The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sure knows how to send some mixed signals to the general public.

The MPAA is well known for being like rabid dogs in protecting the copyrights placed on films.  Two of their biggest fights in recent years has been that you shouldn’t video record movies, and you shouldn’t copy (better known as ‘ripping’) DVDs to your computer.  However, now it seems they have figured out a way to somehow confuse the public even more by suggesting you video record a DVD.

huh?

According to a video posted on Vimeo, every three years the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress holds a hearing to review exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In 2006 there was an exception granted to film and media professors to rip DVDs to show scenes of a film in their class. Now it is being proposed this exemption be extended to all teachers and students that are using the clip in an educational setting. Well, the MPAA just can’t have that, so they have decided it is okay if you set up a video camera pointed at a flat screen TV, play the scene you want, and record it with the camera and then show that in your class or project.

Their reasoning is that this keeps you from breaking the copyright of the DVD (yet it is a violation of copyright if you do it in a movie theater…), and by using this method you can shoot one scene, pause while you change scenes, and then unpause and record the next one so you can just show them one after another with no editing.  They also try to convince you that this will be just as good quality as if you ripped the DVD!  Yeah… right.

This is the MPAA at its absolute best, which is to say when they are bing incredibly idiotic.  The video proof is embedded below, and it’s quite amusing in some twisted way.