Is this illegal?

livEwirE

Hi all,

Need to clarify this one please.

In Ireland, is it legal to make a backup of a dvd you own. I have some of my kids dvd's I'd like to backup as the originals are very worn after several viewings.

I am not 100% sure how to make a dvd backup so I have asked a friend to do it for me. I will pay him a small fee for doing this. This will cover his time and labour. Is this illegal to do this? He will merely backup up the disc and give me the copy, there will be no copied covers etc. and the words BACKUP COPY will be written on the disc surface, so it will be obvious it is a backup only.

Please do NOT offer advice on how to backup the DVD's myself thanks.

All advice appreciated.

~livEwirE~

Bob_Harris

Who cares? :pac:

Just do it, as they say.

livEwirE

The main thing is paying my buddy to make the backup copies for me. Is the 'payment' illegal?

Bob_Harris

I could suggest doing it yourself, for free, as it is very easy but you seem set against that.

Unless your mate is an undercover cop I don't think you'll end up in jail.

livEwirE

Cheers Bob, sounds like it could be okay. I don't really have the time to do it myself, I'm not entirely dead set against it. If I was to do it myself what is the easiest/fastest software to use, preferably 'one click' software;)

Voodu Child

Technically it's illegal to back up a DVD that you own. We don't have a 'fair useage' clause here unfortunately as far as I know. Kinda stupid to be frank, given how easily a disc can be damaged or scratched. Personally I have all my DVDs backed up onto hard-drives. I still have the discs, just have them ripped to HDD for convenience and as a backup.

It doesnt really matter if you're paying a buddy to do it or do it yourself, its all the same.

PogMoThoin

Is it even legal to lend a Dvd to a mate?

5uspect

Probably not. AFAIK you're allowed to make backups in the UK.
And yes there are plent of quick "one click" backup programs out there.

Bob_Harris

livEwirE wrote: »

Cheers Bob, sounds like it could be okay. I don't really have the time to do it myself, I'm not entirely dead set against it. If I was to do it myself what is the easiest/fastest software to use, preferably 'one click' software;)

Commercial DVDs are usually dual layered DVDs with a capacity of 8.5 GB. Movies, plus extras, menus, etc might be in the region of 5-8GB.

Standard recordable DVDs are usually single layered with a capacity of 4.7 GB.

So you have two choices.

1) Use DVD Decrypter to save the entire DVD to your hard drive for archival purposes. Maybe purchase some dual layered recordable DVDs (fairly expensive and your burner needs to support them) and burn the DVDs at a later date.

2) Use DVD Shrink which will decrypt and "shrink" a full sized DVD down to under 4.7GB, by removing extras, extra sound tracks and/or re-encoding the whole DVD to a smaller size. You can save the resulting smaller DVD to your hard drive and then burn it to a standard recordable DVD with some CD/DVD burning software.

Overheal

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Is it even legal to lend a Dvd to a mate?

im not sure its illegal.

livEwirE

Great advice here guys, I might go down the route of buying some blank DL disks(Verbatim) and find a one click program to backup the discs, cheers for all the answers, now all I gotta do is find some of those DL discs at a cheap price