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MPAA Says Teachers Should Camcord For Fair Use
unlametheweak recommends an Ars Technica piece detailing the convoluted lengths to which the MPAA will go in order to keep anybody from ripping a DVD, ever. The organization showed a film to the US Copyright Office, in the triennial hearing to spell out exemptions to the DMCA, giving instructions for how a teacher could use a camcorder to record a low-quality clip of a DVD for educational use — even though such a purpose is solidly established in law as fair use. "Never mind that this solution results in video of questionable quality and requires teachers to learn even more tech in order to get the job done. It also requires schools (or, given the way most schools are run, the teachers themselves) to incur additional costs to purchase camcorders and videotapes if they don't have them already. Add in the extra time involved, and this 'solution' is a laughably convoluted alternative to simply ripping a clip from a DVD."
Nah, can't do that, teacher might use the camcorder to videotape students in the locker room.
Now I know what that guy was doing behind me while I was watching Star Trek yesterday. He was just making a clip for fair use.
According to the MPAA, it is a-okay to use a camcorder to record a movie!
requiring you to defend yourself from a wild boar with a knife, even if you have a gun, just because it is not legal to have a gun where you live. (Even if you don't happen to have a knife.)
BTW, like the MPAA, wild boars are vicious.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Given the technology skills most my teachers have had I can see them trying to put the dvd inside a photocopier and hoping for the best. Your average teacher couldn't rip a DVD, and why bother when you can just get any notable clip you want off youtube. Go fight with Google MPAA.
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It might help if we didn't call it "ripping."
only in america...
to keep anybody from ripping a DVD
Strong naming could easily upset (EliteTorrents or PirateBay can confess).
DVD backup could have been less of a target.
to keep anybody from creating backup of a DVD
Pretty decent and disarming.
Teachers may also make partial copies of a CD for education purposes by recording to a vinyl record and playing it back on a phonograph.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
ThePirateBay.org registers the domain TheTeacherBay.org
I know the MPAA is evil but sheesh, even for them, asking teachers to make dirty movies of themselves is a step too far!
*goes to read the summary*
One would expect the MPAA to suggest teachers use pantomime since this would please both themselves and the RIAA.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
If only so that I may attempt to show other possible logical and reasonable perspectives on the matter.
Uh... got nothing...
I'm glad for ridiculous crap like this, because the more groups that end up on the target list of the MAFIAA's tactics, the sooner something will be done to redress the abuses of our society and our freedoms they have perpetuated in the name of copyright.
People apparently have to feel the heat themselves in order to see the wrong in the MAFIAA's ways.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Talk is cheap. How are they going to back it up? It's not like they can walk onto school grounds and force teachers to abide by this arbitrary policy that has no legal weight whatsoever.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Experiment: Take a random sample of teachers. Equip half with camcorders, a DVD, DVD player and TV. (For completeness, include a group that can take a feed from the DVD player directly to the camcorder). Equip the other half with a PC, DVD ripping software, a DVD and DVD player.
Measure the time taken to extract a clip from the specific DVD and the quality achieved by each group. Compare results.
Hypothesis: Quality obtained by first group will be acceptable and is a lower-tech solution than that needed by second group
I was one of the few people that had the pleasure (or the displeasure) of being at the Library of Congress DMCA hearing room when the MPAA made this ridiculous argument. Suffice to say, I was completely shocked, flabbergasted, and just plain insulted that educators would truly be expected to do something like this in their bizarro world. Nevermind the fact that you would need an HDTV, HD Camcorder, Tripod, good lighting, and tons of time on your hands to manually create compilation clips with your camcorder (as if educators had any free time as it is).
I couldn't tell if the Copyright bigwigs that heard the argument were actually taking it seriously, but I sincerely hope that any appearance of sincerity was simply there for the sake of keeping respect for the hearings.
The one thing that I learned at the hearing was that you have to be fucking crazy in order to be a lawyer on their side. Even I (a soon to be unemployed law school graduate) didn't think that I could make this argument with a straight face even for tons of money.
How much longer before the MPAA becomes irrelevant and we can just ignore their antics?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Videotapes? What's that?
