US Copyright Office Declares Space-Shifting Illegal
Today the Register of Copyrights and the Librarian of Congress announced the 1201 exemptions. You may remember that the 1201 review is the triannual process where organizations, communities, and individuals request permission to circumvent Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies that prevent them from doing otherwise perfectly legal things. This time around, Public Knowledge requested an exemption that would allow people to rip DVDs they already own in order to transfer the movie to a device that cannot play DVDs (like a tablet).
That request was rejected. Furthermore, the Register and the Librarian explained that they were unconvinced that space shifting was fair use at all.
In other words: the US Copyright Office considers you a criminal if you rip a DVD you legally obtained to watch it on a device without a DVD drive (i.e. ‘space-shifting’).
When the MPAA and RIAA — who have done everything possible to warp copyright to benefit themselves — both agree that consumers should have the right to space-shift legally purchased content, does the USCO really think its stance on space-shifting makes sense?
