What’s another phrase for, “meh, who cares?” That’s what I’m thinking when I read that the MPAA tried to argue in court that making a personal copy of a DVD is illegal under the DMCA. Is it shocking to people that the MPAA would argue in favor of its own interests, possibly at the expense of the your ability to make rip a DVD? No. No it’s not.
This all “went down” at the Real DVD court hearing. Remember Real DVD? It is (was?) a piece of software that made copies of DVDs that would then only play within Real’s software; you couldn’t, say, burn a disc then play it on your stand-alone Sony or Samsung (or whatever) DVD or Blu-ray player. That wasn’t good enough for the MPAA, you’ll recall.
But back to the issue at hand—the MPAA hates each and every one of you.
Isn’t it strange that Real, a company so teased and mocked by the Internet community for years now (see: buffering jokes, etc.), is now in a position to argue for our rights as consumers to copy our legally purchased DVDs.
Photo: Flickr
MPAA’s in a bit of a bind here; they have to argue against ANY fair-use rights that would allow for copying, otherwise it won’t matter that the movie would be played back in only certain circumstances, only in particular player, only on a particular device, not burned, etc. Once that fair-use argument is lost, it’s all downhill from there.
Of course, MPAA should lose this, but I’m just explaining why they’re arguing what they are.
MPAA is wasting their time. Piracy, just like terrorism, will never be eradicated. It can be minimized through smart business practices, but it will always exist.
Even if they win this trial… even if they win every single trial, piracy will still exist.
Jordan, As weatherman points out the interest of the MPAA in challenging REALDVD is not to eradicate piracy (they have already lost that battle). Rather, movie producers (not just “Hollywood”) want to control how people access their content so they can charge for new models of distribution and technologies. By hiding behind the anti-circumvention technology protection clause of the DMCA, this also has the potential to limit people’s creative expression by limiting use of media for “remixing” and the like. That is why this case is so critical.
Copying DVDs is legal as long as there are no copy protection mechanisms circumvented.
They should care to minimize piracy and abuse of the system instead of wasting time for nothing