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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."
DVD's are a storage medium. They are what someone makes them to be (ie. Movie DVD's, Software DVD's, etc).
Trying to classify Movie DVD's as software is sort of... dumb.
For a second their People in australia were going to get screwed with DVDs and bradband... Good thing its now back to get screwed with broadband
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
Does this mean Region Code Enhancement, which uses scripting to check whether the player is region 1 (and IIRC only region 1), would be banned in Oz?
sulli
RTFJ.
Since I'm not in Australia, this doesn't affect me directly, but it's still a moral victory (now if we can just convince a judge in the US to accept an Australian court finding as precedent...)
Basically, the decision ruled that DVD movies cannot be treated as software simply because they are digitally recorded, and because DVD players have processors. I wonder if now AOL Time Warner will try to "modify" the DVD standard in order to make DVDs into "software" so they can go ahead with their scheme anyway. I doubt customers (meaning me) would go for that, since it would probably mean that people would have to get newer-model DVD players, but I wouldn't put it past them to try it.
Can be found here. It is dating back to Novemeber 05, 2001.
--Metrollica
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.
As for the price disparity between rental DVDs and videos:
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.
DVDs are more prone to deterioration (being very vulnerable to scratches) and so will not allow as many rentals before requiring replacement.
That's interesting -- I would have guessed that DVD's last longer. VHS tapes are vulnerable to being chewed up by the VCR, and on some old videos that I have the magnetic tape is just wearing out. DVD's avoid both of those problems, but I suppose you're right about the scratching.
I'm not arguing with you -- I suspect you're correct. I'm just curious....
Steve
The company argued that it was entitled to charge more because, since a DVD - unlike a video-tape - is digitally recorded and is played on a machine containing a processor, it should be treated like a computer program and subject to copyright law.
The company argued that [...] a DVD [...] should be treated like a computer program and subject to copyright law.
The courts rejected the company's claim.
Does that mean that DVDs aren't subject to copyright law?
(yes, I know this is a silly conclusion; but I really can't work out what the quoted paragraph is supposed to mean.)
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Hmm... Maybe I'll watch some FreeBSD tonight.
Why must they be pigeon-holed into either category?
While it was true when DVD was first released that most DVD movies were re-releases of VHS with virtually no additional content, many of the new DVD's have great features. The Imax movie Everest, for instance, is available on DVD, and has an additionaly one hour documentary on the making of the film as well as deleted footage, and an interactive map.
As for the legality of copying DVD's to your computer, the easiest way to do it is legal. At my website, my guide provides an entirely legal method. The main issue is using DeCSS, which is illegal because it circumvents copyright protection. But the alternative is to manually verify the DVD by beginning playback in a DVD player program, pausing it, then begin ripping.
The future isn't what it used to be.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Sure, the DVDs may actually come with some executable code on them, but by and large, THE BITS OF THE DVD REPRESENT DATA.
This data is consumed by software to generate media, but IT IS *NOT* SOFTWARE.
Any good software engineer knows that CODE and DATA should be SEPARATE. I'm glad the court recognizes this as well.
VHS's are less susceptable to *people fucking with you* as well :-) Ive rented videos before and had them not be what was printed on the casette ... once someone taped over the movie I rented ... I dont know what exactly was on it, but it was a midget in a bathtub that was on sleds, sledding in a huge drainge ditch, he ate shit about halfway down the slope :) Of course that was way more entertaining then the crap my g/f had picked out for the evening ...
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
This case doesn't have anything to do with the price consumers pay to buy a DVD. AOL-Time-Warner can still charge whatever they want for DVDs. This is all about rental- AOL/TW was trying to make it illegal to rent out retail DVDs, so that rental stores would have to buy special "rental" DVDs that of course cost an arm and a leg. Read the article!
