This may be a very geeky qun, but i wanted to know if backing up of DVD movies (your own) with no commercial interest legal? basically i would like to upload them to my harddrive and access it across my house. i have heard ppl copy stuff borrowed from netflix and blockbuster which may be illegal. but what about the self owned ones.. thanks CL
It is piracy and illegal to be downloading movies off the web. I'm not a lawyer or anything, but all I heard from someone I know is that using it for personal use could go both ways. Correct me if I'm wrong.
It depends a little where you live.. Under that stupid DMCA thing it is now illegal to attempt to bypass any copy protection or encryption designed to stop you changing a format or making a copy (in any way, on to any media) of the content. Apparently when you buy a film or whatever it never really belongs to you.. you have just paid for a license to watch it on "approved" equipment. Now if it's illegal to break the encryption, or copy protection and it's also illegal to download it.. I know which one is free and they don't take my money and make me a criminal..... so guess what stuff the MPAA mafia!! (actually they need to make some films worth watching first, cos this years offerings have been poor)
If you live in the states fair-use and DMCA contradict each other. Fair Use states that you can create a backup of your legally purchased items, but DMCA says that the tools required to do that are illegal as well as the circumvention of any copy protection. It's definately a Catch-22 and it, of course, depends on where you live as the laws regarding backups are different everywhere you go as stated by varnull.
as far as i know, its ok to backup your own dvd's so long as you don't start distributing them (at a cost or free). also, as soon as you lose posession of the dvd, you have to delete the backups
Abhi262, if you live in the U.S. you have it totally wrong...have a read. http://www.burningbits.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t= FYI Australia, Canada and England have similar laws regarding Fair Use and your rights as a consumer to make copies of your purchased movies.
