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Disney Encrypting Screener DVDs to Prevent Piracy

Sascha J. writes "Disney is continuing their war against piracy. To their Oscar reviewers they now send out special encrypted DVDs, which can be played only on a DVD player of the "Cinea" series. From the article: "The DVD players are encoded with recipients' names, and screeners sent to those people are specifically encrypted so they can be seen only on those particular DVD players." Yet, Disney is alone on this. Sony and Universal Pictures said they won't follow that step."

3 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. hm, seems a bit ott to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Im not surprised sony and UP wont follow this one. With recent trends towards openness and more and more people being aware of these issues, they dont want to be seen as evil.

    And with apple edging into the vido market, in fact having a deal with disney (unless im mistaken) this probably wont come very far.

  2. I work for Disney: an Open Letter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Disney has recently made a number of people very, very angry, including me. However, as anger serves no function in a successful rebuttal, I will simply state objectively that Disney's brethren have an almost identical mentality, as if they all had been cloned from a single insufferable prototype. I would like to start by discussing Disney's press releases, mainly because they scare me. The thing I'm the most frightened about is that the question that's on everyone's mind these days is, "Will the world ever be free of negligent, disgraceful doofuses like Disney?" After days of agonized pondering and reflection, I finally came to the conclusion that Disney has planted its worshippers everywhere. You can find them in businesses, unions, activist organizations, tax-exempt foundations, professional societies, movies, schools, churches, and so on. Not only does this subversive approach enhance Disney's ability to destroy that which is the envy of -- and model for -- the entire civilized world but it also provides irrefutable evidence that I frequently wish to tell it that its witticisms serve no purpose other than to declare a national emergency, round up everyone who disagrees with it, and put them in concentration camps. But being a generally genteel person, however, I always bite my tongue.

    Disney's morals leave me with several unanswered questions: Why do we put up with it? And what in perdition does it think it's doing? These are difficult questions to answer, because it is always prating about how all major world powers are controlled by a covert group of "insiders". (It used to say that human beings should be appraised by the number of things and the amount of money they possess instead of by their internal value and achievements, but the evidence is too contrary, so it's given up on that score.) In particular, Disney says that it has mystical powers of divination and prophecy. You know, I don't think I have heard a less factually based statement in my entire life. Disney can't help it; it just loves to keep us perennially behind the eight ball. Disney extricates itself from difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice.

    Even by Disney's own account, if you think you can escape from its harebrained indiscretions, then good-bye and good luck. To the rest of you I suggest that we must reveal the truth about Disney's pranks. To do anything else, and I do mean anything else, is a complete waste of time. I am intellectually honest enough to admit my own previous ignorance in that matter. I only wish that Disney had the same intellectual honesty. If one dares to criticize even a single tenet of Disney's revenge fantasies, one is promptly condemned as egocentric, repugnant, biggety, or whatever epithet Disney deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. Something that I have heard repeated several times from various sources -- a sort of "tag line" for Disney -- is, "We should go out and make empty promises. And when we're done with that, we'll all tear down everything that can possibly be regarded as a support of cultural elevation." This is not a direct quote, nor have I heard it from Disney's lips directly, but several sources have paraphrased the content to me in near-enough ways that I feel fairly confident it actually was said. And to be honest, I have no trouble believing it.

    As a matter of policy, sniffish insincere-types should not bar people from partaking in activities that cannot be monitored and controlled, but this has never stopped Disney. The impact of Disney's balmy, overbearing put-downs is exactly that predicted by the Book of Revelation. Evil will preside over the land. Injustice will triumph over justice, chaos over order, futility over purpose, superstition over reason, and lies over truth. Only when humanity experiences this Hell on Earth will it fully appreciate that if I had to choose between chopping onions and helping Disney convince people that their peers are already riding the Disney bandwagon and will think il

  3. Re:How is this a solution? by Androclese · · Score: 0, Troll

    The bigger question is, who cares!? Nobody wants to Pirate a copy of "Beauty & The Beast: Part IV" or another movie from Will Farrel (has anybody told him he's not funny yet?)

    Honestly, once Disney split with Pixar, they became totally devoid of any talent in the movie/cartoon making business.