Talk:Ripping

Early comments (title added)
Removed link to a commercial site, the link said "FAQ and glossary", but the site offered no information, just an audio CD ripping service. -- Diegovh, 19:06, 1 Nov 2006 (CST)

I added the link to Audio Grabber, I figured it was a good place to mention it, its a great freeware application for ripping CD's to mp3, I think its relevant to wikipedia as its a freeware application and not shareware.. It is closed source, but some things are hard to open sources to.. Anyhow.. --Rofthorax 09:35, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * All of the the links to the software at the bottom of this article are for freeware CD ripping programs. In keeping with fairness typical of what I believe most Wikipedians wish to see, I think there should also be a link to alternative pay-software used for CD ripping. This is not dissimilar to the way that Wikipedia articles such as the article regarding the Open audio format Ogg also has a link to the proprietary audio format MP3 as an alternative. --ThatNateGuy 17:31, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The first paragraph treats ripping as something prohibited, the second as something allowed. Which is it?


 * The whole thing treated ripping as a mechanical process and then threw in unsubstantiated remarks about legality whose accuracy differs with jurisdiction, so for now I've removed them. Someone else can add a section on legality if they like later.


 * Feel free if you wish to just go ahead and make the changes yourself in future; Wikipedia encourages users to be bold and jump in to make the change. &mdash; mendel &#9742; 01:27, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)


 * I didn't check the history and discussion section before I added the one-liner comment that backing up legal media is perfectly legal in the US. I added this because I thought it would be informative to some who may have the mistaken impression that it is somehow not. --69.212.108.244 21:07, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Considering Sony pioneered the mpeg-audio format and the CD's.. With the intent of storing movies on CD's.. It's their own dumb luck that people connected the two together to make backup copies of CD's. It is not illegal to rip CD's to mp3 as long as you own the CD's themselves.. It is illegal to burn songs from mp3's from CD's you don't own.. But some people think the evil starts when you make the mp3's which is no worse than copying the data on the CD's verbatim to WAV files. BTW, I believe the bit about France, the French tend to encourage communities, and a law like this prevents people from selling content, but it allows friends to share content, which is probably why it doesn't matter if the master copy is legal. Play a game of Petanque sometime.

--Rofthorax 09:20, 15 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Are you quite sure of your statement regarding the legality of creating backup CDs? To my understanding, the current legislation in the United States is still too vague to make that kind of assertion without providing a link to a some court case (preferably one presided over by the United States Supreme court) showing precidence of some sort.  I'm not trying to say at all that you are incorrent in your assertion, just that other readers may not understand the law well enough and may attempt to make backup copies CDs based sole on your statement and may end up getting in some sort of legal trouble and I don't wish to see that happen. --ThatNateGuy 17:31, 19 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Technically, most civilised states don't sue you for things you do within your own four walls with things you own when there's nobody else affected by it. Ripping is a convienient method of copying the data stored on the CD onto the PC in order to play it back without having to swap CDs or in order to transfer it to a mobile device such as a cell phone or MP3 player.
 * As long as the music industry can't agree on whether they're selling the physical medium (CDs) or the data (the content of the CDs), I don't think there's a bulletproof answer to the question of legality, though. And right now it seems as if the industry is once again shifting more towards the idea of selling a service rather than a product (i.e. the "right" to use the CD you bought in a certain number of ways, akin to a EULA -- ala Microsoft) because it's great if you can sell a product to the same customer more than once (which is where WMA DRM and online music stores come in).
 * I wouldn't mind the whole dispute so much if they would just cut the "ethics" crap (like calling illegal sharing of their "intellectual property" "piracy") and said what they mean (it _always_ boils down to wanting more money).
 * Erm... sorry for the rant. To answer the original question: Legality of ripping legal CDs you have legally purchased through legal means varies regionally, probably even within the US. It used to be legal in Germany, but I have a vague memory of that having changed, although I can't verify that, so I'll just stick to what my ethics tell me. -- Ashmodai 06:45, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I feel like the last one-liner paragraph is out of place for now in the article, esp. since it's not talking about ripping. Maybe it needs to be re-worded or removed? --69.212.108.244 21:07, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

1.8G Pentium 4 is faster than 1.8G Sempron???
in the text (e.g. a Pentium 4 will be faster than a Celeron or and AMD Sempron with the same clock speed) is utterly not true. P4 1.8Ghz is much much slower than a Sempron 1.8Ghz (Sempron 3100+). I have the latter and I can clearly notice the difference.


