[PLUG] Blu-Ray nonsense...

[Michael C. Robinson]

People rip Blu-Ray discs, encrypted or not, all the time.  In many
cases, they are putting the movies on a hard drive as that is more
convenient.  The hard disk is usually on a computer that is on a 
local area network.  This way, sneaker net is not necessary to be 
able to watch a movie in different places in your own home.  Sneaker 
net is undeniably legal, but it is inconvenient.

Now, this is not as bad as typically what happens with sheet music.
Typically, free copies are made of the sheet music and these copies are
given to the choir.  No royalty is typically paid for the copies.  Worse
yet, people who use sheet music often transpose it or otherwise modify
it.  Do these musicians have the right to do what they are doing?

> To repeat: If it's encrypted, fair use exceptions do not apply. Take
> that in for a second.

According to the DMCA, you have the right to make media compatible with
different playback devices.  Maybe there's a problem with the law or
just an inconsistency.

> > I can't really comment too much about local law, and I am not a
> > lawyer, but I can assure you that in Australia that interpretation is
> > backed by at least some court precedent.
> 
> It varies all over the place. The law is a mess. Nothing new there.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention
> 
> > Sad to say, these technical
> > measures *are* effective ways of preventing people doing legitimate
> > things with legitimate data they paid for.
> 
> See, this is where your argument has problems. You did not pay for the
> right to decrypt *and* copy the data for personal use. That's not a
> legitimate use, nor is it protected.
> 
> That's what copy-right is, where all of this mess comes from... you do
> *not* have a right to make unencrypted copies.
> 
> You can call it a "backup", if you leave it encrypted, bit for bit,
> and get some legal cover,  but once you alter it, things get sketchy
> really fast.

If you have to decrypt a video to legitimately copy it for personal use,
where personal use is allowed, there is a problem.  It is preposterous
to encrypt Blu-Ray discs in the first place and protecting encryption by
abusing the copyright system is even more preposterous.  Most encryption
is easily overcome by serious pirates.  Putting people in jail for
defeating encryption schemes regardless of their reason for doing so and
their intentions afterwards seems ludicrous.  Encrypting videos is not
fair to the public.  If it was a military video, that might make sense.
I don't think however that the Book of Eli or Transformers needs to be
encrypted.  What happens to Linux if you have to have a proprietary
Windows based player to watch these movies?  Are we going to reach a
point where there is a charge per person to watch a Blu-Ray movie?
There should be more emphasis on catching the ring leaders of illegal
copy operations that turn out 1000's of copies and sell them.  Average
Joe who wants to play the Blu-Ray movie off of his hard drive running
Linux should be left alone.  The encryption does not add value to the
movie for the consumer and the bad guys aren't stopped by it.

If the law says that movies can be encrypted and that you have to leave
the encryption intact no matter what, the law is badly written.
Copyright was never supposed to trump fair use or reduce public benefit.
Copyright has seemingly grown into a monster over time, not a temporary
monopoly over a piece of original art that it was supposed to be.  The
idea behind the copyright is that people need to be able to profit from
their art where they supposedly need a temporary monopoly to do that.  I
am not advocating that people be allowed to copy videos they haven't
purchased.  I am not trying to say that you should be able to copy a
video and give your friend that copy.  I do think that you shouldn't
have to engage in sneakernet and you shouldn't have to worry that your
only copy will get scratched.  Plus, Blu-Ray collections that
are large become inconvenient and impractical if you don't copy the
movies to a single hard disk.