DVD Ripping and Editing

[Terje A. bergesen]

Geez this is still going on, well anyways like i said before i was going to share it w/ my parents in my HOME

To me, this is not the point of contention. The point is that you intend to change the movie, without the consent of the movie owner, before you show it to your parents. You didn’t buy the rights to do that. You bought the rights to watching it with your parents, and telling them to shut their eyes when things that they don’t want to see come on.

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

They very often do, but if they do not that is their prerogative, and, since you are not the movie owner, and you have not paid for the right to alter the movie, you can not do this. Note that TV stations and airlines buy down-rated movies or they alter them them selves to a lower rating, but they pay a lot of money for the right. You haven’t paid for that right. If you want to show your parents the PG13 version of the movie, record it to your DVR next time it shows on some TV station. Then you are fine. They have edited it for you and paid for the right to do so.

if that means sacrificing some nudity,blood splatters, limbs and heads being chopped off, without ruining the movie, I’d do it.

And that would be your choice. If I feel that my work would be sullied by such an edit, then it is my choice to not release such a version, and you, as a viewer, have no right to challenge my decision. It is my movie to change, you can watch it or not, those are the only options you have.

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…

Not sure what you are saying here. The only people with the right to alter a movie, and make money doing so, are the owners (maker) of the movie or people they have given permission (usually for a fee) to do so.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Terje A. Bergesen] “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.”

No offense, Terje, but what you are referring to here is the fact that laws evolve. Oftentimes — especially when 530 mostly out of work lawyers in Washington DC get involved — earlier less restrictive laws give way to stricter more restrictive laws. Lawyers may call it refinement, but others would argue otherwise. The point remains that these new laws replace and redefine how that particular area of law is now viewed. It is a process of statute and precedent. New statutes redefine and legally refine earlier precedents.

Case in point for illustration? In the American Old West people used laudanum (a tincture of opium) and it was legal. But I wouldn’t want to be standing in court as an opium user (which I am emphatically not) arguing a case before a judge that today’s laws were not valid because according to earlier laws, it was legal.

I am willing to put some money in escrow and bet that in 10 years the DMCA will still be with us and will still be law. Are you? If you aren’t, you get my point as to why ripping DVDs is not a good use of your time…

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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[Terje A. bergesen]

what you are referring to here is the fact that laws evolve. Oftentimes — especially when 530 mostly out of work lawyers in Washington DC get involved — earlier less restrictive laws give way to stricter more restrictive laws

Again, I am not a lawyer, but – eh, wrong. The US has what is called a common-law system, slightly different than the one in the UK, but similar. The main difference being the importance of the US Constitution. In a common law system precedence is generally more important than in other law systems, and in the US you also have the fact that all laws are held up against the constitution.

This means that the Betamax case, as it pertains to copying, has a stronger stand in the US than does the DMCA since the Betamax case has been tried i court. In fact, in order for a later court to overthrow the Betamax case it must typically either go to a higher court instance or be shown to contain some sort of error – or even be unconstitutional. More typically a lawyer would try to argue that the Betamax case could not be considered relevant in a particular case. This is why, if the duplication of DVDs ever goes to court, it will most likely be tried on cracking the encryption, not copying the content, since there is precedent that says copying the content for private use is legal.

Copying copyrighted material in the US has generally been legal for personal use. That is, you are allowed to put that CD onto your iPod, or that LP onto a tape for your car. You can even copy pages of a book if you feel that is a better way to read the book. This is precedent, and for the movie industry to nail me on making a duplicate of a DVD for my own personal use (let’s say to play on my iPod video), they would have to show that this is a fundamentally different from doing this with a music CD, which you and I both know it is not.

This is why the movie industry primarily have been attacking the breaking of the encryption, not duplication of the content. In other words, they have been attacking where DMCA differs from the Betamax case.

I am willing to put some money in escrow and bet that in 10 years the DMCA will still be with us and will still be law. Are you?

I am confident the DMCA will still be around in ten years, of course. Why would it go anywhere. I am also optimistic that by then the delineation between the DMCA and the Betamax case may have been tried in court, but I am not sure. I don’t really think the movie industry will ever try to have the Betamax case overthrown. Why would they?

But I wouldn’t want to be standing in court as an opium user (which I am emphatically not) arguing a case before a judge that today’s laws were not valid because according to earlier laws, it was legal.

This example is nice, and it illustrates a very important point very well: Your lack of understanding of law. In the US common law system I am confident Opium has never been legal. If you can find a law that states that any opiate is legal I would be interested to read it. What I am also reasonably certain of is that back then, in the Wild Wild West, it wasn’t illegal. Now that is another thing entirely. A thing that is not specifically illegal can be made illegal by creating a law against it. Remember, in the US common law system, anything that isn’t specifically illegal is legal (as opposed to Roman law, where the opposite is true).

