This ruling is inherently limited. It is not rendered by an appellate court and is not binding on anyone but the parties immediately before the court. It poses

This ruling is inherently limited. It is not rendered by an appellate court and is not binding on anyone but the parties immediately before the court. It poses two issues of broader interest - (1) whether a school that buys DVDs can legitimately convert the contents of the DVDs into streaming format without violating the anti-circumvention rules of DMCA and (2) whether it can stream such content broadly within its closed network without infringing copyright because such use is fair use - neither of which is answered in a way that gives the ruling any precedential value (as to issue 1, the parties did not brief, and the court did not discuss, the DMCA anti-circumvention rules but only the anti-trafficking rules; as to issue 2, the holder of the DVD rights had given express "public performance" rights to the school, which the judge took to authorize the challenged activity and which basically takes the discussion out of the fair use realm and puts it in the category of a dispute over the meaning of a licensing provision). With oddball facts and oddball law, and somewhat cursory treatment of the key issues by the court, the ruling is purely a symbolic one for fair-use advocates. Nor is it likely to be appealed, as it stems from a motion to dismiss that the court granted but with "leave to amend" (meaning that it can be refiled with sharpened allegations). The ruling may be found here: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/document/UCLA_Streaming_Video_Ruling.pdf http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/document/UCLA_Streaming.... Hate to throw a wet blanket over this but I think this fairly sums up the significance of the ruling.