Why Its Legal to Rip DVDs and Download Movies ... Well Sometimes.

I’m not a lawyer so please forgive me of any of these comments are off the mark. Feel free to correct me at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, the basis of this argument is that as it stands it remains legal to record any TV show onto VHS, DVD or DVR. This was contested back in the days of betamax (Sony’s losing technology in the race with VHS), where it was ruled legal to record provided the recording was only for personal use.

Taking this a little further, we can understand how the latest TivoToGo offering can come about. This service allows you to record shows you want from the TV, transfer them to your computer and finally re-encode them so they are suitable to be played on the iPod or PSP. At no point along this chain is the premise that the recordings could be for personal use only broken.

This is where I start to get into deep and rather murky waters. If we then take another look at what is allowed here, it seems that after a show or film has been broadcast on network television it has become a part of the public domain. This would have been less true in the days of VHS where you had to remember to set the timer or you wouldn’t have the program recorded. But now with products like Tivo, it even records shows that you didn’t ask it to. And with very quick few clicks you can have it record all your favorite shows without missing a beat. So under these circumstances are we not allowed to own a digital copy of any show or film which has been broadcast, provided it is for personal use?

The natural progression of this argument is to say then, why can’t i rent a DVD and rip it, or download TV shows from the internet provided it has been shown on network television. I mean I could have recorded it when it was shown and so owned a legal digital copy of the show on my iPod. How does it make any difference how those bits of data appeared on my device? Provided I do not share the files with others I am not breaking my original agreement.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naive. I do realise that the MPAA et al have made other steps in my process illegal, for example the act of decoding the content of a DVD itself. I can’t think of any measures yet in place which criminalizes the downloading of this content from p2p networks however though with movies from DVD, at some point someone has broken the law.

This is a very superficial look based on my limited understanding of the legalities in the area. It is food for thought though ...

Comments

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[Gray B.]

In following up Gino, I think a major flaw is in bringing in the term 'Public Domain'. That's a very strong category if the piece is solidly in the PD. And it's often ambiguous and difficult to nail down as in the PD.

Thank you though for the piece. I enjoyed reading the train of logic.

Peace,

[Andrew Harden]

LopingRhondo, BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen just received $8.75 million in venture capital and is negotiating with the MPAA who would like to use BitTorrent as a potential distribution channel. So there ya go :)

[Timothy J. Smith]

Bill Clinton passed the DMCA Act for his Hollywood buddies! Up until that Point it was legal to rip a backup of any movie. Now if you break CSS you break the law. ALTHOUGH IT HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED IN COURT OF LAW! If you read the previous copyright law before the DMCA Act obnnly distributing media was illegal.

[LopingRhondo]

You're forgetting that DVDs are copy protected with CSS, which makes it illegal to back them up. Even if you do have fair use rights to the content (which I believe you do) you are breaking the law by decrypting the content on the DVD.

[theone3]

What if an online network were set up? What if, similar to a cable network subscription, they charged a monthly fee in order to access the broadcast rights that may allow you to download movies, etc. via P2P, but didn't go through the hastle of actually broadcasting and promoting the content. A service like that would be widespread and incredibly popular, as well as efficient to run and scale-based. Any VCs out there??

[Gino]

Yes, you are correct. It is legal to rip a DVD or download a movie as long as you've paid for that right.

You see, it all comes down to compensation. When you record a program to your TIVO or VHS or DVR it's counted as being viewed by someone and the rights holders are paid accordingly. In most cases the broadcaster pays the rights holder for the right to broadcast the program and the broadcaster gets paid by the advertisers buying the ad space during that broadcast. The fee for that ad space is determined by the estimated viewer-ship of that broadcast.

Now, when you give that recording to others their viewing is not taken into account in the broadcaster's viewer-ship estimates and they are not properly compensated. They aren't making as much money as they have a right to make.

The laws that are in place are not there to prevent you from making copies of works for personal use as long as you've already paid for that right, directly or indirectly. They are there to prevent people from giving copies of those recordings to others and thus prevent people from receiving proper compensation for the work

Also, if you bought a DVD of a movie and you want to be able to make a copy so that you can watch it on your computer or portable player you can. The problem arises when you make that copy available to other people who have not purchased that right.

Now, this right does not extend to movies you've rented from the local video store or viewed via pay-per-view. In those instances you are only paying for the right to view that material for as long as the rental/viewer period lasts and no longer. In other words, you have not paid for the right to view that material in perpetuity.

So now I hope you can see how your "public domain" argument does not hold water. If that were the case then as soon as a movie or TV show gets broadcast and as long as one person recorded that broadcast then all copies of that one broadcast would be free to all. The people who went through all the work of creating and broadcasting that movie or TV show would not be compensated for their work. Now I don't think you agree with that premise do you? You like getting paid for your work don't you?

Now provided you agree with what I've written above and please let me know if and with what you don't, the only reason the MPAA lobbies for the protections it wants put in place is because they know that as soon as copies are made those copies are going to be shared and people are not going to be paid as much as they have a right to be for their work.

Let's face it, whether you've done it yourself or not, people do make copies of movies, and music for that matter, that they don't have a right to. As well, copies are being made available to others that don't have any rights to those copies thus inhibiting the rights holders to their fair compensation.

[Pat]

The flaw in your theory is that it is not ever legal to view content without paying the intellectual property owners, while the copyright is in force. For broadcast television, that payment is watching commercials. The VHS "Fair Use" ruling would likely have gone differently had the technology been available at the time to easily and quickly cut out the commercials. That being said, the evil blood-sucking leaches and their whore-congressmen that have been responsible for extending copyright to its present length have shit all over our constitution. I say, let's have fairness in in intellectual property laws. Make copyright and patent lengths equal.