Selling backup dvd's

[bazooka]

Show us where it says it's illegal to own or use this stuff for yourself or stop arguing. Post the text.

www.doom9.org

‘‘(A) to ‘circumvent a technological measure’ means to
descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work,
or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair
a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright
owner; and
‘‘(B) a technological measure ‘effectively controls access to
a work’ if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation,
requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment,
with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access
to the work.

This was from pcworld.

The assertion that consumers' fair-use rights supersede the DMCA is debatable, since the DMCA provides no exemption for fair use, says copyright-law expert Evan Cox, a partner in the Covington and Burling law firm in San Francisco.

Shall I continue, or have you had enough?

[bazooka]

This was from cnet

However, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) states that it's illegal to break the CSS copy-protection mechanism employed by most commercial DVD movies. What does that mean? Most fair-use advocates say that the policy directly contradicts U.S. copyright law, but the DMCA seems to indicate that you cannot make a copy of a commercial DVD, even for personal use, and you certainly cannot give a copied DVD to anyone or watch copied DVD files on your computer.

[MrMoody]

Show us where it says it's illegal to own or use this stuff for yourself or stop arguing. Post the text.

www.doom9.org

‘‘(A) to ‘circumvent a technological measure’ means to
descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work,
or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair
a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright
owner; and
‘‘(B) a technological measure ‘effectively controls access to
a work’ if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation,
requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment,
with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access
to the work.

Those are only definitions of the terms used in the law you omitted:
"‘‘(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-
‘‘(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose
of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls
access to a work protected under this title;
‘‘(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or
use other than to circumvent a technological measure that
effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
or
‘‘(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert
with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing
a technological measure that effectively controls
access to a work protected under this title.
‘‘(3) As used in this subsection-
‘‘(A) to ‘circumvent a technological measure’ means to ..."

It doesn't say "no person shall circumvent a technological measure" in there.

This was from pcworld.

The assertion that consumers' fair-use rights supersede the DMCA is debatable, since the DMCA provides no exemption for fair use, says copyright-law expert Evan Cox, a partner in the Covington and Burling law firm in San Francisco.

He says it's debatable, not wrong. By exemption he means mfgrs. should be able to distribute a copying device/program if it's for fair use. The DMCA itself says:
"(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED.-(1) Nothing in this
section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to
copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."

Shall I continue, or have you had enough?

No, please go on.

[bazooka]

You would have gotten along great with a guy named aero.

He has since been banned.

I am tired of discussing this.

[MrMoody]

This was from cnet

However, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) states that it's illegal to break the CSS copy-protection mechanism employed by most commercial DVD movies.

No it doesn't; this hack is merely wrong. Amateur analysis is not the law.

[bazooka]

This was from cnet

However, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) states that it's illegal to break the CSS copy-protection mechanism employed by most commercial DVD movies.

No it doesn't; this hack is merely wrong. Amateur analysis is not the law.

Well it is funny just about ever ypc magazine will tell you it is illegal.

There have been lawyers that have even said it is illegal.

The judge even said it was illegal.

Are you going to contradict a judge?

If software is illegal and you use that software, then you did an illegal act.

[MrMoody]

You would have gotten along great with a guy named aero.

He has since been banned.

I haven't gotten personal or threatened anyone.

I am tired of discussing this.

No problem.

[MrMoody]

The judge even said it was illegal.

Are you going to contradict a judge?

What judge? When, where?

[bazooka]

The judge even said it was illegal.

Are you going to contradict a judge?

What judge? When, where?

The 321 case.

It was the first such case to go to trial .

There will be others.

As I explained b4, the legal system works on precedence, and 321 was the first.

You keep explaining that it is distribution but it is not. It is use of software that breaks the encryption.

That is why 321 got into trouble.

The software broke the encryption.

The dmca clearly has anticircumvention language in it, and every time you copy a commercial dvd, you break that encryption.

What you said about our rights was correct.....before the dmca was drafted.

Check out www.eff.org
www.pcworld.com,www.pcmagazine.com,and there are a whole slew of other sites with legal experts who know the law and have stated that it is illegal.

I am one of the people on this forum that would stand up for the rights of you and I.

The DMCA needs to be repealed.

[MrMoody]

[quote="bazooka"][quote="MrMoody"]

The judge even said it was illegal.

Are you going to contradict a judge?

What judge? When, where?

The 321 case.

