Now here’s something to think about: Now that HD DVD is dead, do you see anything wrong with HD DVD disc owners breaking the DRM on their discs to make backups of the media that they’ve bought in an effort to future-proof their investments?
Think about it: when you buy a disc, whether a DVD or CD, you’re really paying for a copy of what’s on the disc more than the physical media. So if you’ve paid for the media, but the playback mechanism is a deprecated format, shouldn’t you be allowed to make that media usable to you, even if it means breaking DRM?
Or, conversely, when you purchase media on a disc, it could be said you’re entering a contract with the rights holders saying that you’ll only play back from that media, and if the format expires, well, tough crackers?
So I put it to you, our readers: Should HD DVD disc owners be exempt from the DMCA in order to salvage content they’ve paid for? Or are they screwed for being brave, but foolhardy, early adopters?
Let’s hear what you’ve got to say, either in the comments here, or if you’ve got a larger argument, we invite you to sound off on BFF.
The Copyright protects the MOVIE, not the format/media that the movie is stored on. Duh! But copy away! F-it!
Not to be the killjoy, but this isn’t gonna happen unless/until some higher-level politician can’t play his HD-DVD with that new fangled (blu-ray) player that they had to buy just so they could watch some movie that’s only out on blu-ray.
The argument will always be that all early adopters should have bought the dual (HD-DVD/Blu-ray) player. And I imagine those players will become more popular than you could possibly imagine.
Fair use dictates that you can move your movies to whatever format you need to watch them. That’s true regardless of what format or crappy DRM scheme you’ve bought.
The DMCA has never actually faced a real court challenge on this.
Actually, it has. In Universal Studios v. Reimerdes, the Court directly considered whether the fair use doctrine provided exceptions to the DMCA’s restrictions on breaking technological encryption schemes. The court concluded that it does not.
This was the main DeCSS case. Even though 1201(c)(1) of the DMCA explicitly states that the DMCA does not limit other rights in the title (i.e., it would not limit fair use, a right codified in section 107), the court found that cracking DVD encryption–for any reason–was not allowed. That included the defendants cracking it for educational use–normally a highly favored activity and given a lot of latitude. The court provided an analogy something like this: if there’s only one copy in the world of a book you need for your research, fair use would allow you to copy it. But if that book is locked inside someone’s house, you can’t break into that house to get it and claim a fair use defense against the burglary charges.
I know you might not like the analogy, but that’s the legal precedent.
Yes, they should be able to, but why do they need to? You can still find Betamax players on ebay, so I’m sure that HD-DVD players will be around for a while. Hell, snatch up a spare when they hit the bargain bin just in case your current player breaks, and you should be able to watch your HD-DVDs until 3D-DVD comes out.
I think that a trade in program should be offered to help everyone get into the Blu-Ray camp. Trade in your HD DVD Discs for a Blu-Ray one. Hell, just allow them to swap out the discs but keep the same pakaging. Then just figure out how to recycle the HD-DVD discs to be made into new Blu-Ray discs. they use the same material, don’t they?
I’m kind of torn on this.
On one hand you have companies like ION who design vinyl to MP3 and tape to MP3, allowing people to take their old collections of music that they paid for and moved them up into today’s preferred format (MP3) and medium (MP3 Player). I’m not sure what type of legal tightrope ION walks with the RIAAss. This circumvents the lack of DRM protection on tapes and vinyl and also kind of extends to CDs. If an endorsed compay, such as a Sony or Philips, etc. were to create a set-top converter that would take a HDDVD disc and burn it to a separate blue-ray disc, and destroy the original, I think that would make people somewhat happy (and of course you charge an exorbitant amount of money for this player that would probably rival just buying new discs anyways).
On the other hand, I treat video separately from music. I don’t see any mainstream VHS to DVD converters, nor LD to DVD, nor DVD to Blue-Ray/HD. If people are willing to spend money to upgrade their library from DVD to HD and they went out on a limb to purchase something that was not yet a standard, it’s their own damn fault. Me personally, I didn’t buy any HD or Blue-Ray players or discs because I knew a format war was going on. Imagine all the people that thought beta-max was going to the the IT thing… it never crystallized. It was their gamble and it lost. Since I waited to see who would win the format war, I win too. Now I can go buy my blueray player and blueray discs and not have to worry about politicking between sony and toshiba. Nor do I have to resort to some hacker-like activies that are certainly illegal.
I think some stores should definitely offer some sort of discount to trade-in their existing HD movies, it would drive sales at the stores that do this way up.
Who cares! The format’s dead, so I don’t see the harm in that anyway!
I see it like this, you paid for that HD-DVD movie, and if the release of the same movie only on a Blu-ray disc is just going to bring a different menu system, and virtually the same encode of the movie, then what’s the point in selling or getting rid of that HD-DVD to pay MORE money for the Blu-ray version? Rip away!
No one rips legit copies to ‘protect’ them.
No one makes backup copies of anything. People say they do but they are full of it. The only reason anyone wants to copy a CD/DVD/HD-DVD is to pirate.
That’s a load of crap. I rip my albums and movies to my pc so I can put them on my Ipod or be able to watch the videos on a laptop instead of lugging a case of cds/dvds around with me. I don’t share em with anyone. And I know I am not the only person who does this. So to say people only rip to pirate is really an idiotic narrow minded comment.