MGM Concedes Some Fair-Use Rights Exist 417
jambarama writes "MGM seems to have given a little in the Grokster case. After getting
nailed on the possible implications of banning P2P software, they've now admitted
it is perfectly legal to rip one's own CD and store it. Is this a return to the stripped down 'fair use' rights or a temporary court concession?"
Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:4, Insightful)
MGM OKs Ripping [Re:Thank you, MGM] (Score:5, Informative)
No they can't, according to this article [zdnet.com]:
This is a very important point. They cannot have it both ways--whether they like it or not. They have let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
Re:MGM OKs Ripping [Re:Thank you, MGM] (Score:5, Informative)
Still, This isn't why they are trying to implement copy protection and it won't affect their attempts to create an uncopyable media. If they can stop you from ripping to MP3, they can keep the song/movie/whatever off the P2P networks. The fact that its impossible to make it uncopyable without making it unlistenable won't stop them from trying.
Re:MGM OKs Ripping [Re:Thank you, MGM] (Score:3, Funny)
The fact that its impossible to make it uncopyable without making it unlistenable won't stop them from trying.
They're already doing this. Haven't you seen the latest MTV Top 20?
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean a limitation on a copyright holder's privileges.
Nobody has a "right" to control copying (even given the misleading name for it) - they are granted the privilege of controlling it with the goal of benefiting society.
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly, copyrights don't confer a right to do anything; that falls to the rights of free speech and press, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
A corollary of this is that everyone essentially has the same right to e.g. reproduce a work as the author does. However, for the term of copyright, most people are generally excluded from doing so. Upon expiration of the copyright, the public doesn't gain rights, but is no longer impaired from exercising the rights they've had all along.
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post attests that this idea is dying out.
Re:The Constitution was meant to protect the rich (Score:3, Funny)
Haven't we picked you up as an antipatriotic malcontent terrorist yet?
Re:The Constitution was meant to protect the rich (Score:3, Funny)
Already done. He wrote that from prison on his PSP.
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:4, Insightful)
'Axiom of equality' For all x (x = x).
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, the "proof" given by John Locke is paper-thin and rests soley on there being a creator, unless one wants to examine the dubious claims as to the original state of mankind pre-large society. Since acheological evidence shows that man was never, in fact, a free individual running around in a romanticised "state of nature" as Locke's philosophical inquiry in to the matter depends on, it is safe to assume that John Locke's philosophy can be safely disregarded by any right-thinking individual.
Philosophy has long since discarded the idea of natural rights (with a couple deviations, notably Libertarianism, although Nozick uses different justification for his rights than the state of nature of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau), The only remnants of a true-to Locke version being enshrined in the constitution and declaration of independence of the USA.
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Informative)
You missed the part about "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches..." I take it?
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we all miss that.
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Informative)
From the US Constitution:
Article the fifth [Amendment III]
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Article the sixth [Amendment IV]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Informative)
Pragmatically, in this case what matters is what the SCOTUS thinks. Here's one opinion:
A popular quip around the SCOTUS, due to its divided nature, is "let's just take the case to Sandra Day O'Connor".
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:5, Informative)
Section 107 does not define or grant fair use.
Section 107 was first added to copyright law in 1976. Fair use was established by the courts in the early 1800's. It is impossible for a law passed in 1976 to grant or create something that had existed well over a hundred years.
If you check the 1976 congression record when 107 was added to the text of law you'll find the legislators explicitly stated that 107 was not intended to expand, diminish, or alter existing fair use in any way. That it was merely intended to reflect the existing fact of fair use.
If you read the text of 107 very carefully the only thing is actually enforces as a matter of law is "the fair use of a copyrighted work [] is not an infringement of copyright", period. The rest of the text merely gives a list of examples of things that are usually fair use, and the last half lists four examples a court shall consider in determining fair use. Courts are perfectly free to consider other factors, and courts routinely do consider other factors such as whether a use is "transformative". The courts are perfectly free to give the four listed factors zero relative weight if they wish. So the only part of the law that actually says anything binding is that fair use is not infringment.
