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In Stores Soon: Perishable DVDs
Makarand writes "Technology that renders optical media useless after a short lifespan will soon find its way into stores
in the form of perishable DVDs. Retailers in the Southern United States will soon start giving a sample DVD to buyers of a CD (by Nappy Roots, a hip-hop group). This promotional DVD from Atlantic Records will work for only 8 hours. This promotion is aimed at finding if music fans would be interested in buying a package with both audio and video instead of just plain audio. A special dye sandwiched between the layers of the DVD will interact with air making it opaque and unreadable later. If this media catches on you may not have to return your DVD rentals in the future." We noted this 2.5 years ago.
Pathetic attempt at locking out consumers once again.
If this media catches on you may not have to return your DVD rentals in the future.
Yet another way to contribute to the environment. Let's just dump more trash rather than get off our lazy asses to take the DVD back to the shop... Jesus...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Just seal it with some translucent airtight coating, and you can use it forevert.
Low tech solution to a high tech problem.
Notice on the disk will read "You have 8 hours to listen to this music"
Geek reads "You have 8 hours to rip this data to your RAID 5 dedicated music storage facility".
hehe.
You buy something that breaks after a few hours, its then just plain trash.
So apart from being bad from an environmental, consumer and most other perspectives this is a good thing because it helps push up the pollution rates even further.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Why is the entertainment industry so hell-bent on NOT giving us entertainment?
You'd think that will the failure of DivX (the Circuit City one), they they would realize that when someone buys something, they expect to keep it...
Even for Video rentals, I wonder if we're SUCH a disposable society that creating this much waste is worth it.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
The whole disposable philosophy that consumers embrace shows how short-sighted and self-centered most people are.
I for one am concerned about my children and their children and will never use one of these if at all possible. Then again I don't own a car (I jog or bike ot take the bus when I have to) and use recycled materials whenever possible.
--Rosie
I'm not an "environmentalist", but this is just plain ridiculous. Sheesh, it's bad enough that AOL sends out gazillions of CD coasters every year.
The ironic thing is that a lot of the people who are producing these are in Hollywoold.
What do you want to bet that giving it a quick spray of clearcoat will render the disk substrate isolated from oxygen yet still useable?
What is to stop me from making a copy that is less unstable, for that matter (the article actual touches upon this at the end) once the price of blanks come down? A right, I might add (and we all know) that is codified in the Fair Use clause of Copyright law.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this isn't happening anytime soon.
My
Limekiller
Stand back for a minute and look at the big picture. Take a breath, take a minute, and think about it. They encrypt their content and then store it on self destructing disks. HA! It's so pathetic it's funny. If there was ever an example of the dead horse (Rosen?) getting another whack (DMCA?) this is IT. They lost.
Imagine the munks, years ago, using disapearing ink in their scrolls so you didn't have time to read it long enough to place letters on a plate at a printing press! Same shit. Different day. "DISTRIBUTION" is dead. If any 5 year old can publish themselves WORLD WIDE 24/7, then the business of distrobution (of "information") is dead. Ever see a little kid make a homepage on AOL? They do... it ain't XHTML but it's there for the world to see 24/7. Tell me again why I need YOU to publish my info for ungodly sums of money? Tell me again why I should listen to one artist for one hour at a time on obsolete media?
You have a good point. Their model is based on you not returning the videos on time so they collect late fees. But, if you think about it, it's also based on you actually *returning* the movies, as well. You're probably something like 50% more likely to rent *more* movies if you already have to go back to the store to return the old ones. I know I am.
In any case, I really don't think Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are going to warm up to the idea...
The mechanism works by letting air in to react with a layer of dye. How does the air get in? I would imagine only the outer edge (maybe the inner edge too). So what happens if you seal the outer edge? No air gets in, and the dye doesn't go opaque. I'm sure there is some form of glue or other sealant widely available that can handle this task.
Someone should bury the executives and "marketing masterminds" who come up with this drivel under a multi-ton pile of their "perished" DVD's...
Let's add AOL to that pile...
DivX should have been the end of this short-sightedness. Remember that one? Same concept, even worse implementation.
This is actually a trend I've been seeing in large, bloated, over-valued, scared companies. Make the same mistakes and bad business/product decisions over and over and over. Ultimately, make the consumer pay for all your dumb mistakes. Then hunt the consumer down for not playing by your rules.
So how's this for a Fight Club-esque social-hack: find a means of cracking the airtight seal on in-store copies undetected. Of course, then boxcutters and knives will be outlawed in public places... oh wait... already are...
viva le revolucion!,
or something,
Levendis47
--==[ AOL YIM ICQ : Levendis47 : levendis47@yahoo.com ]==--
The question is whether the discs will pollute more or less than the average pollution of people travelling to the rental outlet to return discs. It's not automatically a given that creating waste is a bad thing if it has positive effects that outweigh the problems it cause. I'm not saying that it is good, just that automatically assuming it's bad because it create waste isn't very constructive.
This technology will never catch on for DVD rental companies. They make WAY too much money off of late fees!
Some company comes up with a way to distribute content in such a way that users can actually listen/view/try it in their home BEFORE buying, and /. readers are busy rubbing their hands in glee at the likely truth that will still be able to rip it off.
Where are the kudos for addressing a supposed itch that so many of the P2Pers out there use to justify the existence of unfettered file "sharing" ?
Seems like a disaster waiting to happen. No to mention that it will drive MORE people to rip this video in order to be able to rewatch it - exactly what the RIAA and MPAA do NOT want.
"Where do you think that get [their] money from?"
Assuming only 10 people EVER rent a movie and the movie rental cost is $3.50 then they make $35. That is well above the price of most DVD's. Now imagine if they get a total of 100? Late fees are a source of revenue however it is by far not their only source.
No rental chain will ever use this. They'd have to either a) store hundreds eachs video of these in thier store to rent out. Think how many differnt videos they have. Now, multiply that by every customer they have. Now, I know they could get away with less, but just think how many copies of lotr or Harry Pottery alone they'd need? Their other option would be b) let the clerks in the store burn them them each time for each customer. This means they're still going to need thousands of these blanks sitting around, and they've jsut giving thier $5.65/h employees the ability to make DVDs. There's no way these wouldn't be hacked to make real dvds.
Mod point free since 2001
The goal will be to make **ALL** media time sensitive, so you cant actually retain anything and must continue to pay for listening/viewing/reading time.
Would be applicable in the software market too, forced upgrades since your original cant be used after the next release is out. ( using estimated time of next releases )
Or in the case of E-books, ' sorry that document is no longer acceptable speech, that isn't available for lease any longer'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If the process was reversable, I could see its usefulness. But, just rendering them useless sucks the big one.
We already can't find anything useful to do with the millions of AOL CDs floating about.
This won't catch on. Rental companies have a significant revenue stream from people returning stuff late. (Blockbuster - 15-20%) If the stuff is disposable, then they can't charge you for not returning it. They mightn't care about the enviornment, but they do care about their shareholders.
-- We don't understand software, and sometimes we don't understand hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights
Think about it...
If the media is going to self-destruct and is essentially "disposable" then people will want to copy the content to something more durable (an action which is entirely protected under fair-use laws, until they take those away, too.)
People already copy content to different formats for ease-of-use and convenience reasons (1-2 HD's is more convenient than 1000's of CD's) and this would be the same thing, only practically *enforced* by the nature of the original media.
Just something to think about...
Ken