 * I think there's also an inaccuracy in the statement that "a Pentium running at 120MHz will do that twice as fast as a similar 60MHz chip." Maybe that section can be replaced with this: "the encoding device (in most cases a PC) will encode the digital input to a compressed format. This is a purely CPU-related task, so factors such as the CPU's clock speed, architecture, and design will limit encoding speed." I'll change it to this if nobody objects.  --Ash211 17:27, 29 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Done --Ash211 01:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Old rippers
The article mentions some rippers, but winDAC (Windows Digital Audio Copy) has been around for quite some time. Around 97/98-ish the norm where I was from was to use winDAC to rip and Xing to encode. In so far as bit rates, it was never an issue. It's still one of the faster rippers, but then, I guess I'm not a great judge of that because I've only used three or four others.

(I recall windac being available in 95, as at the time i first came across it i was employed by a particular company)82.152.235.77 (talk) 13:15, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Plagiarism
This edit brings up the usage of ripping as in plagiarizing someone else's work. Perhaps a disambiguation page should be made at Ripping (disambiguation) that includes a link to both the Ripping page and plagiarism too. I'm looking at a page similar to plagiarism (disambiguation). What do you guys think about directing this usage of ripping over to the plagiarism article? --Ash211 01:42, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Turns out that the page at Rip is more what I'm looking for, but with an entry to Plagiarism. My bad.  --Ash211 01:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Legal status
Much as it's interesting to know the legal status of ripping in the US and France, are there any sources available that detail the legal status in various other countries around the world?

zoney ♣ talk 11:22, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The claims in this section of the article are false. The legality of copying media for personal use has not been settled in the United States, because no court has ever specifically ruled on it. The perceived "legality" stems from a lack of enforcement on behalf of the RIAA and MPAA, among others. If challenged, it would likely fall under fair use, but a court has never come to that conclusion. Citation to the RealNetworks case is misleading; the court only said that "it may well be fair use," but did not decide the issue. This is far from "making clear" that copying media for personal use is legal. In fact, the court said in a later proceeding in the same case that "the question of whether a consumer has a right to make a fair use copy of a DVD she has purchased . . . is not presented on this motion and is not addressed by the court." 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1433, at *16.

The RIAA does not concede the legality of copying media, even for personal use. On its website, it argues that "there is no legal 'right' to copy the copyrighted music on a CD or onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns." This is a far cry from the clear legality claimed by the article. It may be necessary to rewrite this whole section to better reflect the current uncertainty in American law.

User: CBattles6; 4/23/2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by CBattles6 (talk • contribs) 19:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the above comment. Furthermore in cases like the DVD ripping which involves circumventing copy protection (css) that is almost certainly illegal in the US (though probably legal in Finland because of a case involving Linux playback of DVDs). Ripping a DVD even if you own it is illegal. However the chances of you getting sued for ripping your own DVD are smaller since the company and film makers can't claim lost profits easily as you already own the DVD. However it is still illegal and a criminal case can be made against the ripper. As an aside CD don't have a copy protection scheme like DVDs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.167.183.80 (talk) 18:03, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

The article states that ripping is legal in the UK, but this has not yet been approved. The current state of draft legislation can be seen on the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) website at. There are also FAQs on the UK IPO Website indicating that this is currently illegal at, and. MartinEyles (talk) 16:32, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

NPOV section
Does this section on plagiarism even need to be here? It's not NPOV, and I can't even figure out what encyclopedic content it's trying to disseminate. --TreyHarris 04:33, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. It's opinionated, uncited, and if it is a legit use of the word "ripping" (to be verified with a primary source), then it deserves the usual disambig treatment like rip saw gets, not an irrelevant section in this article. --Ds13 05:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Ripping comes from Ripping Off??
To me there's no immediate connection between ripping and ripping someone off. Only in the sense of "I'm ripping x off the DVD", but not in the sense of "I'm ripping off Sony or whoever". Nczempin 14:36, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I don't think there's a strong connection there either. Though the MIAA and MPAA might have you believe otherwise. As this link points out, waaaay back in the day, we used to rip the music tracks out of binaries (ROM or disk images from old 8 bit computers).  Legalities aside, the action was to rip it out of its original context, as someone rips a page out of a newspaper. --Ds13 21:01, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

