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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."
And 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... *whistle and confetti!* congratulations Circuit City!!! You just got sued!
That is, unless Circuit City is giving a cut of the money to the MPAA. Thankfully Circuit City has deep pockets and good lawyers, it should be interesting to see the MPAA go up against them instead of picking on little kids.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
Did some bean counter had a brain fart when performing the benefit analysis? Make gobs of money by ripping DVDS minus bigger gobs of money paying attorney fee equals a world of hurt.
I don't care much for Circuit City, but I'm glad they're taking this on. It's going to take companies like this to change the mindset (god knows no one wants to listen to "the little guys")
My studio - www.graylands.ca
10 bucks per CD? Better option is to get the DVD Decrypter and donate a few bucks to the developers :)
S
I know they're just looking for another revenue stream, but its great to see big companies (even inadvertently) fighting the system on behalf of individuals rights.
They must have thought this through. You don't do something risky like this if you're a massive business. They must have talked to a lawyer and have A) a loophole, or B) a license to do this (sharing profits with MPAA?). I mean, million or billion dollar companies are careful to avoid these sorts of lawsuit-risking moves, simply because they're a huge target.
In what way would this violate the DMCA?
Since Circuit City has the software and tools to do the copy and would presumably not be handing them out to customers the standard "providing tools to circumvent copyright" issue wouldn't apply. Since backups for play on another device are fair use and legal I don't see the issue.
Obviously, since companies don't like getting sued into non-existence I suspect Circuit City feels they are on sold legal ground as well.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
I wouldn't make the mistake of assuming they are 'standing up' to anyone. Either they will get sued and desist/settle, strike an arrangement to kick back to the MPAA, or get totally ignored.
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.)
My ZooLoo
Not every joe sixpack is savvy enough to have backed up his DVD collection. Some of my old original disks are already failing on commercial players. (Stargate season 1, bought when it first came out, is now unplayable.)
As people find more and more of their disks failing, these services could become seriously mainstream. And at 10bucks a pop, a lucrative source of cash.
Does anyone have the numbers on whether or not circuit city can afford to stand its legal ground against the MPAA? I imagine they'll probally settle out of court such that Circuit City can make the copies, provided that they include the same copy-protection stuff on the copied DVD as was on the original. The stakes that Circuit City and the MPAA are gambling are frighteningly high, as they risk setting a legal precident that says that you can't bypass copy protection for your own fair-use rights. On the other hand, a precident the other way would be a deathknell to a lot of the provision of the DMCA.
This is pretty interesting, especially coming from the company who was one of the original partners in DIVX...you remember, the "pay-per-view" DVD's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX. Even if they are only driven by profit, it's nice to see them take a more "consumer friendly" position.
----- Connection reset by beer
In what way would this violate the DMCA?
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A).
Legally, a corporation is a 'person,' and movies on DVD are almost all protected by copyright.
geek. lawyer.
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.
Hm, it WOULD be interesting to see Circuit City say "ok, ok, we'll quit ripping your stupid DVDs" then replace their entire DVD/CD section with iPod-loading kiosks. Leftover floorspace would go to selling ipods and various accessories. (Ok, ok, they could even throw in a PlaysForSure store and a few players). You could even float this past the shareholders by talking about "embracing the future of electronic delivery of goods".
This is an interesting point. Does the DMCA specifically disallow the sale or distribution of tools that provide for a circumvention, or does it disallow the circumvention itself? If it is the former, then Circuit City is just providing a service that enables the fair use rights of the consumer.
Now, if the act of circumvention itself is illegal, then CC is up a creek without a legal paddle.
The average consumer can't afford the thousands of dollars it would cost to get one of those licenses, but Circuit City could...
Oh, and yay for DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink!!!
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.
Agreed, but Average Joe is not going to want to bother keeping up in the DRM arms race for casual pir^H^H^HFair Use purposes, and will happily pay a smart techie to do this for him, saving himself from (A) having to learn to do it himself and (B) being directly liable for breaking the DMCA.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Street vendors in China have been doing this same thing for years at a much lower price.
Read any good sonnets lately?
