Degrees of Freedom vs. Hollywood Control Freaks

[Tim May]

On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 01:15  PM, mean-green at hushmail.com wrote:

>
> At 05:06 PM 6/3/2002 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:
>> Tim, I think you're missing the point here. Valenti and his ilk would 
>> like
> nothing more than to force you to to rebuy your visual media *again*, 
> but
> they don't have to. I'll bet dollars to donuts that you've rebought 
> some of
> your VCR tapes as DVDs. Whey wouldn't the MPAA think they can
> make you do it over?
>
> Tim may be willing or able to repurchase his movie collection but many 
> are not.  I've "backed" up all of the movies I have on VHS onto CDs 
> (2-3 per movie average) from DVD in a high quality format called SVCD.  
> As soon as my budget allows I'll be a DVD burn'in fool.

I only bought one (1) VHS tape, ever (*). That was "Pulp Fiction." So 
far, I don't have it on DVD.

(* I am only counting popular movie versions on VHS. I do have such VHS 
tapes as "Tactical Shotgun," "Street Smarts," and "FN-FAL Armorer's 
Guide," as these are specialty items.)

However, I have vast numbers of tapes (several hundred, since my first 
VCR in 1979) made of things from my cable and more recently my satellite 
systems. And the Supreme Court decision, Disney v. Sony, makes these 
tapes perfectly legal. Moreover, the Home Recording Act of the early 90s 
explicitly collected a tax on blank tapes in "exchange" for making my 
collection of around 800 CDs on DAT and CD-R fully legal. (A friend of 
mine has more than 6000 CDs recorded onto DAT and CD-R, all perfectly 
legal under HRA.

Knowing how lawyerscum argue, there are probably those claiming that the 
HRA was superceded by the Millennium Copyright  New World Order 
Enablement Act, but that is absurd. The tax was collected on the blank 
tapes and CD-R blanks. If they wish to send me a check for all of these 
taxes collected, trusting only my word (as no records were required to 
be kept), AND if they wish to compensate me for the labors I made to 
comply with their laws that are now INOPERATIVE, blah blah blah.

(An obvious absurdity, I understand. My point is that Congress cannot 
simply monkey around with laws when past laws made certain things fully 
legal. This would be an example of an "ex post facto law," something 
explicity, and rightly, banned by the Constitution.)

BTW, I use my Ultimate TV to collect many hours of raw signal, some of 
which I make my own tapes with. These play well on every VCR I've tried. 
For example, I made a nice tape of two of my favorite "Outer Limits" 
episodes: "Demon with a Glass Hand" and "Soldier," both written by 
Harlan Ellison. No sign of any "Macrovision" junk, and now I have a 
perfect tape costing me $1.39 in tape costs for what "Blockbuster" wants 
at least $20 for, when it even has the old "Outer Limits" episodes.

(The quality is quite good. I recorded this at standard VHS, fast speed 
setting. My VCRs are S-VHS, but I used VHS so I can play it on the VCRs 
belonging to friends.)

I don't have any plan to replace my large library of taped programs and 
movies with DVD versions.

They taxed me on the tapes, so fuck them on any idea that they can now 
make my taping illegal.

--Tim May
""Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who 
approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but 
downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." 
--Patrick Henry