Illegal Copying

This just came to mind. At what point is something considered copying? While watching a DVD on the computer, I wondered how I'd implement the DVD player software -- assuming it weren't encrypted -- which would be quite fun one day. Well, I'd open the files on the DVD, copy data to memory, decompress the data, and stream the results to the audio device and video-card.

Now; here's the fun part. Copy. Yes, to watch a movie, all of the content is copied onto the machine. And written on the disc is "Do not copy"... Hmm, and to say I'm sure that all DVD players do something similar (especially if they are buffering parts ahead in case of future seek problems).

If you can see it, it was copied into a memory buffer somewhere. With HDMI, the decompressed video data will probably be on the monitor itself; but it's still a perfect copy.

Like unprintable and unsavable PDFs, a copy of the PDF resides in memory on the local machine (it'd be stupid not to). Hence, anything viewed on the web is already copied to the local machine. Anything viewed on the web is downloaded (even streamed data; no matter what hoops someone has to jump, it still gets decompressed somewhere in memory to be sent to the video-card's memory).

The moral of this story, to play or watch a movie implies that it is copied. "No Illegal Copying" would be a better phrase (and that is what should be assumed they meant) - however that would reveal to everyone that there is such a thing as legal copying. They could say "no copying for more than 3 seconds at a time" (for those of us with extremely huge buffers), but could just seem as confusing.

Or they could do like they did with my "Rise of Nations" and "SimCity" discs. Include a nice blurb like "If you think these discs are illegal, contact Microsoft", or just don't mention it. (It's all detailed in the EULA anyhow...). I only wish I could read the EULA before buying the product (aka, in store, and before popping in the disc; some games like HL2 I would have liked to have a different EULA - it was one where some clauses I wanted to refuse; but what store accepts returns on opened software?).