United States Copyright Office: Ripping is Illegal | Hacker News Reader

United States Copyright Office: Ripping is Illegal

publicknowledge.org

63 pointsCountHackulus59 comments

From a Reddit commenter:

The issue here is DVDs & BRs not CDs. 1201 exemptions are DMCA exemptions to the anti-circumvention section. CDs don't have copy protection so this bit of the DMCA never applied. DVDs still have CSS and BRs have something else, that's why you can't just copy the files off, and why legally you're not supposed to phase shift or rip them even though you technically can.

Phase/time shifting is explicitly OK, as long as that's all you're doing, thanks to the betamax case. Breaking encryption, however busted and useless and stupid as CSS is, is still not OK. Some people were trying to get a 1201 exemption for DVD ripping, copyright office didn't go for it.

>why legally you're not supposed to phase shift or rip them even though you technically can

This is wrong, AFAIK. DMCA forbids manufacturing and distribution of anti-DRM tools, but not their use for personal copying.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html#1201

"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

The only exceptions to the above are the ones determined by the Librarian of Congress. Breaking DRM for any purpose is illegal unless the Librarian of Congress explicitly allows it.

I want to know their definition of effectively.

I'm afraid it means "was intended to" here.

Hi - I work at Public Knowledge and coordinated our exemption request. While our exemption request was specifically about DVDs, the Copyright Office's rejection was much broader. Essentially, the Copyright Office found no evidence that space shifting as a practice was fair use. That means that, as far as the Copyright Office is concerned, space shifters are infringing on copyright. That would include anyone who copied a work from one medium to another - regardless of whether or not it was protected by DRM.

But time shifting is fair use and as considered has always required space shifting so space shifting itself is compatible with fair use. I think the question is always about the eventual playback.

http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2012/2012-26308_PI.pdf

Starts on page 58 if you want to read it yourselves.

> “The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their Website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

Why are we letting record companies tell us what's lawful? (and by extension, what's not)

It's not as if we're letting them decide the law by putting something on their website. We are letting them tell us what their interpretation of the law is.

I don't know why the lawyer was telling the Supreme Court what the record companies' interpretation of the law was, but it doesn't sound especially nefarious.

I think it's a dangerous precedent to set.

i.e. I get dragged into court and say "But the RIAA said it was completely legal on their website".

Bad luck.

The point of this quote is to illustrate that even the RIAA thinks this is bogus.

I understand that in this particular case, the RIAA sided with consumers.

What I'm pointing out is that this sets a dangerous precedent for the future.

Now we (and the courts) are used to hearing what the record companies think is and is not lawful, when that has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

Not really. They're saying that this position is so extreme that not even the RIAA agrees with it. That's a far cry from saying they're always right.

"New York City Police Department: Riding a bike outside of a bike lane is illegal."

Just because some unelected government bureaucracy believes something doesn't make it a law. Who has gone to jail for ripping a Blu-Ray to their iPad? Nobody. Therefore, we don't really know if it's illegal or not. The copyright office has an opinion and have decided not to specifically make the act legal (which is the only authority they have). Fair use, copyright law, "the right of the people to be secure in their ... effects against unreasonable searches..." are all part of the legality equation here, and until this is tested in court, we won't know what is or is not legal.

As far as I can see, the cat is already out of the bag and people don't care what the law is. They can space shift, and will. End of story. (Incidentally, it seems that it's perfectly legal to space-shift pirated media. So maybe just get that instead?)

(It's kind of like how pot is illegal federally, but many states allow people to grow, buy, and sell it. Yup, it's illegal. Too bad nobody cares.)

Wow. It's finally clear. Content creators are against phase-shifting because it threatens their distribution mechanisms. Consumers want phase-shifting because it makes consuming media an order of magnitude better.

The ideal solution would be for content creators to offer a DRM-free copy of their wares, and for consumers to not abuse this open-ness. But, it seems that consumers will abuse it: given a choice between a $30 BluRay of "The Avengers" and torrenting it for $0, lots choose the later (not the least of which is to avoid the pain of ripping the movie later).

