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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
If it's dead, you killed it.
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