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The MPAA on How to Camcord

By Michael Geist

The U.S. Copyright Office is conducting hearings on the exemptions under the DMCA (they do this every three years) and Rebecca Tushnet has been providing detailed coverage.  A full day was devoted to the issue of an exemption for teachers and students so that they could circumvent the locks on DVDs to show film clips in class or as part of an assignment.  The education community are pushing for an expansion of the exemption to more broadly cover teachers and students.  The MPAA doesn't want an exemption at all, or, if there is one, argues it should be very limited.

Among the stranger moments of the hearings was the MPAA's argument that there is no need for an exemption since there is an analog way to create film clips.  Rather than break the encryption on a DVD, teachers could camcord the same film clips.  In fact, the organization showed a video demonstrating how to effectively camcord clips of DVDs without breaking the encryption on the DVD. 

Leaving aside how surreal it is to see the same organization that travels the world demanding anti-camcording legislation now citing it as a solution, it is useful to consider how this would have played out had Bill C-61 become law.  First, there was no exception in C-61 to circumvent for any teaching or private study purposes.  Therefore, the act of circumventing for educational instruction or class assignments would have become a violation of the law (the Film Studies Association of Canada spoke out on the issue).  Second, there was no mechanism for hearings to identify necessary exceptions under C-61, so Canadian law did not even include the possibility of mirroring these DMCA exemption hearings to address problems in the law.

Full post as published by Michael Geist on May 08, 2009 (boomark / email).