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The First HD DVD Movie Hits BitTorrent
Ars Technica reports that the first HD DVD movie has made its way onto BitTorrent, showing that current DRM efforts to prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted content are still futile and fighting an uphill battle. From the article: "The pirates of the world have fired another salvo in their ongoing war with copy protection schemes with the first release of the first full-resolution rip of an HD DVD movie on BitTorrent. The movie, Serenity, was made available as a .EVO file and is playable on most DVD playback software packages such as PowerDVD. The file was encoded in MPEG-4 VC-1 and the resulting file size was a hefty 19.6 GB."
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
No direct link to the torrent? What kind of submission is that?
At 20GB this alone will limit pirates as having even 100 of these movies will take up about 2TB of space.
I have a great idea. Just don't sell the product, or release it for distribution of any kind. I guarantee there won't be any piracy, but you'll have a hard time making money!
Everyone complained about piracy when tape decks came out, but everyone knows in retrospect that the bootleg tapes, even the good quality ones (which could easily be as good as the one you bought) were actually helping bands get noticed. This is all about just controlling the supply line so that only studio-backed projects can get money. They want the ability to sh*t can a movie by not distributing it, and vice versa, to make money from only the ones they are investing in.
stuff |
Also: surely 19GB, currently, is far too big to be handy for most people.
alt.binaries.hddvd?
You know, at 19 GB it doesn't need DRM. Who's got the room to store hundreds of those?
Case closed. Give it up, MPAA, your days are numbered. Just like Windows, soon you won't be needed anymore.
Using GNU/Linux -- Windows-free zone!
The First HD DVD Movie Hits BitTorrent
News at 11:00.
On Bit Torrent at 11:05.
Have you read my journal today?
I might download it.
Which, I'm perfectly legal to do as I'm using direct FTP so the sharing is done by the uploading side.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
"It's so big they'll never have enough storage space!" ... !" -- Fill in whatever.
"It's so big they'll never have enough bandwidth!"
"It's so big they'll never have enough
These are no serious impediments. Pirates routinely download 5GB (and 9GB) DVDs all the time and they don't have problem with that. Their ISPs don't suddenly cap them. They don't suddenly find their quality of life has depreciated because they can't download enough porn.
It doesn't happen like that.
ISPs increase bandwidth. Hard drives get bigger. Writable media gets larger. Compression gets more advanced.
It's no big deal.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I'll be in my bunk...
At these file sizes, I, for one, do not aim to misbehave.
] D
I was skeptical when I saw the first article about HDDVDBackup, but there's definitely a posted title key on the Doom9 forum to correspond with this release. I guess the other 2 keys they posted should be released soon as well. The only way to truly implement volume encryption that can't be beaten is to avoid the software player altogether, as the title key needs to be in memory, if only briefly. The posts on the Doom9 forum claim that this is the way that title keys are extracted, and I'm inclined to believe them.
:)
Good job beating the DRM MAFIAA again! Information truly was meant to be free
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
You can't put something "on" BitTorrent.
Sorry I can't stay longer. I have to go put something on ftp.
Just pick it up from ftp when I'm done.
Not cool. Joss needs the money so he can make more cool stuff. Go buy the DVD.
'nuff said.
Of course, this will just make them work harder to fix up the faults in the encryption software/hardware before they really start to mass-produce players / discs, so releasing a pirated movie this early will just make further piracy that little bit harder.
:)
:)
However, I really don't understand why the RIAA/MPAA bother at all - There are just to many people out there who find it _fun_ to spend their time cracking things simply because they can, and it is a great challenge to take on. It's not the money, it's not the legality, it's probably not even the fact that they want to rip the movie onto their hard-drive. It's the fact that when the RIAA says "You can't do this", their first thought is "Just watch me". No-one can compete with that, not even multi-billion dollar companies. And I love that fact
Also.. 20gb?! Somehow I enjoy the thought of piracy a lot less when everything I save in not buying movies, I spend in buying hard-drives / bandwidth!
Will program for karma.
Correct. Until they've got the sizes down to something reasonable, the number of downloaders is gonna be rather limited. As I understand it, it's already VC-1 (of which WMV is an implementation), so that implies some degree of compression already, no? That likely complicates the task of getting the filesize down with minimal quality-loss. I mean, this is so large it won't even fit on a SL HD-DVD. This is the equal of 5000 songs in size (assuming iTunes-level bitrates).
This medium (or blue-ray or some hybrid) will be around for years to come. In two years time, 1 terabyte of storage will probably be standard on mid range computers.
I wonder if this is going to cause downward pressure on HD DVD player prices as people can now just use their computer to play the films? I wonder if the HD-DVD player makes will have a monetary claim against the hackers who are responsible as such.
The article says there is a battle between the pirates and the content providers and imply the pirates are winning.
I am not sure that is the case. I have not been interested in a format that has no provision for backup or ability to shift to other players -- like linux laptops. I have no interest in a disk that won't look as good as a DVD if I play it in my 1 year old non-HDMI HDTV.
If HDDVD disks can now be reliably ripped, I am interested.
I'll buy a set top player and a computer drive sooner.
I'll pester Blockbuster to start renting the disks.
If Muslix64 et al. are blocked, I am back to no interest.
just wondering, also how large would that be?
"The file was encoded in MPEG-4 VC-1"?
MPEG-4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_AVC and Microsoft's VC-1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC1 are different standards...
> At 20GB this alone will limit pirates as having even 100 of these movies will take up about 2TB of space.
I'm sure people made the same observation when DVDs first became available a decade ago. 4.7 or 9GB over dialup or even early cable modems stored onto hard drives barely able to hold a single disc was not a threat to DVD sales either. But bandwidth and storage keep on improving while a media standard like DVD or HD-DVD remains constant for years. The reality is that if an HD movie is fixed at ~20GB the cost to move/store that will soon drop to managable costs.
With the copy restrictions removed it is an absolute certainly that they WILL be copied. For now just to prove it is possible, to stick it to the man and to prove 313t3 5k177z but eventually it will be as commonplace as Divx;) CD-R copies are now.
Democrat delenda est
Better get used to watching Serenity over and over because you're not likely to see any more movies released with PowerDVD keys. That takes care of software players for HDDVD and there will definitely be no software players for Blu-Ray.
...but I bet the MPAA is watching the peer list on this torrent very, very carefully.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I think that the prohibitive cost of HDDVD drives, as well as (small) doubt that the format will survive the Blu Ray standard counterbalances the weighty file size.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Now there is finally something to store on those blank 25gb blu-ray discs...
