Slashdot Mirror
Macrovision Releases DVD Copy Protection
msblack writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the good folks at Macrovision have unveiled a new system that will thwart 97% of existing DVD copying software while maintaining compatibility with existing DVD players. Macrovision claims that DVD copying results in $1 billion loss for studios out of $27.5 billion in sales. With piracy resulting in only 4% loss, why are the studios making such a big deal? The article also reports (mistakenly) that the market is pressing 100s of billions of DVD annually. Who's buying all those DVDs?" I'm skeptical of their claims, since historically Macrovision's anti-copying measures have been little more than easily circumvented snake oil, but maybe this time they've got their plan down.
If People can see it, People can copy it, End of story. They are just wasting their time.
Slight correction: The DMCA doesn't say you can't circumvent the protections. It just says that you can't tell anyone how you did it, or give them tools to let them do it.
"Macromedia" != "Macrovision"
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
That's actually part of your expenses. I don't want to get into accounting here, but producing anything has fixed and variable costs which go into the expense columns, profit is what's left of gross after subtracting expenses. That's why that 4% should be magnified.
I'm not attempting to justify their numbers (which could have just been pulled out of their a55 like the RIAA often does) just to shed light on the figures.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Also, according to the article on the BBC:
Macrovision said the new technology will work in "nearly all" current DVD players when applied to the discs, but it did not specify how many machines could have a problem with RipGuard.
(this is in contrast to the 'maintaining compatibility with existing DVD players' comment in the article linked to by Slashdot).
The whole Betamax thing applies to analog formats, not digital, and the concept of "fair-use" isn't a right, but an exception to a section of copyright code.
Analog, digital, it doesn't matter, space-shifting is space-shifting. The law is clear, I can (privately) do what I like with the copy of a copyrighted work I purchased barring any additional restrictions I agreed to when I purchased it (EULA).
Call it an "exception" if you like but Fair Use is still a principle written into the law and supported by many court precedents.
Wal-mart actually isn't the bad guy on this one, the studios started refusing to credit Wal-mart for the returns unless they followed the above rules. Faced with eating the losses for the studio's moronic rules or implementing them what retailer is going to refuse? That's why you can't take a disc back that won't play in your player and get another movie. (And yes, they did this to all retailers at the same time, not just Wal-mart.)
Basically this new and improved Macrovision will play in all DVD players, because if it doesn't your only option will be to buy a new one that will play it. From the studio's perspective I'm sure they think this is a fair solution.
Before I got a DVD burner I bought about 2 DVDs a year. Now I have a $25/month DVD rental subscription. I doubt they are losing money off of the majority of people who copy DVDs, and they are just going to stunt innovation for what consumers really want to do with their media (e.g. Kaleidescape).
If this is the same as the new protection that Columbia has been using recently on titles such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Little Black Book it has already been defeated. The latest AnyDVD or DVD Decrypter will rip those titles.
That would be me. :-)
.se, at least over mail order.
I buy alot of movies on DVD. Once they have been out for a few months on DVD they cost about the same as a movie ticket here in
So for the same price as a movie ticket I get a nice piece of loot to put on my shelf, and I can watch it with friends in the comfort of my own home any time I please. (And sometimes I can see it again, with the commentary track, great fun if it is a movie I like.)
As opposed to seeing it at the movies, with teens talking on their cell-phones throughout the movie, out of focus picture and sound thats so loud you have to bring hearing protection. Not to mention five minutes of spoil.. umm, trailers before the movie gets going.
That may be in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan and Korea.
But you have no idea what the piracy problem is like in, for example, Latin America or Southeast Asia. An original DVD will cost you about 15 USD. Why pay that, whan you can rent it for 3 USD, you ask? Well, why pay 3 USD for a rent, when you can own a not-so-shabby quality copy of it for the same price? Consider that average minimum wage in, say, Mexico, is about 5 USD PER DAY.
