DeCSS, Backups of legally purchased DVD's and Irish Law?

Inquitus

I routinely backup my DVD's due to my 1 year old daughters propensity for destroying them at every opportunity.

I DeCSS them using the Likes of DVD Decrypter and either save them to HD or shrink them to fit a single layer DVD.

Anyways I purchased Season 4 of the Tv Drama 24 the other day and noted that it had a UK warning at the start that stated that it was illegal to crack the copyright encryption on the DVD, whether I owned it or not. Is this also true here in Ireland? and whatever happened to Fair Use? Even itunes allows you to make 5 copies of a tune FFS!

Inqui

ObeyGiant

I am not a lawyer, so I'm just going on what I've learned from listening to smart people talk about such things.

Performing a straight backup of your DVD constitutes 'fair use' (or 'fair dealing' as it's known in our copyright law), because you are not interfering with the encrypted data. The data goes from the original to the backup without any change. Using something like DeCSS (or anything else that cracks the encryption) counts as a 'circumvention', and is prohibited by Irish copyright law and the EUCD, and so is not covered by fair dealing.

But like I said, not a lawyer. I reserve the right to be completely wrong about this.

Thumper Long

its not possible to make a backup for personal use without circumventing the encryprion so how are we to comply with "fair dealing" if the dvd production companies conspire against the end user by demanding that they breach the copyright law, crack the encryption and back it up on a single layer disc for Personal use

Inquitus

Exactly, it is impossible to Backup a Dual Layer DVD without using DeCSS.

Inqui

ObeyGiant

Hey guys, don't shoot the messenger.

Thumper Long

not shooting the messenger just the stupidity of the law, why the dvd companies insist on using these encryption technologies when they are so easily broken anyway, and hence putting lawful users who wish to backup some valuable material into an unlawful situation while inherently doing something they are entitled to. :mad:

on another point, since a movie has been backed up and compressed etc, the actual 1's and 0's are no longer the same so just wondering if technically its no longer copyright infringement to copy and distribute movies music etc (just playing devils advocate not advertising for a mass duplication factory)

jor el

Inquitus wrote:

it had a UK warning at the start that stated that it was illegal to crack the copyright encryption on the DVD, whether I owned it or not.

I think there's something similar to that on all DVDs, usually along the lines of "No permission is granted to reproduce, in part or in whole, the following copyright material" and so on. But, under Irish Copyright law you are entitled to make a backup copy of copyright material under the Fair Use clause. However with CSS encryption that is not possible without first decrypting it. So it's a catch 22 situation.

Anyway, this has never (to the best of my knowledge) been tested in Irish courts. Never has it happened that a person has been brought to court for having a single backup copy of a DVD they already own, and it probably never will.

What I can't figure out is why they are still using CSS at all. It's been broken since the very beginning so it obviously doesn't work anymore. Why keep using it? It's not exactly a hassle to de-CSS a DVD now is it, it's done on the fly as you read off the DVD contents anyway.

ObeyGiant

jor el wrote:

What I can't figure out is why they are still using CSS at all. It's been broken since the very beginning so it obviously doesn't work anymore. Why keep using it? It's not exactly a hassle to de-CSS a DVD now is it, it's done on the fly as you read off the DVD contents anyway.

Because with stuff like the the DMCA and the ECDA prohibiting 'circumvention devices', the strength of the encryption isn't important because they've got the law behind them. They could have used rot13 and had the same results.