From time to time I am reminded on how good piracy is, and how copy protection is designed to make consumer life difficult. This story happened today. I just bought a DVD with the Penguins of Madagascar movie. Unfortunately I do not have a DVD player attached to my television. I have an old Mac Book Pro as media player. Its multi-drive is mostly dead, so I can’t use it to watch the DVD.
Well, when I bought the DVD I did not think on this, or I might look up on the DVD information and, noticing the “anti copy” I wouldn’t buy it. But I did not notice, so I bought it. The next step was to do a ripped copy, so I can copy it to a pen drive and see in the Mac.
I installed HandBrake and, of course, it complained the DVD is protected. I can understand its developers not to include the needed libraries to decode encrypted media, or they might have legal problems. But after some time I found out there is some DLL files I can copy and DVD will be able to rip the movie.
And this is why I love piracy. Not because of the piracy itself, but because every initiative against it LIMITS THE USERS THAT PAYS FOR THE MEDIA, not the one that copies the media illegally.