DVD Ripping and Editing

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

So to be sure I’m clear on what you’re asking;
)-you want to illegally rip a movie (apparently already accomplished)
)-you intend on editing the movie so it is no longer “300” but rather “250” so your parents can watch it with less blood,
)-you’ll deliver the “250” on an illegally copied DVD

And your LDS parents are OK with this?? If they’re honest, they’ll lose their temple recommends for watching/encouraging this activity.
There is a reason that the LDS faithful lost their lawsuit against the DGA. Get Zack Snyder’s permission first, maybe. You’re messing with his vision, his story.
Get some paint and paint clothing on the Venus di Milo while you’re at it?

BTW, yes, you can use Vegas to cut this movie up and remove some of the blood.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Tevya Washburn]

DPayne:
https://www.familyfocusfilms.org/product_info.php?products_id=2830

No offense Douglas, but don’t you think you’re being a little harsh? As a Mod, aren’t you supposed to be making people feel invited and welcome? Even if you don’t especially care for their approach or logic (or lack thereof).

The legality of it all still up for debate. As long as one keeps it for personal use, breaking the copy protection isn’t necessarily illegal in and of itself. CleanFlicks got shut down because they lost a civil suit. If what they were doing was against the law, then the other companies who do the same, or similar things, would all have cops storming their offices. They’re still in business.

I know that people say it’s about the director’s vision, and I can understand that. But there are a lot of people who, for moral reasons, don’t want to see the nudity, sexuality, and graphic violence. They still want new, great entertainment, just not the exposure to some of the harsher elements that seem so prevalent in today’s media.

The fact is, TV still edits films to broadcast, as do airlines and other things. The DGA was just upset that they weren’t getting an additional cut for these edited versions. Kinda stupid business-wise on their part because it made their films available to an audience that wouldn’t have otherwise purchased or rented them.

Back to you DPayne:
In the end, I have a few films (which I own) I’d like to edit just a few very minor parts out of so I can watch them with my little brothers (aged 8 and 11). I’ve tried and tried and cannot find a way to make video taken from a commercial DVD show up properly in Vegas (or Premiere or other NLE’s). I can make it work, but something with the way the MPEG2 VOB’s are encoded, Vegas can’t translate them correctly. I used some footage for an educational project I did a while back (posted on this forum because I received some help from several people here). No matter what I did, frames from a previous part of the video would suddenly show up later on, or similar things would happen so that video would appear to jump forward and/or backward sometimes slightly sometimes in a big way. Its weird because sometimes there will be a fairly long sequence without any problems, but then inevitably there’s a part with these weird frame insertions and or deletions. If anyone around here knows what’s going on I’d sure like to know the source of the problem.

–the Fiddler

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

A-yes, I’m being a little harsh. I tend to get that way when people that are within our industry use our industrial tools to destroy the very works we create, usually out of love first, profit second.

B-There is no debate about the legality of bypassing DRM, there is no debate about the legality of editing a film. Neither is legal. Nothing much more to say there.

C-“TV” does not edit a film. No one in the industry edits a film, excepting for the director or his designees, unless a studio owns the master, at which point they designate how/what will be cut. Broadcast will/might say “This scene is not suitable for the hour in which we’d like to present it,” or “the movie is too long for the broadcast with comm spots, so please edit it for length.” No one at the television station or broadcast house cuts it without specific direction from the director or owner of the master. Usually the director will provide this cut anyway.

…. But there are a lot of people who, for moral reasons, don’t want to see the nudity, sexuality, and graphic violence. ….
Then don’t see it. Don’t watch it. I’m tremendously offended by people who smoke in public places, women who wear offensive perfumes, and men who pass gas in airplanes. But unlike those who would spray-paint a fur coat or toss water on a smoker, I merely avoid those situations as much as I can. I know which parts of Jerusalem in which I can walk at night and which parts I can’t. I’m smart enough to avoid those places, too. In other words, if I have a line in the sand about what is acceptable for me to see or experience, then it’s my responsibility to toe that line, not illegally modify the experience so that it fits the parameters of my own life.
Either gin up to it or don’t. But don’t force others to fit your morality mode. It may well happen to you one day. It has happened to me at a few different levels, ranging from a film scorist completely destroying my music (without license) to finding my own music on Ebay as part of illegal music compilations.
Maybe I’m a little harsh, but I can’t possibly imagine anyone in our industry, professional or not, supporting this kind of theft and moral abuse and infringement upon our property rights.
It’s often said “Those that don’t believe in protecting intellectual property have none.” I agree.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Ron Lindeboom]

[theFiddler] “The legality of it all still up for debate. As long as one keeps it for personal use, breaking the copy protection isn’t necessarily illegal in and of itself.”

