Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

Arstechnica published an interview with Marybeth Peterson, who is the head of the U.S. Copyright Office. The article is an interesting look into the mind of a major government official and their view on Fair Use. According to Ms. Peterson, consumers have no right to rip DVD’s to a hard drive. From the article:

Take DVD ripping as an example. As noted above, it’s an issue that Peters hears about without fail every three years as users seek a DMCA exemption to the anti circumvention protections that extend to DVDs. Why has the Copyright Office rejected the proposed exemption at each triennial rulemaking to date? In her words, it’s because the widely-hacked CSS encryption on DVDs does not actually prevent fair use at all, and those who think otherwise don’t understand exactly what rights fair use grants them.

Basically, the Copyright Office, with Ms. Peterson at the helm, will never provide DVD ripping an exemption from the Digital Millenium Copyright ACT, which prohibits consumers from making copies of their own DVDs. What is frustrating to me, is that there are legitimate reasons for people to want to copy their own DVDs. For me, I want to be able to put all of my DVDs on one computer and then place my actual DVDs in a box in my closet. Of course, I can still do this using one of the many programs available on the internet, but doing so is illegal. I would love to see what products would be developed by software companies if you DVD collection could be managed through a media center computer.

One light at the end of the tunnel, at least for the next generation of high definition DVDs, is the concept of Managed Copy, which allows consumers to place a copy of a movie on a computer legally. However, Managed Copy has yet to be implemented, even though the second generation of HD-DVD and Bu-ray players are now available.