Judge suggests DMCA allows DVD ripping if you own the DVD
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
It is not rendered by an appellate court and is not binding on anyone but the parties immediately before the court. It poses two issues of broader interest - (1) whether a school that buys DVDs can legitimately convert the contents of the DVDs into streaming format without violating the anti-circumvention rules of DMCA and (2) whether it can stream such content broadly within its closed network without infringing copyright because such use is fair use - neither of which is answered in a way that gives the ruling any precedential value (as to issue 1, the parties did not brief, and the court did not discuss, the DMCA anti-circumvention rules but only the anti-trafficking rules; as to issue 2, the holder of the DVD rights had given express "public performance" rights to the school, which the judge took to authorize the challenged activity and which basically takes the discussion out of the fair use realm and puts it in the category of a dispute over the meaning of a licensing provision).
With oddball facts and oddball law, and somewhat cursory treatment of the key issues by the court, the ruling is purely a symbolic one for fair-use advocates. Nor is it likely to be appealed, as it stems from a motion to dismiss that the court granted but with "leave to amend" (meaning that it can be refiled with sharpened allegations). The ruling may be found here: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/document/UCLA_Streaming....
Hate to throw a wet blanket over this but I think this fairly sums up the significance of the ruling.
Wow, a judge rules correctly, and because he didn't spend pages talking about your pet subject, he's an idiot?
Cripes, no wonder we can't make headway against DRM if zealots insult everyone who isn't a zealot.
"We've never liked the DMCA's anti-circumvention language, so we'd be delighted to see the rest of the judiciary agree with Judge Marshall."
I don't think it's insulting, but rather that the author thinks others might interpret the judge's ruling as one that he didn't do his homework. Now, if the judge had written a larger report specifying exactly why the ruling stands in great detail, this ruling would have been a bigger precedent and not something that is just about DVD ripping and not against the whole DMCA anti-circumvention.
"Update: New York Law School's James Grimmelmann emails to suggest an alternative explanation or the shortness of the judge's DMCA analysis. He notes that the plaintiffs focused their arguments on the trafficking provisions of the DMCA, but ignored the circumvention provisions. Since the plaintiffs didn't raise the circumvention issue, Judge Marshall didn't need to address it. He dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, so Ambrose can amend its complaint and try again."
(In fact, as pmh said, he could overturn his own ruling to the extent he could rule differently when the case is brought before him again.)
That said, I'm glad this judge did the sensible thing.