Anti-ripping *always* infringes on fair dealing?

[Matthew Skala]

Here's a thought I had while reading the latest Slashdot item about the
CDs with built-in "smart cards".  Note that in the last day or so there
was also that story about "SACDs", with a high-quality and low-quality
version of the music and the claim that the low-quality version would be
rippable and the high-quality not.

Manufacturers do stuff like this in order to prevent people "ripping"
music to computer hard discs, because they claim that the reason people
rip discs is to illegally copy them.  People on our side of the fence
claim that we rip discs mostly for perfectly legal reasons, so ripping
should be allowed.

But now here's the thing: aren't we missing the point?  I think a claim
could be made that ripping is *always* fair dealing.  Even if
someone makes an illegal duplicate of the music later, it's not the
CD->hard disk copy that's the illegal copy.  The illegal copy is hard
disk->CD-R, or hard disc->net->someone else's hard disc.  When they try
to prevent ripping, they're attacking the wrong part of the
supposed problem.
-- 
Matthew Skala, CS PhD student, University of Waterloo
mskala at math.uwaterloo.ca  <-- school
mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca  <-- home
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/   http://www.edifyingfellowship.org/

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