Is ripping blu-ray/dvd legal for amv's?

[boagz1]

I was googling different topics the other day and stumbled upon this website page: http://fairusetube.org/dvd-ripping-guide

In it the author says, " the Library of Congress recently made an exception to the prohibition in the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) which made it illegal to break the copy-protection on DVDs. It is now completely legal do decrypt DVDs and rip them to your computer for the purpose of using footage from motion pictures in noncommercial remix videos (a practice commonly called "vidding")". Vidding includes things like amvs. So is this true? Does this still stand today? Thanks for any input.

[UnluckyArtist]

Of course. I thought ripping your dvds was the most legal way to make videos digitally.. Some would say that it's the only way you should do it.

[boagz1]

Then how come the company DVDfab (sells dvd ripping software) is getting sued if it is legal?

[CrackTheSky]

Not a legal expert here by any means, but from what I can tell, no, technically ripping DVDs/Blu-Rays is not legal. AMVs are and always have been a legal grey area. Will you get prosecuted for it? I highly doubt it. The DMCA (or whatever organization would pursue this) has bigger concerns than going after individual editors. Remix culture is huge -- AMVs are a tiny subset.

If anything were to happen, it would probably be on the scale of action against streaming platforms like YouTube or Vimeo. Years ago, our community spent a lot of time fretting over "how long until they notice us", "it's not a question of 'if' but 'when'", etc. I think that cloud has passed us at this point, with the rise of YouTube (for an idea of just how small we are, Alexa won't even show stats for this website because it gets so little traffic).

So yeah. Illegal? Technically. Do you need to worry? No.

[boagz1]

I'm just worried that people will stop making blu ray ripping software for us given that places like dvdfab are getting sued now.