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Old 09-22-2010, 11:38 PM
Ed999 Ed999 is offline
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Re: Is it legal to record video streams? Can it be considered as a piracy?


In my opinion:

1. In the UK and most of Europe, making a recording of a music track or a radio or television programme can only be (at most) a breach of copyright. Thus it is only a matter for civil law (i.e. private law), not a criminal offence. You cannot be prosecuted.

2. It only becomes piracy if you sell copies of the recording, since that does (or could) amount to a criminal offence (typically, a charge of counterfeiting might be made out, or a charge of fraud, depending on the circumstances).


As for the USA, Wikipedia has the following note -

"Within the United States of America, but not in Europe or elsewhere, software which contains measures for circumventing copy-protection code may be in breach of the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It is considered that only software which removes encryption from an RTMP stream (i.e. which unencrypts an RTMPE stream) is affected by that Act, and only if that software is used in, or hosted on a server within, the United States."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Ti...aging_Protocol

The problem lay with programs such as RTMPDUMP, which can record RTMPE streams. RTMPDUMP is no longer being developed or maintained within the USA, and has been replaced there by a fork known as FLVstreamer.

It's my understanding that FLVstreamer was created as a solution that contains no code for recording an encrypted RTMP stream. So it appears that it does not breach the DMCA, as it can only record unencrypted streams.

Last edited by Ed999 : 09-22-2010 at 11:53 PM. Reason: Clarification
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