Circuit City Flouts The DMCA For A Tenner

Well, well, well! Look who’s violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act! For only a couple of fins, Circuit City will take your DVD and an iPod and flagrantly breach copyright at your behest.

How does this violate the DMCA? Well, according to the act, any attempts to work around an encryption scheme is prohibited. Every DVD comes encrypted. Ergo, Circuit City’s breaking the law for customers, thousands of times per day.

Note the caveat: “Transfer must be from an original copy of your DVD collection.” We’ll swat aside the of/from confusion to point out how gleefully imprecise a criterion that is. Time to load up your trunk with a buddy’s DVD collection and head on down to Circuit City. “Just what I needed!”

Of course, the most savvy of us don’t need to pay Circuit City ten bucks a pop to breach copyright. In fact, paying to breach copyright pretty much defeats the whole purpose of it. Either way, Instant Handbrake will do the exact same thing for free, without some Circuit City monkey smearing putrescent grease all over your copy of Purple Rain.

Thanks to Joel for the pic!

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