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May 26, 2004
HandBrake and the DMCA
I have been trying out HandBrake 0.6.2, so that I can keep my meager DVD collection stored on my computer. It seems to be working alright, although I am still waiting to complete my first DVD. The software itself seems to violate the DMCA, and an encryption company recently won an injunction against a company that distributes similar software commercially. However, my use of the software is just for legitimate purposes. The DMCA explicitly states that although it is illegal to provide a service designed to circumvent copyright protections, it is legal to circumvent copyright protections for the purpose of "fair use" copying. Consider this statement from the previously linked document:
Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. By contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited.
I am circumventing a measure just to make a "fair use" copy of a movie, not to gain unauthorized access. Further inspection of the DMCA document indicates that the software is illegal:
Section 1201 proscribes devices or services that fall within any one of the following three categories:
- they are primarily designed or produced to circumvent;
- they have only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent; or
- they are marketed for use in circumventing.
Clearly, the software is designed to circumvent, even though such circumvention is in itself not necessarily illegal. However, in the "ideal" world where only legally distributed software is available, I would be unable to exercise all of my fair use rights by circumventing the protection for purposes of personal copying. Hmmm...
Posted by Raj Doshi at May 26, 2004 2:32 AM