(I'm mostly joking. Blu-ray computer drives and discs are too expensive for this to make sense at the moment.)
OK. So what are you saying? Piracy is OK because it help the artist? Or it's OK because we should hate big business? And do you REALLY want people to be unemployed, or content to stop being created? I'm failing to see how your rationalization is a good thing in the general sense regardless of one's personal feelings towards the RIAA/MPAA/Steam/Text Book Publishers/SlashBaddie of the week?
Several posts gasped at the 20GB file size... Come on, its HD. The discs themselves are 30-50GB, what the hell did you expect the ripped torrent file size to be? You want the file size to be small, relatively, then go pirate the non-HD version!
Throttling bandwidth might prevent huge files from being handily swapped, but it really doesn't do much to comparatively puny mp3s, which constitute a much larger number of files (read: RIAA suits) than movies or videos.
And with ever-increasing storage and bandwidth capabilities, the amount of content of any media a single person could store or share could be practically limitless.
On a side note: I felt a twinge of victory when I first read the headline, but that was followed by a swift realization that, essentially, something was stolen from someone. I mean, regardless of my personal feelings toward being gouged endlessly by these people, I'm still having a hard time justifying freedom of information that is, in effect, theft.
...you really can't stop the signal. :-)
--Ford Prefect
Think back about 5, or even 10, years. Could you have imagined downloading 3-4 Gigs just for a movie? Or a game?
When the CD came into existance, it was not thought that copy protection could ever be necessary, people did hardly have the space on their HD to store those 650 Megs on. Today, a CD is not even a deterrent to downloading it, storing is even less a problem.
Give it a year, and you will probably not even think twice about transfering 20 Gigs just to check out the movie (and deleting it immediately afterwards when you notice that it is indeed copyrighted material, of course).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They have gone to enormous trouble to find your little friend... and found her they have. Do you all know what it is you're carrying?
Agent: "The MPAA is not an Evil coperation, you are not the piratey heros, and this is not the end."
Pirates: "That isn't just a movie!!"
Heh, seriously though, i can't see that DRM will even get to the point that it's mutually beneficial, CD's did fine for a good time without all this invasive and restrictive DRM. IT doesn't help the consumer and builds resentment against the MPAA, it's loose loose.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
but its even bigger at a 30GB download, besides the wasted time, my dual athlon mp 2800+ w/ 1.5GB of ram is not powerful enough to play it (albiet its 3-4 years old now)
Tapedecks had one sigificant disadvantage over really buying the record: Quality. We all know, good music has to be played LOUD. Now, when you play a tape loud, the noise becomes more than just a nuisance.
Today, copying does not mean loss of quality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Better get used to watching Serenity over and over because you're not likely to see any more movies released with PowerDVD keys. That takes care of software players for HDDVD and there will definitely be no software players for Blu-Ray.
There already are BluRay software players. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD have versions that support BluRay. Guess that's what happens when you talk off the top of your head with no facts or research to back things up.
The only tracker that was released was on a private website that as of yesterday closed itself to outsiders. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the trackers make it out to the rest of the world. Another poster said another HD-DVD film is already on Usenet.
This is like Argentina shelling a German coastal fortification in World War II. It may have great propaganda value, but the real war was Britain-America-Canada versus Germany-Japan-Italy. In the case of DRM, the real war is Studios versus Consumers.
To extend the analogy, the Germans may cite the Argentine attack as a reason to reinforce a particular fortification, but their eye is forcused elsewhere: media-shifting. If they can stop media-shifting (i.e. moving a movie from DVD onto your hard-drive or wherever), then consumers will be trapped in a buy-it-buy-it-buy-it-again scheme.
"Guess I'll have to buy the White Album again." -- Agent K
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
No, won't be any of those.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm seeing Batman Begins and Pitch Black on The Pirates of Sealand or whatever they are calling themselves now.
May take a while to find them all :)
http://www.guster.net : Mmmmm fresh Guster.
Case closed. Give it up, MPAA, your days are numbered. Just like Windows, soon you won't be needed anymore.
Ah, because "Serenity" (since that's the movie in quesiton) would have been just as good if made collaboratively by a bunch of volunteers with little or no budget and no expectation of making enough money to pay back good acting, writing, animation, and other talent? Who do you think the MPAA is, anyway? It's a trade association populated by the companies that moviemakers, actors, writers, tech people and all the rest choose to work for. People compete to work for these companies, and to make projects that will be well received and which will reward the risks taken.
You may have no use for the trade association these creative people support, but you'd better also have no use for films as good as Serenity. No money, no Serenity. You don't "win" anything by ripping off the very people that you're hoping will scrape together the money, talent, and time to make another movie you'll like.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
i think this blog sums it up quite well! http://www.hdtvblogger.com/
But why bother downloading the HD-DVD version only to downrez it and view on a 15" monitor? At that point, you're better off just downloading (or, *gasp*, buying) the DVD version.
You can squish it down to 5-6GB and it still looks fantastic to most people. They are releasing it this Huge as simply a statement to the world that....
"HD-DVD and Blu Ray protection is 100% useless and here is our proof!" You really do not need it to be that big to see it looking fantastic on a 42"-50" LCD or plasma. Larger such as many 150" or larger home theatres will look not as good as the compression starts to show through.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Buy shares in hard drive companies, concentrating on the ones that are projecting 2TB+ drives in the near future.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
19.6 GB ÷ 119 min = 23.5 Mb/s.
That's serious overkill for MPEG-4. OTA HD is MPEG-2 and limited to 19.2 Mb/s.
If some kind soul would re-encode the movie to something more appropriate...say DiVX at 4 Mb/s, it'd only be 3.5 GB.
That's more reasonable to download, and will fit on a single-layer DVD.
Xesdeeni
Could anyone care to explain what the difference is (apart from the codec used) between this and the 10GB 1080i version of Serenity that has been available on The Pirate Bay for ages?
print "Yet another p{erl,ython} hacker\n",
> Playable on most DVD playback software packages such as PowerDVD On an HDCP compliant PC? Or did the rip has the ICT flag turned off?
I see a big difference between a recompressed hdtv movie and the orginal one and this on my tiny monitor. The ones recompressed to mpeg4 will usually have smoothed picture and details being washed out. You notice this especially on things like grass or other background details.
