Ripping a DVD, a federal crime in 1999, requires $22 and free software in 2026

A writer plugged in a $22 DVD drive, grabbed free software, and copied Gladiator in about an hour—basically recreating a once-scary early-2000s computer ritual with modern ease. The big reveal wasn’t just that it still works, but that the old movie disc was packed with weird extra files, hidden installers, and long-forgotten copy-protection baggage from an era when Hollywood treated home copying like the end of civilization. In plain English: something that used to feel risky, complicated, and vaguely illegal is now about as easy as ordering socks online.

But the real show was in the comments, where nostalgia instantly turned into a fact-checking cage match. One camp basically yelled, calm down, nobody was getting busted for making a backup in their bedroom, with one commenter accusing the piece of mixing up DVD copying with movie downloading. Another group flexed their old-school credentials: “I’m pretty sure I did it for much cheaper back in the day” became the unofficial boomer-hacker battle cry. And then came the comedy hits: one reader saw the line about “every kid with a Dell tower in 2003” and fired back “OK Claude,” roasting the prose like it was written by an AI trying too hard to cosplay as a millennial.

Meanwhile, the power users casually wandered in to say this isn’t even limited to DVDs anymore, because yes, people are apparently still out here unlocking Blu-ray drives like it’s a side quest. The mood? Equal parts “this is neat,” “this was never that serious,” and “buddy, we solved this years ago.”