Is burning DVDs against the law?
People may often ask questions like what kind of DVD can be burned, what is the law regarding burning of DVDs or is there any punishment the law will provide if I burn a copyright protected DVD? Answers to the above questions can be summarised as follows;
Burning commercial DVD and copy protected DVDs are extremely controversial process. Commercial DVDs are protected as per copy right laws and the burning of such copy protected DVDs are considered as illegal.
You can burn as many copies of DVD you purchased for the personal use as per the policy of the U.S. copyright law. But you are not authorised to take a copy of copy right protected Movie or an audio song.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed by US Congress on October 12th 1998 clearly states that the cracking of copy protection encrypted commercial DVDs without the permission of the owner is deliberated as a crime and contrary to the law. This law does provide exemption to the non-profit libraries, archives and education institutions under certain circumstances.
There are several DVD burning software products available in the market that supports consumers to burn different kind of DVDs– DVD+R, DVD+R DL, DVD+RW or DVD+RW DL. These DVD burning programs enables you to burn Movies, data, songs, including commercial DVDs.
DVD Copy 6 plus, My DVD, DVD Cloner, Nero Burning ROM are some of the popular DVD burning application packages. You can also download free trial versions of DVD burning software from internet. While downloading the original version make sure that these applications are legal and not breaking any copyright protection laws.
If anybody illegally burn copy right protected Commercial DVDs, the law has provision to penalise them on guilty of breaking CSS protection and illegal copying; the offender may sentenced for a period not less than 5 years as per the severity of offence.
However you can take copies of commercial DVD for archiving purpose with the permission of the author. In any case distribution and recreation of CSS protected DVDs is against the intellectual property rights. The CSS protected DVD author can file litigation on the court against the illegal copying and distribution of files.
A famous ruling on this regards was enacted by United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the Judge Susan Illston in the case 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc., Feb 19, 2004, where the judge ordered an injection order against 321 studio. The injection order was released on the very ground that 321 studio used copyrighted materials of the other party to make backup DVD software DVD X copy.