FAQ at www.divx.com helping spread lies about DVD backup

[Stabmaster-Arson]

Over there in the Faq a question asking "How do I copy my DVD's into divx?" their answer? "According to the DMCA (Digital Milleniu Copyright Act, copying DVD's is illegal and will not be supported by us"

This is blatently untrue. Straight from the DMCA, copying a DVD that you legally own, is legal as per fair use. The only thing possibly in question, is making the tools to descramble css, possibly may be. Once obtained though, it is never illegal to copy movies you own, the crime would never be copyright infringement, its the distribution of the tool to do it which raises questions. Possessing a "Means of breaking a copy protection measure." is 100% legal, for personal use.

Was this statement in their FAQ a slam of this site, are they just cowering, for fear of lawsuit, ignorant of the letter of the law, trying to be on the nuts of Hollywood, or all of these or none of these. What do you all think about this?

What disturbed me about this statement was the "Copying a dvd is illegal even if you own it." i felt this was way to oversimplified, and a poor message to send to the encoding n00bs who are finally getting on the divx bandwagon, being fed false information, and helping to desensitize a society that assumes a "Copying should be illegal no matter what." type of attitude. Once people believe that coying media is always going to be illegal, then it will be easier for our fairuse rights to get even further thwarted. I think a much better way to deal with this question would have been for them to post a link to, say, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act itself, or, perhaps, to Doom9's article regarding the issue, or other articles that tackle the issue. However it did not bother me they did not link to the tools to do it, that I can understand for fear of lawsuit but in this day and age to propagate ignorance and a lack of information is a very dangerous thing to do with respect to all our freedoms.

Thoughts?

[markrb]

In the U.S. the movie and music industries are taking the position that Fair Use does not cover DVD's or other bought media. Their stance is that fair use only covers your right to record broadcasted material for personal use.
It's a little more clouded for the audio industry then the video industry since recording of records on to tape was legal for personal use. They are saying that digital copies are illegal since they can be copied many times without degrading the quality from the original.
From what I have seen nothing in the courts has countered this claim. In reality it is doubtful the industry would go after any single user and force the issue in the courts. They risk having to change their position and opening the floodgates. Right now the threat of legal action is their best friend.
At this point they mostly go after groups and people that are making or allowing mass copies to be produced for sale. There is no legal point of objection here so it's a safe prosecution. The only time it becomes marginal is when they go after a single person that has not made any money from his product, but by making this product has allowed others to. As is the case of the kid that found out how to break the DVD decryption.

From everything I have read it is now illegal to copy DVD's in the US. They do not fall under fair use since the technology didn't exhist when the laws were created. This is something that will have to be decided by changing of laws or the courts.

Mark

Mark

[Doom9]

hmm.. never really thought of it this way. Maybe just because I'm a webmaster and engage in more than just the possession of a tool that circumvents copy protection measures.
As far as I can see (haven't read the whole act again.. it's been a while since I wrote my last article on the DMCA) it is indeed legal to own such a tool, however ??(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public,
provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service,
device, component, or part thereof, that- is not. Now, a simple address lookup will tell you that my site is stratecigally placed outside the US.. it's more of a coincidence actually but it works out really well for me because non-US providers actually bother to read the MPAAs letters before shutting down an account. Now, except for very few people we do not manufacture CSS descrambling tools. Offer to the public, provide or traffic in any technology... applies mostly to websites as I see it. However, there's the import clause. If you're in the US you cannot have a website that offers CSS descrambling tools. If you're outside the US you can as long as there's no DMCA equivalent. However, since the tools are hosted on foreign servers, by downloading you engage in an act of importing, which is forbidden by the DMCA. Of course, this is a play with the written word for now. But, there's a long history behind the whole importing thing. You'd have to analyze preceding court decisions on similar issues (there's the whole PGP exporting thing which I think is something similar... it was found legal to print out sourcecode and export it, so by an analogy it should be legal to import decss sourcecode on paper and compile it as stuff written on paper is protected by the first amendment, a fact that Mr Kaplan conveniently forgot (I think this whole concept is called jurisprudence... take similar court rulings into account)).
This is just a quick blurb of my thoughs on the matter. As you can see we're getting deeply into a legal jungle here. A lawyer experienced in similar matters may be able to tell you more.. I'm just an engineer who has taken a basic law course at college and studied some additional documents since they concern my most time consuming hobby...

