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Hollywood Faces Key Court Battle Over DVD Copying
Reuters ^ | April 22, 2003 | Bob Tourtellotte

Posted on 04/22/2003 1:40:03 PM PDT by Pern

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood's movie studios face a key test in their battle to defend copyright holders from digital pirates, when a federal court in California this Friday hears a case filed by a maker of software that allows users to copy DVDs.

At stake for the studios are potentially billions of dollars in revenues that would be lost if nearly perfect digital copies of movies on DVD were sold in large quantities on the black market or circulated on the Internet in digital files.

But the privately held software maker, St. Louis-based 321 Studios, argues that its software is designed to protect DVD owners by allowing them to make backup copies in case their DVDs, which can cost as much as $30, get damaged or are lost.

The case, which will be heard in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, tests the limits of 1998's controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act, lawyers said.

The studios claim 321's software violates a portion of the act that makes it illegal for anyone to sell software used to break or bypass digital encryption codes.

But 321 argues that the DMCA allows software owners to get around encryption when copies are made for an owner's sole use.

"This is a very interesting, cutting-edge case," said 321's San Francisco-based attorney Daralyn Durie. "The first issue is what does the DMCA mean, and does it prohibit all circumvention of encryption, or does it only prohibit the circumvention when it's being done to engage in copyright infringement."

Durie contends that copying DVDs, for example, to use excerpts in critical reviews or by a teacher in a presentation to students, falls under the legal concept of protected "fair use." 321's software, called DVD Copy Plus and DVD X Copy, aids in the "fair use" of copyrighted content, she said.

Not so, say the studios. "321 isn't making any fair use. They are stripping my copy protection," said Russell Frackman, the attorney for the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood's major film studios.

"The law has never provided you have the right to get two-for-one" when you buy a DVD, Frackman said.

BILLION DOLLAR BABIES

The MPAA estimates that filmmakers already lose $3 billion a year in old-style, analog piracy, which is copying videotapes or taping movies in theaters or movie production offices with small video cameras and then reselling them on the black market.

While the MPAA has battled analog piracy for years, the practice has proved nearly impossible to stop. The industry has taken some solace in the fact that tape quality generally is bad and the distribution of tapes can be tracked.

The equation changes in the digital world, however, where copies are exact and can be put on the Internet for downloading to computers around the world.

Illegal copying and Web-based free swapping of digital music has wreaked havoc on the record industry. Global music sales in 2002 fell 7.2 percent from 2001 to $32.2 billion.

The MPAA is determined to avoid the same fate. To some extent, the free swapping of digital movies has been limited by the hours it takes to download a film with dial-up connections.

High-speed broadband links, however, reduce that time to minutes. California-based Adams Media Research expects broadband-linked homes to number 24.3 million by the end of 2003, up 41 percent from 17.2 million at the end of 2002.

The MPAA estimates as many as 400,000 to 600,000 digital movies are currently being downloaded everyday from file swap sites like KaZaa, Gnutella and Morpheus.

"The (quality) of it gives me a Maalox moment," MPAA Chief Jack Valenti said at the ShoWest industry gathering in March.

Defendants are various film studio divisions of Sony Corp., AOL Time Warner Inc., Walt Disney Co., Vivendi Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Pixar Animation Studios Inc. and Saul Zaentz Co.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; US: California
KEYWORDS: bastards; copying; dvd; greedy; hollywood; pirating
KaZaa is great. Long live P2P!
1 posted on 04/22/2003 1:40:03 PM PDT by Pern
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To: Pern
Personally, I'd really love to know how the MPAA (and their just-as-evil twin, the RIAA) comes up with these "cost of piracy" figures. The completely assinine assumption that every person who obtains an unlicensed copy would have paid for a licensed one otherwise is laughable.

As for the case at hand, I am 100% in favor of being able to back up my own DVDs, or to create "movie-night mixes" where I can pull together my own playlists from multiple discs. For example, grab a few theatrical trailers from various movies, tack on a short feature (like, "For The Birds" on the "Monsters, Inc." DVD), and then put a feature film on the end. That way, I can put together my own in-home theater experience without having to switch discs all night.

But the MPAA follows the "gun-grabber" mentaility: the software could be used for illegal file copying, so therefore we assume that anyone who owns it is a theif. Jerks.

2 posted on 04/22/2003 1:47:37 PM PDT by kevkrom
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To: Pern
Long live P2P!

Long live cheapskate freeloaders that don't want to pay for stuff they want?

3 posted on 04/22/2003 1:52:42 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog (Not all those who wander are lost)
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To: Pern
Why do you need to break encryption to copy? Isn't a bitwise copy sufficient?
4 posted on 04/22/2003 1:54:16 PM PDT by proxy_user
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To: HairOfTheDog
Mmmm...yes.
5 posted on 04/22/2003 1:55:45 PM PDT by Future Snake Eater (All generalizations are false.)
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To: Future Snake Eater
Lots of people steal. Few brag about it as a better way.
6 posted on 04/22/2003 1:59:41 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog (Not all those who wander are lost)
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To: HairOfTheDog
Well, I figure that whatever they'd lose to me in copying their movies, they'd more than make up the dozen or so times a year I go to the theater and get raped by their outrageous ticket prices. Not saying it's a better way, but it is a way.
7 posted on 04/22/2003 2:02:05 PM PDT by Future Snake Eater (All generalizations are false.)
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To: Pern
When the MPAA and their industry use the public airways to enrich themselves they open themselves to a fair use examination.

