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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'."
My question is this: there is nothing legally wrong with space-shifting my CD collection, so what is legally wrong with space-shifting my DVD collection?
I copy my CD's to MP3 format and take those into work so that I won't have my CD's stolen. I do the same with my DVD's, except I convert them to Windows Media 8 format.
As long as you own a copy of the video in question, aren't you basically doing what is already legal to do with CD's? (Aside from the whole DMCA riff, which is OK, because I have several region-free DVD's.)
I'm not talking about distributing those copies. That is, of course, illegal as hell. I'm talking about using a copy of your own item for personal use.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
The interesting (and disturbing) thing is that this stuff was never legal to begin with.
Copying a CD, making a mix disc for your girlfriend, having a group of people watch one copy of a videotape, loaning CDs to friends, these are all legally fuzzy.
These things have been going since the beginning of consumer recording devices. I have stacks of home-copied tapes and Apple II games from my high school days. But not until the internet have the Media Corporations been able to actually *see* the data flying around. And not until the internet have they even considered the idea of *monitoring* your recording devices.
So to them, this is great. Now they can finally fully and completely enforce all those laws that were drafted in the phonograph era and patched here and there whenever a new technology comes out.
But to the rest of us, it shows just how much power copyright law gives the copyright holder.
What to do? Well the obvious thing is to never ever buy anything from those corps again. And avoid new technology until the appropriate "DeCSS-esque" hack is available (no matter what the article says, the technology will be cracked and the information will be relatively easy to find). That way you can always remain in control of your own possessions. I don't see any other solution. The government believes "copyright" and "capitalism" go hand-in-hand, even though too strong copyright is decidedly anti-freedom and anti-capitalistic.
A quote:
"The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or 'space-shift,' those files that already reside on a user's hard drive." In its reasoning, the court stated that this type of format conversion falls within the personal use right of consumers to make analog or digital recordings of copyrighted music for private, noncommercial use. According to the ruling, "Such copying is paradigmatic noncommercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act."
So again, my question: what is so fundamentally different between DVD's and CD's that I can space-shift one legally, but not the other?
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
What about "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"?
The Fouding Fathers knew that it was not enough to guarantee people's rights, because some morons would try to argue those rights away, they took steps to make sure the people would have the rights to *fight* for their rights. A copyright breaking device is a weapon against injustice, and it's our *sacred right*, according to the Second Ammendment, to keep and bear it.
you'd do better to pick a month that didnt have the releases of the next star trek and lotr movies, at least with this crowd.
I think you repeated every single commonly-used /. argument. How quaint. Fortunately, since I already know all these arguments, I also know all the rebuttals.
/. argument. You forgot the bit about the labels ripping off the artists. Strange... very few people forget that one.
It's not government's responsibility to prop them up by becoming their enforcement arm.
What is the government's responsibility anyway? I mean, I'm sure you have your own fantasy about what a government does, but the actual real government does spend quite a lot of its effort propping up industry. And I know you probably think that's only because they're in the pocket of industry, but it might also have something to do with the fact that a healthy economy is more likely to get them re-elected.
The telegram industry was a perfectly legitimate industry that employed millions of people. If they were the RIAA, they would lobby to ban the telephone because it is a threat to their bottom line. It makes little sense.
Except you left out a major difference between telegrams and music. The telegram was rendered obsolete by the telephone. Music isn't becoming obsolete; CDs are. That's a huge distinction.
Look at their sales records, in the days of Napster (when music piracy was totally rampant) they enjoyed RECORD SALES. Sales have since dropped.
I always love this one. As if the relationship between piracy and music sales is so direct and immediate that you could turn Napster on and sales would immediately skyrocket. By that same logic, Dubya is directly responsible for the economic slump and it has nothing to do with the boom-bust cycle that began in the 90s.
The problem lies in the fact that I can't put the new Linkin Park CD into my MP3 collection.
Oh look, a red herring. We weren't discussing DRM. We were discussing piracy specifically. Don't try to confuse the two.
Maybe this drop in sales is not because of music piracy, but because the vast majority of music released (read: shoved down our throats) is total crap
You have music shoved down your throat? Poor you. I listen to music mostly at home, at work, and in the car. I guess you spend most of your time in elevators and shopping malls or on hold.
If the RIAA wants to stay in business, they should move from strongarm anti-piracy attempts to actually improving their product.
This is the most specious argument of all. Firstly, you are basically justifying mob rule. Secondly, people obviously people want the product or they wouldn't be pirating it. I don't listen to N'Sync but millions of teenaged girls do. Although I'm sure there is some kind of conspiracy out there to suppress the music you like, I will at least acknowledge that some of the bands I like just aren't mainstream enough to have huge followings.
As a side note, the prices for CDs are insane. I went CD shopping the other day and was apalled to see that a CD I wanted had a sticker on it for $20.
And you didn't buy the CD. Congratulations, that's the way capitalism is supposed to work. If all you want is music, there's plenty of music out there for $10 or less, even from popular artists. I picked up most of Rush's back catalog for $8 a pop. Heck, if quality isn't your number 1 priority, check out the 99 cent bin at your local used CD store.
$20! That's roughly $0.50 a minute for a normal CD! Phone sex lines give better rates than that.
Hey, that's some bargain phone sex. Anyway, how is that a fair comparison? Is it that you listen to the music CDs once and throw them away or do you tape your phone sex calls and listen to them repeatedly?
Oh wait, you didn't repeat *every* single commonly-used
-a
How to rationalize theft.
I may be totally off base, but I don't think the reason the entertainment industry is fighting digital technology is because they are worried about Joe Consumer copying CDs and giving them to friends. People have been making copies of stuff for the last 20-30 years, and while the Internet may facilitate the process some, I don't think it greatly increases the damage on individual consumer can inflict on the entertainment industry. When I was in high school and college 15 years ago, people copied records (remeber those?) and CDs all the time..it's something those who are perpetually low on cash do. The Internet extends an individual's reach to some degree, but how many people can I email my CDs to anyway? Widescale distribution through things like Kazaa can be abusive, but those people could be caught and dealt with accordingly. With extreme DRM technolgy measures, the ones who are seriously trying to stick it to the industry through piracy will find ways to circumvent the technology and Joe Consumer will be left paying over and over for what costs him once today.
The real threat that the entertainment industry is trying to fight off is the independent music artist or film maker. The Internet has the potential to completely bypass the people who control the entertainment industry today and they don't like it. If they lose control over how digital works are distributed, they lose their cut and they whither and die. They are hiding behind the facade of "piracy" to protect their franchise. If the draconian DRM measures take hold, you'll wake up to find one day that even distributing your own works will be defined as "piracy" since the entertainment industry hasn't sanctioned said distribution.
--z
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!