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"Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers
secmartin writes "Shortly after the release of Iron Man on Blu-ray on October 1, people started complaining of defective discs; the problem turned out to be that all the Blu-ray players downloading additional content brought down Paramount's BD-Live servers, causing delays while loading the disc. Which really makes you wonder what will happen when they decide to shut down this service in a couple of years."
i thought the BD live content was extra content only downloaded once when you first play the disc--things like bonus scenes, soundtracks, ringtones, and other promo material--rather than just video streamed live each time you play it.
Neither, actually, unless they're being particularly stupid. More likely, downloaded once, whenever either you choose to download them, or the disc does -- and then saved, so you can watch them again. Live streaming would be reserved for places where it actually matters -- as in, content which is also being generated live.
preview trailers are something you skip over, not something you waste bandwidth on.
Preview trailers are also the most trivial, and the most useless, of the things that are possible with this.
I worked on some client-side programming for HD-DVD, before it died. Basically, you've got a little bit of local storage, an Internet connection, and a script engine. You can download small videos and play them, or you can run a program overlaid on top of the movie -- this is how menus were done, but we were doing a lot more than just menus.
Now, from what I remember of Paramount's discs, they pretty much re-downloaded several megs (at least) worth of data on boot -- including every single file needed for said scripts. The only exception was actual media, as in audio and video.
So, they're basically replacing a bunch of data that was already there on the disc. Unlike some other discs, you have no choice -- you will update, before you watch the movie.
That's not really "defectivebydesign", as it's got nothing to do with DRM. It is, however, a defective design. Subtle but very important difference.
It's possible none of this applies to the Blu-Ray, but I suspect it's very similar, and I very much doubt that any of it involves re-downloading the same trailer over and over.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This definitely breaks First-sale Doctrine. coming straight from Wikipedia:
"In 1997 in Novell v. Network Trade Center 25 F. Supp. 2d 1218 (C.D. Utah 1997)[2] purchaser is an "owner" by way of sale and is entitled to the use and enjoyment of the software with the same rights as exist in the purchase of any other good. Said software transactions do not merely constitute the sale of a license to use the software. The shrinkwrap license included with the software is therefore invalid as against such a purchaser insofar as it purports to maintain title to the software in the copyright owner. Under the first sale doctrine, NTC was able to redistribute the software to end-users without copyright infringement. Transfer of a copyrighted work that is subject to the first sale doctrine extinguishes all distribution rights of the copyright holder upon transfer of title."
and
"In 2008, in Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk Inc.[2], a U.S. Federal District Judge in Washington rejected a software vendor's argument that it only licensed copies of its software, rather than selling them, and that therefore any resale of the software constituted copyright infringement. Judge Richard A. Jones cited first-sale doctrine when ruling that a reseller was entitled to sell used copies of the vendor's software regardless of any licensing agreement that might have bound the software's previous owners [3]."