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Studios OK Burning Movie Downloads
SirClicksalot writes "The DVD Copy Control Association has released a statement (pdf) announcing that it will make adaptations to the Content Scramble System (CSS) used to protect DVDs. The association, made up of Hollywood studios, consumer electronics and software companies, licenses CSS to the DVD industry to protect content. The changes will allow home users to legally burn purchased movie downloads to special CSS protected DVDs, compatible with existing DVD players."
but it's a nice gesture of sincerity. :)
Yes, it is a nice gesture of how sincere they are about making you pay twice for the movie. Once for the download and again for the blank media to burn it to.
I thought it was proven that consumers won't purchase particular media in advance back when it was tried with audio CDs. I am beginning to think that a cursory attempt at digital distribution is all they want, making it appear that they are defending their rights while supplementing income with civil lawsuit extortion. Nothing new, but it gets clearer every day to me.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
Nah. It's just that they've learned from the RIAA's mess. They realize they are where the music industry was in the mid-90's, with downloading movies just becoming practical, and they don't want to loose control of their revenue stream.
Apple showed that people will pay for downloads, if they are presented with few enough restrictions. So, the MPAA is trying to pre-empt the P2P people by getting legal downloads in place before illegal ones take off.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Why are they going through all this trouble? Don't they know that CSS was broken years ago? Haven't they ever downloaded Handbrake?
How does it prove that?
The RIAA's members continue to sell unencumbered media for the most part. The DVD-CCA has merely announced a minor modification to CSS (actually probably to recordable DVD media) that will allow DVD-burning kiosks to be set up. These DVD burning kiosks will still end up generating discs that are illegal - as in jailtime - to play with an unlicensed DVD player.
I haven't seen the RIAA pushing for jailtime against people who write audio ripping software let alone CD players. And while there may be occasional glitches in its current stategy, so far it seems to be aiming to punish only those who actually willfully infringe copyright (by putting copies of their member's music onto file copying networks.)
Neither are perfect bodies, but the RIAA so far hasn't tried to micromanage how I listen to music. The MPAA really does think, very strongly, that you should only watch its member's content on it's members defined terms, and is willing to promote mechanisms with draconian legal backing to enforce this. They're a bunch of scumbags, and this article does nothing to disabuse me of that notion.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Why must they put DRM on it? CSS has already been proven not to be effective, so what are the Media Companies afraid of?
This is certainly a step in the correct direction for video downloads. Certainly the movie business must be realizing that customers want freedom to use their products how they wish. Being locked into only "approved" viewing on a pc could only have appealed to a small audience.
I suppose DRM is an attempt to make people buy content more than once, because it certainly will never stop piracy. Studios are finally realizing they can't get away with doing that. Very few, if any, people would be willing to purchase the same movie more than once. If legal video downloading is ever going to catch on, this will make it at least possible
This isn't fair use. They're trying to sell DVD downloads specifically without giving any Fair Use capabilities. The burnt disks are still css-encoded so they'll get in the way of legitimate users while providing no barrier to real pirates.
If it's dead, you killed it.
Did we finally get a message through that the majority of us aren't criminals?
To whom are you trying to deliver this message? The MPAA members?
A criminal can make a perfect copy of a DVD and resell it without touching the encryption. A criminal can point a video camera at a TV playing a DVD and make a file. A criminal can break the encryption anyway, since it is weak and the only thing stopping them is the law. A criminal can download a cracked copy from the internet.
All of the the so called "copy protection" schemes and DRM are not about stopping criminals. They are about stopping the law abiding. They are about making sure they can charge more money for the same product in the US where people can pay more, without sacrificing other markets that can't afford to pay as much. They are about making sure when your DVD gets scratched, you have to buy a new one instead of using a backup you made. They are about making sure you have to buy a second copy of the same movie for the car, or your portable game console. They are about making sure that when the new format comes out and players gradually transition to it, your kids will buy a new copy of the same old movie yet again, because the DVD you gave them no longer is useful.
