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Are DVDs Software Or Films?
NewsWatcher writes: "In Australia a court case with international ramifications will decide if DVDs are software or films. If they are designated as software, rental prices will go through the roof, if they are films their distribution cannot be limited under copyright laws.
This article explains the ins and outs ." Unrelated incident -- FatRatBastard writes: "C|Net News is reporting that the new Warner Bros Powerpuff Girls DVD is infected with the FunLove virus. Note this only effects those who install the supplemental Windows software that comes on the DVD. The article claims that "The virus only affects PCs that load the disc, not DVD players" so I'm not sure if the DVD auto installs software if loaded on a Win PC, or if infection only happens if the user chooses to install the supplemental software."
Is a tape music or software?
Is a floppy disk music or software?
The media that something resides on does not change the identity of what it is. Therefore a DVD-based movie is still a movie.
Im going home to watch Redhat 7.2 now, Don't post any spoilers.
I'm wondering what the wholesale vs retail prices are for videos, is the gap as wide?
From article:
Warner simultaneously releases DVDs to the retail and rental market. They are color coded - silver for retail at
a wholesale price of $24, and blue for rental, wholesaling at $55.
When Warner threatened to sue video shops caught renting the retail-designated DVD, the association -
representing 55 per cent of Australian video shops - took the offensive. It argues that under the Copyright Act,
Warner cannot restrict the rental of DVD movies.
Some DVDs are film only. Some are software only. Some are films with minor menu software. Some are films with game software.
It depends.
But the thing that's disturbing is that the Powerpuff Girls have a virus. It must be the work of that villain MoJo JoJo! Quick, call the mayor's secretary, she'll know what to do!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Something I've been wondering. How is the interactive part of a DVD programmed? Is there some sort of specialized Flash-style DVD language? Is there a spec for it somewhere? How is it encoded? How would you do something for your own custom DVDs?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The company is replacing all infected DVDs. The problem is getting word out to consumers about the recall. The problem is also moron consumers who read the headline "DVD infected with virus" and suddenly panic and flood customer support lines with concerns over what an infected DVD might do to their standalone Toshiba or Sony player.
I won't get into the problem that allows a DVD to be mastered and pressed with an virus in the supplimental software.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
It seems from the article that the case Warner Home Video is presenting is that a DVD is computer software with a movie hidden somwhere inside, which is totally bogus.
When I go out to purchase a DVD, I'm thinking, "Wow, Fight Club is going to look awesome on my friends big screen;" not, "Wow, I can't wait to go home and enjoy my Fight Club-related software and included movie!" The mere fact that they market these as things that you *WATCH* with extra features should totally nullify their whole argument. I might be able to understand it if they called it "Interactive software, *now with a free movie!*," but they don't, because nobody wants that crap, they want a movie, if they didn't they wouldn't have purchased it. Get off your high-horse Warner and stop gouging rental outlets.
It used to be that a few seconds at the front of every videotape said "Copying is prohibited, etc, etc," and you'd just fast forward through it. Nowadays all my DVDs have thirty second clips of FBI warnings, and they include codes that prevent my DVD player from fast forwarding. The DVD, literally, takes precedence over what I click on my remote control.
Although we all understand the UCITA has turned into a frightful mess, it seems like there does need to be a standard set of laws for software and content. When I buy a CD, most of the time I know what I'm getting and I know how to use it. When I buy a DVD, I don't know if they've somehow inserted idiotic menus and ads that I will be forced to watch.
Mojo: Hahaha! Now the powerpuff girls cannot sell their DVD because the software contained inside it is infected with the virus I infected the software contained inside the DVD with. Now the Powerpuff girls' goody-goody reputation will be tarnished because nobody would beleive that the goody-goody Powerpuff Girls would do something that would tarnish their reputation like distributing a DVD that was infected with a virus!
Blossom: Not so fast, Mojo! The DVD runs just fine under linux if you use DeCSS!
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The presumption that forcing rental places to pay the full $55 will make rental prices go through the roof is, as presented, flawed. It assumes that the added cost of the DVDs will be such that the rental companies MUST charge significantly more to make up the difference. I expect that the cost of media is actually very small relative to the overhead of paying rent and staffing the store, so even a doubling of media price should not mean a doubling of rental prices. It assumes that rental places are forced to use the cheaper, non-rental DVDs because otherwise they would not make any money at all - i.e., that the margins on the rental business are razor sharp and depend critically on the price of the DVD. But a possibility is that these rental places are just looking to save every buck they can, and that they would still make a comfortable (albeit smaller) margin renting out $55 CDs.
Ultimately the price of rentals will NOT be determined solely by the cost of the media to the renting company. It will be determined by the market forces of supply and demand. The price will largely be determined by what price consumers are willing to pay. Given that DVDs are relatively inexpensive now (5-6 times the price of a 2-day rental in Canada), I think it is clear that the maximum price for (say) a 2-day DVD rental is clearly bounded and not much more than what those prices are now, and hence it seems unlikely DVD rental prices would ever go "through the roof".
