I would argue that is legal for a consumer to make a copy for his personal use. Otherwise a VCR would be illegal to own. Of course once you make a copy and share it, you are breaking the law.
Wal-mart recently stated if you purchase a DVD or BLUE-Ray that for a fee they will make you a digital copy. They use some service like vudu or something like that. I think that if you have basically a personal use license, then when you buy a DVD or Blue-ray they should give you a license certificate as proof or record your name in a database which grants you digital download rights.
I noted an article on
www.missingremote.com about premium channels requiring better DHCP control of their premium channels over the network, whatever that means. This might interfere with some older TV encoder cards.
Wrong about the VCR thought. It's the same thing as stuff like Usenet... Glass pipes in headshops... etc. Everyone knows what they are really being used for, but they "could" be used for legal things, so they are sellable. Even if 99% of the people buying something use it for an illegal purpose, if there's ANY legitimate use for a product they can fall back on that.
That said... and the rest of this is just a general reply...
Piracy is not theft. Period. If you think it is, you lack a basic understanding of the meaning of the word. It's a crime, absolutely, but you are not "stealing" anything because that would require something that was there before to no longer be there after you "took" it.
If the original is unaffected, it is not theft. Making a copy of something isn't theft.
Now, one could argue that the distribution of this copy that you made could cause the loss of X amount of sales, but there has been little evidence presented that this is actually true.
I understand completely why music/movie corporations are vehemently anti-piracy.
I do not understand at all, though, why MUSICIANS themselves are sometimes vocally anti-filesharing, because file sharing benefits them FAR more than it harms their profits. Musicians on major labels don't make anywhere near the majority of their profits from record sales to begin with, they make money on merchandise and touring.
That, and many people that I know who have "borrowed" at some point... generally tend to make a point of directly supporting artists that are currently active by buying digital downloads directly from their websites - cutting out the middlemen like iTunes and giving 100% of the profits to the band (well, almost. some production costs are involved with anything)