Neither are you. - caesurae

One could easily argue that using Flip4Mac's Drive-In software to copy DVDs to your computer is also in violation of the DMCA and other copyright statutes and is therefor illegal.

Oh, and MacTheRipper also creates a LOSSLESS copy, unless you consider the absence of the CSS encryption and various other copy protection schemes a "loss".

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Sunday, September 07 2008 @ 01:47 PM PDT

Your comment is irrelevant - bughunter69

Because first, I didn't make a statement about the letter of the law, except to say it's in flux. The spirit of the law, one assumes, is its intent to prevent piracy. If I make a non-CSS copy of a DVD I purchased legally, and choose to view that while not making the original DVD available to anyone else, I am not violating the spirit of the law because I am not pirating the movie.

Secondly, this sort of "crime" is virtually non-detectable, and therefore unenforcable. Also, this law has not yet been rigorously tested in the context I describe above, and I daresay there's a better than 50/50 chance that it would not survive a competent challenge in a fair court, or that the anticompetitive aspects of the anti-circumvention section as written will elicit future legislation amending these provisions. This is what I meant by "the letter of the law continues to evolve."

Finally, all of the above is academic anyway, because the thesis of my original comment was criticism of the market concept for Drive-in. There are other methods widely available, both legal and illegal, that provide far more convenience than Drive-In and it's no secret that most people are willing to use them.

Dependance on a controversial law to create a market is a poor business model for a commercial product. And given the availability of other, more convenient methods, Drive-In is also superfluous.

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Sunday, September 07 2008 @ 10:49 PM PDT