[Doom9]

@mark: that is indeed the MPAA and RIAAs position (though the latter actually put some copy protection on digital recording technology which has been illegal to circumvent since day one - SCMS), however, there's nothing in the copyright act or the DMCA that would justify that kind of handling digital content. As far as I know there never was any destinction between content forms as far as the law is concerned.

[markrb]

@Doom9 Because of this thread I did a little digging and figured out that my thoughts were flawed in some ways. I was basing what I said on memory and old arguments. The idea that it's digital seems to in no way make any difference. I think I confused the idea that it's digital with that it's encrypted. I found this paragraph over at the MPAA website.
Circumvention Devices

A circumvention device is any physical medium or digital file that allows for the circumvention of content protection devices put on films, videos, discs, etc. to secure the copyrighted content. One such Circumvention Device is the unauthorized, so-called software utility DeCSS. Any person that has the DeCSS utility can use it to break the copy protection on DVDs making it possible for motion pictures in DVD format to be decrypted and illegally copied onto a computer’s hard-drive for further distribution over the Internet or otherwise, in perfect, digital format. Other common circumvention devices include "black boxes" and other illegal signal theft devices and macrovision defeators.

If I read this right then as long as the DVD is encrypted it is illegal in the US to copy it no matter what. It is a funny way they get around a loophole by making one themselves. It seems that copying the video is not illegal it's breaking the encryption that is the illegal part, even if you own the disc.

Mark

[Doom9]

well.. in 1201.a/b there's no mention of the use of a decryption device. As I said.. it's been a long while since I've last read the DMCA (I read the whole damned act twice.. really boring) so I'm not sure if my memory is letting me down here. Unfortunately I don't have access the the docs right now to look that up (they should be somewhere on my page but they don't even let me ftp out from school so I can't check the docs directory on my site).

[markrb]

This might be a U.S. only thing and if this is the case I doubt it could affect any site outside of the U.S.

I wonder do you know what law they got the kid that created DeCss for? I know he was in northern Europe I just don't remember exactly what country. If my memory serves me they didn't find him doing any pirating of videos himself. He just published the program or at least the way to do it.

Mark

[Swede]

so I can't check the docs directory on my site But I can :) dmca revealed (http://www.doom9.org/dmca_revealed.htm)

[Doom9]

@swede: I didn't mean that.. but I found the link, but of course it's behind my anti-leech so pasting it here would be useless.

Anyways... I 1201.a starts with no person shall circumvent a technical measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title..
So.. we need not go any further in this discussion.. that was the paragraph I was looking for and it clearly says that you cannot circumvent. You may be able to legally own such a device, and with some good lawyer work you may be able to legally import such a device but you're effectively barred from ever using the circumvention device.

@stabmaster: as long as DVDs (or any other media containing copyrighted work) is protected by any technological means that restricts access (CSS, Macrovision, all kinds of CD anti-copy protection stuff) the DMCA makes it impossible to copy it, be it for fair use purposes or any other. So far it has been the argumentation of US courts that the fair use exception, despite being mentioned in the DMCA itself does not apply (makes one wonder why it's there if it apparently has no value). So.. unless you have an unprotected DVD (and there are such) you're breaking the law when descrambling it, regardless if you own it and would have the right to make a copy under the copyright act.

[Hanty]

I don't think anyone can give a straight answer to wether it is legal or not. There'd have to be a court ruling on it to decide, which is sorta sad. It says alot about the bureacracy that surrounds the subject.

[whome]

Doesn't this depend of which country you reside in...I was of the impresion that every country has it's own laws on that subject.
Here in Norway it's suppose to be legal to copy the movies you own, though...I won't try that in court.

[markrb]

Yes it does depend on your country. I highly doubt Iraq gives a crap about our laws, but there is an international agreement that many countries signed onto. I believe, but am not 100% sure, it is tied to trade agreements and one of the catches to becoming a "most favoured nation" is signing onto this agreement. Technically even China has signed on, although they actually helped to develop VCD and SVCD technology.
If you watch a video in the US no only is there a FBI warning about copying the video, but now there is an Interpole warning as well.

I can't say I know the specifics, but I have heard mentioned many times about copy right infrigment and international agreements.

Mark

[whome]

Originally posted by markrb
This might be a U.S. only thing and if this is the case I doubt it could affect any site outside of the U.S.

