Unless you're a professor for movie studies, there's no way you can copy your DVD movies, thus breaking the DVD encryption protection law. So, if you're planning on ripping your DVD movies onto you iPods and other devices, you might wanna rethink your option, or at the very least, do so at your own risk.

This comes in the wake of the US Library of Congress' rejection of a petition that would give US iPod users the right to break the encryption technology on DVDs so that they can copy it onto their iTunes or iPods. Looking into it a step further, it could be because approving the petition might lead to the opening of floodgates as to the protection of these materials.

Particularly threatening in the status quo is the steady proliferation of piracy. And of course, no matter how much you say that breaking the encryption code is legal, as it will be with consent from the government, you still cannot deny the fact that it is but another form of piracy, only placed in a pedestal and tagged as legit.

At least, that could be one of the reasons behind the rejection. It simply might set a bad precedent. And with all the brouhaha about intellectual property nowadays, it just could prove to be a good call.