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Originally Posted by HarryT
No. I was simply wondering if Ana's statement that media rights-holders are spending tax-payers' money in prosecuting people who format-shift media for personal use was in fact correct. In the UK, for example, although format-shifting is technically illegal, the industry has said that they have no interest in prosecuting people who convert legitimately-bought media for personal use.
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Yes, there have been successful prosecutions under the DMCA, and people have been charged under the anti-circumvention section. There's a case sentencing summary
here, that provides as follows:
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SACRAMENTO United States Attorney John K. Vincent announced today that MOHSIN MYNAF, 37, of Vacaville, California, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge David F. Levi to 24 months in federal prison, a three year term of supervised release, a $1,600 special assessment, and also ordered to pay approximately $201,738.70 in restitution for engaging in six counts of criminal copyright infringement; six counts of trafficking in counterfeit labels; and one count of circumventing a technological measure that protects a copyright work (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act”). As part of his plea agreement, MYNAF agreed to the forfeiture of the equipment he used to commit the copyright violations, the forfeiture of $5,000, and the destruction of a substantial amount of property used to commit the copyright violations.
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You can go
here for a general FAQ on the anti-circumvention section of the DMCA if you're interested, with an interesting bit stating:
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Question: So what is all the controversy about the DMCA?
Answer: The shift towards the distribution of copyrighted materials in digital form has been accompanied by new methods of protection. Through the use of "digital locks," technological systems behind which these copyrighted materials are protected, producers and manufacturers are able to automate fine grained control over who can access, use, and/or copy their works and under what conditions. Producers insist these "digital locks" are necessary to protect their materials from being pirated or misappropriated. But, these new technological systems, and the DMCA provisions making it a crime to bypass them, undermine individuals ability to make "fair use" of digital information, and essentially replace the negotiation of the terms of use for those products with unilateral terms dictated by copyright owners. These self-help technical protection mechanisms are generally not evident to the purchaser or user until after the sale. In some cases, producers who use these technical locks to enforce limits on access and use of their works fail to disclose the terms of use to the purchasers or licensees of their products.
The defenses and exemptions to the circumvention prohibition and circumvention device bans included in the law are fatefully narrow. As a result, the legitimate activities of scientists, software engineers, journalists, and others have been chilled. The DMCA has been used by copyright holders and the government to prevent the creation of third-party software products, silence computer scientists, and prosecute journalists who provide hypertext links to software code.
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If you want more than that we can negotiate a rate for research
