Judge suggests DMCA allows DVD rips of DVD's you own

[jinjuku]

Quoted from Arstechnica:

Ambrose and AIME sued in December 2010, alleging copyright infringement, breach of contract, and other harms. They argued that UCLA violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA when it ripped Ambrose's copy-protected DVDs. They also argued that its DVDs are sold under a licensing agreement that prohibits rebroadcast and public display. And they noted that Ambrose was just one of many copyright holders whose works were included in UCLA's 2,500-work streaming library.

UCLA countered that copyright's fair use doctrine gives educators broad latitude to publicly perform copyrighted works as part of their instructional activities. They also noted that Ambrose's own catalog states that "All purchases by schools and libraries include public performance rights." As for the DMCA claim, UCLA argued that because the school was the lawful owner of the DVDs at issue, it had a right to access the DVDs and therefore could not have run afoul of the ban on circumventing access-control measures.

 

[sholling]

I read that to and it's interesting and I agree with the ruling but it's still a legal grey area. The stupidity of the copyright holders is that eliminating copy protection and allowing/simplifying ripping and streaming at home would help their sales not hurt them.

 

[jonnythan]

Copy protection on BD and DVD is so thoroughly broken it's become literally trivial to break. It's just built right into ripping software so anyone who rips a disc is hardly aware that there's any CP at all.

They should just abandon CP on DVD and BD. Everyone would be the better off.