Now, I would, as many others, argue that the ban on drug use for personal recreation is unconstitutional, but since the Supreme Court is primarily a political, and not a judicial institution, it seems unlikely that we’ll get a court in the near future that is willing to look at this from a purely legalistic standpoint.

The problem with your opiate argument is that copying of copyrighted content for purely private use has been deemed legal by a US court, and overthrowing that is typically not trivial. That is why the industry hasn’t really tried in the almost three decades since 1979.

And PLEASE I am not arguing that you should be allowed to duplicate and sell, give away, distribute or in any other way break the law, movies. I am arguing that if I buy the rights to watch a movie, the industry shouldn’t really have the right to ban me from watching that movie on my iPod video and force me to watch it on their approved Televisions.

[Ron Lindeboom]

The fact is this: Law enforcement acts on the statutes that are on the books. Judges enforce based on these same statutes — at least until they are off the books (which rarely happens, especially when big money and where powerful PACs and special interest groups are concerned).

If you have the money and the time to fight existing laws, then please feel free.

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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[Terje A. bergesen]

The fact is this: Law enforcement acts on the statutes that are on the books. Judges enforce based on these same statutes

Ah, well, “the fact” is rarely fact other than in the most simplistic cases. The statues that are on the books right now say that we can duplicate copyrighted material for private use. Do law enforcement act on those statutes? What about the judges when two aspects of “the books” are contradictory?

[Ron Lindeboom]

Bottom-line: You will have to spend a LOT of money arguing your case that you have a right to do something that is clearly outlawed by a statute on the books.

Courts do NOT spend endless time wrangling philosophies as is done in forums like this. You are in and out. You will never be given the chance to make many statements at all and will only do so based on the strength of the number and quality of your legal team. Only in the Supreme Court are you given time to do things like this and you will have spent a lot of time and money before you ever get there…

Maybe one day the DMCA will be overturned but that day isn’t today and it won’t be with money I am willing to spend. You are indeed welcome to spend whatsoever you wish…

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!

Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?

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[Terje A. bergesen]

You will have to spend a LOT of money arguing your case that you have a right to do something that is clearly outlawed by a statute on the books.

Bottom line, you still don’t understand that this isn’t “clearly outlawed by a statute on the books” since it is specifically legalized by another “statute on the books”.

Courts do NOT spend endless time wrangling philosophies as is done in forums like this.

Higher court instances do almost exactly that.

Maybe one day the DMCA will be overturned

Again, there is no reason the DMCA should be overturned. It doesn’t have to be.

Interestingly, and think about this for a little while before you answer. The guy who cracked the DVD protection scheme was prosecuted, DVD John, remember? He then published his work, and a number of companies have since created DVD decryption software based on his work. These companies have generally not been pursued in court. Why the discrepancy? Can you imagine a situation where a studio lawyer understands that they can pursue DVD John, but that they realize there is little to be gained from going after the ones who enable copying of DVDs?

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Actually, no law permits the copying/archiving of protected content. You’re confused. You may not archive protected works.
Time-shifting is copying broadcasts, which is perfectly legal. Still.
What you may not do, is rip a DVD, bypassing copy protection. It was illegal to bypass Macrovision on VHS, and still is illegal to bypass Macrovision, CSS, or any other copy protection scheme, and the laws preventing same were merely re-fortified by DMCA.
Technically, it is not illegal to rip a CD and put it on your iPod or similar device, because the concept of those devices is that they may be enjoyed by one person at one time, rather than multiple persons at one time, or one person in multiple occurrences. Too late to put that genie back in the bottle, and frankly, I don’t think anyone cares anyway, not at this point. The bigger problem is people ripping the songs and putting them on file-sharing sites.
Either way, back to point…Ron is right, and myself right along with him. You may *not* archive DVD content to another disc, period. The new amendments to the Copyright laws last fall serve to not only fortify the DMCA, but to also reiterate that copying for personal use, when it involves bypassing any copy protection scheme, is illegal for anyone, excepting very specific purposes, none of which are related to the rights of individuals. Only specific organizations.
While some are apparently confused about the legal aspects of this, I don’t understand why. It’s clear, specific, and very easy for the layperson to understand, IMO. It’s not that folks don’t understand it, it’s that they tend to try to interpret current law vs past law, or interpret loopholes in the laws.
To clarify;
You may *not* bypass copy protection, period. On any format of media. For personal use or otherwise, excepting extremely specific organizations. Religion is not one of them.
You may *not* back up media in any fashion that disables copy protection or alters its specific protection scheme.

