Harry Potter, Macrovision and Economics

markthebrewer writes "Apparantly Warner Home Video have released Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone without any of the usual Macrovision copy-protection systems. Looks like its just a trial, but someone's done the maths and decided it may be cheaper not to copy-protect videos after all. Find the full article in the New Scientist." There is certainly something desperate about macrovisions response to this development. Does anyone see macrovision as a real barrier to copying anymore? What a bunch of snake oil salesmen these people are. In related news, I'm marketing my own personal copy protection device.

Comments

Macrovision isn't a total solution anyway...

[User 956]

Getting past the protection is only the first step. The next problem is the distribution. Homemade servers have lots of file space because the pirate put his own hard drive in, but bandwidth is low, because his connection is cable (or worse). Free internet hosting has a great deal of bandwidth at your disposal, but the pirate is generally limited by the amount of space in which he can put files. This causes him to make multiple accounts under pseudonyms to store all the files. IRC channels and Usenet are often posted with links to the locations of the files, as are the pirates websites. Distribution is sometimes active, sometimes passive, depending upon the pirate's personality and motives.

On the note of motives, back to the idea that for some it is prestige. One of the goals with pirating, in the underground, is to get a pirated copy on the internet and widely available on the first day that the movie is released. Hence, a 0-Day movie is a pirated copy that was released the same day as the legal copy.

The internet is without question the largest mode for wide scale piracy. But one often overlooked area of piracy is that of person-to-person piracy. Most don't consider this as piracy, because the person is generally a friend, and as such we see it as a favor, rather than as stealing. It skips our mind that it takes away revenue from the software producers. In such a form of piracy, we lend our Installation CD to a friend to either copy or install from, and then we get it back (or perhaps we get a copy from a friend). Person-to-person copying often goes on to result in commercial copying (copying for profit). This mode is often difficult for bearded linux hippies, as they are often without friends.

I must say that despite piracy being a bane to the movie companies, there is honor among thieves. I've noted that many sites actually encourage those who download to purchase the movie if it is good. They say to support the companies, which indicates that they at least know the repercussions of their actions. Another one of the major repercussions of piracy is the spread of viruses. A little while back, CIH (Chernobyl virus) was spread rather widely through inclusion in pirated software, as it infected a few of the major underground software centers.

All in all, I do not condone wanton piracy. However, I must take the stance that it must exist. Not only from the stance that order cannot exist without anarchy (sounds cheesy), but from another stance. One's muscle does not develop without resistance. So also does the evolution of software protection not occur without resistance to it.