After doki pointed me to this thread I was curious about this issue so pinged my colleague at UC Berkeley Law (and EFF fellow), Jason Schultz. He also has an upbeat take on this ruling in the San Francisco Chronicle, fwiw. I know the fight is far from over but those of us who have been trying to support the work to change policy on remix see this ruling as one significant step in the right direction.BasharOfTheAges wrote: Since it has absolutely nothing to do with music (and even if it did, whole songs are non-transformative and used in their entirety... far above the 1/300 guideline they're currently deeming as a legit portion to even claim fair use), I'd say jack shit.
The stupid part is, this ruling is specific to pure CSS on DVDs. BRDs are a whole separate ball game, as are the DVDs that implement a combination of CSS and bad sector writes. Not so sure about dealing in the tools to break CSS though, unless they specifically stated it, i think those might be illegal still too.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... &type=tech
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You're right -- the battle to clear up the legal status of AMVs and other UGC/Remix genres will take some time, but this is a first step. The DMCA prohibitions on circumventing DRM are the strongest weapons in the MPAA/RIAA arsenal, and this ruling takes that arrow out of their quiver against actual artists who use movie content. While the ruling doesn't specifically extend to other forms of protection such as BRD or bad sectors, etc., the same underlying logic applies to why you should be able to circumvent those as well, and I expect that we will apply for exemptions that include them in the next round, two years from now.
As to the questions about tools, yes, this ruling doesn't apply to tools, but it will make enforcement against tools much harder now that the Copyright Office has ruled that these uses are valid. On the music front, there is also hope. The ruling states: "The final requirement of the recommended class is that the person engaging in the circumvention must reasonably believe that the circumvention is necessary in order to fulfill the purpose of the use i.e., the noninfringing criticism or commentary." This rule can apply to all copyrighted content, not just movie clips. So to the extent that you reasonably believe your use of music is necessary in order to fulfill the purpose of commenting on or criticizing the video content, you already have a good fair use argument that tracks the Copyright Office's logic. But there are also other arguments that courts have accepted in other cases, such as the creative/transformative nature of using the music (essentially making a new work of art) and that you use of the music was merely a "reasonable" choice instead of a "necessary" choice. While this ruling doesn't use those words, future rulings may, so don't give up hope yet for winning the fair use argument on these issues
