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Japanese Digital TV Viewers Complain About DRM Restrictions
Riktov writes "The Japan Times reports that that viewers of digital broadcast TV, which started this past April, are complaining to national broadcaster NHK about restrictions on recording. Many of the complaints seem to arise from viewers who are confused as to why they can't copy rather than angry that they can't copy, but in the end all viewers are learning the hard way about content restrictions."
More and more people will now just download what they want to watch / edit / et al - this will push more and more people underground. The RIAA hasn't had much success with stopping such a thing, (ooh, 500 people served every month?) so I wonder how much success the networks etc will have with it.
Right now, you can download damn near dvd (read tivo compressed with xvid) quality rips of virtually every tv show off the internet - and usually very quickly (assuming you have broadband and that you are trying to get something that was aired in the last month). These rips have no commericals and look even better than what I get through the cable tv.
I really can't see why people would want to actually sit in front of a TV and suffer through 20 minutes of commericals, especially given the fact that you can watch it when you want and not have to worry about setting the damn vcr or any of these bullshit copy restrictions.
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For an individual, stripping out broadcast flags to make recordings you are legally allowed to make is not a crime.
DMCA TITLE 17 CHAPTER 12 Sec. 1202. (b)(1)
And that's ignoring any issues with modifying the TV receiver itself and that you managed to avoid any circumvention issues.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
That is not "fair use".
LOL. Of course it is. I don't even know where to begin arguing it because I can't imagine what makes you think it isn't fair use.
Most people make that sort of error based on a backwards reading of section 107, thinking that is is an exhaustive list granting fair use. In fact it is not an exhaustive list - it merely lists six examples of fair use and lists four examples of factors to include in determining fair use. Nor does it grant fair use. In fact all it does is recognize existing fair use rights (as stated in the congressional record when it was passed) and state that fair use is never copyright infringment. Fair use is not granted by copyright law, fair use sweeps away copyright law.
But even that doesn't make sense because you clearly know that shifting is fair use. Under that sort of backwards reading of 107 even time-shifting would not be fair use. So I don't know what makes you think it somehow becomes infringment to edit out the commercials or to keep a private collection.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The way Section 107 is written, I do not understand it either.
What it says is:
the fair use of a copyrighted work, including [examples] is not an infringement of copyright.
If something is fair use then it's not infringment. Fair use completely sweeps aside all of copyright law.
Of course that leaves the question of what is fair use? Well the rest of 107 is merely four examples of "factors to be considered" in determining fair use. Determining fair use is done by the courts. The courts shall weigh at a minimum those four factors, but they can weigh any other factors they like. To put it bluntly, fair use includes anything the courts decide it includes.
A fundamental aspect is that 107 is irrelevant. Fair use never appeared in copyright law before 1976, yet fair use existed before that. 107 could be striken from law and there would be no change. The congressional record says that 107 was merely written to acknowledge existing rights, that it was not intended to enlarge/diminish/alter fair use in any way at all.
Much of fair use was mapped out by the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds. For example it is almost impossible to effectively review or criticize a book or movie or political speach without copying portions of it into the review/criticism. The literal text of copyright law says that such copying is infringment. That means copyright law could unconstitutionally prohibit other people's 1st amendment protected right to make their own original reviews/criticism speech.
So prior to passing 107, copyright law was technically unconstitutional. Ordinarily the courts simply strike down any unconstitutional law as null and void. The courts wanted to aviod such a sweeping and disruptive result, so instead they bent over backwards to assume that copyright law implicitly never attempted to apply in the first place. They assumes that copyright law implicitly flees when faced with fair use.
There is no simple way to define fair use, and the Supreme Court has specificly said that it is impossible to give a full listing of fair use - that someone could show up tomorrow with a never before dreamt of use, and that only the courts can ultimately decide if it is fair use.
Probably one of the most enlightning aspects is that initially all use is fair use and that all such works lie in the public domain. The constitution give congress the power - if they chose to do so - to take a limited bundle of rights from the public for a limited time and give them to the copyright holder. Congress my only do so for the public benefit. The Supreme Court has explicitly said that the purpose of copyright *MUST* ultimately be for the benefit of the public, rejecting copyright holder benefit as a purpose of copyright law. The public willingly turns over this limited bundle of rights to copyright holders because the public expects to benefit from doing so. It gives creators an incentive to create for the public and an incentive to distribute thier works to the public. When copyright expires the work falls back into the public domain, where it was before copyright temporarily lifted it out of the public domain. Copyright law was created to encourage the flow of more works into the public domain, that is why it is constitutionally required to expire.
To put it simply, copyright holders were given a limited bundle of rights, an exclusive monopoly to commercially exploit a work. Anything not included in that bundle is fair use. For example making a backups and recording with a VCR do not infringe their limited monopoly to commercialize that work. Such uses were never a part of the bundle granted to copyright holders in the first place. They were never given any rights to relating to personal use. Once you have received a copy, private use is fair use. Whatever you do with it in your home is not part of the copyright grant.
Taping TV shows for personal use, building a collection, editing them, none of that infringes their lim
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.