Judge Rules DVD-Copying Software is Illegal

[Russ Smith]

Judge Susan Illston ruled Friday that software company 321 Studios' popular DVD-copying products are illegal, granting an injuction against the software. Illston wrote that federal law made it illegal to sell products that break through DVDs' antipiracy technology, even if consumers do have a legal right to make personal copies of their movies.

For those of us who remember back when 8-track tapes were being replaced by cassette tapes, these arguments have an odd familiarity. The only difference is that, with cassettes, the "Fair Use Doctrine" trumped content companies attempts to prevent people from making legitimate copies of material they already owned. The "Fair Use Doctrine" essentially states that someone who has legitimately purchased content has the right to duplicate that content for backup purposes or to play on a medium different than that on which the original was intended to play. So, you can copy vinyl to cassette... and, theoretically, you should be able to copy CD to MP3 and DVD to MPEG. In fact, it is legal to do that, unless the content provider uses anti-piracy technolgy.

What the Hollywood studios want us to believe is that somehow, the difference in technology means that what used to be legal isn't any more. Well, they don't actually need us to believe it. They just needed to convince enough Congress-folk and, viola!, Federal law now prohibits it. Now copying a DVD is as illegal for someone who would make a business out of selling copies (good) as it is for someone, like me, who wants some hedge against my darling daughter scratching her legal, purchased, copy of "The Lion King 1 1/2."

I don't blame the judge on this one. She's right. The law does make this illegal. I do wonder what it's going to take for the people who write these laws to realize how bad a law this is. Is it going to take some "fair-users" going to jail?

What's your opinion? Should copyright owner's be able to protect their content at the expense of fair users? Is there some method to protect the rights of both?

[thpope]

There was no law passed here. It is an activist judge declaring law.

The issue here is another judge that feels he/she has the power to dictate law instead of interpreting it. :mad:

[Blondoobie]

Hmm... well, at least Susan Illston isn't a Supreme Court justice. That means there's still at least some room for appeal, eh?

[ChrisSpera]

Originally posted by Russ Smith
What's your opinion? Should copyright owner's be able to protect their content at the expense of fair users? Is there some method to protect the rights of both?

I think I should be able to make copies of any item I have legally purchased a copy of. I should be able to rip, tear, shred, fold, spindle and otherwise duplicate copies of CD's, DVD's VHS tapes, etc., so that I don't lose them due to technology changes/ shifts or due to time (the tape wears out, for example).

No, copyright owners should NOT be able to protect their content at my expense. They make enough money already. I don't want to do anything illegal, I just want to watch/ listen to their content where I want, when I want, and the way I want.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a method that currently permits the protection of the rights of both user groups...and I'm stuck for what to suggest...


Kind Regards,


Christopher Spera

[Pony99CA]

Originally posted by Russ Smith
The "Fair Use Doctrine" essentially states that someone who has legitimately purchased content has the right to duplicate that content for backup purposes or to play on a medium different than that on which the original was intended to play.
I don't believe your definition of Fair Use is correct. Fair Use is part of the copyright law that allows using parts of a copyrighted work for education and criticism. Clearly, if you're criticizing a book or movie, it's useful to be able to quote a passage or show a clip.

Stanford has some information about Fair Use (http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/index.html) which you might interesting.

When discussing reproducing an entire work, I don't believe the issues about recording and backup have much to do with Fair Use. Specifically, things like the Audio Home Recording Act (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/MP3/ahra.html) (AHRA) and the Sony Betamax case (http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/sony_v_universal_decision.php) are what gave us rights to record and time shift.

Originally posted by Russ Smith
I don't blame the judge on this one. She's right. The law does make this illegal. I do wonder what it's going to take for the people who write these laws to realize how bad a law this is. Is it going to take some "fair-users" going to jail?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is what made this illegal. Lawmakers are (were?) already considering repealing parts of this. I forget the exact section, but I think it had to do with some of the prohibitions on researching, and even breaking, copy protection.

