Just a little rant about the DMCL.

I have a TV, VCR, DVD player, satellite reciever, and an original NES (Mmmm, 8-bit games) in my living room. Now, I want to have it set up with everything plugged into the 4-port switchbox and then routed through the VCR to the TV. Makes it convienient, because I can record from the satellite and if I, for some wierd reason, decide to record a NES game onto tape, all I have to do is switch the box over to the correct port and hit Record on the VCR. Well, sorry, the RIAA (or whoever wanted the DMCL in the first place) has to make life heck for me. I can't do this, because if I route the DVD through the VCR, the picture is all wavy and pulses. Why? Because I COULD record a DVD onto a tape!

Let me explain this. The way movies get pirated is this: Somebody goes to a theater with a camera and a microphone down their pants leg, points the camera at the screen, and hits record. THAT is how it's done. And when the movies are copied from DVD, they're copied directly onto a hard drive. Nowhere is a VCR involved. So why is it illegal to have a decent picture when the DVD is plugged into the VCR?

The thing that people need to learn is that no matter what you do, the only way to prevent copying is to prevent viewing, and that would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? CD copy protection, layer upon layer of CD keys and reg codes, Product Activation, etc. etc. etc. All you're doing is making it very slightly harder to copy something. It doesn't matter what you do to a DVD or whatever, it's impossible to prevent you from pointing a camera at the TV screen. There's copy protection on some audio CD's that makes a burnt copy have "pops and whistles". Nothing to prevent copying, though. My portable CD player has a Line Out port on the back, which defeats that copy protection. And if all else fails, sticking a microphone next to a speaker works. Some games have copy protection that simply makes copying impossible. Or so the game companies believe. There's a wonderful little program called CloneCD which makes exact copies of a CD, and there is no copy protection in existance that can prevent CloneCD from copying.

And this is what really makes me mad: I can't route my DVD player through my VCR, but Eminem can steal an ENTIRE SONG and use it to make money. How is this different from pirating? Well, it's "sampling". Oh, OK then. How 'bout this. I didn't pirate that game, I SAMPLED IT! I didn't copy that DVD and sell the copies for a buck each, I SAMPLED IT! Guess what? I'm going to get laughed at, slapped with a fine, and/or sent to jail! And I know what the reason is. If Eminem plays someone elses song with his own rap plastered into it, he makes money, the recording industry makes money, and he could have done it in his living room with a couple of tape players in ten minutes. It all centers around money, really.

My point? The DMCL makes it illegal to route my DVD player through my VCR, and there's no reason at all for it.

I'm done ranting. Everybody tell me how wrong I am.