The obvious risk is that you don't have nearly as much budget to spend on lawyers if someone does come after you for it. The copyright system tends to disproportionately punish small players and not punish larger ones.
The part I was responding to was "with digital copies sourced from the high seas". The premise that they were responding to was if the only domestically available media playing devices required subscriptions. It's not clear why the assumption would be that getting content from arbitrary international online sources would be something that isn't also sanctioned in this scenario. That doesn't mean the entire scenario is likely, but if that's the objection, then why reply to me and not the original comment proposing it?
I replied to you because my point is that it's established law that they cannot come after you for a backup of a title you own, and even the rights holders admit that.
Selling machines that require subscriptions to operate doesn't change the settled law about having backups of things you bought.
It actually did. There weren't that many, they were just high profile news at the time. And most of them either lost or recovered minimal damages. There was no actual $250,000 payment for downloading an MP3. That's why the industry stopped doing it and now only targets distribution sites.
The RIAA/MPA still goes after individuals, but they target them with settlement offers to avoid going to court. 3k and an admission of guilt is a lot less than it would cost to get a lawyer and fight back in court so people do pay them, including completely innocent people since the companies who spam out DMCA notices don't care all that much about accuracy. They've also been going after ISPs and extracting money from them for no reason, but after losing the Cox case, that might not end up being worth it to them.
