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More Incompatible DVDs and CDs Coming Your Way
wwwssabbsdotcom writes " More DRM is coming to DVD and CD shelves in the future. Looks like more incompatible discs for players around the world. Rip-proof and self-destructing seems to be the latest DRM craze."
Why would they be cheap? Why would it protect the rights of the creator of art?
Adding (ultimately futile) attempts at copy protection ADDS to costs. Who pays for that? The consumers and artists.
Oh well. All the good shit still gets released on vinyl, anyway.
hang brain.
You know, I considered myself a pretty moral person -- sure, I've got a few mp3s, but I try my best to purchase albums of artists I've enjoyed. I have never downloaded a full-length movie.
If this is where the future is going, that just might change. I usually play DVDs on my PC, and if I bring one home from Blockbuster and it won't play because the MPAA assumes I'm a pirate, I will feel 100% justified in seeking out a rip of that movie in XViD or SVCD (or DVDR) and watching it.
They're digging their own grave, but then again, maybe that's what they want to do. More invasive media -> More piracy -> More lobbying power to create strict DMCA-like laws.
Either way, you're going to be seeing a lot of people downloading movies who normally didn't. And it's just going to give all the people who do download movies all the more reason.
Thanks for assuming I'm a pirate, MPAA. You might just've made me one.
+ Donald Gunth
+ Email: dgunth@quicktek.net
"Caffeine is the greatest lubricant ever created." -ESR
Problem is, there isn't any mechanism to ensure that "cheap" would become any part of the equation. Within a pretty broad range, items like DVD's aren't really price sensitive. It's not like you're going to go to the store to buy Harry Potter and instead change your mind to buy The Dark Crystal because it's a buck cheaper. This initiative, and the others like it, are merely about protecting top-line sales.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Comparing Windows and Linux is not a good analogy. They're two totally different things. If Linux apps were SUPPOSED to run on Windows or the other way around out of the box (Please dont talk about Wine...), sure..
Self Destructing DVDs will simply not be bought unless the pricing ratio is well worth it. If rental places can offer then for $1 a rental that lasts 2 days, sure, thats something most people can afford. But if the price is static, then people wont bother. Everyone is used to buying DVDs for $15-20 that they can keep forever. Change that, and people wont bother buying. People just wont "give in" unless you give back, and with the DVD industry, the only way they can possibly give more is by lowering the price. Added features? Already got em.
Non-Destructing DVD and Audio has been mainstream too long for anything to sway it. If they dont work in certain players, people will avoid buying them, or will just find a pirated version that they are certain 100% will work on their system. People take the path of least resistance. This is one the companies will have to learn about.
My new radiohead disc has 1300 intentional C1 errors on it, rendering it extremely prone to scratches and (ironically) making a backup copy pretty much a necessity.
Took over 8 hours to rip using EAC though... owch.
Basically I could have stolen it from Kazaa and saved a lot of trouble, but because I am actually a paying customer I was charged $12, 8 hours of labour and was rewarded with an intentionally damaged CD. What a bunch of fuckers.
As return punishment, I have made the CD available for all my friends to download, and I am encouraging them to use my error-free, DRM-disabled MP3s instead of that horrid disc.
Jeremy
Like the "safe deposit box" part.
Yeah, CDs will fall apart or die faster in non-optimal environments. But a safe deposit box is not one of those.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Excuse me but I would prefer not to live in a world without entertainment.
A world without entertainment is not possible.
For example, I find watching a trail of ants to be much much more entertaining than shit like "Real TV" or "CNN Headline News". Ants are really amazing (I'm serious).
Here are other things that can be entertaining:
1) Talking to a spouse. If the marriage is right, then talking to a spouse is like talking to a best friend. Talking to children is a good thing to do, also. Kids might even be more amazing than ants!
2) Climb to the top of a small mountain (1000 ft. should do it). Now, look.
3) Go to a museum. Train museums are very nice, because they usually have a big train set in the basement. Good family fun.
4) Good authors write good books. Perhaps there is a book out there whose plot hasn't been done 50 times over and ruined by a made-for-TV studio.
5) Taking a small boat or canoe out on to a lake is fun, good excersize, and can be a confidence builder for people who are otherwise shut-in.
6) Lots of people go bowling or square dancing, etc.
7) It's been a long time since I've seen a really good set of stars, due to light pollution. The last time I was really out in the boonies, a friend pointed out some really neat stuff (some satellites are visible with the naked eye, for example).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Oh, I feel your pain.
As owner of several hundred CDs (for which I had a custom solid oak and granite cabinet custom-made to hold them and sport the playback equipment back in the day...), and a growing collection of DVDs, not to mention all the kids' videos (does anyone else hate Disney cases (yeah, yeah, don't feed the copyright monster, but wives and kids do their own thing)), I feel the storage blues as well.
I've archived almost all the CD audio to hard disk (losslessly), and plan to do the same with the DVDs. The video tapes are a bit of a toss up, though, as a movie mecomes dated, I'd probably be willing to pay the rights-holder a modest amount to provide a copy to me on more "modern" media, if I surrender the original (fat chance that will happen, when they can sell the DVD for more than the VHS cassette -- except I'm not likely to buy the former if I already have the latter, unless the price is commensurate with a "convenience factor" rather than a "license fee").