It was the first such case to go to trial .

You keep explaining that it is distribution but it is not. It is use of software that breaks the encryption.

That is why 321 got into trouble.

The software broke the encryption.

Are you trying to say 321 was using their software, not distributing it? They manufactured and sold the software, obviously breaking the law as quoted! They didn't get in trouble for using it on their own DVDs.

[Capmaster]

Hmmmm ...I was wrong in my take on it. I thought it was the CSS decryption, but maybe it's the copying itself. Here is what adam says. He's our resident video legalities sage:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1057859#1057859

[MrMoody]

Hmmmm ...I was wrong in my take on it. I thought it was the CSS decryption, but maybe it's the copying itself. Here is what adam says. He's our resident video legalities sage:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1057859#1057859

Absolutely true, copying is illegal unless you fall under one of the exceptions. This is not DMCA, it is copyright law that's been around forever.

[bazooka]

[quote="MrMoody"][quote="bazooka"]

The judge even said it was illegal.

Are you going to contradict a judge?

What judge? When, where?

The 321 case.

It was the first such case to go to trial .

You keep explaining that it is distribution but it is not. It is use of software that breaks the encryption.

That is why 321 got into trouble.

The software broke the encryption.

Are you trying to say 321 was using their software, not distributing it? They manufactured and sold the software, obviously breaking the law as quoted! They didn't get in trouble for using it on their own DVDs.

No I am saying that the software was ruled illegal.

If you use something that is illegal, the act is illegal.

Let's just say it is a gray area and leave it at that.

[housepig]

You can still make copies of it due to fair use. The catch is, How are you going to copy it with the encryption protection placed on the disc?

point a video camera at the tv screen while you play the dvd.

copy made, no encryption broken.

hey, Fair Use says you can use it*, it doesn't guarantee you a pristine copy!

( *footnote from hell : the two points that should be made in any of these threads:
- Fair Use isn't a right - it's an affirmative defense to breaking the law [yes judge, I copied it, but.... ]
- Fair Use is more concerned with excerpts from a work than full copies of a work - one of the tests for Fair Use deals with how much of the source material you are using. if it's "too much", you're outside the bounds of Fair Use.
The idea that you are allowed to back up your digital media is a mishmash of a) Fair Use, b) the exceptions most software manufacturers made for making one backup of your software discs against damage, c) the Betamax decision and the Copyright Act amendment that made it legal to format-shift audio recordings from lp to cassette.)

(edit - caveat to the above - in the US.)

[Capmaster]

I might add that this is Videohelp's official position on Fair Use:

Fair use / Backup
When you own the media, they are the rights you get automatically DESPITE what content providers or laywers might tell you. These rights are fully supported by the crew at VCDhelp and are the basis for most of the site. These fair use rights evaporate when you sell the media in question.

Backup
You have the right to make A backup of your media. You can back up as much or as little as you wish.

Format shifting
You have the right to convert your media to another format.

Time shifting
You have the right to time shift your legitimately received cable, tv or satellite signal for viewing at a later time

Fair use DOES NOT APPLY TO rentals or borrowed media.

Source: Forum AUP.

[MrMoody]

If you use something that is illegal, the act is illegal.

I don't accept that. Did you know that it's illegal to make and sell new 3-wheel ATVs in the US? But it's not illegal to ride one.

Let's just say it is a gray area and leave it at that.

I can accept that. Fair use is a huge gray area, very poorly defined. The right to personal copies is not specifically spelled out. To my knowledge no one has ever been successfully prosecuted for making them though, and in fact the courts have ruled in the consumers' favor in the case of SOUND recordings, so it's not a worry. I don't think movies have ever been tested beyond the famous VCR case, which wasn't against individuals: just like 321 it was for distributing the means, but they lost that time.

The original 1984 case of Universal v. Sony that home recording precedent is based on, was actually Universal trying to sue Sony for MAKING THE MEANS to copy their material. Universal lost; it was ruled that making the means wasn't illegal and that taping off air for time shifting was fair use. The copyright owners have now covered this base after that huge loss, making it illegal for an electronics manufacturer to make & sell a "DVD copier", or more importantly anything that decrypts & records encrypted broadcasts. THAT's where the problem with the DMCA lies. There are also other problems with it, like making ISPs responsible for their customers violating copyright law. This threat is what's being used to make ISPs turn over their customers' names to the RIAA. One ISP recently refused, we'll see what becomes of that.

