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Comment by Retr0id | Hacker News Reader

However, you will stop owning that copy the moment the DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable. Physical media is a good start, but DRM-stripped digital is the ideal.

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If you buy a DVD you have the right, in every sane jurisdiction I'm aware of, to rip the movie from the DVD into an iso. You can then discard/recycle the media and retain the digital copy you have the right to view privately in perpetuity. It is a single consumer license though, as is logical, so it's likely illegal for you to continue to watch the ripped iso if you resell the media with the content still on it or resell the media with any portion of the value coming from the markings from the content or the fact that it used to contain that content. You probably want to shove it in a closet somewhere or just reuse it as rewriteable media for whatever purpose you need - retaining physical ownership of the media makes things simplest legally.

You are only able to do this because the DRM was cracked long ago.

DRM is like a vibe, man - if you have the ability to output a video stream to an arbitrary display device you can always bypass DRM and it's never been illegal[1] to do so (though publishing approaches to defeat it often is).

1. To my knowledge, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

"bypassing DRM" is explicitly illegal according to DMCA. Don't conflate "unenforce{d,able}" and "legal".

Gosh, I didn't know the DMCA went that far. I had assumed it was in line with Canada's TPM related laws which do disallow direct circumvention of DRM but do specifically except format shifting if the copy will be used for a legal purpose. I guess be careful and check your local jurisdiction.

The US Library of Congress is given a Special Exemption in the DMCA [1] and so far the Library has been using it to grant a Backup Exemption that format shifting is legal for backups. Due to the nature of this exemption it has to be debated and reviewed every 3 years, so it's in a weird legal status if it "will always" be around.

[1] (a)1(C) here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

You don't have that right on the US. The AHRA is the only law which permits format shifting and it only applies to audio.

In Finland DVD's CSS was ruled to be strong technical copy protection system (tehokas tekninen toimenpide). In that exact case a person had made a program which bypassed it and published it. He was found to be criminally liable though he didn't get any fine/prison time from what I remember.

In Finnish criminal law the threshold is "significant harm", but given that there were already multitude of ways to get around DVD copy protection the "significant harm" clearly isn't very high bar. Also both distribution the method and actually using the method are both criminalized.

Finnish Copyright Act does individual to bypass copy protection to view the content, but it notably does say that you are not allowed to copy the work.

Unfortunately I cannot find the exact page right now, but I found one of the appeal documents from from https://www.yumpu.com/fi/document/view/38482300/1-helsingin-.... It's probably under https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/nikki/, but it's no longer available and Internet Archive is currently giving 503 when trying to access the old pages.

Shoutout to DVD-Jon from Norway.[1] I'm pretty sure we've settled on it being legal nowadays, but it took at least that court case for it to happen (not to mention that it was a fucking clown show).

There's a quote on his Norwegian Wikipedia page from the then minister of justice: 'Some people may think [circumventing DVD DRM] is cool and stuff, but this is an activity that is devastating for the industry'.

If it really is devastating for the industry, the industry should really figure itself out. And for that matter, with hindsight, it doesn't look like it really did anything.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lech_Johansen

Finnish case happened after DVD-Jon. To my knowledge there also hasn't been any new cases which went other way (or any way) in Finland & law hasn't changed so it's technically still illegal. Of course it's up to prosecutor to determine if they want to actually go ahead with prosecution & it's also not a crime which gets discovered often so the risks are quite low, especially if you are just ripping DVDs for personal use.

> DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable

If I am the reason for damaging my purchase then I am fine with that characteristic of the purchase.

Same happens with books, you buy the copy and if you don't take care of it, soon it will become unreadable.

DVDs degrade naturally. Good care will extend the lifespan but not indefinitely.

Other things as well degrade naturally, some faster, some slower, some depending on the use.

I am fine with that characteristic of the purchase, I am not fine when my purchase can be taken away from me abruptly by the decision of random Joe

I’m still playing CDs from 1985 without any issue. And they often sound way nicer than overcompressed remasters I can find on Spotify. Would it be different with DVDs for a reason I ignore ?

They may be more susceptible due to the finer grooves alone, I guess? Although so far I've also never had any DVD or Blu-ray go bad.

Recordable discs are another matter, though. Much more sensitive because the pits are "burned" instead of "pressed" (not sure about the correct terminology). And some of those materials were so bad that back in the day, I often had blank discs that went bad before I even had a chance to burn them. Nowadays I'm using M-Discs and hope they'll hold up their promise. They should outlive me, anyway.

everything degrades. We live in a world ruled by entropy. Even digital stuff degrades. It has to be stored somewhere, in some form, and there is always a risk of loss. No matter what.

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