eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?

[David Honig]

At 07:30 PM 6/20/01 -0400, Riad S. Wahby wrote:
>
>> Not if you have lawfully paid for the content.
>
>Not really.  Part of 2600's claim is that DeCSS and css-auth allow
>people using operating systems without officially licensed DVD player
>software (with development cost starting at $20k just for the license
>to implement the standard) to view DVDs that they purchased.  

That is a correct claim by 2600.

The
>judge didn't buy it; 

The judge needs to buy steal or rent a clue, as we both know.


it doesn't matter that they legally paid for the
>content, they're accessing it illegally via a "circumvention device."

Its not *illegal* access since *they paid for it*.  (For the license
to play it; to copy it to other media for play in their cars; to back
it up; etc.)


>The DMCA, according to the court, clearly prevents the use of DeCSS
>and css-auth, even in the case that it has a legitimate use, because
>it circumvents the access control measures built into the DVD
>standard.

We both know that's an incorrect ruling that will be reversed.

>> If a cartridge doesn't have (C) SEGA in it, it won't play... ergo,
>> (C) SEGA is not protected.
>
>I don't see how this applies to what I was saying.  

The SEGA ruling said that whatever you need to do to interoperate
is legal ---even including the string "(C) SEGA" in your ROM if the
host platform requires it.

You bought the DVD, you can play it how you want.

The reason I
>tagged this on is to show that one must authenticate if one plans to
>read the data.  Thus, the EBay offering has to use some sort of
>authentication mechanism.  If it uses one that is not officially
>licensed (read this: upwards of $20k development cost), it is illegal,
>according to the court.

The EBay advert could have been selling "cp" because there was nothing
about playback implied.  Presumably you would copy your DVD files
from CDs onto a hard drive and then play them back.  As the ad said,
perfectly legal.

You don't need to decrypt to copy.  


>I'm not agreeing with the DMCA, or with the judge's decision regarding
>DeCSS.  Neither are palatable, to say the least.  The original
>question was "can this be done legally."  The answer is: if someone
>paid to develop a licensed implementation of the DVD standard, yes. 

Can data backup be done legally? Of course.  

Playback, again, is not what is being offered, in my reading of the ad.

 I
>don't know of any commercial software that will read the data from the
>DVD and spit out the raw data, encrypted or not, for writing to a CD.
>The DVD CCA would never license such a piece of software---its use is
>too clearly geared towards backup or, as they see it, piracy.

I'm surprised that any ordinary file manager wouldn't show the
DVD files much as they'll show audio CD files as files.  [I don't
have a DVD player to try this..]