Slashdot Mirror
Protecting Your DRM Rights
A reader wrote to say:"There's an article on SiliconValley.com that talks about a new bill in Congress that will, if passed, mean that consumers can copy CDs, DVDs and other digital works for personal use, just as they now do with TV shows and audio tapes."
Too bad the law won't pass until Congress is in session again next year. Let's just hope that the Democrats win a majority again this year -- they've been much more sensitive to technology issues than the Republicans.
seriouslyexcited.net
Yes! now there are two good guys! Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Virginia. We need a lot more in Congress who will stand up for our rights, instead of selling us out to big business. Tara Grubb, if elected would be a third defender of fair use.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Really? So Clinton was a republican? He signed it into law....
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
As said earlier something similar to this exist in Denmark, but the "right" to copy your own material comes at a cost. All media capable of copying digital music movies etc. has now been taxed, you can not obtain a quality cd-r for less then $1 and mostly it's up about $1.5, also the hardware has rissen in price due to this. Now the irony in this is those who copy music etc. for own use arent stealing anything, they already bought the cd dvd or whatever, however the extra taxes are for compensating the loss in music sales (which would happen anyhow), and this money should (at some expenses of course) be given to the artists.
(strangely enough none of this money is send to programmers, go figrue)
When you say that because of some people who bootleg we should all have our rights stripped away (and that is what your saying) I dismiss any problems you might have because if you dont give a damn about my rights why should I give a damn about you career?
The problem here is that the DMCA violates the fair use clause of the existing copyright laws.
That's funny, since I thought the DMCA said that "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."
So Clinton was a republican? He signed [the Digital Millennium Copyright Act] into law
The DMCA and the Bono Act were both enacted by a voice vote of both houses of Congress; the bills had so much bipartisan support that nobody opposed either measure enough to bring it to a full recorded vote. Had then-President Clinton vetoed them, Congress would havejust passed the bills over Clinton's veto with a 2/3 majority of both houses.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think Hollywood has the idea that if one can copy a DVD, they're just going to give it away bla blah blah. I don't think they've considered that their own talent pool makes good use of copying technology i.e. ripping.
I'll give you an example: I know some peeps who are learning to do 3D rendering and animation. One test of their skills is to see how convincing they can recreate a scene from a movie. For example: Star Trek First Contact. That movie had some scenes shot using studio models of the Enterprise and other ships. One of these guys had a nice mesh of the Enterprise, then he wanted to perfectly recreate the lighting used on the studio model in the movie.
What he did was he bought a copy of the First Contact DVD, then he did a few screen-grabs on his PC. He had very clean pictures to use as reference. Using these images, he started figuring out where the studio lights were placed, and what effects he needed to achieve to minimize the differences. He gained some serious experience in learning how to realistically light a CG model to imitate a 3D model.
Is this an important skill in Hollywood? Oh most definitely! It is a frequent thing to cut from motion control model rigs to CG models. The better the lighting on the mesh, the less startling it is to go from model to CG. (Lost in Space comes to mind...)
This guy was legitimately copying from DVD to improve his talent, and Hollywood may one day hire him for it. However, if Hollywood had their way, he'd have no way to take screen grabs or download the video to his computer for further study. I don't think they have any idea how much damage they may end up doing to the next generation of their talent pool.
The Proposed bill would allow users to make backup copies for personal use, etc.. However, does that backup involve retaining the "native" format?
So, you would be within your rights if you backup a CD and retain it as such; but would you be outside of your rights to "backup" as an mp3 or ogg?
ac
here
basically, all of our feelings, summed up in one article
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
This actually motivated me to write a letter to my state senator. Go Bennett! Maybe us people in utah can acctually do something kick ass like those people in CA.
Correct me if I am wrong, but this right is, and always has been in existance. The DMCA makes it illegal to DISTRIBUTE any circumvention device, it actually states in it that it is ok to bypass protection measures to perform legal actions, but distributing the tool to do this is illegal. If this law really says "Customers can bypass protection measures to make personal copies" it will do nothing for us with regard to DeCSS or any other tool for bypassing protection schemes...it will be ok to have it and use it, but still illegal to share such a program acording to the DMCA. So what would be changed? Isn't that the state we find ourselves in currently? I can crack CSS all I want, I can make copies of DVDs, change the format to VCD or AVI or whatever, but I can't give anyone the tools to do it...
What am I missing? The article does not say what the proposed law would do in this regard. The important right that was taken away from us was not Fair Use...That "law" is still in place, what was taken from us is the right to provide tools that make Fair Use possible, this is the right we need back.
NR