Is it legal to record video streams? Can it be considered as a piracy?

Streaming media recorders (software capable of recording audio and video streams) such as Replay Media Catcher or WM Recorder are intended for use as personal archiving tools only. Please respect the rights of the copyright holders of any audio material you record.

If you like a broadcast you've recorded, please buy the media! Our web-site is not intended to be a replacement for the media stores, rather it allows you to listen/watch and make an educated purchase.

There are many good reasons to buy music videos, movies and video tutorials:

• You help support an artist, moviemaker, author, ...
• Your video files will be of the highest quality
• You'll sleep better knowing you did the right thing.

There are a lot of means to protect streaming media from illegal copying and distribution including password-protection and Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems.

You should also read the Terms of Service (ToS) carefully to make sure your stream recording will not violate it. Otherwise we strongly recommend not to make any recordings.

We can record TV shows with a video cassette recorder, DVR, computer TV and it is not considered illegal. Why stream recording of online TV broadcasts should be considered illegal then?

At the same time we do NOT support any illegal distribution of the recorded materials.

100% of video streams we know can be recorded using Screen capture software. We just try to describe a better approach so that our visitors don't waste their time and HD space.

P.S.: If you are a content owner/distributor and you want any information about stream recording from your web-site to be removed from stream-recorder.com or all-streaming-media.com, please contact us. Please also make sure your visitors can easily find information prohibiting stream recording from your web-site.

Applian Technologies, the developer of Replay AV, Replay Media Catcher, Replay Music and At-Large Recorder, has the following answers to legal questions:

Originally Posted by applian

Overview
As a content publisher, we take copyright laws very seriously. We also believe strongly in Fair Use. The laws are simple: When recording or converting media, please do not redistribute it to other people. This will keep you out of trouble.

Our products fall in the same category as VCR's, TiVo Digital Video Recorders (DVR's), Tape Recorders, CD Burners, iPods, and other popular consumer devices. All Applian products record streaming media not protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management), and are fully compliant with all copyright laws, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Only 1% of all online video and audio is DRM protected.

Here is what our products are NOT:

• We do not provide instructions or equipment to illegally access or tamper with software, servers, or web sites.
• We do not provide products that enable illegal access of cell phones and other communications or content delivery systems/devices.
• We do not provide software to unlock copyright protection.
• We do not provide tools for copying CDs or DVD's not intended for personal use.
• We do not sell products or services that circumvent digital rights management (DRM) technologies or technical protection measures for copyrighted works.

Will the RIAA or MPAA sue me for using your products?

The RIAA will not come after you as long as you record for your own personal use. File sharing services like eDonkey, Kazaa, Morpheus and the original Napster service put their users at risk, since redistributing copyrighted content or acquiring copyrighted content that you wouldn't otherwise have access to is illegal.

If you decide to share recordings with others, post them on the Internet, or sell them, do so at your own risk. This is definitely breaking the law.

What does the copyright law say about recording?

If you're really into the legal aspect of this, there are two important parts of the copyright law relating to recordings. We've quoted the actual text of the law below, and highlighted the important parts in green.

First, the basic right of copying is outlined in section 1008:

§ 1008. Prohibition on certain infringement actions
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

Next, comes the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is often used to stop distribution of certain copying programs. Replay Music operates by recording what comes out of the PC speakers, using capabilities built into Windows. We don't circumvent any copy protection systems, nor do we claim that Replay Music is designed to circumvent copy protection systems (which it isn't). The underlying technology behind Replay Music has been in use since at least 1999.

Below is the important part of the DMCA as it relates to copying and circumventing copy protection systems:

§ 1201. Circumvention of copyright protection systems

(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that —

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

(3) As used in this subsection —

(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

[compn]

There is a nice FAQ about fair use at the EFF's website
http://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php

Fair Use Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers)
An EFF FAQ

Last updated: 6:00pm PST, 2002-03-21

» More in depth information about Fair Use issues can be found at Chilling Effects

1. What is Fair Use?

In essence, fair use is a limitation on the exclusive rights of copyright holders. The Copyright Act gives copyright holders the exclusive right to reproduce works for a limited time period. Fair use is a limitation on this right. A use which is considered "fair" does not infringe copyright, even if it involves one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Fair use allows consumers to make a copy of part or all of a copyrighted work, even where the copyright holder has not given permission or objects to your use of the work.

