New Ruling Confirms Copying DVDs is Illegal - Page 2

We need to get a lawyer on this, because if what we bought was a license to play the content on DVD players rather than the disc and what it contains that means they must now replace any damaged or defective discs in perpetuity. Forever...

Much ado about nothing.

To my knowledge, zero suits have been brought involving the breaking of encryption on DVDs and Blu-Rays. So the affirmative defense under fair use doctrine has never been tested in court as it bears on breaking encryption. The fair use defense is still available. If the MPAA did bring such a suit, it's quite possible they would lose. Which may have something to do with the fact that the specific provision in the the DMCA has never been tested in court.

Do not confuse the above with the Betamax test case (which was won, BTW), allowing time shifting under fair use. And do not confuse this with recent suits involving file sharing. (Look up Capitol v. Thomas. The defendant lost).

If you're breaking encryption for the purpose of playing legally owned content on some device you own, and are not distributing it, well, don't worry about it. It's unlikely in the extreme the cops are gonna bust down your door and cuff you for it. Especially if you don't shout it from the rooftops. Just an observation, and not legal advice.

According to internetworldstats.com, there are 2,405,510,175 internet users in the world, out of a total WORLD population TOTAL of: 7,012,519,841 or

34.3% Not 1%

I know of people for which the only reason to BUY a movie on disc to for the purpose of ripping it to their HDD so it can be watched on their various devices or on their big screen.

Yet another blow to innovation.

So unless I am missing something (which I often do)...
Wouldn't this ruling wipe-out, or cripple, the ultraviolet business model also?

"Internet users" does not equal computer owners.

No. The UV guys don't get their media on consumer discs and as such aren't bypassing copy protection to make the content available via their streaming service.

True, I jack directly into the computer network via the port slightly behind my right ear.


In order to charge you with removing the encryption they would have to have evidence of you doing it, ie. your hard drive. To get your hard drive they need a warrant. To get a warrant they need probable cause. To get probable cause they have to have some way of knowing you have already removed encryption from your movies. The easiest way to do this is to find who is the originator of the shared movie and who is the downloader of the shared movie. They have no way to know you have encryption free movies otherwise.

This wasn't so much a ruling. It's a statement of law interpretation the Copyright Office puts out every few years.

Off topic but part of the brief stated that cell phone unlocking would be made illegal as a provision of DMCA

Does this mean you can't take your dvd to walmart and have them transfer to digital copy?

What's asinine about this ruling is calling it a "victory" for content creators and distributors. A victory for lawyers, to be sure, but who is the target for this ruling, and how does this translate into further sales for content creators and distributors? What percentage of people currently ripping DVD's to hard drives give a damn whether it's legal or not? Of that (small) percentage, how many care that their DVD collection is now "off limits" to their portables and storage servers? What, are they now going to herd in droves to pay-to-download content so they can put their DVD copy of Ghostbusters on their phones? People aren't going to spend on putting old movies on portables, and for the "centralized storage and playback" crowd, well, I'd guess that most folk with a NAS or a movie server likely are either buying or renting bluray in the amounts they desire, or ripping to their heart's content regardless. This is a meaningless "win", and all that's happening is lawyers getting rich off content creator's dollar, and legit customers getting hassled.

Price is what the market will bear, and content creators are already getting that...legislation and court rulings on DVD content protection is a laughably misguided way to try and create scarcity to drive the price up. Imagine how many good movies and tv shows could be created and sold on the dollar these idiots give lawyers.

In this environment of digital piracy, these idiots are going after protections against their paying customers. I can't imagine a more wasteful and misguided approach to their problem.
Edited by hithere - 11/1/12 at 1:26pm

So much for the Movie business.
Guess I'll just be selling all my gear and never buying anything including a movie ticket ever again.
No Blockbuster, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google, iTunes, Movie Theaters, or retail stores.
I'm Done! Everyone should stop supporting these idiots.
If nobody bought another CD, DVD or Movie ticket ever again, then the MPAA & RIAA could just eat dung and die.

Anybody want to trade 2 or 3 horses for a HT system? Seriously!
Yamaha RX-V995, 5 MA Silver Series (S10, SLCR, Sfx), SPL1000II, Plus various players, Crestron equipment, & video collection.

