Slashdot Mirror
DVD Copyright Case Mulled over by Judge
howhardcanitbetocrea writes "news.com is reporting that the judge in a closely watched lawsuit challenging the legality of DVD-copying software said she was 'substantially persuaded' by past court rulings that favored copyright holders, but closed a hearing Thursday without issuing a ruling in the case." This is a case that could very well determine the future of the DMCA, and the article does a good job of summarizing the arguments from both sides.
Unfortunately that judgement preceded the DMCA by about 15 years.
The law has changed since then.
With any luck however, the judge will understand the insanity of limiting fair use.
An item such as a DVD copier has a multitude of non-piracy (aar me hearties) uses.
The software allows people to exercise their right to make a backup copy of digital media; that's fair use. The MPAA likes to sell multiple copies of fragile media.
"If you can't excersize a right, you don't really have it."
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
If the author hasn't already, I plead with him to please GPL the code. With code all over the internet, they will be powerless to stop it.
Hollywood confronts DVD-copy software
Look, 321 Studios got it's start by selling freeware bundled together for $50 and even still sells it to this day. It includes Smartripper and I believe dvdx which is GPL dvdx. DVDToolBox (freeware) can split main movie only two two dvd-rs and also strip out audio and extras, etc. Many in the dvd backup community don't look favorably upon 321 Studios although many wish them luck in court.
What most people do is go to out and buy a dvd burner. Get on google and type in 'dvd copy' that is where it goes down hill. Almost 100 or more hits plus ads are all ripoff dvd software.
I'm keeping a list of ripoff software on my site hoping that others don't fall into the trap but it's inevitable.
BTW, in the above article what I'm trying to say is that this DVD Backup Software is irrelevant and not the cause of revenue being lost. All existing laws are already in place. Stop foreign countries, even people on street corners in big cities in USA from profiting off other's intellectual property. Prosecute those who upload movies to newsgroups, irc, p2p, etc.
The average Joe backing up his movie is NOT where the main concern should be. If Hollywood wins this battle is that going to stop the illegal selling or uploading / downloading of movies? Heck no, it'll just punish the average person from legally making a personal DVD backup.
One of the arguments of the case has been that it does not matter whether copyright is violated or not, as circumventing copy protection is illegal irrespective of the copyright.
But, as I understand the DMCA, there is a link though between copyright and copy protection, as the act only prohibits copy protection when it is applied to a copyrighted work. That is, it is legal to circumvent the copy protection when the content is not under copyright. But, some comments by the lawyers quoted in the article suggest that this is not true, and circumventing ANY copy protection system is illegal? Is that really the case?
I think it's being done as form of copy protection on commercial DVDs to sample the video at excessively high rates.
Boy, that's pretty whacked-out reasoning. Have you ever considered the possibility that movies are encoded at "excessively" high bit rates so that the LOOK GOOD? It doesn't take a trained eye to see the difference between a well-encoded DVD and a poorly-encoded one. The difference jumps right out at you.
Studios want their product to look as good as possible, so they squeeze every last bit onto that disc that they can.