It's about fucking time

A pause from my regular blogging (and irregular reading) to thank Warner Home Video and then rant about the MPAA (that's the Motion Picture Association of America, for those of you not in the know).

First of all, good news that I've been waiting for for over a year. The out-of-print-on-VHS 1940 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is finally—FINALLY—going to be available on DVD Oct. 10. Currently, I only own a copy that I copied from my professor's VHS tape. This is SO going on my wishlist.

However. The Motion Picture Association of America (like its music industry counterpart) is notoriously paranoid about copyright infringement and illegal copying. As a result, many newer DVDs come with built-in copy protection that prevents me, as an academic, from copying relevant 2-minute clips from DVDs to a VHS tape that I can play in class. While DVDs provide superior picture quality and widescreen options (I loves me my wide screen), they are also impossible to cue up to exactly the right section before going into the classroom. When I gave a talk to a fourth-year Austen film adaptation class earlier this year, I had a hellish time coordinating the technonlogy, especially because I was showing five clips from four movies. When juggling that number of clips for a lecture, it's best (and this is something I learned from the film prof I TA'd for last year) to put them all, in order, on one tape that you can simply pause and play as necessary. However, the new DVD technology prevents that.

One way I could conceivably get DVD-quality clips onto VHS is to illegally download the movie and get an S-cable to connect my computer to my VCR. Ironically then, in its bid to prevent illegal downloading, the MPAA has provided another reason to go bitTorrent.

Now, I'm not advocating illegal copying and distribution of movies here. I am, however, expressing my frustration over not being able to copy a short clip under the auspices of fair use for academic purposes. I can't legally photocopy an entire novel and distribute it to my students, but I can certainly put a passage from onto an overhead transparency for a class exercise. Of course, it's easier to reproduce words than it is to reproduce a scene in a movie. Perhaps I'll take those Pride and Prejudice paper dolls that Nicole gave me and act the scene out myself after all: "She is tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me." "I believe, ma'am, I may safely promise you never to dance with him." "In vain have I struggled; you must allow me to tell you how ardently I love and adore you." "Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"

And... scene.