What exactly is a protected DVD?
Well really this is an easy answer. A protected DVD is a DVD movie that contains CSS or Content Scrambling System, which is a digital rights management to protect commercial DVD movies. Manufacturers or producers use CSS keys set which is a collective term for authentication key, player key, title key, disc key, second disk key set, and/or encrypted key to protect the disc’s content from being duplicated by unauthorized parties.
So is it legal to Copy a Protected DVD?
Now this is where it gets tricky. I'll just say this, it is illegal to circumvent the CSS in most countries. Now there are a handful of DeCSS software decrypters available. At the risk of defying the Digital Copyright Act I won't list what titles are available.
Are there legal solutions?
Now onto the fun part. I will say that there are ways to copy dvd's and there are easy solutions to do so. The top commercial products to use are:
- 1 Click DVD Copy - this is what I use and it works great, and the name says it all, 1 click.
- DVD neXt Copy - another good solution for backing up dvd's
- 123 DVD Copy - a 'lightweight' but still does the job
So if your looking to copy protected DVD's know the in's and out's before jumping in. |