"laws are laws... this will do nothing... they legally MUST kill FairUse4WM. "
Why?
The only law that might apply here is the DMCA, and the DMCA specifically notes that fair use clauses of existing copyright law are not affected by the protections against circumvention of technological measures in the DMCA. Format-shifting is long settled case law (going back to court cases involving personal copying of CD's onto audio cassette) that has already been defined as fair use by the courts, so there's nothing illegal about this app. And there's certainly nothing *compelling* MS or anybody else to do anything about it.
No doubt the RIAA is going to put out a lot of bluster about this, but despite what they're going to say, there's nothing they can legally do about it unless they can prove an individual is using it to pirate music. But it would have to involve an actual infringing act and it would have to be on the individual level - that's where the DMCA would then be invoked. Just stripping the DRM so you can listen to songs on your iPod is completely and 100% legal even according to the DMCA. (People who say it's not need to read the whole law, not just the specific clause about protection of technological copyright measures. Exceptions are listed later, and one of those is existing fair use.) If, however, you were to strip the DRM and then put those files on a file sharing network, you would not only be liable for illegal distribution, but you would then *also* be liable for a DMCA violation because you stripped the DRM for a purpose that was not fair use.
MS will probably change their DRM to fix this, but it's their choice to do so. It's not a legal requirement.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeff @ Aug 27th 2006 1:44PM
"laws are laws... this will do nothing... they legally MUST kill FairUse4WM. "
Why?
The only law that might apply here is the DMCA, and the DMCA specifically notes that fair use clauses of existing copyright law are not affected by the protections against circumvention of technological measures in the DMCA. Format-shifting is long settled case law (going back to court cases involving personal copying of CD's onto audio cassette) that has already been defined as fair use by the courts, so there's nothing illegal about this app. And there's certainly nothing *compelling* MS or anybody else to do anything about it.
No doubt the RIAA is going to put out a lot of bluster about this, but despite what they're going to say, there's nothing they can legally do about it unless they can prove an individual is using it to pirate music. But it would have to involve an actual infringing act and it would have to be on the individual level - that's where the DMCA would then be invoked. Just stripping the DRM so you can listen to songs on your iPod is completely and 100% legal even according to the DMCA. (People who say it's not need to read the whole law, not just the specific clause about protection of technological copyright measures. Exceptions are listed later, and one of those is existing fair use.) If, however, you were to strip the DRM and then put those files on a file sharing network, you would not only be liable for illegal distribution, but you would then *also* be liable for a DMCA violation because you stripped the DRM for a purpose that was not fair use.
MS will probably change their DRM to fix this, but it's their choice to do so. It's not a legal requirement.