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Offtopic rant time! My variant on this is that a movie worth watching is worth downloading - it takes a day or so and is a hassle, so I don't waste my time watching crap movies. Sure, it's piracy, but I'm not going to buy a DVD drive that will only work with certain movies and may be obsoleted to fix the broken region coding. I'm also not going to wait a year for the VHS, this is *much* less convenient for me than watching it on my computer.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
I just don't understand all the negativity here. Here's how I see it: WB was playing games with what a DVD really is in order to squeeze more money out of rental places in questionable ways. They lost that right, and were punished. Customers at rental places are renting MOVIES, no matter what kind of 'software' is on the DVD. They're not renting DVD's to solve a problem, virus scan their hard drive, or render images in 3D.
Most DVD's aren't worth owning. I don't want to spend $40 or so on a DVD unless it's the type of thing I think I'll come back to again and again, like I did with T2. However, I do rent quite a few DVD's. And what Warner Bros. basically did was try to take that right away from me by jacking up the prices on their DVD's specifically for rental stores. That was not right. Tough noogies if WB doesn't get money for each rental. If their content isn't worth owning, that's their fault. Don't punish the consumers for it.
I do have concerns of the ramifications this might have in the future, though. So far, I'm encouraged though. By defining DVD's as movies, then movie rights are seperate from Software rights. At least Warner Bros. can't grease up some politician to take movie rights away that affect how I use software.
"Derp de derp."
uh, australia? what the fook does that have to do with the United States?
:-)
Speaking as an Australian, I hold some hope your painfully US-centric attitude can be rectified.
Last time I checked , we were using something loosely defined as the World-Wide-Web , not the United-States-Web, so I think it is entirely relevant, as one day a reference to this particular decision could help you.
Your comment portrays a bad image of the U.S. to the rest of the world. Wake up. The sun does not shine out of the US's collective posterior.
Don't make me have to come over there and kick your ass to prove it
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
It seems pretty strange to me since DVD is an acronym for Digital V ersatile Disk... :)
Classifying it as film only goes against the very name of the medium
Versatile: adj.
1) Capable of doing many things competently.
2) Having varied uses or serving many functions.
SYNONYMS: All-around, many-sided, multifaceted, multifarious. These adjectives mean having many aspects, uses, or abilities.
But ok, reading the article makes it much clearer, and I fully agree - Just because the medium is digital doesn't make it software!
:)
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
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)
..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.
I think the point is for twice the money they get the right to rent the video to paying cutomers. Hence they make money out of the deal that you and I can't at 'retail' price. They are buying a different use license than we are. They should have to pay more for that because that is their business. How much more is a different matter.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
It would probablly come down to the primary purpose of the DVD. If the DVD is a movie, is someone buying it for the crappy "PC extras"? Of course not. They're buying it for the movie.
I was involved in this case as an expert witness, so, if anyone has questions I'd be happy to answer them.
I see it as one more example of creeping corporate hijacking of the police power. What follows is based on my (US-centric) understanding of copyright law; it might be different in Australia but I suspect now. It's already illegal to rent out a DVD you own, unless you make a different arrangement with the copyright holder. So Warner could have pursued the allegedly legion video stores illegally renting retail copies (ie, without a rental license). But that would be hard, and inefficient, and a lot of trouble. So instead they wanted to sic the machinery of the courts on all video stores in a blanket action.
This, I think, is much like DMCA and CSS. It's already illegal to trade in, say, digitized movies. The Content Cartel could go after all the violating users... but they almost certainly could not efficiently recover costs from thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of violators. So they buy some laws to bugify the court system and cut the problem off at its supposed source, even if that means restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens.
The evil of the Content Cartel is not just that they are control freaks building dungeons in the air. It's also that they're pathetically lazy and they're willing to distort the legal system to satisfy their laziness.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
Naturally what this means depends on the laws. The Australian case apparently decided that movies were specially exempt from rental restrictions. If the law had only specifically stated that software could be restricted, the rental places would have lost.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Ah, yes, the joys of a Commodore "datasette" drive. Slow -- but what wasn't, then? -- and decidedly low-tech, but mine worked rather well. At least until I upended a bag of pretzel crumbs and salt into it. Oh, well, it had been time to upgrade to the infamous 1541 anyway.
