INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: davemccorkle on November 24, 2006, 05:29:52 pm
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I made a post a few weeks ago asking for a DVD ripper. Is there any chance you guys can incorporate on into MC12?
Thanks
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I don't think they have any plans on it, it has been asked before
Nero Works Good.
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Can you describe what you're trying to do? Of course ripping protected DVD-Video discs is not allowed by the license.
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Can you describe what you're trying to do? Of course ripping protected DVD-Video discs is not allowed by the license.
What license?
The DMCA makes circumventing CSS illegal (which is absurd but still currently true in the US and many other countries), but I'm not sure what license you're referring to...
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I was referring to the CSS protection, and I agree that it's absurd but true.
I was just asking for clarification on what he was trying to do, because it's possible he's talking about ripping non-protected discs, or maybe he meant to say "burning" rather than "ripping".
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Okay. Sorry! The sorry state of IP law drives me into a mad, raving, frothing hysteria of tinfoil-hat wearing mania. I just wondered what license you were referring to!
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To answer the parent poster's question more precisely (as if anyone cares):
If by a "DVD Ripper" you mean a function that will take the video on a commercial DVD (such as one you would buy from Best Buy or Amazon.com) and extract it and put it onto your computer in a format that you can use, possibly converting it to MPEG-4 during the process to save space, then this is not a function that MC will ever have for the foreseeable future.
The reason is that it would then make MC a "circumvention tool" as defined by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The vast majority of commercial DVDs are "protected" (if it can be called that) by an encryption scheme called CSS. CSS is laughably easy to break and there are many software programs available that can do this.
However, the DMCA does not care how terribly bad the encryption is (or even if it violates your other rights)... it states:
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
So... Unlike non-protected CDs, it is not legal to rip most DVDs onto your computer. Even if you legally purchased the DVD, and even if the reason you are doing the "ripping" is protected (and most are), and even if the encryption on the disc is so trivially bad that it is simple to do, it doesn't matter. If the DVD is encrypted, then you can't legally rip it. Period.
This anti-circumvention clause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention_rules) has now been further globalized, via the WIPO Copyright Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty), so unless you happen to live in a country not covered by a comparable copyright law (mostly those "oppressive regimes" and third-world countries) then it would be illegal in your country as well.
These laws work wonderfully in actually preventing piracy of course. ::)
About as well as our drug laws do in preventing people from smoking pot. Doom9.org is your friend if you want to flaunt the law and do this anyway. Google would be another way to go.
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Ok