On Tuesday, 28 December 2004, at 12:42:31 (-0500), Chris Hammond wrote: > Is it illegal to rip a DVD to a file on your hard drive for personal > use? I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. As I understand it, using any technology (like DeCSS and similar tools, namely libdvdcss) to circumvent cryptographic protection (like that on most commercial DVD's) is a violation of the DMCA. This is why distributions like cAos, CentOS, etc. do not have it but certain foreign repositories do. Those outside the US are very likely okay, but those of us in the US are hosed. Michael -- Michael Jennings (a.k.a. KainX) http://www.kainx.org/ <mej at kainx.org> n + 1, Inc., http://www.nplus1.net/ Author, Eterm (www.eterm.org) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "You're just an empty cage, girl, if you kill the bird." -- Tori Amos, "Crucify"