Along the same lines, I had a friend who had a Timex/Sinclair Z80 computer (with all of 1 KB of memory). He programmed a "tank combat" game that simulated poor visibility by randomly turning on and off the tape-load code (which would, for the sake of timing simplicity, blank the screen). It was a pretty cool effect for two bytes of code.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
Simple. If they'r formatted as DVD-Video, they're movies with a twist. If they're formatted as DVD-ROMS, they're software that happens to contain motion pictures.
DVDs aren't like CDs. AFAIK, both DVD-ROM discs and DVD-Video discs are formatted in UDF; DVD-Video is simply a standard for the names, formats, and encryption of some files (*.vob and *.ifo). It's perfectly possible to have a folder on a DVD-Video disc containing DVD-ROM data designed for a computer.
Will I retire or break 10K?
>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?
There is nothing in our law stating that it is illegal to play region one DVD's in region 4. The whole region encoding thing is nothing more than a matter of standards compliance.
Except the typical terms for the CSS licence amount to "If you don't comply with the standard, including the region coding and Macrovision® encoding, you lose your CSS keys on all future titles, and we have paid your Parliament millions of monetary units to get an equivalent to the American DMCA with a few SSSCA provisions thrown in with that, so the only way you can DeCSS discs is through this license, nyeh!"
If it did, then you wouldn't be able to buy region 1 or region free players in Harvey Norman would you?
The MPAA is probably already buying laws making it illegal to ship DVD-Video titles or players outside of their respective regions.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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)
If you buy anything by credit card face-to-face, the EULA can be assumed to be binding, as you have signed the charge slip, and some crafty lawyer could probably twist that into having signed the EULA.
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.
If it's not speech, then it'll have a real hard time qualifying as a Section 102 literary work under U.S. copyright law.
Nevertheless, the argument that a DVD *is* software is absurd - a DVD-Movie is data for a fixed playback algorithm.
Likewise, the argument that a computer program *is* software is absurd - a Windows-Executable is data for a fixed interpreter algorithm, encoded in the hardware of the AMD Athlon and Intel Pentium IV processors.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I saw a blurb on CNN last night where the RIAA made a claim that MP3 trading (like Napster) cost them four billion dollars. I think their math is based on "everybody that has MP3 is worth the CD that it was on."
I just don't think they can make this claim. What's going on with MP3 trading is not so much piracy, but demand for a new type of service. People want individual songs, not over-priced CD's full of crap. They want it on a non-CD media so they don't have to juggle CD's. And finally, they don't want to have to look very hard to find it. You'd have thought somebody would have said "hmm.. there's demand here, we should fill it!".
Then the RIAA would have created a business model for purchase and download of MP3's. If they had done that, I'd understand if their case that Napster is costing them money. But they're not even in that market, instead they're trying to sue it out of existence. Ever wonder if phone companies tried to sue cell phone companies?
The market has spoken about what it wants, and the RIAA is stupid enough to try to fight it. The movie industry is going to learn a harsh lesson too if they follow suit. People want to rent DVD's instead of buying them. Their best bet is to make the content on the DVD's worth owning. Compete with the rental companies by being better than them. Man I'm so glad Warner Brothers lost that case.
"Derp de derp."
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.
Unfortunately, it has. This very flawed decision set a precedent in some jurisdictions that 17 USC 117 applies only when the owner of a particular copy says it does. If you merely "possess" a copy of software, but somebody else owns the physical copy (in cases such as rental), some jurisdictions say that the owner of a copy of a work has the right not to license the rights under 17 USC 117 to the person merely in possession of the copy. And software publishers claim under some EULAs to transact a perpetual rental rather than a sale of a copy.
Will I retire or break 10K?
At first glance, I found this to be an interesting story on its own, because of the way it addresses the boundaries that the digital world is creating as it goes. But in another way, it's also the most boring story I've ever heard, in that this is the most predictable storyline you could come across. It's being repeated all over the industry:
1. New format for distribution threatens company that used to make easy profits without much innovation.
2. Company seeks to sue/tax/threaten promoters of new technology for infringing on its rights to make a profit.
3. Consumers/users actually like new format, saves them money, time.
4. Company actually ends up shooting self in foot, because its entrenched in old technology, refuses to embrace new opportunity. 5. Users adopt new technology anyway, leaving company in the dust.
