DVD Copying and Piracy Issues

In the United States, the National Consumers League has publiushed results of a new study conducted by Opinion Research showing that 90% of consumers believe they should be able to back up their DVDs to a hard drive or copy them to a portable device - and that they'd be willing to pay about $61 for a piece of software that helped them back up their collections. According to the survey:

• 55% of respondents are buying fewer DVDs today than they did a year ago.
• More than four in 10 (41%) expect to be buying fewer still a year from now.
• 41% said the ability to make back up copies would make their collections more valuable
• 40% said it might cause them to buy more DVDs.
• Households with kids have purchased an average of nearly 3 DVDs to replace those lost or damaged.
• Despite studio fears that back-up copying will lead to massive Internet piracy, only 18% of respondents reported ever having copied a DVD to a hard drive.
• Another 5% said they had tried but were unable to.
• The vast majority of respondents (79%) said they have no real interest in copying DVDs.

And, according to DMW, what have the studios come up with to deliver that value to their customers? Litigation against Kaleidescape Systems and RealDVD for providing tools that allow people to back up their DVD collections.