Is Copying A DVD Legal?

The answer to this question depends on the laws in the country that you live in. There is an ongoing debate concerning the legality of copying DVDs for personal use, and this debate has been going on for a long time. This is because there are elements of the entertainment industry that are very against allowing consumers to do any form of copying of DVDs, whether for personal use or otherwise, as they believe that this inevitably leads to greater intellectual piracy.

The reason for this is that there is a thriving industry that deals in pirating and either selling or distributing illegal copies of movies, games, music, and any other form of digital media. This has resulted in the media industry losing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, making it a very serious case indeed.

If you live in the United States, then you are technically allowed to make backup copies of DVDs that you have bought and own. The law there is somewhat curious, however, as there is another law that states that it is illegal to remove any digital encryption from a commercial DVD. The problem with that is DVD copy software must first remove any form of digital encryption that is present in order to copy a DVD. Since almost all of the DVDs currently available include some form of digital encryption, copying any of these DVDs is, strictly speaking, illegal.

This is why most DVD copy programs will not include a utility to decrypt the CSS Decryption that can be found on almost every commercial DVD in existence. This is to avoid any form of legal action against the software developers. Instead, programs such as 1Click DVD Copy 5 and DVD Wizard Pro simply include the ability to integrate third-party CSS decryption software. Such software is usually developed anonymously and can be downloaded for free from a website. In this way, developers of DVD copy software circumvent the rule against developing any form of software designed to remove CSS encryption.

While it is technically illegal to remove CSS encryption, this does not necessarily make it illegal to create backup copies of your own DVDs. The confusion arises from the fact that the law clearly allows people to backup DVDs that they own. In order to do this, it is necessary to remove the CSS encryption on those DVDs. It is therefore argued that this law implicitly makes it legal to create backup copies of your own DVDs. To date, there has been no record of any legal action against a consumer creating backup copies of DVDs that they already own.

So if you live outside of the United States, then you should definitely make enquiries as to whether it is legal for you to create backup copies of DVDs that you own. You would hardly want to purchase DVD copy software, only to find out afterwards that it is illegal for you to use such software.