Posted on 05/07/2009 2:11:41 PM PDT by dangerdoc
So the Copyright Office is currently in the middle reviewing proposed exceptions to the DMCA, and one of the proposals on the table would allow teachers and students to rip DVDs and edit them for use in the classroom. Open and shut, right? Not if you're the MPAA and gearing up to litigate the legality of ripping -- it's trying to convince the rulemaking committee that videotaping a flatscreen is an acceptable alternative. Seriously. It's hard to say if we've ever seen an organization make a more tone-deaf, flailing argument than this.
Take a good look, kids. This is what an industry looks like right before it dies. Video after the break
Even better, schools have MUCH more leeway for fair use than the rest of us do. The educational exemption is pretty broad. The MPAA just doesn't want it to be legal to rip a DVD, period. That would be a chink in their armor.
The full article may have mentioned this but there is a (to the best of my memory) 30-second fair use provision for audio and video.
Copyright has an EXEMPTION for educational purposes. Quit letting Hollywood Big Media rewrite our nation’s copyright laws.
They’ve already extended the duration of “limited time” to beyond our lifetime (it is agreed that all works eventually will lapse, by agreement, into the public domain, we will never live to see that day under current extensions).
They are now working to change 80+ years of established history on royalties paid by stations for music on played on the radio.
Their rotten business model is sinking. If they didn’t have 75+ years of pop culture sitting in vaults (much of which would have become public domain by now if they had not continued lobbying for the change of existing laws), they would have been bankrupted decades ago.
Why is it Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, and the majority of novels adapted by Disney are public domain but the works of MGM, Disney, and WB are not? Are they some how more deserving?
In England, they are working to extend copyright another 25 years. Why? Because unlike the works of Elvis, and Sinatra, and even the Brit Lonnie Donagan, they are concerned that the works of the godly Beatles are going to suddenly lapse into the public domain. Heaven forbid. Two of them are dead and Paul is worth upwards of a billion dollars.
But the laws must be changed for cultural reasons. If they’d seen fit to protect ALL artists along the way, they may have had a case.
And none of their arguments should trump the rights of educators to do as has been permitted for the entire 20th century.
I suppose that makes sense. Not that many 14-year-olds, homeschooled or not, haven’t seen a backside, but it would be an administrative problem.
Fortunately, in a land where liberty and freedom are valued, our permissions aren't based on "need". As for educational use, I am glad that as a part-time instructor I have the ability and the freedom to use technology and innovation in order to stimulate learning in many different ways, regardless of whether somebody deems there to be a "need" for those techniques and methods.
Hollyweird isn’t so quick to respect the rights of ownership of the photographer/model of sexting messages.
Exactly, editing a pg-13 film to a pg rating (well aside from all the bawdy jokes but for some reason the moms didn’t complain about those) makes sense. There can be legitimate reasons to use films in class - not many, but a few.
Off the top of my head, I'm thinking music and/or video clips for PowerPoint (or similar) projects. Those could easily happen outside a computer class.
As far as my computer teacher was concerned, "educational purpose" always trumped copyright. Legally, this is often true. It looks like they're trying to narrow educational purposes.
What, specifically, do you want me to do about it?
My opinion that school instruction is full of expensive, high-tech crap is irrelevant to how my Congresscritter, Mrs. Myrick, votes on things like this. In fact, I have no idea how she votes, because I'm much more interested in her positions on national defense and immigration.
And I disagree completely.
As a Criminal Justice student, we watch Forensic File episodes, Documentaries on prisons, 20/20 and other such videos about twice a week.
To think you expect the teacher to stand up there and recite every point in a classroom setting is not only ridiculous, but time consuming and unnecessary.
He can explain the ENTIRE case with a flash point of images, or he can pop in an episode of 20/20. Which is better for the educational system? I know I pay attention to the TV show more, I’m sure I’m not the only one.
That’s a joke, right? Cause if so, it’s kinda funny.
Okay, we disagree.
heeeeee
But not on the legal point, because I don’t care, legally, whether teachers show DVDs or not.
“Irrelevant.
No, it’s not, because the taxpayers are paying for all of the equipment, and dealing with the results of the wasted time.”
Huh? You make no sense.
Of course I’m joking.
Precisely. "You don't need that" is exactly the Brady Bunch argument in favor of banning Big Scary Guns.
This is how the old kinescope films were made by filming a monitor of the video feed during many tv shows in the fifties. The 39 lost episodes (found) of the Honeymooners were all kinescopes.
Interestingly enough the MPAA is letting the cat out of the bag by highlighting how essentially all the software/hardware protections will not eliminate the ability to essentially create these newfangled kinescopes. And since the audio feed can still be captured directly, coupled with the ability to make a very decent image using the kinescope method, guarantees that there will always be decent pirated movies.
What would be better for the educational system is to stop using TVs for anything ever. Frankly TVs are the tool of lazy teachers who don’t feel like going through the trouble of preparing a proper lecture. Of all the TV time I got stuck with in school maybe 10% of it was actually useful, the rest was a cheap excuse for the teacher to spend a week sitting down not talking.
Poo Poo, she should have acted out every part of every character herself.
I mean actually letting you watch a MOVIE as a teaching tool of the intensity of Shakespeare!!
The “that’s about it” part is the whole part!
You guys are acting like teachers aren’t doing anything but watching movies in class. Of course that’s ‘about it’. But it’s a big IT!
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