There is a reason the law does not attempt to define or restrict fair use in any way, a reason the law allows the courts can define fair use however they wish. The reason is that fair use was established by the courts on constitutional grounds. The court had found that the raw text of copyright law was unconstitutional. That copyright law would be struck down as null and void if the courts did not invent 'fair use' to rescue copyright from being stuck down. The courts assumed that copyright law implicitly does not actually attempt to restrict what it claims to restrict. That copyright law implicitly flees in the face of fair use, to avoid being unconstitutional and invalidated.
Most of fair use was established on First Amendment grounds. The raw text of copyright claims to restrict any and all copying. The raw text of copyright claims it would be infringment for a critical review in a newspaper to copy even a small excerpt of text for that review. The raw text of copyright law claims to make effective criticism illegal. This is an unconstitutional prohibition of vital free speech. In this case it is also a violation of the copyright clause of the constitution stating that the purpose of copyright is to promote progress. Suppressing effective review and criticism would not only burden free speech, it would be an intolerable hinderance of progress. Doubly unconstitutional, and making copyright law doubly invalid if it actually restricted what it claims to restrict.
Fair use is the embodiment of Constitutionally protected rights. Copyright does not grant ot define fair use, it is fair use which sweeps away and restricts copyright. Fair use is the only thing saving copyright law from being null and void. Any attempt to pass a law to infringe or revoke fair use use would be unconstitutional.
Fair use does indeed trump copyright.
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The third also. (Score:4, Interesting)
It may not be quite as easy to see, but the third amendment is also about both privacy, not just a form of taxation.
Part of the reason for quartering troops with the locals is so the troops can act as spys, observing, for the government, the activity of each family and its neighbors, and reporting anything suspicious to the officers of the army.
It's an old tradition, and one of the things that the founders wanted to end.
Re:Thank you, MGM (Score:2)
Don't give them ideas. If pirating stuff off FTP becomes popular, we could end up with crazy lawsuits, port 21 firewalled off (yes I know that wouldn't stop it) and other crazy ideas.
However, in a way, you can see why they're doing it. Suing individual users is totally futile, and it would be easier for them to take out the whole file-sharing system itself. Going to be an interesting lawsuit if they try and
Hopefully... (Score:5, Interesting)
Declared legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about DeCSS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if MGM said that ripping video DVDs is legal, then we would have something to talk about.
I' rather the gouverments.. (Score:2)
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they say that it's ok for fair use to be able to rip media for personal use, then it follows that they must admit users can do the same for DVDs.
If they are saying it is only allowed in cases where compact discs are involved, then the question becomes: "What makes music special in this way?"
I for one cannot think of why it would be ok to rip cds but not rip dvds. If it is fair use to rip a medium (cd) for use on another device (like an iPod), it should be just as legal to rip a medium (dvd) for use on another device (like xine).
They better think hard and long as to why one is okay and not the other, because the courts will draw the analogy I just made and agree that if some ripping is ok, then all should be (so long as you have the media in question legally, of course).
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not encrypted.
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:3, Interesting)
Er... Read the subject line of the post to which you responded - "What about DeCSS?"
Although I would tend to agree with you, on any and all lines of reasoning short of "US Law" (which has very little "reason" involved), the DMCA (sort-of) says you can rip CDs but not DVDs. Why? CDs have no access control mechanism, while DVDs do (however weak and pathetic we may consider it), namely, CSS. Thus, you cannot rip a DVD without circ
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the DMCA does not proscribe the USE of tools to copy something, but for anybody to PROVIDE such tools to others in any manner, selling or giving it away. You can make your own hammer to pound nails (or break DVD's), but it is against the law to provide hammers to others. If you can find a hammer in a country that doesn't outlaw the manufacture of hammers, you are allowed to use it, athoug
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:3, Informative)
The issue is that ordinary consumer DVD-Rs have a critical header location destroyed before you get them and ordinary consumer DVD burners cannot write to this location. Without this headder location you lose the keys to play the DVD.
It is perfectly legal to rip a backup of a DVD using a DVD-A burner on a DVD-A recordable disk. DVD-A burners and DVD-A disks tend to be fai
Re:What about DeCSS? (Score:2)
What pissses me off is that I want to rip DVDs to build my own personal (i.e. only I use it) media center. They think I'm going to rip gigabytes of data and give it away to anybody who wants it. Right.