This is simply and patently incorrect.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act expressly makes a crime any ripping of a DVD or other medium that falls under its protections. (This is a USA law and does not apply to other countries in which people here may be reading this.)

It does not exempt nor does it protect the rights of the end user who bought it. In fact, it expressly forbids backing it up in any means whatsoever. Period. There are no exceptions granted.

There is also no debate. The law was passed. It is not a “transitional” law somehow being phased in in some increasingly more enforceable manner that grows with time. No, it is the law, plain and simple.

Debate it if you like but it would be akin to debating the ethics of robbing a bank. The ethics wouldn’t matter in a court of law and a judge won’t care one bit if you don’t like the law or not. They are not there to legislate, that job has already been done. They are there to enforce the laws as written.

There’s no debate but you can think so to your own demise.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom Publisher, Creative COW Magazine CreativeCOW.net Paso Robles, California USA Email: ron@creativecow.net https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom Join the COW’s LinkedIn Group Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!

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Activity

[Terje A. bergesen]

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act expressly makes a crime any ripping of a DVD or other medium that falls under its protections.

This is correct, however, there are other laws that would allow it as Fair Use. Since the DMCA vs the older VHS (I think it was) have not been tried in the Supreme Court yet, we don’t really know. One court decision says you can, another law says you can’t.

What is clearly not legal however is altering the movie. Copying it, perhaps legal, altering it without permission, definitely not legal.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

there are other laws that would allow it as Fair Use

Incorrect. There is no law, anywhere, of any kind related to Berne or DCMA that allows ripping of DVDs to be authorized under any term of Fair Use. Period.

The *only* avenue where this *may* arguably fall (and doesn’t related one whit to this course of discussion) is the less-than-a-year-old change in the Copyright Act that allows media instructors to make copies for purposes of educational commentary on the media itself, and that particular part of the amendments by the Library of Congress have not been tried out yet.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Terje A. bergesen]

I am not a lawyer, and what I say should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. Also, as a non-lawyer, I will be careful with stating either this or that categorically. We may need to wait and see a little on this one since it hasn’t yet been tried in court – that is, the Betamax case vs DMCA (see below). As you know, this is a country of common law, so court decisions are very important.

In the Sony vs Universal and Walt Disney (often referred to as the Betamax case), the court clearly states that duplicating copyrighted material for private use, in this particular case time-shifting, was fair use and therefore legal. Sony argued that copying like this had been not only possible, but widespread since the first tape recorder was released. Copying your records (LP) to tape for playing in your car (where you people had LP players) was common practice, and accepted (fair use). The court agreed with Sony. This decision, which is from 1979, is generally used as an argument that copying copyrighted material in limited quantities for your own use is generally legal in the US.

Along comes the DMCA, which adds another interesting twist to the discussion. The DMCA states that circumventing copy protection, which is required to copy a DVD, is illegal. OK, so now we have two conflicting areas of law, the DMCA that says I can not copy a DVD, and the Betamax case which in essence says that I can copy it for my own use.

These two conflicting areas of law have not yet been brought head-to-head in a court of law in the US, and the main reason, as far as I understand it, is that the movie industry is reasonably sure they would lose given the Betamax case. The fact that they think they would lose you can see in the fact that the entertainment industry has not gone after the makers of DVD duplication software at all (in reality). They realize it would probably be futile. Not so with people who share music. In reality, their actions (or lack of) show the public that they are OK with you making backup of this for your own use. This is something the court would take into account in a case. Same thing with CD ripping software.

Remember, without the Betamax case Apple would not be able to sell a single iPod.

