No Fair Use Carve-Out for Tablet-Friendly DVD Copies

The Librarian of Congress has declined to provide an exemption from copyright protections for so-called place-shifting of DVDs to tablets and other devices.

The Librarian did create new classes of exempt circumvention, including to access captioning or audio descriptions on the DVDs, or to excerpt videos for commentary, criticism and educational uses, but on the recommendation of Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante. Librarian James Billington eschewed the time-shifting carve-out, which would have allowed the copying of DVDs so they could be played on tablets or laptops without DVD-playing capability. Public Knowledge had argued that the inability to play lawfully acquired DVDs on the newest platforms adversely affects noninfringing uses, and that it would be reasonable to allow consumers to solve that by making a copy for noncommercial personal use that could be viewed on those devices. Public Knowledge also argued that allowing the copies would not hurt the market or contribute to piracy.