If it was software, then it falls under the whole licensing rigamarole that most software does. However, they use the same type of legal warnings that VHS movies use. Plus, it's basically the same content. Yeah, it's got some flashy menus and such, but as many have said before if you classify this as software then CDs become software too. The content's the same, it's the media it's on that's different.
This is YADL (yet another dumb lawsuit) perpetrated by a company who wants to improve its bottom line. Should be interesting to see if the Aussies have more sense in their digital media policies than we do. It sickens me when a company tries to muck with laws in the digital era just because the lawmakers are ignorant about new technology. "Oh, it's the same movie, just on a different media, but let's call it software so we can charge more". Disgusting.
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I don't think consumers need to fear this one much. While either film distributors or video stores will see their margins affected, it all balances out in the end.
Should the courts decide that DVDs *are* films, we'll probably just see more DVD's come out in an expensive version targeted at video stores a few weeks before the consumer market priced DVD's come out. Motivated video stores will get the releases early on (most have special agreements with the film distributors already anyhow). Those stores that wait will not see as many rentals since demand is highest at initial release, but they will save one the cost of the DVD.
DVD's contain very simple programs in a virtual machine that handle a lot of the viewing control settings. If they are software however then the film industry still loses.
Under EU law I have a right to make backups of software.
wouldn't this mean that Warner Bros is guilty of terrorism under the new patriot act? If so wouldn't that mean that the US military should head in and start bombing the snot out of them?
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
Um, dude, there already is software of the computer sort on DVDs. Has been since the early days. That's what's infected on that Powerpuff Girls DVD, in fact--the interactivity software.
The earliest DVD that I know of to have software on it as well as media was the Bubblegum Crisis 3-disc set, which included its own Shockwave DVD player so you could watch the disc on your computer even if you didn't have a player program. Then came discs like The Matrix , which had an app called "PC Friendly" on them. PC Friendly, in addition to containing its own player for the DVD, would allow you to access the "special interactive features"--in the case of The Matrix, that would be things like the "I Know Kung Fu" fight scene collection, the interactive trivia game, the text articles, and of course the weblink.
These days, the helper app of choice is the Interactual Player, which is included on titles like The Mummy Returns, Star Wars Episode One (it is this software, by the way, that controls whether you can access the DVD-exclusive trailers on their website), and just about anything else that touts interactive features. (Notable exceptions including the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within DVD, which uses a Quicktime program, and the forthcoming Shrek DVD, which the Bits says will be interactive without having to install anything, though it doesn't say how.) Interactual will also play the interactive content from PC Friendly-enabled discs.
You'll always know when you have a software-enabled disc--because when you put it in the drive, it'll either try to install the program, or else launch it if it's installed already--probably interfering with your DVD player software, which will also be trying to launch. For this reason, I went into the Windows registry and disabled the CD autorun function (and thanks for making it so easy for me, Microsoft! (That was sarcasm)).
Anyway, like I said, the interactivity software is what's infected on the Powerpuff DVD. If you didn't install it and have autorun off, it should be safe to play the movie content--but I wouldn't take chances anyway.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The law is a place for things that make sense, but the law is intentionally a very slow moving cumbersome beast. Of course when there's a major shift in any realm governed by laws the law takes a while to catch up. Unfortunately this process of catching up can involve short term idiocy while the ramifications of the laws are truely understood. This process is further muddled because there are power structures built around the old way of doing things which are now at risk.
Right now what we see is that lawmakers are trying to maintain those power structures. The reasons for this are numerous but I think that in the long run as the negative impact of artificially sustaining these structures will become clear.
For example we talk here about whether this is software or a movie. Well it is software, but then every form of media is getting to be software of a sort. Identifying these things as software is fine, but the problem here is the notion that somehow being software changes the nature of the beast. It's the problem that somehow first sale doctrine is slowly getting corrupted by EULA's.
The concept of licensing of intellectual property was originally intended for dealing with small scope releases. You'd license information to a subsidiary or a contractor and because of the nature of the information it made sense to have broad restrictions on what they could do with that information. But when we are talking about mass commercial sales, a EULA makes no sense at all. Why should I be unable to sell my used copy of Microsoft Windows but be able to sell my used copy of a VNV Nation album? The purpose of EULA's was to limit the distribution and use of proprietary information but if things are being distributed on a broad scale, it doesn't make any sense (except for those wishing to usurp copyright law).
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In the UK at present, it is not uncommon for film distributors to charge different amounts for the non-theatric hire (film clubs, schools, oil rigs etc) of a film based on the physical medium. A 35mm print of a film might cost £250 for a single screening, compared to £80-100 for a 16mm print and £50-80 for a VHS or DVD print. They're all still films, but the different media command different prices. Interestingly, a rental agreement for a film in one format does not permit exhibition in a different format - often different formats are distributed by different companies.
However, that is not the issue behind this Australian case, where (cheaper) retail prints are being used in place of (more expensive) rental prints. The price does not reflect the 'value' of the physical print or of the film therein (although for VHS, the recording quality of rental prints is generally better than that of retail), but rather the rights which are permitted to the owner of the print.
