Proposed Amendment Would Ban All DVD Copying

Ynefel writes in with a PC Magazine article reporting that the DVD Copy Control Association is considering an amendment to the agreement equipment vendors must abide by, which would completely ban all DVD backups, whether fair use or not, and prevent DVDs from playing without the DVD disk being present in the drive. The amendment is being voted on imminently and if approved would go into effect within 18 months. Quoting: "The proposed amendment was made public in a letter sent by Michael Malcolm, the chief executive of Kaleidescape, a DVD jukebox company which successfully defeated a suit by the DVD CCA this past March."

Comments

You think you're joking, but you're not

[dpbsmith]

Media companies have always worried about how many eyeballs will be watching that screen. That's why the videos you buy are "licensed for home use only."

Sometime before home video turned off (and turned out not to be the "strangler" of movies that Jack Valenti testified it was), RCA developed a system intended for video rental that they thought would overcome studios' objection to putting their content on home video. It was a cartridge with a mechanical design that would not rewind; the tape locked in place when viewing was complete, and required a special tool to release it. You could only watch it once, then you'd have to take it back to the video rental store where they would unlock it, rewind it, and charge another rental fee for another viewing.

RCA brought studio executives in for a demo, sure they had a winner. The executives said "We have no interest in this whatsover. You've given us absolutely no way to know how many people were watching it."

Now, in recent years there has been quite a lot of activity in biometrics and eyetracking. It is not at all inconceivable that someone could design a relatively low-cost device that could be built into a DVD player, PVR, whatever, that could tell how many eyes were watching. (And might even be able to discount cats' eyes, although dogs' eyes would be harder). And charge you accordingly. And maybe even charge extra if it detected that nobody had been watching the ads and coming attractions at the beginning.