“the right to control…”
Okay, so the news is starting to pick this stuff up. PC Magazine has a good writeup about it that covers the rights, while the Salt Lake Tribune fails to cover that stuff in detail whatsover.
What really irks me is this quote from the federal judge in California, “The right to control the content of the copyrighted work … is the essence of the law of copyright.” I thought the fundamental purpose of copyright was who has rights to copy something, not control it’s post-purchase status. Apparently I missed that boat.
Plus, the slashdot zealots are still at it with more nonsense, “This decision is based on the same principle that powers the GPL: The right to control Derivative Works! The GPL could not control the terms licences of derivative works without the basic right to control derivative works!”
By that same ruling, any “editing” that I do personally is also a derivative work. So, I guess now it’s against the law to rip a DVD myself and take out parts of it, since I’m creating a “derivative work.” Someone sue me.
While I personally don’t use or care too much about the businesses that “clean” the films, I do find it insane that our rights are being trampled on so much more, and I can’t understand why more people don’t see this as a copyright and fair use issue more than anything else.
I’m tempted to help out Jacob and start a site just with mplayer edit decision lists and distribute them for free so people can ignore the “naughty bits”, if only to piss off Hollywood even more.