I actually like this post, it makes a good point. Teachers are very on the bottom side of the Texh world. I had teachers in Elementary school that couldn't even use Windows. Come on, how hard is that. I think there should be a bare reqreset for teachers to be at least mid level skilled with tech.
As for the stupid video laws, so what. Teachers should be allowed to show what ever they want to students. Infact students aren't shown enough in class rooms. In one case you go to a Catholic School and your told that every thing else is wrong and horrible to consider such as evolution, or you go to public school and you get a mis represented view on religon.
Here's the solution. Teachers should be allowed to show what ever they want, but they have to be fair on what they show. I got a horrible over view of what Religon is, infact I was told every other Religon was wrong. Of course this is BS. I was also taught facts about tech that were clearly false, for instace I was told how to use a computer and they teachers couldn't even use Windows.
Here's a new idea, lets get properly trained Teachers in the class room and make sure there fully trained in a proper overview in many areas, not what they think is proper overview. I think we seriously need to get better teachers. As for the DVD stuff, come on, Just use a tuner card, rip the video with some sort of Linux software, compress in the data etc... Do all the work required, Get the students to run the video or show it publicly, teach them how your doing it and then whats the harm.
Teachers should be able to show what they want, they should have to use the proper technology to acheive it but non the less free viewing. They should also be trained to teach students better
Thanks
Docmur
until Star.Trek.(2009).Mr.BeRNaRD.3rdPeRIod.SoCiALSTudiES.avi hits the scene.
Can't they just as well play the DVD???
Seriously, this is possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. If anyone really needed proof that the MPAA doesn't care about consumers in any way, look no further.
I am more than willing to support smarter teachers in the classroom, including paying higher taxes for higher pay for these teachers. Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?! Maybe if the MPAA had smarter teachers in the classroom when they were in school they would never try to pull fast ones like this to the Copyright office in the first place!
I know that its legitimate in Russia to break copy protection to make a backup as allowed under their law. I don't think that is allowed in the states because it would be effectively attacking the DRM scheme. That makes it kinda silly then to have fair use and not allow people to use that right. Points to how poorly crafted the DMCA really is.
The movie industry's NEMESIS, is now their best friend.
The submitter just gave us a link to a recording of a recording?
And that guy is using VLC, one of the best rip-a-DVD-as-you-play-it video players/transcoders
Process Terminated Normally
If only someone would propose a bill that would allow camcording in theaters for editorial use, pointing to the example the media companies gave as evidence for the necessity of the inclusion...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What do these folks have against education?
First they go after the students, now, they go after the teachers?
This brings up another point that someone further up mentioned as a joke, I've always thought that using a camcorder to record a movie would be and/or should be fair use, Its obviously an inferior copy (even the best shaky cams have some serious problems, mostly they point out just how $h!tty the theatre experience is, people get up, down, coughing, talking, etc); when it comes down to it I suspect the only way we will be rid of these folks is if we just stop buying movies and CD's which, I find somewhat ironic.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
Teachers could carve each frame into a clay tablet and let it dry in the sun. Then mount the clay tablets on big wooden wheel and spin it real fast.
Time to put an end to chucklehead organizations like the MPAA, BSA and RIAA. Companies are trying to be heavy-handed with their customers while letting some vaporous organization take the heat for their dickish behavior. Implement joint and several liability on the member companies for the actions of their enforcement organizations and this silly business will end overnight.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Realistically, given the increasing free market bias of the developed world, combined with the relaxed view of copyright in the developing world, companies either have to supply content in a user friendly form, or have someone else do it. There is a great deal of money spent to build demand for these things. The problem is that there the value placed on he product by the producers is often much more than the value to the consumer, especially when the producers wishes to place arbitrary restrictions on use.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
They own Biden, and their friends run the DoJ. See "change and hope".
Just like Pirate or Hacking or 'Assault' in Assault Weapon, also a media darling. ... 'jena se qua' quality.
The hard consonants of the word give it a
Similarly, note 'Poo' vs 'Shit' or 'Pussy' vs 'Cunt'.
You can't tell me that the notoriety of Jack the Ripper isn't in some part due to his name.
If NEA is as powerful as many around here think it is, the recording industry is going down.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
The MPAA is required to furnish free DVDs to educators within a reasonable time frame (less than a week is good) on request.
the teachers should just get a license to use a copy of the DVD's script, which they may paraphrase and describe to the class aloud.
