Re: [dvd-discuss] Postage Meters and the "Right to Tinker"

["John Zulauf" <johnzu(at)ia.nsc.com>]

Adam Wells wrote:
> 
> At 10:00 -0700 1/10/03, John Zulauf wrote:
> >(Note 0) Cracking the TurboTax installer (regardless of what we think of
> >p-spam) clearly isn't fair use, not only locally in the impact on the
> >value of retail versions of the TurboTax files, buy also globally on the
> >impact on the market value of all tax software -- and antithetical to
> >progress.  Remember, every warez Photoshop copy is users subtracted from
> >The Gimp, Ulead, or others Adobe's competitors.
> 
> So it depends on the impact on the market for the product?  Imagine
> this scenario ...

Actually I brought this in to show that such my position about
circumvention was consistent with the purpose of copyright.  It doesn't
matter (AFAICT) in terms of a fair use defense for copying.


> So now imagine you're one of the customers who receives that package
> of DVDs.  Are you within your rights to reverse-engineer a software
> player for those DVDs on your (very expensive at the time) DVD-ROM
> drive?  

From most point of view (and not the current findings of any US court),
absolutely.  CSS under normal operation condition doesn't require any
further transaction with the rights holder in order to play the disc. 
Why the courts have treated it as a 1201 TPM is mysterious.  As
accessing the work to play it only tends to increase the market and
value of the work, such access will pass the "four part" test.

> If you do, it'll surely impact the market for software and
> hardware DVD players, since you may not need to buy one from Sony, or
> from any of their competitors, for that matter.

Antitrust legislation prohibits such market tying, that's why there is
such a apparently convoluted connection from the MPAA to the DVD-CCA. 
The fact that accessing a DVD impact the market for another product
doesn't enter into fair use analysis.

Sorry if I ran to many things together.  I just stream of
concsiounessing this stuff out as fast as I can.

.002