So..... (Score:3, Insightful)
'stripped down fair use rights' (Score:4, Informative)
Re:'stripped down fair use rights' (Score:4, Informative)
Re:'stripped down fair use rights' (Score:3, Insightful)
However.
In most countries, and in the US up until recently, (before the DMCA), copyright owners also had no recourse if their anti-copying measures were circumvented. They implemented them to make a statistical difference, not a legal one (and it worked more or less)
Fair use was not spelled out, but was a defence against copyright violation.
Nowadays, in the US, if you break copy protection in order to make fair use of the work, you have STILL broken copyright law.. making fair use moot.
I
Re:'stripped down fair use rights' (Score:3, Informative)
You're right that the music and video industries can try and implement more and more complicated DRM in order to make it very hard for people to rip said materials. However, they will continue to be broken. And if the conversion is legal, the tool used to do the c
Re:'stripped down fair use rights' (Score:4, Insightful)
But they weren't going after rippers to begin with (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But they weren't going after rippers to begin w (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, but it is. Admitting that people have _any_ rights to their purchase (other than listening to it in its original form) is a big step. After all, you can't argue that you have the right to share something legally until you have crossed the very basic step of establishing that you have the right to do something with it besides listen to it on the original medium.
Re:But they weren't going after rippers to begin w (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to know how someone can reasonably think they have the legal right to "share" works they don't own over the Internet? The difference between personal use of a legitimately paid-for product and letting anyone and everyone have a copy is pretty large.
I think both the *AAs
Re:But they weren't going after rippers to begin w (Score:2)
They have attempted to 'protect' the discs so that ripping wasn't possible.
Re:But they weren't going after rippers to begin w (Score:2, Insightful)
So, this is probably the primary reason they people haven't gotten drilled.
Re:But they weren't going after rippers to begin w (Score:2)
short term problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Subconsciously copying the underlying song (Score:2)
Without copyright law, people would have no incentive at all to write music since anyone could play it without paying them.
With copyright law, people would still have no incentive at all to write music since anyone can sue a songwriter, alleging that the musical works are excessively similar [slashdot.org], and few people can afford to finance a legal defense.
Re:Keep telling yourself that... (Score:5, Insightful)
no incentive... how about being creative?... the money earned afterwards is just a bonus.
Btw, getting rid of copyrights will also destroy every open source project as some greedy company would be able to easily rip off the hard work of the developers.
If you eliminate IP then selling ideas would be against the law. All ideas would be free and without copyrights any idea is public domain. I mean of course you wouldn't be able to provide yourself a means to live if you were in the trade of ideas.
However maybe there is a business model or economic system that can provide a means to live for those who do work in the trade of ideas. Just because there doesn't seem to exist one currently doesn't mean there will never exist one.
Re:Keep telling yourself that... (Score:2)
How often, for instance, does one see good novels from writers who do their writing only in their off-hours?
Re:Keep telling yourself that... (Score:2)
If there would exist no property rights to ideas then how can one sell them? You first need to prove property rights of said item to sell it.
The rest of your comment does not apply to me since you mistakenly took a comment I put in italic as my own.
Re:Keep telling yourself that... (Score:2)
That's really stupid. In order for a company to turn an open sourced project into a closed one
Re:Keep telling yourself that... (Score:2)
They merely have to offer what would be a more sellable alternative, through
(a) support services, and
(b) better responsiveness
With regards to (a), OS doesn't cover customer support. That's still going to take money, because few people will volunteer to support commercial software installation and troubleshooting.
With regards to (b), it's not an unusual refrain in the OS world to say "We really aren't interested in writing this. You have the source and the interest, so why don't you do
MOD -1 Hypocritical (Score:2)
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (Score:2)
The media industry is the only industry which doesn't have generic products or any significant competetition.
Not exactly. Americans can buy generic Beethoven CDs or generic kids' music CDs because musical works published pre-1923 are not subject to U.S. copyright.
Guess why? Even the medical industry, with its tens of thousands of patents, has generics and hot competition.
Pharm has vibrant competition because patents expire well within a human lifetime. Copyrights, on the other hand, do not [pineight.com].
