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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
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."
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.