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Spielberg Bitten by DVD Encryption
diodesign writes "The Guardian newspaper has reported that 5000 DVD based preview copies of Spielberg's 'Munich' sent to reviewers in the UK can't be played due to the copy protection system involved. Human error at the laboratory where the DVDs were encrypted lead to the wrong region code being set, plus the reviewers use special players from Dolby that prevent the pirating of 'screeners'. An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers."
Why not just use either software for region free DVDs or a hacked region free firmware. Then use DVD decrypter like someone will do anyway?
BB
They don't have laws such as the DMCA making it a crime to sell region free players, you ca walk into Tescos (a supermarket chain) and buy a region free DVD player with your milk and other groceries.
Then they now know how someone who only has a linux machine feels when he tries to play the dvd he just bought.
I suggest them to download the movie that works without problems.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
This is more a problem of quality control at the manufacturing plant. It's like those Barbies that got shipped out with G.I. Joe voice boxes a few years ago. The people who were supposed to view these aren't even going to notice. They'll likely get new copies in a week or two and watch them without even having one thought of shaking their fists at the MPAA.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
go over to the lab and club them with his oscar.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Reviewers can't see the movie before they review it, showering it with praise for being the best thing since sliced bread.
To me, this is only the next logical step. They hardly glance at the movies they review now, so I fail to see how this will put a damper on things.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
uh speilberg has a tad little more control of his own distribution than joe schmoe ass raped musician.
Of course If I'd actually read the aritcle I'd have realised that the reveiwers had been given 'special' DVD players last year for viewing advance copies of movies. 'Special' as in 'Special Olympics' 'The problem, it appears, was partly down to teething troubles with the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies. Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe.'
it was region encoded wrong, Munich is in Germany, not in the UK.
Wait, are these standard DVDs they're using, or is it some special setup where the special "screener" DVDs will only work on special "screener" DVD players?
Anyone have any info on the tech involved?
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
At least it wasn't Jaws.
Prove it.
Oh, if only Aeon Flux had been so lucky!
"Someone pushed the wrong button," she said. "It was a case of rotten bad luck."
I sure wish I could blame pushing the wrong button on bad luck. Unfortunately, I live in the real world and have to live with the consequences of my negligence.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
The DVDs can only (supposedly) be played on "the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD screeners .... Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe".
Why on Earth they region-encoded them on top of the special encryption is a question Steve may well be asking.
I'm sure it did. His chances of winning awards based on this film just decreased, if for no other reason than the screeners will be pissed that they can't watch it because of actions by Spielberg's people. True, it wasn't him personally that did it, but he still is the boss, and his name is the one all over the credits.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Most of them come region coded, but you just get a code off a website (the manufactures leak the codes) that you type in to the remote. All of a sudden no region coding.
"An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers.""
I'm not even certain reviewers could be called "consumers". More like an extension of the media. Did they even purchase their own players?
--
The "are you a script" word for today is "theater".
The post has completely missed the significant point with this story. It's not so much that the dvds were unviewable, it's that because the reviewers couldn't see the film, the film itself is ineligible for the main official UK film awards.
The are biting there own hands off, as well as those that feed them. Will this wake them up maybe?
The problem, it appears, was partly down to teething troubles with the limited edition DVD players issued last year to Bafta members. Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies. Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe.
If they're using specially encrypted DVDs meant to only be played back on specially-made DVD players, why are they even bothering to region code them? This just reeks of stupidity...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
No, but I heard something crack.
ayottesoftware.com
I don't think DMCA can mandate what can and can't be called a DVD player. The DVD consortium mandated that the players be divided up into regions so that the movies studios could prevent distribution outside of the intended market (don't ask my why). From what I remember reading, it has something to do with the algorithms used (which are proprietary); therefore, if you want to use the algorithm then you have to agree to have regions "enhancement" ""Feature"".
Just go buy a cheap Asian made player that agree to the ""Feature"" but are not really good, care, or in the business to make it hard to disable the region ""Feature"".
Sure it hurt, but now he's an immortal DVD encryption himself, so who minds a little short term pain with that kind of payoff!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
..did it stop screeners of 'Munich' from appearing on trackers?
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
If you're prepared to go with unheard of players you'll find virtuall all of them are region unlockable and often contain a slip of paper telling you how to do it.
Region encoding is a farce anyway. It's hard to see why studios are so worked up about it.
In other news, the VHS tape is making a huge resurgence in the video market for its low price, high duplicability, and general ease of use.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Not quite, these are special PLAYERS designed to play only the screener discs, this is NOT a dvd player they have bought in a shop.
"Ha ha!"
I was replying to the parent about the DVD players you buy in shops.. guess I should have made that clearer.
Rather, the movie will most likely not get a nomination or win any awards because not enough of BAFTA's 5k members will have seen it. They've been trying to get multiple screenings and will have about 3-4 done soon in london for Bafta's members due to the dvd crisis but it will most likely not be seen by enough people still.
It's too bad, I have a feeling the brits would have really liked this one.
Hmmm... Pie...
Like they expect us to do.
I don't see anyone saying he was responsible. The article just says he was "bitten" by it. I.e. it negatively affected him. They're singling him out because it's not some joe schmoe being affected by it, it's a famous director and that may have greater implications than if it had affected someone else.
The laws of probability forbid it!
... is obviously not in a state of humor this morning.
Infuriate left and right
ObBender: Ha ha!
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
He did replace the guns with fucking walkee-talkees in the re-release of ET. Fuck him right in the ear for that. I decided to ignore his work form then on. Especially considering that today the police are MORE likely to be packing weapons then back in the 80's. Because of the terrorists, you know. Shit man...in 2005, ET would be in Abu Graihb awaiting a trial that will never come.
Blar.
"That's nice, however, according to TFA: "By tomorrow they have to nominate the films they think worthy of accolade, and Spielberg's Munich was expected to be among them...""
And that's different from any other kind of "defect" how? What if it had been "all the disks shipped to reviewers are scratched"? Would we even be doing a story on the irony of "pressing plants versus consumers! Tag-team death-match"? Maybe the submitter should look up "Much ado about nothing".
However, region coding IS short bus stupid. It depends on DVD players being too expensive to own more then one. Gads, how much brain damage do you need to believe consumer electronics will stay expensive?
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
The last time I borrowed five DVDs from a local library, two of them were unplayable, possibly due to having a wrong region code. No thanks, I'll stick with VHS since it Simply Works® (unless of course I'm buying a movie and find the DVD cheaper than VHS, which happens at times.)
No, it didn't hurt. But in a few weeks, Spielberg will transform into DRM-Man, a superhero who can crack DES keys in his head, spin thousands of times a second in place, and spoof anyone's biometric credentials! He is dedicated to wiping out piracy everywhere in the world!
...Thus increasing global warming. The next chapter has a battle between DRM-Man and the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
Um, RTFA. The DVD has the wrong region code, so it can't be played in the specially shipped DVD player to play the magic copy protected screener DVD. The DVD won't play in a standard DVD player. To stop anyone from copying it. Maybe you got confused?
the Mossad are *everywhere*
Spielberg was 'bitten' by this not becuase he was responsible for the copy-protection but becuase his movie will now not be able to be reviewed by the critics in time to allow them to vote on it for their film awards. This means that his film will not have a chance of winning their film awards and looses any chance of the revenue boost that it would entail.
To moderators; Please at least RTFA before you mod and don't just moderate based upon authoritative sounding posts. :)
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Not just a supermarket chain. The supermarket chain. Ubiquitous, cheap, and very, very, very rich. I remember reading that something like one pound in every five spent at retail stores by the British public went to Tesco. This is the chain that's pushing cheap far-eastern region-free DVD players.
Just to underline the point for you all there. Multiregion DVD players are definitely not hard to get hold of.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I could have sworn that a "screener" was just another word for "cam," a designation that means the pirated version comes from someone sneaking a camera into a theater and bootlegging it that way. If you have the DVD, why do this? Also, I thought that the proper designation for a prerelease that is bootlegged from a DVD preview was "Royal." If anyone can correct me on this, I'd appreciate it, as AFAIK, there is no bootleggers vocabulary list anywhere... and the whole culture, from a socialogical standpoint, is very interesting.
The Admin and the Engineer
No, no, no. Everyone knows there is only one correct region code, "1". Countries with other region codes are either figments of imagination or simply way too backwards to even know what a DVD is.
But the preview DVD sent to the academy's members is unplayable on machines used in the UK. As a result the majority of Bafta's 5,000 voters will not have seen the film, due to be released in Britain on January 27, and can hardly be expected to recommend it for acclaim.
