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MPAA Sues Company For Selling Pre-Loaded iPods
ColinPL writes, "The MPAA has launched yet another 'defensive attack,' this time on a small business that is pre-loading movie DVDs onto iPods and reselling them. The original DVDs of the movies that are loaded are also given to the customer. The MPAA is claiming that the service Load 'N Go Video offers is completely illegal because ripping a DVD is against the DMCA. The MPAA is also suing the company for copyright violation."
If you are not licensed to use the legitimate key to decrypt the video stream, and you use it, it is likely that what you are doing is illegal.
The DMCA was signed into law by Clinton. If you know nothing about American politics, shut the fuck up.
It doesn't need to be. The Legislature has already spoken. See Title 17 Section 1008 of the U.S. Code:
(Emphasis mine). It says "no action". The use of a digital audio recorder by a consumer for non-commercial purposes is pretected. Note that the definition of "digital audio recorder" seem to include MP3 players or iPods. The grey area in this case is that it's not the consumer who's doing the transfer, it's the company selling the equipment.
My blog
It does something (completely unintuitive and impossible to grok) if you hit the checkbox to enable testing the horrible new discussion system. In regular mode it indeed sticks to just generating javascript errors.
Since I haven't found an explanation elsewhere...
:)
One and four either shows the parent and its replies or the collapsed parent and a message stating "4 hidden comments" or whatever.
Two toggles the collapsed state of the comment you click and any of its children that don't meet your threshold or something.
Three basically just toggles the collapsed state of the comment you click, but doesn't modify its children, except from when you're going from four to three, in which case it collapses ones that don't meet the threshold.
The difference between one and four is that in One, upon expanding a comment, if one of the children was collapsed before, it will stay collapsed, while number Four expands all the children too.
I vote for One or Two...
It's hard to argue "fair use" when someone is making money by making a copy... that's the whole point of copyright.
No, copyright is about making money distributing copies. The one doing the copying is not making a copy of their own DVD, they are making a copy of the customer's DVD for the customer.
Making a backup copy of a copyrighted work is completely legal and is explicitly spelled out in copyright law. If you don't own or don't know how to run a CD burner, is paying someone to make the backup copy for you illegal?
There's a reason the MPAA is invoking the DMCA, and that's because the DMCA is what makes breaking encryption illegal even if the actions performed thereafter are legal under copyright law. Were it not for the DMCA, the MPAA would not have a case here at all.
The enemies of Democracy are
Actually, Howard Coble and Orrin Hatch co-introduced this measure into their respective houses of Congress after the relevant treaty was signed by the Clinton Administration's representative at WIPO.
Sponsors of the original bills introduced into each house:
Senate:
Sen Kohl, Herb [WI]
Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT]
Sen Thompson, Fred [TN]
House:
Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14]
Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4]
Rep Hyde, Henry J. [IL-6]
Rep Berman, Howard L. [CA-26]
Rep McCollum, Bill [FL-8]
Rep Bono, Sonny [CA-44]
These folks in the House co-sponsored it after it was amended from its original form, though it still included the anti-circumvention provision:
Rep Paxon, Bill [NY-27]
Rep Pickering, Charles W. (Chip) [MS-3]
Rep Bono, Mary [CA-44]
It is not the consumer doing it... but it is the consumer's "agent" acting under instructions from the consumer. If they were preloading and bundling BEFORE sale, that would be illegal. But they are doing it AFTER the sale, but before delivery and only upon the instruction of the consumer to do so.
Basic agency law -- if you instruct someone to do something, they are your agent and it is as if you were doing it yourself. There are only a limited and specific few things that you can't do by using an agent like this.
Not because of copyright law that is broadly applicable beyond computer programs, but because (1) the license for Windows specifically grants that right, and (2) there is a special provision of copyright law allowing making a copy or adaptation of a computer programs necessary to run the program in the ordinary way.
Neither of these is applicable to DVDs.
Dell has an OEM agreement which gets them discounted software. They could just as easily use normal copies, but it would cost them more. Your argument is flawed.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
That is precisely why this really isn't a fair use or copyright issue, because of the DMCA prohibition on the circumvention of encryption. Analogously, if someone recorded the playback of their DVD using a camcorder and then distributed it, you would have copyright but not DMCA issues.
Here's a link to the US Copyright Office. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/ Specifically look at the exclusive rights given to authors: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 Most other nations will have similar provisions.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You seem to have missed a significant portion of the text you quoted:
Seeing as this use is both (1) commercial, and (2) not by the consumer, I don't see how this is applicable.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Except they're not authorize to distribute the copies.
Thus they're in violation of copyright.
(Emphasis mine). It says "no action". The use of a digital audio recorder by a consumer for non-commercial purposes is pretected.
...
Ah, no... Re-Read what you yourself typed:
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright
There are three key words you left out: "under this title"
The title just says end-users can't be arrested for buying blank CDs/recorders/etc if they using them for non-commercial use.
I should think that using such devices to copy video/musical recordings and then SELLING them would consistute COMMERCIAL USE. (Regardless of what non-commercial uses the end consumer does).
The group in the article will be toast.