Group items tagged

Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System [CSS] when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances: (i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students; (ii) Documentary filmmaking; (iii) Noncommercial videos. [Note: the term "motion picture" does not solely mean feature films—for the Library of Congress, it refers to "audiovisual works consisting of a series of related images which, when shown in succession, impart an impression of motion, together with accompanying sounds, if any." Hence, the term includes television, animation, and pretty much any moving image to be found on DVD.]

the longer explanation from the Library of Congress specifies that circumventing CSS on a DVD is only justified when non-circumventing methods, such as videotaping the screen while playing the DVD or using screen-capture tools through a computer, are unacceptable due to inadequate audio or visual quality. But nevertheless, this ruling greatly expands who can use ripping software to clip DVDs for academic and transformative use, including a range of derivative works like remix videos and documentaries.

Now, no matter your discipline, you (or your technological partners) can do what I've been doing for the past three years: assemble a personal (or departmental) library of clips to access for class lectures. Now we can expand the use of those clips to embed in conference presentations, public lectures, digital publications, companion websites or DVDs to include with print publications, or other innovative uses that had otherwise been stifled by legal restrictions. For me, having a hard drive full of video clips on hand enables a mode of improvisation not available with DVDs—if discussion shifts to talking about an example of a film or television show that I've ripped a clip for another course, I can instantly play it in class even without planning in advance by bringing the DVD. Think of the conference presentations you've seen where a presenter fumbles over cuing and swapping DVDs—with a little bit of planning, clips can be directly embedded into a slideshow to avoid awkwardly wasting time.