As has been known for years, academy members simply don't watch many of the movies they select. It's a huge farce. I'll bet that even though they didn't get the movie within a reasonable time, many vote for it anyway.
The Academy Awards are a grandiose pat on the back, given by the industry to itself. Why we care, I'm not sure.
are there really 5000 "reviewers" in the UK to start with? I didn't think there were *that* many newspapers left on the planet, much less great britain.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers.
I don't get it, sounds like a manufacturing problem. Happens all the time in every industry.
...nobody will want the Director's Cut.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
When I read that headline it sounded like a trailer I wouldn't be surprised to see. Spielberg, the director of many award winning movies has beautifully recreated the geek's debate over DRM, DVD encryption, and the Linux verses Windows debate in his new movie he directed... BITTEN by DVD Encryption **Shriek**
The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first. Reg
This has almost nothing to do with the DRM battle between media and consumers. These people aren't consumers. These are screener copies used in the awards process. I have absolutely no problem with whatever kinds of DRM they want to use on screener copies, as these have already been found to be a genuine source of piracy. This is EXACTLY the kind of target that the media companies should pursue. The only problem is that they goofed on their first attempt at using some of their new strategies. Other than that, nothing to see here.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Hm. If time was of the essence, when that happened, Spielberg should have directed the reviewers to the site that has the Munich BitTorrent...
You can walk into a Costco and buy the Liteon 5005 DVD player/recorder and make it region free in 12 seconds with other great fixes. In fact most DVD players are pretty darn easy to disable the Region detect/macrovision.
It is not difficult at all to get your dvd player region free or get one that can be that way in seconds here in the USA. It's not a big issue here as most people have zero exposure to different region dvd's.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Learn to read, nobody was blaming Spielberg. "Spielberg bitten back by dvd encryption" would be the topic if he was the perpetrator instead of the victim he is now.
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed. I can understand them using CSS to encrypt the DVDs to prevent copying since that directly eats into their profits, but why should they care where you watch the DVD? If I want to buy anime directly from Japan why should I need a region-free DVD player to view it? Same goes for people in Europe buying the "American" version of a movie. Has region-locking ever been held up in court in the USA anyway? What law would they use to support it? It's not copy protection so the DMCA doesn't apply.
Who cares if the people making the nominations don't get to see the movie, since when are these awards handed out for the content anyway? The movie will get nominated anyway because of the buzz, and Spielberg.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Despite not being able to view the movie, reviews were positive for the film, with most reviews giving it two thumbs up or four out of five stars depending on their rating systems.
The reason they dont go see the movies in theatres, and why theatre attendance in general is going down, is because when a guy goes to the movies, he usually brings his girlfriend / wife...
Now to avoid relationship trouble, guys usually let the woman pick the seat.
And we all know that women have a knack for picking the worst possible seat in a theatre (usually at the back, because she doesnt want "to be too close", and off to the side, because she took too long to get ready before leaving, therefore all the centre seats are taken when you finally arrive at the theatre).
Reviewers aren't consumers (in this case anyway). They are being shipped pre-release copies of the movie for free so they can watch it and publish a review before the movie hits theaters. This isn't some corporation putting undo restrictions on a consumer's use of it's product, it's a distributor making sure a copy of a film doesn't fall into the wrong hands before the theatrical release.
http://www.worldsoccerbars.com
Reprinting 5,000 DVD's would be much less costly than an early pirated version of the movie.
Actually, in terms of copyright protection, it is well-known (at least in the videophile community) that Spielberg takes quite a bit of personal initiative when it comes to digital rights media / copyright protection. Back when DVD was an emerging format, he has made many well-publicized statements about how he feared that the digitization of his movies on such a convenient format would result in skyrocketing piracy, and therefore withheld publication of his movie library on DVD for almost 2 years after every other movie studio has dived headfirst into the DVD pool. Search some years back on DVD newsgroups, and you'll see many references to "$pielberg" and inevitably many inevitable counter-arguments that follow seeping into cries of anti-Semitism.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
The deadline is comming up very soon for the reviewers. Tomorrow? Does this mean that if Munich is nominated, it's a scam, since no-one was able to watch it!?!
\couldn't get me to watch that piece of crap if you paid me.
\\slashdot needs for fark "slashies"
Reviewers don't need to see a movie before they comment.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
How could you possibly be mad at guy who comes up with choice lyrics like this:
I am, I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
RTFA. These DVDs were DRMed to only run in special screener players as well as region coded. If Boing Boing's coverage is any indication, plenty of people may not have watched any of the DRMed discs just to avoid the hassle of setting up a special player. They get so many movies, the encryption just makes it an easy choice which to watch: the ones they can.
Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation. -debord
It seems that a wrong button was pressed. However the real problems is that there was NO QA process. It would of been very simple to add the step of trying to play the DVD on the DVD player that was the target. If they did not have the DVD with the proper region encoding, they choose not wait for the DVD player to be delivered.
Trying to take a shortcut on the QA process has turned into big problem. Reminds me of the old nursery rhyme, "For the want of a nail, the kingdom was lost..."
Research is what I doing when I don't know what I am doing - Werner von Braun
I believe it was 1 in 8 pounds actually, though I have no reference. I think it was in a Sky News Active article a while back.
They just downloaded the torrent and were able to watch it.
they should try to download it from the internet. I'm sure it's there already.
"No worries. And yes, the reviewers won't blame this on the stupid artificial lockout schemes. This is all the fault of the manufacturer."
Of course it is. Just like if Ford's concept car was shipped to "Car and Track" for a trial, and the locks, locked too well. Damn those "artificial lockout"s! Keeping me from saying nice things about your car!
Every British Academy member I've spoken to, and to be fair, that's not a huge sample. More like 3. But every British Academy member I've spoken to has a normal multi-region player as well as their special screener player.
So the wrong region code wouldn't be an issue if the things didn't have the extra special "don't use their normal player" protection.
How often they can be bothered to hook up a different player to their setup to watch screeners is a guessing exercise left for the reader.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
By the light of the full moon, Steven Spielberg will transform into a Were-DVD.
Hidden in its heavily wrapped box, it waits to devour your face.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
Sorry but IMHO you have it the wrong way around.
(This is not meant purely as flamebait btw)
Speilburg makes the mainstream news because he is commercially important
*but*
DVD encryption, region coding and other throttling of media really is stuff that matters.
Spielburg wont be important for long after his death, whereas media control is massively important now and will be throughout the future, not just for the celebrity of the rich, but the rest of us too.
Stick to the point.
[ insert meme here ]
... ahem ...
</nelson>
Ha-hah!
</nelson>
Very likely, since British voters who don't see the movie can't nominate it for a BAFTA award. In fact, I think some of the important deadlines have already passed, and most film award voters need working screeners in order to stop on top of recent films.
Getting nominated for a major awards ceremony like the British Film Academy's goes a long way in giving your film publicity and extra filmgoers. It also improves your chances of Oscar nominations, which *do* have a significant effect on a film's bottom line.
In other words, Spielberg could lose a lot of money because of the studio's copy protection cock-up.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
I did blame Neil Diamond and the others when their CDs were involved with the Sony rootkit incident. They listed with Sony, are collecting money from Sony, and will probably re-list with Sony. If Neil Diamond was somebody from whom I might buy a CD then I would send his people a polite little note saying "thank you for the memories, but until you leave the Sony family I won't buy any more of your albums". But he isn't so I won't. But you get the idea.
If Neil (and others) refused to deliver more music to Sony then Sony wouldn't have anything to rootkit - so Neil is at least partly to blame.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed.
It is 100% greed. DVD could be more expensive in Europe than in the US, even with the postage and custom (saying could, because it depends on the country). MPAA members want to be able to sell the same product for different prices depending on region. So, for a western European, buying from the US might be cheaper than buying locally. For a northern American, it could be cheaper to buy from Asia than to buy locally. They really want the public to pay as much as possible for a given product, and not the world average.
Also, they usually get local distributors to sell their DVDs. These would go away, they fear, if everybody buys DVDs from another country.
To be honest, I don't think they should fear the last point. Most people in Norway would prefer to have DVDs with Norwegian subtitles, so they probably wouldn't order from the US anyways (since those DVDs aren't subtitled in Norwegian).
Je ne parle pas francais.
I wonder if the DVDs sent to the screeners include those annoying advertisements and coming attraction segments, and if so, are they also locked out of skipping past them?