Why do people COMPETE to work for these companies? Because they have the market by the balls and have the money to throw into a HUGE production worth $100 million and then to do the marketing and advertising and all that. If it was even REMOTELY possible for Joe Blow to do ANY of that to that kind of extent, you'd see a FLOOD of people leaving Hollywood to work for Joe Blow because Joe Blow can do it just as good, if not better. That's all it is. Hollywood has the MONEY to throw at movies, not Joe Blow...
Did you guys here that? Somewhere, a browncoat just blew a load.
Actually, fair use is not Constitutionally guaranteed. It comes from the common law, and the first codification of it was in the Copyright Act of 1976. Additionally, it's an affirmative defense, not a right. I only point this out because, if Slashdotters want it to be a right instead of a defense against criminal or civil penalties, they should lobby for it instead of assuming it is already a right.
I'd really like to see you get modded down because you're spreading falsehoods, not being insightful.
about unauthorized redistribution of that comment.
Hopefully this will give that great movie the audience it deserves.
And what if the legal [hd]dvd sales will rise because of that? Will the mpaa
execs complain about piracy helping them to make more money?
"I have received numerous (more than 3) independent reports that an exploit has been found on the PS3 that will reveal the title/volume keys for Blu-ray disks using a PS3."
Why would people download this when there are already 1080i rips (of Serenity and others) going out onto the net? Is there something on this *20GiB* DVD that's not on the standard DVD?
Why is it so huge? A 720p rip of a typical movie is only about 4.5GiB
Why are the pirates giving ammunition to Microsoft and going with VC-1 instead of H.264? (H.264 may be known to Apple users, however, H.264 is a regular industry standard just like MPEG-1 or MPEG-2).
I know VC-1 is still MPEG-4, but that's like pirates going with WMA instead of MP3/AAC (non-DRM'ed AAC, for those who think that AAC = DRM).
Notice how the "customer" is left out of all of this. I paid for each and every movie I play on my HTPC. I want Fair Use!
Many DRM bashers cheer over DRM circumvention in the name of "Fair Use". But what's the first thing they do when circumventing DRM? Pirate like crazy!!
You guys crack DRM not for fair use, but for piracy. And it's as plain as day, that's why Hollywood doesn't give a damn about your opinions regarding IP protection. Maybe once you freeloaders stop pirating so mucy, Hollywood will give a damn about what you have to say. But to pirate while bashing DRM is like a car thief bitching about the evils of "the club".
I don't really know what you're talking about here.
... when someone... forget it, I have no idea what you're saying.
Because they have the market by the balls
You're saying they (MPAA?) have the market by the balls? They are the market. They are Hollywood. Of course people want to work for them because they have money and they give people fame.
you'd see a FLOOD of people leaving Hollywood to work for Joe Blow because Joe Blow can do it just as good
You mean if like Trenton OH was the new hotspot for movie making, people would flock there? Isn't that robbing Peter to pay Paul? Joe Blow isn't going to want to get ripped off either. And if you're talking like indies, indies make money, and you know why actors act in them for so little money?! BECAUSE THEY WANT SOMEONE IN HOLLYWOOD TO SEE THEM!
What it sounds like you're saying, to me at least, is that if
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...fair use was a gradually evolved (e.g. court-developed) common law doctrine that was only codified in US law in 1976.
The right to make backups applies specifically to computer software and evolved contemporaneously.
The closest you have as to a right to space-shift is the 1999 judgement in the Rio case that "such copying is a paradigmatic noncommercial personal use." Again, I don't disagree that it should be allowed, but it's not exactly a constitutional right.
From the writeup:
Well, I just happen to know:
Does this mean that all of those Sensormatic tags, all of those cameras, and so on are "futile?" Not hardly. You wouldn't make such a ridiculous statement because you know that retail anti-theft mechanisms are meant to be a deterrent. Nobody -- least of which the retail industry -- expects these measures to prevent 100% of retail theft.
And so it goes with DRM. If we pretend that the content industry expects it to prevent 100% of piracy, then yes -- we can have a jolly laugh at their expense. Why then, "futile" does sound like a good word, and after this little warm-up straw man exercise, we're ready to hit Burning Man. But it's intellectually dishonest.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Who's going to get their movies put on HD-DVD insead of Blu-Ray if it's only going to be pirated?
At least not in this case.
Before all those HD DVD rips people were happily sharing transport streams ripped off TV (as MPEG2, not even reencoded). Many are 1080i/p and in some cases even larger than those EVOs. Don't forget that in some countries you can get unlimited 100Mb/s at consumer prices (i.e., they could stream those movies if they wanted to), there are users who don't even keep the files after watching.
In some cities they're building 1Gb/s connectivity for home users. You can imagine what kind of an effect that will have.
"You may have no use for the trade association these creative people support, but you'd better also have no use for films as good as Serenity."
p ?j=207126280&p=zx7yz6986
I got the impression that the MPAA is not an organization for creative people, rather it is an organization of film distributors.
If you look here:
http://www.mpaa.org/AboutUs.asp
it says in part:
"these associations represent not only the world of theatrical film, but serve as leader and advocate for major producers and distributors of entertainment programming for television, cable, home video and future delivery systems not yet imagined. "
So while I fully appreciate your comment, the MPAA doesn't appear to serve as the voice of the creative community, unless you're counting the creative accounting practices that some people say are typical of MPAA members:
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.as
But who really knows what's true and what's not?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
to all saying "it is vc-1, so it has been recompressed right?"
no: vc-1 is one of the standard supported codec choices for hd-dvd mastering
to all those saying it should be downres'd compressed, and then released
no: that would be stupid. then you might as well just download these craptastic "tv-rips" full of artifacts, fuzz, and crappy dvd-or-lower-quality. there would be no *point*.
to all those saying there are already "1080i rips" etc, well. That is exactly what those are. 1080 INTERLACED rips. No matter how you cut it, its just the same (most likely) 720p sourced video, being transcoded to 1080i and retransmitted. And what makes it worse, is that in being interlaced, it is *losing* pixel data. And furthermore, anything that is a "rip" from television, and available on bitorrent, is usually compressed so far beyond recognition that it is no better than having a dvd.
If you aren't interested in true hi-definition to begin with, then you wont be interested in *any* hd-dvd rips. Get over it, and run back to your dvd's.
I wonder how much quality would be possible if it were recoded down to a more manageable 3Gb or so but still in HD. That way you could fit them on a DVD. Won't be long before the market is flooded with DVD players that support HD AVC content playback.
