I have a damaged DVD that will no longer play in my DVD player. My computer seems to be able to read it OK. The official position of the MPAA is that I’m shit-outa-luck, and should just buy another copy. Naturally I prefer to exercise fair use rights, and make a backup copy.
I didn’t buy a copy of DVD Copy Plus back when it was being sold, and in any case I prefer to use Linux to solve these problems. I was expecting to have to jump through a lot of hoops to copy a video DVD on Linux, but a search turned up a paper explaining how to do it. In case the information is useful to someone else, I’ve put the paper online at floobydust.com.
The backup process worked fine, and the resulting disc plays in my DVD player, so I’m happy. Of course, normally one should make a backup of a disc before the original goes bad, but in this case I got lucky.