I always thought that Regional distinctions were wrong, and illegitimate. Even if you want to "protect your IP" and prevent people from copying your product, there is no legitimate reason to prevent someone from buying something in one country and viewing it in another. People can be called upon to move because of work or family. They can bring a present to a family member abroad... maybe because things are cheaper at home. There are so many legitimate reasons for the movies to have to be played in other markets than their destination markets that that kind of protection should plainly be illegal. On the other hand, here we have a beautiful example of karmic retribution. Maybe there is intelligent design after all.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Or more importantly why, on these special encrypted DVD's, they would bother setting a region encoding!
(In other words... Did you read the post you relied to?)
I will never forgive him for War of the Worlds.
Speilberg is the new Michael Bay and if this costs him some academy nominations I really couldn't care less.
The reason is pretty simple, though equally it's pretty rubbish.
Movie studios sell the distribution rights for a film to multiple companies, including CD soundtrack producers, toy companies, and DVD distributors, giving each one limited rights in what they can do, including what parts of the world they can sell the finished product.
The DVD distribution company then decides on things like the price they'll sell it to wholesalers at, what extras to include, the packaging design, does all the retail hand-holding, local marketing (if it's a major film the studio will still play a part in all this), and is responsible for the DVD manufacture and shipping out to the wholesalers.
The theory goes that if there wasn't region encoding, the distribution companies wouldn't be willing to pay as much for their monopoly rights to distribute a film in a region, as everyone would buy the version with the extras and packaging they wanted at the cheapest price they could find wherever it came from in the world, rather than pay full retail price in their local country for the version their distributor has decided to produce.
The fact of the matter is that no matter what you feel about DRM, so long as the fat cats in Washington and can be bought out, more and more companies are going to do their best to employ/use DRM to protect their content/product and that is the truth.
I have one of the Cinea Players (a member of my family is a Bafta member) - to even play normally non spazzed up DVDs on them you need to ring Dolby to activate the damn thing. If I remember, no movies that were sent as screeners last year actually used the Cinea player, so its been sitting in a box somewhere. A lot of the screeners used to be just single layer DVD-Rs, meaning that quite a few films spanned several discs. And they don't really stop the creation of pirate copies, given you can still just plug the video output of the thing into a capture device (although given a lot of the DVDs have serial numbers displayed pretty clearly, you really wouldn't want to).
Actually, Region Coding does have a tiny bit to do with the CSS encryption scheme in newer players. The newer players won't even read the keyset for the disc if it's the wrong region.
In that minor way, the improper region code would prevent the screener disc from being read at all by the screener player if the region codes don't agree.
I'm pretty sure the screener players are ones based on the newer player design. They are most likely only different in using a custom set of CSS keys that don't exist in normal commercial (or software) players.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Unscreened is likely right. But, it will still be voted for even by those unscreeners just because of the media hype. Am I right, or am I right?
I'd like to send you some money to purchase one for me and then have you mail it back to me here in the states. hehe.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
Grilfriend? Wife? You made a wrong turn somewhere. This is Slashdot.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
It's amazing how often the popular press gets confused by the technical details.
And it's amazing how often Slashdot and its elitist readers do an even worse job. For example, in this case:
1) The bozo who submitted the article was the one who got the technical details confused. If you RTFA, they actually get it correct.
2) The Slashdot editors, not caring about accuracy, posted a summary which they saw as a button pusher and traffic gem. $$ trumps facts
3) You, the typical Slashdot reader, didn't read the RTFA, and posted a general rant about stupidity and included the mandatory karma whoring Wikipedia link
4) The mods, following the chain, gave your nice little culmination of ignorance a Score:5, Insightful
So to summarize, the press got the story and technology straight. It wasn't until it made it to Slashdot that the story was misunderstood and politicised at every level.
Interesting, ain't it?
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
I didn't know Neil Diamonds career had made it into the CD age. Way to go Neil.
What they do now is just look who brings out votes for Munich and the will know that these people have done something to go around the system wich MUST be illegal.
The **AA then can start suing these people. The fact that some will say that the **AA does not have anything to say there is irrelevant.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What a tweest!
Yes its true region coding is used as a marketing control. But the very concept of region coding includes the ability to keep pirated copies from being played in different regions. Until the advent of ripping DVD's and the proliferation of region free players, it was a fairly decent way of protecting content.
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
The Academy Awards are a grandiose pat on the back, given by the industry to itself. Why we care, I'm not sure.
Most years, I'm intensely interested what wins so I know exactly what movies not to watch. Half the time, the winner is just a steaming 3-hour pile of over-dramatic, over-acted, under-edited crap. I use the award sort of like I do Zagat ratings for restaurants - unless I know differently from reviewers I find credible, avoid like the plague.
Similarly, I hereby move that the awards for best Actor/Actress be renamed "Most over-done imitation of someone with a mental, physical, or emotional disability."
The submitter and I have very different criteria for "ironic twist". A Cask of Amontillado this is not. Hell, it isn't even up to M. Night Shyamalan standards.
Seriously, every time I reread the submission I find something else wrong. This has nothing to do with encryption, consumers, or copy protection. Region codes serve only one "useful" purpose: preventing the import/export of legit discs. The lab mistakenly put in a "1" instead of a "2", so the disc wouldn't play. This is a non-event. This is not a stunning blow against the media pigopolists. No points were made. No wars were won. No minds were blown.
Rename the headline to "Lab fucks up; switches 2s with 1s. Almost nobody affected" or I will start submitting a new article for every DVD-R I coaster.
Die by DRM.
Maybe now that it starts hurting important people something might actually be done about it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Welcome to the EUCD: it's illegal to circumvent copyprotection mechanisms.
i !celexplus!prod!CELEXnumdoc&numdoc=32001L0029&lg=E N
Current DVDs with regioncodes and CSS might be exempt since they were no longer effective before ratification of the EUCD.
You might want to read (and your local implementation of it)
http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartap
CHAPTER III
PROTECTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURES AND RIGHTS-MANAGEMENT INFORMATION
Article 6
Obligations as to technological measures
2. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the manufacture, import, distribution, sale, rental, advertisement for sale or rental, or possession for commercial purposes of devices, products or components or the provision of services which:
(a) are promoted, advertised or marketed for the purpose of circumvention of, or
(b) have only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent, or
(c) are primarily designed, produced, adapted or performed for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of,
any effective technological measures.
3. For the purposes of this Directive, the expression "technological measures" means any technology, device or component that, in the normal course of its operation, is designed to prevent or restrict acts, in respect of works or other subject-matter, which are not authorised by the rightholder of any copyright or any right related to copyright as provided for by law or the sui generis right provided for in Chapter III of Directive 96/9/EC. Technological measures shall be deemed "effective" where the use of a protected work or other subject-matter is controlled by the rightholders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
Although if you want a cheap, good DVD player Ebuyer is the place to go. Don't think I'm pushing a product because I am a Ebuyer spy but they have a DVD player for 20 quid. Multiregion-capable (ie needs a simple button combination), 5.1 surround sound capable and has every single type of connector you can think of.
Million Dollar Baby didn't get a single one, even though it won tons of Acadamy Awards. Why? The precisely stated reason was that the distributor chose to not send Screener copies to the Bafta members and therefore it wasn't seen by them- not seen equates to NO nominations at least with the UK version of the Acadamy Awards.
It's going to hurt Spielberg very little in the long run, but it's still very annoying to him all the same- and it's over paranoia about "piracy"...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The DVDs can only (supposedly) be played on "the limited edition DVD players
Then they are not DVD's.
At least with the UK version of the Acadamy, they typically don't vote for nomination on titles they've not seen. Seems that Munich won't get nominated except perhaps by the narrowest margins there. If not, while it's not a "big" deal financially, it's a snub from Hell to Speilberg- and it's not their fault nor his. It's his publishing and distribution group's fault- and worrying about "piracy" taken to great and obnoxious lengths.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
How much would a pirate release cost? A lot if it sucks royally, 'cos people would know beforehand. However, a bad movie hyped has a shorter lifetime than the producer wants (cf gigli).
If it is good, with limited a pocket, many would wait for the movie to come out in 7.99 special bin. Thoes who would buy full price would probably buy full price and get the pirate copy.
No, it's just proof that UK Academy members are toothless, and their votes don't really matter anyways...
roughly equal to £5.34995
hahahahaha!!!
SERIOUSLY? FIVE THOUSAND DVD'S?!?! OMFG!?!
What did that cost them? Five dollars? Ten? This isn't newsworthy.
So, Tesco is the Wal-Mart of the UK?
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
"Developed by Cinea, a subsidiary of Dolby, the players permit their owners to view encrypted DVD "screeners", but prevent the creation of pirate copies."
