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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."
While i Feel sympathetic for the Company under fire, this is only good news for consumers, when my mother read this she thought it was shocking and is appauled at the DMCA, having not known what it meant before
Stories in the press like this only hurt the Big bad Companys, by raising awareness
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.
This is essentially the same way they sued mp3.com into the ground, and yet another example of why the DMCA is such a fucking horrible law. There's no damage being done here except to the iron grip the MPAA exerts over movie distribution.
They have no problem with the idea of selling movies on hard disc, it's just that they don't want competition.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
no i think this is exactly what we need to get this stupid law overturned. this is clearly an infringement on the user's fair use right. no one is "stealing" any content, merely shifting the content from one format to another. the mpaa gets its money, the user gets the content, a third party is making money for the service of shifting it.
The MP3.com case (remember that one) seemed to hinge on the fact that even though the service was trying to verify that consumers already owned the CDs, they were doing the actual ripping from a copy that the service had purchased.
Now we've heard that space-shifting falls under fair use, as long as you don't distribute the copy. This is the principle under which it's legal to rip tracks from your own CDs and load them on your iPod.
Now, we've got someone who is oofering (1) a legit copy of the music and (2) a service that will take your DVD and transfer it to your iPod. All copies made under fair use are transferred at the same time.
Now it may be that circumventing copy protection is illegal under DMCA... but does that make it an infringement of copyright?
It's disabled because the MPAA is sueing Slashdot for copyright infringement.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Much as this sounds like a convenient service, I think the MPAA is completely legally right here: making copies is an exclusive right under copyright, so this is a regular copyright violation; copies for noncommercial format shifting purposes by the end-user might be "fair use"—IIRC, format-shifting hasn't been conclusively litigated—but that's not what is happening here. And DVD copy protection is pretty clearly covered under the DMCA, and bypassing it is a DMCA violation.
Should the law be changed to allow this? Perhaps, certainly I wouldn't object to deep sixing the DMCA, or to writing some kind of reasonable express format-shifting protection into the law, though its difficult to craft without undermining copyright entirely (unless you require destruction of the original before transfer.)
Putting aside for a moment that "format shifting" hasn't really been tested yet in court, the end-user is not the one doing the copying here. It's hard to argue "fair use" when someone is making money by making a copy... that's the whole point of copyright.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I can't think of a more stupid strategy for any business.
This case may end up depending on: (answer what you want)
(1) Does the market allow for the selling of an iPod and a separate DVD disc?
(2) Does the market allow for someone to buy a movie onto their iPod?
(3) What is the difference between a movie on a DVD and a movie on an iPod? Are a distributor's rights changed?
(4) Can a business do for users what they can do for themselves? For example, rip a DVD copy onto a viewing device?
(5) Can a user pay someone, in any way, to copy their DVD onto any other device they own?
I bet there are some non-intuitive answers that the RIAA would put up there.
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
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
Orrin Hatch got this piece of crap introduced and passed and has also taken almost $400K From the entertainment lobby.
America, best government money can buy®
So, if I make a backup copy of my customer's disk before working on his computer -- a service provided for a fee -- have I violated copyright law? What if I use Norton Ghost to make the copy, because some files are encrypted? Have I then violated DCMA as well?
IANAL, but this makes my head hurt!
This reminds me of mp3.com
As an "honest" consumer -- I thought it was the best win/win situation ever.
I whip out my credit card and pay $15 for a CD, and I get to download and
listen to the songs I just bought right away until the CD itself showed up
in the mail in a week or so. Everyone gets paid the full amount and everyone
is happy.
Yet -- they chose to take mp3.com down to the ground because of it.
In this case they are marketing the ipod to people who are also paying the full
price for the physical media......
This is said....I don't shed tear 1 when they "take down" the criminals that stealing movies
or music where the content makers don't profit....But to take down the people who are selling
your product at full price seems pretty stupid to me. The people that suffer the most
are the honest consumers.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Its about both, and even doing either without making money, which is why all of those are exclusive rights protected under copyright.
Right. They are selling the service of making the copy along with the goods (the source and target media.) It therefore is not noncommercial copying by the end-user for personal use, and insofar as there may be exceptions for noncommercial format-shifting for personal use (a disputed point!) that would cover DVD ripping, this is not covered by them.
Really, where? At least in the US, this is a popular myth, not a fact: "a library or archives" has a right to make backup copies with certain limits (see 17 USC 108), and the making of an archival copy of a computer program is expressly allowed (17 USC 117), but this is not generally the case for copyrighted works.