2. How does Fair Use fit with Copyright Law?

Copyright law embodies a bargain: Congress gave copyright holders a set of six exclusive rights for a limited time period, and gave to the public all remaining rights in creative works. The goals of the bargain are to give copyright holders an economic incentive to create works that ultimately benefit society as a whole, and by doing so, to promote the progress of science and learning in society. Congress never intended Copyright law to give copyright holders complete control of their works. The bargain also ensures that created works move into "the public domain" and are available for unlimited use by the public when the time period finishes. In addition, as part of the public's side of this bargain, U.S. Copyright law recognizes the doctrine of "fair use" as a limitation on copyright holders' exclusive right of reproduction of their works during the initial protected time period.

The public's right to make fair use of copyrighted works is a long-established and integral part of US copyright law. Courts have used fair use as the means of balancing the competing principles underlying copyright law since 1841. Fair use also reconciles a tension that would otherwise exist between copyright law and the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has described fair use as "the guarantee of breathing space for new expression within the confines of Copyright law".

3. How Do You Know If It's Fair Use?

There are no clear-cut rules for deciding what's fair use and there are no "automatic" classes of fair uses. Fair use is decided by a judge, on a case by case basis, after balancing the four factors listed in section 107 of the Copyright statute. The factors to be considered include:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes -- Courts are more likely to find fair use where the use is for noncommercial purposes.
The nature of the copyrighted work -- A particular use is more likely to be fair where the copied work is factual rather than creative.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole -- A court will balance this factor toward a finding of fair use where the amount taken is small or insignificant in proportion to the overall work.
The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work -- If the court finds the newly created work is not a substitute product for the copyrighted work, it will be more likely to weigh this factor in favor of fair use.

4. What's been recognized as fair use?

Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.

In addition, in 1984 the Supreme Court held that time-shifting (for example, private, non-commercial home taping of television programs with a VCR to permit later viewing) is fair use. (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984, S.C.)

Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:
Space-shifting or format-shifting - that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, "ripping" an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
Making a personal back-up copy of content you own - for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.

5. Is Fair Use a Right or Merely a Defense?

Lawyers disagree about the conceptual nature of fair use. Some lawyers claim that fair use is merely a defense to a claim of copyright infringement. Although fair use is often raised as a defense, many lawyers argue that fair use can also be viewed as having a broader scope than this. If fair use is viewed as a limitation on the exclusive rights of copyright holders, fair use can be seen as a scope of positive freedom available to users of copyrighted material. On this view, fair use is the space which the U.S. copyright system recognizes between the rights granted to copyright holders and the rights reserved to the public, where uses of works may or may not be subject to copyright protection. Copyright law gives the decision about whether copyright law applies to a particular use in this space to a Federal Court judge, to decide after weighing up all relevant factors and the underlying policies of copyright law.

6. For More Information

Stanford University's Fair Use Resources Page

I think that more companies will end up in the law courts in the future surrounding the whole streaming video issue.

Check this news story out: seekingalpha.com: Reuters: Viacom /Google Battle Over YouTube Bears Enormous Significance
Regards

Dave

I think if developers still sell software for video stream then it is legal. This software has been selling during few last years with any problems. So if our law doesn't prevent it I'm sure that it is legal.
However it is not the problem of users but the problem of law.

[Stream Ripper]

Originally Posted by bukka

I think if developers still sell software for video stream then it is legal. This software has been selling during few last years with any problems. So if our law doesn't prevent it I'm sure that it is legal.
However it is not the problem of users but the problem of law.

The software falls under the same laws as DVR's or dvd video recorders - as long as they're not used to mass reproduce and sell the content, then you're fine.

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

Recording streaming videos is nothing more than a digital VCR. On regualr TV it's 100% legitimate fair use. The concept really doesn't change when you go digital. You are recording a streaming video (like TV show) for later enjoyment. In neither case are you supposed to share it and that's fair enough since anyone can watch online anyway.

Look up Sony Betamax case and you will find "Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)[1], also known as the "Betamax case", was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time-shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but is fair use. The Court also ruled that the manufacturers of home video recording devices, such as Betamax or other VCRs (referred to as VTRs in the case), cannot be liable for infringement. The case was a boon to the home video market as it created a legal safe haven for the technology, which also significantly benefited the entertainment industry through the sale of pre-recorded movies."

Studios hate this and since they lost the case they have tried everything including Orwellian disinformation to try to change the outcome. It is the digital millennium copyright act that congress passed that said you can't circumvent digital rights management which can be in transmissions. no where does it say you cant record. So if the stream is unencrypted then it is not illegal to record.

The only issue is the TOS restricting your fair use. That TOS is different than copyright law.

[hatetea58]

in my opinion. it will not matter a lot if it is for personal use

Yup it is illegal and considered as a piracy, if you're using it public-ally. But if you've record it for personal use only then it's not counted as illegal.

[Ed999]

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.