From "raster image processing"?
I have my doubts about the origin promoted by the page linked above. From what I've observed, the term seemed to have carried over from graphics, where decades ago RIP was originally (and still is) an acronym for Raster Image Processor. A RIP in that context was a piece of software or a device that could read a graphic file that was in some vector-based markup language (such as a PostScript file or a CAD drawing formatted for a pen plotter) and convert it from a mathematical description of lines into dots (that is, into a bitmap representation) so that it could be output on a dumb printer (as most dot matrix and inkjet printers were).

The ripping process would often take several minutes or even hours for a single file. The term was almost universally known and used by nearly everyone associated with the computer image printing industry. The fact that it stood for "Raster Image Processor" was much less well known or used, but everyone knew "RIP". The term's scope expanded beyond just creating a digital image file from an analog description of the image, and, soon, scanning an image was also sometimes referred to as ripping. "Ripping" had become so disconnected from its original meaning that it became essentially a synonym for "digitizing" of any sort.

When the practice of digitizing audio from an analog source became common, that also came to be known as ripping. It seems the scope was then further expanded to cover any process of converting files from one digital audio format to another, and now even to laying audio files onto an MP3 player or a disc (replacing the term "burning").

BTW, usage of the term in what I see as its original context (computer graphics printing) has become much less common in recent years because most printers these days have built-in processors to perform the ripping. That is, most users don't ever need to think about ripping a PCL6, HPGL, etc. (or often even PostScript) file into a bitmap file before sending it to the printer because the printer itself is capable of reading the source version and can then draw out the picture right in its memory to create a rasterized version.Starling2001 (talk) 17:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I just want to agree that the term originated with Raster Imagine Processing. I've been saying this for years! 68.45.3.28 (talk) 03:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * +1 for Raster Imagine Processing, that is my recollection also, we just need a reference. Chalky (talk) 23:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed. That the term carried with it the parallel meaning of "ripping something/something off" is just one of those coincidences of terminology that computing is rife with. It's probably one of the factors that ensures that a word will come into wide usage. But I think the article should at least mention somewhere that the term "RIP" can also refer to Raster Image Processing, or to Raster Image Processor. rowley (talk) 00:22, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Merge Digital audio extraction Article into Ripping?
Maybe merge the DAE article into the ripping article? Makes sense, just needs a little update in the Ripping article to state that when you are ripping audio CD's it is called DAE. The DAE page acts a little too much like an entry in a dictionary. - Pupilar - 09:34, 15 June 2006 (GMT)

The reason why Wikipedia will never be great
I added explanation of abbreviation BDrip a few months back but now some jerk has removed it. Instead of adding HDrip etc.

I wrote a description of the FREE firewalll Kerio 2.1.5 some months back, the other versions are not free. Some jerks turned that into an ad page for Kerio/Sunbelt

I tried to inform about a company secretly owned by the Scientologists. But no that was not allowed.

I give up on Wikipedia. Jerks are allowed to edit anything. And the ones who try to tidy things up usually make it worse and are some kind of psychos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.209.36.29 (talk) 21:38, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Watch for bias
I'm concerned that the section on "legality" misrepresents the issues a bit.

There is widespread agreement that, if you have music that you didn't pay for, a crime has been committed. (There are exceptions, but this is the basic idea. ) This should be stated fairly clearly at the top of the section.

What is unclear is exactly when the crime was committed and by whom. Consider the ways that copyrighted material could arrive on your computer: a friend buys it, rips it, burns you a copy, hands you the CD, and you rip it. Or, a friend buys it, rips it, hands you the original CD, and you rip it. Or, a stranger buys a copy, rips it, makes it "available" (through Kazaa, or whatever), you download it. The legal issues basically boil down to identifying when the crime occurred. Was it the first rip? The hand off? The second rip? Or (in the last case) was it making it "available"? Or was it the download? These are the things that are at issue in the legal cases.