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.
Ahh but Best Buy isn't nearly as good as it used to be, higher prices, smaller selection, worse return policies. I gave up on Best Buy a few years ago anow now use Circuit City almost exclusively for my local (what I don't buy online) needs. Their order-online > store-pickup program is fantastic and their prices alsmost always match those of Best Buy exactly.
* Start DVD copy service
...
* Cash in on DVD copy service for all it's worth while waiting for the inevitable lawsuit
* Use lawyers already on retainer to string out the suit against DVD copy service as long as possible.
* Pay 10% of DVD copy earnings in settlement, promise never to do a DVD copy service ever again.
* Start unrelated DVD duplication service using equipment already conveniently at hand.()
() Remember to trademark "DVD Duplication service", "DVD Backup service", "Disc copy service", "Disc Duplication service", "Disk Kopy DudeZ", "Dupe It Man!"
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
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.
The best thing we, as consumers, can do at this point is to take Circuit City up on their offer. Use the service they're providing. If the market gets lucrative enough, the other electronics giants (Best Buy, Fryes, etc.) will want a piece of the action. At that point, none of them will want to listen to the MPAA's whining and will do everything in their power to maintain their hold on this new market.
You want a bunch of bigwig companies to gang up on the MPAA? I think this is the best way to accomplish that.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
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
"Copyright" is the right of a person to copy something. The copyrighted content does not have the copyright, the person does (or does not).
The "Kinko's Rule" demonstrates how copyright is not transferable, even under fair use. Let's say I have a book I bought. My fair use includes the copyright to photocopy pages, an entire chapter, for my personal consumption. If I'm a teacher, that even includes giving copies of a chapter (though not the whole book) to, say, 30 people in a class I teach. I go to Kinko's; I walk up to a photocopier; I set it to 30 copies; I turn the pages through the chapter on the machine; I collect the 30 copies of the chapter; I pass them out to each person in my class. No problem - I have the copyright to use the book's content fairly that way.
But if I take that book to the Kinko's service desk, ask the Kinko's employee (or even just another customer with extra time on their hands) to copy the book for an otherwise identical usage scenario, I'm not allowed. Because the employee does not have the copyright to fairly use that book for anything (except maybe reading it as borrowed by a "friend"), because they did not obtain any copyrights by buying the book. The fair use copyrights I have on the book I bought are not transferable to another person - they are not contained in the book I physically pass to the employee, they are contained in the transaction of buying (and thereby owning) the book.
This rule is the same when I bring a CD or DVD to Kinko's. I could use their burner to copy them for myself. But not for distribution to other people, though fair use of audio and video recordings does allow me to lend a single copy to a "friend", though I'm not allowed to use my own copy while another copy is loaned out. The rule says I cannot leave my CD or DVD with someone else at Kinko's to copy for me. And of course that rule applies to Circuit City, too.
So how is Circuit City ripping these DVDs for users? In the last five years, several small companies started up to rip CDs for people, violating the Kinko's Rule. They were all told (I heard the warnings personally) by lawyers and copyright owners/"enthusiasts" that they were breaking the law, that their income would be siezed whenever a copyright owner wanted to sue them. That's the main reason why we haven't been able to have our media ripped from the physical media that traps so much value out of play: the small companies that always innovate fast ("entrepreneurs") have been stopped by legal intimidation.
Now Circuit City is doing it anyway. Will they be stopped by the Kinko's Rule, and kill the whole business for everyone, even those who have been getting away serving with the consumer demand "below the radar"? Or will they demonstrate (in court, perhaps) that the Kinko's Rule is out of business? Or will some kind of "big corporation" collusion between the RIAA/MPAA and Circuit City just leave them alone, while enforcing the Kinko's Rule on entrepreneurs, keeping them (us) from competing?
--
make install -not war
After reading this, I too thought that Circuit City was doomed. Until I realized what they are up to!
By them promoting the transfer option they have not actually done anything illegal yet. But they have done a couple things. They have made their image better in the eyes of the public and they are going to provide a service that their competitors can not match. (Best Buy, Frys, Wal-mart, Target, etc.)
