[mythtv-users] Ripped DVD recordings have skips

[Allen Edwards]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Johnny <jarpublic at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Allen Edwards <allen.p.edwards at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > In the US it is legal to make a backup copy for personal use under "fair
> > use".  It is illegal to defeat copy protection.  This is the source of
> the
> > ambiguity that is quoted.  However, simply decoding something that is
> copy
> > protected cannot be illegal or every DVD player on the market would be
> > illegal.  So it has to go to the end use.  If you decode something that
> is
> > copy protected for the purpose of selling it, that is clearly illegal.
>  If
> > you decode copy protected material for a legal use, like watching a movie
> or
> > making a backup copy for your own use, that cannot be illegal.  I am not
> > a lawyer although I did take a law class at Stanford a long time ago.
>  This
> > is not a legal opinion, it is my opinion.
> > Allen
>
> This is not how the law is currently interpreted. The digital
> millinneum copyright act forbids the circumvention of an encryption
> without the authorization of the copyright holder. Commercial DVD
> player have authorization to circumvent the CSS encryption used on
> DVDs and there are certain exemptions for hardware manufacturers. The
> software used in Linux to decrypt DVDs does not have this
> authorization and thus is illegal to use to decrypt a DVD. That is why
> deCSS is not included with mythtv and not distributed with most Linux
> distributions in the US. There is an allowance for exceptions to this
> law that are decided upon by the library of congress every three
> years, however, as of yet I don't believe there have been exceptions
> made for DVDs.
>
> So as bazaar as it sounds, it is perfectly legal to backup your DVD
> but it is not legal to circumvent the encryption. So if that is
> necessary to backup your DVD then you have no legal way to do it.
> However, it is not a crime unless you are doing it for commercial
> purposes. If it is for personal use then the rights holder has to
> resort to civil litigation. It seems highly unlikely that anybody is
> going to come after joe sixpack for backing up or watching their own
> DVDs on a Linux machine. But they certainly may come after somebody
> who is distributing software to do such. Hence Slysoft is located "on
> the beautiful island Antigua."
>
> All of this seems obviously absurd to us lay people, and much of it
> hasn't been tested in court. It sure would be interesting to see if
> someone fought this in court. There are definitely some gray areas
> where fair use allows certain acts but the only way of actually doing
> that act violates the DMCA.
>


Let me see if I have this straight.

Backing up my copy of American Grafetti is legal but it is against the law
to actually do.  But, breaking this law is not a crime.

I am going to go have another beer.  I understand beer.

Allen
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