If it's possible for a conglomerate to have a nervous breakdown, then the MPAA is either just starting or in the middle of one.
The MPAA\'s next anti-piracy proposal will involve reenactment or interpretative dance. (IMG:ICHC)
At the DMCA 1201 hearings, held at the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, the MPAA argued that instead of ripping DVDs for classroom usage, teachers should instead record the sound from the DVD on a camcorder and record the image from a TV set.
Mull that over, and see for yourself in the video below.
Timothy Vollmer, an information technology policy analyst for the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy, posted a video of the MPAA demonstration to Vimeo. In his posting, Vollmer explained what was going on.
At the DMCA 1201 hearings at the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, representatives from the MPAA showed a video demonstrating how users can videorecord a TV set. They argue this is an acceptable analog alternative to breaking copy protection on a DVD, he outlined.
In 2006, film and media professors were granted an exemption in order to break copy protection on DVDs so that they could utilize high quality video clips in classroom teaching. Up for consideration during the 2009 exemption hearings is whether this exemption should be extended to apply to faculty teaching in all disciplines, and whether the exemption should apply to students, the post added.
It's ironic that the MPAA would rather teachers bootleg a movie, using a camcorder and line input from the player, instead of allowing them to simply use any of the hundreds of applications available to pick and choose scenes from a DVD and rip them for classroom usage.
Notice at the end of the video below, the DVD clip used by the teacher actually looks cleaner than the camera version. This is accounting for the fact a camcorder was used to record the presentation itself when they showed the clips.
Also of note is that they're using a seriously high-quality TV screen in the presentation to record the Harry Potter clip. Which classrooms have that kind of equipment, aside from schools with a decent AV budget? Most schools use older TV sets, so the quality would suffer tremendously. Poor quality makes for poor classroom materials.
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