[tonyiws]

Thanks for all the replies. Just to clarify my original question, I wanted to sell the originals and just offer to send along the backups that I had made for my personal use for free as a way to differentiate my dvd's from all the other ones on there that are exactly the same. Just wated to give people a reason to buy mine instead of someone elses. I see that's a bad idea. So, I'll just send them along as a bonus to the winning bidder. I hate to just destroy them.

[jimmalenko]

@ bazooka & MrMoody:

Why hasn't someone come out with a dumb sector copier for DVDs? Just a bit-by bit copier so you could copy the protected content without breaking it, getting around the law?

As I understand it, the process of pressing the DVDs physically "imprints" the key that is used to decrypt the VOBs into the disc - obviously this must be stored on the first few sectors of the disc or something.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1231654,00.asp

One way that the system's developers attempted to compensate for CSS' easily broken encryption mechanism is by defining a complicated multi-stage decryption procedure that employs multiple levels of keys. None of these keys can be displayed or copied by casual users, and may be read by DVD players only during the CSS authentication procedure. They include:

Title Keys: each identify one Video Title Set (or VTS) on a protected disc and are stored in that title's sector headers

Disc Key: an encrypted value stored in the DVD's Lead-in Area that is used to tie content to the physical media

Player Key: a secret value assigned to every CSS licensee that is selected from a master list of 409 possible entries. This list is stored on every protected DVD. Licensed consumer-electronics DVD-Video players and DVD-player computer software store the key value assigned to them in firmware or as an encrypted data object. A license can theoretically be revoked by removing its corresponding key from the CCA's master list, but this threat lost its teeth when crackers quickly decoded and posted all 409 keys.

So I wonder whether Cap might be right - maybe simple sector by sector copier (the CloneCD equivalent for DVD) would mean copying the raw sectors is possible, therefore you aren't breaking the encryption ?

[bazooka]

I was not arguing jim.

[handyguy]

Might be fair but ebay can do what it wants & ban them. Whats the point anyway? If they got an original they don't need your back up.

Funny thing is that when I see backup, it makes me think of your avatar.

[jimmalenko]

I was not arguing jim.

I know ... just a friendly reminder that sometimes you're better off to walk away, and let the other eperson believe what they want to believe ....


... plus I'll utilise any remotely-suitable opportunity to unleash that pic ....

[budz]

hey! jim i just ordered this tshirt off cafepress.com but it says, ARGUING IN A INTERNET CHATROOM IS LIKE BEING IN THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS BUT EVEN IF YOU WIN YOU'RE STILL RETARDED".

[jimmalenko]

hey! jim i just ordered this tshirt off cafepress.com but it says, ARGUING IN A INTERNET CHATROOM IS LIKE BEING IN THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS BUT EVEN IF YOU WIN YOU'RE STILL RETARDED".

PIRATES !!!

I'll bet they ripped the slogan from this pic ....

[vitualis]

Let's clear this up...

The DMCA does NOT make it illegal to backup a DVD.

The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent a digital copy protection device like CSS encryption. Thus, using a unlicenced CSS cracking algorithm (even if you aren't copying the DVD) would be illegal.

If we divorce the issue of CSS cracking from backing up a DVD, the DMCA does not make the "concept" of copying a DVD illegal at all. That is, the DMCA would not be applicable, e.g., on an unencrypted commercial DVD.

The copyright act makes it illegal for you copy/backup DVDs.

It is probably reasonable to say that Fair Use provisions should apply to DVDs as well (though this has never been tested in court). The DMCA does not over-ride Fair Use and it is specifically stated in the act.

The issue then is that the DMCA allows content providers to override the spirit of "Fair Use" (i.e., why such provisions were made in the first place) by putting in arbitrary technological barriers and then protecting those barriers. If you look at it objectively, CSS does absolutely nothing than to provide a legalistic mechanism to subvert the right to Fair Use. As a "copy protection" mechanism, it is weak and has never stopped the "real" pirates (i.e., large Asian duplicators that churn out millions of high quality pirate DVDs).

Regards.

[tonyiws]

Funny thing is that when I see backup, it makes me think of your avatar.

Yep, I had to change my avatar.... got in trouble for the a$$ one...

[Byronleehk]

Might be fair but ebay can do what it wants & ban them. Whats the point anyway? If they got an original they don't need your back up.

