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.

Comments

The Judge should be persuaded by

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony v. Universal. If it's good enough for the Supreme Court...

Re:The Judge should be persuaded by

[sould]

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.

DVD X Copy

[swtaarrs]

I've seen DVD X Copy at stores, and it has false claims on the box. It claims to copy the whole dvd onto one dvd-r, which is impossible for many commercial movies. Dvd-r's are single layered and only 4.7Gb(4.5 usable), but many(most?) professional movies are on double layer discs which hold twice that, therefore not fitting on a single dvd-r.

Re:DVD X Copy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Let the hybrid robot with the rat brain decide

[corebreech]

Probaby get a better decision that way.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Excerpt from the article:

Illston(the judge) asked Zacharia to explain the conundrum of locking up copyrighted works behind encryption and then making the breaking of that encryption illegal, even after the copyrights on those works expire. The judge wondered if it would effectively extend copyrights to keep such works out of the public domain. Zacharia said it would not, because the copyright had expired. "But it's encrypted. If it doesn't stop being encrypted, it's still encrypted," Illston said, adding that such protected works still couldn't be legally copied.

A judge with a clue?

Re:hmm

[Guppy06]

Nah. If she had a clue, she'd know that copyrights never expire. It's heresy to even say such a thing, and I'm sure men with black helicopters and black mouse ears will be showing up soon to take her away for "questioning."

Re:This is nice

[Timesprout]

eh not really. The judge has already admitted
"I am substantially persuaded by them," she told both sides.
referring to previous decisions in favour of copyright holders in similar cases.

Possible inconsistent interpretation of the law?

[harmonics]

Amazing, one week we have solid interpretation of digital rights laws and their impact on Fair Use (Grokkster Case), and now this? I admit it isn't over yet, but some one please explain to me how the VCR is any different?

Perhaps it's just me, but the last few years has been painful to watch, perhaps my politically apathetic body needs to get into action...

Ahh hell, I live in Florida, the Mouse rules here with an white gloved iron fist!

stupid

[SHEENmaster]

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."

Re:stupid

[More Trouble]

The software allows people to exercise their right to make a backup copy of digital media

So does a simple block copy. DeCSS is not necessary for making backup copies. DeCSS is necessary for making unlicensed players, tho. CSS is a licensing tool, not an anti-piracy tool. Maybe they should show the judge that you can easily make copies of DVDs without DeCSS. Think she'd get the point?

:w

when will they understand

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

1. copyright protection is the legal protection given to works
2. copy protection is the snake oil used to prevent fair use and to slow incompetent pirates

Don't use DVD X Copy... Use one of these instead:

[diatonic]

There are thre software packages currently available to copy a full DVD9 disc to DVD5. All three will resample the video to fit on a single layer recordable DVD.

DVD2One is incredible fast, and gives the option of 'Movie Only' stripping menus and extras, or 'Entire Disc'. It can process an entire 8GB DVD in about 25 minutes on my 1.4 GHz T-bird.

DVD 95 Copy will preseve entire disc stucture (resampling video and giving option of discarding unwanted audio) Takes about 2-3 hours to process.

Pinnacle Instant Copy will also preserve entire disc. Takes about 4 hours to process disc.

Hope this helps,
.:diatonic:.

Re:Possible inconsistent interpretation of the law

[Anonymous Coward]

one please explain to me how the VCR is any different?

Encryption and the DMCA. If DVD's weren't encrypted this wouldn't even be an issue.

Please GPL it

[argoff]

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.

Copyright never expires now

[beldraen]

Illston asked Zacharia to explain the conundrum of locking up copyrighted works behind encryption and then making the breaking of that encryption illegal, even after the copyrights on those works expire. The judge wondered if it would effectively extend copyrights to keep such works out of the public domain. Zacharia said it would not, because the copyright had expired. "But it's encrypted. If it doesn't stop being encrypted, it's still encrypted," Illston said, adding that such protected works still couldn't be legally copied.

I had never thought of this before. Think about it: If any work now has solely been release to the public in an encrypted form, then if anyone has copied/clipped/fair-use used the item, then the corporation can always go after the individual; therefore, copyright is completely irrelavent since encryption is enforced forever. Maybe I'm the only one who just caught this, but it seems no one has explicitly stated it this way.

Movie length does not dictate size

[diatonic]

DVD's use variable bitrate MPEG-2 encoding, and even short movies can be >4.5 GB... I think it's being done as form of copy protection on commercial DVDs to sample the video at excessively high rates. I saw a single disc rip of LOTR the Two Towers that was on a DVD-R and the video looked great (it was a DVD rip from a disc submitted to the academy).

Look at movies done with Apple's iDVD (constant bitrate encoding) where 60 minutes can take an entire DVD-R.

.:diatonic:.

Re:Movie length does not dictate size

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

yah right!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so I bought hundreds of records in the 80's and I confined them to the dustbin (or lost them) when CD's became mainstream. Do you really expect me to pay once for tape, again for vinyl, again for CD's, and again for your next format, and the next... ?
The same for the MPAA! I bought a DVD and it developed a crack not through my own fault of abuse. I sent it back to the 'house' that produced it and never received a response.
Oh my question: When we buy a CD or a DVD what exactly are we buying ? (rights to view/listen ? a piece of plastic ? rights to put on another medium ?)

My answer: The right to spend money so these greedy assholes can get million dollar salaries, never answer questions, and buy lawyers!

the way I look at it

[toddhunter]

If they sell me a DVD or CD, I'll do whatever I want to do with it. If I want to copy it, I will, If I want to crack the copy-protection, I will. If I want to sit around the house using them as frisbees I'll bloody well do that too. If they don't like it, then stop selling me DVD's and CD's. Make it impossible to 'buy' them, and start a renting agreement. Then fair enough, I'll pay my money, agree to the temporary license and leave it at that. So stop prenteding you are not selling me something. if you do, then it is mine.

You have been lured to the SIDESHOW!

[Tiger Smile]

Welcome to the sideshow! Here you are argue that the DMCA does, or does not allow fair use as it existed before the DMCA.

Avoid the Sideshow. Vote. Forget this arguement. The people who passed the DMCA need to go. Do something other than letting your butt get bigger reading postings and eating hohos. Write a letter.

If you don't like it like I do, take action. Don't wait for someone to save your rights like the EFF. Help them, by donating money, time, and help yourself by writing and calling.

For God's sake please don't complain unless you are willing to do something. I hope that everyone here who cliams to have some passion about this issue is willing to do something. If that is so we'll have no trouble making our opinions known.

PS: Sorry, about the butt...errr...crack earilier in my post. :)

-- James Dornan

Re:circumventing protection != circumvnent copyrig

[IWannaBeAnAC]

The problem is that "fair use" applies to copyright law. Unfortunately there is no similar "fair use" provision in the DMCA for circumventing copy protection.

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?

Re:Backups as fair use?

[Drachemorder]

"If you buy a can opener and it breaks, do you expect to get another can opener for free"

A can opener or a book is a physical item. When you buy a can opener, you're buying one can opener. You actually posses that item. This is not so with DVDs, according to the MPAA and their cronies: instead, you are buying the right to watch the movie contained in that DVD. Therefore it's reasonable to claim that this right persists regardless of what happens to the physical medium the movie is contained on.

The movie is an abstract concept (i.e. "intellectual property"); the can opener is a physical item. The two are inherently different.

Re:circumventing protection != circumvnent copyrig

[Anonymous Coward]

If you guys REALLY want to have a mind bender the judge is mulling over the fact that the DMCA might be unconstitutional due to the fact that it denies access to works even AFTER the copywrites expire. Here is the la times article on it.