I mean really, can't we do something different for once? Let's get over our petty interests, and have some vision, maybe? This has been / is being repeated everywhere you look: Napster vs recording companies, internet phone calls vs telecom companies, hybrid cars vs US car companies, xerox copiers vs carbon paper manufacturers, robots vs assembly line workers, Gutenberg vs monks...
Actually, price descrimination can be a good thing. For example, price descrimination is largely responsible for the availability of cheap airline tickets and airline tickets being generally available on short notice. Without price descrimination, you'd likely have a situation where you'd pay more than the cheapest fares these days and/or there'd be no seats available for the last minute traveller.
The DVD region system was a good idea, but it's poorly implemented. It's supposed to allow cheap DVDs to be sold in places like India without affecting the market in the US and Europe. Without it, DVDs would probably never be released in India at all, or they'd be released there at the same price as in the US and the middle class wouldn't be able to afford them. I don't see how either of these outcomes is better than $5 DVDs that only work in local DVD players.
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.
"Broadcast Quality" is a meaningless term. [...] for broadcast, dvd is better than anything you'll see on TV.
The FCC requires all on-air programming to conform to a strict definition of "broadcast quality", one which has absolutely nothing to do with the downstream picture you see on TV, cable, satellite, etc. This definition involves a series of quantifications (luminance s/n ratio, chroma s/n, resolution, differential gain, differential phase, subcarrier color framing, RS-170A sync, comb filtered inputs, subcarrier frequency drift, multiburst response or bandwidth) that are best highlighted when viewed under a vectorscope or a wavescope.
No, DVD's are not "broadcast quality."
DISCLAIMER: i am australian
The real issues in this case was that Warner decided to create a tiered system for DVD rental. Retail DVDs where marked as such and sold for standard prices (around $30 or so AUD, which is quite reasonable). Rental DVDs were at least double the price, and the publisher said that it was illegal to use retail movies for rental purposes. Big copyright notices and disclaimers are places in all retails movies to ensure that consumers are alered to the legalities if they rent one.
The effect of this was that the big coroprate rental shops (Blockbuster and VideoEzy among very few others) bore the cost, but the smaller and local rental places could not afford the new system and their business was threatend.
This smaller rental shops are the ones who took legal action.
technoshamanic resistance within hyper-transgressive ontology
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).
Unfortunately it is not possible to keep a huge number of extra copies around due to the cost of buying those copies (and the risk of not being able to recoup that cost). So most places seem to have fairly limited numbers of spares and keeping them out of covers probably contributes to the scratching problems. The best solution would be for the distributors to replace damage discs, but I can't see that happening unless it becomes a big PR issue. More likely the rental places will try to charge people returning damaged discs.
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.
I mean there's a long way between
- DVD with nothing but menus
- DVD with some add-on apps (screen savers etc.)
- DVD *and* a solid app. Harry Potter DVD + Harry Potter game? Could have happened. Won't, but could be.
- DVD wtih an application like Premiere, with some example trailers
- Pure application DVD
Where does it stop being a movie and start being software, when can you sell it under the first sale doctrine, when would an EULA of no resale be binding? I'm curious at least.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, they call us "consumers." Turnabout's fair play.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Does this mean Region Code Enhancement [...] scripting [...] would be banned in Oz?
No, it just means scripting isn't considered software, which we all knew already. Sorry, kiddies.
I disagree. DVDs may be more prone to damage, but if you're careful with them and don't damage them, they won't deteriorate. With tapes, on the other hand, deterioration is inevitable and has nothing to do with how careful you are.
IMO, jewel cases are a hassle and a waste of space for the mostly minimal protection they provide (as long as you're not transporting them or constantly handling them out of the player). I've actually taken to storing most of my CDs in old CD-R spindles, since I've already ripped/backed-up the content, and since I'm not the type who needs to showcase my collection for friends to gawk at.