Re:Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (Score:3, Insightful)
Originally, people had a natural right to copy. In the Constitution, part of that natural right gets tranferred back to the originator of the work to encourage the artist to make works. It's somewhat like saying a person has a natural right to swing their arms, but part of that right is taken away, when someone's nose would lie at the end of the swing.
When you die, the natural righ
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Naturally, this opens up other discussions about technologies and their uses. Some might argue that based on the above argument, everyone should have the right to own a gun, since it's not the technology that's bad but the use of it by certain people. But these are debates that need to be had to mature the discussion about the difference between a simple object or technology and the way human beings use it for their own gains or against others.
Basically, confronting the issue with education and discussion, instead of reacting with lawsuits, is the way to find a position the majority of society can agree on.
Completely meaningless statement (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no such thing as "judicial estoppel". If he meant collateral estoppel or res judicata, those only apply to rulings by the court, not statements made in court.
Re:Completely meaningless statement (Score:2)
Re:Completely meaningless statement (Score:5, Informative)
judicial estoppel. Estoppel that prevents a party from contradicting previous declarations made during the same or a later proceeding if the change in position would adversely affect the proceeding or constitute a fraud on the court. --- Also termed doctrine of preclusion of inconsistent positions; doctrine of the conclusiveness of the judgment.
Re:Completely meaningless statement (Score:3, Informative)
In real life attorneys state a lot of different things in arguments and easily go back and forth on positions. This case does not have the issue of fair use in front of it so a passing statement like this will get news headlines but w
DeCSS violates IP if used as a DVD player (Score:4, Interesting)
Although it should be legal to rip a DVD to make a backup, there are IP issues with using DeCSS. DVD player manufacturers must pay a licensing fee to use the DVD format. By using DeCSS to play your own movies on your computer, you are not violating fair use, but you are using the technology without paying the licensing fee. Therefore, it seems DeCSS should be legal as a copying tool, but not as a playback tool, although IANAL.
You mean "patent issues" (Score:2)
Again, nothing you read on Slashdot is legal advice.
Although it should be legal to rip a DVD to make a backup, there are IP issues with using DeCSS. DVD player manufacturers must pay a licensing fee to use the DVD format.
Given the vagueness of the term "intellectual property" [gnu.org], it's best to call these copyright, patent, or trade secret issues what they are. In this case, most DeCSS-based DVD players appear to violate patents on MPEG-2 video and Dolby Digital audio.
DVD Packaging Warnings (Score:5, Interesting)
It didn't say anything about distribution - merely "It is illegal to copy this DVD". But I thought under UK (and US) law I was allowed to copy physical media for my own personal use, or if not that for my use as a backup copy.
If I'm right, does that mean someone could actually have some sort of legal case against FACT, seeing as they are wrongly informing consumers of their legal rights?
I'm obviously not a lawyer, and I only ask this out of curiousity...
Re:DVD Packaging Warnings (Score:2)
I'm not claiming to be super informed on this topic, but I'm fairly certain the DMCA says "Nah, you can't copy this because you'd be undoing encryption."
I don't know if the UK has that law also or not. Clarification appreciated.
Re:DVD Packaging Warnings (Score:2)
Re:DVD Packaging Warnings (Score:2)
Re:DVD Packaging Warnings (Score:2)
http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/indetail/usingcopyr i ght.htm [patent.gov.uk]
See "But if I've bought something, can't I use it however I like?" specifically.
Sucks, doesn't it.
Re:DVD Packaging Warnings (Score:5, Interesting)
basically, you can only use a limited portion of a copyrighted work for education or news reporting etc. A wholesale copy, even if it's for your own use, is technically illegal. Ergo, ripping a CD to MP3's, or a DVD to your hard drive are not legal - but not enforced.
However, the courts have generally ruled that a non-distributive, non-profit copying is legal, such as timeshifting by taping radio shows, or making transient copies in order to run a program.
It's likely that ripping a CD or DVD, for your own personal use (and not say, your mate) would equally be judged non-infringing if it ever came up in court.
