High Court Ends Stay in DVD Copying Case

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor threw out an emergency stay that barred a former Web master from putting DVD decryption programs on the Internet.

Attorney Jeffrey Kessler said the DVD Copy Control Assn., which licenses software to film studios to block illegal copying, fears that Matthew Pavlovich will re-post programs that help people duplicate movies for free.

Pavlovich's lawyer argued that decryption programs are available on hundreds of sites.

.........That's sooo ****ing stupid. Trying to ban him, I mean.

He's not doing anything illegal, but because the programs can expose just how piss-poor the DVD's copy-protection is on the DVD's and show just how much the DVD makers are being lied to by the DVD-CCA, the dude gets legally raped.

Methinks some radical action is in order in the near future. Something along the lines of smashing several million DVDs and suing such companies for replacements, after all, they'd have prevented legal back-ups from being made prior to the demise of the DVDs.

You know why DVD copy protection is shazbot, don't you?

Because at the time the standard was first put into action, the US had a law against the export of high bit encryption schemes...remember how you weren't allowed to download the 128 bit version of IE unless you were in the US and Canada? hehe. It's the same with DVDs...well, was the same. The laws have been relaxed in the last couple years.

Frankly, it's all for the better that the encryption scheme is crap...there shouldn't be any encryption on DVDs at all, just as an0n said, it prevents legal back ups being made and whatnot.

Who backs up their DVDs??

If I had a DVD-RW drive, I'd back all my DVD's up. Ideally, I'd like to keep the originals in a safe place (like at the back of my cupboard) and only use the copies, so if one was damaged from me leaving it out (and my niece snapping it) I could still watch the DVD (and make another copy).

Infact, I might go buy a DVD-RAM now.

I make backups of all my games (or at least the ones I can, my brother tends to break/lose them...I swear if he breaks my battlefield 1942...), and if I had a dvd writer I'd do those as well.