I wonder, though, how bad the abuse would be if the service was really easy to use, and priced correctly? Why would I bother with bittorent if I had a really nice service that let me stream/download movies for a few bucks apiece?

Additionally, I personally wouldn't mind one bit if a subset of the data was encrypted with my public key, making it hard (but not impossible, of course) to share it. Combined with a some creative steganography to identify the targeted user, you have about a secure, enforceable system as is humanly possible.

There is a privacy concern here, of course - the seller can individually identify people who've bought their movie. But that's going to be a problem whenever information is bought and sold. Note that this privacy protection is relatively easy to get around even today, as law-enforcement can request credit card records and itemized purchase information from the retailer. The difference is that now you would require a target and to make effort to get at this data, whereas in this new system, it's right there. If this worries you, either don't purchase data or purchase it in person with cash.

And if content creators can't win a steganography war on a 2 gigabyte battlefield, then they deserve to lose.

According to the article, content creators are fine with phase shifting.

"And the RIAA and the MPAA agree with you. In 2005, their lawyer (now the Solicitor General of the United States) assured the Supreme Court that “The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their Website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod.""

Do you have specific criticisms of the iTunes store, PS3 store, Xbox store, etc.? People keep talking about legal downloads like they're a theoretical concept...

Still waiting for that iTunes client for Android...

OK, the Google Play store.

My point is that it's somewhat inaccurate to say that legal content is easily accessible when there are exclusive deals, fragmentation, delays, revoked content, time-limited access, DRM, etc.

Have you ever lived somewhere other than the United States? They are in fact a theoretical concept in many places.

Services like netflix, spotify and pandora are also just as rare and they usually have extremely reduced libraries outside the States.

Given that this is a thread about US copyright law, I thought we were talking about the US market. I guess it's turned into generic copyright griping thread #4,702.

With the global nature of the Internet and the universal human desire to participate in culture, it's difficult to discuss US copyright law without considering the international effects thereof.

There will always be more "copyright griping thread[s]" until the arbitrary and artificial barriers to universal cultural participation and consumption are torn down, until a Fringe fan in Mombasa can watch and participate in discussion about the latest episode at the same time as someone in Memphis.

I do have knowledge of the iTunes store. Unfortunately, it's content is saddled with DRM that prevents me from watching it where I want and how I want. It's data that forces me to use iTunes, of which I am not a fan. It's data that prevents me from sharing music with my friends, even on a temporary basis (e.g. the equivalent of a mix-tape).

Additionally, I have a Nook and while I like the device, the DRM means that I really don't own those books, and I'm not excited by the idea of B&N yanking my books (or worse, editing them behind my back). I'd like to keep my own copy that didn't rely on their reader, but without breaking the law and stripping the DRM, I can't do that.

Honestly, I'm not sure if there is a reasonable solution that gives consumers the convenience that they want, and the rights-holders the revenue they deserve. If this can't be done, then it may turn out to be the case that "selling information to consumers for profit" was a passing fad of the late second millenium.

I've noticed a cycle here. Media companies donate tons to campaigns. They act out during electoral season because they know that people they write checks to will not dare talk back to them, and if possible will pressure regulators to back them to keep the money flowing. I saw a spike in this stuff in 2008 and in 2004 - articles, pushes for lawsuits, regulatory announcements that were otherwise baffling. Don't remember 2000 well, or rather it's overshadowed by other memories of that election. Anyway, I may be wrong of course but my point is I'm not surprised at seeing an announcement like this during election season. I think the balance of evidence is that regulators in this country work with significant political interference, regardless of claims to the contrary - if nothing else they're sensitive to the winds in Washington. Just a thought.

I'm not sure the amount they donate matters as much as the good press they donate. This is extremely valuable.

Consider the case of the bribes paid by the Peruvian government to media versus that paid to judges and politicians. While the latter two got tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, a TV channel owners got $5 million. That acts as a proxy for their power.

What is the parallel? They act out during election season because they are in the middle of handing their most valuable asset out--their coverage. That is the true lobbying asset. Based on what you said I suppose they want to get what they want before the election happens and the horse is let out of the barn.