That is until the EUCD comes into force. The UK has already signed up to this european legislation, we're just waiting on the patent office to write a version of the law for parliament to pass. The EUCD is more restrictive than the DMCA, and the UK version will almost certainly prevent the bypassing of copy-control mechanisms by any means. Therefore when it passes, bypassing CSS to rip your own copy will likely be explicitly illegal, rather than technically as at the moment.
Re:Sale is a contract (Score:3, Insightful)
Adding additional restrictions after a sale is effectively prevented in the UK by the concept of 'doctrine of first sale' - specifically, the copyright holder cannot add additional restrictions than those granted by copyright, such as preventing resale, after the first sale is completed.
However, this isn't necessary in this case. Making a complete copy o
Property Rights (Score:5, Insightful)
1) File sharing and "ripping and sharing" in general expand the market and drive up sales and possible, disintermediation of the record labels.
2) MPIA has been wrong about this issue; they would have killed the VCR rental market, for example; instead a multi-billion dollar business was created.
3) For a song, there is the copyright on the words (Lyrics; song writer) and the (Music; composer) and is their copyright for the performance as well (e.g., the artists). I believe the record companies also assert a copyright on the finished album (CD) as well; which maybe legal and all, but well isn't really for something all that creative and artistic that it would worth copyrighting (and the some day releasing it into the public domain.
4) You certainly have the right to make archive copies and/or to use that copy and keep the "master/original" safely stored for safe keeping.
5) If you also have the right to lend your CD to a friend or have a library and lend out CDs/DVDs.
6) Do you really however, have the right make copies of your archive and lend/give those?
6a) While it's good for business to do so (my belief), I think it is illegal.
6b) I've driven through south central LA and seen crack being sold in 20 sec. transactions and at the time said, when you can sell 1 Terabyte of music that way, legal or NOT, copyright becomes some you can not enforce. That doesn't make it legal, but makes it so you would want to change the law...
7) Economist and Hover Inst. Fellow, Thomas Sowell called P2P sharing akin to fencing stolen goods, but for that to fly you'd have to "selling" the copies... It's not fencing, if anything its accessory to theft, but it's possible (AND THIS IS BIG THING) that accepting that it is THEFT, that there is NO Damage and NO Loss; again it actually has inverse damages; it enriches the copyright holders (see points 2 and 6a.
Re:Property Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
Now they will claim every thing from the layout of the tracks and the final production, etc. but those are in my view all work for hire and those rights should be wrapped up in the various artist rights.
Basically, since they are coming
Assigned rights (Score:3, Insightful)
What I didn't say, is I'd like to see some type of legal challenge to the record companies copyright claiming that the finished song, music and performance is no different from the Album so that they can't claim the rights that have already been award to the creative arists.
U.S. copyright law grants copyright in the sound recordings on a CD to the recording artists, but by standard industry contract, the artists have assigned (i.e. given in exchange for money or other consideration) their copyright inte
Re:Assigned rights (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the law is doing its job. Just because artists are willing to give away their rights doesn't mean that the rights didn't vest in them initially. In fact, it means that the rights must have done so, or else there'd be nothing to transfer.
The Constitution doesn't say a word about whether rights must remain with artists for their duration, and in fact every single copyright law in our history, including English ones that guided the framers, and the first federal one, allowed for copyrights to be assigned.
People have unequal bargaining positions. That's a fact of life. Taking away their ability to bargain doesn't help much.
Re:Assigned rights (Score:3, Interesting)
You can. But, if you can show that your ideas are your ideas, the government has no power to support a company litigating against you over your own ideas.
This has what to do with intellectual property law? This is co
Not fair use - unregulated use! (Score:3, Interesting)
"Fair use" is an exception to the law. This is what permits me to reprint verbatim part of a copyrighted work in, say, a book review, and publish that review without violating copyright.
This is what is so evil about the DMCA. It enables copyright holders to invent new rights for themselves--such as the right to prevent me from making copies for personal use--with DRM technology, then enforce that new right by making it illegal for me to circumvent the DRM.
For the last time, you are wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
The right to copy belongs solely to the copyright holder. There is no caveat on that right except fair use. The right to make one copy, for you, for someone else, for throwing in the garbage, for anything, is a right solely vested in the copyright holder.
