Will my DVD collection drive me to piracy?

Right now, there's a battle going on, both in the courts and in the media— part legal, and part PR— between the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RealNetworks. The consequences of this battle will probably be massively significant for the future of digital video— I'll probably address the specifics of it in a seperate post when the case reaches a conclusion— but I think that to really understand it, you first need to put it in the wider context of what's already happened in the music industry.

I don't think I'm in a terribly unusual, "early adopter" position in that pretty much all of my music collection is on my computer. This is partly because I buy some of my music online (pretty much any singles I get are through iTunes these days, but I still buy the occasional album), but mainly because I rip all my CDs. Most of the music I listen to has, for the last 6-7 years, been an MP3 (or similar digital format) through the headphones of my phone or iPod, and since I moved house about six months ago, my bedroom stereo is now an alarm/radio with an iPod dock. (There is a CD player in my living room, but most of the time I listen to music, it's through my PC that's also in there.)

Before my music all moved to my PC, I used to spend hours making mix tapes, and my CD collection was always organized in a way that meant I knew where anything was- similar artists would be next to one another, solo projects would be next to the bands and so on. (So the Happy Mondays would sit next to the Stone Roses- both Manchester bands- with John Squire and Ian Brown's solo records next to the Roses. Next would be Primal Scream, since Mani from the Stone Roses played bass with them, followed by My Bloody Valentine, since Kevin Shields played guitar with Primal Scream for a while. You probably get the general idea...)

A few years ago, as I realized that I was listening to more and more digital music- not just on the occasional journey, but on a day to day basis, but I only hand a small selection of my CDs in a digital format that I could use on my portable devices, so I sat down and ripped all my CDs. I hated it as a job- it was a slow and tedious exercise that dragged out over the course of a couple of weeks.

Now, I rarely touch my CDs- but I do still spent a fair amount of time 'grooming' my digital music collection in a similar way; making sure that my songs are tagged with the right artists, genre and ratings. My mix tapes have been replaced- first by simple Playlists, then Smart Playlists later on.

The way I listen to music has changed as a result- I don't think I ever really listened to whole albums as much as the odd favourite track on my mix tapes, but I've probably gone even further in that direction. Apart from a first listen when they are brand new, I can think of only a handful of albums that I would ever listen to from start to finish. Digital technologies have given me more control over what I choose to listen to, so I've made the most of it.

At least, that's what I think...

Maybe some of the artists who have spent months making an album which I've then fed into iTunes, only to have it spit out the occasional track in with the constant stream of music that it plays me might disagree. Maybe if I didn't listen to music on the go, pausing whenever I get interrupted at work, or when my train reaches it's destination, or when I have to stop at the shops to buy a pint of milk and speak to the checkout assistant, I'd be sitting down and listening, uninterrupted, to an album from start to finish. Maybe the simple fact is that if I heard them for the first time today, I'd never understand the importance of the position on the album of a song like "A Day in the Life" or "I am the Ressurection." Maybe the central themes of "concept albums" like "Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" or The Streets' "A Grand Don't Come for Free (an album that I would strongly recommend you sit down and listen to from start to finish, by the way) would be completely lost on me— and the full impact of the individual tracks as a result would be vastly diminished, reduced from the status of a carefully prepared platter in a sit-down 5-course meal to the canapés that you absent mindedly graze on at a drinks party.

Anyway, if I did it all again and re-digitized my music collection today (which I still would do), I think I might not bother with ripping my CDs at all; it would be easier to download them all illegally from P2P websites. I know that I wouldn't feel bad about downloading music I've already paid for and bought. I understand how the law works and that it's still illegal to make unauthorised copies etc. But instead of sitting by my computer swapping discs, I could just set off a bunch of downloads and leave them running for a few days. I'm guessing it would take just as long— if not longer— than ripping the CDs, but the difference is that my time wouldn't be spent sat next to the computer, changing discs every few minutes while unable to give anything else my full attention. (And I'm increasingly realising that my time is perhaps more valuable to me than I tend to treat it.)

But technically, it's apparently illegal to copy CDs to your computer anyway; copyright laws haven't just failed to catch up with 21st century media technologies— they have barely managed to catch up with the technological innovations of magnetic tapes and the ability to make home recordings. There are laws that say you can't make unauthorised copies of media you buy (because all you buy is a licence to play it— not to copy it) and there's no legal exception for making a tape for your car or walkman, for example.

While consumer technologies have got cheaper and moved from analogue tapes to digital CD-Rs and MP3s (or bluetooth on mobile phones), and the arena for swapping copies may have shifted from the playground to the Internet, the legal framework seems to be trying to hold back the tides, like Canute fighting a force of nature.

Similarly, it's illegal to rip DVDs. Not just because of the same kinds of copyright issues and lack of "fair use" exceptions, but the EU Copyright Directive (similar to the DMCA in the US) makes it illegal to bypass copy protection technologies, and virtually every DVD sold has some sort of copy protection system. Which leads me back to what I mentioned at the opening of this post; the current battle over RealNetworks' RealDVD software, which copies DVDs to your PC. Because it doesn't technically bypass the copy protection (instead, the "protected" data is copied to the hard drive, where it is copy-protected by a second layer of DRM), RealNetworks argue that it's fair to use it for your own DVDs. The MPAA argue that it's an illegal breach of the DMCA. For now, it's on hold— although there is plenty of software out there in the world of the internet that can do the same job, it doesn't have the commercial backing of a publisher like RealNetworks, which the MPAA argue could lead consumers to believe that using the software to copy rented DVDs is legal.

So to make a somewhat clichéd comparison; in the US it's legal to carry around a loaded handgun to protect yourself and your property, to shoot someone who is on your property without permission (or to shoot wild animals for fun, come to that), or to use your body to have unprotected sex, and then to abort your baby that you had no intention of carrying. But it's illegal to sell software that lets you copy the intellectual property on the DVDs that you own.

But is it ethical? Is it fair? That's a whole different set of questions… Speaking purely for myself, it wouldn't feel like I was doing something bad or wrong to copy something I already own, purely for my own personal use. Similarly, if I were to save myself time by downloading a copy of something I already own, and would be able (although with questionable legality) to make a copy from my own copy for myself, I wouldn't feel as though I was doing something ethically wrong.

My DVD collection isn't huge- certainly not as big as my CD collection- but a DVD can hold much more information than a CD, so I expect that ripping them all would be just as slow a job— probably significantly slower. I don't know much about it, but I imagine that having to bypass the copy protection would slow it down even more.

So what am I going to do? Do I (or will I) really want to put my DVDs on my computer in the first place? I think the answer to that is yes; I'm moving more and more towards the idea of a "media centre" machine, and DVDs aren't something that I'm particularly attached to (unlike, say, books or magazines— which I think I will always prefer to screen-based reading.) Having all the films and TV programs I've bought on my computer would make it easier for me to watch them— if I could categorise them and use a "smart playlist" kind of system (so I could dip in and watch, say, the Simpsons or South Park episodes that I've seen the least, or have marked as my favourites) then all the better. If it's just a case of saving me getting up when I want to switch from TV to my video collection, then that's still an improvement. I'd love to be able to take my entire video collection with me when I go on holiday, or on long journeys, or even if visiting friends who I'd like to share my latest favourite TV programme with.

Whatever I do, I think I can say with some confidence what I'm not going to do; I bought the original Star Wars film on VHS in the 90's, then again when the Special editions came out, then again on DVD when the box set was released, and yet again when they were released with the original 1977 version as a special feature. So what I'm not going to do is buy my favourite film all over again.

Not again…