I would be doing the same for my few DVDs, except that I can't make cheap backups of 'em, so I can't risk scratches due to dirt getting between them on a spindle... though... maybe a layer of felt per would work...
Anyone manufacture something like this? a "super spindle" ... with tabs for indexing?
--
Power to the Peaceful
the pixels by pixels mean nothing. the bitrate at which the mpeg is compressed does. EVERYTHING on yout normal tv is 720X480 including your VHS tapes. What Cable TV compression does (and the problem isnt cable TV it's sattelite TV, as those digital channels are sucked from the sattelite and directly stuffed into the cable lines, the cable headend cannot even touch the signal (it's called HITS, or head-end in the sky) so even people with primestar or dish have the same crappy picture because they are using the same sattelite feeds.
Bitrates are everything. I can give you mpeg2 files that look like hell and an mpeg2 file that looks awesome on a 1080i hdtv. it's all in the bitrate and how much information am I cramming into that second of playback from 800K to 30meg per second.
DVD is not broadcast suitable as it is at a low bitrate to fit on that tiny 4gig disk. they CAN get it better, but that would require people to flip over the disk 1/2 way through the movie and as lazy as people are it won't happen. (you wouldnt believe how many people whine about Laserdiscs.. "god you have to flip it or change a disc? oh that sucks... I want to be as lazy as possible and not ever stand up... can I get a toilet installed in my couch?")
all DVD's are intentionally encoded at low bitrates, it's another part of the "copy prevention" that the studios love to use.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So, no, I don't consider divx or multiple svcd disks a worthy backup of a DVD; only the original will do (until I can buy a cheap DVD-R burner).
--
Power to the Peaceful
IIRC, the U.S. has this. There are tiered VHS tapes, one set that sell at your local store for $10-20, and another for the movie rental stores that cost $100. I know that there was a big uproar over The Matrix - if it didn't clear 200$ million, the only VHS copy would be available for rental stores, so you'd have to pay $100 for it. The only difference between the tapes, I believe, was that one had a different "don't show this in public" warning or something like that. Would someone who work(s|ed) at a movie store like to join in?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
You can by these plastic films that just have a ring of gum arround the inner hole. You can stick them on both the front (to stop scratching from fucking up the transperant plastic the laser has to penetrate) & the back (to protect the label that has the track underneath). When the bottom one gets so warn it starts to intefer with the laser tracking, you just peel it off & stick a new one on.
...the insanely expensive plane tickets to small places. It's cheaper for me (Germany) to fly to the USA than to fly home (Norway, a little country just north of Germany for you US-centric) because of price discrimination.
...and what made DVDs that different from other media? Don't they sell VHS movies in India? Actually, I'd live with it if the European versions usually hadn't been late, in a worse format, lack extras and on top of it are more expensive. When you force people to pay more *for a late and inferior product* you're begging for trouble.
I don't think MPAA get it. If I can stroll down to the shop and buy a DVD, in a good format, with all the extras the US version has, I'll probably do that. If I can't buy it, but I can get it on DivX (not screener, DVDrip, from a US DVD) or it's a horribly crippled version, I'll screw it and get the DivX. I can deal with living in a rich part of the world and be expected to pay more. But when I'm treated like a second-rate customer, I take offense. Of course I should probably simply not buy DVDs at all, write a letter to WTO and sulk. Uh huh. See you all in the line to get the LotR DVD.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Philips do a consumer DVD-RW that'll probably do the job... You'd probably be going over SCART but the drop in quality shouldn't be too great (unless you're a prefectionist).
The downside is it costs about £1000 (roughly $1600).
We'll have more crappy software packages on DVD's that refuse to give bonus footage unless we install it on our PC's?
Take the Phantom Menace DVD for example, where you have to either search around for a copy of the quicktime video of the Ep 2 trailers, or install the crappy Interactual software that comes with the DVD in order to access the Starwars.com site preview (of course this also axes Mac/Linux users)...
