Apparently people watching DVDs they've purchased somehow harms the public good. Yay, go Tories!

There are also countries outside of the USA in which format shifting DVDs is explicitly legal (France for example).

Sure, there is a contingent of people using it to rip their own movies, but if that was really a core usage of Kodi, it would be a core feature. But it isn't. If you rip DVDs or bluerays, you have to integrate third party software.

What is a core feature of Kodi? Grokking large numbers of video files that use usenet/torrent naming standards as well as a nice API that virtually all torrent clients integrate with.

Now that I have a streaming subscription to Tidal (CD quality) I find very little reason to look to alternative music sources. With Amazon Prime the same goes for a lot of TV and movies. But for niche stuff there will always be torrent sites.

Speaking only for myself, blocking commercials is probably the biggest motivator for myself in seeking DVD sets and/or series of TV shows. Once you have stopped watching "live TV" you'd be surprised how sensitive you become commercials blasting every 10 minutes. Kind of like turning off your ad blocker (I honestly don't know how people survive the web without those things). I'm willing to pay for the "privilege" of not being yelled at every 10 minutes...

Edit: I mean yes, it's technically illegal but I've never heard of anyone being charged for personal use. And if it did happen the penalty would be a lot smaller because the damage done would be the price of a new blu-ray.

This is where things are going IMHO.

Sometimes this has forced me to spend more money on drives/other storage (for example, I manually upgraded both my PS3 and PS4 to the largest capacity drives they support). And I have a NAS with a bunch of drives in it. Worth it, IMHO.

Most publicly available pirated content is terrible quality anyway. If there are shows and movies you really love it's worth it to make yourself a high quality rip. Emby/Plex are super convenient, especially playlists. Who wouldn't want their own private streaming service with all the content they love. The discs sit in the basement as disaster recovery.

(Well, added to my iTunes library, actually, but - you know.)

Do you count digitizing my existing DVD collection with Handbrake "piracy"? I don't.

While you're grouping them in that category, why not put Microsoft Windows Media Center, XBox Media Center, and Playstation Media Center, and Apple TV in that category as well.

The one off video players are more likely used for home videos or one off video files.

I'm not saying there aren't plenty of legal uses for Kodi and Plex, I'm just saying that people aren't paying for a Plex pass or spending countless hours on Kodi to catalog their personal home videos.

Neither program is even well suited to that. There isnt even an easy to use interface on either for including custom content.

But drop in a file names the.big.bang.theory.s05e11.720p.brrip.mkv and they both know exactly what to do.

As far as I am aware, if they are not distributing their changes, there is no copyright violation.

I'd be interested to see what laws they are violating.

It is the copying that is the tort. Distribution is a separate tort/crime.

You don't mention your jurisdiction but this is common to international law and applies in almost all countries.

> A few people I know just check out movie from the local Library on DVD or Bluray, rip them and then watch them from Plex, [and then return the DVD or Bluray without deleting the ripped copy].

This is textbook piracy.

A person who copies a specific work and does not distribute it is not breaking the law as far as I am aware.

That is why I'd be interested in seeing what laws have been broken.

If they watch the movie again without a license then it would be copyright infringement.

Assuming they live in a jurisdiction that allows format shifting they've not made a copy without a license or right to do so.