Originally Posted by
ESpen36
Perhaps they didn't trust that you actually owned the DVDs. As far as I know (though I am not a lawyer), it is legal to make a "backup" copy of content that you OWN (as long as it is for your personal backup use only).
It is not legal to do so (and I am a lawyer).
But it is very very illegal to rip DVDs that are rented or otherwise do not belong to you.
That's a very interesting question. Under the DMCA, the act of decrypting them is illegal. However, it is possible (note use of the word, "possible,") that DMCA issues notwithstanding, it would come within Fair Use to copy rental disks for later viewing.
If you didn't have the DVD discs in question with you in your luggage, the officers would have no way of knowing whether you actually owned the content or had stolen it by ripping rented/borrowed DVDs.
I would LOVE for a CBP officer to try and tell me what they told the OP, above. It would make for an interesting discussion.
So, I guess the moral of the story is not to travel with ripped DVD content unless you can prove that you own the discs from which you ripped the content. A receipt should suffice, I would suspect, if you didn't want to carry around the discs.
A receipt (and whether or not you own the disks) is irrelevant to this discussion.