[hexydes]

Originally Posted by MSUeddie

Copyright is a property right to an intangible good. You say "why couldnt you just change forms for your own use." As stated earlier you may NOT make another copy of the work. You bought the right to use the DVD not to use teh underlying movie.

This is incorrect. You CAN make another copy of the work, so long as it is for personal archival purposes. Again, this is where we hit the Catch-22, because while this is provided for under the rules of copyright, the problem is that the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection. This is why the DMCA needs to be repealed until such time that it does not create contradicting situations with other laws.

It is a complicated concept.

That's too bad that our government has decided to make something so complicated that effects hundreds of millions of people. If it is that complicated, perhaps it should be thrown out and made less-complicated.

Take a CD that you buy. There are 2 copyrights, 1 is the right to the physical copy made of the music (the CD) which you have rights to use, resell and for other fair use.

Such as making a backup copy...

The underlying musical performance you have no rights to. Thus playing the CD at your bar is infringement, you have to pay a licensing fee to "perform" the musical performance on the CD. For the same reason, you have no rights to the art on the DVD, only rights to the physical DVD.

You are talking about making a Derivative work of another' s copyrighted performance, like it or not that is not permissible.

This is partially incorrect, at least in trying to link your first and second point together (about making derivative works of the original). There is no law, for or against, about taking a work that you have paid for, and altering it simply so that it can play on a different device. This is simply something that has never been tested in court, or had legislation made for or against it (yet). The last thing these organizations want to happen is for it to go to court, because it would lose. So I can only assume that over the next decade they will try to inject legislation into our governmental bodies so that it makes it a copyright infringement to take content that you have purchased, and convert it to use in a different way than they intended.

BTW - I love that you point to the RIAA and MPAA "lobbying" scaring you while in the same post defending how Oil prices are set.

He wasn't defending how oil prices are set; he was simply making a distinction between a physical good (something with natural scarcity), and a digital good (something with unlimited abundance). This is the very reason why this is called "copyright infringement" and not "theft", because in order for theft to occur, you have to have relieved someone of a limited good that they are now no longer in possession of.