MPAA Says Teachers Should Camcord For Fair Use

unlametheweak recommends an Ars Technica piece detailing the convoluted lengths to which the MPAA will go in order to keep anybody from ripping a DVD, ever. The organization showed a film to the US Copyright Office, in the triennial hearing to spell out exemptions to the DMCA, giving instructions for how a teacher could use a camcorder to record a low-quality clip of a DVD for educational use — even though such a purpose is solidly established in law as fair use. "Never mind that this solution results in video of questionable quality and requires teachers to learn even more tech in order to get the job done. It also requires schools (or, given the way most schools are run, the teachers themselves) to incur additional costs to purchase camcorders and videotapes if they don't have them already. Add in the extra time involved, and this 'solution' is a laughably convoluted alternative to simply ripping a clip from a DVD."

Re:well that explains it...

[WebScud]

In a senior year class we actually used the leaked direct feed bootleg of Episode II to compare the CG to original trilogy and discuss the evolution of technology in film.

Ridiculous, but somewhat scary. . .

[MistaE]

I was one of the few people that had the pleasure (or the displeasure) of being at the Library of Congress DMCA hearing room when the MPAA made this ridiculous argument. Suffice to say, I was completely shocked, flabbergasted, and just plain insulted that educators would truly be expected to do something like this in their bizarro world. Nevermind the fact that you would need an HDTV, HD Camcorder, Tripod, good lighting, and tons of time on your hands to manually create compilation clips with your camcorder (as if educators had any free time as it is).

I couldn't tell if the Copyright bigwigs that heard the argument were actually taking it seriously, but I sincerely hope that any appearance of sincerity was simply there for the sake of keeping respect for the hearings.

The one thing that I learned at the hearing was that you have to be fucking crazy in order to be a lawyer on their side. Even I (a soon to be unemployed law school graduate) didn't think that I could make this argument with a straight face even for tons of money.

Re:Photocopying

[lostguru]

Putting aside the fact that almost every teacher I have or have had in highschool with the exception of a few have been able to rip video clips off dvds, and the ones who couldn't would simply have student who was bright enough do it for them. Most schools/districts these days block youtube as well as facebook, myspace, etc, for reasons unknown as it seems to only serve the purpose of annoying teachers and students. Wonderful fun, our district also chooses to block many useful linux/programming sites as they could be used for hacking. SSH tunnels work for bypassing, but only if you're smart enough to get one set up.

Re:Ripping a DVD

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Strictly speaking, at least in the US, there is a significant difference between a "rip" and a "backup". By "rip" it is almost always meant a video file produced by breaking CSS and re-encoding the contents of the DVD. That would fall foul of the DMCA(which sucks; but it is pretty clear).

A "backup" would just be a copy, bit-for-bit of the DVD, which the MPAA and friends obviously don't want you to make, and you would probably get in trouble for distributing; but in no way violates the DMCA. (incidentally, this part is why DVD piracy started well before CSS was broken. Since anybody with a DVD player can decode CSS crippled disks, a pirate simply has to clone the disk, not break the crypto)

Re:This just in:

[mysidia]

As long as you own the DVD, and you're using only a short piss-poor-quality recording solely for classroom purposes.

At least four more years, obviously.

[Anonymous Coward]

They own Biden, and their friends run the DoJ. See "change and hope".

Re:For starters

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much that the MPAA would allow it if the name was different, but that it would probably improve public perception

Re:Ripping a DVD

[whoever57]

A "backup" would just be a copy, bit-for-bit of the DVD, which the MPAA and friends obviously don't want you to make, and you would probably get in trouble for distributing; but in no way violates the DMCA. (incidentally, this part is why DVD piracy started well before CSS was broken. Since anybody with a DVD player can decode CSS crippled disks, a pirate simply has to clone the disk, not break the crypto)

Except that currently available DVD burners don't burn the part of the disk where the keys are stored, so the (encrypted) backup won't play in a DVD player.

I don't know if this relates...

[earlymon]

If you watch the History channels very, very early in the morning, you'll find that they run a show with less/no commercials to make room before the top of the hour. During that time, they have a History Classroom or something show (seriously - that's not my best time of day, so I apologize for inaccuracies).

One thing I noticed - there's a screen that gives instructions to teachers that they have to delete any video recordings they've made of the show after a certain date - I recall, sleepily - that it's within a year or something.

Now - how does history go stale in a year?

