Which only raises the price of exploiting the analog hole by a relatively small amount -- it is not hard to buy better audio recording equipment to record the a

Which only raises the price of exploiting the analog hole by a relatively small amount -- it is not hard to buy better audio recording equipment to record the audio as it is being played, and the postprocessing needed to make it sound like the original is not very complex. A few thousand dollars (maybe low tens of thousands) wuold be enough to get you a rig that records a high-def movie with little noticeable loss, and anecdotally I have heard of such systems being used to rip TV shows as they air.