^^;;; Typo. I'll correct it.

Let's not discuss piracy techniques, thanks

My collection has 200+ DVDs, all original copies. No boots. Now I started late in the DVD game, and I would love to have another 300 or so movies that I could name off the top of my head, but I would never steal (rip) them.

That is like saying I am sick and tired of walking to work so let me steal someone's car. After all I am enititled to drive a car but I just cannot afford one right now (probably because you bought too many DVDs, but that is another conversation). They have insurance so I am sure they will get money for another car. Plus those damn insurance companies charge such high premiums I don't mind stealing from them. That is stupid and it is wrong.

If you don't care that something is illegal or wrong and you do it anyway then the comments here should be the least of your problems.

IMHO whether something is illegal or not should only be a consideration if you're likely to be caught. It's morality that should be your guide, and that's something everyone has to decide for themselves. That looks really silly written down... but to me it makes perfect sense. Look at it this way: Do you dislike murderers because they broke a law that forbids killing people, or because killing people is wrong?

In my view you shouldn't steal a car because it's morally wrong - you're depriving someone of a physical possession of theirs, and quite an expensive one that (they'll get compensation, but that's not the same as getting the car back). It's easy to make the argument that it's a whole different ballgame with copies of existing content, content which is also available on a medium that the person copying wouldn't have bought in the first place. It's illegal, but arguably no one loses out. Whether it's illegal or not is irrelevant (if you like I could go down the "What, you've never willingly broken a law?" route...)

This is the 2am ramblings of someone very divided on this issue ^^;

I do not steal a DVD in store and make a copy. I rent it, then make a copy if I think i'll watch the movie again sometimes down the road. Maybe for you it's great to either buy the movie, or don't have it at all. Morally a good person. Well, for me, I have the tools to rip, so I rip movies I kinda like for a small amount of money. Moreally wrong, but at least, I can pop the movie in whenver i feel like watching it. Yes, I am aware of quality loss, and extras lost, but for movies like How to lose a guy in 10 days, I don't really care about the extras, nor 5-10% in quality loss. For something like LOTR, yes I care and I own both EE.

However, i'm totally against bootlegs DVD. My mom bought a bunch and I threw them away, and told her to never waste her money on those again.

Just a question, how many movies did you watch during the whole summer.. from May to August.

What you described would be related more to someone breaking into a video store and stealing a bunch of movies. Eventually the insurance would cover the cost of replacing the stolen movies and everything is fine in the end.

The only way what you said that would be exactly like someone copying movies is if instead of stealing your car, they had a magical machine that could make an almost perfect copy of your car. The original is never gone and the other person has a car like yours but with a few extra scratches or more worn seats.

Ok, I have a question.

I have several VHS tapes like:

The Sea Prince and The Fire Child

Hey Good Lookin'

The State(MTV)

I have been wanting to put these on DVD for the simple fact that each time I play them the VHS quality gets worse and worse. They are that old.

If I wanted to, could I legally put them on DVD atleast until their legit versions are released on DVD?

If someone comes into your house is that only immoral because it's against the law? I don't think so. Burning disks is stealing, just like going into someone's house and helping yourself to their stuff, and is immoral regardless of the law.

Yes. This is what I mentioned earlier. Medium shifting is allowed as an exemption to copyright laws.
However it would not be legal for you to go buy a bootleg version on dvd since it was not made from your original. That distinction was show in the lawsuit against mp3.com. You are allowed to have backups or do a medium shift aslong as it is done from your own original and not from someone else's even if bitwise they are the same.
And to respond to X's comment on my comment there are many ways to backup or medium shift a dvd without breaking the css encryption and thus running afowl of the DMCA. I would go into my thoughts on the DMCA but I just don't have enough energy tonight.

Burning disc is stealing? Stealing what? Danm, if downloading MP3s is stealing like the way you're talking, 80% of the people on this planet is a thief.

To correct your example, it's more like this: someone goes into your house and steals your decoration ideas, go home and replicate his house like yours.

Pirating is stealing copyrights. Not the object.

See that is exactly the problem. Just because 80% of the population does it, which they don't, and it is easy does not mean it is right. I don't care if you are downloading and burning songs that you do not own, or if you are renting a DVD and then burning yourself a copy, both are wrong.

Put very nicely!
I'm nearing 700 right now, all original store bought.
My "joy" in this hobby is the joy of collecting something of worth, something I can jump into and escape reality for a bit... Its my collection. If I collected fine art why would I embarase myself by haning fakes on my walls?

