U.S. Court Rules Against Consumer DVD Copying

[ArcticFox]

DailyTech - U.S. Court Rules Consumers Never Have the Right to Copy DVD Movies

The MPAA's assertion was simple -- consumers do not have the right to copy DVD movies -- ever.

This one gets me pretty bad:

"Yes it would be circumvention," Williams replied, "and no it would not be fair use. The only backup copy Congress envisioned was archival, that you would never use until such time when your main computer wasn't working...Congress would not have gone through the process or have this process if you're going to say there is some fair use rights that allows you to circumvent."

So originally it might have been fine to make a backup of something, but I was never allowed to touch said backup until my hard drive/computer/DVD was damaged.

I think there's a lot of money being thrown around this issue in favor of a specific group that's pulling all the laws in their favor. What ever happened to fair use?

Please inform me if I am mis-reading this article.

[osprey4]

Hang on, need to go update DVD Fab. Back in a sec.

[Rootstonian]

Same here, but Ideal DVD Copy

They'll never win...ever. Anyone on this planet smart enough to come up with an encryption scheme, there's a million others that'll break it. The only thing that I came across that in my career that was nasty enough was from Micro Focus COBOL; they had a parallel port key you had to have on the machine it was running on. And when you installed it, you had to call then for a install key that was written to a EPROM in the parallel port key along with some hash key of the computer's info so you just couldn't move it from one pc to another.

God forbid you have to move it to another pc because you had to call them, get a friggn UNINSTALL key to remove the software and reset the EPROM and then go through the hassle of the reinstall. AND, pay and upgrade fee. They got rid of that...I wonder why. I still think I have the parallel key in my desk at work (some 10 odd years later ROFL)

Anyways, back to OT, how does a company like Redbox do it? Say they have, I dunno, 10,000 boxes (that's probably way small). Do they pay $24.95 a pop for Saw IV? If my math is right, that's $250,000. Ouch. That would be quite a start-up cost just for one movie. So how do they get to "copy" 10,000 Saw IV's? Hmmm, the term I'm probably looking for is "kickback"; something the average joe (you and me don't do).

So, you know what? Screw 'em.

[osprey4]

Anyways, back to OT, how does a company like Redbox do it?

They must have some sort of licensing agreement with the studios. They're not paying retail for each disc, I would bet. But they must be doing something right if they've now passed Blockbuster for top DVD rentals.

[Lostman]

The U.S. court mentions that it's illegal to produce the software but it didn't say you can't make personal backups of your dvd's. Unless I read it wrong (hooked on phonics didn't work for me)

[no1_vern]

Actually, you read it wrong.

You can not LEGALLY make any copy of any encrypted material. Welcome to the DMCA.