Consider, now, that for a hit title, like Spider-Man 2, we are talking about thousands of [3-dollar] illegal copies sold, instead of thousands of [15-dollar] legitimate ones.
Not that I favor Macrovision, tho...
In order to rent you a DVD, the video store had to buy it. They're sharing it out among a few dozen people, but the disc is still sold and the movie company gets its inch of green (or in this case, millimeter of green, but millimeters add up.)
Also, the versions of video releases sold to rental stores have a *huge* markup. I don't have much experience with the pricing scheme, but I stumbled across a vendor selling the rental version of one of the shitty Nemesis movies for something like $75. This is a movie you can get on DVD for about $5.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
"You won't accept my product back?" ....{leave store, call credit card company} "Yes they won't accept my product. Please handle it...oh and since i had to make a far journey to walmart i refuse to drive back there, again, to deliver the package. Inform them they can send me a pre-paid usps packing slip/box."
And yes I have done this in the past, got my money back, and had the packing slip sent to me. It wasn't wal-mart (it was best buy). Their other option was to credit me my money, and I keep the product (it was a $100 dvd burner, so they had incentive to send me a packaging box).
I think this new macrovision will be circumvented quickly - like all other media protection. The only problem will happen when it doesn't play in someone's dvd player because that dvd player is not "new enough" which is bogus.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
That's just an accounting trick - the question is whether or not you're paying more money to the DVD group and Macrovision than you're saving. I can't answer that question, but when the numbers presented by a party with a vested interest in inflating the amount gives a number thats a pretty low percentage of total sales, I have to wonder.
Simple.
Around these parts (Portugal, Europe), newspapers have in the last couple of years adopted the habit of "offering" DVDs for a few extra . Usually for around 9, sometimes less. These are movies that came out half a dozen years ago, though. But the point is: the distribution system ALREADY exists. You just need to (and they do) use the existing mechanisms. It doesn't cost'em that much to distribute. Their expenses do not justify their cost.
Someone along the chain is making alot of profit...
I am a speak english. Do you not? - Saroto
Wrong. Check out the law . The act of circumvention is illegal (1)(a). (IIRC there was a short period when the tools were illegal, but not yet circumvention. This period has passed.)
As far as I understand, telling someone how you did it is not illegal, but probably ill-advised. Telling someone how to do it is very likely protected speech. Giving him tools is clearly illegal, unless those tools have substantial non-circumvention use.
A bit by bit copy would be idistinguishable from the original. This is how a disc copy works. And this is what the Proffesional Pirates use. Many commercial CD/DVD burners offer this, but first detect to see if the original is CSS protected (and if so, refuses to copy it). Also, making a bit for bit copy requires you to have the new disk the same size as the old. Dual layer disks are still expensive as compared to single layer, but they are coming down in price.
The people who release these on the internet however, generally release them in a compressed form that requires decrypting the original and re-encoding it to some other format. (usually DivX).
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I don't know anything about this fun new scheme from Macrovision, but one reason you can't just make an exact duplicate of a retail DVD on normal consumer equipment is that the part of the disc where the CSS key lives is not writable on a DVD-ROM. Without this key, players cannot decrypt the content on the disc.
If you've got the equipment you can, of course, press proper discs... but do you?
The CSS title-key is in a fixed place on the disc. Commercial (re)writable DVDs have this section of the disc set to all 0s, and it cannot be altered.
So you can't just do a bitwise copy, unless the source DVD isn't encrypted, you need to break the CSS encryption and write the unencrypted data to your destination disc.
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
So you can add them to your portable computer, compile a best movies HDD or compressed DVD, or make a copy so you can take the copy with you in the car or on the plane so the original doesn't get messed up, or whatever...
what is your confusion again?
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Absolutely. You're responsible for obeying the law, even if you don't know what it is.
paintball
As the movie starts, move the the center seats. I am sure if the theatre is empty they won't care.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The movie piracy industry is ablaze in Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia) ...instead of calling out Macrovision with their snake oil, they should try to stop the piracy coming from Asia.