Bootlegs are cheap copies... People who are into this sort of thing just isn't in my group of DVD folks who enjoy collecting the "fine art". I also salute the studios, and hope for years of more DVD entertainment in hopes that the bootlegers don't force all other kinds of restrictions, and/or price increase, or anything that the studios will have to do in order to protect there work...

I for one boycot the trash...

i havent burned any dvd's...and if i were to burn any dvd's it would be season sets of tv shows that probably wont be released...like the 90's X-Men cartoon or the 90's Spider-Man cartoon

Thanks Duz!

Now one more quick question. Would I be better off buying a DVD Recorder/Player or buying one for my computer?

There are also alot of old family VHS movies that I would love to put on DVD.....weddings, family holidays, etc. What would you suggest using if you were making backups of old movies, and family archival footage?

For ease of use get a settop dvd recorder, those are made to be easy. If you want versatility then get a DVD burner for the PC. With a PC Burner you can make fancy menus, do all sorts of stuff. It'll just take you awhile to learn it and figure it out. Unless you have a Mac then use their DVD software and it'll be easy. Plus you can use PC burners for data storage.
The computer section of this forum can provide you with lots of help/info.

About 20 or so eps of X-Men have been released on DVD. They seem to release a 5 ep disc twice a year. Same with Spider-Man 'cept they've only got 12 eps out.

Jason, not everyone is a top DVD collector. Some people like to collect stamps

Btw, I agree with Duz, a DVDR for PC is much more versatile. You can create menus, do PC backups, create FX, mix video/sounds.. etc etc etc etc.. And they're cheaper..

God. It was tedious reading 4 pages of self-righteous moralizing.

Since it's always been my beleif that this site has an excessive amount of "industry" here, all this rhetoric is probably because one of them probably the guy with the red goatee in that stupid "pirating" promo at the movies. Usually when that comes out, I give a loud "AAARRRGGGHHH!" (pirate-like) and laughter usually follows. Yep. Just because a majority does something illegal doesn't mean it's right or moral. Sort of like prohibition. And you know how that unpopular law ended up. DMCA, i'm looking at you.

As for "fair use". If I own it, I can do whatever the hell I feel like with it. Whether or not Jack Valenti can grease the palms of our government-for-sale to have them say otherwise. That includes making a backup. Since in reality, I am buying a license and the studios by all rights should replace a damaged disc since i've already paid for the license and not for the storage device. But they don't do that now, do they?

Don't the studios already get a percentage from the sale of burners and blank discs anyways??

i myself have seen DVD-R's with great packaging and cover art. It's not that hard to do. Plus you can indeed get almost identical quality from a DVD rip as the original.

I wouldn't actually go as far as saying i've ever done any of that seeing as how I wouldn't put it above these industry types here to start taking names and turning people in.

I'll just end by saying the best way to end DVD piracy is to make them so affordable that it isn't worth the time or effort. The industry actually does a pretty decent job of this as the average DVD retails now for about 9.00. This is something that the RIAA will probably just discover the day they're repo-ing Hillary Rosen's office chair.

I find the arguments here ironic because most of it sounds like the one I have with a co-worker.

I'm against pirating and never have downloaded movies or MP3s but I'll admit to copying a friend's CD from time to time just like I used to make tape copies of albums and tapes years ago. Besides the morality and legality of this argument comes the ramifications of our actions down the road IMO. Because of the ease of which we can make bit for bit copies of music and music and the ease of which it can be shared on the internet I feel it's a much bigger problem than the handful of friends making copies of albums like year's past. Sure it was still illegal copying and pirating of somebody's commercial property but in those days we were just making copies for a handfull of friends not posting it on the internet and sharing it with potentially millions of people so the amount of financial impact was much less to the artist IMO.

My co-workers arguments for making pirated copies are many but his main points are that he feels that theater prices are too high and by downloading movies he gets to see many films he wouldn't otherwise see. So I tell him to wait until it hits DVD and then he can buy or rent it but he says that DVD prices are too high for puchase and rentals are a rip off since you don't get to keep it. So he downloads them, burns them, makes his own labels for the disc, downloads or creates his own DVD covers and buys amray cases to keep them in. So I then counterargue that between materials and his time he'll probably spend about as much per disc as I do buying through Columbia House and mine are all full discs with none of the extras missing and of the best quality. He still doesn't get it.