So are we talking about an existing DVD encryption or anti-piracy technology, or is this something completely new? Anyone know how the encryption on these DVDs differs from the standard CSS encryption on retail DVDs?
Inquiring and very geeky minds want to know.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
I understand the logic, and it seems perfectly reasonable, given that it is their movie and they are welcome to sell it as they would like to.
The question still stands though, what is the basis for a law making region-free players (somewhat) illegal? A company choosing to use regions for business purposes is a far cry from a legitimate federal law.
Anyone know of a court case where this was discussed? It seems to be complete garbage, a case of lawmakers issuing laws for the sole purpose of aiding in a specific business practice, which has no effect on any other broad-reaching benefits to our society.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Is Tesco also considered mega-evil like many see Wal-Mart in the USA? I mean, to hear some of these folks the CEO must close every board meeting by placing his pinky next to his mouth and cackling madly. And they claim Sam Walton is kept in a vacuum-sealed coffin in the town square of Benton, AK.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed.
Exactly. So what about it don't you understand?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The Palestinian terrorist (Black September) did infact use guns, and not walkie talkies.
:)
F'n Speilberg, leave your movies alone! ET phone home.
Someone should get him a copy of AnyDVD and CloneDVD, that way he can rip his own movies and remove the encryption... Fight the Power! Copy Movies...
This article should be called "Spielberg Bitten by someone who messed up in a lab". I'm not for DVD encryption, but this has nothing to do the region encoding. This is about someone hitting the wrong button and not doing and quality control.
It's access control so (a different provision of) the DMCA applies.
And it is even stricter, certain actions regarding circumvention are illegal only against access control, not copy controls.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
As an American I don't understand these stores. I went to one in London which was pretty much the same as a Grocery store. I also went to one in Prague that was like a convenience store appended to a department store appended to a discount store appended to a drug store. Are they all so dissimilar or was this because of cultural differences between Czech Republic and the UK?
Did it hurt?
Upon further review, it was found that this DVD was actually the special edition where all the guns had been replaced with walkie-talkies. So it might have saved Munich's Oscar hopes.
It's an anti-free-trade move.
You see, corporations love free trade when it's in their favor. Lower tariffs, move factories over seas and sell stuff domestically, that kind of thing.
On the other hand, if there's any way that they can HINDER free trade when it's in the customer's favor, they'll do it.
This is one of those cases.
What's the problem? The studio wanted to prevent people from seeing this film, and they succeeded. Kudos to all involved!
Dunno about the codes being 'leaked', one of my cheapy players came with instructions on a bit of paper in the box.
Joel Seigal of the NY Times writes:
"I loved it! It was much better than Cats! I'll go to see it again and again!"
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Slashdot has elitist readers/posters.... NEVER!!!!
*Gratuitous Sig/Plug* Heres my website - firesuite
But... but... we are the smart ones and the liberal arts graduates writing for the press are idiots. Clearly, your offensive insinuations are logically impossible! Who modded up your illogical and emotional rant?
It is possible to dupliate a disk, including the CSS encryption, using professional equipment for mass production. This can be done with zero understanding of CSS. So CSS does nothing to stop money-making pirates.
The true purpose of CSS was to prevent translation to different forms by unauthorized software. The good thing is that this makes it harder to copy over the internet (currently sending a CSS disk image over the internet is impractical, and all known compression schemes require decoding the CSS). The bad thing is that this allows region encoding and locking out the fast-forward and other things that the authorized software may enforce.
But when they listed with Sony, they weren't doing this. I complained to Sarah McLachlan, and her Canadian label will sell you a MP3 copy of the same album, uncorrupted by Sony/BMG. Sony made the decision, as the US distributor for the album. Well, the web makes it easy for me to do business with her Canadian distributor, so Sony will lose out.
Complain to the artist. Find their distributors in other countries. Let them know that Sony is hurting them, not helping them, promote and distribute their music. Perhaps this would constitute a violation by Sony of the recording contract!
The mess the mass media pimps are making of the intrigity of the content or even, in this case, of access to it in the first place, just shows the failure of mass media in an internet world.
Since WE, the now no longer passive consumers, control the means of production and reproduction of IP we are breaking up the hegemony of the oligopoly (we're 'sticking it to "the man"') and the powers that were are trying to interfere with our constitutionally protected right to property (in the 'States.)
In the process, they're stepping on their own dicks and making themselves look:
vicious (RIAA),
venal (MPAA),
greedy (podsafe music versus ASCAP/BMI and the reporting agencies) or
just stupid (FCC vs Howard Stern).
I think that we have always had control, in the truest Marxist sense of the word.
We just got conned into not exercising it by the distribution channels who were making a great deal of money off the scarcety of distribution.
They weren't interested in having more than one media 'outlet' (one TV station or newspaper per area) because that meant that they were creating scarcity.
Payola and rest of the scandals were an inevitable consequence and revealed the limits of power (essentially none,) which are exercised at every funnel or constriction point in a capitalist society.
Now with the internet the IP world is indeed flat and there are no local maxima to be exploited (unless you're Apple and thrive just selling the people what they want, you're Google and thrive just telling the people what they want or Wall*Mart and thrive just selling everything.)
Note how I did not include Microsoft or SonyBMG or most of the corporations in the western world.
You can't be nimble enough if you're trying to impose, or to cope with, the rules and regulations of closed systems. Hence, you're left behind.
(The real lesson of BetaMax versus VHS is that VHS was open while BetaMax was Sony's double edged sword with no haft. They were able to wield it long enough to slit their own throats.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I hope you don't mind, but I've been using your sig over on Groklaw for quite a while now.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
That, my friends, is quality ownage.
That is interesting, but your post is why I continue to read Slashdot nonetheless. The cycle continued and Slashdot self-corrected that culmination of ignorance, as evidenced by your post which was modded to Score:5, Interesting.
Just have a freaking encoded serial number on every copy.
Find one on the internet? Check the seirail number in the signal... Knock kncok Mr I signed a angreement not to give this out, and my serial is on the internet... Here is your fine, here is your prison time.
I bought a Philips DVD player from WalMart in California last month that I region-unlocked with the codes on the remote, so it's not just a UK/Europe phenomenon... it plays DIVX files, too.
*Still* negative function...
> The question still stands though, what is the basis for a law making region-free players
> (somewhat) illegal?
There doesn't have to be a logical reason for making something illegal. Alcohol was legal, then illegal, then legal. Most drugs are now illegal. It's illegal for Tescos (a UK supermarket) to buy Levi's jeans abroad (more cheaply than can be sourcd here) and sell them in the UK (they lost a big court case over that - it was treated as if they'd sold counterfeit clothing). As long as you're in a position of power you can make the laws.
As someone once said - "Politics* is the shadow cast on society by big business"
*(and therefore law, a consequence of politics/policy)
AFAIK, the only law against region free devices involves disabling region protection. The DMCA protects against breaking encryption systems, but it does not dictate what devices need what systems.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I'm sure if this particular player had a code to change the region, they would have already sent letters with the code to everyone who received this dvd.
That would be why though most of my components are Sony, my dvd player is not.
I have the Philips dvd642 that plays divx too.
How is this any different than me sending someone in the UK a file, encrypting it with a password, but typing the wrong password, or using the wrong algorithm to encrypt it, thus making it unreadable at the other end.
There is nothing in the field of morality or ethics that says Spielberg shouldn't be able to send some people of his choice encrypted copies of data that he created. He did make the movie, after all.
Sheesh.
If you SELL me a movie that has encryption or DRM limiting how I can watch that movie, then there's a problem. These people in the UK never purchased a copy of the movie.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
SHHHH!!!! The unwashed masses do not know the difference between CSS and Region Coding and think it's all one and the same. I say let them continue to think so and allow more and more stories like this to get on the major media outlets. The proponents of DRM are constantly shooting themselves in the foot and this kind of thing is only making it look worse in the public's eye. If the public believes that they can't buy a dvd that will play in all of their players then they will start showing their disaproval by withholding their money.
I don't beleive that we have reached the critical-mass yet where the general public will activly oposse DRM and region coding, but I think we're getting there. Lets help it along shall we?
>
RTFA means "read the f***ing article", so "read the RTFA" is redundant. Congratulations otherwise on getting his post modded back down into oblivion.
AFAIK, the only law against region free devices involves disabling region protection. The DMCA protects against breaking encryption systems, but it does not dictate what devices need what systems.