I’d like to invite you to attend one of the Copyright conventions for musicians and attorneys, they take place 4 times per year in various locations around the country. Not terribly expensive, usually 149.00 for a full day with an IP attorney like Paul Tauger, Bill Evans, or similar. WELL worth the cost, IMO.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Ron Lindeboom]

As I said, Terje, and now will make abundantly clear: You are giving people BAD advice and any fool who follows you is welcome to follow advice that will cost them a ton of money while they argue their way up the food chain — if they ever get that far — and get into a higher court where these kinds of splitting of legal hairs are allowed. (Which is what I said but you don’t seem to listen, do you?)

You are encouraging users to break the law. Period.

There is no ambiguity in that and if you think otherwise, then you

read too many forums,
• Have no attorney (who would talk sense to you),
• are headed for eventual problems,
• hopefully will go alone and no one here will heed your bad advice.Now, next time you try to turn my words inside out, do me the courtesy of at least reading them and maybe even try understanding them, okay???

  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!

  Do you have your complimentary subscription to Creative COW Magazine yet?

[Terje A. bergesen]

As I said, Terje, and now will make abundantly clear: You are giving people BAD advice

Please note that I have not been trying to give advice in this thread at all; well, I advised the OP not to do what he tried to do since it was illegal. My arguments in this case have only been that things are not yet as clear-cut as you have argued that they are.

Let me try to very shortly state the basis for the contention in this issue.

US copyright law and practice generally gives a private person the right to duplicate copyrighted material for personal use. That is the general view of US law. I don’t think this issue is contentious at all. You can copy a CD onto an iPod and play it as you walk, in your car, or even at a party at a friends house. In other words, you can use the duplicate of the copyrighted material in the same way that you can use the material it self. You can, however, not sell it or distribute it for free. No debate here I think. If you think this is wrong, please explain RIAA v Diamond and the fact that we have iPods.

So, then there is the DMCA. The DMCA says you are not allowed to duplicate copy protected material. This is actually interesting, since the DMCA doesn’t require the copy protected material to be copyrighted for it to be illegal to duplicate it. In other words, if I create a DVD consisting only of public domain material and I include CSS copy protection on that DVD, it is still illegal to make duplicates of the DVD. This is one of the utterly bizarre consequences of the DMCA.

So, purely according to the DMCA, I can at the current point in time not make duplicates of anything that has copy protection on it. As Spot points out, this is illegal now, for any reason whatsoever (with a very limited set of exceptions for libraries and the like). I do not disagree with that point of view as the land currently lies. No argument whatsoever.

My point is the following: The US system of law is common law. The implications of this are important. This means that previous judicial precedent is generally very, very important, and it is even difficult to create new laws that go counter to judicial precedent. In other words, it is hard to make the DMCA stick over time when faced with decades of judges saying that what the DMCA deems illegal should be legal.

Let me use an example. Say that Warner Brothers decide to come after me because I have ripped a DVD and put it on my PC so that I can stream it to my PS3 in my living room. In other words, I do to a DVD exactly the same thing I have already (100% legally) done to my CD collection. BTW, do you not find it utterly bizarre that I can legally do this to all my CDs, but none of my movies? Why do a musician have less rights to his work than does a director? Anyway. We march on.

So, Warner comes after me with all of their big guns, and I hire the Ghost of Johnnie Cochran to defend me. Lets say it goes all the way to the Supreme Court. What is likely to happen apart from the fact that I have to try on various pieces of apparel that turn out to be too small for me? What is likely to happen is that WB will not be able to get me convicted for duplicating their copyrighted material, but they will be able to convict me for circumventing the copyright protection. A crucial difference.

Do I think the DMCA will stand in 10 years, not as it is today, no. It will be altered by court decisions along the way. All laws are, and hopefully, given this experiment we call democracy, always will be.

Sadly, in todays insanely paranoid post 9/11 judicial environment, having rationality prevail all the way to the Supreme Court is hard, but I hope that this great country soon regains most of it’s sanity, also when it comes to the ludicrous aspects of the DMCA. It gets utterly bizarre when counsel in a copyright lawsuits pulls in, and scores points on, the terrorist threat.

Note – I am not advocating sharing of copyrighted material, I am only advocating that the result of Sony v. Universal, and decades upon decades of rational US copyright law should be left as is. This can happen in one of two ways, either some poor sod is attacked by the big media companies for putting a DVD onto his new iPod video to watch on a flight across country or, well, see the next paragraph.

It will be interesting to see, over time, how the DMCRA (Digital Media Consumers Rights Act) fares. Hopefully well. It is short, simple and the only sane part of current copyright debate in DC.

Now, next time you try to turn my words inside out, do me the courtesy of at least reading them and maybe even try understanding them, okay???

That is an advice I will have to return to you re me giving advice.

But honestly, do you really believe that watching a DVD on your iPod video is, and should be, a crime in the US? Why?