Haven't we been saying this for, like, ten years. The fact that an increasing number of consumers are becoming aware of said tactics doesn't seem to have:
a) impacted on those tactics
b) changed legislative backing for the MPAA
c) reduced political complicity in the whole sorry affair
Sure it will change eventually, but soon?
Seriously, this is possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. If anyone really needed proof that the MPAA doesn't care about consumers in any way, look no further.
If the MPAA didn't care about consumers then they wouldn't have given us Borat or Charlies Angels or Super Fly or Reefer Madness. Clearly, the MPAA just wants to protect the cultural IP of the United States from being exploited by criminals and teachers.
If you watch the History channels very, very early in the morning, you'll find that they run a show with less/no commercials to make room before the top of the hour. During that time, they have a History Classroom or something show (seriously - that's not my best time of day, so I apologize for inaccuracies).
One thing I noticed - there's a screen that gives instructions to teachers that they have to delete any video recordings they've made of the show after a certain date - I recall, sleepily - that it's within a year or something.
Now - how does history go stale in a year?
I did a lot of digging to find the food chain on this one... History is the Classroom ties into Cable in the Classroom. Here's what they have to say:
http://www.history.com/global/feedback/faq.jsp?NetwCode=THC&level_1=nodes_54224&level_2=nodes_54240&level_3=nodes_54297&x=35&y=11
http://www.ciconline.org/faq#Copyright
http://www.ciconline.org/copyright
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280.shtml
Now, color me naive - but that's the beginning of the foodchain for a teacher to BEGIN to simply videotape something related to history of educational value to show to their students. I quote - and I am not making this up:
What's an educator to do? Read Education World's five-part series on copyright, fair use, and new technologies, that's what! We did the work so you wouldn't have to!
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280a.shtml
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280b.shtml
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280c.shtml
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280e.shtml
In an age where our test scores show we're failing, with teachers overburdened like never before - related to a show that a kid can just watch at home without encumbrances (should his/her parents **be there** for the kid with this kind of info) - note what the teacher has to go through.
As opposed to just taping it and working it into the lesson plan - because it comes from a place called the History Channel - tied to Cable in the Classroom - where "cable" is that thing usually subsidized by local communities as a near utility.
Thanks, copyright eagles. Thanks a lot.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
It's extremely amusing to see that they're using VLC to demonstrate their unreason.
The problem I see here is that the Copyright Office may not see how absolutely stupid the MPAA's position on this actually is.
Why would I suppose that? Well consider, the MPAA is actually making this lame argument, and they're not doing it to intentionally lose the argument, so they must think they have a chance of winning their case.
This resolves to either:
The MPAA is incredibly stupid and is insulting the Copyright Office (not a good idea if you're the MPAA).
The Copyright Office really is this stupid.
Both the MPAA and the Copyright Office are incredibly stupid.
Heaven help us all!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
We can't have teachers ripping DVD-quality clips all willy-nilly. Why, if someone got ahold of enough teachers, he could put all their clips together and re-create the original movie! In digital DVD quality! You pirates will surely roast in hell for even considering it.
I think this is pretty ridiculous, but the summary (I did not rtfa) contradicts itself a bit. Ripping a video incurs extra costs / time just as much as recording a video of a video does.
So their idea is to piss on teachers who have as many as some 100 children or so passing through their classes every day?
I can imagine quite a few disgruntled teachers beginning anti-copyright lectures across the country.
IS it not time that people stopped fafing around and got together and once and for all time sorted the MPAA out on an Absolute basis or are you all so wet nappy scared of them that you will just continue to let them run amuck amongst you , they are only people only a FEW people at that there are millions of you there if you got together there aint a thing in the world they could do but capitulate completely
but of course you are quite happy being told by some little SMUCK what you can and cant do they will be telling you how to hold it to have a pee next if you dont wake the **** up.
non anon just fed up with slapshod slapshot mods that are just slapstick dicks
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the MPAA wants to protect its income stream by getting teachers to train up lots of adults who they can sue. Remember: the MPAA gets money from sueing, the studios loose money through piracy of DVDs.
I just finished ripping my somewhat meager DVD collection (~ 100 titles) to disk. Guess I should start over and use a camcorder this time around...
