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Australia Rules DVD's are Films, Not Software
divereigh writes: "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that an Australian Federal court has decided this case in favour of the Australian Video Rental Association. The Association had taken Warner Home Video to court for trying to classify DVD's as software and thus double the price for those sold into the rental market."
They can be both, and now adays, they usually are?
Like the ones that have stupid little games in the menu.. that's not part of the movie, and I would cosider it software.
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So it's really consumers 1, video rental stores 1, giant corporation 0.
Sorry - but it's total crap. DVD's are software. They contain logic - menu systems, scene browsers, and most importantly, a nasty little piece of malicioius code called "region coding" which illegally allows the Motion Picture cartels to practice Predatory Price Discrimination against a worldwide customer base.
No, DVD's are software. Malicious software, in fact. They should be dealt with as such.
That's missing the whole point. Of course DVDs are better than VHS, and the companies put more work into a DVD release than a VHS release. So they should cost more--I'm willing to pay it. But all DVDs should cost the same--the cost of a buying DVD shouldn't depend on who you are, and that's exactly what they were trying to do. If you're a regular guy, you pay X amount, but if you're a video rental guy, you have to pay twice as much for the SAME thing in a different color package.
This ruling probably won't benefit consumers because, as someone else has already pointed out, DVD's will cost more to rent than VHS tapes regardless of how expensive it is for the rental chains to purchase them. However, I think it's gratifying anytime someone manages to beat the film industry in court.
Do people actually rent DVD's? Because of the higher cost of renting them, I've found that it's usually best just to buy the movie outright. In most cases, I find that a movie worth watching is worth watching again. So I think it would be kind of nice to have a movie library.
I think the main difference between a piece of software and a game is how much interactivity is offered. The first CD-ROM games that I played, back in the early 1990's, were "Spaceship Warlock" and "Hell Cab". While these were computer games and as such would be classified as software, they interactive experience entailed essentially clicking on things every once in a while and the rest of the time watching the story unfold.
The main difference between "playing" these games and watching a movie was the fact that they had a "choose your own adventure" style of playback; i.e. you could dictate the basic actions of the main character. So I would conclude that most DVD movies are indeed movies and not pieces of software, because they are mostly non-interactive, and for the most part, people by them to watch the movie and not play the silly little games included.
I think my sig has never been more appropriate than now. Check out my site if you want to know about backing up DVD's.
The future isn't what it used to be.
"No, DVD's are software. Malicious software, in fact. They should be dealt with as such."
Well I've heard that Shrek installs spyware on your computer based DVD player.
So your not too far off the mark.
And of course, if it's small-lot stuff that has to be shipped from overseas, *dingdingding*. Watch the dollars rack up. Australia is still a long haul from America and Europe, even in this modern age of jet aircraft. I'd love to buy some books from the US that I can't get over here, but the price of shipping is higher than the price of the books! (and considering the high price of books in Aus... I really want print-on-demand). Same applies to a lot of computer hardware (monitors, drives, boards, cpus, etc - all made in places far far away from Down Under).
Heh. Yeah, it's one of the nicer places in the world to live, in terms of both scenery and culture. Hey, just because nine of the ten most venomous critters on the planet call Australia home, doesn't mean you can't too.(seriously, the chances of getting fatally bit/clawed/stung by one of those critters is amazingly remote unless you do something really stupid or careless - or if you are named Steve Irwin and play with 'em for a living)
I was involved in this case as an expert witness, so, if anyone has questions I'd be happy to answer them.
Its called the "doctrine of first sale". Essencially it says that once you buy a copy of a work (book, video, etc), the seller can not stop you from lending, renting, or reselling the copy to someone else.
What was happening in this case was that Warner Home Video was selling two versions of DVDs... one that was not for rental and the other that was for rental. The for rental version was, of course, more expensive. The difference? A little sticker on the disc. The Australian video rental industry took Warner Home Video to court over this and won. Warner can not dictate what the purcahser does with the video disc. Warner was claiming that DVDs were software and could have use restrictions placed on them, ala a EULA. The court ruled that Warner can not claim DVDs as such.
First sale in the US came from a case (early 20th century?) between Macy's department store and a book publisher. The publisher indicated that on the book that it could not be sold lower than a certain price. Macy's sold it from a lower price and the publisher took them to court. The court decided that once the publisher sells the copies of the works, they have no say over what is done with them.
