Industry Proposal Could Ban All DVD Copying

DVD copy protection gets a mountain of press, partly because it's such a confusing topic. Is it legal to make a personal backup of a DVD so you can play it on your PC or your iPod, like you can do with a music CD? Or is copying of DVDs outright banned, thanks to that masterful work of legislation, the DMCA?

The gray area where fair use and copyright protection collides could get a whole lot more black and white soon: A proposed amendment to DVD licenses includes wording that would completely ban all copying, preventing playback of a movie unless the disc is present at the time it is shown.

Note that this is not a government amendment but rather one from the DVD Copy Control Association, which sets the terms by which both DVD hardware and software (discs) are created. Basically, if you don't agree to the terms, you can't make DVD equipment. The amendment is a response to a lawsuit, which the DVD CCA lost, when it sued a DVD jukebox company which ripped and stored copies of your movies on an internal hard drive.

The amendment comes up for vote on Wednesday. If it passes, it will go into effect after 18 months.

To be sure, it's already questionable whether any DVD copying is legal at all, but fair use claims have tended to prevail in arguments over the topic, which is why no lawsuit that I know of has ever been brought against someone making copies of DVDs for personal use. But the industry would prefer to sell you a DVD as well as a digital copy via iTunes, of course, so it's end-running the government and trying to set hurdles at a technical level. (That said, I don't see how this would effect existing software that can rip DVDs except to make it slightly more illegal than it already is.)

Regardless of what happens (and since DVD CCA is only looking out for its own hide, ratification is almost a given), expect more legal wrangling to commence in the near future. 

LINK: Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying