More Thoughts on Fair Use vs the DCMA

[Russ Smith]

David Carnoy writes the Fully Equipped column for CNet News. Recently, he took a look at Makayama Software's DVD to Pocket PC, one of the several DVD "ripping" programs that are targetted directly at Pocket PC users. He was wondering about how the company responded to the recent judicial decision, involving DVD X Copy software, that said, according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, converting a content-protected DVD to another format is illegal in the United States. He took the question directly to the CEO of Makayama Software, Vincent Verweij.

Verweij said that, in response to the decision, they had released a new version of DVD to Pocket PC which no longer unlocks protected DVDs internally. Instead, it uses Windows Media Player to unlock the DVD and then extracts and compresses the unlocked content. This, says Verwiej, doesn't violate the DMCA and still supports Fair Use. As a further hedge, Makayama's web site has a warning that says "This software may only be used to convert personally owned DVDs."

[ChrisSpera]

I have a program that rips DVD's to MPEG1 files. I don't use it a lot, but I do use it to rip DVD's that I personally own to my hard drive so that I can format the display for Pocket PC.

I will only do this with movies that I own; but not necessarily because it violates DMCA. The process takes a while to complete, and I have a habit of returning DVD's late to Hollywood and BlockBuster. I hate late fees!

However, I also don't want the DMCA police knocking on my door, so its safer to just buy the DVD and then convert a copy to a "fair use file."

I also use WMEncoder to convert from MPEG1 to WMA with a Pocket PC template.