You know, I don't really have a problem with the concept of DRM, but rather with the most-likely uses and implementations. If DRM provided for (a) traditional fair uses and (b) was required to be field-upgradable to permit newly recognized fair-uses, I could live with it.
As it stands, I use DeCSS for the legitimate traditional fair use of serving a working copy of movies from a hard disk to a remote display device. I'd be happy to keep the video stream encrypted on my LAN and only decrypted by the end device, as long as I get to have any display device I own be capable of displaying the video I've licensed from and storage medium I own on any server I own over any network I own. In other words, protect yourself from unfair uses of your content, yes, but stay the fuck out of MY hardware except to the extent necessary -- at the end of the stream, however many such ends I may have.
You could've hired me.
Why do you think it's an artist's dream to get a major label deal?
In some cases it is, but in most cases the artist's dream is simply to make a living creating and performing their art. There are many cases where artists have gained a name on independent labels and then had the clout to get major label contracts that worked for them, instead of making them work for the label. In a few cases, those artists were even able to leave the major labels with their work when the labels refused to release and support their work as they intended it to be heard.
Because the label will pay for promotion, advertising, product positioning, radio time, etc.
The label only pays advances for these things. Every bit of it gets charged to the artist, regardless of whether or not the artist approved the methods used (ie paying for radio time, which is illegal if done directly, some artists have had enough clout to force the label to pay for this directly, but it's very rare, and the labels do get billed for every song played every time it's played anyway). Labels will not promote or position artists that they don't want to promote. Regardless of Pearl Jam's musical direction, for instance, they were still getting airplay until they spoke out against Ticketmaster and Clear Channel. Once they did that, Clear Channel shut down their radio play, and the label didn't do anything about it.
These are all things which help you SELL MORE UNITS. If you sell millions, YOU WILL GET PAID. Just ask any artist who has sold millions of records... they'll tell you two things: 1, that they're happy they signed with a major label; 2, that they couldn't have accomplished it by themselves.
For #1: see any number of current and past artists who have had fights with the labels over the amount of money they've made off their multi-platinum albums. Look at the whole thing with Prince (though I'm sure most people could care less about him these days, he was doing very well before he started his fight with Sony), or even the more recent battles with some of the current top-selling acts.
As for #2, the main reason they can't accomplish it by themselves is because of the industry. Radio airplay only goes to the songs that the labels will pay for. Clear Channel (and the one or two other radio promoters in the US) will not put up with stations playing music for which they can't bill a label. Most retail chains won't carry independent music, and few will even carry small labels (and WalMart, the biggest music retailer in the country, has many more rules regarding what they will and will not carry). Viacom owns the majority of all video airplay on television in the US (Viacom owns MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, etc; ever wonder why Nick. started the 'Kids choice awards' and other music promotionals?).
Digital music and video are means by which video and audio recording, production, and distribution can be made easily affordable and accessable to every single person that wants to pursue a career. The labels want to do whatever they can to hold on to their position as the only route through which to gain access to these things, before it becomes easy for my next door neighbor to figure out how to make it without them.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Read the article I have linked to very, very carefully. Record company "advances" are considered loans against future royalties. You have to "repay" a laundry list of expenditures made on your behalf before you make a dime of royalty off of your music.
In other businesses, those kind of expenses are considered part of doing business. In the recording industry, they are considered the employee's problem. Imagine the uproar that would happen if all the copier paper, copy toner, pens, pencils, internet bandwidth and other "cost centers" of a business' budget were charged to their employees and, as a condition of getting paid, the employee would have to pay their boss back for all of it. You would have general strikes, you would have rioting in the streets, it would not be pretty.
Because of the high-glamour nature of the recording industry, however, and the strength of the recording industry lobby in governments around the world, they have had the unique, special right to charge off almost all their expenses to the recording artists.
And the big record companies are not the only ones who use this kind of chicanery. After SST Records lost their major distributor, Jem/Greenworld, all of a sudden bands who had been in the black on royalties found themselves on the hook to SST for promotional expenses. Bands like Saccharine Trust, Paper Bag, Zoogz Rift and others basically were screwed out of being paid for their record sales by a switch to a more "industry standard" set of billing practices. I was there to see this all happen...my husband was in Zoogz Rift's band and I was very good friends with Paper Bag.
This way of doing business has been standard operating procedure with major record companies since the 1930s. It is only now, with the record companies going after their customer base for "piracy" and adding hideously restrictive measures to safeguard their ill gotten gains that the word is getting out.
Sure, some people get ahead with their record company. That's why you hear Metallica and Elton John and Madonna and all these other mega-millionaire recording stars whining about people "ripping us off". But the vast majority of recording artists, including some, like Prince and TLC and Don Henley, whom you would think would be in this Millionaires' Club, have been basically given a deal that is exactly as you describe. Yes indeed, artists get absolutely no money and the label keeps everything. That "advance" money is not really theirs...it is a loan from the biggest, nastiest loan sharks the world has ever known.
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