DVD Jailbait
Rafe Needleman,
Business 2.0,
Apr 03, 2003
According to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), circumventing the file protection on, say, a DVD is against the law. OK, fine. But what happens when you play a DVD? In a certain sense, all DVD players circumvent file protection - otherwise purchasers could never view the product, which would make them a lot less popular. OK, fine. So you have a DVD player, and it is playing a DVD the way it is supposed to. Suppose, now, that while the DVD is playing, you also record a back-up copy. You have not circumvented the file protection - the DVD player did that. All you did is redirect the legally available DVD stream to a different (and far more useful) output device. Well, the MPAA calls it a "burglar's tool." But the company that manufactures the product, 321 Studios, argues that it is nothing more than fair use, particularly since the system won't allow you to make copies of copies. But it just goes to show that copy protection of any sort has a fatal flaw: at some point, you have to expose the content, or else the content is usefuless, and at that point, the system is vulnerable. Note: this article hasn't been posted to the web yet, so I've provided a link to an index page where it will appear in a few days.
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