Ripping a DVD, a federal crime in 1999, requires $22 and free software in 2026 (opens in new tab)

I went to rip a movie from my own DVD collection. It surfaced dead anti-piracy infrastructure, a defunct Japanese DRM company, and a twenty five year old executable that was still trying to phone homeThe SetupI just wanted to see if I could do it.The disc was Gladiator, a two-disc set that has been on my shelf for years. The plan was small, more curiosity than project: pull the disc into the computer, see if it would let me copy it, and if it worked, burn a fresh copy onto a blank DVD. The ki...