On a more serious note - this really is getting absurd. Even with good care DVDs get scratched. I had to run a couple of mine through a Skip Doctor before they'd play without errors (as an aside: that's a pretty nifty device). But frankly the "backing up" aspect of all this is secondary - I'm ripping my DVDs because it's a heck of a lot more convenient to manage my library of purchased DVDs this way. Now I can take advantage of some great free software (pyTivo, streambaby) and watch whichever one I want using my Tivo remote - no more digging through the DVD rack looking for one particular movie.
There's just no way I'm going to let these dinosaurs tell me what I can and can't do with my own stuff.
#DeleteChrome
Given recent stupid statements in press releases, attempts a litigation against the sick/dead, and involvement in criminal behaviour (illegal investigations, price fixing, ...), it seems like a good time for a drugs bust on this organisation. Clearly the people running it have a serious drug problem, or if not, are seriously sociopathic.
why I don't go and see Star Trek this weekend even though I'm a trekkie.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Ripping dvd's for class is a waste of time. All that ripping and encoding. Teachers have to prep for classes after school is over, and they are on their own unpaid time. It's much easier for teachers to find the clips they want on YouTube, since it's likely that their students have already posted the clip... at least until google starts charging for it.
Just re-record it at a 2x higher compression rate, then you have a "lesser quality sample" that falls under 'fair use'.
Oh, and that should cover my copy too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The items change but the names remain the same:
A representative of Sony Pictures wants us to use a Sony camcorder to film a piece of their movie on a Sony memory stick or tape, and transfer it to a blank Sony DVD using a Sony laptop for playback later through a Sony monitor or projector. Of course the reason is that they want the artists to get the money due them.
Of course the MPAA doesn't just represent Sony. All the players have or invest in companies that produce the recording and playback hardware and media.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
They (the MPAA) are also working on an online movie server ("USC Film Server" project) where teachers can select portions of movies in order to obtain clips of them for a special player program, and automatically submit a request to the relevant copyright holder for permission. They're getting it ready and hope to "beta test" it "later in the year" for Warner Bros. movies.
You can hear it at about 1 hour, 4 minutes into part 4 [MP3] of the May 6 hearings.
Not only is educational use explicitly protected, but that's a slippery slope. Where do you stop? If I'm downloading a cam of your film, can I claim that it's obviously only for review purposes since it's low-quality?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, I know. The various *IAA's of the world have been over the top for a long time now.
But, I can't say that I blame them 100%. Performers & content creators are entitled to be paid for their work. Just as you or I am.
But, illegally copying (stealing) their materials has been going on for a long time now. They are overreacting. But they are reacting to a legitimate problem.
Granted, they could do a better job creating content that people want to pay for. Myself, I haven't purchased a newly recorded CD in over 2 decades. But it's not because I steal what I want. There just haven't been any CD released in the past 15-20 years that I consider to BE music. If you aim your product at a bunch of snotnoses living in their parent's basements who can't afford to purchase your product, that's your fault.
But I can see their point too. How would you like to go to work, and then find that you don't get paid because someone stole the fruits of your work? You might overreact too.
Okay, I'm pretty sure a movie theater screen was involved, rather than a television set, but the basic mechanism is essentially the same.
I was only pursuing an education, honest! It's not fair - Obi-Wan trained Anakin Skywalker, but he wouldn't train me. I have to get my force training somewhere, don't I?
Viruses, Infections, Spyware, Trojans, Adware
The MPAA doesn't care about consumers. That's also not their mission statement. Their job is to care about movie makers. Essentially, the consumer is the necessary evil to get money to their protectees. If they could force you (or anyone, for that matter) to hand money to their members, it would probably be all right with them.
Sorry, but the argument is like saying "Unions don't care for employers". No they don't. It's the necessary evil they have to deal with.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Simply refrain from consuming any product represented by their organization.
It's hard to avoid the MPAA without going back to Amish country. For example, movie studios in the MPAA own all major commercial television news outlets in the United States, whether left or right:
Sony doesn't own any news outlets, but it does own Sony Pictures and make the only video game console that can officially dual-boot into GNU/Linux.
Give educational institutions the right to record any DVD with the provision that the DVD burner places a watermark in the lower right hand corner that states the institution name (Like IU or PennState, etc) and "For Educational Use ONLY".
