment representatives to recend the DMCA, the burdon of which is right is placed in the hands of the courts (and lawyers).

If people do complain, and congress doesn’t get it’s act together to work for the people, then it will be up to the people to do what Thomas Jefferson suggested, and overthrow the government now and then, rip up the laws, and start over.

Until this is decided, my judgment is that making backup copies of DVD’s IS NOT ILLEGAL, being protected by fair use.

CSS is NOT a form of copy protection. With the correct media and correct reader/burner – you can make 1 to 1 copies with the CSS intact. How did that stop the copy from being made – it didnt – the unavailability of the needed hardware to the general public prevents it.

All CSS does is stop region swapping

Second I do not recognize the DMCA as law. Period, I don’t care what the consequences of this may be.

Third Converting my Property into any format I want by any means I want is Fair Use – I do not care if the law says otherwise.

Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/