
United States Copyright Office: Ripping is Illegal - CountHackulus
http://publicknowledge.org/blog/united-states-copyright-office-ripping-illega
======
res0nat0r
From a Reddit commenter:

The issue here is DVDs & BRs not CDs. 1201 exemptions are DMCA exemptions to
the anti-circumvention section. CDs don't have copy protection so this bit of
the DMCA never applied. DVDs still have CSS and BRs have something else,
that's why you can't just copy the files off, and why legally you're not
supposed to phase shift or rip them even though you technically can.

Phase/time shifting is explicitly OK, as long as that's all you're doing,
thanks to the betamax case. Breaking encryption, however busted and useless
and stupid as CSS is, is still not OK. Some people were trying to get a 1201
exemption for DVD ripping, copyright office didn't go for it.

~~~
mweinbergPK
Hi - I work at Public Knowledge and coordinated our exemption request. While
our exemption request was specifically about DVDs, the Copyright Office's
rejection was much broader. Essentially, the Copyright Office found no
evidence that space shifting as a practice was fair use. That means that, as
far as the Copyright Office is concerned, space shifters are infringing on
copyright. That would include anyone who copied a work from one medium to
another - regardless of whether or not it was protected by DRM.

~~~
lostnet
But time shifting is fair use and as considered has always required space
shifting so space shifting itself is compatible with fair use. I think the
question is always about the eventual playback.

------
grecy
> “The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s
> been on their Website for some time now, that it’s _perfectly lawful_ to
> take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto
> your iPod."

Why are we letting record companies tell us what's lawful? (and by extension,
what's not)

~~~
klodolph
The point of this quote is to illustrate that _even the RIAA_ thinks this is
bogus.

~~~
grecy
I understand that in this particular case, the RIAA sided with consumers.

What I'm pointing out is that this sets a dangerous precedent for the future.

Now we (and the courts) are used to hearing what the record companies think is
and is not lawful, when that has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

~~~
Natsu
Not really. They're saying that this position is so extreme that not even the
RIAA agrees with it. That's a far cry from saying they're always right.

------
jrockway
"New York City Police Department: Riding a bike outside of a bike lane is
illegal."

Just because some unelected government bureaucracy believes something doesn't
make it a law. Who has gone to jail for ripping a Blu-Ray to their iPad?
Nobody. Therefore, we don't really know if it's illegal or not. The copyright
office has an _opinion_ and have decided not to specifically make the act
legal (which is the only authority they have). Fair use, copyright law, "the
right of the people to be secure in their ... effects against unreasonable
searches..." are all part of the legality equation here, and until this is
tested in court, we won't know what is or is not legal.

As far as I can see, the cat is already out of the bag and people don't care
what the law is. They _can_ space shift, and will. End of story.
(Incidentally, it seems that it's perfectly legal to space-shift pirated
media. So maybe just get that instead?)

(It's kind of like how pot is illegal federally, but many states allow people
to grow, buy, and sell it. Yup, it's illegal. Too bad nobody cares.)

------
javajosh
Wow. It's finally clear. Content creators are against phase-shifting because
it threatens their distribution mechanisms. Consumers want phase-shifting
because it makes consuming media an order of magnitude better.

The ideal solution would be for content creators to offer a DRM-free copy of
their wares, and for consumers to not abuse this open-ness. But, it seems that
consumers _will_ abuse it: given a choice between a $30 BluRay of "The
Avengers" and torrenting it for $0, lots choose the later (not the least of
which is to avoid the pain of ripping the movie later).

I wonder, though, how bad the abuse would be if the service was really easy to
use, and priced correctly? Why would I bother with bittorent if I had a really
nice service that let me stream/download movies for a few bucks apiece?

Additionally, I personally wouldn't mind one bit if a subset of the data was
encrypted with my public key, making it hard (but not impossible, of course)
to share it. Combined with a some creative steganography to identify the
targeted user, you have about a secure, enforceable system as is humanly
possible.

There is a privacy concern here, of course - the seller can individually
identify people who've bought their movie. But that's going to be a problem
whenever information is bought and sold. Note that this privacy protection is
relatively easy to get around even today, as law-enforcement can request
credit card records and itemized purchase information from the retailer. The
difference is that now you would require a _target_ and to make _effort_ to
get at this data, whereas in this new system, it's right there. If this
worries you, either don't purchase data or purchase it in person with cash.

