Warners release Harry Potter DVD without Macrovision - a good sign. Warners have consistently been more clueful than other media companies, releasing music online in undamaged formats, and not making corrupt CDs that crash computers like Sony.

Stan Liebowitz (cited below) claimed that Macrovison's obvious violations of content creators rights was not DRM. Thus DRM, like Socialism, can be redefined to be what he likes and not what he dislikes. Macrovision is deliberate content damage - degrading video siganls so that the AGC circuitry in VCRs fails. Modern VCRs are required by the DMCA to have stupid AGC circuitry so Macrovision still works.

The language there about Professional recorders vs consumer ones could only be more blatant if it mandated a DRM helmet or TuneBlock:

Sixth, the exclusion of professional analog video cassette recorders is necessary in order to allow the motion picture, broadcasting, and other legitimate industries and individual businesses to obtain and use equipment that is essential to their normal, lawful business operations. As a further explanation of the types of equipment that are to be subject to this exception, the following factors should be used in evaluating whether a specific product is a "professional'" product:

(1) whether, in the preceding year, only a small number of the devices that are of the same kind, nature, and description were sold to consumers other than professionals employing such devices in a lawful business or industrial use;

(2) whether the device has special features designed for use by professionals employing the device in a lawful business or industrial use;

(3) whether the advertising, promotional and descriptive literature or other materials used to market the device were directed at professionals employing such devices in a lawful business or industrial use;

(4) whether the distribution channels and retail outlets through which the device is distributed and sold are ones used primarily to make sales to professionals employing such devices in a lawful business or industrial use; and

(5) whether the uses to which the device is most commonly put are those associated with the work of professionals employing the device in a lawful business or industrial use.

So amateurs can't copy videotapes, only legitimate professionals. No presumption of innocence. Now they want to apply the same ideas to all computers. Glad to see Warner are smart enough to realise that people might want to pass their DVD signal through a VCR.