eBay: Burn DVD movies onto CD?

Jim Choate ravage at einstein.ssz.com
Thu Jun 21 16:15:30 PDT 2001


On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, David Honig wrote:

> My argument, to any judges reading, is that its *not* circumvention if you've
> bought the damn thing, no matter how you decode it.
> 
> If you paid for satellite TV but you build your own descrambler, its *not*
> illegal circumvention, even though your gizmo (legally) circumvents
> access controls.  Get it? [Rhetorically; Riad is not the problem :-]
> 
> Hint: its only illegal if its fraud.  DeCSS has nothing to do with fraud.
> "cp" does.  Actually, only humans do, "cp" is not a moral entity.

Actually that won't hold up. There is a distinction that you are missing.

Do you legally purchase service from that cable vendor? If so then even
building your own cable descrambling box may be illegal if the contract
says so (you're depriving the cable company of contractual income,
fraud?). The only(!!!) way that I can see building your own descrambler
and getting away with it is if you have no(!) connection to the vendor,
hence they have no claim to a 'loss' since you're not buying any service
in the first place.


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