What if I buy the digital copy in HD with 5.1 sound from say Amazon and burn it to a bluray? is that illegal now too? This way I would have a digital copy and a hard copy for back up.

Note: This is theoretical as I don't even know if you can burn blurays with full 1080P and 5.1 DTSHD/DDTru HD...if someone knows if you can please let me know.

This reminds me of those laws that forbid you from having "non-missionary" sex with your wife, outlawing the use of land mines in combat, "coveting your neighbors goat", etc. etc.

Good luck with enforcing that them there boys!


So now the RIAA and this grey-haired judge are going to now simply uninvent BY DECREE the gaggle of software / hardware industries out there that exist for this purpose alone? Purge the internet of < 10mb software that can do this with just a click of a button?

Sorry RIAA, the honor code system does not work with this stuff and never will.

Maybe they should allow you to go straight to the movie without having to sit or FF though 15 minutes of total CRAP. Maybe then there would be less reason to copy the movie.

Didn't the ISP's rat our users when Napster went down? For those of you running torrents, big brother could be watching. Beware.

Oh the irony. Every single copy protection ever invented has been cracked. Every single one. Every min there are hundreds of gigabyte's being uploaded globally. A lot of it I bet isn't even seen by the typical American pirate. No one can stop it. I'm surprised the MPAA hasn't realized this yet.

so does that mean Walmart is going to get sued and have to stop its DVD ripping service?

They tried to stop people from ripping before, then they changed their mind, now they are trying again but soon will go wow this is useless and go back to letting people... I know I wont stop...

This is an odd ruling because generally a company would have to prove some sort of damage (monetary, loss of business) due to the activity. In cases where people are buying the DVD and burning a copy for there own use it would be difficult and I'm sure a convoluted argument to show any damage. They are getting their money.

On a related thought, if we don't own the movie and are just buying the rights to watch the movie, then is it illegal to sell a used dvd to someone else, or trade it in for a value. Seems if I don't own it, I shouldn't be allowed to sell it.

I odd thing, I haven't seem commercials for this service in sometime as they were being played quite often over the summer and all of a sudden not one in months.


Djoel

Whats funny is I believe that its illegal in Europe for companies to sell locked phones.
Edited by MysticalJet - 11/1/12 at 2:38pm

I'm not sure what the big deal is as this is totally an unenforceable law for all of us that don't distribute. We will all continue ripping. So long as we don't distribute it which I am sure non of us AVS members do anyway. Use it for your own use and personal collection.

The law is the law. Deal with it. I am I am not playing devils advocate, but the law is the law. You have to make a decision when you all purchase a movie. Do I buy disk? Do I buy digital? If the big bad movie studio wants to prevent people from ripping movies, stop selling internal and external disk burners. If the major electronics company quits making blank disks and burners the whole issue would be solved.
Edited by JoeBlow74 - 11/1/12 at 3:29pm

If I buy a disk and got it scratched, would the company send me a replacement? Since I bought the right to play and the disk is no-longer playable

So, to stay legal, I might as well stop buying DVDs and Blu-rays (which I have the most of) for our household collection and rent them via Blockbuster, Netflix or Amazon Instant Video online and not investing bigger $ and having to worry about keeping the media pristine and playable. Gotcha ... dumb@sses

Dup

Well that sounds like exactly what they want us to do, the movie studios are trying to keep us from owning physical media as it's cheaper for them for various reason, convenient yes but quality down the toilet until better ways of getting fat band width through skinny telephone lines.

I subscribe to Netflix a month or two ago, and it sucks, convenient yes but the quality simply is god awful.


DJoel

While I agree that the whole thing is stupid, now the FBI would not care if you legally bought the DVD. The fact that you ripped *any* copy-protected DVD (legally owned or otherwise) is a violation of the law.

They are saying that you only legally own the disc. You are not allowed to bypass the encryption on the disc for any reason, not even for making a backup copy of the disc.

If the digital copy is free of DRM (unlikely), then it would be perfectly legal to put that on Blu-ray. But if placing it on Blu-ray required you to strip off copy-protection, then it would not be legal.

And yes, you can author Blu-ray discs with 1080p video and 5.1 audio using quite a few utilites (ex: Nero)

Ripping a blu-ray as we speak. Oops.