So how do we (the consumer) get the rest of their competition to join in? Simple, we go to each Circuit City competitor (Best Buy, Frys, Wal-mart, Target, etc.) and we ask about their "new ripping service". I am sure that the first 1000 people that do this across the country will cause some confusion since none of their competitors have this service. But the more people that do this, it will cause their management to question, "Why can Circuit City provide this but we can not?" Even before Circuit City actually starts ripping.
I plan on going down to the local BB and talking to the person in the iPod Video department.
The conversation with the clerk should go like this...
-----------
Clerk: Welcome to Best Buy, Can I help you find something today?
Me: Sure, I was looking at getting an iPod video that you have over here.
Clerk: Were you looking at the 20GB or the 40GB? (Blah blah blah)
Me: Well I was interested in the 40GB and I wanted to bring in my DVD movies for you to put on there. I have them in the car.
Clerk: Sir, we are unable to put your DVD movies on the iPod at this time. blah blah blah
Me: Oh, I was just over at Circuit City and they were willing to do it for $10 a movie. What would you charge?
Clerk: Sir, we don't offer that service
Me: Ok. Thanks for your help.
-------------
That's it! That is all we have to do. Remember two main things!
1. DO NOT insult them or their company.
2. Be polite and DO NOT act knowledgable.
By doing these two things they will put you into their "Clueless consumer" category. Which is exactly the market they would sell this service to. THE MORE CLUELESS THE BETTER! Good luck and I hope we have sucess.
-flipsoft
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Please, get your terminology right. Halfway through your post you switch from Macrovision, the company that provides DVD encryption, to Macromedia, the company that provides Flash. I doubt the latter has a care one way or the other in DVD protection.
It's the DMCA, not the DCMA. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Not "Copyright Millennium". And, young man, it doesn't fit the music as well. "It's fun to violate the D-M-C-A!"
Finally, he didn't "give all source code to Macrovision." Ignoring the grammatical ambiguity therein, he gave rights to the code, and unfortunately had not previously licensed it under a perpetual redistribution license. If he had simply GPL'd it (or CC-SA or anything), Macrovision would've had all the source code they wanted and couldn't've done a thing about it.
CleanFlicks lost not because they made a "backup copy" of the original copyrighted work but rather because they manipulated the copyrighted work to edit out "offensive content" without the permission of the copyright holder. This is legal in certain exceptional cases such as parodying a copyrighted work, but in this case, it was a clear violation of copyright law. Cleanflicks sold a modified version of a copyrighted work without the consent of the copyrighted holder, and their main purpose was commercial and not artistic, political etc.
The legal argument against CleanFlicks and the resulting decision in favor of the movie industry focused more on the right of a artistic creator to see his/her work presented in its intended form, without manipulation by 3rd parties, and NOT an attack on the illegal distribution of movies.
Here are some pertinent quotes from the Defendant:
"Directors put their skill, craft and often years of hard work into the creation of a film," added Apted, whose own repertoire includes the 1999 James Bond adventure The World Is Not Enough and Gorillas in the Mist. "These films carry our name and reflect our reputations. So we have great passion about protecting our work...against unauthorized editing."
And from the case itself:
""[Moviemakers'] objective...is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge wrote. "There is a public interest in providing such protection. Their business is illegitimate."
The service that Circuit City is providing is not analogous to that of Cleanflicks. They're not selling a modified version of the movie, nor are they selling ANYTHING. Instead, they're charging for the SERVICE of ripping a movie into a format that's capable of being played in a mobile player. Because they are circumventing CSS, they are breaking the DMCA. Therefore, Circuit City is breaking the law, but for different reasons than that of decision in the Cleanflicks case.
I hate to deflate people's expectations, but this looks *very* much like one store offering this service, not a rollout of a new service across the entire Circuit City corporation.
... now. ;-)
The sole evidence Ars Technica has for this service is a photograph of a flyer! There is nothing on the Circuit City Web site about the service, nor does it look like the company issued a press release touting the new service.
