A company recently released some software that allows DVDs to be copied for "backup purposes."

PCWorld.com - Tool Copies DVD Movies.

Hollywood says that burning a backup of your Austin Powers in Goldmember DVD is illegal, and it builds in copy protection to stop you. But a small firm denies kinship to Dr. Evil just because it markets software that lets anyone with a rewritable DVD drive make an exact copy of a commercial DVD.

321 Studios' $100 DVD X Copy ($84.99 on Amazon.com - ed.) is the first product to let users dub an entire DVD movie onto a blank DVD. In our trials, we saw that the copy even includes the menus, special features, and enhanced audio.

The Motion Picture Association of America argues that such products violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bans providing information or tools to evade copy-control technology, including the Contents Scramble System that's used on DVD media.

The software has built-in copy protection and according to the report, doesn't violate DMCA:

To appease its Hollywood critics, 321 Studios has built its own copy protection into its software. The program inserts electronic controls into the DVD copies to prevent them from being duplicated further. It embeds a digital watermark capable of tracing a movie file transmitted over the Internet back to the software's licensed owner--pointing the finger at peer-to-peer file sharers (registration is required when you install DVD X Copy). In addition to the federal disclaimer, it inserts another disclaimer at the beginning of each recorded DVD, telling viewers that the disc is a backup copy intended for personal use only.

Moore claims that DVD X Copy doesn't break the CSS code on DVD movies. Rather, it intercepts the video and audio stream after a DVD player has decrypted CSS to show the movie. Because it doesn't interfere with the disc's encryption, he argues, it does not run afoul of the DMCA.

To me, this is all about the "fair-use" of entertainment media. If you want to be able to make backup copies of your DVDs, I'd advise you to grab a copy of this software soon, since the maker of the software is at odds with Hollywood:

But Robert Moore, president and founder of 321 Studios, says users have a fair-use right to make personal backup copies of DVDs they buy. "We are offering for the first time a tool that allows you to exercise that consumer right," he says.

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