Custom DVDs & Players For Academy Members

xyankee writes "In an effort to curtail the piracy and bootlegging of DVD screeners, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has endorsed a plan to distribute about 6,000 special DVD players to members that will play specially encrypted screener discs that would be earmarked for a specific academy voter and would play only on that person's machine. The Associated Press has the full story, while Laurence Roth, VP and co-founder of Cinea, Inc., the company behind the technology, says 'the discs, by themselves, cannot be hacked.'"

Comments

Re:6000 members of the Academy...

[mangu]

Or that many Academy members won't want to hook up a special DVD player each time they watch a movie?

If they are like me, they may want to carry that DVD around. They may want to watch in in the office, at home, in a notebook, in a weekend place, in a boat, you name it. No matter how "transparent" you want to make it, DRM is always a bother.

Right now, I have a good example of this. I got a new 200Gb disk for my desktop machine, so I decided to retire the old 6Gb were I had Windows98, and move W98 to the old 15Gb disk which had Linux. Now, I have the original Windows98 CD right here. But where is the fscking certificate of authenticity with the product key? Fortunately, that key isn't so secure at all. I found the manual for my old Sony Vaio notebook, and the installation program accepted that key. That's DRM for you, a problem for users and no solution for the companies.

Legislating away the PC as we know it?

[WCMI92]

Does anyone find it coincidental, that Hollings, Berman (Microsoft), and others are trying to de-facto legislate away the PC as we know it?

The general purpose PC, which gets ever cheaper while getting ever more powerful will always be a match for any kind of static "copy protection" technology in the long run.

The MPAA can't impliment this kind of thing on consumer DVD's. People won't stand for replacing their player every year, or worse, not owning their player, paying "rent" and having to pay for upgrades constantly. Neither will they stand for discs that expire or degrade.

The MPAA/RIAA want to do away with the non-corporate owned PC, their main enemy.

It puts too much power in the hands of an individual.

Microsoft, being what they are, marches in lockstep with them. After all, they are more than happy to provide such a crippled PC, as it's in their own interests. Once something became law, you would never be allowed to own a PC that didn't have a closed OS on it, and you are denied the "root" or "admin" passwords to it. That password is in escrow with a third party, probably Microsoft.

You won't be able to run anything on your PC that Microsoft and their partners don't want you to be able to run. Don't want to pay $20/month to "license" Office, and want to run Open Office?

Tough, Microsoft wont' let you run it.

Busting the hardware and installing Linux or some other FOSS on it would be a felony under the DMCA II.

The MPAA/RIAA wins because they've taken away the power of the PC from the inndividual. Microsoft wins because such a legal climate would make open source software completely illegal, as you cannot have an open system that does not allow the system owner full root access.

Indeed, it may even become impossible to OWN PC hardware... You might have to rent THAT too, like a cable box, from your cable/satellite/phone company...