Hi everyone,
I’m starting my self hosting journey and have run into a snag. I just took a job where I need to get govt security clearance and take polygraphs etc, so I cannot engage in piracy.
What that means in practice is actually abiding the ToS for all my media, so I cannot rip DVDs, I cannot capture streams (I believe including YouTube channels because they’re copyrighted and YT ToS but please correct me if I’m wrong because that would be amazing).
What I’ve done so far:
There is legal precedent to rip CDs and digitize books for personal consumption, and I have also begun buying albums I want from Amazon Music (they let you download the mp3 files directly instead of a Spotify/YT Music system).
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I am going to be hosting immich for my Google Photos replacement
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I don’t know the best service for a YT Music/Spotify replacement, but maybe Jellyfin of nothing else.
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I want to have a digital movie library.
So there’s the rub. How can I have a digital movie library without ripping DVDs? It is an unauthorized reproduction and although nobody is prosecuted, it is illegal and I’d have to disclose that.
Any advice is welcome, and I’d love to hear conversation about this.
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Unless you’re doing a full scope nobody will care. Even then it’s highly doubtful.
Even a full scope, they don’t give a shit about ripping DVDs or torrenting. They want to know if you’re a druggie, gay, or terrorist/spy…
Even a full scope, they don’t give a shit about ripping DVDs or torrenting. They want to know if you’re a druggie, gay, or terrorist/spy…
you can manually find which movies are out of their copyright period and are free to download, but you’ll only be watching 50s/early 2000s romcoms if you do that
> so I cannot rip DVDs, I cannot capture streams
Would any government job with a serious enough mission to require polygraphs and security clearances actually care about this kind of kindergarten illegality.
Seems like the digital equivalent of jaywalking or rolling a stop sign. Are they also going to check up and make sure you have never burned a CD in your life, or shared a Netflix password?
Media shifting is fair use.
For 20 + years in my misspent youth, I had a TS-SCI clearance.
I would suggest avoiding the grey area early on in your career. The investigators are going to be much more interested in discussions about circumventing laws rather than minor crimes such as copyright violations especially if you stumble and hesitate while talking about it.
Once you get the clearance, you are going to be completely amazed at the commonly known, but let’s pretend it didn’t happen, stuff that people with clearances actually do.
The government has often spent 100,000’s if not millions of dollars, training people with high-level clearance. They are not going to throw all that away for a ripped DVD. Plus, people with clearance often know where the skeletons are for other people with clearances.
Nine out of ten times, if someone finds out you did a fireable offense they are not going to do anything about it. They are going to tuck that information in their pocket and use it as leverage to make sure that next time some shit rolls downhill, you will do your best to make sure none of it sticks to them.
Why is ripping a DVD an unauthorized reproduction if ripping a CD isn’t?
Depends on the jurisdiction
There might be laws against “cracking” the copy-protection (CSS for DVD, hdcp for BR) although there might be precedent that it’s okay for home use
Keep in mind that CSS is so bad that it has been sacked as a “security mechanism” (as the computational power required to crack the key is just a bit above the counting skills of an elementary school student), but I guess we’re more talking about BD’s.
It’s fair use to copy the files but it’s illegal separately to break the DRM, meaning you can’t digitize a DVD without breaking the law
pro tip: if you do not read the ToS, you also can’t lie about if you are breaking them or not
Polygraphs are junk science and do not work.
FYI, polygraph tests don’t work. they’re a pseudoscience.
Yes. There is an ex fbi agent that does talks about this. Clench your butt hole is how you fool it apparently. Thats not a joke. Apparently takes some practice. It massively ridiculous they are used.
Regardless, they are used to make adjudications. You can be the one to sink millions of dollars suing the feds after the Denny you a job.
yeah, they’re used, but you are no more likely to fail or succeed whether you’re lying or not.
Honestly? The government is not going to care unless you get caught. Had you been caught before, you would not have received government clearance. You are literally in the same position you’ve always been: getting caught means no government clearance (only difference is you would lose it now as opposed to being barred from ever receiving it had you been caught before).
AFAIK, you MAY rip your legally purchased media for backup purposes. So backup your DVDs and DONT expose those copies to the public internet. Even if you did and you were investigated all you would have to do is show them the physical copies; how would they know which you used for viewing?
Polygraph don’t measure truth. They measure your nerves. If you are nervous about obfuscating your piracy it would show up on the graph
I don’t know what country you live in, but I have worked on multiple gov contracts (software development in the USA) and have never been asked to take a polygraph. It was eye opening to find out that deep down, they really don’t care about what each individual is doing (unless you mess with their data). That being said, what you are asking is really hard to do without dancing on the line of whats “legal” and whats not. You’ll have to decide where you draw the line and host what you can. Nobody can force you to admit to crimes (at least if you live in the west).
I cannot rip DVDs
In the US, this is legal:
“This means that you can legally rip a DVD for personal use, as long as you don’t violate any of the other copyright laws. What does this mean in practice? You can rip a DVD for your own personal use, but you can’t distribute the ripped file to others. You also can’t make a copy of the ripped file for someone else.”
https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/tips/is-it-legal-to-rip-dvd.html
So you want to be one of the 5% of honest government employees…
The country matters here. Though overall, isn’t it distributing it what constitutes as the piracy part rather than just ripping something? As far as I am aware, ripping a disk for personal consumption (so long as nobody gets access to your library) should be no different from backing up media that you won.