Repeat after me: copyright piracy is NOT theft. Making a copy does NOT deprive the original owner of the item. The only people losing anything are the record companies losing their ability to sell the exact same movie to you over and over again.
DRM Engineering team: $1.2 million.
Marketing for release of first movie: $3 million
Having some wiseass kid from Sweden post a torrent of your movie the day before the commercial release: Priceless.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've watched the samples and I can't say I see much difference from normal movies. I think I'll stick to Xvid movies a while. However I hope the Xvids now are encoded from HDDVD source and not DVD.
It could be. All of a sudden the average user is now looking at HD-DVD. Especially when put together with the porn element, it good be the tilter on the scales.
I know it's redundant, but... Seeing as to how my university caps all users' total bandwidth (combined upstream & downstream) to 5GB per any 7 consecutive days, this would take over 4 weeks to download if I did not share at all. I say over 4 weeks because I still require some bandwidth for my typical habits like listening to distant radio stations and downloading software updates. Now, if I were to download this on bittorrent, it would take at least 6 weeks if I'm a jerk, 9 weeks if I'm nice and get my ratio back up to 1. At this rate, I'd rather just buy the damn disc than wait 2+ months. Then again, the only HDTV I have is at my family's home, and I'm too poor to buy the 360's HD-DVD player, and I'm also not sure that my computer can handle outputting something at that high of a resolution without losing frames. Anywho, I suppose I should buy a DVIHDMI cable sometime before this summer so I can play Pro Evo on the new TV, but that would also require a new video card.... New video card or a month's rent, hrmm.....
If not, it would certainly give Sony bragging rights.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
I guess my questions comes more from the idea of possible drive failures, data throughput, and lack of knowledge in both these categories than anything else...
With a ~20gig file on such large drives, doesn't the chance for error increase at the same rate? What is to keep these files from having a small error which then destabilizes the whole file? Doesn't it take so much less to make the drive, as a whole, unusable, wiping out that much more data in one fail swoop?
Are there redundancy efforts in place besides a common backup to secure information? It seems as though these large files, floating in lifeboats on bittorrent, retained in case such large drives should go, is the safest place should your HD-DVD or hard drive fail.
I'm still on dial-up... you insensitive clod!
HD rips have been available on torrent networks for a while now, and they're much more reasonably sized. In about 1 minute of looking I found the following high-def movies available for download:
Sin.City.2005.720p.HDTV.DTS.x264-THOR
Snatch.HD.720p.x264
Resident.Evil.Apocalypse.2004.720p.HDTV.x2...
War.Of.The.Worlds.2005.720p.HDTV.x264-ESiR
The.Island.2005.720p.HDTV.x264-ESiR
Independence.Day.720p.OAR.HDTV.x264-ESiR
Sin City.HDTV.720p.SPANISH.x264
Terminator 3.HDTV.720p.x264
Conan.The.Barbarian.720p.x264.DD5.1-HINT
Dragonheart.1996.720p.HDTV.x264-ESiR
Ice.Age.2.2006.720p.HDTV.DTS.x264-ESiR
Underworld.Evolution.2006.720p.x264-ESiR
Alien.vs.Predator.720p.OAR.HDTV.DTS.x264-E...
The size for these average about 4.4 gigabytes, which is a hell of a lot better than a 20 gig rip. Out of curiosity I downloaded a sample file from one of these, and the quality is excellent. I haven't actually seen an HD-DVD yet, but I doubt the quality on them would be much better. Which leads to the question - if you're going to pirate, why waste your time downloading a 20 gig rip when you can get the same quality at a quarter of the size?
...definately not my girlfriend!! *smiles* :-)
Why should you get to decide that the full size movie is better than the 700MB CD image?
I can tell you have never used bittorrent, since if you did you would know that it is very easy to tell whether the file in question is 700MB or 20GB without even downloading it! Almost every movie I have downloaded off of the pirate bay is available in 700mb CD-sized files or in +/-4GB DVD-sized files (on the pirate bay). And guess what, there is almost always a
Next time you make a comment about the limitations of a technology, you might want it to be a technology you know something about.
http://www.hdtvblogger.com/?p=39 Apparently it might be possible to snag the title/volume keys from a PS3 that has been modded to run linux. So I guess it shouldn't be long before a Blu-Ray copy shows up online as well...
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
Just make sure you provide a .nzb file.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
a: you only listed 6 people. show me a movie made with only 6 people including the cast
I listed only 6 as a general example of the support staff needed to run a studio, if you want to get technical it could take all day. A studio is a business or part of a larger business (if owned by a label) and requires an office staff, secretaries, renting space for the building, people to maintain that facility - from cleaning toilets all the way to an IT guy handling their computers. There's a lot of people involved in making a professional recording, and while it's not as many as it takes to make a movie, it's way way more than just six, even if they are not directly involved in the physical act of recording on a given day. And even so, even if it did only take the 6 people I listed before, don't those people deserve to get paid??
b: if it wasnt a shitty pop group, have those people wouldnt be necessary, or be needed minimally. ie. if the group had talent they wouldnt need someone to write their songs for them. if they could sing, they'd need less autotune to make them sound acceptable
So I'll throw this argument right back at you: if it weren't a shitty hollywood formulaic movie then each actor wouldn't require their own seperate hair stylist, makeup artist, and wardrobe manager, they wouldn't need 5 writers because they'd just hire the one good indy script writer, they wouldn't need super CGI special effects because the dialogue would carry the film, they wouldn't need an editing crew to put all the takes together and sequence them nicely they'd just do one perfect take every time.
Look it comes down to this: IN GENERAL making a movie takes more crew than making an album. And IN GENERAL a higher production value movie or album will require more crew than a lower quality production. If we're going to discuss high-cost movies then let's compare them to the music industry equivalent - a high-cost album production. So the OP's argument that pirating movies hurts hundreds of film crew but pirating music only hurts some theoretical "obsolete music executive" is bunk! Stealing music affects the dozens of crew involved in making that album. Yes, it is less people than it takes to make a movie, big deal, it's still way more than this lone greedy executive bullshit argument.