Originally posted by Russ Smith
What's your opinion? Should copyright owner's be able to protect their content at the expense of fair users? Is there some method to protect the rights of both?
I think we certainly should be able to make backup copies of our media. We paid for them, so that only seems fair.

I know when I buy a CD, I often make a copy to play in my car, to prevent the original from getting scratched. That seems like a reasonable use, as I can't really play the version in my car and the original at home at the same time (of course, somebody else there could).

However, if my daughter likes the CD, and I burn a copy for her, I would probably view that as a copyright infringement.

I do understand the studios' issues. Piracy does cost them a lot, but there should be other ways to deal with this. For example, when Digital Audio Tape came out, the AHRA was passed which required preventing serial copies. You could make copies of the originals, but could not make copies of the copies.

Of course, that won't thwart pirates who buy one DVD original and make copies, but it will prevent people from making a copy for their friends, then having the friend copying it for their friends and so on.

Steve

[Pony99CA]

Originally posted by thpope
There was no law passed here. It is an activist judge declaring law.

The issue here is another judge that feels he/she has the power to dictate law instead of interpreting it. :mad:
Wow, are you wrong. Have you heard of the DMCA? If not, see my post above. That judge was interpreting the DMCA.

You may debate the merits of the DMCA, but to claim it doesn't exist is just wrong.

Steve

[Gerard]

I'm in accord with Steve's personal approach to 'fair use' here. Piracy is a huge problem for the top 1000 or so pop singers and their labels, maybe more than that number. It's as big an issue or bigger for movie distributors, with especially Asian dubs getting massive distribution, often days after a theatrical release, never mind DVD release dates. All it takes is one bad theatre owner, some film-to-DVD equipment, and boom, millions in profits with only a few tens of thousands invested.

But the home user, making a copy for reasons of backup, media longevity, personal use on a different device than the medium purchased? Those uses should be protected, not prosecuted under the law. When the CD came along, it was touted loudly by Phillips and everyone else selling us on it as being 'indestructable', or 'virtually' so. Claims were very publicly made that this medium was a recording medium for the ages, something with an as-yet undefined half-life. Humbug. I have vinyl LPs from 30 years ago which are in pristine condition, not detectably degraded from the day they were purchased by my mother. I have a couple of LPs from 1954, Pablo Casals playing the Bach Suites for Solo Cello, which might be a little scratchy in spots but feel like the guy's sitting in the room with me playing beautifully (well, except for the prelude to the 6th suite, where he kind of loses it intonation-wise, but that's not the record's fault). On the other hand, I have a CD from 1992 which hits this one track and just starts choking. I have to remember not to play that track, or else stop the CD and start over, skipping to the next one. There is the teensiest little scratch. I must have slipped once putting it into the tray, made this wee little blip in the surface. Durable media? Come on! Bloody cassette tapes are more reliable!

So now the Be Good Tanyas start encrypting their CDs, along with a bunch of other independents and a host of big pop stars. If I'm to rip to digital files on my PC, for use on my Pocket PC or just for backup, they supply a stupidly designed 'player' which will not allow realtime recording from within the PC at any bitrate higher than 56kbps. That's about like recording them off a cheap AM radio. Right. So I used a line-out from my CD player into my notebook, recorded them that way. Worked great. Encryption? Stupid 'player' software? Irrelevant. If you can play a CD, you can record that CD, even if it's via an analog line. Hell, I can use an optical line-out to my minidisc recorder if I want full spectrum digital accuracy, but I happen not to like my minidisc player much any more.

