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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."

2 of 537 comments (clear)

  1. Oy! by Aladrin · · Score: 4, Informative

    "It's so big they'll never have enough storage space!"
    "It's so big they'll never have enough bandwidth!"
    "It's so big they'll never have enough ... !" -- Fill in whatever.

    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
  2. Re:All discussion of pirating aside by TheoMurpse · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.