More probably, this "service" was devised by some store manager too ignorant of the ways of the DMCA to understand what he was offering. S/He was just looking to bring in a few more bucks (on the other side of the same display case is another advert on a free in-house PC clinic. I bet that's not a Circuit City wide service either, just a local store initiative). I'm sure DVD ripping service will be discontinued as the minute corporate headquarters gets wind of this. Which, thanks to Slashdot, should be right about
I wouldn't blame the ill-informed Circuit City Manager, nor even Consumerist, which first posted the photo (but wouldn't provide a location interestingly enough). Ars Technica should know better though. That's just sloppy journalism.
joab
I'm not sure that your analysis is really the whole story. It wasn't just the editing that got CleanFlicks in hot water, it was the copying of an edited version. If they had just taken a VHS tape, and physically cut out offensive sections with a razor blade and spliced it back together, they would have been fine. (Actually, my understanding is that some companies did that, pre-DVD, although it's too labor-intensive to be commercially viable.) The problem was that they were editing the film and then reproducing it; even though it was 1 reproduction for every 1 original copy, and they were rendering the originals unplayable, it was still infringement. The problem stemmed from a combination of the commercial nature of the service, the fact that the edits weren't authorized, the fact that the copy could have been passed off as the 'actual movie' (i.e. someone might have watched it and not known that what they were watching was not what the director really made), and the fact that they were making unauthorized copies of the edited versions.
Copyright law is fairly vague, particularly in relation to fair use. It's difficult to look at something like CleanFlicks and say "this action right here, this is what was illegal" within the scope of their entire business practices. It was the whole procedure that was found to be infringing. If they had done the editing without reproduction (e.g. VHS splices, or the timecode based systems now in use) they probably would have been okay. But the combination of things they were doing precluded a fair use defense, and thus they lost.
Anyway, I agree with your ultimate point: Circuit City isn't going to have nearly the problem with copyright law as they're going to have with the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. Frankly if they do end up in court, I think this could end up being a much more significant and interesting case than CleanFlicks was. On the scale of "bad laws," the DMCA is orders of magnitude worse than copyright law even in its current state, since it has no exemption for fair use. In the CleanFlicks case I could at least see the situation from the perspective of the studios or a copyright holder who didn't want edits being made to their stuff, but I don't think that they have any such right to dictate the format in which a viewer watches the Work. Except wherein the format it's watched in has a real impact on the artistic merits of the movie, and where the prohibition is enforced against (say) all portable players because it was designed to only be seen in IMAX theaters, that's not something that a rightsholder should be able to claim control over.
I think we're only starting to see the very beginning of the battles over the DMCA: the number of future services that are going to run afoul of it are just mind boggling; ultimately I think the consumer demand for these services is going to be so great, that if the law is not modified it's just going to be flouted by the public, leading to some Prohibition-like state where the law is so disconnected from reality that it's bordering on irrelevance.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
>strike an arrangement to kick back to the MPAA
That's too naked. What they're doing is illegal. They can't just pay someone off without making it blatantly clear that the DMCA is a tax-generating system for the MPAA et al. And, more basically, they can't just pay someone to break a law. US law doesn't (yet) work that way, even though we treat it as if it does. To the best of my knowledge, they're violating a federal law, which means it's a felony. (I may be wrong: this is just what I've been told.) Either the law goes or they do.
Make no mistake: I think it's a cool idea and if publicized will make a lot of waves when people think "huh, gee, that makes sense: everyone should be able to do that." If it gets publicized before it gets shut down, it's very very bad press for the MPAA. But I don't believe that it will actually happen.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
"And walk out.
You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him.
And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization.
And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out.
And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is , the Circuit City Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Haven't seen any quotes from Richmond so I wouldn't get to excited. Store personnel are encouraged to 'think out of the box' regarding alternative revenue streams - esp. those related to exploiting a workforce that is already in place. The signs in the picture were not sourced from corporate... not very flashy is it? For those hoping for a fight, you probably won't see one - they'll just ask the store director to pull the signs. Remember, CC is a major distributor of Hollywood movies, not because they make money on titles but because it brings in customers to buy other stuff. They will not upset their suppliers.