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Predicting The End Of Digital Copying
prostoalex writes: "Christian Science Monitor warns about approaching era of digital prohibition. With FCC requiring the use of copy prevention mechanisms in future generations of television sets, soon 'Americans may not be able to copy a song off a CD, watch a recorded DVD at a friend's house, or store a copy of a television show for more than a day'. Of course, no article on this topic can go without a mandatory quote from Jack Valenti, who points out: 'It is not legal to make a copy of a DVD now. Everything people are doing legally today, they'll be able to do legally tomorrow'."
The point is that the "special circumstances" will now be made moot by technology which prohibits the practice at all. Want to include a 10 second clip of an SRV guitar riff in a music thesis paper discussing the late 20th century Jazz and Blues greats? Better make sure you have a late 20th century recording and playback device to work from, because in short order the products being produced for consumer use will prevent you from doing so.
Want to digitally remix recordings of artists for your own enjoyment? (Yes, some people actually find this fun and do it for sheer joy, not to pirate or sell or otherwise redistribute in violation of copyright) Too bad; so sad.
Look, no one is arguing that there aren't illegal or infringing uses for digital recording devices. The same types of abuses are possible with analog media as well. The point is that there ARE legitimate uses "special circumstances" to use your venacular which have been traditionally afforded to the general public. The **AA is attempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and the consumer will be the one to suffer as a result.
Since I was present at the Kinkos landmark fair-use trial and worked for the company through the courts remedy, I guess I am qualified in reporting that it is (Constitutionally) legal to make copies of just about anything under certain circumstances (including DVD's). One of those circumstances being to be able to make copies of things for personal use so long as no substantial financial harm to the copyright holder and no substantial gain to the copier (or others) occurs, eg. backups of your own purchased goods.
I DO make copies of my DVD's mr Valenti...and I will fight for my right to do so.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Regardless of the religious organizations fanasty beliefs the Christian Science Monitor has a long tradition of "agnostic" reporting.
Under fair use laws, what Jack Valenti and his cronies at the entertainment cartels are trying to change through "drm" legislation, it is legal for you to copy vhs cassettes, cd-roms, dvd discs of movies and music.
For the specifics, go to NYFairUse.org and learn what right you have, and what Jack Valenti, Sony, AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Vivendi, and many others in the entertainment cartel and digital camps promoting drm are trying to ban. And find out what your legislators position on the issue is, then call them, and let them know you'll be voting on this issue this November.
For a NYC based organization that promotes Linux use, Fair Use rights, freeing Dimitry, and many other issues important to the community, see NYLXS.com and if you are from the area, drop in at our next installfest or in-service demo, or CUNY Linux demo, or our boat cruise around Manhattan on August 24th, or join us in Washington DC at our next protest against drm, and attacks on our fair use rights.
The way out is to support candidates who oppose the DMCA (we are looking for more). See the site of Tripp Helms, who was profiled in Roll Call this week. Contribute through PayPal and help one of Coble's North Carolina buddies retire.
The claim that skipping commercials is stealing was made by by Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner broadcasting>
~Phillip
RMS is right on the money. Right To Read
Putting copy protection on products is identical to putting anti-theft tags on pocketable good, with mirrors and cameras and pickups by the door to stop shoplifters.
With the exception being that copy protection only hurts the honest - it does nothing to prevent the piracy groups from doing thier thing. For real examples of this, take a look at the gaming industry.
Warcraft 3 (and many other titles) use a copy protection on the CD called SecuRom. This copy protection puts invalid data on the CD, with the intention of "tricking" burners. That's all well and good, except it also hinders the ability of certain drives to READ the CD. This is causing problems with legitimate owners of the CD not being able to play the game they paid for. It doesn't, however, seem to have prevented the warez groups from releasing a non-protected ISO. It's kind of funny, actually, that in the first couple of weeks, the most user-suggested workarounds for Warcraft 3 problems (on Blizzard's "Open Support" forum) were "Try the no-CD", and "Try to find the warezed version and see if that works". Blizzard, of course, couldn't condone either one of these, and instead pointed to a general system-tweaking checklist that had little to do with actual game issues.
"It is not legal to make a copy of a DVD now. Everything people are doing legally today, they'll be able to do legally tomorrow," says Valenti.
Taken without context, Valenti's statement is just plain wrong. Let's go through it one more time, for all the recording execs who are just joining the class.
Copying a DVD can be legal (as far as copyright law is concerned) depending on how you use it. We call it "fair use." Technologically prohibiting all copying, therefore, prevents DVD owners from exercising some of their legal rights.
Perhaps Valenti's quote has been taken out of context (he appears to have been talking about making and distributing multiple copies). But, he may also have been revealing a vision of the future. "Everything people are doing [that recording companies approve of] today, they'll be able to do legally tomorrow [and nothing else]."
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Good question. The difference comes from the RIAA's interpretation of the DMCA. Unfortunately all the lower court decisions to date seem to agree with the RIAA's interpretation. The reasoning goes like this: DVDs are copy protected. It is illegal (with certain very narrow exceptions) to circumvent the copy protection. Thus if you made a copy, you could only have done that by circumventing the copy protection, an illegal activity.
Under this interpretation, it would not be illegal to make a copy of the CD, because the CD is not copy protected. If the CD is copy protected, than it would be illegal to make a copy by circumventing the copy protection (hence the recent stories that black pens are an illegal device under the DMCA, because they can be used to circumvent Sony's CD copy protection scheme).
The reason the RIAA's interpretation of the DMCA is being upheld by the courts is the totally inadequate authorship of the DMCA (some might propose this was on purpose, and I won't disagree with them). There is a clause in the DMCA which is supposed to protect fair-use. In the first DMCA related case, the DeCSS (MPAA vs. 2600) the judge ruled that the fair-use clause did not apply to the copy circumvention sections of the DMCA.
There have since been a number of rulings that manufactures and publishers are not obligated to protect fair-use. Aside: one judge said the DVD did not limit fair-use, because you could still take pictures of each still frame, at least until Fritz chips appear in all the camera and sounds recorders. The copyright rules as written force copy protection down the publics throat, but put no limits on the use of them. So that is why we are in the situation we are now, the DMCA essentially grants the copyright holders the ability to remove any right a citizen would normally have, so long as they can claim the citizen using it had to break copy protection in order to use it.