[bubblethink]

Isn't the act of bypassing DRM itself some violation of DMCA and related laws (however unlikely any enforcement may be) ? Which is also why you can't play commercial DVDs and blu-rays out of the box on Fedora because they won't ship any code that can circumvent DRM.

[Joeri]

Yes. Section 1201 says “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.”

The reason you can’t find a commercial vendor that will directly ship something to bypass the DRM is because it also says “No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title”

This is also why for a while the t-shirts with the dvd decss key were popular among nerds, because they are illegal.

[abecedarius]

https://cyber.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/dvd-discuss-faq.html#s...

Are you saying this is incorrect?

[boomboomsubban]

Bypassing the DRM is acceptable for certain use cases, with DVD's it's OK for using clips as a critic or adding additional accessibility features. So something like makemkv is legal while in practice almost every user is breaking the law.

[wizzwizz4]

I don't think that's how the law works. There's a fair use exemption for using copyrighted material, however you're still not allowed to bypass DRM to get at the data.

[boomboomsubban]

You are, the DMCA tasked the Library of Congress with approving exceptions to the anti-circumvention provision. Here's the list of when it's acceptable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

[e44858]

Looks like ripping movies was just made legal:

> The 2021 exemptions, issued in October 2021, are for:[15]

> Motion pictures (including television shows and videos), as defined in 17 U.S.C. 101, where circumvention is undertaken solely in order to make use of short portions of the motion pictures for the purpose of criticism or comment, for supervised educational purposes, to accommodate for accessibility for disabled students in educational institutions, for preservation of the motion picture by a library, archive, or museum, or for research purposes at educational institutions;

[boomboomsubban]

No, a version of that exemption was first added in 2010. Each exemption has to be readded every new listing.

And that exemption only adds cases in which stripping DRM from a DVD becomes legal. It's still generally illegal, and most people using makemkv are likely using it illegally.

[zozbot234]

> however you're still not allowed to bypass DRM to get at the data.

I'm not sure this has ever been tested in court, though. And even the DMCA itself does provide for a rather clunky system of "exemptions" to the no-circumvention provision.

[pbhjpbhj]

Can anyone cite law and/or caselaw on that?

[boomboomsubban]

They're wrong, the relevant part of the DMCA is http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html#1201 and the most recent list of exemptions is https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2021-23311.pdf

[pbhjpbhj]

Thanks.

[pbhjpbhj]

That's my take for the UK. This is not legal advice. It seems the tech is fine as circumvention for accessibility is allowed (eg under three Marrakesh Treaty); most users probably aren't doing it for accessibility.