I have season 2 of the Sopranos on DVD. It’s a 5 disc set. We lost the fifth disc. I know someone who also has that same set. If I were to copy his fifth disc onto a DVD-R, would I be violating a copyright? My argument against it being a violation is that I already own the set. I always assumed you were allowed to make backup copies for your own use. Does it matter if it’s somone else’s disc that I’m copying?
I assume it would technically be breaking copyright laws, but I don’t see any moral reasons for you not to do it. You paid for it already. Just because you lost one of the discs doesn’t mean that you should have to buy the whole thing all over again.
If you use decss or a similar program to make a copy of the digital stream: illegal under the DMCA.
If you make an analog copy of a friend’s video: illegal because you don’t have “fair use” rights to the friend’s video.
If you make an analog copy of your own video: Could be “fair use”, but I think you are supposed to obtain permission or “archival rights” from the copyright holder.
IANAL, but the problem is that circumventing copy protection, which is required to extract any data from a DVD, is a federal crime under the DMCA. Your fair use right to make a backup only exists to the extent that you can do so without violating other laws.
You could try contacting the manufacturer, if you supply proof of purchase and complain enough, you may get a replacement.
I disagree with this much-- as long as you did purchase your own copy and that the owner of the source disc gives permission, then the question of whether this is “fair use” probably is not affected by whether you’re using your disc or his. However, I do not know if this would be fair use or not; there are arguments to be made on both sides. The Audio Home Taping Act of 1984(?) seems to indicate that a similar practice using analog copies of audio cassette tapes would be fair use, but digitally-encoded video is obviously a different beast than analog-recorded audio.
AFAIK it’s an open question whether such copying would be fair use, but I do agree with FDISK that any effort to bypass the copy protection on a disc is a federal offense under the DMCA.
Cliffy: Since when are logical and legal the same thing?
Fair use is limited. You can copy, quote, etc. but you can’t pass that right to someone else. I might be able to create a backup copy of a CD that I purchased. But I can’t create a backup copy of a video that I rented from Blockbuster. And Blockbuster can’t give me permission to do it either.
Note: to copy a DVD does not require decoding the copy “protection” scheme. One of the peculiar beliefs uttered in court by MPAA lawyers all the time is how the publication of the decoding algorithm would lead to pirating. Pirates don’t decode the disk, they just copy it. Decoding is for viewing.