disabling macrovision illegal? which law?

[iffer]

the mods closed a macrovision thread - because disabling it was "illegal" which law is this under?? Given - making copies is illegal, but how is not generating macrovision signal corruption against australian law?
(auslii references prefered thanks)

Jennifer

[steve lamb]

the mods closed a macrovision thread - because disabling it was "illegal" which law is this under?? Given - making copies is illegal, but how is not generating macrovision signal corruption against australian law?
(auslii references prefered thanks)

I believe disabling of macrovision is illegal as it falls under the circumvention of legitimate copyright protection devices/measures provisions of the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000.

[jokiin]

I think you are correct Steve, the agreement actually goes between the manufacturer and the DVD consortium governs this technology, if they find out that you have a player that can be macro disabled they can terminate the agreement that gives the right to manufacture a DVD player, they can take this all the way back to the chipset manufacturers, two of the majors got in trouble recently over this and have modified their chipsets to prevent any further breaches of the agreement by their customers. As an end user it is still illegal to modify the player as it is circumventing the copy protection, that's why it's not something you can openly discuss on this forum, as a member you need to abide by the site owners rules.

[iffer]

Region coding is also in the agreement between the DVDCCA and the various manufacturers, but of course we mod/hack/flash around that at the first opportunity. And a copy from another region is (by the studios standards anyway) an unauthorised copy, you have a validly purchased but in violation of copyright original copy (yeah yeah tell me about it).
How is macrovision any different? There are other reasons than copying to disable macrovision (I have an older NEC tele that is affected by macrovision signals on the av input, and other people have setups where the only connection to the tele is via the VCR)

And if a macrovision "stripper" is legal, then so (it would seem) would be disabling the macrovision before generation.

Just one more, playing a dvd with a unlicensed (DVDCCA) player - either hardware or software - means you are already running afoul of the Digital agenda anti-circumvention provisions... welcome to the new world where everyone is already a criminal, just waiting for the cops to get around to wanting to pick you up. (My PVR also makes me a criminal - all this crime kinda makes me want to rob banks or something just for a change! just kidding - really!)

And yes - the instant someone said they wanted to use a macrovision bypass to make illegal copies, then that is against the rules and should be purged. But just macrovision removal (as a general thing) is no worse than dvix encoding - as a general thing. Even in Australia, not all copying is illegal (Hint, I work for a University) And some of the illegal copying - well, not many convictions for personal copying.. yet (people bulk copying for profit - yeah lock-em up! but they're not going to be worried about macrovision either)

The reality is the days when DVDs were actually protected by macrovision is now history - last weekend I overheard 2 women working at a fashion clothing store discussing how to best rip dvd's and single layer dvd vs svcd copies. If mid-40's moms can do it, then I think we can safely assume it's out of the realm of the esoteric :)

Jen

[iffer]

I believe disabling of macrovision is illegal as it falls under the circumvention of legitimate copyright protection devices/measures provisions of the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000.

oh - and on this act... it is amazing in how much day-to-day stuff it makes illegal... for example the caching proxies in use at all ISP (and universities)... yep as soon as you hand a copy of a web page out to a second person (not the original requester which caused a copy to be cached), it's an unauthorised copy. emails... forum postings, etc etc are all protected material. We had a lot of discussions with our legal section.. eventually deciding to just ignore it all as too hard and wait for someone to be prosecuted to decide the "real" boundries in the act/enforcement. (This from a Uni with a law school as well as lawyers on staff! so we still cache, we still make system backups of student areas, etc) (boys and girls, don't go into computer science unless you are doing a law degree as well!)

If this is the law you are trying to comply with, macrovision is the least of your worries
Jen

[celtic_druid]

We all have an innate need to break laws, so they have to come up with these BS laws or else we would be forced to break the important ones.... Then again, mabe it's just me?

[davidf]

Region coding is also in the agreement between the DVDCCA and the various manufacturers



Region coding has nothing to do with copyright protection and is falling under the scrutiny of several countries that have trade practise laws.

The ACCC established region coding was anti-competitive and that in this Country all DVD equipment must be supplied with the ability to remove region locking.

[jokiin]

The ACCC established region coding was anti-competitive and that in this Country all DVD equipment must be supplied with the ability to remove region locking.

I think there is a bit more to it than that, it is still against the rules of the agreement for a manufacturer to make a region free player, however the loophole in our law says that it's ok to sell a region free player, if you look at any of the brand name players they all claim to have been opened and modified here prior to local shipping (don't know if that actually occurs, bit it is what they claim) reality is that in this country and a lot of others for that matter if the player is not region free, or can easily be made region free, nobody wants it. There is certainly no rule that says that all DVD equipment must be supplied with the ability to remove region locking.

[iffer]

Region coding has nothing to do with copyright protection and is falling under the scrutiny of several countries that have trade practise laws.

Oh, but it does - in the same way macrovision is a copy protection technology, Region coding is there to prevent you playing unauthorised* copies of DVDs.
* unauthorised in that while they are real, licenced DVDs, they are not licenced for that market (region) thereby become unauthorised (dare we say "pirate") copies of the content. (in that you don't have a valid licence for that material in your market)


The ACCC established region coding was anti-competitive and that in this Country all DVD equipment must be supplied with the ability to remove region locking.
Oh yeah... it is all about retaining control and developing a "rent seeking" market. Can you say "prevent consumer choice" - the media cartel does!
(why else do you need a cartel?) The ACCC also tore through some of the other ways copyrights were being mis-used (for example to prevent parallel imports of GOODS through claims the packaging material was copyright therefore the goods couldn't be imported except through authorised (eg price maintained) channels. Go ACCC! We love ya! :)

[dvd_beetle]

Signal stabilizers are quite legal and are readily available. It is illegal for a DVD player not to have a macrovision chip, or to have the chip deactivated while a DVD with the macrovision flag is played. It's as simple as that.

It's ridicules I know, since to use legal DVD players with certain equipment you HAVE to buy a signal stabilizer, however there is nothing that can change that. It's above and beyond the scope of the DVD patent itself. On the other hand the only thing region coding is enforced by is a condition in the patent - one which is not honoured by Australian law - thus multiregion players are perfectly legal. The only players you will find region locked are ones produced by the studios; or brands in which the parent company has close relations with a studio corporation.