After all, even if you rent a DVD from Blockbuster and copy it to keep, the movie studios still get a few pennies from the rental. If you buy from a bootlegger, the only one whose pockets are lined are the bootlegger's.
[an error occured while processing this directive]
Make a stink. Talk to a manager. I have a friend who was a department manager at Wal-Mart, another who worked there for 6 yrs. The company line (as I was told) is that they will give you your money back if it's less than $100. Customer satisfaction is a big deal. Costs less to keep you happy than lose your business.
Sure, Joe-Wally-World might not be able to do it, but talk to his manager. You will get your money back.
The Blockbuster I worked in didn't function that way...We bought X number of Y title and had to rent it Z times before we covered the loss. The price of getting said title if not a "public" release was absurd $60-$120. If a movie was released "priced to own", we bought it at the standard wholesale price of the street price (street =~ $15-$20).
Of course, this was 8 years ago; we didn't do DVDs and we had a decent lead time on most titles over the "street date".
You obviously don't watch enough dvd's to have encountered the already common feature of disabling the navigation buttons during previews and commercials before the main feature starts. Practically every DVD produced today now does this.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
The Blockbuster I worked in didn't function that way... Of course, this was 8 years ago
Ok, so I don't know exactly when it happened... but to quote from Blockbuster's 2000 10-K filing:
Since the late 1980s, revenue-sharing agreements have been available to home video chains and independent video dealers through deals brokered by distributors such as Rentrak Corporation and SuperComm, Inc.
So, 8 years ago would be 1997. My reading of BB's 2000 10-K is that revenue-sharing agreements were fairly new to BB then. Further down they indicate that a restructuring of their business model occured in 1998 and that they entered into revenue-sharing arrangements with six major studios. Anyway, you can always read it youself.
Anyway, it's shocking how much companies are forced to reveal in their SEC filings. But your 8-year-old data is, unsurprisingly, pretty much out of date.
PA state dummy laws allows me to return my product back for full refund within 30 days. No store policy can recind this law. Best Buy policy is to also accept returns.
I don't understand, who is going to fine me for what? The CC company? They won't fine me for making a claim with them. If they decide not to side with me (highly unlikely) they will just give me the bad news.
Lets not toaly blame the movie industry...the retailers would prefer that customers do not return products (as this affects their bottom line).
How is me returning my product a huge victory for movie studios? It is a huge victory for the consumer - as consumer rights beat-up the big company who likes to make threats and false claims.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I have no idea if your $5/day number is correct or not, but I'm assuming that if I clear $100 a day, I *might* buy a $65 DVD once in a great while, but I sure as hell am never going to buy a $300 one.
Pricing Models have been out of whack for a long time. As Robert Cross points out in his book Revenue Management, the only relationship between price and manufacturing is that no company can sustain selling something for more than it costs. Companies price their products as high as their market research says they can. Why does Microsoft raise their prices? Because research shows people will still buy it at that price.
I completely agree the parent articles idea that the expendature side of IP based production (Software, Pharmacuticals, Music, Literature) is highly disconnected from the revenue side. The more volatility exists on the revenue side, the greater the tempation for the pricing people to err on higher prices.
This is a boring sig
AllofMP3.com. And it's incredibly good! After getting a cease and desist letter from the *AA (and an accompanying threat from Adelphia to suspend for 14 days at next incident), it's a great alternative to Kazaa! Side benefit: It's legal. It costs $0.01 a MB. Very simple. You can choose the encoding type (OGG, MP3, WMA, MPEG-4, MPC) and the bitrate (128, 192, 320 kbps), so you pay for the quality you choose. No DRMs either.
I would definitely patronize such a service for movies; that has got to have the idiots at the MPAA sweating. They could really turn that into a revenue stream... idiots...
Read my blog: HansMast.com