taking backups overseas

[rvman]

I have a friend who is traveling to Europe from the U.S. He's bringing his laptop and wanted to bring some of his favorite DVDs along to watch on the plane. He'd rather not bring his originals, and I was planning on making some backups for him to take with him. Obviously, people back up the DVDs they own all time and consider it their right to do so. But I wasn't sure if this was really legal either here or in Europe. Those FBI warnings that precede the movie make me think that it isn't. I don't relish the thought of a customs official rummaging through his suitcase and finding something that's going land him a gaziliion dollar fine. Any thoughts on this? I think maybe he should stick with the originals or watch whatever's being shown on the airplane.

[moviebuff2]

Hi

I think it's best to consult your or his lawyer on this subject.

However your questions reminds me of my past time when...

1) I would make copies and/or compilations of my music and took them with me to overseas. Nobody ever bothered to find out what was on my 8-track , cassettes.

but

2) I was stopped and told not to take along my portable mono cassette player with me when I was leaving my country to study abroad. The custom official gave me the reason: "It was EXPORTING illegally!"


Cheers

[j1d10t]

When I took a cruise I took along my portable DVD player and a bunch of movies to watch in the cabin - I didn't want to take the originals so I took back-ups. I was nervous, too, about going through secturity/customs. So instead of labeling the DVDs with what they were, I wrote on them (with a marker) names that *I* would know - names that could be home movies... I figured they wouldn't take the time to pull them out and put them in a DVD player to see what they really were if they looked like home movies. Didn't have any problems. Then after I got back I made nice labels for them and put them right over the marker....

[Richard_G]

The last time I flew on the initial announcements they said that you may not use portable CD and DVD players during the flight. They had no problems with using a laptop as long as it wasn't being used as either a CD or DVD player. They reckoned that the use of them caused interference to the planes equipment.

During the flight one of the attendants came to a guy near me as equipment on the plane had detected a CD player in use. It turned out that he had a CD Walkman in his hand luggage in the overhead locker and the play button had been pressed when he got something out of his bag. They insisted that the batteries were taken out so this couldn't happen again. Incidentally, this was a US airline too.