Ripping a DVD, a federal crime in 1999, requires $22 and free software in 2026

# Summary DVD ripping, which was illegal under 1990s anti-piracy laws, now requires only a $22 USB drive and free software like MakeMKV to bypass CSS encryption that once prompted federal lawsuits and DMCA threats. The author discovered that the CSS protection layer Hollywood spent millions defending in federal court was transparently bypassed by libdvdcss, a library written by a Norwegian teenager in 1999, which is now bundled into standard media players across all operating systems.