This part above is great advice. I agree. We're both that guy. LOL.... The "not going to jail part" is also true, but there is a first time for everything, and you may not be old enough to remember Napster lawsuits AND Napster going after some of its users something like 25 years ago.....
(Unfortunately) old enough to remember Napster, Metallica's rage, the lawsuits, all of it LOL.
But no, I don't believe "there is a first time for everything," in the case of being arrested for ripping DVDs/Blu-rays in the privacy of your own home on a device you own.
People using Napster were sued because they were broadcasting their public IP address with every song they shared which meant anyone could easily track them down and incriminate them in thousands of individual incidents of distribution side piracy.
I don't believe downloading ripping software is illegal in any (first world) country, even if using it on a commercial discs is technically illegal. Even if it was, proving you downloaded it would be fairly difficult given modern security protections built into the web. And proving you used it to rip movies is neigh impossible unless they have a warrant to search your house and compel you to decrypt your computer.
To be clear if OP doesn't want to/isn't comfortable doing it that's fine, but in that case dealing with the hassles of buying digitally is the price they pay for that convenience, and they should advocate for legal changes that would make BS like taking away content you've already paid for illegal.
This part, I disagree with. The original poster has already stated that they don't want to deal with a mass of DVDs or Blu-rays in their house, which is totally reasonable. The best option (and totally legal option) then to preserve the Apple movies that have already been bought is just to simply download them onto an external drive--easy, peasy, Japanesey (I've been living in Japan for 15 years, so I can say this. We say this here, and it is not offensive).
Ok... so funnily enough I've lived in Japan for a similar amount of time and I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that (nor would I assume its offensive, just weird.) That said given how "analog" Japan still is in terms of media sales (and how non tech savvy a lot of consumers are) I certainly wouldn't say keeping local backups of a collection of a 500+ iTunes movie collection is very "Japanesey." (if anything renting media and copying it is more "Japanese" but I digress)
But anyway like I said, if OP doesn't want to deal with a mass of discs they can just sell them/give them away, chuck them once they've copied them.
Downloading to an external drive will give someone access to physical copies of all of their movies, forever, and an external drive is not going to take up a lot of space. Downloaded movies from the iTunes / tv app are great quality when played on devices that have iTunes/tv app, etc. If someone then wanted to take the extra step and be "that guy," it would be possible to remove the copy protection from most of the Apple movies, except for the most recent ones... Then, the movies could be conceivably watched on devices not associated with an Apple ID or on unsupported displays. And you are absolutely right, that in the privacy of one's home, doing this is not a big deal or unethical, as long as one isn't sharing the movies with people or selling pirated copies. But, it's good to point out that removing copy protection is technically illegal.... too much discussion of this topic will probably get posts deleted here by moderators.
Sure OP can (and should) backup their iTunes files locally going forward and or remove DRM if they so choose (although if their so concerned that they'd never copy a disc...) but I think there's a fair argument to be made that they shouldn't have to do that and if they're going to go through that much trouble they might as well just start ripping discs. I just wanted to provide another perspective.
