I hope memes are okay here
I’ve got all of TOS, Voyager, and DS9 (as well as all the movies – well, official movies, at least) on DVD.
I went to the trouble of copying all of Voyager to a big ol’ hard drive because I re-watch it every now and then and that would make it easier. I kindof intended to do so with DS9 as well.
Just for personal use. Not with the intention of sharing it or selling the original DVDs or anything. Not that that 100% for sure makes the act of copying “legal”. I’m unaware of any caselaw indicating it is, though maybe the “Betamax Case”'s declaration that timeshifting is legal might push the likelihood slightly in the direction that maybe courts would find it legal if they haven’t made any decision directly about copying just for personal use and not publishing. (IANAL, not legal advice, go hire a lawyer.)
But one disk was encoded differently than the rest and somehow I wasn’t able to get all the content onto the drive in a form that I could reasonably watch it from the hard drive. Even though it works just fine in my Bluray player.
Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to do put all the content on a drive, but it’s probably just as fine to swap disks as I’m watching.
There doesn’t to be precedent from case law, the DMCA already allows for copying something for the purposes of backup for personal use only.
The backup provision applies to “computer programs” only. Not TV shows, movies, music, stage plays, player piano rolls, etc. (The relevant law is in 17 U.S.C. § 117 a.)
Maybe courts would find that fair use would allow the copying I described above. After all, in the “Betamax Case”, the Supreme Court found that at least in many circumstances, timeshifting can be considered fair use. The Supreme Court’s decision can be seen in this document. The first sentence of the last non-footnote paragraph of page 13 (part of the same opinion written by Justice Stevens) reads “When these factors are all weighed in the ‘equitable rule of reason’ balance, we must conclude that this record amply supports the District Court’s conclusion that home time-shifting is fair use.”
But they would have to read pretty thoroughly between the lines of federal law to do so. (And, again, that sometimes happens like in the Betamax case. But…)
So, it’s far from certain what the courts would think about that sort of use.
(Again, NAL. I kindof geek out on this stuff. Lol. But I don’t even have a shadow of a fraction of enough expertise to give any legal advice on this.)
