The law is not clear, otherwise it wouldn't have to go to the supreme court to contrive the notion of "time-shifting" to allow for making personal copies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni....

Sure which is why saying it's absolutely a violation isn't a correct interpretation. So is saying it's absolutely not a violation. Even if the supreme court rules on the issue it's not absolutely anything because that ruling only applies until a future supreme court potentially changes its mind.

I understand how my use of "absolutely" could be misleading. I'll attempt to clarify.

My understanding of the reality:

* Violations of those four rights give copyright holders standing to sue over duplication.

* Fair Use is a defense against that violation.

What I was trying to get at in my first post above is that it is a violation of copyright law as the law is written, and because of this, you expose yourself to lawsuits when you make copies for personal use (assuming anyone could ever find out...I'm not, and never have, argued that copyright law is correct or good). The fact that you can defend yourself using a Fair Use defense is also important and a good point, but still requires hiring a lawyer, going to court, and winning. In my book, this is quite a bit different than saying it's not a violation.

IANAL, though I follow this fairly closely, and I'm not aware of any cases that have established that copying for personal use is Fair Use; I'd be very happy to read through a decision that establishes this!

In the US you can be sued for anything by anyone so it's a question of degrees of risk rather than absolutes.

Yes, I think we agree.

> What I was trying to get at in my first post above is that it is a violation of copyright law as the law is written

Copyright law “as the law is written” says fair use is not a violation. 17 USC § 107: “Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work [...] is not an infringement of copyright.”

Right, but courts are the only ones that can make a fair use determination.

That's not true other than in the sense that “courts are the only ones that can make a determination that an act would violate copyright law outside of fair use considerations” is also true.

Its true that many times fair use will be somewhat harder to predict what a court would decide on than other aspects of copyright law, because the statute and precedent in combination are less clear, but that's not a categorical distinction.