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."

Comments

Reversal of Fortune

[fragmentate]

It's a shame that only Circuit City is challenging the MPAA. Their offering is commercially viable. But I don't think Circuit City has the financial wherewithall to take this to its conclusion.

I would love it if some large corporations would gang up against the MPAA and RIAA. Power without challenge is a dangerous thing -- evidenced by DRM, and the litigious nature of these two agencies.

Many years ago Circuit City bravely (but foolishly) pursued the DivX versus DVD issue (the betamax vs. VHS of its time). That battle, which, if it had gone Circuit City's way, would have hurt the consumer. It's ironic now, because DivX was a kind of DRM back then. You bought a movie at a lower price but had to renew via a special player that connected to a site over a phoneline to renew your ability to watch that movie. Or, you could spend more and get "unlimited viewing" -- assuming, of course, the movie studio even offered it. From the initial releases there were only a handful of movies that could be had for "unlimited viewing."

There was a grass-roots effort to thwart this nonsense (DRM over the phone) and DVD as we know it now won the battle; only to be replaced by another DRM years later. A much more pervasive and restrictive DRM. The irony of Circuit City's current stand is thick.

This time, however, I'd back 'em up... Is someone up to the cause? Does the grass even have roots anymore? In spite of all of the podders out there, I don't think most of them have the mental fortitude to stand against the MPAA/RIAA. Are they even aware?

(objectively speaking: this could be a bad idea because you can bring in any number of iPods and copy a single movie to each of them. This, I believe, it's ethically reprehensible; it's also a major flaw behind this service.)

Re:Reversal of Fortune

[R2.0]

Dammit - my mod points just expired.

You hit the nail on the head. The Circuit City/DivX fiasco should be the textbook business case that we push to the public and Congress whenever the **AA's start trotting out the "piracy is killing us" line.

There is nothing like pain as a negative reinforcement, and Circuit City took it up the ass (no lube, either) directly due to the overly restrictive controls on their product. They KNOW how much it hurt business, and can point straight to the balance sheet. So I'm not surprised they are looking in the other direction.

As for pissing off the **AA's, I seem to recall that Disney was their partner in the DivX fiasco, and once things started going sour, Disney hung them out to dry. Maybe that's why Disney never learned from it - they never experiencede teh pain, and so are still in love with DRM. I can't see any love lost between Circuit City and the content producers.

Re:Benefit Analysis Is Flawed...

[uniqueUser]

If CC spends say, 2 million on lawyer fees for this vs. 2 million in TV adds (which TIVO takes care of alraedy), then maybe that may have a better rate of return.

Right on..
The first thing that I thought of when I read the blurb on the main /. page was "Wow, I should start shopping there more often b/c they get it."

Now wait just a minute

[acvh]

The article we are discussing is based on ONE photograph of ONE cheesily printed DVD Copy flyer. This could be nothing more than a prank; it could be one store or department manager trying to increase sales; it could be the real thing (but I doubt it).

Has anyone checked with Circuit City to see if the speculation is grounded in reality?

I thought not.

Re:Circuit City has cash for the fight

[ThisIsForReal]

As much as we all like to see companies and people stand up to the MPAA and RIAA, this may not be a good idea.

At its heart this is about a company profiting off of the removal of DRM and re-extending fair use to a product that really shouldn't have DRM on it (or so sayeth most slashdotters). What if this is discovered to be the next business model? Cripple things with DRM, and then for additional money they'll take them off?

Shutter...If only Circuit City were doing this for free.

Re:good to see..

[squiggleslash]

The assumption keeps being made that Circuit City hasn't actually been authorized to do this.

I'd like to know where that assumption comes from.

The unauthorized circumventing of access controls isn't even just a mere civil offense, it's criminal. People can go to jail for that. Exactly why are people assuming that CC hasn't actually done their homework and at the very least got some kind of permission from the DVD-CCA to go ahead with this project. Given the prices they're charging, and the nature of the service, it looks to me like something the DVD-CCA would approve. All we have is an article from an increasingly dumber Ars Technica (they're not what they were.) which infers that they don't have permission only from the fact that the service exists.

The high expensive, and the intended use (which may even involve converting DVDs to another DRM'd format, we don't know at this stage) certainly suggests that the service wouldn't have been veto'd automatically on presentation to the DVD-CCA. And we're assuming at this stage that Circuit City aren't pointing a miniDV camera at a plasma TV.