Private circumvention of copy protection will not stop because of some judge or some ccopyright law. Availability of ripping software will not cease because one company was shut down. They can close 20 software developers, or 100, and it won't matter. It will only make the market that much more interesting, with new developers coming up with better tools, and more and more of these will be freewares. And yes, pirates will use these same means to steal content and deprive distributors of their legitimate profits. The disconnect here is that lawmakers and big recording businesses seem not to get the fact that enforcement, whether it be in the so-called (and completely, pathologically false) 'war on drugs' or in copyright protection schemes, do not work. Education works. Improved communication, better outreach, more imagination, and of course BETTER PRODUCTS which don't pander to the lowest possible tastes, these are the real anti-piracy weapons. If we work collectively towards a healthier society, not based so much on greed, then there might be some hope of stemming various sorts of crime and addiction - the worst crime/addiction of all being money, of course. Until big business realises that it has been taking for too long without putting back what's really needed, it will be more and more seen as the enemy, something 'okay' to rip off.

[Pony99CA]

Originally posted by Gerard
Private circumvention of copy protection will not stop because of some judge or some ccopyright law. Availability of ripping software will not cease because one company was shut down.
Actually, this judges decision won't even stop 321 Studios from selling the software. In another story (http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114885,00.asp) I read about this, a spokesman said they would just remove the DeCSS portion of the code and make the buyer find a ripper that can plug-in.

Whether that approach would fly with the judge isn't known, of course. The movie studios could argue that while the software itself no longer infringed, it was still the clear intent of the software to allow others to infringe.

Steve

[Gerard]

A related story; My wife bought a Fujitsu notebook while she was last in Japan, a bit more than 2 years ago. It's running Japanese language ME (please, nobody else tell me ME stinks; I know that all too well by now), and is one of those with a DVD drive built in with the protection scheme allowing the user to switch regions 5 times before it locks the BIOS on the drive into one region. She had used it a few times in Japan (region 2), then here for some Region 1 movies, then our kid watched some Japanese anime things, then we watched some more Western movies... then the kid popped in one more Japanese movie, and got a warning message in Japanese. She's 10, and though she speaks a fair bit of Japanese, she doesn't read much, yet. She looked at the message for a while, decided not to wait for mommy to come home and tell her what it said (I was in my workshop, but I don't read any Japanese, so she didn't ask me), and she hit Enter. Locked it right down: suddenly our only DVD player was Region 2 only, period, end of story.

So I started doing some digging. Wrote to a couple of tech friends, posted a thread about it, and googled a bunch. I found Region Free DVD, which seemed to sort of work to allow us to watch whatever we liked again. I ran the trial, a couple of versions actually as they developer cranks them out pretty fast, then decided to buy it. USD$40. ouch. To watch movies on our own DVD player, our own movies purchased legitimately at full retail, we had to shell out a fair piece of change. I didn't like it, but at the time the only other option, re-flashing the BIOS with software not specifically developed for our exact model of notebook, was very risky. About a week after we paid for it, a friend emailed with a link to a review of AnyDVD. I tried the software, and BAM!, it blew the doors off the clunky and unreliable Region Free DVD, which by then I'd tested another 4 versions and seemed to be getting worse. AnyDVD just does the job, invisibly, never needing a tweak or a toggle or any user interference at all. Plays any movie, from anywhere, painlessly. No lockups, no opening one software player then another then the first again to get a movie to work, no settings to constantly manipulate. Unfortunately, it's another USD$40. After the AnyDVD trial ran out I uninstalled it. $80 is a bit too steep for running our own damned player.

Maybe one day, if I just give up on the other tool and his many dozens of versions we've now tried, I'll fold and buy AnyDVD. Good to know it's out there anyway. There are probably others, too, just not very well publicised because of legal problems. Either of these softwares claims to make copying of copy-protected DVDs for backup purposes easy. I wouldn't know, as I don't have nor do I intend to have a DVD burner. It'd be nice to have PPC-formatted versions of a couple of my movies in DVD format, but for the most part we just rent DVDs, so copying wouldn't be legal.

Isn't it 'fair use', in the moral sense not the US legal sense, to use a DVD player to watch movies in the region of their release, on one's own computer? If softwares like the ones I've mentioned are made illegal, then such little accidents as what happened with our kid and our DVD drive would lead many to owning useless machines, rendered into scrap by a law which does not consider well the real world and the needs of real users.

