This isn't even close to correct.

What the DMCA says is that you can't strip and redistribute the content, not that you can't strip and watch it. This is an old false stalking horse.

And even if this is correct, this wouldn't make you a criminal; since nobody knows, this does not rise to the level of intent.

Notice how if this was true, people would be making a fortune going after TiVo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Panic

Notice that he's also saying that it's legal to jailbreak a phone (it isn't, anymore,) and that the reason it was legal was an exemption to the DMCA (which is completely incorrect.)

Notice that the thing he's claiming is illegal is a link to a thing that's actually about a completely different topic - space shifting, ie they claim, taking the DVD, decoding it, then transferring that decoded version to another device.

Oh, and that place he's citing is also wrong. This isn't what the problem is in the eyes of the copyright office. Space shifting is perfectly legal, and is done on large consumer devices all the time. iTunes can do it, your Archos can do it, the SlingBox can do it, the high end TiVo can do it, I think the Hopper might be able to, et cetera.

Quoting the source he claims said this was illegal:

> "And the RIAA and the MPAA agree with you. In
> 2005, their lawyer (now the Solicitor General of
> the United States) assured the Supreme Court that
> “The record companies, my clients, have said, for
> some time now, and it’s been on their Website for
> some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a
> CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your
> computer, put it onto your iPod."
>
> Movie executives agree as well. Mitch Singer, the
> Chief Technology Officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment
> explained to author Robert Levine that the idea for
> the movie industry’s UltraViolet program evolved out
> of Singer’s own frustration with transferring movies
> between PCs in his home.

And, of course, the Fair Use clause of the copyright act makes it perfectly clear that you're allowed to do this as long as you aren't transmitting it to other people. Have fun. Go nuts.

There was a point at which it was, briefly, illegal to decode DVDs under Linux, but it had nothing to do with any of this, and it's long since undone. What was actually going on was that the MP3 decoder is under patent by Fraunhofer AG, and back in the mid-1990s, before most people understood what Linux was, but when MP3 players were starting to become popular, Fraunhofer started to assert their patent to take money from device manufacturers.

A few MP3 makers protested that they were using the MP3 stuff built into Linux, and as such they weren't the ones using the tech, Linux was, and Fraunhofer ought to go after Linux. Fraunhofer fell for this, and in response, the community removed MP3 stuff to insulate itself from legal nonsense. A couple months later Fraunhofer figured out what Linux was, and issued a free use license like decent people, but the community was so long since neckbearded out over the topic that they never put any of it back in.

And then the legends of what was going on began.

This is why you don't take legal advice from random programmers on the internet.

This is a bunch of moral panic over a misunderstanding of the copyright system. There's absolutely no reason that it's illegal to watch a DVD in America. This just isn't true at all.