[tsimionescu]

There is a clear expectation in law for at least 100-200 years now that owning a copy of a piece of media doesn't allow you to copy or perform it. This is by no means a new concept, and you broke the social contract the moment you copied the DVD. This may not be printed on every book and DVD, but it is very clear - you own the physical copy, not the text.

There are other gray areas related to property and copyright. This is not one of them.

[colinsane]

sure, i can identify the moment in this chain when copyright law may have been violated. it's the contract part i'm caught up with though: law is a thing which exists whether i agree to it or not, but contracts are agreements opted into. and i can't identify any moment where i reneged on any agreement, implied (the friend i bought that DVD from knew me well enough to understand what that meant) or otherwise.

[atq2119]

Your dates are off by more than a century though. Initial copyright terms were barely more than a decade. Cowboy Bebop would have been fair game.

[tsimionescu]

Duration of copyright is separate from the principle. The current durations of copyright are obviously crazy. But that doesn't mean we should just do away with copyright entirely.