Since the exception for archival copies states "... it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided...", probably not, where it is legal to make a backup in the first place.
Not that the copy being made here is for archival purposes, nor would a court probably find that it is of a computer program, though that's less clear. (A DVD contains principally, of course, one or more audiovisual works, it also includes some instructions that might make it a computer program. I don't know if whether the 17 USC 117 exception applies to DVDs has been litigated.)
No, because the MPAA is charging infringement as well as DMCA violation and seeking remedies for both; the DMCA expressly does not change the scope of any of the provisions or exceptions to infringement, so adding the DMCA claim does nothing to help their other claims.
Sorry, it doesn't matter whether you're "guilty" or "indicted" when you have to cough up thousands of dollars just to get started with a lawyer - and the MPAA and RIAA takes you to civil, not criminal court. No one needs to prosecute you for ripping a DVD when the MPAA can spend its lawyers' idle time writing up civil complaints against parties who have little ability to defend themselves and often have not even have the foggiest idea how the legal system works. A defendant may not even be the correct party, but if he doesn't have means to make an appropriate motion to have the suit amended or dismissed, the result is a default judgement.
I don't see the EFF or ACLU or other legal organizations hopping aggressively into these lawsuits or doing anything beyond filing amicus briefs. Anyway, it's difficult (as in impossible) to get part or all of a piece of legislation overturned, or a law reinterpreted, when every case is either settled or dropped.
I can't characterize this behavior as SLAPP, because strictly speaking it isn't (SLAPP refers to legal maneuvering to dissuade public discussion), but it's one of those cases where it would be nice if there were a government organization, or powerful private interest, whose business it was to intercede in favor of individuals in these cases of imbalanced litigation on controversial rights issues.
ER, the problem is that this isn't within that exception, since its not about the device, but the use to make a recording (which itself doesn't stop it from being protected), but:
(1) its not an audio or digital music recording, but movies,
(2) the use to make the recording is not "by a consumer of such a device or medium",
(3) the use is not "noncommercial".
Anyone of those three would be enough to make the provision you quote inapplicable.
Putting aside for a moment that "format shifting" hasn't really been tested yet in court, the end-user is not the one doing the copying here. It's hard to argue "fair use" when someone is making money by making a copy... that's the whole point of copyright.
I don't agree with that interpretation of copyright. Copyright exists to encourage creative development by guaranteeing the creator a reasonable period of time where they can have the exclusive ability to produce (and sell) a specific kind of content. (it grants the creator a "limited monopoly" on their creation) The company that is doing the format shifting is not benefiting from having a copy of the work, and the consumer has already paid the creator for his work. The only possible lost revenue is if the riaa was offering the same service or if it was impacting the sales of their product. They are not offering the service, and it is arguably increasing the benefits from their limited monopoly.
What stumps me here is "why?" Why are they doing this? It costs them money and ill-will (which at this point I think they have so much negative karma that a little more really doesn't matter anymore) and I don't see what's in it for them. The iPod is designed to make it difficult to copy content off from it, so the odds of someone swapping tracks on their ipod with a friend is fairly remote. There must be either a paranoid dellusional in authority there or there is a classified pie chart somewhere that say that this will nick off 2% of their proffits due to some complex market dependency.
The RIAA is not doing this because it's illegal. They could care less what's legal and what's not from morality's sake. They have a reason they don't want customers to do it, and they are using the DMCA as a tool to try to make the world behave the way they want them to. Having a law that could cover it just makes this job easier. This is what makes general laws like DMCA so dangerous. The people sponsoring them say it's necessary to make a very broad law so that it covers the largest percentage of offenders they are after, and try to make us believe that the law will be "properly interpreted" such that no innocents (people that "were not meant to be included") will not be harmed. But history shows that in 100% of those cases, there are abuses and they generally go unchecked because after all, they've made it legal. Copyright, seizure laws, and a really fun one, "enemy combatant". They all force us to surrender our rights and fredoms in the name of protecting our rights and our fredoms. What a scam.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
the current business model for the Recording and Movie Industries is to sell you as many copies of the same content as possible. Sell you one copy on CD. One copy for your portable music player. One copy for your DVD. One copy for your PSP. One copy for your iPod. One copy for your BlueRay player. One copy etc this, one copy etc that.
This is the only way they can make money. If you only pay for one copy anymore, then you have effectively cut deeply into their expected revenue. People aren't going to the theater's because it is a one time experience. Why not just pick the DVD up and watch at your own convenience than sitting in a sweaty, smelly seat with over priced popcorn? Why pay for an iPod offering if you can just rip it from the DVD?