Well if that is the only restriction (which it likely is) then it seems pretty reasonable. If the dvd-player makers essentially entered into a deal with the media producers to largely abide by their region technology, then that is of course perfectly acceptable.
It is although another matter to discuss whether the DMCA is infringing on fair-use rights that are benefitial to the consumer and not-too-harmful to the profitability of the companies.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Yes and no. They are digital video discs, but they can not display the DVD logo (just like DVD+D/RW can't display the DVD logo).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
"Spielberg is a sellout but not as much as Lucas."
The term sell out amazes me to this day especially when applied to music and movies. In case you didn't know the very reason that about 99% of people that get involved in the movie biz is becuase they want to get rich and famous and you can't get rich and famous by making indies films. I only said indie because on average these people are considered to be "true to their art" and not sell outs. Now to get rich and famous you MUST make movies for the masses. Do you really think that Lucas made any of the Star Wars films strictly for fun or the art of storytelling and not to make a profit? Lucas is in my opinion a mastermind. Yes he has made crap but he has also made some of the best films of all time, strictly my opinion here. Back to the point to call someone a sellout just because thay made it big and then changed the product to try and stay big is ridiculous. Movies are big business and alot goes on that we never hear about. Decisions are made that are beyond even the creators control or even the producer sometimes to be sure the product sells. The bottom line here is according to most peoples definition evey successfull person in Hollywood is a sell out. Since I got way off topic here I'll sway back. I am glad that this happened to a major hollywood figure maybe it will make them think twice about how secure a dvd should be.
WTF?
Actually the original reason was because films tended to have staggered releases. A film print costs a LOT of money (low to mid-five figures per copy, once you factor in transportation expenses). Unless something is guaranteed to be a blockbuster, they tend to recycle prints as well as use the time and profits from the initial release to pay for and print additional copies for other staggered releases.
In some cases, DVDs come out in their first market while the movie is still in the theater in secondary markets. Region encoding was intended to prevent someone in Europe from buying a US DVD before the movie was released there.
The theory goes that if there wasn't region encoding, the distribution companies wouldn't be willing to pay as much for their monopoly rights to distribute a film in a region, as everyone would buy the version with the extras and packaging they wanted at the cheapest price they could find wherever it came from in the world, rather than pay full retail price in their local country for the version their distributor has decided to produce.
.. oh, so it's like prescription drugs.
The player in question, the sv300 can play ordinary dvd's as well so should still qualify as a DVD player anyway
Hey, we used to use words like "free trade" and "capitalism" to describe that sort of behaviour, and they were supposed to be good things. I guess words like "anticompetitive" and "monopoly abuse" have gone out of fashion with government lawyers these days...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
According to this FAQ all S-VIEW encrypted DVDs are region-free. This means somebody somewhere dropped a major bollock.
Nobody is mentioning the obvious reason (obvious, at least, to smart people) why there's region coding. It's directly related to cinema releases. The reason movies are released at different times in different territories because a single film print that one theatre shows costs approximately $10,000 to print. They're not cheap, and on average they're shown for a few weeks before they're pulled from cinemas. Therefore, depending on anticipated audience numbers, a certain number of prints are made up for American cinemas. It then gets its month or two in cinemas, before the prints are returned to the distributor, and shipped off to other territories where the whole process begins again. It's not greed, its a sensible cost saving measure to prevent wasting millions of dollars on prints that will only be used a few weeks, even if the movie is a mega hit (which is only a small percentage of released films). It's not just Hollywood that follows this example, its every distribution company in the world. Therefore, when it comes to DVDs, they have to be region encoded because the above distribution method can take a year. You might argue, why shouldn't people be allowed to own a DVD before the movie is released to theatres, and maybe they should, but then theatres would start to go out of business. Maybe, that's the way the industry is headed, but for now, put up or shut up, and don't criticise an industry when you don't understand how or why it works. I know this because I work in film.
The leaders of society send a very controversial message with policies like territorial locking: from one hand, they praise globalisation as a means to improve economies of countries, but on the other hand they use policies like territorial locking to enforce strict economic rules based on location.
When the average person deals with this situation, he/she propably feels cheated and betrayed, and then he/she might go on disregarding laws like anti-piracy/DRM stuff. Because the line of thought is usually along the lines of "the big fish only care for money, they don't have principles, so I don't care for their laws."
The way I read this is that, since the screeners have the the dvd players, and the encryption was correct, but the problem was the region encoding, is this really newsworthy? So they were encoded in the wrong region, big fucking deal. If the DRM actually failed and disallowed the playing of the DVDs completely, that might be worth noting.
My sig beat up your sig.
They don't have laws such as the DMCA making it a crime to sell region free players, you ca walk into Tescos (a supermarket chain) and buy a region free DVD player with your milk and other groceries.
Well, we have the UK implementation of the EUCD (the EU super-DMCA) - not sure where region coding stands with this but it does lots of DMCA like things such as making it illegal for you to play DVDs using open software (coz you have to crack the CSS).
OTOH, I'm not sure how the manufacturers of the players are getting away with producing players that are region-free off the shelf since AFAIK that's a violation of their licence agreement (the one licencing the CSS decryption technology).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
why did it have to be snakes?
The latest Slashdot meme.
Clearly, you haven't seen the movie. First of all, Avram and his team "don't exist," clearly outside the law. (At one point, he even asks Ephraim, "Did we do anything illegal?" and Ephraim hems and haws.)
The points of the film are simple: One is, "We kill one, six more take their place." And another is Avram realizes that he is turning into a terrorist. And a third is that he realizes that he is used by the Israeli government to do their dirty work.
Bentonville, AR
Tesco is really trying hard not to be seen as evil... publicly supporting fair trade, organic, recyling (they've run a big ad campaign encouraging everyone to give their christmas cards to their nearest store) and not (apparently) having any of the labour market issues that walmart does.
Walmart is called Asda here (or more commonly 'Asda - a part of the Wal-Mart(tm) family' - now long they'll keep the old name for I don't know). The reputation of walmart is so poor that I know many people who refuse to set foot in an Asda even if they are cheaper.
Somebody needs a nap.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Huh?
It just seems to be 100% greed.
So you did understand it after all.
I guess you're not going as far back as Minority Report, then?
I agree about the prequel Star Wars trilogy, though; I think the parallels are now so obvious that it's even in my sig, as least until I find something I like better tomorrow.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Why don't they ship some sort of device as screeners. The device should be made of heavy gauge stainless steel with no external ports and it's completely welded shut. It has it's own built-in screen. It should only have enough battery life for it to be viewed in a single shot. If anyone tries to tamper with the device, it sends an alarm signal to a satellite dispatching an MPAA goon squad to beat the living crap out of whoever triggered it.
That should be sufficient.
I have been trying to purchase a new cheap dvd player for the guest room. I have continually been thwarted by the macrovision "copy protection" because I have to hook it up through the vcr, to a TV set that only has a coaxial connection. Apparently, connecting the dvd player through the vrc causes this macrovision copy protection crap to make the picture all wonky, when you try to play a movie.
Here is the kicker...the only movies that I canNOT play are retail dvds. ALL of my copied movies play GREAT! So, my point is really that all the copy protection stuff accomplished is to give me such a headache that I have decided to just stop maintaining retail dvds in my personal dvd library. So, all that "copy protection" crap really does is make legit people go illigit. Stupid MPAA/RIAA jerkies wasting my time!
They do hold screenings in theaters for members. The DVDs are for members who can't make it to the screening.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Encryption does not prohibit copying. Never did, not now, and never will as this is not its intent. Why then is using content scrambling understandable? It might as well not even be there because machines to decrypt it (DVD players) are widely available. The whole purpose of encryption is completely defeated here.
Join Tor today!
So the question is: will this change with digital distribution? I'm assuming at some point the cost of distributing enormous files with film-like resolution will approach zero, or at least be much cheaper (and reusable) compared to film reels.
IANAL...
The question still stands though, what is the basis for a law making region-free players (somewhat) illegal? A company choosing to use regions for business purposes is a far cry from a legitimate federal law.
The algorithms for doing pretty much anything with DVD's (encoding, decoding, copy protecting, manufacturing, etc.) are patented. Because they're patented, you can't make a legal DVD player without permission from the inventors. You also can't say your machine plays DVD's because you don't have a trademark license.
When you go to the inventors for a license, one of the things you sign off on in the contract is (presumably) that you will lock your player so it only plays discs for the appropriate region.
My guesses as to why region-free players are so common:
1. It's cheaper for the company to manufacture generic players that have the region code set in firmware.
2. The companies manufacturing the players do business in countries that could care less about U.S. IP laws.
Frankly, your post smacks of anti-semitism at worst and poor reading of films at best.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
However, its the movie companies fear of pirating that's holding this back so long.