There is no law against distribution. If there were, there would be no First Sale doctrine, because only the copyright holder would be able to sell or give away a copyrighted work. Anyone who possesses a copyrighted work can sell it or give it away (in general). If copyright was distroright, then you would never be able to sell your books or your cds to anyone, or even give them away. But that would be stupid. You simply cannot make a duplicate of a copyrighted work, for any purpose.
Unless it falls under fair use.
Re:Not fair use - unregulated use! (Score:3)
For the thousandth time, you're wrong.
There are numerous exclusive rights compromising copyright. One is distribution, but reproduction is another. Read 17 USC 106.
MGM loses before the verdict is even in (Score:4, Insightful)
If I can rip a Song off of my compact disk, what makes it so wrong to rip one I have paid for and my kid scratched, broke, etc.
I wonder if the major players in litigation realize that by taking these cases to court, they are hurting their cause. The more people become educated though soundbytes alone, the less power over our rights the MGM's of the world will have.
Show me the quote (Score:2, Interesting)
This was a very interesting point for them to make, not least because I would wager that there are a substantial number of people on MGM s side of the case who don t think that example is one bit legal.
Show me one official instance where anyone has claimed that ripped CDs for personal use is not legal. I HATE when people on the other side exaggerate (and apparently flat-out lie) just to score points.
If this could be done 100 years ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
One side of this court case does IMHO not know what they are doing.
The recording industry tried the courts to stop radio airplay of recordings. Now radio is both a revenue source and a major free (except for payola) advertising channel.
The movie industry tried the courts to make the video recorder illegal. Now video rentals and sales are one of their largest revenue streams.
And now they try the courts to make new technology illegal - again. I bet that p2p will end up generating more revenue for these companies. (In France and several other european countries they already are generating revenue from p2p [slashdot.org].)
Don't these companies want to earn money?
321 studios should sue (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparison to DVD... (Score:5, Informative)
The answer involves the DMCA and encryption and how the DMCA is worded to excerpt fair use, even though you broke the encryption. I'm quite interested to see what legal geeks say about this (since IANAL).
Re:Comparison to DVD... (Score:3, Insightful)
No it isn't. It may look that way, and I suspect it was a deliberate deception to make it look that way, but it isn't.
The DMCA says that fair use defenses to copyright infringment are not affected. However a DMCA anticircumvention violation is illegal even if you are not commiting infringment. There is no fair use defense to a DMCA violation, therefore saying that a nonexistant fair use defenses is "not affected" is at best worthless and at worst a deception.
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Fair Use (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying it does -- although I hope the court will say so -- but it should. The copyright owner should have no ability to determine or limit how you view the work.
Fair Use doesn't apply to private collections (Score:4, Informative)
Read sections 107 and 108 -
"Fair Use" refers to reproducing works in part or in whole for comment, criticism, or scholarship. It doesn't work for your private DVD collection
Archival copies are permitted for public libraries or research archives. Again (and unfortunately), this doesn't apply to your private DVD collection.
Dual use technology (Score:3, Informative)
In order to understand 17 USC 107, you have to read the interpretations given by the Supreme Court in the Sony-Betamax [eff.org] case. Basically, it comes down to interpreting 107 in light of the four factors laid out by Congress:
Extend copyright terms in exchange for source... (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep the part of the law that states that any work is immediately copyrighted by its creator, even if a notice is not present, but you only get so many years, and then, that's it. It goes into the public domain.
And here's something cool: Offer an additional "extra bonus" copyright protection term, say, ten years extra, for full release of "source"... If it's music, all notation, lyrics, recordings, and other matter used in production. If it's a movie, all the original film, etc. If it's software, the source code and building scripts. Whatever it is, it must be submitted to a government agency created for the purpose a year or so before the copyright expires, and that agency will make sure that all the required materials are there. If they are, the additional "extra bonus" time will be awarded, with the materials released to the public domain when that additional term expires.
You'll find a lot of software companies running up against the copyright limit for versions they released so many years ago, and they'll be desperate for the additional time. Say it's version 9 right now, but version 1 is nearing the copyright limit... Ten years from now, when it's version 12, the complete source code for version 1 will come out. May seem like a huge lag of so many years, but UNIX was created how many years ago? Ten years ago they were saying that BSD is dying. And what the heck am I using to type this up? A Mac. Running BSD. Some of the code running in this thing, I'd bet you, is at least 20 years old. Probably crap they wrote, perfected, and never touched again. How often do you look at the code for tail?
