Slashdot Mirror
Circuit City Ripping DVDs for Users
Grooves writes "Circuit City is offering a DVD transfer service that's sure to enrage the MPAA. For $10 for 1 DVD or $30 for 5, Circuit City will violate the DMCA and
rip commercial DVDs for users to put on their mobile players. From the article: 'This should be a viable market. Software and services are losing out to draconian digital rights management philosophies and anti-consumer technologies aimed at increasing revenues stemming from double-dipping--what I call the industry's penchant for charging twice for the same thing.' They note that fair use
backups of DVDs have not been tested in court because all of the attention is focused on the circumvention software itself." Update: 08/04 22:40 GMT by Z : Acererak writes "Red Herring reports that Circuit City isn't offering any DVD-to-DVD copying scheme. The Slashdotted sign was an isolated screwup."
10 bucks per CD? Better option is to get the DVD Decrypter and donate a few bucks to the developers :)
S
In what way would this violate the DMCA?
They're defeating encryption without permission. Same as if you or I use deCSS to do the same thing. It's illegal whether or not we commit infringement. Dumb Law, needs to go.
Mod me troll (and grammar nazi), but DivX is a MPEG4-based codec that was named after the DIVX you-re talking about. That's why the first versions of DivX was named DivX 3.11 :-)
Check out Circuit City's balance sheet. They have over $600 million in cash with only $50 million in long term debt. They have a lot of liquid assets available to finance the legal battle if that's what they choose to do.
10 bucks per CD? Better option is to get the DVD Decrypter and donate a few bucks to the developers :)
Wow, you are more than 1 year behind the times with this post. DVD Decrypter has been dead since early 2005 when Macrovision gave a cease and desist letter to the creator of DVD Decrypter. The reason? DVD Decrypter can be used to remove Macrovision, which is a violation of the DCMA. The creator was forced to stop developing DVD Decrypter and give all source code to Macrovision. I don't know if he was forced to pay a fine to them or not, but he was threatened with legal action and facing the prospect of jail time and/or fines, he accepted their "offer" and gave them the code and removed the software from his website. In fact, the formerly official website now goes straight to Macromedia.
I have read that certain video forums are regularly monitored by Macromedia to see if the developer ever posts anything that in any way can be said to talk about decrypting DVDs or removing Macrovision and if they ever find him saying anything on those topics, they are going to take him to court and try to get him convicted for breaking the DCMA. Given the legal rulings on the subject to date, this is a very realistic possibility. I think he does still participate to a limited extent in video forums, but only on topics that have nothing to do with decrypting DVDs.
It wasn't bought out, and it wasn't shut down by the British version of the MPAA. Macrovision sent a C&D, and LUK went on to continue development of the burning engine from DVDDecrypter, as IMGBurn. DVDDecrypter is still the easiest way to exercise your fair use rights, but due to new corrupted formats like ArCoss, you sometimes need to include another party like DVDFabDecrypter or FixVTS and make an extra step.
From Circuit City's policy on CD ripping (they offer ripping services for CDs):
Can copy-protected CDs be encoded?
Encoding copy-protected discs is a violation of the record company's copyright protection. Get Digital will not encode any copyrighted discs. Instead Get Digital will notify you of any discs with copyright protection. These discs will be set aside and returned to you with the rest of your collection--without charge.
Can a DVD-Audio or SACD disc be encoded?
Both SACD and DVD-Audio discs feature the same copy protection that regular DVDs do. Any SACD, DVD-Audio or standard DVDs will be set aside and returned to you with the rest of your collection without charge.
Sounds to me like they already know about the DMCA, and that this would violate it. I am now more than a little dubious that this is actually being done with corporate's knowledge.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The fact that CC is charging for the reproduction is irrelevant. If I wish to make a fair use photocopy of a book or magazine article, Kinko's is going to charge me for it at 5 or 10 cents per page. Are they charging me for the content? No. They are charging simply for labor, materials. Circuit City is charging for their time and materials (the bank DVD, the storefront, etc). They are not profitting from the content itself, they did that when they sold you the original disk.