> It seems they are trying to slide in under the DMCA by using the fair use > provision. Interestingly, the way I read the law is it doesn't preclude > fair use only breaking the DRM of the DVD.
One of our hgosting clients tried something similar and seems to have gotten away with it for quite a while as well. In fact it worked great until someone posted the same remark in *their* guestbook. Once someone said that everyone could claim ignorance [which strictly doesn't protect you from prosecution anyway], nobody could claim ignorance anymore and our client mailed us to shut down the site.
One can make a good case that fair use copying of DVDs is legal in the U.S. today. It only may run afoul of the law if one "illegally circumvents" (not just circumvents) the DRM. Technically speaking its not necessary to "illegally circumvent" the DRM to make almost flawless copies. All PC-based DVD players must decrypt the DRM protected digital data and stream it to the video HW for reconstruction. Once the data is placed in the video buffers capturing it to disk is not an "illegally circumvention", even if one manufactures specialized HW to fool the DVD player SW. In addition, there is an "analog hole" in all DRM systems because eventually the digital content must be converted to analog form if humans are to able to sensing the information. Converting the video and audio back to digital is harder and more expensive than getting it from the HW buffers, but still practical.
So even if the agent is reasonably aware of what you are doing, he can't be held responsible until you tell him what you are doing.
No doubt DVD-Backups would be foolish to brag. Because there are viable technical means to make high-quality legal DVD copies customers of DVD-Backups can rightly assume, unless convincing evidence is presented otherwise, that the copies have been obtained fair and square.
steve
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