Slashdot Mirror
Good Disk Library Solutions?
First time submitter fikx writes "How do Slashdotters manage large collections of disks? I'm hoping for a way to manage a large collection of movies that would give me menu type access to the content, and the only consumer device left seems to be the Sony disk changer, which is discontinued. I would have thought that handling disks would have been a solved problem and on sale in many forms, but I guess not. Have Slashdotters found or built solutions? Or has this problem gone the way of the typewriter?"
"Handbrake takes care of DRM for DVDs."
For *some* DVDs. It doesn't handle all of them because the producers of the DVDs keep updating their bogus DRM techniques and thus it is a constant arms race. And it is genuinely bogus, because that's what most of these techniques do: insert bogus sectors and other trickery that trips up a simple ripping program but not most DVD players (and the ones that don't work are collateral damage). Why the media producers bother to keep throwing money at a problem that people will just find a way around in order to use the product they have already bought is beyond my understanding. Do they really think they're stopping anything by spending all that money on DRM? And, no thank you, I don't want to disclose all sorts of unnecessary personal information in order to activate a digital copy that isn't ripped the way I want it anyway.
These days it's easier for a pirate to set up a movie library than a legitimate purchaser, and that situation *sucks*.
Are you saying that you have never performed an unauthorized public performance of "Happy Birthday"? You always keep the car complately under the speed limit? Never do 58 in a 55? I have yet to meet one of these mythical people that even grudgingly honor the rule of law in real life. While you might be that rare exception, I highly doubt it.
What I do see every day are people who see the law as shades of gray, and see anything darker than the shade they chose to draw their line as being criminal, and anything lighter not counting. This includes me. I consider raping, murdering, and eating your neighbors to be criminal. I don't consider copying the DVD you purchased to a hard drive that you purchased so that you can watch a movie on the TV you purchased without jumping through hoops to be criminal.