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Film Studios Sue Samsung Over DVD players
Lam1969 writes "The Korea Times reports that five U.S. film studios have taken Samsung to court for selling DVD players which allow users to bypass DRM features. The film companies, including Walt Disney and Time Warner, are demanding Samsung recall the players. According to a Samsung spokesman quoted in the article, the movie studios probably 'take issue' with Samsung's HD841 model, which Samsung sold in the United States for five months in 2004."
From the article: ''The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy.'' Hrm, yeah, and I bet that's all people buying dvd's from other countries and bepassing the DRM with samsung equipment. Oh, wait, wasn't that the Linux pirates last week?
What I have done for all the DVDs in my OWN collection is bypass the DRM using DVD decrypter (w00t!) because I am sick of these goddamn preveiews, menus, copyright notices, birth control notices, and other shit. DVD Shrink is a nice utility that allows you to reformat a DVD so that you can put the disc in the drive and JUST WATCH THE MOVIE. Some of these more recent DVDs that have come out require ten minutes of mandatory (e.g. you can't fast forward) viewing of SHITE before you can see WHAT YOU PAID TO WATCH. For rental DVD's, don't even bother... it's worse than the old VHS tapes, even though the retailers are PAYING LESS now to maintain their inventory!!
Samsung is the bad guy here. Well, insofar as Rambus was the bad guy in JEDEC. Everyone who was involved in the creation of the DVD standard agreed to a certain set of rules that they would abide by, but Samsung (like Rambus) flagrantly violated those rules and put other members of the association at risk.
Now, DRM and especially things like region locks are really terrible for the consumer, but that's not the issue here. If there were a non-DRM standard for DVD, Samsung could manufacture players for that standard all they like. The fact is that they agreed to a set of rules which included not making non-DRM players, and they decided to go ahead and make a player that is for all intents and purposes non-DRM.
They will be hit with a penalty, no doubt.
This is why I always recommend avoiding DVD players badged by large companies.
Large companies have more to lose if they don't toe the MPAA line (I'm seriously wondering how long it will be until players refuse to play a movie more than once a week or so).
Buy cheap players packed with features from middle east companies that may not even exist - much harder to threaten a company like that and features sell those sort of players and fierce competition keeps prices low.
"The fact is that they agreed to a set of rules which included not making non-DRM players, and they decided to go ahead and make a player that is for all intents and purposes non-DRM."
Um, by definition this makes them the good guy.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So they basically put this number out of their *ss, and whip it out every time things get rough for them :) This is so amazing!
Samsung: That's it, we're releasing the DVD-s as is.
MPAA: No! You can't!
Samsung: WTF?
MPAA: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
Samsung: What are those estimates based on, not on Samusng DVD players right?
MPAA: Can't you read man, come on, SHOCK! See: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
People: MPAA you're suing your users and manifacturers and keep pulling those numbers out of your *ss and applying silly DRM restriction so people don't buy your production, what did you expect?
MPAA: And you'll all be sued!!! You know why!? "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost friggin $5.4 billion last year due to friggin piracy."!!! Estimate=Fact! Estimate=fact!! Don't question us or you be sued!!! Arghh..
It's even worse when you have these kids DVDs that show the loud "you're a thief"-commercial in the beginning. (You wouldn't steal a car blah blah blah). The noise and the imagery is actually quite scary for kids. I'm forced to "pirate" this movie to remove the fricking anti-piracy message from these movies (along with several minutes of commercials -- some Disney movies have 10-15 minutes of non-skippable commercials before the menu starts).
For me, the point isn't about 60seconds, or 120 seconds. It's my media. I bought it. I should be able to use it as I see fit, not as they see fit. ...tell me you'd tolerate that from a car manufacturer.
How about from now on, whenever you start your car, it won't move for 3 minutes. You must be buckled in your seat ('cause after the ~3-minutes are up, it starts to move w/o further warning) and on the windshield a video message is displayed about how you need to change your oil to keep the warranty.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
The MPAA seems to think there's a dichotomy of pirating films or purchasing them, and by extension that if we make pirating impossible, then every pirate will go out and purchase everything that they would otherwise have pirated. And that, my friends, is a rather baseless claim (even if you're completely unaware of the animosity towards studios in general).
My, that was a yummy potato!