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I have some relatively young children and when I got a faster computer, I gave them my old one. For the moment, I am keeping that computer entirely off network, but I would like to be able to put a few movies or tv shows on it for them.

But I am being stymied in looking for a legal way to do this. I would love to be wrong, but I believe ripping a DVD generally violates the DMCA, so I cannot go that route. When buying movies that are supposed to come with a digital copy, installing the digital copy virtually always requires an internet connection and is not (at least in a reasonably easy and legal way) transferrable to another computer which is not networked. I cannot find any site that would legally sell decent show downloads which are not heavily encumbered by DRM that also often requires an internet connection, even for government supported programs like Nova on PBS.

So, are there any options I am overlooking?

TimothyAWiseman
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3 Answers3

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No, you're not missing anything. If you intend to abide by the strictest letter of the law, you either hook the system up to the internet, find freely available kid-friendly non-DRMed content, or go without.

What in particular are you worried about?

If you're worried about acting unethically, ripping DVDs that you already own for the purposes of easier viewing (and keeping grubby little hands away from shiny discs) is pretty hard to argue against unless you're conflating legality and morality.

If you're worried about doing something that's technically illegal and having to defend that action to your children, Parenting.SE is that-a-way.

If you're worried about someone finding out what you've done and being arrested, please tighten up your tin foil hat. (Unless you're distributing the files via P2P, which is a whole different ball of wax.)

If you need a pointer to some software to help the process along, it's hard to beat MakeMKV and HandBrake.

Community
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afrazier
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Stick to movies that are now in the public domain, and thus can legally be copied however you please. Or lobby your representatives to get the law changed to permit people who have legally acquired a copy of a movie to copy it for their own use without Hollywood's approval.

Mike Scott
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I believe that DMCA only applies to breaking the encryption on the DVD. I am not a lawyer, but I do not believe that it applies to making a disk image out of the DVD. You can then load DVD images onto your kids machines and use legal DVD image mounting software (such as Daemon Tools) to allow your kids to watch them. The interface is pretty user friendly, so you should be able to teach your kids to use it.

Konstantin Tarashchanskiy
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