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."

Comments

Is a CD music or software?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Is a CD music or software?

[ConceptJunkie]

You're going about this all wrong, AC. You're applying logic to the question. Stop it. Hasn't legal precedent WRT intellectual property taught you that logic is not required or even desired when rendering decisions?

DVD's will be defined as whatever will end up making the MPAA/RIAA/Bill Gates/the Illuminati/the Stonecutters/Ted Turner the most money.

Re:Is a CD music or software?

[Merk]

Of course we know that. The problem is that "the Law" is not a place for "things that make sense". Consider writeable CDs. Some are dirt cheap, $1 each or so. Others are $10 or more. The difference, a few bits on the CD itself? The $10 kind are the only kind that work in consumer electronics and are designed for copying music. This makes two CDs that are physically essentially identical into two different products that are taxed and priced differently.

The problem is what to do about mixed media. A DVD that contains "pc-friendly" (ha) software is a movie with software on it. What about music CDs that have some fun "interact with the band" software goodies on them? It might be sold in a music store next to music cds, but is it "music", is it more "music" than "software"? Finally, what if one of these cds was originally intended as a mainly music item, but the software happens to be so cool that people buy it just for the software and ignore the music entirely.

Its the Content, Stupid.

[TheDick]

If the CONTENT is a MOVIE, then it is a film. Its all bits one way or the other, but its the INTENDED USAGE of those bits that counts.

Im going home to watch Redhat 7.2 now, Don't post any spoilers.

Wholesale vs retail prices? What about videos?

[Alrocket]

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.

Re:Wholesale vs retail prices? What about videos?

[Blackwulf]

Actually, yes. I used to work at a Blockbuster Video, and it was like this.

Remember how you'd see Videos for RENTAL only? That's because the wholesale price is something insane, like $99.99. Then, after the studio believed that the rentals were sagging, they'd lower the price to $19.99 or whatever, and then Blockbuster would be able to take the rentals and "PVT" them (sell them at a used price).

If you accidentally destroyed a rented video, you had to fork over the $100 to buy it. (We had a customer who left the video on top of his car, and then he drove over it when he was returning it. Oops.)

The insane part was that there were some people that would actually pay the $100 to own the video when it came out for rentals.

Both, but Powerpuffs have a virus?

[WillSeattle]

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!

Clickthrough agreements for movies...

[glassware]

I'm sure I'm not the first person to wonder about it, but DVDs have been getting increasingly software-like in their admonishments to users.

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.

Rental prices need not "go through the roof"

[tmark]

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".

the real impact (if any)

[uqbar]

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 is software

[Alan Cox]

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.

Law and making sense...

[sterno]

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).