Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenophon
Meepster:
I believe that your statement is stronger than can be justified at the moment. [In what follows, please remember that I am NOT a lawyer, and this is not legal advice...]
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I'm not sure. I've looked into the issue quite a bit - as mentioned, I am an attorney, and I specialize in intellectual property (though most of my practice is in patents at present - I do very little copyright work). [note, however, that the below is not legal advice - I do not dispense legal advice on the Internet]
The plain language of the DMCA says "no circumvention, no way, no how". It is self-contradictory in that it claims to keep fair use rights the way they are, but I think that it is fairly clear that it does, prohibit all circumvention. U.S. v. Elcom Ltd., 203 F. Supp. 2d 1111 (N.D. Cal. 2002), appears to support this interpretation - the court interprets the statute to mean that all circumvention tools are prohibited, not just the tools that facilitate copyright infringement.
Incidentally, see Universal City Studios v. Corley, 273 F. 3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001) for a discussion on the DMCA and fair use as it applies to DVD movies:
"Third, the Appellants have provided no support for their premise that fair use of DVD movies is constitutionally required to be made by copying the original work in its original format.[35] Their examples of the fair uses that they believe others will be prevented from making all involve copying in a digital format those portions of a DVD movie amenable to fair use, a copying that would enable the fair user to manipulate the digitally copied portions. One example is that of a school child who wishes to copy images from a DVD movie to insert into the student's documentary film. We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original. Although the Appellants insisted at oral argument that they should not be relegated to a "horse and buggy" technique in making fair use of DVD movies,[36] the DMCA does not impose even an arguable limitation on the opportunity to make a variety of traditional fair uses of DVD movies, such as commenting on their content, quoting excerpts from their screenplays, and even recording portions of the video images and sounds on film or tape by pointing a camera, a camcorder, or a microphone at a monitor as it displays the DVD movie. The fact that the resulting copy will not be as perfect or as manipulable as a digital copy obtained by having direct access to the DVD movie in its digital form, provides no basis for a claim of unconstitutional limitation of fair use. A film critic making fair use of a movie by quoting selected lines of dialogue has no constitutionally valid claim that the review (in print or on television) would be technologically superior if the reviewer had not been prevented from using a movie camera in the theater, nor has an art student a valid constitutional claim to fair use of a painting by photographing it in a museum. Fair use has never been held to be a guarantee of access to copyrighted material in order to copy it by the fair user's preferred technique or in the format of the original."
Sorry for the lengthy quote, but I think it's a good indication of the way the courts are likely to go on this one.
Again, the above is NOT legal advice - it is just my opinion.