You can't claim to be all high and mighty in not pirating movies because "oooh think of the starving crew" but then turn around and think that the exact same situation doesn't occur in the music industry simply because it's a slightly smaller scale. If we accept the argument that "pirating media == crew not getting paid" then it applies to both industries because both require and pay support staff.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
If I buy an HD-DVD, I cannot back it up or archive it. I will also presumably run into playback restrictions in Windows Media Center, since it will not even play regular old-fashioned DVDs with CSS protection on an HDTV at > 640 x 480 resolution because of "restrictions set by the broadcaster," even with valid CSS decoders installed.*
If one *downloads* an HD-DVD, at least the time invested yields an archivable, portable movie.
If I could pay for a legitimate copy of what the torrent offers, I would. On the other hand, I would not buy the encumbered HD-DVD at any price.
* - Without using css circumvention techniques, that is.
Pi Ran Out
Anyone besides me find it ironic that the first HD porno is titled "Pirates?"
I remember when a friend of mine couldn't get this on *cough* USENET *cough* because posters kept telling everyone to go watch it in the theater. Obviously this was when it still was in the theater...
anyway he had never even seen Firefly, so he had to grab all those....and then he went and saw the movie in the theater!
I think the Firefly dvds (plus movie) are the only dvds he owns.
So I am a bit surprised that this is the first to be released unofficially this way.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
"Ok, with the releatively recent popularity of high quality DV cams, editing software and DVD burners or torrents, do you really think that content won't be created? "
But according to slashdot DRM is preventing that from happening. You guys can't have it both ways.
"As to the quality, yes much of it will be of dubious quality, BUT the quality will become greater as the higher-than-consumer-cost but lower-than-MPAA-cost creation goods will prevent the casual crap-creator from trying to make a movie. Also, think about how many big-budget, awesome SFX movies were utterly crap when it came to dialog, plot development and characters, or had endings that didn't finish the story or provide any closure in order to help sell a sequel? "
Two things. YouTube, and quality is a highly subjective criteria. Basing an unethical act on that is lame at best.
[iminplaya (723125)]
"And do you really believe that there will be no content without copyright?"
Do you really believe that open-source would be were it is today if there wasn't for copyright? Would it still be a viable method in the face of an audiance saying "we'll treat you however we want, because we know you'll contine to write quality code in abundence?" Or maybe the more appropriate question for this forum is; were were your teachers when history was being taught? Pre-copyright wasn't some utopia.
"Copyright violation is NOT theft, for the simple reason that the claim of ownership is fraudulent."
I don't find your claim any stronger, the creater at least has proven they've done the hard part so at least you'll have something to call "fraudulent". What have you created that one can claim is fraudulent?
So while I fully appreciate your comment, the MPAA doesn't appear to serve as the voice of the creative community, unless you're counting the creative accounting practices that some people say are typical of MPAA members
The point is that without smoothly getting movies into distribution, the movies won't make nearly as much money. The people making the movies have zero interest, in most cases, in actually dealing with theatre chains, HBO, Apple, NetFlix, etc... they want to make movies. The people who provide them with big hunks of probably-going-to-be-lost cash to make the films in the first place only do so because they understand (and have relationships with) the distribution end of the cycle. Of course there are smaller production people who put together self-financed indy films that succeed... but those are rare, and the people that make them are usually very quick to get right on with bigger-budget work that's financed, again, by the sales side of the industry.
You're right that the MPAA isn't a guild of camera operators, or a society of screenwriters. But the people who derive their livings from the making of movies that only make money through sales/distribution by entities that ARE the MPAA's members... they all know that if the studios and all of the other components can't make up for their usual losses with the occasional financial success, then no one in that entier food chain has a job. Writers, accountants, actors, lighting techs, wireframe animators - none of them. MPAA isn't their "voice" per se, but the parts of the business that actually collect the cash that pays all of these people are part of the MPAA - just like the other sub-professions have their own associations.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
6 years ago - Diablo II
10 years ago - Diablo
You're off by scale, but you have a point. Eventually, people won't even flinch to download huge files like that.
Lemme clarify that, your right we do need the MPAA, but DRM (on these disks) we can live without. Quite frankly, the use of downloading a 20gb file escapes me. Shoot for that size, you would be better off renting it from Netflix or something. I do take major issues with the tactics often used by the MPAA (and the RIAA for that matter).
Using GNU/Linux -- Windows-free zone!
"Not necessarily. A download doesn't equate to a lost sale, no matter how much the like of the MPAA and RIAA say so."
Let's put this to a test.
[$1,000,000 movie]-----[Divide evenly over $1,000,000 people]---[$1 a movie]
Now let's divide the people into two halves. A pays for the movie, B downloads.
[$1,000,000 movie]-----[Divide evenly over $500,000 people]---[$2 a movie]
Not bad, but let's feel the pinch now.
[$1,000,000 movie]-----[Divide evenly over $250,000 people]---[$4 a movie]
Uh, oh. It doubled. So A is paying more for a movie, while B enjoys a "free" $4 movie.* It may not be a "lost sale", but it's not fair to the honest either.
*And if I continue further you'll see that there will be a point were the honest will say to hell with this price and refuse to purchase any further in which case everyone loses. A because they can no longer afford to subsidize B, and B because no one wants to throw money into the "I'm not hurting anyone because I never would have bought it" pit.
Ah, you young whippersnapppers with you GBs and always on Internet. I remember the days when 600MB on a single CD was considered a lot. Of course, these were also the days when you could have all your data and pretty much all the programs you could need on a 60MB disk (yes, that's MegaBytes! :-) ). ;-)
Heck, I even remember the switch from 5 1/4" disks to 3 1/2" - and cutting those small squares in the 5 1/4" to make them double-sided
Admittedly I don't remember the 8" disks or punchcards, what with being old and sub-thirty and all.
Slashdot: An even slower news source then wikipedia.
The HD_DVD rip was released on saturday.
The HD_DVD article on wikipedia was updated sunday or monday with the information.
18:26 Jan 16 2007 - I (and hundreds of others) finish downloading the rip.
18:55 Jan 16 2007 - Slashdot finally catches on.
"proof", when you finally get it:
97a2cd952c4e6cd4baebb4da08fbcbfb FEATURE_1.EVO
Serenity's a great movie, but sadly incompatable with my display. Now the problem has been rectified! Thanks, internet.
So in fact, the MPAA adds no more to the creative or distribution process than, say, Wal-Mart. After all, if there is no place to sell the DVD's and related items, it's likely they'd have to sell over the internet; something that MPAA members seem intent on preventing, particularly since there are 2 last red cents they haven't figured out how to get out of their customers (dirty theives).