We have to be careful to put our personal beliefs aside and report the issues accurately. This includes conceding to the other side the points they have won. CharlesGillingham (talk) 06:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I've rewritten this section so that it states the specific issue clearly. I also simplified it and removed dead links. Let me know if there is a problem and let's discuss it. CharlesGillingham (talk) 19:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

External links; Is an MP3 encoder appropriate?
Regarding the link to "LAME Open source encoder": While one might choose to encode/compress audio to the MP3 format when ripping a CD, does that make a link to an MP3 encoder appropriate for this article? Isn't that like having an external link to a type/brand of cheese on the Wine article? There's a relationship, but... --anon 24.192.9.141 (talk) 05:18, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That depends. In this case it's somewhat relevant to the topic, but it doesn't have any actual bearing on it. For now I'm removing the link. Heavyweight Gamer (talk) 05:21, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

RealDVD and US Legality Clarification
There should be mention of the RealNetworks v. DVD-CCA case regarding the legality of DVD ripping in United States. The injunction in the case stated that "while it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally owned DVD on that individual's computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies." This means that it is illegal for anyone to make or distribute software that circumvents DRM, but it is legal for a consumer to use circumvention software to backup their DVD.

Proposed change: ... the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to circumvent that copy protection scheme. This law makes it illegal to rip most commercial DVDs as they are typically protected by CSS encryption. the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to manufacture or distribute circumvention tools and use those tools for non-fair use purposes. In the case RealNetworks v. DVD-CCA, the final injunction reads, "while it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally owned DVD on that individual's computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies."1 Diafygi (talk) 19:26, 24 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Added to article after no objection. (Diafygi (talk) 04:19, 12 April 2010 (UTC))

CD ripping legal? Where's the reference?
On the whole, it is legal for an individual in the United States to make a copy of media he/she owns for his/her own personal use.

Is it? I'm looking for any court decision that supports this. All I can find is lots of people pointing fingers in the direction of the Sony betamax case and making ambiguous grunting sounds about "format-shifting". But I've been googling around for a couple of hours and haven't been able to scare up any actual legal decisions to support the claim that the Sony case legitimized all personal-use format-shifting. I think the above needs to be referenced if it can, or removed if it can't. CNJECulver (talk) 12:21, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, see the decision for the RealDVD case. -Diafygi (talk) 20:36, 14 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I note, first, that it's not a "decision", it's merely a preliminary injunction, and thus, to my understanding, carries little to no weight of law. And, second, I note phrases such as "it may well be", which I understand to mean, "even if it is". That is, the court is not making a conclusion of law with respect to consumers' fair use, it is merely uttering an obiter dictum on its way to the real point, which is that RealNetworks falls foul of the DMCA's prohibition of the manufacture and distribution of circumvention devices. In essence, the court is saying, "even if we accept RealNetworks' argument that consumers have the fair-use right to copy, it still doesn't absolve RealNetworks on this point."


 * In short, while IANAL, I don't think obiter dicta embedded in preliminary injunctions are generally precedent-setting.

CNJECulver (talk) 10:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Not only is it legal to make a copy, it is legal to give a copy to a relative. This is covered under Fair Use and The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. DavidRavenMoon (talk) 03:38, 1 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The AHRA's sec. 1008 provision surely applies to burning a CD-R, and after RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia it is believed to apply to copying files onto a portable media player (if not space-shifting in general). But Audio Home Recording Act indicates this interpretation isn't set in stone; it's not really what that particular case or the letter of the law was about. More importantly, that's not the same thing as ripping material from a CD or DVD to a hard drive, and giving copies of those files to your family. We might argue that there is no material difference, but the text of the AHRA doesn't directly support that point of view.


 * Likewise, Title 17's Fair Use provisions don't explicitly allow anything so broad. Judicial precedents like Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios have effectively allowed certain kinds of copying to be considered Fair Use, but that's only reducing the likelihood of being taken to court over a particular use. For example, if I give digital file copies of a ripped commercial CD to my "cousins" far and wide "for educational purposes only", I might claim it was Fair Use, but the copyright owner may disagree, and I'm not certain I would prevail in court.


