To rip or not to rip?: Is backing up a DVD fair use or piracy?; Economist.com, 5/1/09

Via Economist.com; To rip or not to rip?: Is backing up a DVD fair use or piracy?:

"SHOULD people who have bought DVDs legally be allowed to make digital copies of them for their own use? Any reasonable person would say yes. In copyright terms, that ought to be considered “fair use”. The law, however, presently says otherwise...

The one way you can legally copy a DVD, at least for the moment, is to buy one of the $10,000 home-server and player combos beloved by Hollywood moguls and made by a Silicon Valley firm called Kaleidescape."

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13579732