Consumer Electronics, Hollywood Work Against 'Video Napster'

cadfael writes: "The EETimes reports that "a new working group within the existing Copyright Protection Technology Working Group (CPTWG) will review a technical method for flagging video content that is not authorized for Internet transmission. ... The group was formed at the suggestion of Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), in a letter sent roughly two weeks ago to Jack Valente, head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)." Does this make sense in the light of this article?"

Comments

Out of touch with reality

[iGawyn]

The main problem that both the RIAA and the MPAA have is that they have lost touch with reality. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, computer literate people. Because of this, you get idiotic decisions like the Cactus CD-Rip protection, the 0.99GB per .vob limit on DVDs, CSS, any all of the rest of the things that we love to laugh at.

If they wanted to sell their products, they'd lower the prices (seriously, 10$ CDs are good, but 30$ for a DVD? Come on, a DVD isn't that expensive, and you've already raped the consumer in the theaters, so drop the price. 15$ or 20$ for a new DVD would be nice), as well as try to get intelligent people to protect their goods.

Instead of going after whoever cracked CSS, the MPAA should have approached them, asked for suggestions to improve encryption, not sue them for copyright infringement, or whatever bullshit they currently are pulling out of their asses.

Information will find a way to be free, be it ripping CDs, DVDs, or whatever. As long as you have computer-illiterate people making the decisions, we'll always have news stories to post on /. and laugh at.

Gawyn

Re:what law am I breaking?

[hearingaid]

They're both illegal.

Under the landmark Sony v. Universal case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to ban VCRs because they could be used for time-shifting: i.e. watching Starsky & Hutch (or whatever people watched back in the '70s :) at a different time than whenever NBC (or whoever) decided to show it.

They decided that this was a fair use.

It's not actually stated, but it's pretty strongly implied in the decision that the now-common act of building ad-free libraries of TV shows is illegal.

And it's certain that distributing videotape copies of shows is illegal. It's a violation of copyright, not saved by fair use, even in the U.S.

Of course, people do it all the time. This is just one of the many inanities of copyright law in the modern era.

Another inanity: The U.S. is the only country in the Western world with a fair use doctrine in copyright law. That means that probably time-shifting is illegal in every other First World country. However, the movie industry knows that if they were to, say, sue to stop Brits having VCRs, they'd win the lawsuit but then the Brits would change copyright law - to make it weaker - and they don't want that.