Chip Tarver's Ipod Information - DMCA Change?

Story courtesy of http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12990


Could the video iPod spur DMCA change?

By Dan Bell on 24 January 2006 - 17:12 - Source: CNet

DamnedIfIknow used our news submit to tell us about a little commentary over at CNet that speaks to present DMCA or Digital Millennium Copyright Act law and how it conflicts with todays society and the products available to it. Specifically, a part of this legislation effectively trumps our Fair Use Rights by allowing content providers to not only add controls to stop us from copying our purchased content but also to make it illegal to "circumvent" the controls. Don't believe me? Ask 321 Studios, they were drummed out of business for trying to provide a product enabling DVD backups, because it was bundled with software that removes Content Scrambling System protection (CSS).

This may have been fine and dandy way back when, but now, people want to use their products they purchase in new ways. You can't exactly stuff a DVD in the side of an iPod so how the heck can we easily grab content for our devices? We can't, unless we want to set drumming our fingers and capture it as it plays, then encode it etc., etc. Or pay for a third party to do it for us.

What the author is wondering here is, can a hardware device or lifestyle become so popular, that it can produce the pressure required to change the law? Can need trump greed?

Apple Computer"s video iPod may not be the first portable movie player, but it is by far the best. The one serious flaw in this svelte little device is how difficult it is to load with video. Apple"s otherwise handy iTunes application flatly refuses to transfer a legally purchased DVD to the iPod. Don"t blame Apple for this glaring oversight. You can thank our esteemed public servants in Congress.

In 1998, politicians bowed to pressure from the entertainment industry and voted overwhelmingly for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Part of that law made it a federal offense to sell or distribute software that can rip DVDs. In other words, believe it or not, Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be guilty of a federal felony if iTunes transferred DVDs to an iPod as easily as it can music from a CD.

"Our best hope for getting amendments to the DMCA is for more regular consumers to feel the pinch of the DMCA," says Fred von Lohmann, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Earlier legal tussles over the DMCA were more arcane and didn"t cripple gadgets prized by millions of Americans. (About 14 million iPods, including the Shuffle, Nano and video versions, were sold in the last quarter of 2005.)

You can check out the entire commentary by following this link. I for one never did understand how it was legal to add these copyright controls to begin with, considering the Fair Use law that came first. We need to get active now, as it seems that corporations are seeing the handwriting on the wall and have put together a new set of controls for the next gen format that uses the blue laser - "Managed Copy". Managed Copy does allow for consumers to stream content among other things, but they also added the wonderful concept of charging us for the right to do so. Think they wont try? Guess again! All that is needed is for the public to abandon the DVD player and CSS and make the move to high definition blue laser discs. Right now, there is too big a base of inexpensive DVD players to introduce a new copy controls scheme...but it's coming.

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Lots more articles and reviews like this are at http://www.ipods-and-onlinevideo-reviews.com.

Chip Tarver