
Judge suggests DMCA allows DVD ripping if you own the DVD - zoowar
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/judge-suggests-dmca-allows-dvd-ripping-if-you-own-the-dvd.ars
======
grellas
This ruling is inherently limited.

It is not rendered by an appellate court and is not binding on anyone but the
parties immediately before the court. It poses two issues of broader interest
- (1) whether a school that buys DVDs can legitimately convert the contents of
the DVDs into streaming format without violating the anti-circumvention rules
of DMCA and (2) whether it can stream such content broadly within its closed
network without infringing copyright because such use is fair use - neither of
which is answered in a way that gives the ruling any precedential value (as to
issue 1, the parties did not brief, and the court did not discuss, the DMCA
anti-circumvention rules but only the anti-trafficking rules; as to issue 2,
the holder of the DVD rights had given express "public performance" rights to
the school, which the judge took to authorize the challenged activity and
which basically takes the discussion out of the fair use realm and puts it in
the category of a dispute over the meaning of a licensing provision).

With oddball facts and oddball law, and somewhat cursory treatment of the key
issues by the court, the ruling is purely a symbolic one for fair-use
advocates. Nor is it likely to be appealed, as it stems from a motion to
dismiss that the court granted but with "leave to amend" (meaning that it can
be refiled with sharpened allegations). The ruling may be found here:
[http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/document/UCLA_Streaming...](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/document/UCLA_Streaming_Video_Ruling.pdf).

Hate to throw a wet blanket over this but I think this fairly sums up the
significance of the ruling.

------
wccrawford
"The perfunctory nature of Judge Marshall's analysis makes him seem less like
a hardcore DMCA reformer than a judge who didn't do his homework."

Wow, a judge rules correctly, and because he didn't spend pages talking about
your pet subject, he's an idiot?

Cripes, no wonder we can't make headway against DRM if zealots insult everyone
who isn't a zealot.

~~~
pmh
The fact that he didn't spend pages talking about it is not the issue, but
that he didn't when there's a large amount of case law that interprets the
anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA completely differently. The second
update to the story provides a more likely reasoning for the lack of analysis:

"Update: New York Law School's James Grimmelmann emails to suggest an
alternative explanation or the shortness of the judge's DMCA analysis. He
notes that the plaintiffs focused their arguments on the trafficking
provisions of the DMCA, but ignored the circumvention provisions. Since the
plaintiffs didn't raise the circumvention issue, Judge Marshall didn't need to
address it. He dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, so Ambrose can amend
its complaint and try again."

------
rcthompson
The article seems to gloss over the difference between owning a DVD and merely
"licensing" it. As far as I know, I don't legally "own" any DVDs because the
all have shrink-wrap licenses that say I don't own them, but just have a
license to use them.