Since this is a growing trend with any movie company that wants to make the buyers jump through hoops just for a crummy bonus footage shot, I think that the Australian courts should reexamine their stance... Since the DVD holds software *on* the media itself, along *with* a movie, it counts as software *and* video media...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Anyway, I beg to differ. Menus, browsers, and region codes are not code, they're data. The line between code and data is often fuzzy, but these things are well beyond the fuzzy area. There's no programming that the player uploads and executes. (That would present interesting opportunities for virus writers!) It's just information that's used by the logic that already embedded in the player.
Which is not to dispute the "malicious" part of your comment. Indeed, that's why the entertainment industry is so uptight about open-source DVD software. Putting logic where people can hack it makes it more difficult for them to control the data the logic interprets.
I also have to point out that even if we accept your classification, it's a technical classification, not a legal one. Judges tend to classify things according to the way people use them. That's why the tomato is a legal vegetable, though botanically it's a fruit. And people use DVDs for watching movies, so embedded data is neither here nor there. Which is also true for the ID info embedded in MP3 files, the sideband data in analog TV broadcasts, and the recording speed info on VHS tapes.
The difference here is most DVD's in Australia cost $35AUD (about $15-17US). If the price *was* doubled, it would make DVD's for rental outlets only around $5 US more than what US people are paying for DVD's.
It doesn't make it good, but it puts in in perspective.
Maybe you should check out the Discus 40 or 20 at http://www.discgear.com/ Sounds exactly like what you're looking for. I use it to store CDs in my car, and they are wonderful, compact units.
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Why is the Herald only reporting this now? And why is Slashdot only accepting the submission now? This was reported in Australian IT on December 10 (Films aren't software, court rules). It was also submitted to Slashdot, but rejected. Why? What's the bet that this comment gets censored too?
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Power to the Peaceful
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Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
You are correct about DVD; commercial movie releases are DVD-Video format.
Knowing lawyers, it's practially certain that this ruling specified the format it applies to, or included a legalese description of a movie on digital media, or both.
Exactly how these things are defined in law is to a large extent pretty unexplored territory; and nobody should assume it won't change even if an attempt to define it has been made.
But, to put a little perspective on things referred to in this discussion...
If, by "Software" you mean "a computer program", I suppose a DVD-Video disk is software. Exactly where "computer program" begins and "useful information" ends is basically undefined in most jursdictions, so far.
If you take the "digital is special" arguement out of it, you come up with a few conclusions:
A movie is information encoded in a retreivable storage form. So's a book, so's a photograph, so's a sound recording.
To stick with the Movie analogy; a movie is not actors, dialog and a stage; it is information about these things. It is essentially irrelevant what medium is used to store the information. 70mm film, videotape, DVD-Video disk; all the same, whether digital or analog.
Now, if you think all things digital automatically encompass a magical transformation to something MORE than information about other information, you might, like WB, try to change the way the courts view it and probably to increase or change your revenue model. If you think it just a damn movie, obviously this approach won't work.
Clearly the Australian Court decided it was just a damn movie.
I believe that all the governments of the entire world shall rule that region coding, encryption, and the other "digital rights denial" technologies in DVDs are illegal, and rule that not only must they be banned, but that consumers should be encouraged to make copies of DVDs and distribute them. There would be a massive, multitrillion dollar marketing campaign to get people to copy and distribute DVDs. In fact, every DVD you buy should cost one cent, and it should come with 1000 blank recordable DVDs. DVD players would come equipped with a DVD copier which would simultaeously make 10 exact digital duplicates of a DVD in one minute. Each copy made by a consumer would allow him to claim a $1,000 tax deduction. And if you make 10,000 or more total copies of DVDs in a year, you automatically don't pay taxes, and get all your taxes refunded for the past 10 years, or 100,000 dollars, whichever is greater. To cover for this, the entertainment industry would repay the government all that money, with interest, penalties, and interest on the penalties. Finally, these laws would apply to music as well.
News: One of many stories on the decision
The full text of the decision
Used to be Slashdot folks were on top of things.
But I did read the actual decision provided by another poster (earlier in the thread).
My interpretation could be off (I always seem to read legalese different from real laywers) but...
The Judge defined software, copyright, etc as it applies in Australian Law.