Of course, no one is going to kick down our door because I confess to using Region Free DVD. But having laws written which make that theoretically possible, that's just silly.

[Pony99CA]

Originally posted by Gerard
Isn't it 'fair use', in the moral sense not the US legal sense, to use a DVD player to watch movies in the region of their release, on one's own computer? If softwares like the ones I've mentioned are made illegal, then such little accidents as what happened with our kid and our DVD drive would lead many to owning useless machines, rendered into scrap by a law which does not consider well the real world and the needs of real users.

First, I agree that it's silly.

However, the machines certainly wouldn't be scrap; they merely wouldn't be able to play DVDs from any other region. Not a good thing, certainly, but the computer would still be useful for many other things.

What it might lead to is a class action suit against the manufacturer, though. Unless the "5 changes" is codified in law, it's an arbitrary limit imposed by somebody. Why not 4 or 6? I could easily see somebody suing over that.

I don't like the region system, but it supposedly has a reason. Because movies don't get released at the same time in all countries, studios were worried about people in a country where the movie wasn't released buying the DVD from a country where it was out on DVD, thus cannibalizing any potential theater income.

For computers, maybe they could use an activation scheme like Reader. If you exceed that limit, you'd have to call the company and get them to authorize the activation. Somebody switching "too much" might not get that authorization, but, in your case, you would.

Did you try asking Fujitsu or the BIOS company for a work-around?

Steve

[Gerard]

Fujitsu just stated that their policy was to maintain the original 5-try rule. No explanation, just that. I didn't get anywhere with other inquiries into BIOS modifications. Some of what I read was, admittedly, WAY over my head.

I didn't mean that the PC is useless with a dead-to-the-region DVD drive, just that the drive itself, it's DVD playback functionality, was essentially killed for our use by the little accident and the 5-try limit. Of course, if we'd seen the warning and chosen Region 1 instead of our girl hitting Region 2 by tapping the Enter key, we'd be unable to watch movies her grandmother and auntie send to her as gifts from Japan. Is that fair? Do we have to buy two DVD players to watch movies from two countries? Seems a bit excessive, for a household where none of us has ever even bought a television.

I agree, something like activation would be better. I'm not thrilled with activation for MS Reader, which is why I figured out how to save a 'backup' of the little set of activation files so I won't have to do that ever again. Implementation would be the thing; it'd have to be simple and practical to submit requests for added activations for the DVD region thing. And of course, someone would have to pay for it.

One thing I learned while on my DVD region fix hunt. In Saudi Arabia, home to a knowledgeable fellow PPC user in a different forum, it is common practice that people take their PCs into shops and for $20 get the BIOS on the DVD drive re-flashed permanently to be all-region drives. According to this user, at least half the computer shops there will happily perform this service. It's not advertised of course, but widely known anyway. Not hard to project that similar schemes are afoot in many countries, if not in all. When in doubt about one's own technical abilities with a new process, why not put it in the hands of someone who's done hundreds or thousands of similar operations? According to the North American movie industry this is a crime. According to users in Saudi Arabia, it's just a common sense response to an unreasonable delay in access to content. The average mainstream movie isn't released there for up to 3 months after US release, and yet many citizens travel to and from the US frequently, bringing movies with them. Why should they not be able to watch legitimately purchased content on their home systems? This sort of blanket treatment of consumers as though we were all criminals is grossly unfair. To stop a few thousand pirates, millions are being ill-used.

[Pony99CA]

Originally posted by Gerard
Fujitsu just stated that their policy was to maintain the original 5-try rule. No explanation, just that.
It sounds like you might have complained online, because I can't really picture you just accepting that response. :)

I certainly wouldn't have settled for that explanation. I would have called them and asked for a supervisor. I've gotten money out a few companies that I thought I deserved, even after being initially told I wouldn't. (The largest was probably AT&T.)

