Reminder from the MPAA: DRM trumps your fair use rights

[pyroboy4206]

Surprise, surprise. The MPAA says if you mess up your DVD you have to purchase a new one. Any form of copying is in violation of the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions, and thus illegal. Courts are hearing the case of MPAA versus RealDVD. Be sure to read the full article.

Fair use has nothing to do with—and can't be used to defend—DRM circumvention, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The arguments were made during the RealDVD hearing in San Francisco this week, with the MPAA insisting that the DVD copying case isn't about fair use at all, but violations of the DMCA's anticircumvention rules. The two concepts aren't directly related when it comes to US Copyright Law, and the MPAA wants the court to agree that DMCA claims trump all when it comes to copying content.

RealNetworks has been dealing with the legal fallout from its RealDVD software since September 2008—before it was even released to the public. At the time, Real seemed confident that RealDVD operated well within the DMCA because the software didn't break CSS encryption—it merely copied a DVD straight to a hard drive, keeping the encryption intact. Additionally, RealDVD added a new layer of DRM to each file to lock the files to the user and PC that created them, which the company thought would keep it on the movie studios' good side.


http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...use-rights.ars

Oh yeah, and sorry MPAA, but DvdShrink and DvdFab have been doing this very effectively for years..

[Subdued]

Noo, this is not what the article says. According to it, if you make a DVD copy of a legally bought DVD, you cannot claim it is fair use per se. But if you make a really archival copy, it will be fair use. They formulate it in a complicated way, because nowadays everyone can rip a DVD to their PC and then upload it as an illegal download. But

The only backup copy Congress envisioned was archival, that you would never use until such time when your main computer wasn't working...

Therefore, pyro, if you mess your DVD, you can go back to your backup copy, you don't have to buy a new one.