My laptop contains several movies which I purchased. Few original DVDs got damaged and only digital format is left in my laptop. I want to free up space and want to upload it on any cloud space. I read that uploading to cloud may violate copyright. But this is my personal stuff and I am not sharing with anyone online. How to safely move these movies to the cloud without any risk of copyright violation? Should I first encrypt and then move?
Yes, buy an external HDD, encrypt it (if needed) and copy your files to it. So you don't have to download it, and you always have instant access to your data. Or you can buy 2 external drives. If one drive is failing, you have the second drive as a backup. If you really want to upload it to the cloud choose a "secure" provider with Two-Factor-Authentication, "Zero knowledge", etc. For example: Tresorit, SpiderOak, ... There are more than these two to choose from, but i'm not up to date with current cloud providers.
Using the cloud does not violate copyright. People backup their songs all the time. The only time you will violate copyright is if you enable sharing on those files. The simple answer is don't enable sharing. If you're extra paranoid then just create passworded zip files and sort the films by name, or category, etc.
Isn't "copying" movies a copyright violation anyway, I'm not condemning those that do (wink) but even cloud is open to subpoenas if the protection agencies have an interest in an individual...Local storage would be my choice for everything, what is the cloud operator goes bust?
The Uk did allow copying of user purchased CD's \DVD's for a short time but it was overruled by the high court here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/artic...egal-again-after-high-court-overturns-new-law
You can use cryptomator (https://cryptomator.org/). As they say: "Free client-side encryption for your cloud files. Open source software: No backdoors, no registration."
If you're being targeted by a subpoena it's not for copyright and you have bigger issues to worry about.
True I guess, I would still err to caution and use local storage rather than risk the minefield of copyright laws using technically public storage.
That is what I use on my desktop and phone works great, There is also BoxCryptor https://www.boxcryptor.com/en I have not used it so I do not know how well it works.
External HDD is ok but it goes obsolete soon. Though it has an advantage of no download problems. If I encrypt songs and videos and then store in cloud, is it still violation?
If you can afford the initial investment a NAS is the best solution. It will provide backup, can be accessed from all the devices at home or through the NET, has disk monitoring and alerts you when one disk starts (or has) failing so you can replace it. Synology is arguably the best option with an excellent OS, Linux based, and costs you less than $200 for a 2 disk machine or less than $300 for a 4 disk one (disks not included).
I downloaded Cryptomator. It is very useful if you want to sync files but my requirement is to archive songs and movies. I don't want to keep a copy in my PC.
you may want to use rclone. However according to many r/datahoarder users there is no problem to upload copyrighted videos, provided you do not share them.