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I'm a bit confused by the title. It seems to suggest that ripping a DVD in 2026 is no longer a federal crime, which I'm pretty sure it is. And that ripping a DVD in 1999 didn't require $22 worth of hardware and some free software -> both of which I'm pretty sure it did.

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Ripping a DVD is and was not a federal crime. The DMCA had carve outs for personal use and DeCSS was free speech (as argued and won by the EFF).

Using DeCSS to rip your own dvd was never illegal.

I'm not seeing personal use as one of the DCMA exemptions to prohibition against copyright protection circumvention: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-37/chapter-II/subchapter-...

The exemptions seem to be for pretty specific cases. Have you got a link to the EFF case?

The DMCA includes a provision for the Library of Congress to grant exemptions, and they exempted DVDs, but if I remember correctly the exemption does not include Blu-Ray disks.

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