There's a lot more rational way of making things happen. It's just that the MPAA and RIAA are more worried about the profits than they are about the "copyrights". Any MPAA or RIAA lawyer that tells you otherwise is full of crap.
To avoid corruption, one must remain dishonest.
Surely there's less convoluted ways then a camcorder - say... Hooking up a vcr to the A/V jacks... or hell, an analog tv tuner with composite in...
The Family Entertainment & Copyright Act, passed in 2005 mostly at the MPAA's behest, established a penalty of up to six years for using a camcorder in a movie theater.
Oh, the irony.
Did they mention to the hearing that they're doing their damndest to close the analog hole? Did they give a plan for what teachers could do when they manage to do that?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The bug in VHS was never really fixed. The issue is due to the way that VHS(and Beta) systems had to record video.
Analog video recorders match the tape movement and the rotation speed of the flying heads dynamically, such that the mechanical system is held in synchronization with the incoming video signal.
The synchronization during recording is very brittle because it has nothing to reference internally, except the regularity, and conformance of the incoming video signal to the broadcast standard. Additionally the mechanical nature of the recording servo loops is that they do not respond well to sudden changes in the timing of the synchronization information in a video signal.
Macrovision and and similar systems produce video that "wiggles" the horizontal and vertical sync pulses in the time domain such that the VHS recording servos cannot stay locked, thus causing "tearing" of the magnetic signal written to the tape.
The only real "fix" for this is to buffer up a significant portion of the incoming video frame and analyze the sync information to get feed-forward correction to the servos. The ability to do this would add a LOT of cost to a VHS recorder. I don't know for sure, but I doubt record buffering was ever available in mass-market units.
As a side note rental VHS tapes could be "copy protected" using a similar technique. A modified recorder was used that introduced a similar "wiggle" into the recording servos during write. The key difference here is that the source video signal did not have this "wiggle", so the servos remain locked to the source, and the servos were of a much higher quality than the ones found in mass-market VHS recorders allowing them to keep the mechanical elements of the record loop under tighter control.
I should also point out there were boxes sold (often as kits) that would buffer a line or two of the video signal in an analog delay line, and average the "wiggle" out of the sync. The filtering wasn't perfect and the delay-line buffering introduced some noise to the resulting video, but they did work. At the time multi-line analog delay lines were hideously expensive, so these boxes were often used by commercial pirates to create counterfeit rental tapes from either mass-market sources, or early release rental sources.
The MPAA doesn't care about consumers. That's also not their mission statement. Their job is to care about movie makers. Essentially, the consumer is the necessary evil to get money to their protectees. If they could force you (or anyone, for that matter) to hand money to their members, it would probably be all right with them.
Sorry, but the argument is like saying "Unions don't care for employers". No they don't. It's the necessary evil they have to deal with.
At a certain threshold, unions don't care about their rank & file constituency either. What's best for the employee becomes secondary to what's best for the union leadership. I see it as an inherent conflict of interest.
When a support/service organization reaches a critical mass it typically begins behaving like a living organism. Unions and similar organizations like the *AA start out behaving like... Pilot fish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_fish ...and end up behaving like lamprey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamprey
We can't have teachers ripping DVD-quality clips all willy-nilly. Why, if someone got ahold of enough teachers, he could put all their clips together and re-create the original movie! In digital DVD quality! You pirates will surely roast in hell for even considering it.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of DVD-ripping teachers!
I lost my sig.
So, how much longer until they make it illegal to even make a short clip with their overly contrived method?
If the number of movies downloaded from the internet spikes when stories of the MPAA suggesting idiotic crap like this comes out.
Hmmmmmmm...
Let's bring the Ekto-Sketch for Teachers. Once they're finished just shake well.
If the MPAA didn't care about consumers then they wouldn't have given us... Reefer Madness.
It's pretty clear from the History section of the linked Wikipedia page that the MPAA did not bring us that movie. I wouldn't even lay the blame on the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA), its precursor.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It's pretty clear from the History section of the linked Wikipedia page that the MPAA did not bring us that movie.
Yeah I know, the Christians are to blame. I was hoping you guys would give me a little bit of rhetorical license here.