The solution: Eliminate the fear of pirating. How: I don't know. The free distribution model is only a solution to the narrow minded people who think Karl Marx had a point - it clearly doesn't work. We see digital music distributed legally on the net, but that hasn't stopped piracy. What can?
Is there a solution? Is there a way for people to make money on the entertainment they produce, without fear of it being stolen all the time? The kiddies usual response is "If you made better movies I'd pay for them and wouldn't download them" which is so laughably ridiculous.
Personally, I think this will all end in jail terms. There is no technical way to stop a piracy, so governments will be lobbied more and more to put more and more pressure on the people who commit piracy, and on the wonderful technologies that are being abused to help distribute it. That's the only "solution" that I see, unless we, as a group of intelligent, technical minded people can find another way.
"put up or shut up, and don't criticize an industry when you don't understand how or why it works. I know this because I work in film."
That sounds like someone trying to rationalize bad behavior. Sorry to tell you this, but in the film industry you work in, $10,000 is a drop in the bucket. DVD releases could easily wait until after the film finished its run through theaters world wide. Up until recently, it was usually at least a year before a movie made it from theater to DVD, so the waiting wouldn't have happened anyway.
I don't believe that the region encoding is to prevent people from seeing foreign films, or to make people re-buy movies they have already purchased. (although that is an ugly side effect) The primary purpose of the region encoding would seem to be that a movie that might sell for $5 in Japan, might sell for $15 in the US, and $35 in Australia. The MPAA doesn't want the thieving Australians stealing $30 from them by using free trade to purchase the movie from Japan.
>The reason is pretty simple, though equally it's pretty rubbish.
there is another real reason - costs of living are not equal. in Brazil or India you can buy a
DVD for far far less than they cost in the UK or Japan. in fact easily a 1/3 less. therefore
why would you buy the UK one when you could, as a citizen in high earnings countries, buy 50 different movies from India and not even feel the impact on your wallet? THAT is why there
is region encoding.
it still sucks though. its anti competitive and highly tinged with global corporation. you dont see region encoded hardware components for PCs. we all buy our stuff from the cheapest companies... which invariably means that all our tech comes from Chinese sweatshops where the guys working there getting killed by dodgy fumes (dont forget that other countries dont have the same stringent workplace health and safety laws too!) for the cheapest price.
"It's like those Barbies that got shipped out with G.I. Joe voice boxes a few years ago."
Actually, members of the Barbie Liberation Organization performed that act. They somehow acquired hundreds of the dolls and swapped the voice boxes of GI Joe and Barbie dolls. The GI Joes said "I like to go shopping with you" and Barbie said "Dead men tell no lies."
It was not a quality control issue. It was purposefully done as some type of sexual stereotyping statement.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Others have pointed out release schedule management as one motivation for region-coding. Another motivation, an obvious one, is price discrimination -- and I use the word 'discrimination' in a neutral, technical sense. If the Studios cannot sell DVDs at different prices in different markets, there will be some undesirable economic consequences.
Possibility 1: The Studios won't be able to sell many DVDs in markets with lower per capita personal income -- since they have to price DVDs to generate more revenue in wealthier markets. Residents in the lower income markets lose out because they can't get legit DVDs at an affordable price. The Studios and residents of higher income markets lose out because the Studios have less distribution and must raise prices in order to recover their costs (and make a profit) from a smaller population of consumers.
Possibility 2: The lowered ability to recoup costs causes some movies not to be made. The Studios don't get revenue from those unmade movies. The consumers don't get to see them.
The studios wanted region coding to prevent reimportation; just look at the cheap new sealed pc games on ebay, many of them are english language Singapore editions that someone bulk purchased at the $10 something local price and then resell for a nice markup that is still less than the wholesale price of the US versions
"They don't have laws such as the DMCA making it a crime to sell region free players"
However (albeit offtopic) the Apple Computers sold in the UK have region-coding enabled. Luckily I don't buy encrypted DVDs anyway, but that was a nasty surprise.
"I sure wish I could blame pushing the wrong button on bad luck."
*clicks accidently on P2P app icon*
[Steve Erkel]
"Oops! Did I do that?"
"Unfortunately, I live in the real world and have to live with the consequences of my negligence."
Geek reading RIAA/MPAA "/." story: "Neener, neener, they're not going to catch me! Pfft!
It did. You may have misread it.
The screeners had both special encryption and region coding.
The players that could understand the encryption were region 2 players. The DVDs that were sent out were region 1. Hence, the only players that could understand the encryption could not play those discs.
Around christmas there was a progressive scan multi-region capable divx playing DVD player on sale at the local GROCERY STORE (a big chain store too, not a corner grocer) for $19.99 (US)
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
.....The DMCA protects against breaking encryption systems,.....
No more than prohibition protected people from obtaining and drinking alcohol. No laws have EVER prevented people from getting what they want. There are many programs available on the Internet that allow anyone who wants to copy anything to copy it. Software companies realized that copy protection was futile and it is not often used any more. Most people will buy something they perceive to be valuable and useful if it can be gotten for a fair price and conveniently. Maybe in time, music and film makers will realize this and change their business models.
All theory is gray
An ironic twist in the on-going battle of DRM and media vs. consumers.
Yeah, but as many others have pointed out, it inconveniences only a few thousand people (who were already having to jump through hoops to view the things in the first place).
An ironic twist would be the initial release of Wedding Crashers or Serenity being unplayable for the average person.
A film print costs a LOT of money (low to mid-five figures per copy, once you factor in transportation expenses).
Is this true of digital cinema as well?
Region encoding was intended to prevent someone in Europe from buying a US DVD before the movie was released there.
So even after the film has completed its theatrical run throughout the developed world, why aren't further DVD copies marked all-region?
Do you really need to have 5000 people (in one region) review your movie?!?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Do you really think that Lucas made any of the Star Wars films strictly for fun or the art of storytelling and not to make a profit?
Seriously, who could ever think that? Lucas is a hack who got lucky (American Graffiti notwithstanding) and he's been flogging that horse for 20 years. Okay, I liked Indiana jones, but Jesus Christ, check out his profile! He hasn't done anything else!
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The Formatting and Encryption Workstation (FEWS) from Cinea is a key component of the S-VIEW Secure DVD System. Together with the SV300 Secure DVD Player and Cinea's key management and certification infrastructure, these components provide an end to end solution for protecting high value content distributed on DVD media.
Obviously they haven't been paying attention to what's been coming out of Hollywood lately...
But what they're afraid of is, once they do that, they are giving people what they want, but they're also giving the pirates easier access to perfect digital copies.
Encrypt each copy of the movie to a separate key stored on a smart card. Then have the BD-R movie discs and key card be sent in separate mailings to separate locations: one directly to the theater and the other to the business office. If one unit contains a BD-ROM drives, a smart card reader, the decoder circuitry, and the projector, then what room do pirates have to access the cleartext digital signal?
[They claim that Hollywood movies are "high value content".] Obviously they haven't been paying attention to what's been coming out of Hollywood lately...
Could you and your friends make a better film than what Hollywood makes?
Low income people usually don't dub the movies or write the subtitles themeselves.
Ever heard of fansubs? Heck, much of the low-income world might not even need subtitles. Case in point: much of Africa is low-income, but much of Africa is also formerly part of the British Empire and retains the influence of the English language.
Films start at different dates in different parts of the world. If people in Europe would get the newest Hollywood films before or during they run in their local theatres, they might decide only to watch them on DVD.
If DVD-Video region coding were about theatrical vs. video release dates, then DVD copies of a film produced after the film has completed its theatrical run in the developed world would be all-region, right? Why are classic films from the 1950s and earlier still region-coded?
\couldn't get me to watch that piece of crap if you paid me. \\slashdot needs for fark "slashies" No, it doesn't. Leave that idiocy on Fark.
I have to hook it up through the vcr, to a TV set that only has a coaxial connection.
If you want to watch movies distributed by Columbia Tristar, a division of SONY, then you are supposed to buy a new SONY TV with the appropriate inputs, or you're supposed to buy a SONY PlayStation 2 game console, for which RF modulators have always been readily available.
It's called a bootleg.
