That's a tough one. From what I understand most people working in those "sweatshops" are better off then if they weren't, so yes I think you are helping them by buying what they make. BUT If you are a reasonably responsible consumer and you hear that a particular company has particularly bad working conditions then one should not support that type activity by buying their product, even if those people are likely to suffer in the short run. BUT That level of information is not all that easy to find AND Place of manufacture alone doesn't tell you much. STILL Large well known companies who have had the spotlight shined on them do appear to be doing things to improve working conditions. I periodically check web sites of vendors that I buy from to see if they are proactive in this regard. (I know this might sound a bit self serving, but I had a good friend that worked for a large shoe manufacturer and we did discuss this issue quite a bit, it is not a black and white issue, and the companies don't have complete control over the conditions, depending on what country and even what part of what country they are operating in). Different Shoe Company to give you an idea: http://nikeinc.com/pages/manufacturing
What you neglect to mention is that there are, in fact, plenty of alternatives--whether it be shoes, music, or whatever. Of course it's not so black-and-white as many would make it out, but I prefer to err on the side of caution in this regards. For me, that mostly means not buying much of anything at all; but I recognize that this isn't a realistic alternative for most people. (At the same time, most people--in the U.S. especially--would do just fine were they to buy only 5 percent of what they actually buy IMHO. Of course, they would also discover that in so doing, they wouldn't need to work nearly as much as they do--according to a person who has lived quite comfortably on between 2 thousand and 10 thousand dollars per annum for the past twenty years.) And I also had a friend who at one time worked for a large shoe manufacturer--Nike, in fact--and in that short time he did some very disgusting things, frankly. He was partly responsible for two television commercials which featured very brief--and consequently, covered under Fair Use--extracts from one track by Fred Frith and one by Faust. Neither artist was especially pleased by this, but they could do nothing about it.
That's merely an unsubstantiated, self-serving assertion. You have been asked to provide support for this claim, and pointedly failed to do so. That, or they don't have much practical concern about getting sued, or they do not actually exist in the first place. There is nothing for anyone to address here, until you can demonstrate that there actually are millions of Americans actually doing what you claim, on the basis of the beliefs you assign to them. Which you have pointedly failed to do, even in response to direct challenges to do so. The last time an American entity tried to sell such a thing, they got sued quite successfully. We have discussed that lawsuit at length in this thread already. Since then, no American entity has distributed such software. As you admit immediately below. And arrest remains a red herring. That's silly. The "trafficking provision" text is pretty clear, and broad. So what? That's another red herring. Bypassing encryption isn't "Fair Use." The DMCA establishes a formal process for those who wish to obtain an exception to the prohibitions on decryption for Fair Use purposes. It does not grant such exceptions to individuals for making back-up copies. This has already been covered in this thread repeatedly. Call me whatever you want - nobody cares. You still aren't fooling anyone. For that matter, you're still going on recommending more software for people to use, with the libdvdcss stuff. No reasonable person has any doubt on this point, and I really don't care what hollow insults you are prepared to shout at me in retaliation for pointing out your lies. And you think those claims there impress anyone? The DMCA very explicitly says that no entity shall use such tools to bypass such. And it's "any entity" not "companies." An opinion with incomparably greater weight and reliability than your own. There are no "actual legal rulings" that bear directly on the questions at issue. Any US entity. The Feds can't file a civil suit. Only criminal suits. "Has not yet been legally challenged" is not the same as "will not be - successfully - legally challenged." Moreover, there are plenty of people worried about such challenges. From your wiki link, there: Many GNU/Linux distributions do not contain libdvdcss (for example Debian, Fedora, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu) due to fears of running afoul of DMCA-style laws, Also, most of those "pre-installed" distros you list are from outside the USA and not hosted in the USA. The ones that are actually hosted in the USA do not appear to include libdvdcss pre-installed, from what I can determine. The info on that Wiki page seems to be either outdated or just plain wrong. Anything other than successfully suing any US entity that tried to distribute such tools, you mean? That remains an unsubstantiated assertion, despite repeated direct requests for substance. You are engaged in flagrant intellectual dishonesty here, and at this point nobody is under any obligation to give your unbacked claims any further regard. As I've already said: until there's an actual direct ruling or, failing that, forever. Unsubstantiated assertion. You have not shown that millions of people in the USA have downloaded such software, nor that they have used it to bypass any encrypted DVDs. This is pure, self-serving speculation on your part, which nobody is under any obligation to consider seriously. An American? Or someone in a jurisdiction outside of the DMCA? But even then: we'd know of exactly two people who've done so. So what? It has everything to do with explaining where all those movies being watched on devices which do not have DVD players are coming from. Fully 1/3 of all US internet traffic is dedicated to just one single movie streaming service, so on the face of it there is very little room for you to contend that the proliferation of video-capable devices without DVD players implies widespread ripping by consumers. So what? Note that DVD sales have been in free-fall for years now, exactly because of the rise of Netflix and similar VOD services: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-no-surprise-dvd-sales-plunged-over-40-percent-last-year/ That's also illegal. You should probably stop recommending illegal practices here. You've already gotten into trouble for exactly that in this thread, after all. You have "very grown" children that like to watch The Little Mermaid? Are they mentally retarded or something? That doesn't make them representative of the US population as a whole. I'd guess that your acquaintances are disproportionately drawn from your age range, socioeconomic stratum and geographical area. Anecdotes are not data. And that's still a strawman. Nobody has disputed that point. Nah, you haven't established that to anybody's satisfaction but your own. Right - there is no direct ruling. We cannot use case law to arrive at a definitive answer here. Correct. And I've also challenged you to refute the reasoning behind that, most recently in the exact post that you are responding to here: how would the MPAA find out if you're making back-up copies of DVDs, or downloading prohibited software from foreign sites? How would the financial and PR cost-benefit analysis end up favoring prosecution of such an individual? Since you have repeatedly declined my invitations to substantively rebut my position, I consider you to have conceded this point. Given that, I'd recommend that you try to develop some honor and so refrain from this cheap tactic of directing hollow ridicule at my position. So what? My whole point is that it's a uniquely problematic, ill-conceived bit of legislation.