~~~
wmf
Do you have specific criticisms of the iTunes store, PS3 store, Xbox store,
etc.? People keep talking about legal downloads like they're a theoretical
concept...

~~~
theevocater
Have you ever lived somewhere other than the United States? They are in fact a
theoretical concept in many places.

Services like netflix, spotify and pandora are also just as rare and they
usually have extremely reduced libraries outside the States.

~~~
wmf
Given that this is a thread about US copyright law, I thought we were talking
about the US market. I guess it's turned into generic copyright griping thread
#4,702.

~~~
nitrogen
With the global nature of the Internet and the universal human desire to
participate in culture, it's difficult to discuss US copyright law without
considering the international effects thereof.

There will always be more "copyright griping thread[s]" until the arbitrary
and artificial barriers to universal cultural participation and consumption
are torn down, until a Fringe fan in Mombasa can watch _and participate in
discussion about_ the latest episode at the same time as someone in Memphis.

------
richardjordan
I've noticed a cycle here. Media companies donate tons to campaigns. They act
out during electoral season because they know that people they write checks to
will not dare talk back to them, and if possible will pressure regulators to
back them to keep the money flowing. I saw a spike in this stuff in 2008 and
in 2004 - articles, pushes for lawsuits, regulatory announcements that were
otherwise baffling. Don't remember 2000 well, or rather it's overshadowed by
other memories of that election. Anyway, I may be wrong of course but my point
is I'm not surprised at seeing an announcement like this during election
season. I think the balance of evidence is that regulators in this country
work with significant political interference, regardless of claims to the
contrary - if nothing else they're sensitive to the winds in Washington. Just
a thought.

~~~
daniel-cussen
I'm not sure the amount they donate matters as much as the good press they
donate. This is extremely valuable.

Consider the case of the bribes paid by the Peruvian government to media
versus that paid to judges and politicians. While the latter two got tens or
hundreds of thousands of dollars, a TV channel owners got $5 million. That
acts as a proxy for their power.

What is the parallel? They act out during election season because they are in
the middle of handing their most valuable asset out--their coverage. That is
the true lobbying asset. Based on what you said I suppose they want to get
what they want before the election happens and the horse is let out of the
barn.

------
acuozzo
So would it be illegal if my team of emus, pecking 0s and 1s at keyboards,
collaboratively created a file that, when packed into segments of size 8 and
converted from ASCII to binary, is bit-for-bit equal to a decrypted a DVD?

I hope not! It probably is illegal considering:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_numbers>.

Man, the law just isn't rigorous enough for me.

~~~
Splines
IANAL, but if you happened, purely by chance, to create a file that was bit-
for-bit equal to a decrypted DVD, that would be fine (since it's practically
impossible to do, anyway).

It's the intent that matters anyway. What the government has now is a stick
they can hit people with (they had the stick already, now they have
permission). Like speeding, if you rip your copy of E.T. you bought at Walmart
and put it on the family's iPad so the kids be quiet, or by god you're going
back to Winnipeg, nobody is going to be knocking on your door. However, if you
start a site called www.dvdtomp4.com and offer a mail-in DVD-to-MP4 service,
you could expect to receive an interesting visit at some point in the future.

~~~
acuozzo
I agree with everything you wrote, but I'm going to continue with the
ridiculousness for the sake of discussion.

> It's the intent that matters anyway.

