Ignoring Obsolete Analog Technology Is Now Considered Circumventing Copy Protection?
from the questions-questions dept
The “anti-circumvention” clause of the DMCA is perhaps its most controversial, leading to lots of complaints, lawsuits and attempts to change the law. It seems particularly ridiculous that it basically criminalizes some uses that are protected by fair use rules. However, it also can create some tricky questions about what, exactly, is “circumvention” of a copy protection system. The EFF is now getting involved in one such case. As many people know, Macrovision creates a very basic type of copy protection for VCR tapes. What it does is degrade any copy by adding a lot of “noise” to it, making it nearly unwatchable. However, the noise is added to the vertical blanking interval (VBI), used in analog broadcasting officially to reset a traditional TV’s beam, but also used to send additional information. For digital converters, it’s easy to ignore the VBI (especially since there’s no beam to reset on a digital TV), which is exactly what one company did. Of course, that means that the forced degradation of copied videotapes disappears. To Macrovision, apparently, ignoring an otherwise useless bit of information is considered “circumventing” their copy protection scheme. As the EFF notes in their filing against Macrovision, it seems ridiculous that any company should be forced to include what’s basically an obsolete technology that serves no purpose, just for the sake of adding noise to copied tapes.
Comments on “Ignoring Obsolete Analog Technology Is Now Considered Circumventing Copy Protection?”
Wow...
That’s just totally frightening.
The DMCA has completely bastardized our legal system in favor of copyright holders.
Anyone and everyone gets trampled along the way.
(well, except the politicians)
Re: Wow...
(well, except the politicians)
whos pockets get heavier and heavier.
Re: Wow...
>(well, except the politicians)
Well, you can’t slap your hos around too much or they’ll leave.
Everytime I go to transfer one of my old home movies that is on VHS tape, I run into macrovisions copy protection. Macrovision mistakes my old home movie footage as copy protected content.
Is macrovision going to transfer my old home video for me?
Seems to me that macrovision is violating my rights.
Quote from above “…Is macrovision going to transfer my old home video for me? Seems to me that macrovision is violating my rights…”
Well funny thing is… when you “made” your home videos on a consumer grade camcorder you didn’t add macrovision. If the tape is not commercially made then there is NO macrovision on it.
Seriously…. if your going to post a comment like that… put a little thought into.
Re: Re:
I did think it out.
My old VHS tape has degraded and when I attempt to convert it to DVD, my recorder mistakes it for copy protected content. The degredation of the old VHS home footage probably appears to be macrovision protected, given the synch loss during retrace. I have tried three different brands of DVD recorder and all three exhibit the problem at one point or another on the VHS tape. A simple filter takes care of the problem. But that would be breaking the law. Go figure.
P.S
I did not like the tone of your response,
Perhaps you should think things through next time.
Or perhaps you work for Macrovision.
“Well funny thing is… when you “made” your home videos on a consumer grade camcorder you didn’t add macrovision. If the tape is not commercially made then there is NO macrovision on it.”
I think the point was that the DVD Recorder, or whatever device he is using to record the tapes, is for some reason recognising that the stram is copyrighted and not allowing the transfer. Not hte macrovision as described in the article but another scheme.
Dear "Someone"
I thought this out. Bite Me!
Follow the links to the EFF doc if you have a chance. It’s a nicely written piece.
Hmm, interesting concept actually.
So… I could basically come up with any type of ‘scheme’ to protect my ‘digital rights’, huh?
I bet if I thought for a while and got creative, I could come up with some interesting ways to exploit this law.
So – I could open a restaurant and wrap my sandwiches in plastic. I could say that my sandwich design is ‘intellectual property’ so long as I got it copywritten. Then after that, I could call the plastic wrap my ‘copy protection’.
So when a customer buys one, I don’t tell them about this (afterall, Macrovision puts NO information about using the VBI band on tapes now do they??) after they open the sandwich, I could have a lawyer waiting there to slap them with a ‘property rights’ lawsuit, since they opened the sandwich. I’d simply have to put a disclaimer on the menu saying ‘all recipes are my intellectual property’.
I mean seriously – Macrovision doesn’t disclose anywhere on VHS tapes that it’s even present, muchless that it’s using the VBI band to ‘protect’ the content. So why would I have to tell anyone that my ‘sandwich wrap’ was my ‘anti-recipe-piracy-device’?
Don’t see where there would be a significant differance there.
I’m sure if I sat and thought about it for any length of time, I could come up with far more devious ideas on how to slap lawsuits on people using this law!
Why not? The RIAA, Sony, Macrovision could all do it.