Munich screeners were encoded for region one, which allows them to be played in the US and Canada, rather than region two, which incorporates most of Europe
No problem, all they have to do is fly over here with their special DVD players and watch the movie. And they can do some sight seeing while they're here.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Note the wording though, and in particular the "possession for commercial purposes" bit. This is not a blanket "thou shalt not" directive like the DMCA, but a measure designed to prevent commercial piracy of protected media and encoded broadcast services such as cable and satellite television. Owning and using such a device for purely private domestic purposes is not illegal, but selling it to you would be, _if its primary purpose_ is circumvention of protection measures, and it is advertised or sold as such. Thus, a general purpose recording device that incidentally contains a circumvention system would be OK, but selling a box that adds circumvention capabilities to existing general purpose recording systems is illegal.
As with most laws, the key to understanding it is knowing who they want to tread on. What this essentially means that they don't actually have to catch you selling pirate media to get shirty: mere possession of the means for commercial-scale piracy is now sufficient for a successful prosecution.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Universal can just tell them to get it off of BitTorrent ... oh wait
unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
Try pushing down on the "spindle" (a lot of them have "push here" written on them). Most DVD cases are designed to pop the DVD out when you press this. They're actually easier to get out than CD's, but yeah, they're a bitch if you've never noticed that "push here".
Please don't be Alanis Morissette. There's nothing ironic about this. It just sucks, that's all.
Still... props to the US for having the most worthless and annoying copyright laws in the history of documented humanity.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Mod parent informative.
Idea is similar to how airlines do ticketing. A buisness traveler doing a last minute flight to close a deal is willing to pay more than Uncle Earl planning a vacation 2 months in advance. The airlines differentiate the cost of the *same ticket* to make more money. Similarly, consumers in the US and Europe are willing to pay significantly more than those in say Hong Kong for a DVD. Region encoding is a way to differentiate these customers to maximize profits since buying and shipping the Hong Kong DVD of all of the X-files is probably cheaper than buying one season in the US. Textbook makers have tried to do the same things for years. The same textbook retails for completely different prices in different parts of the world (even when you add in shipping costs).
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway. It just seems to be 100% greed.
It is indeed greed, no matter what others may tell you. The single reason for this is so you can't buy a box full of DVDs in India for $2 a piece and seel them in America for $3 a paiece, undercutting EVERYONE and yet still makign a profit.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
region lock isn't for merchandising rights, partitioning up distribution financing, fleecing or anything else.
its to control the theatrical release schedule, and not let the early relases (e.g. us dvd pressings) erode the potential delayed film run in other countries.
He hasn't done anything else!
He doesn't have to. Why should he? Would you?
If I had a few hundred million dollars laying around, I'd slack off, too. What? Make another hit movie? Screw that. I'm going to lounge on my private yacht off the coast of Hawaii. Don't call me, I'll call you.
It's time to recognize that DRM is actually an evil ploy by the brilliant Dr. Fu Yan Fuck, leader of the Secret Anal League and all-time champion of Rape Fantasies International First Jump Out Of The Bush You Wanker competition.
For years, Dr. Fuck has been sleeping with RIAA lawyers and with President George W. Bush, and in fact, is said to call the President "my penis-less man toy". Dr. Fuck has perfected a mind-control dildo which has been inserted into the asses of every person in Congress, except Rhode Island, due to its colonial lesbian whore roots.
It's very clear now that Dr. Fuck has been trying to gain sexual favors from Spielberg's wife and dogs, and Spielberg's unwillingness to do what every other human being in Hollywood does, namely prostitute their families, body parts and animals, has lead to this shameful DRM plot.
The time is coming when even Larry King will have submitted to a horrific anal reaming by Dr. Fuck, just as Senator Clinton did last week (admittedly for her every orifice is essentially an asshole). When Larry King falls, then the free world will come to an end and Dr. Fuck and his lesbian mistress Putin will take over the world, and make sure that XBox 360 games come with a hard plastic fuck machine so that all the little kiddies of the world can sacrifice the various virginities in his name.
You've been warned, but let's see if any of you have the guts to phone your congressman or woman and demand they get Dr. Fuck's anal stimulators out of their asses.
If I had a few hundred million dollars laying around, I'd slack off, too. What? Make another hit movie? Screw that. I'm going to lounge on my private yacht off the coast of Hawaii. Don't call me, I'll call you.
Well me too. Difference is, I don't claim to be an artist. Also, look at speilberg - he's done more than 2 things and a lot of variety too.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
We have the EUCD which does pretty much the same thing as the DMCA. Perhaps region free players aren't covered as they aren't a copy protection system.
Or perhaps the fact that some Region 5 countries are now in the EU which is mostly Region 2 means that interstate trade issues take priority.
BS. Read the complete EUCD (and your local implementation of it if applicable). Chapter III article 6 point 1 makes no distinction between personal or other uses.
Finally. The perfect copy protection scheme. Unplayable disks.
I applaud the use of encryption to protect copyright. Piracy must be prevented! If there weren't so many pirates there wouldn't be a multimillion dollar a year business protecting copyrighted content from pirates.
If you don't like encryption don't pirate copyrighted materials.
Personally I'm all for copyright and DRM, etc. Because I recognize consumers are not on my side. They're on their own. On my side we license all our works with the copyleft, to be fair. But producers don't want to do that so consumers must deal with these anticircumvention devices until they can learn to expect more from their producers.
No matter, it doesn't affect me. I don't steal, I create and share, and avoid all these pitfalls by ignoring (read: boycott) content producers and their content. No use crying over spilt milk.
Actually I guess technically they are DVDs, since they do in fact have the video_ts folder on them.... of course all it includes when you play the discs on a normal player is a screen that says you need the cinea player to play the disc. Then the real content is included in a special folder with 128 bit encryption, iirc.
They are digital video discs, but they can not display the DVD logo
Just to be pedantic, they're Digital Versatile Discs but they can't display the DVD -Video(tm) logo.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I remember back in 1999 that Spielberg fully supported Circuit City's DIVX format alongside Disney Corporation®.
Only after DIVX failure movies like Jurassic Park and other classics began to appear in DVD.
So when people say that this encryption bug it's not Spielberg's fault maybe it's true, but rest assured that he is not currently satisfied about DVD-video DRM.
You make two common mistakes here: (1) You believe that there are "leaders of society"; and (2) you believe that the MPAA has anything approaching an ideology on economics. Neither is true. In reality, there are no leaders, only a mass of competing interests. The MPAA's interest is in protecting the strategic interests of its members. They aren't in favor of globalization and they aren't against it. Gloablization is far too philosophical and academic for them.
"There doesn't have to be a logical reason for making something illegal. "
Which isn't the same thing as saying that all laws are illogical.
"As someone once said - "Politics* is the shadow cast on society by big business""
Then slavery is the big shadow cast on soceity, by small men.
"Oh wait. They already do that stuff. Never mind."
Uh, huh. Do you watch/listen to, a PSA, and feel that they're accusing you of being:
1-A smoker?
2-An alcoholic?
3-A drug abuser?
Do you self-identify with everything that crosses your path?
"If you want to make it really over the top, just make sure that most people who actually buy DVDs get little inserts inside the DVD packages themselves that accuse the customers of being thieving criminals."
Well considering the product actually works for the honest, then no they don't have to.
It's the one's who can't seem to adjust to being in a soceity that are having all the problems.
I recently directed a short scifi film called "Eve" and put together the DVD myself.
As such, I made a conscious decision NOT to put any form of DRM on it. No PUOs, no CSS, no region codes. As a movie watcher I hate them, so why on earth would I subject someone else to it? I even placed a page on the DVD stating that, so people who watch it are made that little bit more aware that I am looking out for the viewer's interests in doing so. I've also expressly allowed people to make copies as long as it is for personal use only. If you want to distribute it commercially you'll need to licence it properly. That seems fair to me.
I plan on doing this for every film I make, because I think more and more that people will respond positively to those filmmakers who actually respect their audience and not try to screw them over every chance they get.
If you are interested in getting your own autographed copy of "Eve" then you can buy it from my website (see sig). That's another way to add value to something that can be freely copied by the way - make it personal and unique to the buyer. And why not? I am grateful for every copy I can sell as I'm just starting out and this seems like a great way to say thankyou.
Although the film is only fifteen minutes in length (including credits), the DVD contains about an hour and a half worth of special features, another way to add value.
If you are interested in more info please take a look at my website!
Visceral Psyche Films
How interesting. It's customary for people here to post links to pages that support their arguments rather than undermine them, but you've gone and done the opposite. There's an awful lot of material in his IMDB profile, a considerable amount of which doesn't pertain to either Star Wars, Indiana Jones or American Graffiti.
I never said that he shouldn't have done it. I merely expressed my dissatisfaction for the turn his movies took, and his desire to alter his past work. Which I am free to do. Are you somehow implying that my opinion is invalid? I liked the original ET. Now all you can get is the modifyied one. SO he lost me.
