375
‘My whole library is wiped out’: what it means to own movies and TV in the age of streaming services
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
375 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
59201 readers
2913 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Eh, they're not that big, especially if you discard the cases and store them in a binder.
I would also rather buy digital, but in general, they're not available DRM-free. I can rip the DRM from physical media, so that's what I do. Pirating is technically illegal, even if I own license, so that's not something I'm interested in.
You're okay ripping DRM illegally, but "piracy" is a bridge too far. To copyright holders they're the same thing.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think there's a legal defense under the DMCA, here's the applicable part of the code:
Subparagraph C describes the process by which the Librarian of Congress reviews such exemptions, and specifically calls out non-profit and educational use.
AFAIK, this provision hasn't been tested for a regular home user making digital backups of their copy-protected media for non-infringing use. There's a plausible defense here: I can't use a DVD player on my phone, so this law restricts my ability to make non-infringing use of the material I own when traveling without access to a DVD player (AFAIK, those don't exist on planes or at campsites) or my physical DVD. So it's reasonable to use a digital copy so that I can do non-profit research with the content on disks I own.
To me, that seems like a reasonable interpretation of the exception under this provision, and I think it has a reasonable chance of being upheld in a court of law. I don't think it's ever been tried, because copyright owners don't care about people making backups, and they wouldn't want to set legal precedent about this either. This argument hinges on whether ripping for home use can be considered "educational purposes."
So yes, I'm okay with ripping DRM from a disk I own because I think there's a legitimate legal defense. There isn't a legitimate legal defense for piracy, at least not one I'm aware of.
This is what I think about people using VPNs to access content. You're still accessing it contrary to the license agreement, it's still piracy. Just download it instead of paying for a VPN company to advertise on YouTube.
What is the point of storing something you know you will never use then? At this point can just throw out the disk.
Because then I cannot legally prove that I haven't given it away or sold it. In order to have any hope of a legitimate legal defense, I need to have a copy to prove that it's actually a backup. And no, buying (or borrowing) something, ripping it, and then returning it doesn't count as a "backup," that's illegal duplication.