RE: Copying DVD to VHS: may be impossible

["John T. Mitchell" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Walt Crawford inquires:

"[Does DMCA enter into "defeating" Macrovision? Well, the DVD's flag to
the player has to be digital, even though the Macrovision "protection"
is analog...so I'm certainly not going to assert flatly that DMCA is not
at all an issue, just because it shouldn't be. And I'm no lawyer]"

The DMCA enters in by prohibiting the manufacture and importation of
VCRs and such that would fail to recognize it.  See 17 U.S.C. section
1201(k).  But technically, Macrovision is not a technology that controls
"access', so standard DMCA prohibitions (1201(a), for example) would not
apply.  Macrovision degrades the quality of certain copies, and whether
circumventing that effect to improve the picture constitutes
circumvention is an open question.  Nothing in the DMCA requires that an
access control technology measure be digital.  (A padlock on a book
would be an access control technology, so beware of peeking into a
locked diary!  I can see the headline now:  "Daughter sues mom for
picking lock on her diary, seeks $2,500 in statutory damages.")  

One could argue that if Congress thought circumvention of Macrovision
violated the DMCA's basic anti-circumvention provisions, then there
would have been no reason to include a Macrovision-specific provision.
OTOH, the Macrovision-specific provision does not deal with user
circumvention.  Rather, it is an exception to the general "no mandates"
on hardware contained in the DMCA (see 1201(c)(3)), and mandates that
VCRs be built to respond to Macrovision encoding.

John

___________________
John T. Mitchell
http://interactionlaw.com