Blar.
Really, anything that convinces a player that is fully capable of playing a disc to not play it is DRM. So region coding qualifies.
Additionally, I feel that if they hadn't used these special disks, many people could have used regular region free players (common in Europe) to play them.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
How interesting. It's customary for people here to post links to pages that support their arguments rather than undermine them, but you've gone and done the opposite. There's an awful lot of material in his IMDB profile, a considerable amount of which doesn't pertain to either Star Wars, Indiana Jones or American Graffiti.
Sorry, I only looked back about 30 years. In that time frame, SW and Raiders account for all but a couple of his titles.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I never really understood the whole region-lock thing anyway
I think it's because the normal time-frame for a movie release is USA first, then after six months or so it's released world wide. During those months the DVD is released in USA, so the movie studios fear that the international consumers will just see the american DVD and won't show up at the cinemas.
- Peder
dvd region codes are all about distribution chains... He who controls the distribution controls the profits, controls the price and controls the market. Why else do you think the coca-cola company controls all of the distribution in Australia? So they can sell water to you at $2 a bottle and no1 realises the absolute idiocy of it. Here we have a huge number of brands of bottled water, all of which bar 1 have been baught out by the coca cola company. THis is why region codes exist. So businesses can peddle their wares for the highest price they think that you are willing to pay.
No.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And a few years from now, they'll be campaigning to councils to stop pub companies converting their village pub into a private residence.
"Ha Ha!" - (Nelson, Simpsons)
Perhaps you should read the explanation of what the ECD covers, and how it is to be applied at http://www.euro-copyrights.org/index/13/52.
Some quotes:
"It is important to note that this Directive focuses on copyrighted material such as texts, music and films. Software is explicitly excluded from its scope. The protection of technological measures applied to software products is governed by a different regime".
Not applicable to software, and by extension, firmware.
"The definition does, however, contain a limitation to the protection of technological measures. Technological measures need only be protected if they hinder to perform an act with copyrightable material. Technological measures, which are applied to material not protected by copyright - or by the neighboring or database rights - may lawfully be circumvented."
It is perfectly legal to circumvent technological protection measures for works which have passed into the public domain after copyrights have expired. One of the notable concerns for those living under the DMCA is not therefore in any way applicable to this directive.
"Not under all circumstances must circumvention be made illegal in national law. Only if a person knows or has reasonable grounds to know that an act leads to the circumvention of a technological measure, do the Member States have to declare that act unlawful. Thus, if, for example, person A sends a file to person B, who, not knowing it to be a crack and having no reason to assume it is one, runs the file which then turns out to crack a technological measure, then the Directive does not require the Member-States to target this act."
In other words, they have to show that one knowingly and with forethought bypassed a protection system.
"Probably, if a technological measure does not really and reliably restrict (unauthorized) acts, it is considered to be ineffective and thus not protected. However, it is up to the European Court of Justice to ultimately decide what the requirement means."
The fact that somebody puts a protection mechanism on something doesn't automatically mean that bypassing it is illegal. It is thus likely that copy protection systems that can be bypassed by simple measures such as holding down the shift key when inserting a CD would be ruled ineffective, and therefore exempt.
"Article 6(2) instructs them to prohibit the manufacture, distribution and sale of devices or services which:
are advertised, promoted or marketed for the purpose of circumvention, or
have only a limited commercially different use or purpose other than to circumvent, or
are primarily designed to enable circumvention.
The main purpose of these criteria is to distinguish equipment or software which can be used for circumvention, but which is also capable of other uses which are not related to circumvention. For instance, a regular PC of which the number crushing power can be used to decrypt a file, but which can also be used as a word processor, will not fall under the criteria."
I.e. precisely as I stated in my prior post. A digital music player that contained (for example) a mechanism for bypassing Apple's FairPlay system so that it could play songs bought from the iTunes store would not be illegal under this directive, whereas a device whose main purpose was circumventing Apple's DRM would (with the notable exemption of devices that bypass access protection mechanisms to allow activities which are protected by a member nation's existing "fair use" provisions -- more on this below).
"The Directive requires the EU Member States to provide 'adequate legal protection' against circumvention and against the provision of circumvention devices or services. This means that it is up to the Member States to decide
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I think there's a lot of support for a ban on smoking in some public places. Right now my clothes and the skin on my face still stink of cigarette smoke from the 15 mins I spent in a waiting room at a train station on the way to work this morning (it was freezing outside). The right to smoke anywhere one chooses does not trump my right to not stink of crap drugs - smokers could smoke outside, or maybe petition organisations like train companies and pubs to provide smoking rooms. I'd like to visit pubs and not have the same smelly experience. I have no problem whatsoever with people being allowed to smoke in pubs, though - I don't think the pub owner should be told they can't allow it if that's what they want to do. If people don't want to work in a smelly pub they can work elsewhere - employment isn't that hard to obtain in the UK at the moment - it would be different if it were.
What's the problem with people "campaigning to councils to stop pub companies converting their village pub into a private residence"? It's up to society to decide what it wants done. If it's currently possible to change pubs into homes and people decide that they'd rather the pub was still there then I don't see a problem with that. It's not all about business and profits - unless that's what people want it to all be about, and that certainly doesn't appear to be the case at the moment.
29/12/2005 Munich.Limited.CAM-FILM
The biggest problem I have is when pubs/restaurants etc. are declared as "public spaces". A restaurant is a private business, and should be able to reasonably choose what they do. I wouldn't eat in a restaurant that tolerated smoking at tables, and would take my choice accordingly (note, the market has basically created non-smoking areas in pubs without government interference).
With regards to pubs changing purpose, my point was more that there are consequences that people may not desire, but have not considered. Some pubcos, particularly in villages, will see it as more profitable when takings go down to convert their pubs to housing. If smokers stay away, what happens to the bar? Maybe pubs will move still further towards food, instead of drinkers.
You said the article summary was incorrect. The article summary talked about how DRM screwed Spielberg. This is not incorrect, as region coding is DRM. The title is incorrect (it mentions encryption).
This is where I feel you went wrong.
As to my second comment, you seemed to understand all the words, but completely missed the point.
If they had not used special encrypted discs, then as a backup plan, the screeners (academy members) could have used region-free DVD players to view the discs, and they wouldn't have had this "the intended audience couldn't view it" problem.
You get confused and say somehow that they used the special discs to prevent this scenario. This is incorrect. The scenario they used the special discs to prevent is to prevent UNAUTHORIZED people from viewing it. They tried to thwart someone else, they thwarted themselves. They were hoist from their own petard.
This is what the article is about, this is what the summary says, and neither the article nor the summary is wrong. Yes, the title is pretty much wrong.
Now, you, on the other hand, are wrong and you're getting awfully overwraught too.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I've searched, believe me. The only way to get the theatrical version (from 1982) is to buy the expensive box set. Which also includes the abortion released in 2002. That's lame, he still sucks.
If you can give me a link where I can buy the theatrical release on DVD for under $20, I'll take back all the bad things I said.
Blar.
I agree wholeheartedly with your readings of all the above -- except I have not seen Saving Private Ryan (and I regret seeing all the others, and will actively avoid poison like Munich).
However I would add, to your criticism of Terminal, that what was additionally offensive about the film's concept was that it took at least some of its premise from a real predicament suffered by a man in a Paris airport, while apparently suffering all the usual "Americans won't watch this unless we set it in an American city" cop-outs. So, something that might have had some factual merit is converted into fecal fiction as per formula. I don't know whether that was acknowledged, because frankly the combination of Hanks and Spielberg was too nauseating to watch (it was an in-flight movie, I'd never actually enter a theatre for Spielberg's dreck).
My qualms about War of the Worlds - which I saw moments of, again in-flight - are here.
Why does Hollywood still exist.
you had me at #!
There is a startling irony in the fact that Spielberg has chosen to "adapt" so many Philip K. Dick works to film, as PKD himself -- like Orwell -- was only too aware of the power of language and literature to serve a malign state. In a 1978 speech, How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, in discussing his struggle to define 'reality', he stated:
His second preoccupation, after 'what is reality?', is the question of 'what is the authentic human?', and the definition he gives is eerily relevant today, as we face appalling evidence of state-sanctioned torture and endless murder, thievery and deception by governments we are indoctrinated to trust. As PKD imagines Nixon's fortune cookie might have read, "DEEDS DONE IN SECRET HAVE A WAY OF BEING FOUND OUT":
you had me at #!