Ghostbusters Is First Film Released On USB Key

arcticstoat writes "Are you the USB keymaster? You could be soon if you pick up PNY's new 2GB USB flashdrive, which comes pre-loaded with Ghostbusters. A spokesperson for PNY explained that it comes with a form of DRM that prevents you from copying the movie. 'They have DRM protection,' explained the spokesperson, 'so customers can download the movie onto their laptop or PC if they wish, but they have to have the USB drive plugged in to watch the movie, as the DRM is locked in the USB drive.' The music industry has been playing around with USB flash drives for a few years now, but it hasn't been a massive success yet; will USB movies fare any better?"

Comments

Re:terrible idea

[tom17]

Well apparently it works on Linux as well (As long as it has the right KERNAL)

From Argos.co.uk.

2GB storage.
Plug and play.
Compatible with Windows ME, 2008, XP, Mac OS, 8.6 and Higher, Linux, Kernal 2.4X and any operating system with a USB port.
Compatible with USB 1.1 and 2.0.
Size (H)2 (W)6.3 (D) 0.8cm.
Black USB pendrive.
Full length movie and link to argos website included.
Full installation guide included.

Although I guess that is wrong for the DRM stuff.

Tom...

Re:DRM? laughable

[jedidiah]

If I can play it, I can copy it.

I am sure Windows has an equivalent of the following: "mplayer /media/disk/Ghostbusters.avi -dumpstream"

Re:No thanks, I like to own media and do what I wa

[Threni]

> With apologies to Ray Parker, Jr.:

who in turn apologizes and makes a substantial payment to Huey Lewis for shamelessly ripping his tune off.

Re:countdown

[DJ Jones]

USB Dongles have been cracked for years. Once you crack the key (a 2 minute process), you can dump the data off it and then emulate the dongle at will. See for yourself

This hasn't stopped my company from using them for licensing... Despite me demonstrating this.

Re:terrible idea

[superdave80]

I thought that you were allowed by fair use to make copies for your personal use. You aren't violating copyright, since you purchased a DVD of Ghostbusters. The DMCA is another matter, though...

Re:countdown

[bhtooefr]

QNX is a *nix for embedded applications, with a realtime microkernel, and Syllable is a fork of AtheOS, which was originally intended to be a modern Amiga-like OS.

Re:countdown

[Drooling Iguana]

Uwe Boll's movies are filmed in Canada and funded primarily by European investors. The Clone Wars was self-funded and created in-house by Lucasfilm, which is not Hollywood-based. Not all movies are made by Hollywood.

Little Brother

[sm62704]

This is insanity. I can download a copy of that stupid movie without Dumb Restrictions on Media from TPB, or I can just watch the tape I already paid for over ten years ago. Now, I'd buy the key with the movie pre-loaded, but to pay good money for crippleware when I can get a perfectly useable copy for free is just brain-dead stupid.

DRM doesn't affact copyright infringers whatsoever. It only inconvieniences paying customers. The only rational explanation for the MAFIAA's insanity is drugs - cocaine. It must be all the coke they're snorting/smoking/shooting that makes them behave like a bunch of thieving, distrusting, irrational crack whores.

I just started reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (HTML version linked; there are other formats here), and its preface has something to say about the insanity that is DRM (I've abbreviated it a bit):

I recently saw Neil Gaiman give a talk at which someone asked him how he felt about piracy of his books. He said, "Hands up in the audience if you discovered your favorite writer for free -- because someone loaned you a copy, or because someone gave it to you? Now, hands up if you found your favorite writer by walking into a store and plunking down cash." Overwhelmingly, the audience said that they'd discovered their favorite writers for free, on a loan or as a gift. When it comes to my favorite writers, there's no boundaries: I'll buy every book they publish, just to own it (sometimes I buy two or three, to give away to friends who must read those books). I pay to see them live. I buy t-shirts with their book-covers on them. I'm a customer for life.

People who study the habits of music-buyers have discovered something curious: the biggest pirates are also the biggest spenders. If you pirate music all night long, chances are you're one of the few people left who also goes to the record store (remember those?) during the day. You probably go to concerts on the weekend, and you probably check music out of the library too. If you're a member of the red-hot music-fan tribe, you do lots of everything that has to do with music, from singing in the shower to paying for black-market vinyl bootlegs of rare Eastern European covers of your favorite death-metal band.

Same with books. I've worked in new bookstores, used bookstores and libraries. I've hung out in pirate ebook ("bookwarez") places online. I'm a stone used bookstore junkie, and I go to book fairs for fun. And you know what? It's the same people at all those places: book fans who do lots of everything that has to do with books.

If I could loan out my physical books without giving up possession of them, I would. The fact that I can do so with digital files is not a bug, it's a feature, and a damned fine one. It's embarrassing to see all these writers and musicians and artists bemoaning the fact that art just got this wicked new feature: the ability to be shared without losing access to it in the first place. It's like watching restaurant owners crying down their shirts about the new free lunch machine that's feeding the world's starving people because it'll force them to reconsider their business-models. Yes, that's gonna be tricky, but let's not lose sight of the main attraction: free lunches!

Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.

For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks to Tim O'Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science fiction sell half a million copies -- in a world where 175,000 attend the San Diego Comic Con alone, you've got to figure that most of the people who "like science fiction" (and related geeky stuff li

Re:Just because you can do it...

[HappySmileMan]

Being able to do it doesn't make it legal, but the "Fair Use" clauses in copyright say he's allowed to make a copy for personal use, ripping it without the DRM is fine, he should give the reason "DRM means I can't watch it with the video player I currently have installed." if asked, although technically he doesn't even need to say WHY he did it, just that it was only for his use.

Re:How does a movie fit

[TheRaven64]

9.8Mb/s for 105 minutes gives 6.45GBs. I didn't 'do the math,' I was lazy and got Google to do it for me. I didn't really need to though, because I've actually looked at DVDs in the past, and know that most of them are DVD-9, which stores around 8GB of data, and few have more than about 1GB of special features. Almost all commercial DVDs are double-layered, because making the movie more than 4.7GB made it harder to copy before dual-layer DVD burners became common (very recent). Quite a few longer films come split between two dual-layer DVDs (e.g. Lawrence of Arabia), because you can't fit the whole thing on one without dropping the quality a lot.

Amazon's MP3 store owns.

[MsGeek]

VBR lame-encoded MP3s, with not a speck of DRM! Effective by design!!! And if you drink Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and other Pepsi products (although paradoxically not Mountain Dew, dammit) you can get FREE tunes. I've had iTunes for years and never bought anything. However, I've bought from Amazon.

Re:terrible idea

[/cypher]

Bypassing digital rights management is prohibited _except_ as provided for fair use (and a select few other uses).

If only that were true. Although the text of the DMCA mentions fair use, it doesn't really offer any protection for people who violate "technological protection" of the media in order to exercise those rights. Just look at http://chillingeffects.org/ for examples. The only real protection for people who have legitimate needs to get around DRM come in the form of exemptions which are reexamined and granted every 3 years. Here is the latest set of DMCA exemptions. The EFF specifically notes that no provisions have been made for the sort of fair use rights relevant to this discussion:

...all the proposed exemptions that would benefit consumers were denied (space-shifting, region coding, backing up DVDs).