It’s not about copyright, it’s about control of the medium

Looks like the movie studios don’t want DVDs copied, at all. Not for personal use, not for backups, no copies whatsoever, even though making personal copies is perfectly legal.

DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) sued a company that produces a DVD jukebox that copies DVDs into its harddrive then allows users to play the DVDs from the hard drive. Sounds like a great device, but one that will probably be unavailable sometime soon. The manufacturer will go bankrupt fighting this frivolous lawsuit.

I wonder what’s the point when the general public goes “enough is enough”. We’re fast moving towards an era where nothing you buy is yours, but licensed with terms that allow the owner of the merchandise to dictate everything you can or can not do with the merchandise. You can’t resell or give it to anyone (charity, relative, friend), because it is not yours. You can’t transport it to another location, because the license terms prohibit it. You can’t augment the capabilities with a third party add-on, because the license terms prohibit it. Want to move to another content/network provider, too bad, gotta buy THE SAME device again, because the license terms prohibit you from moving it to another provider. You can’t use it aboard, because the license terms prohibit it.

End result: you have to buy or pay more to do what the merchandise was already capable of doing, but was articifially restricted from doing.

Great for businesses. Really bad for consumers. If only the legislators would understand this.

-TPP

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