Degrees of Freedom vs. Hollywood Control Freaks
Tim May
tcmay at got.net
Wed Jun 5 18:45:52 PDT 2002
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HRA was superceded by the Millennium Copyright New World Order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
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