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Can You Be Sued For Helping Clients Rip DVDs?
DRMer writes "CE Pro has a series of stories that tries to untangle the legalities of DVD ripping in light of the recent RealDVD announcement from RealNetworks. In one of the stories, EFF Attorney Fred von Lohmann discusses the potential liability of those who resell or install DVD-ripping machines (the courts have yet to rule). Another article provides a rather amusing look at how manufacturers justify the legality of their products. Here's one example: 'We are just like Microsoft Vista that does not have a CSS [Content Scramble System] license.'"
You can be sued for anything, the question is can you be successfully sued
Cruise TT
It is not interesting if you can be sued (as mentioned by others, you always can be).
There are two questions that should be answerd:
1) is it right or wrong?
2) is it legal or illegal?
If 1 and 2 give different answers than the law should be updated.
Lawsuits often don't answer any of the questions (which is actually a very bad thing).
Of course answering question 1 is the tough one.
Maybe we should sue Craftsman for making hammers and chainsaws, since those might be used as murder weapons. Or perhaps Raid for making bug spray, since it could conceivably be used to poison someone. Or architects for designing tall buildings since a suicidal person might jump off of them. How about manufacturers of ropes or chains, since those might be used to hang somebody?
Why do we collectively accept this madness when it's copyright that we don't accept otherwise? There are legitimate reasons to rip a DVD, and there are also uses of a DVD ripper that violate copyright. A hammer can help to build a house to shelter a family, or it can be used by a criminal to bludgeon someone to death. In principle, I see no fundamental difference here.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
They keep telling us we're buying a license to listen/view the content they are selling to us.
But then they try to lock it down to the actual media.
If I pay for the content, let me rip it so I can use it on my own hardware, the way I see fit (MPAA/RIAA calm down, that doesn't include giving away nor selling copies to others). Also, why do I have to pay full price to get a replacement CD/DVD, my content license has already been paid.
With the current US system, you lose practically automatically as you're out a reasonably large amount of money in legal fees. Sure, you can counter-sue for your costs, but that could very well be several years down the road.
This is why the RIAA's sue-them-all-and-sort-it-out-later campaign has enjoyed such success. the cost of the settlement is significantly less than the cost of fighting it in court, regardless of the validity of their claims.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Absent a court ruling to back that up, it isn't anything. It's a hypothetical because there is no case law to establish anything.
Note that copyright infringement is a civil matter. So, aiding and abetting doesn't apply.
Maybe if you did it on a commercial scale, for profit, you could make that point. Helping people to install software to perform what is considered to be fair use ... that has yet to be determined.
Would I want to make a business out of selling this kind of stuff without legal precedent? Nope. But, neither does your summary decision that it's a aiding and abetting a crime have anything to support it.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And in both cases, a lot of this seems to depend on where you live.
In North America, Canada seems safer, but there's also a push to hit us with new laws that would be even more draconian than those in the US.
Personally, if person X wants to pay person Y $1.50 to copy his (bought and paid for) "Little Mermaid" DVD so that the kids don't ruin the original, why shouldn't he be able to?
You should tape the cd under the seat of a park bench and tell the client to find it there.
That way you cover yourself, and get a repeat customer. That Tom Clancy shit is fun - who wouldn't come back?
There is an inherent stupidity to much of what goes on in the new frontier of digital media. Tivos don't allow 30 second skipping to mollify the networks, but I can install MythTV and skip as much or as little as I want. Ipods are built to be crippled with DRM and the inability to move files from one player to the other, but anyone can go out and legally purchase an MP3 player from a different manufacturer that allows you to move files onto it or off of it without restriction. Anyone with minimal savvy can use the publicly-available DeCSS code to rip as many DVDs as they want onto their home media server and have been able to do that for years, but now the Copyright Patrol has its panties in a bunch over boxes that are dedicated to this function. The discourse is fundamentally stupid.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
how is it illegal to take something you purchased, and rightfully own, and convert it to a format that better suits your purposes. if i want to rip all my DVDs and CDs onto my hard drive, that is my prerogative. as long as i'm not distributing them illegally, it falls completely within fair use.
just like, if i have a child who is blind, and i want to take all the books i've bought her and record myself reading them aloud so that she may listen to the books when i'm not around, that is not a crime--not yet, at least.
There is no such law that allows for one backup. I can make 100 copies of CDs that I bought and go skeet shooting. I am only breaking the law when I distribute those copies to others.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
No?
Unfair laws make criminals of everyone.
Om, nomnomnom...
I retain right of first sale on DVDs, CDs, and books.
I own the disk, and while I'm limited in what I can do with its contents .... this "license to view what's one the disk" argument is fallacious. Don't buy into the unproven claims of the *AAs. This is more than just what they claim they've licensed you to do.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
that is still illegal. skeet shooting is like bittorrent - distributing little chunks of files over a broad area, but never the whole file at once! =P
http://kered.org