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Two Congressmen Push for DMCA Amendments
silicon not in the v writes "Rep Rick Boucher, D-Va, is proposing a bill to amend the DMCA to specifically allow copying digital media for the purpose of personal backups. This is, of course, being fought hard by the content lobbies, most significantly the MPAA for its potential for bootlegging DVDs. Here was my favorite quote: 'There is no right in the copyright law to make backup copies of motion pictures, so the whole argument that people should have the right to make backup copies of DVDs has no legal support whatsoever,' said Fritz Attaway, executive vice president of the MPAA." See also stories from the Associated Press and CNet.
From the article:
There is no right in the copyright law to make backup copies of motion pictures, so the whole argument that people should have the right to make backup copies of DVDs has no legal support whatsoever
EFF has this to say on the issue:
Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:
* Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
* Making a personal back-up copy of content you own - for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.
(Emphasis mine)
So, the issue is not completely settled, yet. Let's hope that legislation such as those proposed can help settle this matter and take the MPAA down a notch.
Source: http://eff.org/IP//eff_fair_use_faq.html
More Info: http://eff.org/IP/
Josh.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
Copyright law defines what we can't do, not what we can do. If a "right" isn't defined, then it is assumed to be legal. This guy needs a swirly.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
No, I'm the proverbialCOW. ;)
Anyway, somebody always brings up the book analogy in discussions like this, so I will repeat myself:
You ARE allowed to make a personal copy of a book for archival purposes. This doesn't mean you can make a digital copy and post it on your website; it means you can reproduce it in whatever format you like so you can have a backup in case the original deteriorates.
My university had TONS of books in their stacks that were obviously bound photocopies, each with a sticker inside the front cover explaining that the original had fallen apart, and detailing the specific statutes that allowed this.
Wish I'd written down which ones.
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Toothpaste (the cheap plain stuff works well) polishes out the scratches quite well.
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Jose Serrano (D-NY, 16th Bronx) is also a good choice to support, especially when it comes to protecting the 1st Amendment.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
I am pretty sure there is another law out there that states basically, "Once its inside your home, you can do what ever you want." It may have been court ruling as well. If you want to make a copy for every CD/DVD player in your home, it should be legal. If not, I am pretty damn sure it comes close under "fair use" clause.
Now selling those copies on the street corner is illeagal in anyone's book. And giving buddy Joe a copy also boarders on that as well.
I think their biggest fear is of people renting the movie and making a copy. However this practice has been in play for years with VCRs. One of my friends still has the double decker VCR just for that purpose.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
This bill not only allows for making backups, but would require that copy protected so-called CD's be properly labeled as such, and would allow people who own encrypted media (say, a DVD) to bypass the copy protection in order to view it (say, in GNU/Linux).
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I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
Don't forget the Betamax case.
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ADV(mostly distribute anime etc) lets you do this, you just need to send them your old dvd and they will send you a new one free of charge. I sent back a dvd I bought over a year ago, had some problems. Still a hassle, but probably less so than backing up every single dvd you have just in case on breaks.
You don't understand basic copyright law, retard.
Before the DMCA anyone could make a backup copy of DVD's legally. The fair use doctrine is simply stated here Fair Use.
The gist of it is this, does the copy being made have any impact on the copyright holder's ability to make money with the protected work? If I have bought the copy at Wal*Mart and want to copy it on to my HD for my own personal use then that would have been fine before the DMCA. The DMCA makes this copying illegal because DVDs employ a copy protection scheme. If the movie is on a VHS tape then I can still do it. Now, some informed congressmen are attempting to right a wrong when this part of Fair Use was taken away solely because the work was distributed on a DVD.
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Don't forget, you never purchase the DVD directly from the production company itself. The DVD must go through channels, as this is an easier model of doing business.
.
So no, the ~$18.50 is not all going to the studio. Some of that goes to the retail outlet where you purchased it, some went to the warehouse which stored it, some went to the distributor who shipped it to the warehouses across the nation . .
All in all, probably only 1/4 to 1/3 of the retail price of a DVD goes back to the original production company. So if a DVD is $20, assume at most probably $8 goes back to the company. $1.50 for media and jewel case production, probably $.25 each disc for marketing, and you've got just over $6 going to profit.
A far cry from the $18.50 you proposed was the license to view.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Certainly! As I understood the executive summary of the bill, it covers what your average slashdotter would consider "fair use" i.e. making backups but also converting the media to another format or decrypting it for personal use.