As I said, I’m not a lawyer, but I am a betting man. I would not bet a single cent, no matter what odds, on the movie industry if they went after copying for private use in the courts.

There is a long history in the US of accepting copying of copyrighted material for private use. Books, music, movies, most have been tried in court, and the court tends to land on the “you can copy for private use” argument.

So, what about the circumventing of copyright? Well, again it does seem like the courts, the industry and others have agreed in practice what is and what is not legal. It appears that the courts have found that cracking the encryption is illegal, that is, sitting down and doing the crack, but using it after it has been published is not. This is, in my opinion, schizophrenic at best, but then again, that is an affliction commonly seen in a vibrant democracy.

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

I’m not a lawyer either, I just play one on the internet.
)as a musician, copyright law is very important to me. I attend and sit on panels fairly frequently, that are related to this subject.

)My company hired a IP attorneys and paid the $$ to learn their opinions on this very subject. Additionally, we produced a DVD on the subject of copyright. It specifically addresses a couple of your comments.

)The film industry doesn’t need to go after the DVD ripping companies, they’re effectively shut down by the government when they released products.

While what you say is seemingly logical, you’re missing several pieces to the puzzle.
What is even more puzzling to me is when I find *anyone* in our industry supporting the right to rip content for the purpose of sharing it with others. DCMA or not.
I make my living creating content. It truly inspires fury when I find my content on a website without my permission. I don’t see it as flattery. I’ve created content that people are allowed/encouraged to use at no cost, but that’s apparently not enough. They have to rip it and upload it to other sites, use it in their YouTube vids, MySpace pages, etc. If it continues at the pace it’s been going for the past few years, there is little to no incentive for musicians to keep making great music and for independent producers to make great films.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[David Payne]

Geez this is still going on, well anyways like i said before i was going to share it w/ my parents in my HOME , i’d never put it on the internet or share it with others.

What sucks is that the Directors and/or Large Corporations , don’t release a toned down version of their movies when they come out for video , it’s always the Director’s Cut /Unrated version and think more ppl will purchase the video , which doesn’t happen where I live it , since I’m surrounded by Mormon’s.

But let’s say if they release a movie and it has a R rating in the theatres , when it comes out to video why not release a Uncut/Unrated/Director’s Cut/R/PG-13 and maybe even a PG vers of the movie IE: covering all their bases and ppl/religions etc so they can maximize their profit and not to have to worry about ppl ripping and editing their films.

I don’t know but it makes perfect sense to me. The Director’s etc that don’t think this would be a good idea , would really need to go to the hospital and have a colonoscopy to find/remove that stick that’s shoved up in there so far.

I mean I’m no director but maybe some day I will be , I’d want to share my work w/ anyone/everyone I could find that wanted to see it , and if that means sacrificing some nudity,blood splatters, limbs and heads being chopped off, without ruining the movie, I’d do it.

They’re alot of companies that edit movies out there and are still in business and making alot of money doing it, but personally I’d rather see that money go to the ppl that made the movie…

/rant off

/hug

[Terje A. bergesen]

What is even more puzzling to me is when I find *anyone* in our industry supporting the right to rip content for the purpose of sharing it with others. DCMA or not.

I would never advocate ripping DVDs to share with others, but I do contend that when I buy a DVD I buy the right to watch the movie, and I should be allowed to watch the movie any which way I like. In other words, if I want to watch the movie on my iPod video, I should be allowed to. The only way I can do that is by ripping the DVD.

Also, I have put together a multimedia solution with my home-office PC and my Playstation 3. I us TVersity to stream all my home-made video and streaming video from the net (legal) to my PS3. I have now bought three 500G HDs I intend to set up in a RAID configuration, and I intend to rip all my DVDs onto this HD and watch them by streaming them to my PS3 from my PC.

Given the fact that I have paid to watch these movies, why is it that I can go to jail for determining how I watch them? Note, I am not changing the movie at all, I am not even transcoding I am ripping the pure MPEG-2 stream to the HD and streaming this across to my PS3. Would you seriously contend that I am stealing just because I push the DVD content across an 100Mb/s ethernet connection to my PS3 rather than watching, bit for bit and byte for byte, the same content streamed off the DVD disk through the same PS3 onto my TV? Of course not.