Single-play DVDs a Hoax

psy writes "Ed Bott's blog states that in relation to a previously posted slashdot story "a hoax can spread just as fast as a genuine news story. That's the lesson from the bogus story published in an obscure UK business magazine yesterday that claimed Microsoft is about to unleash a new single-play DVD format. Paul Thurrott reprinted the story without giving credit to the original source. Bink.nu picked up the story from Paul and reprinted it verbatim. Techdirt commented on the original story, with attribution but without any fact-checking. So did John Walkenbach. The funny part? There's no truth to the story. None whatsoever. In fact, the original story sparked a flurry of e-mails around Microsoft as people in different groups tried to figure out where on earth this story came from. After the head-scratching stopped, a spokesmen told me, they concluded that the story was not true. "It appears to be confusing an existing feature within Windows Media DRM that allows for single-play of promotional digital material. This has been an option for content owners to use for some time for the Windows Media format - it does not apply to MPEG2 content found on DVDs."

Comments

Haha Slashdot got suckered!

[Aaron England]

Don't you all feel bright now for bashing Microsoft? Perhaps it isn't only the editors that should check the credibility of a story?

Ummm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot? propagating rumors? noooooooooooo..... must be some other blog....

All the more reason to check sources

[Infonaut]

I can understand bloggers screwing it up, but Thurrot, for all his annoyances, is supposedly a professional journalist.

It'll rear its ugly head again

[funkstick]

The fact that so many people believed it leads me to believe that we will still see another single use DVD format one day, dispite the failure of Circuit City's Divx.

You're just realizing it now?

[CyricZ]

I find it's difficult to trust any "journalist". Take the complete failure of the journalistic trade before and during the ongoing war in Iraq, for instance. That's proof enough that the vast majority of journalists aren't qualified to perform their job.

Unlike engineering or medicine, for instance, there is no penalty for those journalists who fail to do their job properly. The complete lack of accountability had resulted in most mainstream newspapers, magazines and television news programs being nothing but farcery.

Re:Not quite a hoax

[macdaddy357]

Maybe Windows Vista is a hoax, too.

Re:Not quite a hoax

[TallGuyRacer]

We can only hope.

Re:Not quite a hoax

[LeonGeeste]

Yeah, it's called a trial balloon. Look it up. Let me make it easier for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon

They send out a press release with plausible deniability to see how their PR would suffer or improve if they took a certain action. Now they know it's a bad idea, and they don't have to go through the trouble of sticking their necks out, too. Politicians do this all the time.

It's a shame really. The single-use DVD merely gives people an additional option. You can buy the DVD for $20, or buy it for a single use for $3. All those who would pay $3 for a single use but not $20 for the full DVD now suffer, and those who buy normal DVD's are unaffected.

Good job guys.