There's no moral argument against ripping DVDs one way or the other.

There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

But there's nothing immoral about copying or watching something you came across. The author isn't injured by it- nobody is. Except, like I said, perhaps society in general.

> arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

They really, really don't. The tradeoff of offering temporary legal privileges in exchange for a future richer public domain resulted in better stuff for everybody. Those legal privileges have become effectively permanent, so the trade is broken.

> There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

They make rich people richer, we have ample evidence for that. But research ... the majority is funded by governments. But content creation ... the majority of high quality Youtube for example in funded in advance by Patreon and similar solutions.

>There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

You raise a valid point. When copyright was first envisioned in 1710, the world population was 600M, literacy rates b/w 5-25% (rural/urban).

That argument does not stand today - we don't need protections since the number of producers of better stuff will simply compete in the market of ideas. Pearl clutching of ideas isn't a problem.

citation?