On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, Arnold P. Siboro wrote:
> I am not sure if this means that no copyright problem with doing
> this, or if Sony has specific licensing agreement with broadcasting
> companies in Japan.
Or Sony just doesn't care enough to stop the product for it.
These situations are complex, and it's not necessarially just copyright
law that applies here. Basically there are three things to consider:
1. Does the controller of the content wish you not to do this?
2. Do you feel that it's morally wrong?
3. What specific laws apply?
For the first case, chances are, "yes." Basically, as far as the large
media companies are concerned, anything they can do to make you pay
more money is good on them. If they could charge you for a DVD and let
you watch it only once, they would. (They've tried this.) If they could
keep you from making any recordings of broadcast content, they would.
(They're still trying for this.) If they could stop you from using
purchased content outside a very limited geographical area, they would.
(They've had some limited success with this.)
For the second case, well, it's your thing. Do you feel your definition
of criminal matches that of the media companies? If so, go with their
guilelines? Do both media companies and the government call your actions
criminal, but you think they're fair? (E.g., playing a DVD you bought on
a Linux box.) If you're not likely to get caught, do it anyway.
The third case is very, very difficult, as the laws are different for
every region. (In Japan it's illegal to chip a Playstation 2 so you
can play games bought in the U.S.; in Australia, at one point, anyway,
it was illegal to attempt to prevent the sale of multi-region DVD
players.) When you're talking about doing something effectively across
two regions, it gets even worse.
However, if you're doing this stuff for personal use only, and you are
not giving or selling free copies to others, the chance that you'll get
into trouble are pretty slim. So using your morals as a guide, option
#2, will probably work just fine.
cjs
--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974
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Received on Tue Jun 21 06:17:43 2005