So the wife and I are in the process of digitizing our DVD collection for easier access, and the topic of selling said DVDs once they are converted came up.

It sounds wonderful in theory. You get to retain access to the content you love, in a super convenient format, plus you get to make some quick cash by selling the physical media you will no longer be needing.

The problem of course is that legally, you can't do this. You are only allowed to have a digital copy of a movie if you still own the physical media. in this case the digital copy is looked upon as a digital backup and falls within your fair use rights.

My take on this is that retaining the physical copy of the movie in question is your way of proving that you have paid for said movie, and didn't just download it from the internet somewhere. This is all the studios and distributors are concerned with after all, whether or not they were paid.

So last night as I was cataloguing the movies we wanted to convert to digital I noticed a piece of legal documentation that exists on almost every DVD and CD produced in this country. The Proof of Purchase.

If you pick up one of your DVDs, flip it over to the back and take a look at the top right corner, you will see something like this:

On many DVDs and CDs you will see a dotted line around the proof of purchase, with a scissors icon, encouraging you to cut out the this bit of info for some other use. Traditionally this has been used to prove you purchased an item that was being used as part of a promotion. Turn in 15 boxtop's from your favorite cereal that have the proof of purchase on them and you get a "johnny danger decoder ring".

What I would submit to you is that regardless of what it was used for in the past, it is a legal document proving that you paid for said merchandise and as such it should be useable as proof that you purchased a DVD, even if you no longer have the DVD.

I am not a lawyer by any stretch, but I do understand the concept of precedence and it seems to me that there are hundreds, if not thousands of examples of proof of purchase being used as verifiable evidence that an individual purchased an item, regardless of the fact that the person in question still physically owns the item.

In this context I should be able to create a digital file of a DVD, cut out the proof of purchase from said DVD, catalogue it and then dispose of the DVD in whatever way I see fit, since I retain the legal document that states I paid for the DVD.

What say you "legal eagle" types out there. Does this seem reasonable, or am I completely and utterly confused about this whole thing?