Has anyone answered the OP’s question about legality? The OP is in the US, and attempting to copy DVD movies (I’m assuming commercial, css-protected ones).
My understanding of the DMCA is that any tool that breaks the css protection, except in very limited circumstances (and making a personal backup isn’t one of them), is illegal. The allowed “single backup” thing doesn’t apply to all classes of works in any case - I think it may just be audio and software.
A casual Google search seems to agree with this assessment, as does my reading of the act itself (you can find the text here .)
Anyone care to give a cite otherwise? I’ve got a lot of DVD’s I’d like to transfer to other media (particularly an iPod), but so far as I can tell it’s completely illegal in the US.
So it’s true that in the U.S. you can legally make a personal back-up copy of a commercial audio CD but not a commercial video DVD? Is there some logic in this law that I’m missing?
This is a zombie thread, but on the off chance it stays open: The difference is that in one case you’re “circumventing a copy protection mechanism” (the CSS on the DVD), and in the other case you’re not. If the audio CD were copy protected (and a few are), it, too, would be illegal.
The “logic” is that since there are always more hackers than copy protection developers (and for reasons relating to having to be able to unprotect the media to actually play it), no copy protection method has a hope of remaining unbroken on technical merits alone. This is a legislative attempt to add force to the copy protection. CD’s aren’t copy protected for historical reasons; it wasn’t deemed necessary when they were first produced (long before Napster).
The DMCA is astoundingly broad; discussion of its merits belong in GD, but folks have correctly pointed out that taken literally, pencils and paper are illegal under it (tools which can be used to break copy protection) – so it will probably undergo some modifications over time. Given the entrenchment of the media industries in maintaining their current revenue models–coupled with their massive lobbying and deep pockets–I don’t forsee the rules getting less restrictive any time soon.