So, yes, you could get additional time in exchange for all the source, or simply let the release go into the public domain and keep the source secret.
Send this to your non-tech friends and family (Score:5, Insightful)
P2P = FTPs + indexing... (Score:3, Interesting)
What we know as peer-to-peer programs today serve fairly much the same purpose as search engines such as Google do for web. It indexes files from each peer to make it e
Re:editors ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:editors ... (Score:2, Funny)
Come on, you could, at least, make sure that your own criticism is spelled correctly.
Re:editors ... (Score:2)
Re:copy protected CDs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:copy protected CDs (Score:2, Informative)
Re:copy protected CDs (Score:2)
Re:copy protected CDs (Score:4, Interesting)
Legally, absolutely nothing. MGM can tell us we have a moon made of green cheese, God wants us to kill gay baby whales, and that we can copy CDs, and none of it means anything at all in court.
Also, we need to skip over the fact that Phillips has denounced these broken CDs as not actually CDs. So let's reduce the question to referring to more-or-less CD-like audio discs.
So... Ignoring all of the above... The answer still depends. CD copy protection refers to quite a few different technologies, ranging from the "copyright" bit, to broken TOCs, to unrecoverable C2 errors, to trying to install what amounts to a virus on your computer, to (haven't seen these come out yet, but I fully expect it eventually) data-only discs that will never ever play on a normal audio CD player.
In the first case (copyright bit), this does nothing more than the "Copyright 2005" already on the outside of the CD packaging. Fair use wins.
In the second and third cases, if your player can still read the disc, you probably don't even know the disc has any form of structural damage, so you don't need to circumvent any protections. Fair use wins.
In the fifth case, this would pretty much match the current internally-inconsistant legal situation with DVDs... You have the "right" to copy it, but you would have to break the law (DMCA) to do so, by breaking whatever access control mechanisms (however weak) the disc has.
The fourth case gets really interesting, though... These discs usually have two sections, an audio section and a data section containing something like WMA files. Once you get infected with the "driver" for these discs, you cannot access the audio tracks, only the digital ones. So post-infection, the situation reduces to #5 (thus my elaboration on that one out-of-order). Before infection, we get into a whole world of nasty tangled legal problems that I do not have the qualifications (IANAL, obviously) to comment on beyond mere speculation. For example, do you have the "right" to not install unwanted software on your computer? If so, press the shift key and have a ball. And what if you run Linux? Does the non-availability of a virus/driver for the protected content exempt you from having to worry about its existance (in that case, you would simply access the otherwise-unprotected audio tracks, you couldn't access the data track)? What if you have autoplay disabled by default, for security reasons (as EVERYONE should!)? Could that still count as circumvention, even though it doesn't require you to "do" anything? Tricky.
Overall, it will take either a new law like the DMCA, or a massive shift in public opinion on this matter, before you'll see any media companies try to take someone to court simply for ripping their own CDs or even DVDs. They would have an exceedingly difficult time proving you broke the law, they would risk the courts declaring sections of laws such as the DMCA invalid, and the cost of losing would set a precedent that, in their current mindset, would completely destroy their current business model. Not to mention, if they win, they would risk enormous public backlash, along with the possibility of huge lawsuits in some cases (Sony, for example, producing CDs, CD copy protection, and MP3 players, can only get away with that level of corporate psychosis because the law remains somewhat unclear on the entire issue).
Re:copy protected CDs (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Omigod! (Score:2)
MP3 as an audio format is legal, but distributing MP3s containing audio without the copyright holder's permission isn't.
MGM's comment of the legality of ripping an audio CD doesn't hurt their case one bit because they deal in video anyway.
Re:Omigod! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My take on this... (Score:3, Interesting)
In some ways you're right and I agree with your sentiment.
However, in the case of medicine, it's not quite that simple. You can't just cure herpes or cancer. Here's why: Any disease is the presence of malfunctioning cells inside of an organism which, hopefully, is composed mostly of properly functioning cells. Nature has given us an immune system whic