So now I throw at him that the piracy problem is so big in the studio's mind that it will have a ripple effect on all of us in the future. Things like higher prices for DVDs, more inconvenient copy protection on discs that could degrade quality and cause player incompatibilities and looking further down the road the problem of the requirement of a DVI connection for HD-DVD, HD STBs and other up and coming technologies so that many of us with HDTVs without DVI will not be able to see HD-DVD at it's full resolution or enjoy the benefits of these other HD features down the line without an expensive upgrade in equipment. He still didn't get it or care because he says that he could care less if some high paid exec at some movie studio doesn't get his bonus or that other people that bought too early into HDTV need to buy again.

Finally when it came out that the MPAA was cracking down and going after some people like the RIAA he gave pause. Then he received a letter from his internet provider and he realised that he could get caught that was enough to make him stop downloading but it hasn't stopped him from borrowing from friends in order to make copies.

So if my co-worker is in any way a representation of the mindset that some of these pirates have then the only thing to make them stop is a legal mess. Morality and ethics and quality and collectability and future proofing your investment mean nothing to the idea that if it's out there to be taken it must be free and free is better then paying for it as long as you don't get caught.

Exactly!

All of these self-righteous people calling your a pirate and comparing it to physically stealing are probably the same jokers with KaZaA running in the background of their desktop grabbing the latest Britney Spears p.o.s.

It reeks of hypocricy.

It's just because they collect original DVD's does stealing content via burning / downloading suddenly become taboo. How about all the people that collect original CD's / Vinyl?

All we are getting irrelevant metaphors and analogies about things as off-topic as murder [go figure??]. Taking a step back for a moment, I'd like to remind everyone that the intention of this thread was created by someone seeking opinions regarding justification of a specific mindset, not a morally based yet flawed Clash of the Titans between a bunch of holier-than-thou's bashing their chests proclaiming how illegal it is when aaryn and others try to answer the very question that was asked.

If people want to get into legalities further or brag about the size of their authentic collections, they should start another thread.

I admit it openly and without guilt. I buy DVD cases and print out DVD covers for everything I copy. I've been downloading VCD's and SVCD's for a long time. Now I've moved on to DVD-R's. It's just too easy. I can rip a movie and burn it to DVD-R in 45 minutes. I'll be doing a "rent, rip and burn" with XMen 2 this Tuesday too. The only DVD's I buy anymore are ones like Family Guy, Indiana Jones, LOTR: Extended Editions, Sopranos, Band of Brothers. I'll continue to buy those no problem. But when it comes to your everyday releases like XMen 2 and Hulk, sorry It's getting DVD-R'd.

MrMacabre, your comments in this thread have been spot on. Brilliant!!

Thank YOU!

That's all DVD Talk ever is. A bunch of well paid middle aged guys forever bragging about how much dough they have for DVD's.

Of course they frown upon piracy. They can afford to be oblivious to it.

I didn't realize that the DVD Talk census numbers had come out for this year.

- moderately-paid twenty-something

Holy crap, just read this and now i really want to post.

I'm proud of the things I put onto DVD-R's. TV shows, mostly, like MTV's Spiderman and Ed, a couple of movies, mostly rented, but NEVER anything d/led off of kazaa. I pirate things, sure, but for some reason, I just feel plain BAD when I download a movie, so I never do it. I'm not a particularly moral person, but that irks me for some reason. Call me a walking Jumbo Shrimp.

Anyways, I've gone to great lengths to build myself a computer that could honestly be called a Bootleg Machine. Between the TV Tuner, the digital cable that runs into it, the DVD burner and extra DVD drive, and the fact that the computer gets used for nothing else, it may seem that I don't want to pay for any dvd's ever again.

Strangely, this is not true. Since I built that, I've recorded TV shows and burnt a few to DVD. I work at Blockbuster and get 5 free rentals a week. If I wanted, I could boost my collection by 5 movies a week, granted, they would be bootlegs. So far, of my over 80 rentals, I've burnt 3 movies, 2 of which were OOP. I find this hard to believe. I have 53 DVD's, not counting boots, and I am proud of all of those movies.

I realized that I love TV. I built a $700 system to take TV shows and put them on DVD, on freakin' Blockbuster wages, I might add. When there is a will, there is a way.

I am in college and I live in an apartment. I have a 13" tv and a cheap as all hell DD5.1 system. My freakin' computer monitor is bigger than my tv. Seriously college students, there are other ways to get movies than by bootlegging them.