bens

Hi, i was just wondering if anyone knew whether it is legal or not to post Screenshots that you have taken yourself from you dvd collection on your own personal website. I am not sure because some sites tell me it is illegal and others tell me it isn't.

Thanks Ben

DVD Polizei

Well, here's an easy question, and let's see if you can answer it.

Q: Do you hold ANY copyrights to the movie you are taking screenshots of?

A personal website is just that, your own website, full of your own stuff, which is...your own. If you include stuff that is not your own, then you have to go about the legal way of letting owners permitting you to put their content on their website.

So, what you need to do, is write a nice email to the movie studio, asking for permission.

SWR 1

That is true and it isn't. If you are a dvd retailer, comparison or review site, you do not need to get permission to post appropriate info pertaining to selling the dvds including a synopsis, pictures, and quotes from the movie. You can not sell the actual screenshots though! If you are just some fan boy building his own website for personal enjoyment then everything that DVD Polizei said is true.

djtoell

Using a handful of screenshots on a personal non-commercial website is almost certainly Fair Use and therefore not copyright infringement. The use is non-commercial, it uses only a tiny portion of the film as a whole, and it has no impact upon potential sales of the film.

DJ

illennium

I'm also an IP lawyer (oddly, also from Astoria, NY) and I can second what djtoell said.

djtoell

Let's open up a practice on Steinway giving free legal advice to DVDTalkers.

Hmmm...that's probably not the best business plan, is it?

DJ

Nick Danger

Another questions for lawyers on a related subject:

A friend told me recently that his 500 disk CD player died. He wants to record the music onto his Mac and play that through his home system. He will retain the original CDs. He will not distribute the music to anyone else. Is this a violation of copyright laws?

FinkPish

Making MP3s is not illegal. Distributing them without permission is. So that would be fine for your friend to do.

djtoell

It's not necessarily an easy question.

The Audio Home Recording Act ("AHRA") protects certain types of music copying from infringement suits. The convoluted language of the AHRA, however, makes it unclear whether this includes the use of computers. Indeed, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in RIAA v. Diamond, in a suit over the Rio MP3 player, found that computers are not covered by the AHRA. The Court did go on, however, to state that the concept of "space-shifting" is a personal non-commercial use that is intended to be protected by the AHRA. The problem is that there's no actual support in the statute for this concept. Even though the House of Representatives, according the House Report on the statute, thought that they were "protect[ing] all noncommercial copying by consumers of digital and analog musical recordings," the AHRA sadly doesn't read that way. It sure would have been nice if it did.

Anyway, even if the AHRA doesn't apply, Fair Use is still available. Fair Use is even more amorphous than the AHRA, however, as it involves asking a court to perform a fact-specific 4-part balancing test to consider whether a given use should be non-infringing. I've never seen anyone actually get sued over such personal copying (and I'm unlikely to ever see such a thing), so we don't have any previous cases to go on. Still, the clear facts should lead to an obvious result. Here, two of the four Fair Use factors would clearly weigh very heavily in your friend's favor (the use is strictly personal and it would have no impact upon sales of the music, given that your friend has already purchased it (although it might have a small impact on his future purchases of authorized mp3s, but this is still a very small impact in the picture)). Even though the other two factors (nature of the works (highly creative) and amount of work used (the entire songs)) cut the other way, I think their impact is weak as against the other factors. For me, this would be enough to consider the use as a non-infringing Fair Use.

DJ

FinkPish

Long story short, no one is going to be kicking in his door over this.

illennium

djtoell:

I used to live at 38th and Steinway, in the SoundWorks. I don't know about free legal advice though. With what people here spend on DVDs and home theater equipment, I think they can afford standard rates.

mzupeman2

I was never even aware that there was legal mumbo jumbo concerning posting screen shots of DVD's for reference. Screen shots posted, big whoop. It's not like your trading the movie to somebody. I guess I can see a slight concern where posting a screen shot could be a 'make or break' the sale of a DVD, if somebody took a single frame that had artifacts or error in coloring or whatnot. But that's just getting a little anal about copyright protection now. Who cares as long as somebody isn't making money on 'selling screenshots'. As long as it's a non-profit website I don't see the big deal.

Nick Danger

Thanks, djtoell. My friend is 1) an ethical guy, and 2) a computer consultant who makes his living by creating stuff that third parties would find valuable. He programmed one of the big online poker sites, for example. So he's more sensitive to copyright laws than most people.

sherm42

Ah, but in the 9th Circuit, they decided the Napster an Grokster cases where the court looked at these four factors and did not find a fair use. The Recording industry argued that there is a market for the legal sales of MP3s. There is no reason that a person who purchases a CD should be allowed to have more than one use for that music. Just as owning a Laserdisc verion of a movie does not entitle you to transfer it to DVD. Space shifting was also specifically knocked out in the Napster case as a valid fair use.

There is a very strong argument that when you take all CD owners and multiply them together, there is a very strong aggregate effect on the legal MP3 download market. This is very specific harm to the market. One that currently exists. It's hard to argue personal use when every CD owner would be doing it.

Technically, I doubt fair use would be found in ripping all your CD's to your computer, even if you do not share them. In reality, no one is going to know. Hence, this is the Recording Industry's real problem.