Sure you are stealing, you've cost them over $200 in lost revenue per piece of content. That's why they are lobbying so hard for DRM. That's why none of it is compatible with everything else. Otherwise, you're still only paying for that one copy.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
>The use of a digital audio recorder by a consumer for non-commercial purposes is pretected.
:)
You're Goddamned right it's pretected! I wouldn't have it any other way, and I'm sure I speak for everyone else here when I say that!
Hell, even if it weren't pretected, then it SHOULD be, dammit.
There ought to be a CLEAR law, ensuring pretection, for EVERYONE! We need to eliminate pretection greyosity, for certitudinousness, from now, into infinitis!
That's what I think, anyway.
'course, it's past time for my meds, so, I could be wrong.
The last sentence is a joke - I took my meds on time - otherwise I couldn't spell "certidudinousness" correctly
It is not the consumer doing it... but it is the consumer's "agent" acting under instructions from the consumer. If they were preloading and bundling BEFORE sale, that would be illegal. But they are doing it AFTER the sale, but before delivery and only upon the instruction of the consumer to do so.
Basic agency law -- if you instruct someone to do something, they are your agent and it is as if you were doing it yourself. There are only a limited and specific few things that you can't do by using an agent like this.
The company doing the copying owns the DVD while they're doing the copy. It's their fair use right to put it on the iPod. Then they resell the DVD (also their fair use right) and include the copy they made, as they have to do.
By your logic, someone that takes a picture of the Statue of Liberty is stealing it.
:)
No, they're a terrorist. Try to keep up here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Were it not for the DMCA, the MPAA would not have a case here at all.
... they simply, uncompromisingly, do not want anyone else distributing their products in a format not of their choosing. The question is whether or not they should have that right. The DMCA would seem to give it to them, which is too bad.
On the other hand, given that the MPAA was largely responsible for the DMCA (even to have furnished draft copies of the legislation to involved Congresscritters) it's hardly surprising that they would invoke it here. This is exactly the kind of case for which they so badly wanted the DMCA
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I live in Texas, just a few hours from the Mexican border. I've often wondered what legal recourse the MPAA would have if I opened up a mail-order DVD ripping shop, but circumvented the encryption in Mexico. I figure I could do all the administrative work here, including loading the customer's encrypted DVD to a hard drive. Then drive down to a Mexican border town once a week and, while I sit in a bar sipping Tequila, or passed out in a cheap motel, my laptop furiously (and legally (?)) decrypts DVDs.
When I return home, hungover, the next day, I send out my customers' backups along with their original DVDs.
Have I broken any American laws?
Under the DMCA, ripping a DVD is illegal.
Making a backup copy of a DVD is illegal.
Format shifting a DVD is illegal.
Possessing a tool which can do any of the above is illegal.
Distributing a tool which can do any of the above is illegal.
If the DMCA had been around in 1980, the VCR would have been shut down by the MPAA long before it ever hit store shelves.
The DMCA is a bad piece of legislation. Congress passed it because the movie industry asked them too.
Congress needs to start thinking for themselves and not passing every single BS piece of legislation that special interest groups ask them to pass.
We just got rid of a whole lot of congressmen, and brought in quite a few new ones, but unfortunately, I see no indications that the new lot will be any better than the old.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Man, Sony's been so evil lately it's even invading our subconsciousness!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Since when did sanity matter, when it comes to the law? We are talking legal arguments here, not rational ones.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It certainly didn't sound like it. I mean, there was no real sarcasm evident in your post. No reference to legality versus rationality. It sounded like you were seriously arguing that a sane argument would be legally sound.
I agree that the situation is pretty ridiculous. What I don't agree with is the approach that most slashdotters appear to take - trying to argue that all this copying is perfectly OK under existing laws, because they want it to be. What people should be doing is trying to change the stupid laws. If people think what they are doing is legal, but it is not, it will come back to bite them on the ass. Even worse, it just perpetuates the bad laws.
Law is what it is, it's not what you want it to be. The media companies can make the laws what they want them to be, because they spend a lot of effort and money making it that way. Meanwhile, people sit back believing they are fine because of mythical interpretations of the law.
It really is quite strange. People on the one hand complain about draconian copyright laws, but then turn around and claim that they have all these rights - which implies that the laws aren't draconian. So, which is it? Are we being screwed by copyright law, or does it guarantee us all these rights?
... and then they built the supercollider.