Comments on: What to expect from the RealDVD decision

Judge is known for delivering relatively speedy decisions. But, even if Real loses in this preceding, company could still prevail at trial. We have a long way to go yet.

[pentest]

Am I the only one disgusted at the RIAA trying to enforce a law that exists solely because they paid for the 'law' to be passed?

[SIGHUP]

Me too. But since our legal system is the best legal system money can buy, I will put my money on the Copyright Cartel winner this case.

[unknown unknown]

Regardless of how the court rules nothing will change. People will continue to flout the DMCA, with products like DVDFab and others. Another pyrrhic victory copyright cartels and their anti-consumer BS.

[magicmaster]

Hollywood: "Sorry, you [consumers] can't back up the discs. It's your faults that discs got scratched. Buy new discs or we will bully you in the court."

What's next? Pay-per-Listening?
"Oops! It's your faults that you can't listen. Since we won't refund your hard-earning money, you must pay for another listening, or we will bully you in the court."

[SaturatedFats]

I understand this complaint about discs getting scratched, but how much of a problem is it, really? I have nearly 1,000 DVDs and hundreds of CDs as well. Some of my DVDs are 15 years old and many of the CDs are a quarter century. Anytime I've had problems trying to play a DVD or a CD, it's always been the player's fault. The darn DVD players (including the high-end models) are so shoddy they only seem to last a few years 'till they stop working. I'm on at least my 4th or 5th DVD player. But the discs themselves continue to work fine as soon as I get a new player. Then again, I'm pretty careful with my discs. I only handle them by the edges (a habit left over from the days of vinyl LPs), I put them back in their boxes when I'm done and, when my kids were little, I didn't let throw them around like Frisbees.

So what's this big deal about discs getting scratched? How does that happen? What are you guys doing with them and whose fault is that?

[pentest]

It doesn't matter whose fault it is. Making a backup is part of fair use, and the MPAA can just sit in the corner and cry about it.

[SaturatedFats]

Okay, but two points:

(a) The law's not on your side. DMCA says, yes, you have some fair use rights, but not if exercising them means you circumventing any copy protection.

(b) If there really isn't any serious problem with discs becoming unplayable due to scratches, then it sounds to me like the argument about wanting to make backups may be disingenuous. Is it really about wanting make backups or is it just a cover story (as the studios insist) for wanting to make free copies of stuff without having to pay for them?

(Yes, of course, I understand there might be circumstances, e.g., a fire or theft, where you lose your entire collection and where backups kept at another location might be helpful. But, otoh, there are other ways to recover in those situations, e.g., submitting a claim to your insurance company.)

[pentest]

DMCA is unconstitutional. Eventually it will be invalidated.

The DMCA explicitly permits fair use.

[pgeneste]

To SaturatedFats,
You must not have children, I have my CD/DVD set, and your right, but what about your KIDS disks, I almost never give the original to them, just a copy to use, gets damaged, no problem, burn another from the original. Fair use in my opinion! I paid for it, why can't I protect my investment, I don't know of any dvd players that you can LOCK the tray up.

[SaturatedFats]

No, I have kids. But when they were little, I actually acted as a parent. I didn't just turn them loose to let the TV set babysit them for me.

[slimj091]

"(a) The law's not on your side. DMCA says, yes, you have some fair use rights, but not if exercising them means you circumventing any copy protection."

whats the point of fair use rights when a special intrest group slap's code on product's of the companies they represent to prevent consumer's from exercising their fair use rights?

the only thing their copy protection does is punish consumers that legally bought their product instead of stealing it. for the people that obtain movies "illegaly" Css is a joke at best, and does absolutely nothing to deter them from stealing movies, because if they are going to steal a movie cracking the weak copy protection is an after thought.

so let see here

1. prevents law abiding people from making a reasonable amount of copies of a movie they legally bought, which is their right by law.

2. does absolutely nothing to stop people from illegaly obtaining movies.

yep.. it's good to know that the MPAA still have their priorities in order.

[dannosliwcd]

I agree that copy protection laws suck, but I think they do help work against piracy a little (though I don't think it really justifies their existence). America is lazy. So many people I meet think that if they can't learn something in less than 5 minutes, it's not worth the time or the effort in typing "google.com" in a browser. It takes about 6 minutes to learn how to copy a protected DVD, so this deters a lot of lazy cheapskates from illegally copying DVDs. So many decoding geniuses have made freely available 1-click-decode-reencode programs, you need only know how to navigate your operating system to get it done.

[russkeller]

Quick note about the comment that this would hurt "Hollywood." With the exception of nestolga what part exacrtly does "hollywood" play the motion picture buisnesss anymore? Think about it canada makes more movies than hollywood now. The MPAA has already destroyed itself hopfully this'll finish the job so someone compotent can offically take over.

[GlennAllen]

My right to decide how I play my DVDs for my enjoyment rests solely in *my* hands. Any member of the MPAA--or anyone else--who thinks differently can take it and stick it where the sun don't shine.