Now that I think of it, the MPAA doesn't actually serve as part of the distribution chain per se, they're simply a lobbying organization that does it's best to maximize profit at the expense of both the creative people and consumer.
I guess that's called "adding value", but since it comes at my expense (on both sides), you'll excuse me if I look on the MPAA with somewhat less reverence than you.
( HD DVD's AACS Protection Bypassed ) http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/31/192 92501 222
( Decryption Keys For HD-DVD Found, Confirmed ) http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/13/18
Thanks, lets keep articles inter-related...
someone please post the projected cost for the 15,000 floppy discs the parent poster will need to store this movie
YES!
There was talent involved with the production of Serenity?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The site says it won't name the tracker, but it shouldn't be hard to find. Yet, after probably 10 minutes of various kinds of Googling, I can't find this anywhere.
...Not that I was actually going to download it, or anything illegal. Wink wink, nudge nudge...
Either the torrent has been taken down, or, more likely, there is entirely too much news about it, so I'm seeing the news instead.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Douche.
...can make DRM effective against determined hackers.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
The Chronicles of Riddick, Batman Begins, and Pitch Black.
So in fact, the MPAA adds no more to the creative or distribution process than, say, Wal-Mart.
Uh huh. It's called "an economy." The guy that changes the oil in the car that a set lighting technician drives to work doesn't directly "add to the creative process" either. Nor does the person who grows the food that tech eats. But you don't get well-made, expensive, technically fantastic work without an economy of specialists. If you really think that the lighting technician should be equally concerned with (or would be any good at) raising the money needed to keep a staff of several hundred people working, fed, insured, and in a studio with paid electric bills and working equipment, then you are wildly, spectacularly out of touch. Out of curiosity, what do you do for a living? Do you do everything that goes towards the production of what it is that pays your way through life? Or do you specialize, so that you can be better and more efficient at things at which you excel?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Of course, porn is always the first. Pirates has been available for a while, as far as I can recall.
Did they really think they'd win a fight against the rest of the world?
Actually, I'm sure the people making the films would be more than willing to deal with theater chains etc themselves and get a bigger cut of the profit, if it were not for the fact the MPAA has effectively monopolized that area.
What the hell is an EVO and why are they using such an obscure file format?
All your HD are belong to us!
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a reference to Godwin's Law approaches 1
You may have no use for the trade association these creative people support, but you'd better also have no use for films as good as Serenity. No money, no Serenity. You don't "win" anything by ripping off the very people that you're hoping will scrape together the money, talent, and time to make another movie you'll like.
Gimme a break. This has to be the most disingenuous argument I've read on slashdot in months and that's saying a lot.
Your argument is since a trade association is one way to help facilitate the production of good movie/tv content, we should put up with anything the current monopolistic trade associations do?
We need software therefore anyone producing software at any cost and no matter how restrictive the licensing is good?
We need food, therefore we should put up with a supermarket monopoly that will price gouge?
We need medicine, therefore testing a medical association for testing on the weak and poor should be tolerated?
We need government, therefore we need Nazism? (purposefully invoking Goddard's Law here)
The ends justify the means?
By the way it's been a long time since the big studios made something I truly like. Their best work comes about when they donate the money and stay out of the way of the creators ala most (but not all) of Babylon 5.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This could really screw us up. As far as I know, no BluRay or HDDVDs out yet have HDCP enabled. This is great, as I can currently watch my BluRay discs on my PS3 at 1080i on my older HDTV through the component connection. Now, they will start enabling HDCP on all these discs. What the hell were these pirates thinking?
BTW, a couple of HDDVD movies were posted in the past couple of weeks in the newsgroup alt.binaries.hdtv as well.
The irony! You can use your own argument against youself, and should: "We must preserve freedom, so we need to steal our entertainment - something we do not need, and which is a luxury - because now that it's easier to do, we especially don't feel like paying for it."
Your rhetorical excesses (um, including Godwin, not "Goddard," unless you're making some rocketry allusion that I'm missing, here) are way off base.
Your argument is since a trade association is one way to help facilitate the production of good movie/tv content, we should put up with anything the current monopolistic trade associations do?
Oh, please. First, you're welcome to attract funding, hire writers, talent, studio people and facilities, and make/release a movie any time you want, distributed by any means you want, and at whatever price (or lack of) that you might want to offer to your prospective audience. The web is full of productions like that, right? There is no barrier to entry, at this point. And if you don't want to allow a production company that happens to be an MPAA member from getting your dollars, just don't buy the work those hundreds (thousands) of people produce. But then have the intellectual honesty to not rip it off, either.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If there comes a time when collaboratively made movies by a bunch of volunteers are all that can be done because piracy sent the MPAA into bankrupcy, then you better believe those volunteers will get payed what it takes. It all comes to supply and demand. When that time comes that it is no longer economically feasable to make a movie because everyone will copy it and share it over the internet, then demand for movies will increase, untill it IS economically feasable. I don't know how things will work then, or how movies will be funded, but I'm sure they will.
The market will survive, it always has.
Now they'll NEVER resume Firefly... or make another movie...
Sheesh - Thanks guys and gals... You blew it!
=D
Technical merits - Great!
Choice of content - Damn you!
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Actually, I'm sure the people making the films would be more than willing to deal with theater chains etc themselves and get a bigger cut of the profit, if it were not for the fact the MPAA has effectively monopolized that area.
Sorry, but I just don't buy that. Not for a second. It's a full-time job for huge teams of people to deal with the distribution side of things. How many hours would a motion-capture artist like to take away from doing, creating, improving, and perfecting her craft so she can... what? Deal with negotiating a 2% better deal if certain freight methods or download schedules are altered? Work out release date schedules with other allied creative teams so they won't steal each others' thunder while still making sure they have a chance at hitting the film festival circuit just right?
This is the same thinking as the programmer that hates the fact that there have to be sales people who deal with customers, and assume that if they just quit their job and started their own private shop, that reality would somehow go away. More than anyone else, creative people are best left to being creative - and people who like to swing deals, wrassle with lawyers, make payroll, understand taxes, etc., should be left to their own thing. I'd much rather see a movie made by movie makers that got to spend their entire work week actually making movies.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Remember this interview? Remember all the slashdotters who got their intellectual asses kicked? Guess some never learn.
Um, apparently you don't understand the concept of independent film studios. Nobody is saying that the technical people would be those responsible for handling marketing and distribution.
