Message from Chris Squire to the Forum members
-
rickenbrother
- RRF Moderator
- Posts: 13099
- Joined: Sun May 26, 2002 5:00 am
John Hall wrote
Wow, now THAT is advocating illegal activity. It's ILLEGAL to copy any part of a commercial DVD for ANY purpose onto ANY medium. Read the copyright notice attached to the DVD.
Go out and buy one for your area if yours doesn't play on your system, or buy a system that plays it.
I'm sure John didn't mean to encourage illegal activity by members of this forum.
...However, you can also copy the DVD file structure to your hard drive, open each of the VOB files with IFOEdit, change each reference of PAL to NTSC in the check boxes, then save each VOB. There's also a region-free button to take care of that little problem. Finally reburn it back to a DVDR and you're good to go.
Wow, now THAT is advocating illegal activity. It's ILLEGAL to copy any part of a commercial DVD for ANY purpose onto ANY medium. Read the copyright notice attached to the DVD.
Go out and buy one for your area if yours doesn't play on your system, or buy a system that plays it.
I'm sure John didn't mean to encourage illegal activity by members of this forum.
Balderdash.
That may well be true in Australia but in the US, if you own the DVD or CD, you are allowed to make a copy for backup purposes- no matter what any notice may say- and format conversion between TV systems falls well within this use. The main requirement is that the source material must have been obtained lawfully. Any further distribution or sale would indeed be illegal.
The landmark case actually has to do with digital print media (which operate under the same copyright law as DVD). Without such an exception it would be illegal, for instance, to create a PDF of almost any document.
For what it's worth, in March of 2006 the French government passed legislation adopting something similar to the American DMCA act which SPECIFICALLY exempts copying for format conversion processes. They seem to be one of the first to directly address this issue.
That may well be true in Australia but in the US, if you own the DVD or CD, you are allowed to make a copy for backup purposes- no matter what any notice may say- and format conversion between TV systems falls well within this use. The main requirement is that the source material must have been obtained lawfully. Any further distribution or sale would indeed be illegal.
The landmark case actually has to do with digital print media (which operate under the same copyright law as DVD). Without such an exception it would be illegal, for instance, to create a PDF of almost any document.
For what it's worth, in March of 2006 the French government passed legislation adopting something similar to the American DMCA act which SPECIFICALLY exempts copying for format conversion processes. They seem to be one of the first to directly address this issue.
I understand that DMCA in the US, as bad a law as it was that the lobbyists in the recording industries snuck by, under the noses of our supposed advocates in Congress for the good of the American people, does override and sets aside portions of the old "Fair Use" statutes, to which we refer when we say that you can make copies of anything for archival and backup purposes.
However, the fact is that no longer can we legally "decrypt" or otherwise attempt to circumvent access-control or protection systems in any way. Fair use no longer grants us an exemption. The first section of the DMCA does not allow you to, and I quote, "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under" copyright law — and thus the DMCA renders it illegal to modify the flags in these files. Again, the exemption you cite granted for certain types of digital print media by the judiciary does not change the DVD prohibitions for the purpose of ripping and modifying copyrighted DVDs. It is still illegal in the USA.
The copyright office has released a rulemaking listing six valid exemptions, but your claim is not among them. Here is the link to get the complete current PDF list of valid exemptions:
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/1201_recommendation.pdf
You CAN still make 1 for 1 copies within the rights granted by Fair Use. But ONLY for unencrypted media that you can digitally copy bit-by-bit without digging into or ripping the DVD work first. The minute you get into the digital world to rip open the entire work to dissemble and edit a DVD copyrighted work into its component parts, change the region-protect scheme, change the format scheme which restricts which classes of playback systems the work can be viewed on, or alter or delete portions of the copyrighted work, you have dissembled and altered the created digital work as-copyrighted, and are held by the DMCA as having decrypted or circumvented access-control schemes, and you are now afoul of DMCA and US copyright law.
I am not saying it is right, nor am I saying that I worry too much myself if it is going to be solely for my own use and not re-sold or given to others. I too long for the good old days where there was no DMCA to override Fair Use, and we had the entire protection of Fair Use to copy our analog works, and also when we were in the original days of digital audio and video when we could make 1 for 1 copies of anything for our own use.
Also, this is not solely my opinion, it is fortified by the precedent of a number of successful court cases that RIAA and others have won recently. As a digital service provider, our company attorneys have given us specific direction on this issue and that is what this is: The case to which you refer does not allow you, under DMCA and any currently applicable exemptions, to open a DVD's files and change the flags for region, encoding, composition and arrangement of files, etc, any more than the case to which you refer allows a PDF document holder to remove a digital watermark placed there by the copyright holder to an image or a PDF file, or decrypt its protection password.
However, the fact is that no longer can we legally "decrypt" or otherwise attempt to circumvent access-control or protection systems in any way. Fair use no longer grants us an exemption. The first section of the DMCA does not allow you to, and I quote, "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under" copyright law — and thus the DMCA renders it illegal to modify the flags in these files. Again, the exemption you cite granted for certain types of digital print media by the judiciary does not change the DVD prohibitions for the purpose of ripping and modifying copyrighted DVDs. It is still illegal in the USA.
The copyright office has released a rulemaking listing six valid exemptions, but your claim is not among them. Here is the link to get the complete current PDF list of valid exemptions:
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/1201_recommendation.pdf
You CAN still make 1 for 1 copies within the rights granted by Fair Use. But ONLY for unencrypted media that you can digitally copy bit-by-bit without digging into or ripping the DVD work first. The minute you get into the digital world to rip open the entire work to dissemble and edit a DVD copyrighted work into its component parts, change the region-protect scheme, change the format scheme which restricts which classes of playback systems the work can be viewed on, or alter or delete portions of the copyrighted work, you have dissembled and altered the created digital work as-copyrighted, and are held by the DMCA as having decrypted or circumvented access-control schemes, and you are now afoul of DMCA and US copyright law.
I am not saying it is right, nor am I saying that I worry too much myself if it is going to be solely for my own use and not re-sold or given to others. I too long for the good old days where there was no DMCA to override Fair Use, and we had the entire protection of Fair Use to copy our analog works, and also when we were in the original days of digital audio and video when we could make 1 for 1 copies of anything for our own use.
Also, this is not solely my opinion, it is fortified by the precedent of a number of successful court cases that RIAA and others have won recently. As a digital service provider, our company attorneys have given us specific direction on this issue and that is what this is: The case to which you refer does not allow you, under DMCA and any currently applicable exemptions, to open a DVD's files and change the flags for region, encoding, composition and arrangement of files, etc, any more than the case to which you refer allows a PDF document holder to remove a digital watermark placed there by the copyright holder to an image or a PDF file, or decrypt its protection password.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and sit in with the band whenever you can, to keep your chops up!
