“After the iPod gained the ability to play videos, services sprung up that would rip your DVDs and reencode them for viewing on your iPod. Useful, but illegal in the US. The Motion Picture Association of America has decided to sue one of those DVD ripping and reeconding services. Earlier this month, Load ‘N Go Video was sued by Paramount Pictures in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit accuses Load ‘N Go Video of copyright infringement and violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” Eric Bangeman reports for Ars Technica.
“Based in Boston, Load N’ Go was founded in 2005 to help consumers get video content on to their portable media players. Load N’ Go also sells iPods and DVDs, and will rip DVDs for its customers and load them on to their iPods. The customer then gets the iPod with the movies loaded on it and a copy of the DVD that she legally purchased,” Bangeman reports. “The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection, even for fair use purposes, so Load N’ Go’s prospects do not look good. The implications of this case are even more troubling. Not only could the MPAA sue any other companies performing similar services, but they clearly believe that they can sue you for ripping DVDs and moving the content to your iPod or other digital media player.”
Full article here.
The DMCA is flawed. Consumers should not have to buy two copies of the same material in order to view it their DVD player and also on their iPod. How many times do we have to buy the same thing? The answer should be once. Are we really pirates if we’ve legally purchased a DVD and want to make a copy of it to watch on our iPods? The DMCA makes a mess of fair use and that mess should be corrected.
This s*cks for the company being sued, but it’s about time the DCMA gets challenged and legislators realize this is a flawed law.
But wait until Trusted Computing DRM rears it’s ugly head.
We will see when the BlueRay DVD drive Mac Pro’s get released.
Sony is a mean company, remember the Sony rootkit fiasco?
Didn’t Circuit City start a service in their stores doing the same thing? Wonder why the MPAA isn’t going after them… oh, that’s right. They make money off of them.
Are we really pirates if we’ve legally purchased a DVD and want to make a copy of it to watch on our iPods?
————-
In a perfect world, No. Unfortunately, there is nothing to prevent DVD renters, Netflix subscribers, etc from ripping DVD’s.. There is also nothing to prevent users from sharing their ripped files. DVD copying is a double-edged sword.
Accessing MDN from work on a Windows machine. Everytime it tries to load a page with the “Texas, an America Revolution — 2007 Silverado” ad, I get a page loading error. Really pissing me off.
What they want to do is relocate their operation to Canada.
And I’m sure the vehicle manufacturers are trying figure out a way to put a credit card swipe above your car lock so that you’d have to pay every time you got in it.
Rabid Dog:
Sony is not the only company that can supply Apple with Blu Ray drives. There are other companies with the rights to manufacture them.
Sony is not the only company that can supply Apple with Blue Ray drives. There are other companies with the rights to manufacture them.
But if one wants to play copy protected BlueRay DVD movies on their Mac, these other companies and Apple will have to adhere to the DRM scheme Sony devises.
That involves Trusted Computing and snitching EFI drivers.
These guys are idiots. DRM protection doesn’t slow down the real mass producing and re-selling pirates. And in fact it only slows down or penalizes very low power users or scrupulously honest people who would not be pirating in the first place.
These same companies fought tooth and claw against the VCR and look how much money they ended up making off of that.
When are they gonna learn that when the paradignm changes it represents an opportunity as long as you change with it and are innovative?
There NEEDS to be a provision that allows people to rip their DVD libraries for personal use thorugh forthcoming technologies such as iTV.
Even if it means putting DRM or some sort of identifier code on the file, so be it. This NEEDS to be done, just as CD’s are legally allowed to be ripped into iTunes.
please people, it’s not “off of” it’s just off!!!
mw:bad, as in “The grammar is bad.”
This reminds me of when I had to buy a CD for listening at home and a cassette tape for the car. Of course you could always copy the CD to a cassette yourself if you wanted to, but there was always a loss of quality. With digital content, the quality loss is not so noticeable.
The DMCA is flawed. Consumers should not have to buy two copies of the same material in order to view it their DVD player and also on their iPod. How many times do we have to buy the same thing?
Isn’t this what is being said about iTunes in the Media and by Microsoft? If I buy music from iTunes I want it to play on my Zune, after all I did purchase it.
come on! everybody does it. it’s not illegal anymore. you don’t rip CD? is it illegal?
ewdard said:
“come on! everybody does it. it’s not illegal anymore. you don’t rip CD? is it illegal?”
Yeah that’s right. If ‘everybody’ does it then it is OK! Screw the law! Screw common decency! Get your share of the pie before it’s gone! Elect ewdard for president!
MacDailyNews Take: The DMCA is flawed. Consumers should not have to buy two copies of the same material …. The DMCA makes a mess of fair use…
—
Sounds like an argument I made against Apple’s Fairplay/iTMS/iPod lock. Apple uses DMCA to limit choice and lock customers into their products.
DVD distributos (via MPAA) are enforcing DMCA in a lesser manner than Apple does.
Go DVD-Jon! Boo Apple/MPAA!!!
Don’t these bozos know that if they make it unfavourable to purchase a physical DVD it’ll force us to move to downloaded versions faster. This is bad for them since it’ll be harder for them to control or detect whether we’re running a paid-for or pirated copy.
Once it goes 100% downloaded it will be game-over for the RIAA’s controls. They should treat us honest DVD-purchasers better.
“And I’m sure the vehicle manufacturers are trying figure out a way to put a credit card swipe above your car lock so that you’d have to pay every time you got in it.”
Unless someone totally pays off their car before driving it off the lot, they are paying for it every time they get in it. In fact, they’re paying for it even when they aren’t in it.