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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.
Hmm... Maybe I'll watch some FreeBSD tonight.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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?" `":" #");}
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
"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).
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.
...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
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.
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!