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Piracy notwithstanding, there are some good, valid reasons for making a backup of a DVD. K9Copy, a utility for copying DVDs, receives high marks in many forums, so I took it for a spin -- and found out its reputation is deserved.

When I travel, I like to view movies on my laptop, but I'm not too keen on taking the original DVDs along; I prefer downloading them to the hard disk and keeping the originals at home. Also, if you have small kids, you know that DVDs probably won't be treated well, so making a backup copy makes good sense. Note, however, that laws differ in each country, and even such fair use might be prohibited where you live.

When using K9Copy to copy a DVD, you can either keep the original menu structure on the disc or create a new one. You can also create an ISO image or compress the original video (producing an AVI file, for example) and store it on your hard disk or burn it to a CD. K9Copy is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2), so it's fully open source and also free of cost. The latest version of the program is 2.0.2, from June 2008, for KDE 4; if you're still using KDE 3, use version 1.2.3 from January 2008.