 * So I'm basically reiterating CNJECulver's point above when I say that for purposes of this article and others, care must be taken to avoid conflating the actual text of the law with hopeful/permissive interpretations thereof, and to make a distinction between a judicial ruling and obiter dicta. —mjb (talk) 21:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed the offending statement from the article, and I made several clarifications and additions in order to make it very clear that "personal use" copying is not explicitly covered by U.S. copyright law, and has yet to be the focus of case law. I moved a misplaced paragraph from the end to the middle, and I added paragraphs about the FTC, the AHRA, and the (non-)definition of distribution. I also revised what appeared to be a too-broad interpretation of the 2010 ruling on circumventing DVD copy protection. —mjb (talk) 03:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Arkmabat (talk) 14:55, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The RIAA is fine with ripping a CD to a computer for personal "format-shifting" use. See:
 * "Common Examples of Online Copyright Infringement: You make an MP3 copy of a song because the CD you bought expressly permits you to do so. But then you put your MP3 copy on the Internet, using a file-sharing network, so that millions of other people can download it." As well as: "burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:
 * The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
 * The copy is just for your personal use. "
 * http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arkmabat (talk • contribs) 14:54, 15 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The RIAA says what it says. They never say whether, in their view, ripping is illegal. They just say that under certain conditions, ripping "won't usually raise concerns." That doesn't mean anything, really. I suggest listening to the NPR podcast "Rip This, Share That" in which the RIAA president was directly questioned on this issue. He avoided answering. The implication is that they very much want to reserve the right to sue in some cases; it is not in their interest to acknowledge a blanket 'personal use' exemption, even if such an exemption is already implicit by their historical lack of action in that regard.
 * I'm not sure what, if anything, we should say about it in this article. It would be 'original research' to simply infer what the RIAA's strategy is. And we don't want to mislead people into thinking that ripping copyrighted material actually is legal in the U.S., when strictly by the letter of the law, there's no personal-use or non-commercial exemption that would prevent it from being regarded as copyright infringement. —mjb (talk) 21:39, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Australia
I think that this reference that comes from comlaw.gov.au states that you can now legally rip your own CD in Australia. If someone wants to check this and write it up then I think it would be quite beneficial as the cited reference given is not a .gov.au reference.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Exazonk (talk • contribs) 10:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The term "copying" is at best imprecise, at worse inaccurate, at worst slanted
The term "copying" is used throughout the article. Indeed, Ripping is not typically synonymous with "copying," because audio and/or visual representations of source media data are typically recoded into altogether new digital data. That is, the encoding/transcoding processes most commonly selected when source media are "ripped" create data that can then be rendered visually and/or audibly in similar fashion to how source data are rendered (encode looks a lot like original), but once encoded/transcoded, the actual "ripped" data are entirely different from the source data.

That is, more succinctly, ripping translates multimedia data to *new* data. As such, the term "copy" is not (directly) applicable. Media are "re-encoded" to new digital media and other terms, but not "copied" to it.

Arguments have been made this issue is germane to matters of intellectual property, but that prospective relevance isn't my basis for mentioning the distinction. My motive is accuracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pause2Reflect (talk • contribs) 20:18, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It is true that ripping often involves transcoding, but not always. At present, the article does make some effort to explain that ripping generally involves repackaging, if not also compressing/transcoding. We could probably phrase things a little better, but I think it would be confusing if we tried to get the reader to have a more nuanced understanding of the word copying when the article is focused on copyright law, where any facsimile is almost without exception considered a copy. —mjb (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I concur with MJB.

Pause2Reflect: You are using a technical IT meaning here, inappropriate in this context. When you scan something and print out, you are also copying it, although the format changed twice and the quality has degraded somewhat. Zezen (talk) 09:32, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

The intro section
The intro section of this article reads like someone's personal soapbox, and it includes no sources for its several claims. Furthermore, it appearss to be claiming Wikipedia as a source.rowley (talk) 18:49, 4 May 2021 (UTC)