Is this actually true? I thought there was inherent illegality to cracking the DRM on DVDs.
Granted, I doubt anyone is going to come after you for making a backup of a legitimate copy, but I think strictly speaking it's still illegal.
I am also not a lawyer.
17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A)
Which was the beginning of the end for ownership vs purchasing a license. That thing you paid for isn’t yours.
More importantly however, is the fact that there isn't a meaningful argument that making backups of physical media you own is ethically wrong.
I was just saying that I don’t think it’s actually legal to do so for a DVD since those usually have CSS encryption.
But at least in the US, it is a DMCA violation.
DMCA gets a little weird; Basically unless you're distributing it is a civil penalty (which, I could be wrong but would mean you'd get a Jury trial, even assuming it ever came up) and I doubt you would ever run into legal issues so long as you were only backing up for personal use.
It's where you get into distribution that anyone starts to care, and it's when you do distribution on a large scale that criminal penalties come into play.
However there may be countries where possession of an 'illegal number' or 'DRM Breaking software' is considered legal for personal use.
It's still sort of confusing to me because would that mean then that if you are making a personal backup in the United States, would it technically be allowed if you pointed a video camera at your own TV screen?
DeCSS proved that CSS is not strong at all. A Pentium III could bruteforce it in 18 seconds. It was also impossible to contain the source code because it was so short, you could print it on a T-shirt or write it into a haiku.
Sharing stuff is still illegal, so if you rip a DVD and upload it for others, that's technically breaking the law.