Sorry Chris, whether you and others believe it or not is, with all due respect, irrelevant. The laws are clear on all this.
Let me ask you, what do you know about the DVD Authoring process? Seriously.
Do you honestly think what these people are doing is are just simply editing? Do you really understand what all needs to happen to do this "simple editing"?
Again, people doing this are nothing more than Hackers.
Here, why don't you try and obtain a copy of DVD X Copy (Platinum, Silver, or Gold).
Oooops, you can't.
Why?
Because the Courts found that such software (used to make those "personal back-ups" circumvents the Copy Protections to make the copies.
BTW, did you know that DVD distributors pay BIG money for that Macrovision copy protection?
Sorry Chris, bottom line here, aside from the fact that this case had NOTHING to do with "personal back-ups", which renders that whole argument moot, what it DID cover was companies illegally copying, illegally remanufacturing, and then selling illegal copies of copyrighted material.
Do you REALLY defend that?
I have authored several. At times, up to one a night. You?
Do you honestly think what these people are doing is are just simply editing? Do you really understand what all needs to happen to do this "simple editing"?
Yes, and yes. The technology required to perform the editing is really beside the point, if the editing itself is legal.
Because the Courts found that such software (used to make those "personal back-ups" circumvents the Copy Protections to make the copies.
Yeah. It was this idea to which I was referring when writing about the new territory created by copy-protected DVDs. When the actual act of editing a legal copy of some material for personal use is legal, why is the act of making such legal editing possible by cracking the copy protection then illegal? This is a messed up segment of copyright law, IMO.
Copyright should apply equally regardless of the particular kind of material at issue. If editing my copy of Basic Economics, by tearing out pages or blacking out phrases, is legal, then similar editorial activity must be legal for the audio recordings, photographs, paintings, video tapes or DVDs that I own. Legally, the technology involved is entirely beside the point, since copyright law should be technology neutral.
How about this: Is it illegal for me to buy the VHS version of a movie, encode it to MPEG, edit the MPEG stream and author my own DVD for personal use? I would argue that it is. And if it is, then doing the same to one of my DVDs, with the necessary technological actions, should likewise be legal.
As a footnote, it seems to me that the studios, producers and directors are aiming their ire at the wrong targets on this. These customers all bought a copy of the movie. They generated revenue for the studios. They aren't pirating. The real problem for the studios is the culture that entirely ignores copyright and pirates material in bulk. Asia and other regions do this in a big way. Why get so uptight about a few stores in Utah where people want to spend their money with you, but not get the vulgarity? Why tell them, "No, we don't want your money. You have to take our offensive content, or don't buy our stuff." It's rather bizarre to me.