Nope. The DMCA is the Federal Law written to protect the rights of copyright holders in a digital age. As you have said yourself, Fair Use includes making back up copies for Personal use and format shifting. So since the court has said Circumvention is not Infringement and the DMCA did NOT give copyright holders a new property right, the holder of the copyright has no legal basis to sue someone for making a copy for Fair Use. So that leaves the Feds. Who, based on a "plain language" reading of the DMCA could charge someone with breaking the CSS algorithm, but the Legislature and Courts have spoken to that as well. It also instructs the courts explicitly not to construe the anticircumvention provisions in ways that would effectively repeal long standing principles of copyright law And that would be what you would be asking the courts to do. In a case where the user was NOT infringing on the copyright you are arguing that the court should still find the user guilty on a "plain language" interpretation of the DMCA. But courts don't do that. And to make SURE of that, Congress inserted the "innocent violations" clause in the DMCA which pretty much precludes showing intent.
No, it is the same, and this has already been explained to you. Do you even understand what that sentence means? "Fair use can never be an affirmative defense to the act of gaining unauthorized access" It is the software that you purchase that is gaining the unauthorized access, and fair use is not an affirmitive defense to use that software to gain unauthorized access because the DMCA does not concern itself with downstream use.
Different issue. If I like the music from Artist X who of their own free will, signed onto Mega Label Y, why should I not buy it? What if I've heard that Artist X is only getting a small share of the proceeds? Should I not buy it then? Is not a small share better than nothing? Good for you.
I don't agree. We will just have to disagree on that point. But is the point you are making that you think that the Copyright holder can sue you for a Fair Use of the DVD because you broke CSS?
Because Congress made a big show of passing new legislation exactly to change the rules for that exact case, and this legislation (and resulting lawsuits) routinely made the news for several years, presumably. Regardless, ignorance of the law is no defense. But apparently you don't bother to browse through the slysoft forums, where you can simply ask what the deal is. If you put "slysoft legality" into google, you get this page: http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=12803 Note that no SlySoft representative seems willing to come out and state that their software is legal to import into the USA, nor whether it is legal to bypass encryption in the USA. Or you might check the wikipedia page for AnyDVD, which has a "legal issues" section stating: Advertising, sale, and lending of AnyDVD is outlawed in Germany (but possession and use on personally owned media is not), as it removes copy prevention from DVDs. [...] The legal status of AnyDVD in other countries is unclear. Ignorance of the law is no defense. While that can be grounds to reduce the penalties that would be applied to you, it does not remove your basic liability. You've already been informed that "authorized access" requires using an authorized playback device. The illegal software that you recommend importing from the Cayman Islands does not meet that requirement. That's why Congress enacted this law called DMCA to make circumvention illegal in its own right. And if you've trafficked in illegal software (which you'd have to, to make those copies) and used it to bypass encryption, then you've violated clear terms of the DMCA, regardless of what, if any, actual copyright infringement you might have gone on to commit.