What if I intend to sell the product of my emu-packing operation? Surely, we
did our own work!

~~~
wmf
Then when advertising _your own work_ you would surely make no references to
the names of any Hollywood movies that are not your work, right?

------
WiseWeasel
Fortunately, shiny discs are all but obsolete, so this decision is quickly
becoming irrelevant, not that there was ever any real risk for individuals
ripping their own discs, just as there's no risk for an individual
circumventing DRM on digital content they bought. Distributing tools to do so
is the tricky part, so that's really the only exemption that would have an
impact on the status quo.

------
antihero
This is still so extremely worrying. How insane is it that we have a law that
prevents us purchasing a physical object, and doing certain things with that
that don't impact directly on others? Imagine if your tobacco company
prohibited you rolling cigarettes and giving them to others? Or your water
company legally stopped you being able to drink the water coming out of your
taps so you have to buy bottled water?

It's fucking ridiculous.

------
Zarathust
If you somehow connect a DVD player to an iPad, then read it from there, would
it be legal?

Then if the iPad had such a large memory that you could fit the whole DVD
inside it, would it be legal?

Then if you never had to turn off your iPad, the results would be exactly the
same as what is currently illegal.

~~~
shrughes
No, and no.

~~~
Zarathust
So you are saying it is illegal to transform a device that cannot play DVD
into a device that can play DVD?

Again, you can have some buffering, but not too long as it would be
circumvention.

~~~
wonderyak
No, it is illegal to convert/circumvent DRM protected files to any other
medium.

~~~
randomdata
He's not really suggesting conversion per say, just playing the DVD content
straight from the DVD media like any other DVD player does. That does assume
some kind of conversion in itself but should fall under fair use. It would be
_impossible_ to watch a DVD at all otherwise.

It gets into the realm of the legality of using Linux to watch a DVD, which is
generally considered illegal, but looking around the net there seems that
there may be some legal precedence that says otherwise.

If Apple somehow left their DVD player decryption code in iOS on the
aforementioned iPad, for which they presumably do have a license to use, then
there should be no legal qualms at all.

------
debacle
By that same logic, is converting files from m4a to mp3 illegal?

~~~
tzs
No, M4A to MP3 should be fine in most cases, because those formats are usually
used for musical recordings. Space shifting of musical recordings by consumers
for non-commercial purposes is allowed by the Audio Home Recording Act of
1992, so there is no need to turn to fair use to justify it.

~~~
debacle
So m4a to mp3 is fine, but avi to mpeg4 is illegal?

~~~
aplusbi
No, copying a file from one device to another is illegal (space shifting) not
changing the format (media shifting).

~~~
jlgreco
So if I rip a DVD to another DVD, but don't use CSS on the second, is that
legal?

------
jcromartie
So what about removing DRM from eBooks, etc.?

~~~
wmf
"The good news is that the disabled readers can still remove DRM which would
inhibit their ability to use the content. The bad news is that there are no
other exceptions which would allow you to remove the DRM." [http://www.the-
digital-reader.com/2012/10/25/u-s-copyright-o...](http://www.the-digital-
reader.com/2012/10/25/u-s-copyright-office-publishes-final-rules-with-dmca-
exemptions/)

------
maeon3
If i can't make copies of my DVD's then that means whenever I scratch my DVD
and it is unrecoverable, the entity that shipped me a DVD must ship me a new
one.

These cats want to be the gatekeepers of all data everywhere, I guess we can't
stop them, the only thing we can do is stick a thorn in their foot so they
have to limp along doing so.

Makes me sick how a central authority thinks they get to make law on what my
device can and can't do with data I own on it.

The future of what you are looking at: <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-
to-read.html>

~~~
mathgladiator
> "I own"

That's the crux of it isn't it. Who says that just because you paid for
something that you "own" it with the associated rights. We are migrating from
ownership to licensee-ship.

I used to be sick of all this "license" business, but then I realized that
ownership is a dual-edge sword. Consider this, I don't buy dvds anymore.
Instead, I'll wilfully pay $1.99 on either iTunes or Amazon. It all depends on
how you look at it. One of my favorite movies is $14; that means that I would
have to watch it eight times for ownership to be a rational decision. This is,
of course, assuming that the total cost of ownership is $14.

Consider: \- Shipping ~ $2 \- Moving Expenses ~ ($5 per 100) \- Related Items
~ ($80 per 200) [bookshelf] \- Storage Opportunity Cost ~ What could I have
instead of this thing

w.r.t to "Right to Read"; I believe that there will always be libraries and
champions for education and "important things" to negate the bad side-effects
of over-intrusive gate-keepers. The "trivial things" like music/movies will
always have gate-keepers since those gate-keepers need to get a return of
investment (which is their right).

