legal status of digital copies of entertainment products for personal use

[Deleted]

I've got a couple of series that i bought and paid a license for in a store, mainly South Park. I want to watch these on my smartphone. I do not intend to share or distribute the copies i want to make to anyone, not even to my relatives. all I want to do is rip the DVD to my computer and convert the result to a format compatible with Android. what is the legal status on that? I know that I'm allowed 1 copy of a software product for archival purposes because of the DMCA or something, but what about a copy for personal use? Can I legally watch South Park on my Android if I own the DVDs?

[inux94]

You're allowed for personal use, not for sharing with other people.


So yes, I've done it aswell on my Windows Phone with Game of Thrones Season 1 =)

[Deleted]

got any source for that? sorry for the distrust, but i've burned myself on single line comments like that often enough to be weary of any advice people give.

to clarify: i do trust advice, but only if people can actually prove it's valid.

i live in Belgium BTW.

[drwelfare]

Legal, if they really wanted to burn you they could still try and push it and you could beat it if you had money to fight the good fight,

Not likely that it would happen for small things like that

[BicycleMafioso]

Only speaking for Sweden here, but if this is not the case in the rest of the world, it'd be daft (and no offense, since I only know of Sweden).

You are fully entitled to download any amount of (edit: and make) copies for private personal use, as long as you have bought the rights to use the media/software in any way at all.

[Deleted]

Well, thing is they can pin it to you if they want to. I believe the legal wording is something like this:

You are not allowed to reproduce, store, alter, copy, distribute, retransmit, or modify any materials on this disk without legal permission. All rights reserved.

"Ripping" content could be filed under "alter" and as such you aren't safe, really. I see no reason why they would want to pin a consumer for wanting to watch content they bought on a different device than a DVD-player - there are bigger fish to focus on.

[Dedweight]

got any source for that? sorry for the distrust, but i've burned myself on single line comments like that often enough to be weary of any advice people give.

to clarify: i do trust advice, but only if people can actually prove it's valid.

i live in Belgium BTW.

Couldn't say for Belgium, could try looking at your copyright law there and see if there's any mention of physical or digital backups for your software(I'd assume digital music/videos would fall under the software clause).

Here in the states is perfectly legal to make backups of your copyright material according to the US Copyright Offices website(http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html) so I can only assume a lot of the European nations would have something similar.

Edit: Reading the article again I guess Music and Videos are not permitted for backup legally but really who's going to report you for doing so?

[Drunkenvalley]

Keep in mind that "not allowed to reproduce, alter, etc" message is not a law, but a license agreement. If law says otherwise then law's what matters. But until then assume there's not a law that voids this license agreement.

I'm alas not familiar with Belgium's copyright law. That's a bit of the deal with EU: It's a heap of license bullshit.

[Deleted]

That's a bit of the deal with EU: It's a heap of license bullshit.

This is very true.

The thing is, it will cost companies too much money to pin a single consumer for "ripping" content for personal use. Even if they might have a case, it will cost them too much (both money and negative press) to actually see it through.

OP, really, you got nothing to fear. You bought the content, you have the right to watch it.

[Deleted]

Couldn't say for Belgium, could try looking at your copyright law there and see if there's any mention of physical or digital backups for your software(I'd assume digital music/videos would fall under the software clause).

That's just it, Belgian copyright law is ancient and outdated. the most recent law concerning this was made in 1994, with some modifications in 2005.

If i get it right, Belgian copyright law has 2 author's rights: moral rights and economic rights. the clearest explanation i could find is:

The economic rights of an author are the following: a reproduction right (right to reproduction, distribution right, right adaptation, translation and legal right destination), a legal notice and a public exhibition right (mainly of interest in works of art). These property rights are limited in time (until 70 years after the death of the author), and originate once the work meets the protection requirements. There are several exceptions to the above property rights, including the right to quote, the private copy, and exceptions for scientific, school or educational purposes, et cetera.


The moral rights of an author include a divulgatierecht (right of publication), a paterniteitsrecht (recognition of paternity) and integrity right (respect for the work). Moral rights are inalienable, the limitation coincides with the economic rights, and the moral rights can only be exercised by specified persons.

In belgium we do have to pay a small levy on blank media as compensation for piracy. but i can't find anything about whether we are actually allowed to have a personal copy.

[Wromthrax]

I find it shocking that people actually care about this so much to be afraid to put a song on their phone/MP3 player.

[BicycleMafioso]

I checked Wikipedia, and it seems that you are allowed to. It's a bit fuzzy, but that is more to your advantage than the other way around.

I find it shocking that people actually care about this so much to be afraid to put a song on their phone/MP3 player.

I care much in the same way that I would make sure that it's actually my car I get into.

[Archaeon]

More importantly... even if it is illegal, how would they find out?

[FearXI]

More importantly... even if it is illegal, how would they find out?

Well since he posted here in an open forum and if they really wanted (highly doubt) they can use this as intent and start watching him lol.

But really unless you're getting hundreds of things and making copy's handing out and or selling they won't care.
Sure it's a grey area just don't go around telling people you're doing it.

So in short it is illegal but at the same time it's not, AKA grey area.

[Orlong]

Here in the states is perfectly legal to make backups of your copyright material according to the US Copyright Offices website(http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-digital.html) so I can only assume a lot of the European nations would have something similar.

This is true to an extent. While you are allowed to have a backup copy, you CANNOT obtain that backup copy if you have to break encryption to do so as breaking the encryption is against the DMCA which pretty much means you cant have a legal backup copy since every company uses copy protection