2000+ rips on my 8 drive NAS

[Ezatoka]

So you pay people so they can commit a crime? They're not making much money if they have to pay the BluRay from the money you give them.

[Navvie]

20 harddrives of varying sizes in various zfs arrays, in a Norco server case. I think 5,000 discs* ripped over the 13 years since I joined these forums.

I've still got four bays free in this case, then I'll start seriously looking for a 36 bay supermicro case at not stupid money.

*Discs that I own. Bought new or second hand, or donated by people who don't need them anymore because streaming is the future. Go figure.

[newbob]

So you pay people so they can commit a crime? They're not making much money if they have to pay the BluRay from the money you give them.

Asking an assistant to buy a blu-ray with my own money (since I pay them/reimburse this expense) and ripping the disc for my own personal use falls under the "fair use" clause. It's not a crime. If you think this is a crime, then nearly every user of MakeMKV here on this forum is a criminal.

[Radiocomms237]

Hmm... Okay, we're at cross-purposes then.

I'm not just trying to build a media library, I am trying to convert my physical media library to digital mainly for the sake of convenience (being able to organize and play it via Plex).

I still own everything I've ever ripped, it's just that I have boxes and boxes of titles in storage that I don't have the room to display, which doesn't exactly make it convenient to find and watch anything in particular.

[obitwan7]

I could be wrong, for I am not a law expert, but from what I've read....it says that "Digitizing Services: You may find services that offer to digitize your Blu-ray collection. These services might navigate legal complexities by ensuring you retain ownership of the original discs or that the process falls within specific legal frameworks (less likely given current rulings on DRM). However, the legality of such services can be a gray area and varies depending on their specific practices and location."

To me, that sounds like you have to retain the original discs and be in your home to even be considered, legal. Mostly it's the circumventing of the DRM, but does MakeMKV always do this? You can have the option to decrypt or copy it to a folder intact, correct (without circumventing). I'd like to know for sure, but....I like to own my discs as my source and have the disc quality, but in digital form. Being over 50, I love movies, but never had the budget to digitize all my movies before, but now I am slowly building up my collection and will be a lifetime thing until I die. Heck, if we could afford it, I'm surprised no one here has Kaleiescape, but that's a proprietary company and they do work with all the studios, so there is that. It's just so expensive to start with. That and I would like to know if Kaleidescape has those movies that are not on their service. Say you had an old DVD movie, how would you put that on there? They used to rip in the beginning, but I hear now that they no longer offer a Blu-ray optical drive to do just that, so......

Personally, the studios or distributors (whomever is in charge of movie rights), should have a movie/TV Show service for those old movies that were never even put on DVD, much less Blu-ray or UHD or just plain Out of Print. Watch It!, Malibu Bikini Shop.....etc. Those movies that I only saw on cable or on VHS, when I had one, we should be able to contact and say I would like a copy of and they send you one. Granted it would be more expensive than normal, say....$100, but......we don't have that option any longer. I used to work for Suncoast and we could order a VHS for that $100 price tag, but I never understood how it was done and I only filled an order once in the 1 year employment to know or ask questions about.

Sorry about the long rant, but.....I thought this was an interesting topic.

[dcoke22]

Personally, the studios or distributors (whomever is in charge of movie rights), should have a movie/TV Show service for those old movies that were never even put on DVD, much less Blu-ray or UHD or just plain Out of Print. Watch It!, Malibu Bikini Shop.....etc. Those movies that I only saw on cable or on VHS, when I had one, we should be able to contact and say I would like a copy of and they send you one. Granted it would be more expensive than normal, say....$100, but......we don't have that option any longer. I used to work for Suncoast and we could order a VHS for that $100 price tag, but I never understood how it was done and I only filled an order once in the 1 year employment to know or ask questions about.

I think in a lot of cases, especially for old, pre-dvd stuff, the studios don't have the rights to put things on DVD or blu-ray, even if they wanted to. Only some of the original The Muppet Show made it onto DVD and that was after a herculean effort to track down the rights holders and get them to agree to DVD rights. Not all rights holders could be found and in the end, they gave up before finishing the whole show. The Muppet Show had a different guest each episode and usually one or more musical performances so the rights situation is way more complicated than most TV shows.

I assume obtaining streaming rights is the same sort of issue as obtaining DVD rights for old stuff. It wasn't in the original contracts so rights holders have to agree and sign new contracts granting streaming rights.

[drxenos]

So you pay people so they can commit a crime? They're not making much money if they have to pay the BluRay from the money you give them.

Asking an assistant to buy a blu-ray with my own money (since I pay them/reimburse this expense) and ripping the disc for my own personal use falls under the "fair use" clause. It's not a crime. If you think this is a crime, then nearly every user of MakeMKV here on this forum is a criminal.

Actually, depending on where you/they live, you're breaking two laws:
1. If in the US, ripping Blu-rays protected by AACS (which most are) violates the DMCA clause on breaking DRM meant to protect copyrighted material.
2. If they rip a copy for you and keep the physical discs, that violates the copyright act in multiple countries. While making a copy of a disc you own is legal (fair use) in most countries, keeping a copy and giving the discs away is not.

Note, I don't really care whether you do this or not, just pointing out you're wrong about the law.

[dcoke22]

1. If in the US, ripping Blu-rays protected by AACS (which most are) violates the DMCA clause on breaking DRM meant to protect copyrighted material.

Further complicating matters, in the US the Librarian of Congress can issue exemptions from breaking DRM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions

I don't know where this stuff falls among all the rules around the DMCA, I just know it is complicated and a bit of a mess.

[drxenos]

1. If in the US, ripping Blu-rays protected by AACS (which most are) violates the DMCA clause on breaking DRM meant to protect copyrighted material.

Further complicating matters, in the US the Librarian of Congress can issue exemptions from breaking DRM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions

I don't know where this stuff falls among all the rules around the DMCA, I just know it is complicated and a bit of a mess.

Good point, and it's even worse. They have renew the exemptions every three years. At one point, they added an exemption for DVDs, then failed to renew it. So, for a brief period of time, it was actually legal to rip protected DVDs. Now, it's illegal again.