How about this? Maybe we should start a campaign…
Let’s all make up poems – copyright them and then call the envelope our ‘anti-piracy’ device. When the RIAA gets them, and opens them, we can sue them for circumventing our ‘piracy’ device. All we’d have to do is put a small disclaimer on the back saying ‘this content is proected by an anti-piracy device’.
Re: Re:
You seem to be assuming that the law applies equally to everyone. It doesn’t, at least not in the U.S., and it’s the judges job to make sure that it doesn’t.
AHHH HAAA!
Here’s the *REAL* reason for Macrovision’s lawsuit..
Look at thier stock.
http://today.reuters.com/stocks/overview.aspx?symbol=MVSN.O&chart=7
Now don’t be fooled here – it looks ok over the last year.. Now check the last 5 years.. You’ll see their stock took a huge hit in 2001 – almost perfectly coinciding with the shift from VHS tapes to DVD… lol
So if you go to their page, they try to spin it real well: “earnings were also a record for a first quarter at $13.2 million, compared to $11.5 million in the first quarter of 2005.”
Note** They say “compared to 11.5 mill in the 1st qtr”. It’s a ‘record’ compared to last year… LOL – but it’s most certainly *NOT* a record for the last 5 years.
http://www.macrovision.com/company/news/releases/newsdetail.jsp?id=Tue%20May%2002%2014:16:17%20PDT%202006
So in the end – I guess, I’ll spin it in my own fashion.
It’s GOOD news.
The Good news is that one more low-down company that doesn’t disclose everything about their ‘control’ mechanisms is going down the tubes.
You know – seriously.. In order for this BS ‘law’ to be valid, the company should have to disclose ALL information about their ‘anti-piracy’ technology if they EXPECT people to not circumvent it.
What if you ‘accidentally’ circumvent it because you weren’t aware of how it worked? Can they still sue you, even though you had no idea it ‘circumvented’ their hidden crap?
No law broken...
@ Anon Coward post# 12:
“A simple filter takes care of the problem. But that would be breaking the law.”
Well, technically, your home movie is not covered by copyright. Well, it’s YOUR copyright, which means you can make as many copies of it as you like, legally.
The fact that your DVRs are choking on the old, degraded signal (thanks to poor component design in the recording device, apparently), means you have to come up with a technical solution in order to succeed in format-shifting your own personal recordings.
In order to get a clean signal to the DVR, or DVD-R, whichever, you need to use that filter of which you speak, and which can be bought at Radio Shack (without registering with the FCC I might add). So you can do what you have to do to make the recording and not worry about violating any laws. You are not circumventing anything for the purpose of duplicating copyrighted media. I’ll take anyone to lunch who can show that duplicating your home movie is infringing on anyone’s copyright. If no copyright is infringed, what was circumvented, was simply some hardware problems manifested by an aging VHS tape and some sort of bug in the ADC on your recorder. in fact, I think you should notify the recorder’s manufacturer of the bug.
Scre on your filters, spool up that ol’ RCA, and copy away…
No law broken...
@ Anon Coward post# 12:
“A simple filter takes care of the problem. But that would be breaking the law.”
Well, technically, your home movie is not covered by copyright. Well, it’s YOUR copyright, which means you can make as many copies of it as you like, legally.
The fact that your DVRs are choking on the old, degraded signal (thanks to poor component design in the recording device, apparently), means you have to come up with a technical solution in order to succeed in format-shifting your own personal recordings.
In order to get a clean signal to the DVR, or DVD-R, whichever, you need to use that filter of which you speak, and which can be bought at Radio Shack (without registering with the FCC I might add). So you can do what you have to do to make the recording and not worry about violating any laws. You are not circumventing anything for the purpose of duplicating copyrighted media. I’ll take anyone to lunch who can show that duplicating your home movie is infringing on anyone’s copyright. If no copyright is infringed, what was circumvented, was simply some hardware problems manifested by an aging VHS tape and some sort of bug in the ADC on your recorder. in fact, I think you should notify the recorder’s manufacturer of the bug.
Screw on your filters, spool up that ol’ RCA, and copy away…
But I thought that Sima products can no longer be sold. So where can I legally purchase a filter?
I just contacted SONY on a similar complaint and they said that some VHS tapes came with a signal in it which allows people to record to the tape but not from it… Not sure I believe this but my tapes were from the early 90’s
home taping
I work in a call center and I get calls from people with the same problem. They get to a point in their home footage in the tape then our recorders say that it can’t be recorded. Probably the uneven tape speed for the old tape is mistaken for the Macrovision pulses and then causes the recording function on the dvd recorder to shut down