"Hollywood says that it's illegal to burn a backup copy of your Austin Powers Goldmember DVD, and it builds in copy protection to stop you. But a small firm denies any kinship to Dr. Evil just because it markets software that lets anyone with a burnable DVD drive make an exact copy of a commercial DVD.
Missouri-based 321 Studios has released DVD X Copy, a $99 program that is the first to let users create a mirror image of an entire DVD on a second blank DVD. The copy even includes menus, special features, and enhanced audio, the company says.
The movie industry trade association Motion Picture Association of America contends that such products violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That law, currently under review, outlaws providing information or tools to circumvent copy-control technology, including the Contents Scramble System (CSS) used on DVD media.
But Robert Moore, president and founder of 321 Studios, says consumers have a fair-use right to make backup copies of DVDs they purchase....
During a recent demonstration of DVD X Copy running on an 800-MHz Compaq notebook attached to a USB 2.0 external DVD+RW Viper Drive, it took us about an hour to make an exact copy of the DVD Black Hawk Down....
During the copying process, 321 Studios takes three extra steps to appease its Hollywood critics. DVD X Copy inserts electronic controls into copied DVDs to prevent them from being duplicated further. It embeds a digital watermark that can trace the source of any file transmitted over the Internet to the software's licensed owner. And it inserts a disclaimer at the beginning of the recorded DVD, telling viewers that the disc is a backup copy intended for personal use only....
Moore believes that anticircumvention laws like the DMCA are unconstitutional. He cites the so-called "Betamax defense," a response to the motion picture industry's efforts to ban Sony's Betamax VCRs because they could be used to make illegal copies of movies. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that, though some VCR uses do infringe on copyright, a banning the technology was not justified because it had sufficient noninfringing uses.
What's more, Moore says, DVD X Copy doesn't actually break the CSS on commercial DVDs.
Instead, 321 Studio intercepts the video and audio stream after a DVD player has decrypted the CSS code. Moore argues that all DVD players decrypt the CSS code when they plays a protected DVD. Because it intercepts the signal after decryption but before the video is rendered, the product does not run afoul of the DMCA, he says." [PC World]
So now we'll find out if the movie industry really believes in fair use or not. It looks to my non-lawyerly eye that they have taken measures to prevent widespread piracy and they've even included some DRM.
Hollywood, the ball is in your court. Are you with consumers, or against us?
Tuesday, December 03, 2002