Nobody is saying that the technical people would be those responsible for handling marketing and distribution.
Right. Marketing and distribution people would be. And if the handful of marketing and distribution people that work for two different independent film companies get together over a few beers and decide that they could both keep more money working for their production and creative people by... sharing lawyers? Oh no! It's a trade association! Eeeeeevil.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Well, there's a big difference between small associations and ones that control pretty much the entire industry such as the MPAA.
You can squish it down to 5-6GB and it still looks fantastic to most people.
This would mean that it rivals a straight rip of a standard DVD movie. It would be intesting to compare a disc compressed like you say with a standard DVD upconverted to an HD res.
Laugh it up, but I promise you that if it gets back that Serenity II doesn't get made because of this little "test of manhood"? I'll personally remind everyone of this litte joke-fest you all call a story for as long as I can.
it's a shame serenity is defenitly worth buying imho
The irony! You can use your own argument against youself, and should: "We must preserve freedom, so we need to steal our entertainment - something we do not need, and which is a luxury - because now that it's easier to do, we especially don't feel like paying for it."
Nice straw man. I said nothing about stealing anything. I don't support theft. I don't support copyright infringement (which is different to theft) either. Show me where I said "piracy" is good? However, nor do I support a bunch of middlemen taking most of the profits. If you're going to start your attack with the suggestion that I'm some sort of pirate sympathiser because I don't like the MPAA/RIAA cartels, I'm going to conclude that you're not talking to the right person.
Your rhetorical excesses (um, including Godwin, not "Goddard," unless you're making some rocketry allusion that I'm missing, here) are way off base.
Yep. Thanks for correcting that one. I typed it up fast and made a mistake.
First, you're welcome to attract funding, hire writers, talent, studio people and facilities, and make/release a movie any time you want, distributed by any means you want, and at whatever price (or lack of) that you might want to offer to your prospective audience. The web is full of productions like that, right? There is no barrier to entry, at this point.
What rubbish is this? If it were so simple, lots of actors, writers, directors etc. would go independent once they got popular and pocket the money currently paid to the associations. The truth is it's very hard to get into any kind of main stream distribution unless you pay the piper. As for internet releases etc. sure that's grand, but it's a much more difficult thing to distribute purely on the net and your audience is much smaller. Not many people are willing to sit for hours on a torrent and use up their Internet bandwidth. Hell a lot of people I know are still on dialup.
And if you don't want to allow a production company that happens to be an MPAA member from getting your dollars, just don't buy the work those hundreds (thousands) of people produce. But then have the intellectual honesty to not rip it off, either.
Once again you demonstrate the ability to open your mouth and let unfounded accusations and RUBBISH come out. Take a look at the posts I've made on USENET about not buying the latest flight sim. I don't buy heavily encumbered DRM'd rubbish even when I do want it. I don't steal it either thank you very bloody much.
Another thing, you're quick to criticise but I wonder how quickly you'd steal food if a large cartel decided to control all food supply and charge ridiculously for it. Food is a consumable unlike media content so the analogy doesn't extend to charging repeatedly too easily but imagine being asked for more money after each bite you took out of an apple on pain of 5 years imprisonment. Don't like it? Grow your own! Well we don't NEED music, movies, or software the way we need food but it's still a damn unreasonable thing to slap DRM all over it and run your business on the basis of trying to charge for it repeatedly.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The idea of a fan base paying for content isn't new. To my knowledge it simply hasn't been seriously tried yet. "That's not how the industry works" seems to be the only reason why it won't work for something like Serenity.
Serenity cost $40m to make, and got about $40m in domestic and foreign box-office receipts. If half those people were willing to pay the equivalent of 2 tickets or 1 DVD prior to the production, Joss would have had his $40m to make the film, and the fans would have everything. The movie, the extras, the bloopers, the dailies, the music, the script, etc. If you opened things up a bit and allowed contributions like "I'll put in $20,000 and if the movie gets made I want one of Morena Baccarin's outfits", you'd have your $40m that much faster, though the process could get a bit chaotic.
Maybe I'm being horribly naiive, but it seems to me that if the only thing standing between Firefly and Serenity was $40m, it shouldn't have taken nearly as long as it did.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
You can't count the cost of the internet in this equation! You pay $100/month (apparently getting screwed) for your PORN! Therefore, the margin cost of internet FOR HD DVD is $0.
There is no open source software that plays that stuff on Linux. I found this out last night. Mplayer fails, vlc fails, gstreamer lives in the 90s on what comes to format support, xine fails.
In case you guys started downloading the file, don't bother. Only PowerDVD will play it.
I'll have no problem storing all these 20GB movies!
...err... "drive" for FREE (just pay s/h)!!!!!
I just got an email and I can enlarge my hard
And it won't play on Apple TV. Apple!!!!!!
You are being horribly naive. What you are suggesting is people paying up front for a product they haven't seen, months in advance. How many people are going to be willing to do this? Sure, it may work for directors/actors who have a solid record of producing popular movies, but what of everyone else?
The current, much derided, system works by investors gambling that a certain movie will make money. That is why they put large sums of money up. Having gambled that money they have a certain expectation that if the movie is popular then they should have the right to make a large profit on it. After all, they could have lost everything. They may well lose everything on their next movie. The profits on the successes is what keeps them going.
But do you see thousands, millions of people willing to put money up front when the end product may be total crap? And if it's an amazing success they get nothing but 2 hours enjoyment? Sorry, not going to work. They'll people who may be willing to gamble the price of a movie ticket on this, but most won't. They are fore-planning a single evening's leisure. They want to spend their money on a movie that they can see now, having read the reviews, seen the trailer.
Here's slashdot's problem. The failure of the admittedly pain-in-in-ass DRM is treated with delight, but no-one has anything to offer that would work to replace it. How are works like movies and music going to be financed if people think it's ok to just take them for free? Too many slashdotters think that it can be done by achieved in a faintly communist kind of way they'd never dare suggest as viable for any other business in free market economy society. And the rest believe it can be done by a licence-free endeavour like open source software. They simply can't fathom that movies and music are not anything like software.
640kB (/s?) should be enough for anyone.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
I've been avoiding buying an HD player and here's why. I have a media server in the house. I rip DVDs and CDs and I can stream them to my HDTV (or to other TVs in the house). I haven't made the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray jump yet because there's been no way to get the content into my media server. I won't allow them to dictate how I use the media, that I legally purchase, in my own home.