The Internet makes this easier thanks to forums where people can complain about bad companies and products. I've had my Sony Playstation 2 fixed out of warranty thanks to Internet research.

Originally posted by Gerard
Do we have to buy two DVD players to watch movies from two countries? Seems a bit excessive, for a household where none of us has ever even bought a television.
That's really not unheard of, you realize. Video formats in various countries vary -- the U.S. uses NTSC, France and Russia use SECAM and much of the remaining world uses PAL. If you want to watch videotape from most other countries, you'll either need to buy a VCR that supports that video format or buy a special multi-format VCR.

I hadn't thought about how DVD players handle that, but I guess with the sophisticated processors available now, maybe all DVD players sold in a region convert video to the host country's video format.

Originally posted by Gerard
To stop a few thousand pirates, millions are being ill-used.
Hence the phrase "a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch". Many laws are created because a small group won't conform to "socially acceptable" behavior.

Is it "fair"? Nope. Is it reasonable? Probably not. Is it understandable? I'm afraid so.

Steve

[LeDave]

Originally posted by Gerard
[...] Unfortunately, it's another USD$40. After the AnyDVD trial ran out I uninstalled it. $80 is a bit too steep for running our own damned player.


Gerard, look at VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc) It's free for personnal use and multi platform. On my poor old Armada 7800, it's the only player that runs light enough to avoid the lil' annoying freezes 'n drops I have with others such as PowerDVD, WinDVD, WM9, ... and if you want to tune, many options are at hand for you to enjoy (I don't use them though, default setting is good enough).

-- David -/.

[Gerard]

Thank you very much for that link! I'm using Mobile Downloader to grab a Windows copy now, and will give this a try in the next day or two, whenever next we rent a movie. Hope the software is as clean and friendly as the website. :)

[Pony99CA]

Here's a cartoon for you, Gerard.

Steve

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200402/df20040227.jpg

[Gerard]

That... is very funny. Thank you.

I still haven't had time to play with the open source software yet, but will tomorrow.

[DavesPPC]

My response to that is.....
I own DVD X Copy Platinum, and a DVD Burner, and will continue to make copies of DVD's that I own (I have kids that love to handle those expensive DVD movies).
Just like my music CD's...I make copies of them on my CD-Burner so that I can have them in my truck and not worry about them being damaged from the sun/dirt/handling, etc....

Copies will always be made by me, judge or no judge...law or no law.

It is my decision, and my right to do so.

David

[Gerard]

It works! The VCD thing, it's functional. Not very pretty, in fact it's a bit of a pain to get going as it refuses to remember that the DVD drive is E: on this notebook, not D:, so we have to manually enter an E in the path every time. Still, that's dead simple. The other drawback is that the control strip 'next chapter' button just restarts the current chapter. Oh well, the right-click menus are all there and working, so that's not a real problem either. Anyway, we mostly watch in fullscreen, where buttons would be hidden.

So thanks a whole lot for this link. No need to go spending more money. And if the Region Free DVD guy ever gets his act together and gives us a fully working version, it's gravy. Man, I just love freeware. Gives me this recurring hit of the warm and fuzzies. Inspires me to keep on keeping on with what I can offer the community back; my advice to newbies, mostly.

[Gerard]

Actually the default setup thing for drive letter was what I referred to with that last post. From one opening to the next, the program fails to remember my choice of drive letter. It seems to remember other settings, but not this one.

Further making it not so magical is the fact that it fails to open some DVDs. I'd only tried it with one older DVD when I last commented. Since then I've tried two newer releases rented from a shop, the last being 'School of Rock' (very silly by the way, but our kid liked it a lot). It would not open at all in this player. Tried several times, rebooted, tried again... then gave up and just used the old Region Free DVD > open WinDVD > failure message > close WinDVD > open Interactual Player > sort of works but hate it so closed player > open WinDVD again... and TA DA! It plays, as most things do when using this silly routine, with RF DVD running in the background. A pain, but usable. Beats paying another $40.