[PrimeTime]

A federal court ruling today that may affect the manufacture of STB FireWire (MPAA fans, take note):

http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...ies/998363.htm


It will be interesting to see if cases arising from this decision survive a head-on collision with the DMCA in the Supreme Court.

 

[Don Landis]

Not necessarily-

This court ruling addresses liability issues more than right to make copies of copyrighted music. While the RIAA and MPAA would like to shut down companies that make duplicating tools available to consumers, the court says that making these tools doesn't hold the liability for breaking the law of piracy.

I view this a consistent ruling much like the gun control fanatics that would want gun manufacturers to be shut down because handguns could be use to commit a crime.


This is not a rule score for Fair Use, it is a ruling to quash liability for piracy from the manufacturer to the one actually responsible for using the tool in an unlawful manner.


Fair use as it is defined in the law was never in question.

Fair use as defined by lay people who conjure up their own definition of the term is what ever it is by those defining it but is meaningless from a legal viewpoint.


Bottom line of this is that the ruling may be overturned as the plaintifs have deep pockets.

 

[videohot]

There was almost a footnote in Sound & Vision a couple months ago that suggested the falloff in CD sales could be attributed to the incredible rise in sales of DVD's and to my way of thinking this is more logical than than anything else.


The disc format is one thing making that very believable to my way of thinking. The entertainment industry finally has a product people will buy rather than rent which they have always wanted. I believe that has bitten them in the butt. Rather than people spending $15 on a CD to satisfy some possession instinct and maybe $4.00 on a rental of a tape they are spending $25 on a DVD. CD's may, in some quarters, be seen as old hat.


We only have so much time and money to spend on entertainment product in general.


I would love to see a study sponsored by a truly independent entity seeing where they publics' home entertainment time and dollar is now going. At this point the record industry division of the home entertainment industry seems to be blowing smoke up the lawmakers butts to my way of thinking.


The music industry might start suing the DVD industry, Internet service providers, George Bush for having a war that people can watch, satellite and cable companies for providing alternative paid entertainment, and a host of other industries and at least be screaming at the right people for a

change.


Oh yeah, I've never file swapped via the net any Mp3 or the like. I'm not keen on the quality of MP3s.


This has probably been mentioned in some other thread but I thought I'd put my 2 cents in just the same.


Larry

 

[PrimeTime]

DVD sales replacing CD sales? Interesting. I'll buy that.


I'd say the DVD/Home Theater movement has cut the heart out of High-End Audio. The guy who dropped $5K a pop for a turntable, a 10-watt triode tube amplifier, a CD player and EACH loudspeaker has to feel silly when he realizes what half of that moolah buys in a plasma/DLP 5.1 Home Theater rig.


Plus, unlike Audio, the wife and kids will sit still and watch movies. (Then again, High-End Audio is really more of a Lonely Guy thing.)

 

[MiltonH]

Larry and Primetime


The substitution hypothesis certainly describes my own situation; my CD purchasing dropped dramatically when I started collecting DVDs and now that I am really into HDTV my DVD purchasing has taken a similar dive.


Maybe the record industry ought to look for co distribution deals with the movie industry i.e. why not put the most popular/compelling songs used for the movie soundtrack on the DVD and call it something like a Music + special edition; that way at least they get in on the DVD action.


MiltonH

 

[trbarry]

I was never really aware of the audio possibilities of DVD until the Grammy awards. But the next day I went out and found Best Buy had a rather large section of music DVD's.


I picked up both the Nora Jones and a Springsteen 5.1 music video DVD's that day and have been watching the section since whenever I go over there.


And neither DVD really cost more than a regular audio CD.


- Tom

 

[Don Landis]

What's all this have to do with HDTV recording anyway?


Maybe this thread would be better suited in the DVD section.

 

[michaeltscott]

Well, it pertains to the general "Fair Use" discussion, which is related to recording all types of things.


I don't see how this decision has to anything to do with copy-protection and the DMCA. All the judge decided was that, though media piracy probably occurs on P2P networks, P2P networks and the software used to implement them is not at fault for the piracy ("P2P networks don't steal copyrighted media--people steal copyrighted media"). The judge didn't say that people had a right to trade files containing copyrighted material over the net--he said that people have a right to trade files, without the assumption that the files contain copyrighted material which would be illegal to trade in this fashion.


It's pretty much equivalent to the decisions to not hold Internet Service Providers liable for stuff that their subscribers post online.