IMHO, Warner is entirely justified in attempting to stamp out unlicensed rental of retail prints, just as it already makes non-theatric hire licenses available at a lower price than that of theatric hire licenses (as would be required of a cinema or other commercial exhibitor). I say again, the cost of a print (for sale or rent) depends on the exhibition rights which are given to its owner.
I wonder how the MPAA will defend their use of region coding? When's the last time that you bought a piece of software that was linked to the theatrical release of a movie. I can just see it... Microsoft won't release Office 2004 until after "Back to the Future IV" has shown in theaters in your area.
If they dropped region coding (which they won't do), do you think that rental stores will just buy (probably cheaper) grey market videos?
The way this used to work in the days of VHS was that they would sell only one version of the tapes... For the first few months it would be priced at the rental-store-price of $100-$300, and then after that it would drop to the consumer-price of $20-$30. Now, I guess they're getting greedy and want to sell to consumers as soon as possible.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
This will probably get lost in all the noise, but here we go anyway.
Imagine for a second a world where DVDs had never been invented. In such a world, any interactive content would have to be packaged separately, say in a bundled CD-ROM like you get in kids cereal boxes these days. This presents a clear physical separation of the interactive content from the product. In this case the "software" component is just a freebie extra that *happens* to come with the video (or cereal).
Now back to the real world where we DVDs have been invented. The physical separation of software and product (in this case video content) becomes a *logical* separation. Instead of a VHS cassette box and a bundled CD-ROM, we now have the abstract separation of MPEG files and executable binaries. The interactive content is still just a freebie extra that *happens* to come with the purchase or rental of the DVD. In this case, we must consider the DVD to a film, and have all the copyright privilidges and restricitons of said media.
But wait, there's more. The above case only works if one cannot interact directly with the movie as it is being played. Suppose someone devises a method for actually interacting with a running movie. Remember "Clue", the movie with several different endings? Suppose someone had devised a method that, through user choices made during the playback of the movie, different storylines would appear. In this case, the DVD must be considered "software" because playback somehow contains binary instructions for choosing a movie path.
Therefore, I advocate a classification system where discs are labled as "software" or "film". It may be slightly convoluted, but it seems to me that this is the only way to be fair...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
All they have to do to show DVD's are film and not software is to load in a full-frame DVD - usually they start with the warning "This FILM has been formatted to fit your screen".
If the DVD itself says it's a film, how can they say otherwise? This sounds like an argument even someone with no technical expertise can disagree with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The definition of software under the copyright act is basically any instructions that make a machine produce a desire result. There are US legal precedents that imply that HTML qualifies.
Unlike a music CD, a DVD has navigation commands that were rich enough to implement the old game Dragonslayer. This includes chapter markup, paging, etc... The MPEG-2 and AC-3 compression is essentially instruction for how to reproduce the raw video and sound. Even the CSS encryption TPM is a software mechanism. During the preliminary injuction hearing in the DeCSS DMCA case Kaplan asked the MPAA guy something like "What is this key thing? is it hardware, is it software?" and the reply was "it is software".
I think it is very clear that DVD's are more than simple content. They are meant to be read only by a particular computer program.
The implication is that 17 USC 117 applies which gives "owners" of software certain additional rights - ability to "adapt" for use in a machine and ability to archive. If a DVD is software, it also refutes judge Kaplan's reverse engineering analysis (he found the DMCA RE clauses only apply to software works and wrongly assumed that a DVD wasn't one).
A movie is software, so a DVD indeed is software, and so are a VHS tape and a vinyl record : although analogical, they still contain instructions that are interpreted by a device, so they qualify as software.
Think of your favorite games that have FMV sequences. The actual game engine, software, controls the FMV "movie". But the entire CD is considered software.
Take Microsoft's Encarta on DVD. I'm sure MS isn't going to say that's a "movie" no matter how many videos it contains.
A "movie" DVD, on the other hand, contains a relatively small "software" portion and a comparatively larger "movie" portion (plural if you consider the outtakes, trailers, interviews). So what's the difference? The actual sizes of the "software" and "movie"???
It's absurd to consider a DVD anything BUT software.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
(From my weblog:) I would like to propose an interesting spin on this story: Should Warner Brothers win, then the following syllogism will hold:
- All movies are expressions that in America would be protected under the First Amendment.
- All movies are software (since all movies can be put on DVD).
- There exists at least one movie.
- Therefore, there exists software that in America would be protected under the First Amendment.
Once a single piece of software is over that line, it's going to be very, very hard to draw a line that includes movies (movies, of all things!), yet excludes other things.This story hails from Australia, not the USA, but it would still probably have some interesting ramifications, even in Australia.
Note that in particular, DeCSS, a DVD decryption program, is trying to claim software-as-expression as a defense in the USA. Warner, a member of the RIAA, has gone on record now, at least in Australia, as claiming that DVD movies are an instance of a thing that is both software and an expression protectable under the First Amendment.