Both parties agreed you could rent DVDs.
Both parties agreed to the study of 2 titles as representative of all video DVDs.
Australian Law prohibits the rental of software.
The Judge spent some time going over the definition of software, and in particular that it is a set of instructions which produces a result.
You must be able to define the result; for example it does not follow that every result is protected by the same license/copyright. An analogy might be "Adobe doesn't own every work created in PhotoShop".
He found that the SW is nothing more than what is encompassed in the DVD-Video specifications, and controls play, stop, etc. He also found that if there is no movie, the sw does nothing (no result). I think this might have been the case-breaker for WB, but I'll leave that to real lawyers. He therefore concluded that it is the movie and not the sw the consumer is intending to rent.
He found that storage of data in memory (what a DVD player does) did not constitute copying of SW because the data is not normally accessable; is briefly stored and constantly replaced over the course of watching the film in real time. He agreed a computer along with additional SW (ie. SW not used to simply view the movie on a computer) could be used to do so but concluded it did not represent the intended use of most consumers when they rent.
They also analized the data and determined how many bits were sw and movie (about 5/95); and concluded the sw component is incidental to the use by consumers.
He considered the many additional features of DVD over VHS but concluded it was merely part of the format. The format allows for all kinds of information to be stored, and they defined DVD-Audio, data, MPEG-2, and others.
I have VHS editions of most Bruce Lee movies, and trust me, those scratches you see were on the negatives.
For bonus fun, the scratches you see in Return of the Dragon are in a shot they reused for The Game of Death.
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!
I honestly don't understand why people make the blanket assumptions that you can impose a EULA on software when such a thing applied to any other medium protected by copyright is totally bogus.
Because no-one has called them up on it. Publishers tried this with books and failed. Now, at least in one part of the world, this has also been found to apply to films on DVD.
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.
Actually you'd need to do something like send the copyright holder a letter stating "By breaking the seal on the envelope you have placed into the public domain worldwide"...
I guess this is the guts of my question. Why does software differ from books, video, etc in the applicability of the doctrine of first sale?
Because it started off being that way. Remember at one time, before COTS, software involved contractors working for customers much bigger than themselves. Some of the terms which have wound up in a COTS environment appear to only actually make sense where the end user contracts the software writer to write the software.
More recently you have lobbying to change copyright law to formalise this situation.
A VHS tape can have 4 hours on it. DVD 3
You can now get E300 video tapes. That's 5 hours (at standard speed.)
In Australia, it would be illegal, to restrict the sales of other region and multi region players, due to Trade practices act which forbids unfair or anti competitive acts. all it would take is a few days and a decent lawyer to get it repealed.
Isn't this act a ratification of Australia's treaty obligations with the rest of the world in the matter of free trade though.?
> > We can checkout various software titles at our public library here in my town.
> Copyright law makes copious exceptions for non-profit libraries and archives. Blockbuster Video is not a non-profit.
I can rent various software titles (well, games) from my local Blockbuster here in the UK.
But the movie DVDs are in the "movie" section, not the "computer games" section.
rant
Adobe sued Softman because Softman was unbundling packages of Adobe applications and selling the individual apps separately. Adobe asked for a preliminary injunction prohibiting this practice. Softman was successful in denying the injunction because of the first sale doctrine. Of course, what happens at a trial and/or appeal may change things, but the courts are at least looking seriously at the doctrine in the software realm.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Since when did they start doing that? Last time I checked, they charge the same for both. (Then again, I can't remember when I last rented a tape...even before I had something that would play DVDs, I didn't rent tapes much.)
(BTW, whoever modded the parent post as flamebait needs to lay off the crack pipe and look up the definition of flamebait.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Listen, take a good SVHS deck with a good SVHS recorded video material, compare that to a DVD.. you will see NO sppreciable difference in video quality. Second look at those on a vectorscope... the SVHS video is cleaner than that of a DVD player.
DVD is really no better than SVHS. the test tools prove it, the marketing hype is only that. hype, and they never promised anything in video quality when DVD came out.
do subjective testing, it's amazing what you discover.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.