Right. Instead, they can sue under the DMCA for the act of bypassing the encryption (as well as various other things you'd have to do to get the tools to do so). We don't know what a court would do in that case, since such a case has never been tried. We do know that one judge Kaplan gave the following ruling: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Reimerdes Defendants have focused on a significant point. Access control measures such as CSS do involve some risk of preventing lawful as well as unlawful uses of copyrighted material. Congress, however, clearly faced up to and dealt with this question in enacting the DMCA. The Court begins its statutory analysis, as it must, with the language of the statute. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides in critical part that certain uses of copyrighted works that otherwise would be wrongful are “not … infringement of copyright.” Defendants, however, are not here sued for copyright infringement. They are sued for offering and providing technology designed to circumvent technological measures that control access to copyrighted works and otherwise violating Section 1201(a)(2) of the Act. If Congress had meant the fair use defense to apply to such actions, it would have said so. Indeed, as the legislative history demonstrates, the decision not to make fair use a defense to a claim under Section 1201(a) was quite deliberate. Congress was well aware during the consideration of the DMCA of the traditional role of the fair use defense in accommodating the exclusive rights of copyright owners with the legitimate interests of noninfringing users of portions of copyrighted works. It recognized the contention, voiced by a range of constituencies concerned with the legislation, that technological controls on access to copyrighted works might erode fair use by preventing access even for uses that would be deemed “fair” if only access might be gained. And it struck a balance among the competing interests. The first element of the balance was the careful limitation of Section 1201(a)(1)’s prohibition of the act of circumvention to the act itself so as not to “apply to subsequent actions of a person once he or she has obtained authorized access to a copy of a [copyrighted] work….” By doing so, it left “the traditional defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, … fully applicable” provided “the access is authorized.” Second, Congress delayed the effective date of Section 1201(a)(1)’s prohibition of the act of circumvention for two years pending further investigation about how best to reconcile Section 1201(a)(1) with fair use concerns. Following that investigation, which is being carried out in the form of a rule-making by the Register of Copyright, the prohibition will not apply to users of particular classes of copyrighted works who demonstrate that their ability to make noninfringing uses of those classes of works would be affected adversely by Section 1201(a)(1). Third, it created a series of exceptions to aspects of Section 1201(a) for certain uses that Congress thought “fair,” including reverse engineering, security testing, good faith encryption research, and certain uses by nonprofit libraries, archives and educational institutions. That clause doesn't prevent anyone from being found guilty. It just provides a means to reduce their penalties in such a case. An "innocent violation" is still a violation, just one that carries a potentially reduced penalty.
The rest of your post was your typical drivel. But this was hilarious. Update: SNL Kagan clarified its stats, noting that Blu-ray, direct-to-video titles and TV on DVD were not included in the stats. When looking at the video retail market as a whole, consumer spending only declined 10.8 percent to $11.86 billion in 2010. Yeah, the economy wasn't doing that well, but nearly $12 Billion in DVD sales is HARDLY in free fall.
NO NO NO A copyright owner seeking to impose liability on an accused circumventor must demonstrate a reasonable relationship between the circumvention at issue and a use relating to a property right for which the Copyright Act permits the copyright owner to withhold authorization. As you have repeatedly said, making a back up is indeed FAIR USE. Fair Use by definition means it is a use that the copyright holder can not withhold authorization on.
Yes but we DO have a legal opinion on JUST that issue: It also instructs the courts explicitly not to construe the anticircumvention provisions in ways that would effectively repeal long standing principles of copyright law You have said that making a back up copy is FAIR USE. Thus it falls under the long standing principles of copyright law And so the court is NOT to construe the anticircumvention in a plain language manner that would penalize someone for a FAIR USE.
Or NO penalty, which certainly takes the wind out of the sails of anyone who wants to sue someone for excercising their FAIR USE rights.
Under New Zealand law, sure. As I recall, I've said that it is (or may be) legal, but I have also subsequently questioned that on the basis of what Sony v Universal actually means, what the copyright law actually says, and some comments made by judges in various cases. And there you go again. Fair use is not an affirmative defense. The DMCA doesn't give a toss about the downstream use. Possessing the software has been ruled as illegal. No, it isn't. Fair use is not an affirmative defense. The DMCA does not consider downstream use. Any defendant posessing the tools to bypass DRM is in violation of the DMCA. "As the Copyright Office knows, there is no fair use exception to the prohibition of circumvention in section 1201(a)(1)(A). Such an exception was extensively debated and specifically rejected by Congress, and the courts have consistently so interpreted the statute." No they didn't. The innocent Infringer defense comes from the Copyright Act, not the DMCA. The DMCA provides no exemption for innocent violations, and under the copyright act it's not a defense, it's a mitigating factor.
More empty insults in lieu of substance. Typical. 10% year-on-year declines - for multiple years in a row - while VOD surges still hamstrings your earlier contentions.
If you disagree, then you're wrong. Either you're disagreeing with the courts, or you don't understand how CSS works (depending on which part of that post you're disagreeing with).
Your interpretation of that ruling (which dealt with universal garage door openers, which cannot be used for any infringing purpose) is great and all, but you don't have any court precedent establishing that it means what you say it means when it comes to bypassing CSS. The issue is what a "resonable relationship" is. You interpret that to mean that if you swear you're only doing Fair Use you're covered. But a judge might well decide otherwise, and rule that tools that enable piracy in that manner constitute a "reasonable relationship." Certainly, the lack of legal availability of such tools in the USA would suggest such. Likewise, the fact that Congress included explicit Fair Use exceptions in the act, along with a formal process for routinely updating that, and yet has never included personal back-up copies of DVDs in that.
Again, this is simply your own non-expert opinion. What's really odd here is that you seem to essentially agree with everyone else, that the DMCA as written presents a problematic tension with traditional Fair Use laws. But where the rest of the world wants the laws changed to allow for clear, liability-free Fair Use, you somehow got the idea that such has already occurred. It probably will, eventually, but the situation today is much muddier than that.
And so there you have a great explanation for why the MPAA doesn't go around suing individuals for exercising their Fair Use rights, despite the grounds for such provide by the DMCA. So you will cease your accusations that the lack of such lawsuits proves that such is not banned by the DMCA then, yes?