I wonder do you know what law they got the kid that created DeCss for? I know he was in northern Europe I just don't remember exactly what country. If my memory serves me they didn't find him doing any pirating of videos himself. He just published the program or at least the way to do it.

Mark

He was norwegian...why I said I won't try that in court ;)...
...anyway...I'm not really sure what law they got him for, but I think it had to do with distributing the prog...and something about 'breakin an entry'...as in breakin into the copyrighted code...please don't quote me on this since I have the memory of a common housefly...

btw...here in Norway we have warnings before every movie on both VHS and DVD too...says it's strictly forbidden to copy the image and sound of this tape/dvd...

[Stabmaster-Arson]

I reside in Cnada, and as this law does not apecifically apply to me, it stil affects me because its all U.S. content anyways. So I can't get busted for doing this but it does affect us almost as heavily.

How about this for a loophole...
"To ensure the interoperability....."

I need to make an SVCD from my dvd movie, nd I want to ensure that it will run on my DVD player.

In this case, the DVD player is a licensed medium for playing this content which is readily available commercially and which I purchased.....

Just a thought.

It's too bad lawmakers in the U.S. keep ignoring the first amendment, and fair use rights.

I'm no lawyer but as I understand it, when a contract is interpreted, it must be interpreted favorably towards the party that did not draft the contract, in other words, the people. And in the DMCA it says it is not intended to ionterfear with fair use rights, and it would seem to me, the industry must provide us the tools to backup our movies or its game on.

Too bad it will take major court battle(s) and no one has the cash to fight hollywood.

What really pisses me off bsides all this, is ATI capture drivers detecting macrovision and killing capture, even for Canadian customers. It's ot like a 5 minute search to goole wouldnt turn out hacked driver files that allow this, but we deserve a fully supported, non hacked capture driver.

This too may be a loophole if they did not enable macrovision detection in the capture drivers, no person shall circumvent a technical measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.. , macrovision does not "Effectively prevent" copying an analog source into digital format. The key word here is effectively. Macrovision was designed for, and protects analog copies from being made, not digital. And therefor does NOT effectively protect the work in this case.

(For those that do not know, macrovision is not affected during video capture unless the driver specifically looks for the macrovision signal and voluntarily cripples the capture. This is an important point to know when reading the preceeding paragraph.

[Doom9]

as for macrovision just read the dmca again.. I didn't put anything about that in my analysis but there's a paragraph specifically for macrovision.

@mark: these international treaties only mean that your work is automatically protected in all countries that signed the treaty, but the applicable law is always the law of the country you live in, not the country the content owner is from. And.. these treaties are about copyright law, not DMCA-like stuff. But there every country is cooking its own soup as well.

[Joebuck JR]

This is nothing new or unexpected. Don't expect support for fighting them here. There are many things that are not on the up and up.

[TheWEF]

i wonder: what happens if someone builds and sells a dvd-recorder that is able to make a 1:1 copy - just copying the encrypted data bit by bit, no decryption. that's a legal copy then?
:scared:

wef.

[markrb]

Actually it still is a way to get around the decryption scheme and I think that would fall under the
"no person shall circumvent a technical measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.."

It may not be decrypting, but it is circumventing. So the law still applies.

I think the studios would make a stink about this too. Just look at Apex, you can't sell them on Ebay now and they are being sued just for making it possible to alter the code to get rid of region coding and macrovision. They don't even supply the code, they just left it for others to figure it out a bit easier then the others.

Mark

[Stabmaster-Arson]

As for a bit by bit copy, remaining encrypted, I believe that would constitute fair use. the DMCA goes to very great lengths to say it does not stop fair use, for if it did it would be nulified. The oprotection offered by decss stops the raw data stream from being decrypted and copied unprotected and un modified. In this case the backup does not decrypt it, and the resulting copy still requires a css licensed player to view the material. CSS prevents the data from being decrypted, it does not protect copying, so there is no circumvention in this case. Tell you what, im going to see if i can make a dvd iso and play it in daemon tools (I do not have a standalone dvd player nor a dvd burner of any sort) and see what happens.

Can anyone point me to a program that converts nero .nrg into .iso ? As of this writing nero is the only cd mastering software I have that supports dvd imaging.

[Joebuck JR]

http://www.copystar.com.tw/Php/Main.php3?Function=DOWNLOAD

Fantom cd can image the dvd and play it in an emulated drve. I like it better then daemon tools.