I did a lot of digging to find the food chain on this one... History is the Classroom ties into Cable in the Classroom. Here's what they have to say:

http://www.history.com/global/feedback/faq.jsp?NetwCode=THC&level_1=nodes_54224&level_2=nodes_54240&level_3=nodes_54297&x=35&y=11 [history.com]
http://www.ciconline.org/faq#Copyright [ciconline.org]
http://www.ciconline.org/copyright [ciconline.org]
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280.shtml [education-world.com]

Now, color me naive - but that's the beginning of the foodchain for a teacher to BEGIN to simply videotape something related to history of educational value to show to their students. I quote - and I am not making this up:

What's an educator to do? Read Education World's five-part series on copyright, fair use, and new technologies, that's what! We did the work so you wouldn't have to!
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280a.shtml [education-world.com]
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280b.shtml [education-world.com]
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280c.shtml [education-world.com]
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml [education-world.com]
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280e.shtml [education-world.com]

In an age where our test scores show we're failing, with teachers overburdened like never before - related to a show that a kid can just watch at home without encumbrances (should his/her parents **be there** for the kid with this kind of info) - note what the teacher has to go through.

As opposed to just taping it and working it into the lesson plan - because it comes from a place called the History Channel - tied to Cable in the Classroom - where "cable" is that thing usually subsidized by local communities as a near utility.

Thanks, copyright eagles. Thanks a lot.

Re:Ripping a DVD

[profplump]

The key is written to the disk as regular data, and if you could copy the entire disk it would just work, but the CSS key region is not writable on typical DVD media, nor by typical DVD drives.

If you have the ability to press new DVDs though -- like a commercial pirate might -- you can simply duplicate the disk as-is without decoding or re-encrypted anything. That's how the thing was produced in the first place.

Re:This just in:

[SlashWombat]

Prior to Vista, you could just snatch the video memory, and re-encode the data back to whatever format you were happy with. Vista, however, will stop you doing that (and presumably so will windows 7)

Re:The MPAA went on to say that

[soundguy]

You are either trolling or seriously retarded.

Standard audio cassette tape travels at 1 7/8 ips (inches of tape per second past the heads) and is complete and total SHIT. No amount of DBS/Dolby "magic" and expensive playback electronics can fix that. Audio cassettes have the lowest fidelity of any analog format in history and only the mega-stoned could tolerate listening to them. 8-tracks ran at 3 3/4 ips. Twice as fast. That means twice the headroom, twice the high frequency information, and half the tape noise. Consumer reel-to-reel ran at 3 3/4 and 7 1/2 ips for another doubling of quality. Semi-pro machines ran at 7 1/2 and 15 ips. Pro machines ran at 15 and 30 ips. (at $200 per reel for 2" multitrack tape, studios didn't run at 30ips much, usually just for jazz and classical)

The number of heads above 3 had fuck-all to do with anything. Having separate heads for playback, recording, and erase allowed the magnetic gap to be optimized for a single task. Cassettes were 2-sided and expensive decks often had more heads but only so you didn't have to flip the tape or move the heads to play the other side. It was still a $100 saddle on a $10 horse.

Cassette tape is so insanely inferior to vinyl that I won't even dignify your comparison by responding. I'm guessing your only experience with a turntable involved mangled children's records on a battery-operated "record player" adorned with Disney characters.

Re:This just in:

[peragrin]

You do realize that is because of blue-ray right? The Vista DRM is necessary in order to comply with the blue ray specs and HDCP which requires end to end Drive to display hardware/software copy protection.

That is why i am glad apple and linux doesn't have blue ray in there stuff. Teachers should be able to use clips of dvd's and other media for teaching. DRM is preventing that.

Re:It doesn't matter what the MPAA says

[tepples]

Universal v. Reimerdes, the DeCSS case, already examined this issue and came to the same conclusion: camcording would not unlawfully circumvent.

Re:Wait, what?

[LainTouko]

mplayer dvd://1 -ss 1090 -endpos 20

Seems to work well enough.

Re:Wait, what?

[darthyoshiboy]

mplayer dvd://1 -ss 1090 -endpos 20

Seems to work well enough.

Sorry LainTouko, still breaking the DMCA with that one so you might as well have an exception to the DMCA. (Much like they are trying to do.)
Command line mplayer is probably beyond your average 7th period drama teacher as well.

Re:Photocopying

[DeadChobi]

I disagree with your assertion that Youtube videos can't be educationally relevant. Try getting the equipment to actually have students go outside and observe the sun in a high school. Then try checking out these clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB7W385a-tM [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbGD_9aPTK0&feature=related [youtube.com]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwn_Y3990wQ&feature=related [youtube.com]

And I defy you to find a school where their library is as well-stocked with information on diverse subjects as the internet. Most school libraries have vast sections of Juvenille literature, and are so small that the Dewey Decimal system is still relevant and useful to them. The librarian is more likely to point the students to the internet, because the source material one can get from a good google search or series of searches is far more timely, more likely to be relevant, and much quicker to access.

I really think you actually need to do some research about the educational uses of the Internet before spouting off the opinion that video is a pointless time-waster and that books are the only real source of useful information.