Ruling against DVD program latest twist in copyright law

Pete writes “DO YOU HAVE the right to make a backup copy of a DVD movie in case your kid scratches or breaks the original disk? This Baltimore Sun story reports that a federal court in California says no. But don’t worry – you can copy a taped version of the movie without risking time in a federal slammer.

This bizarre twist in the fight over U.S. copyright law occurred this month, when a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco ruled that a popular commercial DVD copy program violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and ordered its publisher, 321 Studios, to stop selling it within a week.”