If MPAA et al were willing to forego the radio and television promotion and/or presentation for profit of their work product their posture would be on much higher ground.

8 posted on 04/22/2003 2:10:05 PM PDT by Amerigomag
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To: Future Snake Eater
Rape is not consentual, and there are a lot of hands in the cookie jar to make up theater prices.

And I am not on a high horse... I have been to Kazaa. I have later bought everything I have ever tried bootlegs of so far, mostly because I do want to reward the creator of it, but also because the quality still isn't quite perfect. If the actual DVD, with all the menus and extras becomes available and burnable with common technology, many will not still buy it, though they want the product badly. Wanting the product but not being willing to pay for it is theft.

I don't think the motion picture people will ever win this by fighting the technology side, rather they should embrace and use the technology to sell their own stuff online... But I would not blame them a bit for cracking down on P2P and illegal distributors. This is no longer your buddy's tapedeck making you a copy, it is the ability for one copy to be instantly accessible to the world for free. That is wrong, no matter how you look at it.
9 posted on 04/22/2003 2:13:56 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog (Not all those who wander are lost)
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To: HairOfTheDog
Even if this technology did become widely available I would still more than likely buy the DVDs. Unlike CDs, there are a lot of professional knick-knacks that go with a DVD (menus, inserts, etc.). As far as the stealing angle goes, well...I can't deny it, but I sure as hell can't condemn it. I have many songs on MP3 that I did not buy on CD mainly b/c I'm sick of buying a full CD for 2, maybe 3, songs. Regardless of anyone's views on the issue (yours and mine included), the P2P genie is out of the bottle, it will not go back in, and the companies are going to have to adapt. They will have no choice.
10 posted on 04/22/2003 2:19:05 PM PDT by Future Snake Eater (All generalizations are false.)
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To: Future Snake Eater
Right... the music companies should adopt the same strategy I advised above... adapt by selling singles online and cracking down on the P2P networks that mass-distribute the bootlegs.
11 posted on 04/22/2003 2:27:56 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog (Not all those who wander are lost)
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To: HairOfTheDog
Except they're trying to crack down right now and it's not working. They need to offer something more. Can't say I have the answer to that, but they have marketing gurus who make a hell of a lot more than I do who can answer just such problems.
12 posted on 04/22/2003 2:37:19 PM PDT by Future Snake Eater (All generalizations are false.)
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To: Future Snake Eater
I don't know enough about why they have failed to shut down P2P either. My own interest in it is also pretty casual!
13 posted on 04/22/2003 2:38:42 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog (Not all those who wander are lost)
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To: Pern
321's software, called DVD Copy Plus and DVD X Copy

Ironically 321's software, which retails for $99, is easily available for bootleg download on Kazaa. I wonder how they feel about that.

14 posted on 04/22/2003 2:48:08 PM PDT by Reeses
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To: proxy_user
Why do you need to break encryption to copy? Isn't a bitwise copy sufficient?

I see nobody's rushing to get you an answer yet ;)

The CSS encryption system uses different keys to encrypt different disks - that way, the idea is that if one key is cracked, you don't have to remaster every disk in the world with a new key, just the disks that use that key. But that means that each disk has to carry its own key so that players can decrypt it and play it, and so they do - DVDs have a key stored on a "hidden" sector on the inside of the disk, in a place where DVD-recorders can't write to. If you just do a bitwise copy, you won't copy over the key to decrypt the data, and you'll have a useless encrypted disk that no player can play. So the only way to copy it is to decrypt it first.

It's a bit of an oversimplification, but that's about the size of it...

15 posted on 04/22/2003 3:14:57 PM PDT by general_re (You're just jealous because the voices are talking to me....)
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To: kevkrom
As for the case at hand, I am 100% in favor of being able to back up my own DVDs, or to create "movie-night mixes" where I can pull together my own playlists from multiple discs.

This is a great point. Although you will most likely not be backing them up to other DVDs but to some TiVo-like device in the future.

Technology is going the way of a central entertainment server for households. You should be able to store that DVD on your entertainment server and watch it anywhere in the house.

The MPAA needs to start being proactive rather than reactive. The market is changing whether they like it or not. They can sue this company and win -- fine. Someone will create the same software and make it open source and distribute it. Once it is on Kazaa or the like, they are not going to be able to get rid of it.

16 posted on 04/22/2003 3:17:44 PM PDT by TexRef
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To: Pern
how do you convert an .avi file to something which media player can use? Divix is from gator and puts tons of spyware in your computer.
17 posted on 04/29/2003 10:24:04 PM PDT by Coleus (RU-486 Kills Babies)
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