I've seen them being sold on e-bay, an original with a back-up (as a free bonus). Why? Because the original material wasn't available on DVD (it was on VHS and another on LD) and the sellers had DVD back-ups of them.

Is that legal or not? I'm confused...

[MrMoody]

I've seen them being sold on e-bay, an original with a back-up (as a free bonus). Why? Because the original material wasn't available on DVD (it was on VHS and another on LD) and the sellers had DVD back-ups of them.

Is that legal or not? I'm confused...

During all my searching around, I saw a legal opinion somewhere that if a work wasn't available from the owner at a reasonable price, making a copy fell under fair use.

In any case, it's as handyguy says, eBay can do whatever they want, and they ALWAYS pull auctions if a copyright owner complains OR it looks like a copy of anything copyrighted. Some naturally slip by for a while, even long enough to end. You'll notice pirate auctions are always 1 day on a weekend.

[vitualis]

[quote="Byronleehk"]

I've seen them being sold on e-bay, an original with a back-up (as a free bonus). Why? Because the original material wasn't available on DVD (it was on VHS and another on LD) and the sellers had DVD back-ups of them.

Is that legal or not? I'm confused...

Unless the seller had a licence to redistribute the material (which I strongly doubt), then it is illegal.

Regards.

[MrMoody]

The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent a digital copy protection device like CSS encryption. Thus, using a unlicenced CSS cracking algorithm (even if you aren't copying the DVD) would be illegal.

Most of what you said I agree with, except the above. It is illegal to provide cracking to someone else, not illegal to use. The only verbs present in the law are: "manufacture", "import", "offer", "provide", and "traffic in". "Circumvent" in the paragraph below that only describes the purpose of the object/service that's illegal to manufacture, provide, etc.

I give up, obviously the content owners' propaganda is universally believed over the text of the law itself. Let me know when someone gets busted for decrypting something and DID NOT provide the decryption tool or decrypted data to someone else.

[adam]

I give up, obviously the content owners' propaganda is universally believed over the text of the law itself. Let me know when someone gets busted for decrypting something and DID NOT provide the decryption tool or decrypted data to someone else.

MrMoody you are reading the wrong section of the DMCA. The language you quote falls under the section titled "addititional violations." The very first line of the DMCA states:

(a) Violations regarding circumvention of technological measures.
(1) (A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

Distribution of the means to circumvent, or the results of the circumvention are not a requirement, and indeed most of these types of DMCA suits don't involve any distribution at all. Like the case where they enjoined the garage door repair company from reverse engineering the openers in order to fix them. The bypassing of their protection mechanism was a per se violation of the DMCA.

But let's forget about the DMCA for now because its really pretty immaterial to this issue. Insofar as copying copyrighted material is concerned, the DMCA is an additional legal remedy for seeking damages and only applies when there has been a violation of copyright in the first place. The real question is whether backing up a DVD is permissible under Fair Use or not. If it is, then it is an affirmative defense to copyright infringement. Additionally, it is also an affirmative defense to the bypassing of the CSS keys which would be illegal under the DMCA, except that it makes exception for those acts made permissible under Fair Use.

Fair Use is almost a universal legal doctrine. It is at least used in every country which is has signed the Berne Treaty or which is a member of the WTO. Whether or not Fair Use makes exception for DVD, CD, etc... backups is something that would have to be analyzed under the laws of each country. As far as I know, there is no country that allows backups under Fair Use. Honestly, Fair Use has absolutely nothing to do with personal backups.

If we are talking about US law, in my personal opionion, forget about it. The law is pretty express in disallowing personal backups of DVDs or audio cds. 17 USCS § 117 expressly allows "archival backup copying" of computer software. 17 USCS § 108 expressly allows "archival backup copying" of any media if done by a library. The legislature clearly looked at archival backups and chose to allow this only in these limited circumstances and no other. If you look at the US's caselaw on Fair Use you can also see that none of the protected uses are anything like making archival copies. If you look at the legal tests for finding Fair Use, it pretty much precludes archival copying altogether. One of the hallmark requirements of Fair Use is that the copying be in part not in whole. Another factor considered is whether "such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes." This factor doesn't even contemplate archival copying, which is neither of these things. While the definition of Fair Use, and examples of Fair Uses, are incredibly broad and unclear, the 4 factors used in determining Fair Use are express and "shall" be applied in every case as a matter of law. By my estimation, Fair Use does not satisfy any of the 4 requirements. Again, this is only under US law.