If you think this has anything to do with stopping criminals, you've bought into their marketing propaganda.
I don't like to flip thru my dvd/cd binder and see handwritten titles. I like to see the movie/music are on the actual disc.
How many people have their DVD or CD collections on shelfs? It's nice to look at. It's easy to find the movie/cd you're wanting. Not the case with download-n-burn processes where, even tho the purchase was legit, still looks like crap and looks copied/stolen. People are much more impressed (and so am I) with a shelf of a few hundred movies all in their nice cases than a bunch of dvd-r's sitting in a spindle.
I'll always be for going to the store and buying my media if it costs the same as teh digitally delivered version. No compressed downloads for me. I can guarantee the movie downloads aren't filling DVD9 discs. And if they're not, you're losing quality. Why pay for less?
Future ruler of a small Asian-Pacific island
Mod parent up some more, because the rest of you are all freaking idiots who have no idea why you can't burn CSS-protected discs currently.
In order for this to work the way they describe (backward compatible with existing players), the only thing that can be changed is either requiring everyone to get new, special burners that write the CSS area with new, special discs that don't have the CSS area written to (an obvious non-starter, not to mention a loss of control if everyone can burn to the CSS area), or for the discs to already have the CSS keys written on them.
The obvious way this would work is either a single secret key would be used for all discs, and the consumer would download a pre-encrypted image using this key (simple and easier to distribute, but also very easy to break), or the downloading software would read the CSS area from the disc and transmit the contents to the download service, which would then send you the encrypted image for that particular disc (a lot more likely, in my view).
Any changes to the CSS spec will probably be more on the lines of changing the legal restrictions imposed by the licensing authority, not technical changes.
How will this stop a person from renting a DVD from blockbuster down the street and making a copy of it. Much cheaper than buying the orginal DVD to begin with.
Can we please get an automatic -1, Troll/Flamebait mod on any post that uses terms such as "Slashdot position", or "slashbot"? Contrary to what some believe, there are actually differing opinions here. There is no "Slashbot position".
In fact, the rest of the parent post pretty much confirms the subject line: "whine", "whining", "whiny babies", "cheap bastards"...
Grow up.
For the record, charge me money for a product with no restrictions and no ads. I'll pay. I'll pay a lot, as is evidenced by my large CD collection that I purchased during the Napster days, before all this non-standard DRM crap started showing up on CDs. And my large VHS collection. And my large book collection. Guess I'm not a "Slashbot", whatever that's supposed to be.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
See, here's one way to look at the problem. Let's say I subscribe to HBO. HBO plays "Tears of the Sun," to use an example. I record it on my VCR. That's legal. If I take an A/V output from the satellite box and record it, that's fair use as well. If I then convert the VCR or whatever recording and convert it to a DIVX so I can play it on my PC, that's legal. But if I skip the work myself and grab a copy off the Internet, that's illegal.
The person who is effectively breaking the law by default is the guy who is uploading the movie, not the person downloading it. That isn't to say that the guy downloading it isn't breaking the law as well, but there are plenty of legitimate ways that he could have obtained the same exact result, legally, making the entire argument stupid.
It was at this point I realized that they needed to start selling the stuff or the "problem" would only get worse. As I told a coworker at the time, 'net surfers are going to take the path of least resistence. If they can get music more conveniently than dealing with ratioed FTP sites (I hated those things), they will happily pay a reasonable fee.
Unsurprisingly, the RIAA members ignored the wonderful business opportunity that was staring them in the face. So then they had to contend with Napster. By the time the entire debacle was over, every person on the planet now knew about the convenience of online music! To get support from congress for their legal tactics, they actually started claiming that they would have a music store out Real Soon Now(TM). Of course, one never materialized. (At least the MPAA members were smart enough to launch MovieLink.) If it hadn't been for Apple, Lord knows what would have happened.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade