greetings,

tedob1, its illegal to lend your DVD's and CD's to people too!
perhaps in the future the technology available will force these laws to be relaxed. if technologies such as BlueRay take off that is. basically, the movie industry jumped at the chance to put movies onto a disk, the DVD, and there was a massive push to getting DVD players into peoples homes. they may make a similar push in the future with blueray but unless it is made backwards compatible this would not be justifiable. because the discs (i don't know the acronym) can store 13 hours of video and this is not necessary for todays movies and movie budgets. i don't think consumers will be too happy with having to collect their movies again (ideally doubling profits). but IF this technology was not pushed on the masses then it would most likely only be available in the latest computer models. apparently this would not be a problem as The Dawn of Cinematic Computing is apon us. seemingly the conversion is possible but not "smooth". ultimately however, larger and larger storage will be available, perhaps an xray optical disc drive, and perhaps you will store you collection on a disc. in relation to real 'piracy' and rented licences for film: including the invention of the disc that is only readable for a certain amount of time, they still have to let you read it once so you can watch the thing and you can use that one read to rip it, and reopen the session on your xray disc, copy it there and watch at a later date.
my point is that it will always be possible with existing and evolving technologies to make copies whether it is illegal or not. of course, blueray could choke on its own baby vomit.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3/b3786071.htm
http://www.iec.ch/news_centre/release/nr2002/nr0302.htm
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=geforcefx