The irony here is that my having had someone break the DRM, they will actually GAIN SALES, at least from me. If these things had been DRM free from the start, I can guarantee that I would already be building a collection (ie, buying).
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
It's more than that. There's also techno-faith. Faith (with often vague assumptions) that technology will somehow allow piracy to continue forever.* Slashdotters don't seem to understand the concept of limits. Be it their behaviour, or physical, legal, or otherwise.
*Shame there's no such thing as magic. I can just imagine the pirate crowd fighting every which way trying to make illegal copies, and none of them work. Then we'd see if they really would bite the bullet and either do without (which they should have done from day one in the first place, so we wouldn't be in this mess), or actually buy which would just kill them.
....below this comment are comments which should be construed as being just my opinion......
This whole thing is not a war between people producing a quality product and the consumers trying to skip out on paying for the product..
This is a war between the few trying to force the many to pay again, and again, and again and again for the same damn thing over and over.
Let's look at the deal at its sweetest from the consumers point of view.. In a perfect consumerist world this would be true:
1) you can browse for movies, music, books, tv shows, games, programs and start downloading it right away
2) you can watch, read, play, use the product for as long as you deem necessary to test the product, and that means watching the whole movie, reading the whole book, playing the complete game, using the software for a few months, not a few weeks until you're satisfied.
3) If you like the product, feel that it's worth the money, you support the producers by buying the rights to ownership.
4) If you don't like it, you delete it.
Let's look at the deal at it's sweetest from the **AA point of view.. In a perfect world for them, this would be true:
1) you could not buy ownership of the product, you merely lease it for a very short time period, needing to repay at various intervals.
2) you would have to buy a copy of the game/movie/music/book/software for each device you want to play it on, and for each person who wants to view/read/use the product (2 pcs, 2 tvs, an ipod, a zune, wife, 2 kids.. that's 10 different payments).
3) you could not test the product, except for the carefully designed marketing, and you could not demo the product, you would have to pay for the demo as well, a lesser price of course, severely limited in scope.
4) by agreeing to view/read/use the product you could not comment or critique about it to others, allowing only marketing through ads, trailers, payed-for-reviews to tell you what to buy, and what not to buy. This way you get a 10% discount of the product.
In the perfect consumers world, he will still buy stuff, probably more stuff as there is no hindrance for him to check new things out, but no one will control what he buys except him, and he gets to try new things as much as he likes, meaning more of a chance he'll stumble on something which benefits him and he wants to own.
In the perfect **AA world, the consumer will only buy what he's told to buy, and if he buys anything, a guaranteed moneysink has been created to keep that lease alive.
I wish that there was some way of researching which of these extremes is the most beneficial for both parties.. The internet P2P is what is keeping the consumer extreme alive.. the DRM fiasco is the **AA extreme..
We all know that DRM is the least profitable way forward.. you can't profit from restricting peoples' access to stuff in the long term, but there's no real research proving this..
So that's what we need.. we need sales & marketing scientific research into whether a consumer controlled market, or a conglomerate controlled market is the better model regarding profiting from a product.
>Additionally, it's an affirmative defense, not a right.
That's a trivial distinction (essentially about nothing more than timing within court procedure), as your referenced Wiki article goes on to explain.
I can't speak for the original poster, but I think the point is that your original post of how the MPAA is standing up for the creative process is nonsense. They stand, if anything, for improved profits for MPAA members. That's not a criticism, but let's not ascribe good will for the creative process to the MPAA. Motion Pictures are to the MPAA what pigs are to sausage makers.
After all, if the MPAA had their way, the only people who would make money from movies and television are the MPAA member executives. They are most assuredly anti-consumer, and anti-creative.
Dear Warner Bro.s, Sony Bla-Bla-Bla, and yadda-dadda Enterprise !
First: I certainly hope your TOP Management is reading this post !!
Second: There wouldn't be a point if finally YOU guys at Warner Bros., Sony Entertainment - or whatever other name you might have copyrighted, and produders of movies are using for the same purpose - would realize that, if you were selling DVDs at a reasonable price, there wouldn't be point for DRM at all. So come on, get back to Earth and consider reality. It's all about live and let live.
"However, I really don't understand why the RIAA/MPAA bother at all - There are just to many people out there who find it _fun_ to spend their time cracking things simply because they can, and it is a great challenge to take on. It's not the money, it's not the legality, it's probably not even the fact that they want to rip the movie onto their hard-drive. It's the fact that when the RIAA says "You can't do this", their first thought is "Just watch me". No-one can compete with that, not even multi-billion dollar companies. And I love that fact :)"
So can I presume you're arguing against evolution then?
No: affirmative defenses can be taken away quite easily by changes in legislation; however, if the legislators "try to take away Americans' rights," the shit (ideally) hits the fan. "Ideally" included because the past 5-6 years have shown otherwise.
What's also funny is how much people claim to love the constitution and free speech and hate copyright, while utterly failing to recognise that copyright is written into the constitution proper, whilst free speech was only tacked on in an amendment, and therefore of questionable legality.
Of course back then copyright was designed to protect the small-time content creator from the big company with the Gutenberg Press. Funny how things turn out.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I do, however, disagree with Trogre's statement that an amendment is of "questionable legality." Amendments are not of questionable legality (not even prohibition during its time). I direct you to Article V:
The first and fourth sections of Article I refer to elections, how often to assemble, and the exclusivity of legislative power in the Congress. 3/4 of the states did indeed ratify the 3rd through 12th amendments proposed, creating the first 10 amendments to the Constitution (the Bill of Rights).
The only way you could claim the Bill of Rights is not legitimate is if you claim the Constitution itself has no legitimacy. However, since you implied support of the Constitution in your post, this is not a possible avenue of argument.
Therefore, under the assumption that the Constitution itself is valid, the Bill of Rights is valid, and thus legal.
So, by "No", you mean "Yes, but I wish it were otherwise" or "Yes, but it wasn't like that back in the day"...
Well several tests actually. 1. I already own Serenity on DVD, hence would it be fair use to download this? 2. If I bought this on HD-DVD, but not owning a player downloaded this to watch on my computer would that be fair use? Also, great film to be the first. (Yes! a record!)
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
h.264
:) )
I'm surprised there aren't DVD-sized h.264 releases of these HD-DVDs already (in case you can't tell it's DVD-compressed-to-700MB-xvid all over again
It's not exactly rocket surgery.