DVD Josh

Alright, this question is based on the recent ruling against 321 studios (DVD X COPY).

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...media_321_dc_5

I understand that under the DMCA, it is a per se violation to circumvent copyright protection schemes. Quite frankly, that's what DVD X Copy does.

However, under the DMCA, a user is allowed to copy media for backup purposes.

These two provisions seemingly contradict each other, as you could not make a copy without breaking the protection.

I think the DMCA is the worst piece of legislation regarding digital rights that Congress has ever passed. It's fraught with contradicitons and vagueries like this one.

So my question is how can one make a copy of his/her digital media, a right under the DMCA, without violating the DMCA?

djtoell

No such provision exists within the DMCA.

DJ

DVD Josh

Copyright law is not my specialty . That was however 321's argument in its defense. Perhaps the article phrased it wrong. Generally speaking however, isn't a user entitled to make a backup for personal purposes?

djtoell

321 didn't argue that the DMCA allows for backup copies, but rather that the Constitution protects such fair uses. And they lost.

Quote:

Generally speaking however, isn't a user entitled to make a backup for personal purposes?

Other than in the case of computer software, there is no law that definitively says so. A court would have to decide if a given backup copy was fair use, weighing the 4 factors. And while personal backup copies are fairly llikely to be found to be fair use, that is rather irrelevant to the DMCA. Fair use protects a person from copyright infringement suit, but the DMCA anti-circumvention provision isn't copyright infringement, but rather its own thing. The act of circumventing a technological access control such as CSS has no fair use exception. 321 Studios, just as 2600 Magazine before it, has tried to convince the courts that the Constitution provides fair use exceptions to the DMCA, but they're wrong and have lost in court each time.

DJ

chemosh6969

A lot of dvds don't have copy protection and those are the ones you can backup. As for all the others, you are SOL

duz

A lot? You must buy nothing but dvds from A&E then.

The only way to back up your dvds under the fair use provision is thru the "analog hole," that is, to copy the signal that comes out of the dvd player and to the tv/vcr. Atleast until the law forbidding that gets passed (the MPAA is trying hard).

chemosh6969

Nope, no A&E, but I do buy a lot of movies that don't come from the major studios so that's why I can make that claim. I'd say that about 25% of my dvds don't have protection on them.

If the dvd has no copy protection, you can make a copy using a dvd recorder on a computer, and that is a digital copy not analog.

iove

Hmmm...Porn isn't usually copy protected and it certainly doesn't make up 25% of my collection!

chemosh6969

noooo! I have a lot of older horror movies that don't have protection, some Something Weird dvds, some Troma dvds, some retromedia dvds, and so on.

dvds that aren't from the big studios that are supporting the DMCA a lot of times aren't protected.

ScottReynolds

I say this with respect, but you may have just violated the law. You just circumvented a copy protection.

Gotta love possible (some would say very likely) interpretations of the DMCA, huh? When they add any measure of 'protection', which can mean so little, fair use is gone.

philo

Sony had Federal rulings against them when Universal tried to make VCRs illegal until it was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court. Even if they lose this case it does nothing to stop mass produced piracy which is far more sophisticated than any home PC software app.

duz

Nope, the DMCA refers only to digital circumvention. The MPAA is trying to get analog bypassing included though.

djtoell

No, it doesn't. The word "digital" does not appear anywhere within 17 USC § 1201, the provision that prohibits circumvention of access controls. § 1201(a)(3)(B) defines a qualifying access control as one that, "in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work." An analog access control can qualify just as easily as a digital one. Likewise, the act of circumvention is defined in § 1201(a)(3)(A) as "to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." Nothing in that definition limits circumvention to being digital in nature.

DJ