Copyright Office nixes DVD space shifting on DMCA grounds — no watching your DVDs on the tablet

The Copyright Office has ruled on whether DVD owners can “space shift” their content so as to watch them on tablets. According to MediaPost, the Copyright Office ruled NO to DVD space shifting.

What is “space shifting?” It is a copyright doctrine which allows media, such as music or films, which is stored on one device to be accessed from another place through another device without violating the copyright to that media (assuming the media was properly purchased in the first place).

The devices at issue here were DVDs and tablets. People wanted to view their DVD movies on the tablet, and to do so would require them to crack the DVD’s Digital Rights Management (“DRM”) software.

The problem with cracking a DRM, says the Copyright Office, is that doing so would be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright ACT (“DMCA”) which makes it illegal to circumvent DRMs except for educational purposes and other limited circumstances.