There is a well-worded form letter that you can fill out and have emailed or faxed to your US Representative urging them to support the bill. (Automated too so you just enter your address and it sends it to the right Rep.) The entire text of the bill itself is available here.
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Yes.
See this post for a link to the full text.
Actually, you're (partly, maybe) wrong.
from MS, referring to XP
"Can I make a second copy of my Windows operating system software for my portable computer?"
"The End-User License Agreement (EULA) for many Microsoft application software products contains the following sentence: "The primary user of the computer on which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is installed may make a second copy for his or her exclusive use on a portable computer." If your EULA contains this sentence, then, subject to the conditions mentioned, you may make a second copy of the software. "
There is no law saying I can't xerox my book.
Well, I don't know about that. And here's where my understanding of copyright law breaks down.
Section 106 - 106(1) states: Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
So this says that the copyright holder's the only person who can make exact copies (barring limitations later defined). Now, we have Fair Use, Section 107, which is the most commonly used deflection of the law. In particular, it states that copying is permitted... but not for backup purposes. As a counterpoint, Section 117 on Computer Software explicitely states that copying for archival purposes is allowed (Section 117(a)(2)). I have yet to find a similar declaration for books, music, or visual (stillframe or moving) works.
So it seems that, yes, there is a law sayig you can't Xerox your book. In practicality, Xeroxing a whole book is a time-consuming and tedious affair, so it hasn't been hilighted (well, recently, anyway). Digital media is quickly and easily copied, thus all the hooplah.
That said, do I think there should be an amendment stating that making archival copies of any such media should be allowed? Hell yes! I think that's 100% within the right of the consumer. If someone could point out explicitely where is it already a law and prove me wrong, I'd be very grateful.
Making it to the house floor has nothing to do with "jurisdiction" of a committee, and everything to do with what the House Rules Committee says. What committee the bill is in at any given time doesn't matter that much. In the US House of Representatives, when a bill is debated, what committees (and how many) that bill is shuffled to, how much debate will be on the bill, even the number of offered ammdenmdents, are all decided by the House Rules Committee.
The Rules Committee can shuffle a bill to any number of committees, even ones that don't seem to have juristiction (or even have to do with anything related to the bill!) You are probably thinking of the US Senate, where bills are only refered to one committee (rarely two, but the secondary committee has far less powers). Most people think the power in the US House is on Ways and Means, but the real power is on the Rules Committee. Those members decide what/when/where happens to every bill.
Because a bill has to pass all committees before it is allowed on the House floor, a common tactic to kill legislation used by the Rules Commitee refer it to many, many committees. Failure to get approval from any one of the committees results in the bill's demise.
Getting a bill to the House floor is a duanting task, but if the bill does make it out of committee it has a good chance of an up or down vote without major modification. In the House, only germane ammendments (previously approved by the Rules Committee) may be offered. Filibusters do not occur in the House.
In the Senate, bills are only refered to one committee (usually) so getting out of committee is much easier. The flipside of this process is in the Senate, non-germane ammendments are allowed, and there always exists the risk of filibuster.
Hope that clarifies things.
Chevy can't come after me for that.
Wrong.
Every Chevy car has patents stamped all over the place. You can not just look at the design of the car and make your own copy out of a raw materials. Well, you will probably get away with making it, but not selling it. However, you can always license all the patents, usually by bying the components from GM.
badness 10000
Among other things, this would allow products like TIVO to legally defeat encryption to access HDTV. Currently it is unlikely the TIVO will ever work with HDTV because it is illegal for them to reverse engineer the encryption that protects the digital data stream from an HDTV receiver. The companies that make HDTV sets will undoubtedly include their own lame TIVO imitations so they can up the prices of their sets, but it won't be the same.
1 07 :
Here's the bill:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.
There's a site where you can send an email to your congressperson asking them to support the bill.
http://www.protectfairuse.org/
Next I suppose we cannot backup commercial software?
Well, there's an explicit exception in the copyright law for doing this. There's no corresponding explicit exception for movies. For making backups of DVDs, you'd have to depend on fair use or squeezing the DVDs under the definition of "computer programs" per section 117.
*bzzt, wrong*
You don't have the right to REDISTRIBUTE copyrighted works. I can make a million copies of something privately, and if I don't distribute them I HAVEN'T BROKEN ANY LAWS.
What, did you just go through that MPAA-sponsored 'class' in school? The one where they say "if you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it"?
I'd prefer that they make the discs more resilient in the first place.