As far as I know, the fist sale doctrine has never been applied to software. I don't think that any of the "no resale" clauses of many EULAs has been contested in court. Presumably, there aren't many EULA violations claims made by publishers because they probablly aren't enforceable and the whole might of groups like the SPA and BSA are built unpon these unenforcable claims. Not bringing them to court allows they claims to continue because most people threatended with them will cave before any real legal action is made.
Incidentally, this is probablly what Warner's claims were based upon--the assumption that no one would challenge them.
This is something that most socialists don't understand. In a free market, the consumers determine the price. If they overcharge, then they will go out of business. Blockbuster is heading in that direction. Anyone one rent from Blockbuster, they seem to be dead. For the price of 1 video rental, I can rent 3 from a mom and pop store.
If the courts actually decide that it doesn't and that EULAs are binding (i.e. click-through/assumed agreements, obviously signed contracts for enterprise software ARE binding by contract law), then I will deem copyright law no longer applies to software. If software isn't covered by copyright law then FUCK everybody, I'm gonna go pirate the shit out of everything.
So you see, it would be irrational to exclude software, as if code were somehow magical. It's already been established that code is more or less equivalent to speech (no that's not a legal statement but a common sense translation), at least here in the US. And any country with some sense would come to the same conclusion. As such, a piece of software is like a book with instructions, very, very detailed instructions. The fact that they are read by a machine that does stuff with them like draw widgets on a screen is fucking irrelevant to the underlying law.
Nevertheless, the argument that a DVD *is* software is absurd - a DVD-Movie is data for a fixed playback algorithm. A DVD-ROM is a platter than may contain software. This is obvious. Even my mother understands the basic fact that a DVD can be used to store stuff like software OR movies, and she's not exactly a computer scientist. Putting menus and perhaps games that use the menu system on a DVD do not change it's primary role as a movie.
However, any legal system that allows this kind of outrageous treatment of the owner of software or movies deserves to go down like a two dollar whore.
>region coding is _not_ "nasty malicious code."
No, but it certianly is nasty and malicious.
Yes it is code on some titles. These "Region Coding Enhanced" (RCE) discs contain valid content for all regions, but in all but the "correct" region the content is only "Wrong region" (confusing region-free players), and in the "correct" region there's a menu program that reads the player's make and model, and if it's a model known to be region-switchable or too easy to to modify to get rid of Macrovision or region lockout), the disc won't play.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Same applies to a lot of computer hardware (monitors, drives, boards, cpus, etc - all made in places far far away from Down Under). Yeah like Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Singapore and Japan.
The reason I could support something similar to what WB was trying to do, is that I could support the concept of limiting some of the traditional rights during a rental "situation". This was what Rep. Boucher was trying to accomplish with his DMCA clause.
Of course the actual result of that DMCA clause turned out to be another total victory for the recording industry. It was supposed to protect rental movies from being copied, by making it mandatory for all VCR's to recognize MacroVision/CopyGuard. The industry promptly screwed the consumers by using this copy protection in all movies sold, not just the rental versions.
Still, I could almost support the scheme of two types of movies: bought and rental. The reality is that this probably won't work for a number of reasons, the classic reasons cited in the article is that the "rental version" ends-up being more expensive, so rental stores use consumer versions instead.
Another practical reason why this would probably not work, is that the recording industry has proved time and again that they are totally untrustworthy! I have to stretch to come-up with an example of an industry that is more sleazy (have to drop into organized crime like loan sharking and illegal immigrant smugglers).
The subject of this judgement was not whether a dvd is a movie or software, it is about Time Warner using its larger size to extort extra money from the movie rental stores. (ie not allowing video stores to rent out the cheaper DVDs, but selling them others DVDs with the same qualities for a greatly increased price)
In Australia it is against the law for a company to interfere with any retailers pricing schemes. This is in order to encourage competition, and prevent price fixing, and also gives the same power to any individual that would be given to a company.
In Australia we have an Act to ensure the rights of all parties in any agreement are all an the same footing, and can be found here
To my knowlegde this exists nowhere else in the world, so it seems, once again that Australia is the fairest country in the world.
Macrovision took out any resemblence of NTSC broadcast quality. Macrovision deliberately violates much of the standard to screw up AGC in VCR's downstream. It exceeds 100 IRE at times to cause AGC to compress video throwing the SYNC, Blanking, Color Subcarrier, and Pedistal way out of spec in the process. Without it, it may have a chance of getting close to the standard.
The truth shall set you free!