So would it be illegal if my team of emus, pecking 0s and 1s at keyboards, collaboratively created a file that, when packed into segments of size 8 and converted from ASCII to binary, is bit-for-bit equal to a decrypted a DVD?

I hope not! It probably is illegal considering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_numbers.

Man, the law just isn't rigorous enough for me.

IANAL, but if you happened, purely by chance, to create a file that was bit-for-bit equal to a decrypted DVD, that would be fine (since it's practically impossible to do, anyway).

It's the intent that matters anyway. What the government has now is a stick they can hit people with (they had the stick already, now they have permission). Like speeding, if you rip your copy of E.T. you bought at Walmart and put it on the family's iPad so the kids be quiet, or by god you're going back to Winnipeg, nobody is going to be knocking on your door. However, if you start a site called www.dvdtomp4.com and offer a mail-in DVD-to-MP4 service, you could expect to receive an interesting visit at some point in the future.

I agree with everything you wrote, but I'm going to continue with the ridiculousness for the sake of discussion.

> It's the intent that matters anyway.

What if I intend to sell the product of my emu-packing operation? Surely, we did our own work!

Then when advertising your own work you would surely make no references to the names of any Hollywood movies that are not your work, right?

And would it be illegal if my space avocado farmers were to use microwaves from the future to beam a perfect copy of a DVD into the hieroglyphs in Egypt where a team of cryptozoologists...

Seriously, they say there are no stupid questions but if X is impossible then "is X illegal" is probably not a productive question to ask.

> Seriously, they say there are no stupid questions but if X is impossible then "is X illegal" is probably not a productive question to ask.

The point of asking such a ridiculous question is to show the silliness of attaching __so_much__ value to what are, essentially, very large numbers.

Here's a less ridiculous question for your consideration: What if a team of Mathematicians accidentally generate a copyrighted commercial MP3 during research? Is it illegal for them to hold on to that very large number? Furthermore, is it illegal for them to publish it?

No it's still ridiculous because that remains effectively impossible. Think of this analogy: it would be like running into someone with your exact same genes, but who isn't your twin. Genomes can be seen as a series of bits, and they're sufficiently large that getting the same sequence twice cannot happen by accident.

Furthermore it's a misunderstanding to say that people attach value to a 'large number', the value is in the effort it took to arrive at it and the fruits it can give in the context of society. The sequence of bits by itself is meaningless because it only becomes a song or a movie using the right interpretation & context.

What your talking about is addressed by the famous law for programmers essay, "What Colour are your Bits?": http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Its a good entertaining read and elaborates on the absurdity of evaluating law as an algorithm.

Fortunately, shiny discs are all but obsolete, so this decision is quickly becoming irrelevant, not that there was ever any real risk for individuals ripping their own discs, just as there's no risk for an individual circumventing DRM on digital content they bought. Distributing tools to do so is the tricky part, so that's really the only exemption that would have an impact on the status quo.

This is still so extremely worrying. How insane is it that we have a law that prevents us purchasing a physical object, and doing certain things with that that don't impact directly on others? Imagine if your tobacco company prohibited you rolling cigarettes and giving them to others? Or your water company legally stopped you being able to drink the water coming out of your taps so you have to buy bottled water?

It's fucking ridiculous.

If you somehow connect a DVD player to an iPad, then read it from there, would it be legal?

Then if the iPad had such a large memory that you could fit the whole DVD inside it, would it be legal?

Then if you never had to turn off your iPad, the results would be exactly the same as what is currently illegal.

No, and no.

So you are saying it is illegal to transform a device that cannot play DVD into a device that can play DVD?

Again, you can have some buffering, but not too long as it would be circumvention.

No it's illegal to make copies of copyrighted works no matter how transient other than allowed under fair use.

And (I might be wrong here) but to be a legal device that can play DVD it has to have licensing and keys to get past DRM (legally).

No, it is illegal to convert/circumvent DRM protected files to any other medium.

