3 ms·

I appreciate that this won't be a popular comment, but doesn't this sort of thing fall under the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA (or later)? This is

I appreciate that this won't be a popular comment, but doesn't this sort of thing fall under the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA (or later)? This is not a comment about the rightness/wrongness of copyright law, but a question that seems like it's worth asking.

traverseda 10y ago
I'm not in the USA. Is the author?
- matheusmoreira 10y ago
  The author is in Serbia, according to his GitHub profile.
shmerl 10y ago
It probably does, but it doesn't make such effort less worthy. Anti-circumvention provisions should have existed to begin with, same as DRM.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
If the user were in the USA then 17 USC 1201 (which I think is at question) says this at Section C(1): >"Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title." (17 USC 1201) // So presumably personal format-shifting is still a fair-use defence that supersedes considerations under this section. FWIW format-shifting was expressly removed from UK Fair Dealing after a challenge by BASCA, presumably no UK musicians rip songs to their MP3 player/phone or whatever. Wish they'd sued Apple Computers for contributory infringement, what with the massive damage iPods have done to people wanting to buy music. /sarcasm
- sbuttgereit 10y ago
  I'm thinking more that employing such circumvention for your own purposes would be hard to argue against, but publishing it publicly may not actually be defensible under U.S. law, even with the fair use exemption. I think if I were thinking of publishing something like this I'd look at the outcome of lawsuits such as those surrounding the old DeCSS code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Reimerdes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v...). I'm in the U.S. so for me something like this would be relevant. For those elsewhere there may still be issues as DMCA is the U.S. implementation of the WIPO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty), so there may be issues elsewhere, too.

traverseda 10y ago

I'm not in the USA. Is the author?

matheusmoreira 10y ago
The author is in Serbia, according to his GitHub profile.

shmerl 10y ago

It probably does, but it doesn't make such effort less worthy. Anti-circumvention provisions should have existed to begin with, same as DRM.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

If the user were in the USA then 17 USC 1201 (which I think is at question) says this at Section C(1): >"Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title." (17 USC 1201) // So presumably personal format-shifting is still a fair-use defence that supersedes considerations under this section. FWIW format-shifting was expressly removed from UK Fair Dealing after a challenge by BASCA, presumably no UK musicians rip songs to their MP3 player/phone or whatever. Wish they'd sued Apple Computers for contributory infringement, what with the massive damage iPods have done to people wanting to buy music. /sarcasm

sbuttgereit 10y ago
I'm thinking more that employing such circumvention for your own purposes would be hard to argue against, but publishing it publicly may not actually be defensible under U.S. law, even with the fair use exemption. I think if I were thinking of publishing something like this I'd look at the outcome of lawsuits such as those surrounding the old DeCSS code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Reimerdes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v...). I'm in the U.S. so for me something like this would be relevant. For those elsewhere there may still be issues as DMCA is the U.S. implementation of the WIPO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty), so there may be issues elsewhere, too.