Hollywood’s MPAA: Cammer Supreme
p2pnet news view | P2P | Movies:-The US Copyright Office is conducting hearings on the exemptions under the DMCA (they do this every three years) and Rebecca Tushnet has been providing detailed coverage.
A full day was devoted to the issue of an exemption for teachers and students so that they could circumvent the locks on DVDs to show film clips in class or as part of an assignment. The education community are pushing for an expansion of the exemption to more broadly cover teachers and students. The MPAA doesn’t want an exemption at all, or, if there is one, argues it should be very limited.
Among the stranger moments of the hearings was the MPAA’s argument that there is no need for an exemption since there is an analog way to create film clips. Rather than break the encryption on a DVD, teachers could camcord the same film clips. In fact, the organization showed a video demonstrating how to effectively camcord clips of DVDs without breaking the encryption on the DVD.
Leaving aside how surreal it is to see the same organization that travels the world demanding anti-camcording legislation now citing it as a solution, it is useful to consider how this would have played out had Bill C-61 become law.
First, there was no exception in C-61 to circumvent for any teaching or private study purposes. Therefore, the act of circumventing for educational instruction or class assignments would have become a violation of the law (the Film Studies Association of Canada spoke out on the issue).
Second, there was no mechanism for hearings to identify necessary exceptions under C-61, so Canadian law did not even include the possibility of mirroring these DMCA exemption hearings to address problems in the law.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
May, 2009
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May 9th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Haha – and audio files “may” be copied with a microphone held in front of the speaker…? These guys don’t have to run a mental health check before getting their jobs, do they?
May 9th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
So now the anti-ripping theme has come home to bite them on the butt. In all this digital transformation, the one thing that has been strenuously objected to is fair use. I know Canada doesn’t have fair use but they have something more important which is legal downloading because they are paying for the privilege in high surcharges for blank media.
We too, are paying surcharges hidden in the cost of the blank media. Only we aren’t getting anything for that. It was passed with the promise that the money would go to support the artists and has been being charged ever since the days of cassettes. Only not one artist has yet to receive a penny of that money, despite lawsuits by artists suing to get their share. So much for being for the artist.
Now big entertainment wants complete lock down of everything. As Schmock above says, that isn’t possible because it is too easy to circumvent. Lock downs don’t transfer with the audio listening side. Once it hits the speaker, all locks are off.
So the fight against ripping has no real feet to stand on, beyond the big entertainment’s idea they want to control every aspect of their product. More and more they become disconnected to the what their customer needs, desires, and is willing to spend money for.
Buying digital has become a minefield where you, the customer gets ripped off through the whole process. If and when the inevitable happens and the on-line store goes down, so does access to the music you paid to have. So you have rented it, not bought it as was your intention at the start. Ripping the music is the only way to have what you bought from now on. Burning it doesn’t last as the burned disc has not the life of the pressed disc on physical media.
So here comes big entertainment out with the cavalry hoping to stave off the one thing the customer really needs to make buying worth while. No wonder on-line stores are doing so poorly, unlike indies. High prices, lack of having anything for your money, and the loss of that product you bought under the expectation that it was yours and not a rental, has made the majority of customers very dubious of on-line purchases.
Ripping makes a lot of sense, just not to those that want you to buy, buy, and buy yet again the same thing. It worked in the past because of changing media. It doesn’t work today with the same media.
They’ve made copyright laws such a minefield that it is no longer worth the hassles. Those suffering the most are libraries and school applications which have traditionally been granted the ability to use. The very ones that should have this access are the sideline victims of the wish to control every aspect.
The deal has changed for what you get, it’s not worth it anymore.
May 9th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Reader’s write has just described my thoughts so I will only say this: Are we talking Monty Pyton non-sens language here?
May 10th, 2009 at 4:55 am
here’s the future of music, oops no, it’s what we were doing before the music industry created music.
live music is where it will always be, cds or mp3 is like buying a poster of a well know piece of art.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8041277.stm
May 10th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Thanks for the link deadbeatstalk. True, music is an art, not a product; lets go back to that level….
May 12th, 2009 at 4:05 am
This shouldn’t really surprise anybody:
1. Remember the companies which had to resprt to TELLING PEOPLE HOW TO BREAK THEIR OWN DRM, simply because they were closing their digital store? Mind-numbingly stupid, and guaranteed to poison anybody with even half a brain against ALL forms of DRM, forever.
2. Now they claim there’s no reason for an exemption in their bullshit “law”, and to prove it, they resort to GIVING LESSONS ON WHAT AMOUNTS TO A REALLY SIMPLE “CIRCUMVENTION”. Brilliant! Mind-numbingly brilliant!
“Mixed Messages”, anyone?
They spend huge amounts of time and money propagandizing the younger generation into believing that copy”right” is a wonderful, glorious thing to which everything else should be sacrificed, and then take explicit pains to show teachers how to BREAK THE LAW.
Wow.
Does anybody still think we’re not winning? At least we’re not this goddamn dumb.
May 12th, 2009 at 4:07 am
The mere fact that they have to teach people how how easy it is to defeat their DRM (for the “right” reasons), indicates to me, that they have no illusions about DRM actually working. Else, they wouldn’t be publically admitting that ANY form of it can be defeated/sidestepped.
How dumb are they?