He's not really suggesting conversion per say, just playing the DVD content straight from the DVD media like any other DVD player does. That does assume some kind of conversion in itself but should fall under fair use. It would be impossible to watch a DVD at all otherwise.

It gets into the realm of the legality of using Linux to watch a DVD, which is generally considered illegal, but looking around the net there seems that there may be some legal precedence that says otherwise.

If Apple somehow left their DVD player decryption code in iOS on the aforementioned iPad, for which they presumably do have a license to use, then there should be no legal qualms at all.

A licensed DVD player has all sorts of restrictions like not retaining any transient copies once the disc has been ejected, etc. This was discussed in the Kaleidescape case.

By that same logic, is converting files from m4a to mp3 illegal?

No, M4A to MP3 should be fine in most cases, because those formats are usually used for musical recordings. Space shifting of musical recordings by consumers for non-commercial purposes is allowed by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, so there is no need to turn to fair use to justify it.

So m4a to mp3 is fine, but avi to mpeg4 is illegal?

I don't know that there's been a court decision covering that specific case, so it might still be in a legal gray area. To me the decision in the Betamax case suggests that it would be legal. Others say the precedent doesn't apply because the Betamax case was looking at time-shifting, and space-shifting is different.

However, in any case avi to mpeg4 is not equivalent to DVD ripping from a legal standpoint. Because of the DMCA, US law makes a distinction between media that is encrypted for copyright protection purposes and media that is not encrypted. So since DVDs are CSS encrypted and AVIs aren't, the two are covered by somewhat different sets of law.

No, I don't think the case at hand says anything about that. What happened here is that the Copyright Office was asked specifically about DVD/BluRay ripping, and said "no". But that's all they said. The case of music ripping has some precendent, but not here.

Obviously an unprotected file has no "means to effectively control access", so copying it should be legal under the DMCA (it's the circumvention that's illegal, not the copying per se). But m4a files are usually DRM'd, so my guess would be that unless a separate determination is made it's still not kosher.

No, copying a file from one device to another is illegal (space shifting) not changing the format (media shifting).

So if I rip a DVD to another DVD, but don't use CSS on the second, is that legal?

Apparently. Mind you, none of this has been tried in court AFAIK.

Not if it removes DRM.

No, as m4a files are not protected by any copy protection mechanisms, which is the factor in play here. Did you by any chance mean the obsolete .m4p/Fairplay files that Apple abandoned several years back?

So what about removing DRM from eBooks, etc.?

"The good news is that the disabled readers can still remove DRM which would inhibit their ability to use the content. The bad news is that there are no other exceptions which would allow you to remove the DRM." http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/10/25/u-s-copyright-o...

If i can't make copies of my DVD's then that means whenever I scratch my DVD and it is unrecoverable, the entity that shipped me a DVD must ship me a new one.

These cats want to be the gatekeepers of all data everywhere, I guess we can't stop them, the only thing we can do is stick a thorn in their foot so they have to limp along doing so.

Makes me sick how a central authority thinks they get to make law on what my device can and can't do with data I own on it.

The future of what you are looking at: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

> "I own"

That's the crux of it isn't it. Who says that just because you paid for something that you "own" it with the associated rights. We are migrating from ownership to licensee-ship.

I used to be sick of all this "license" business, but then I realized that ownership is a dual-edge sword. Consider this, I don't buy dvds anymore. Instead, I'll wilfully pay $1.99 on either iTunes or Amazon. It all depends on how you look at it. One of my favorite movies is $14; that means that I would have to watch it eight times for ownership to be a rational decision. This is, of course, assuming that the total cost of ownership is $14.

Consider: - Shipping ~ $2 - Moving Expenses ~ ($5 per 100) - Related Items ~ ($80 per 200) [bookshelf] - Storage Opportunity Cost ~ What could I have instead of this thing

w.r.t to "Right to Read"; I believe that there will always be libraries and champions for education and "important things" to negate the bad side-effects of over-intrusive gate-keepers. The "trivial things" like music/movies will always have gate-keepers since those gate-keepers need to get a return of investment (which is their right).

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