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Here We Go Again — Video Standards War 2010
Andy Updegrove writes "Think of the words 'standards war,' and if you're of a certain age you're likely to think of the battle between the Betamax and VHS video tape formats. Fast forward, and you'll recall we just finished another video standards war between most of the same companies, this time between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Well, here we go again, except this time its the movie studios that are duking it out, and DRM issues are a big part of it. On the one side are five of the six major studios, dozens of cable, hardware, software, distribution and device vendors, and on the other side there's just Disney — and maybe Apple as well, and that's enough to have the other side worried."
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[T]his time its the movie studios that are duking it out, and DRM issues is a big part of it.
I tend to prefer those video standards which are inclusive and unencumbered such as xvid and x264. They've survived. Our library, some of which is many years old, still plays.
No central server to authorize and track our viewing habits. No chance of having my devices' keys revoked. No need to keep all our gear connected to the net.
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Trolling is a art,
"Whoever wins, we lose."
As with the Betamax/VHS formats, Circuit City's DivX and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, the ace up the sleeve is that people always have the choice not to buy. If people don't want a format or technology, nothing the studios or content providers do will get them what they want (our money). They never seem to factor that in to their plans.
They've got some cheek, acting like letting us view the same content on multiple devices is an amazing new revolution. We could do that before DRM, and it would've been easy for them to manage DRM such that people could grab more authorised, licenced copies in different formats. That's the whole point of having a licence instead of a physical product.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The only good news here is that is actually possible for both of them to lose ... if consumers don't buy into either scheme.
Formats lead to acceptance. Acceptance leads to dominance. Dominance leads to a de facto standard. De facto standards lead to the dark side.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
True standards will only be set by the end users. If nobody buys it, is it a standard?
If there are 1000 Xvid copies around for every BD copy sold... which one is the standard?
In the face of this reality, the industry has come up with a pretty practical solution: pay once for a video, and the seller will track your ownership for you, and make that information available to anyone who hosts the same content anywhere.
If you RTFA, the two "sides" in that article are really on the same side, that is, the side of removing the consumers' rights for the content the consumers purchase.
Look, what happened between Betamax and VHS is well know, Sony were full of themselves with their better format, and didn't want to license it to anyone whereas VHS was licensed to anyone that wanted to build that platform.
But since then it's been easier to figure out which format will win. It's not which is technically better for consumers (ie. less / no DRM), but which company has the biggest pocket to give the biggest backhanders. Follow the money.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
With the multiyear HD DVD Blu-ray battle still a recent memory, we have a new standards face off in video, just as we do in eBooks, and just as it looks like we may in on-line print, where a new consortium led by the News Corporation and others is launching a standards-based "digital newsstand." All of these devices, of course, are targeted at you and I, and each has the potential to not only extend the woes of the music/video/print vendors behind these standards battles, but to waste your money and mine as well.
Does that strike you as a shame?
Hell no. The last thing we need is easy to use, standardized DRM. Apple derailed Microsoft's attempt to make Plays for Sure the boot stamping in the face of the music lover, forever, by making sure NOBODY won the music DRM wars. It looks like they're up to their loveable tricks again, and I salute them for it. A fragmented, hard to use, unreliable DRM ecosystem is to the consumer's benefit in the long term.
Just lower your prices, it's really that simple. A movie should cost from $1-5. The whole industry needs to take a massive pay cut as well. If they don't I will continue to take what I want for free. So will many others.
From TFA:
There lies the rub: Few want to replace all their gear just for a new DRM. I think Disne's seems the least unreasonable. If they eschewed DRM entirely, that would be reasonable, since DRM itself encourages piracy by making the legit data hard to work with and the pirate content easy.
IMO we're in a world wide recession because the Ferengis who run things aren't very reasonable, nor smart. If they'd stop worrying about pirates they'd sell more "content" and make more money.
Free Martian Whores!
And all of this means that NOBODY will support it. There is no way that the cable company, or iTunes will show you a movie for free because you purchased a copy from Best Buy or something and registered the key when you brought it home.
I am perfectly capable of managing my own digital rights. I don't need someone else's server to handle it, mine does so just fine. Keep sending out encryption of the same caliber as DVDs and I'll keep supporting your industry. If you treat me like I can't be trusted, I can, will and do act like it.
This would fix one of the MAJOR problems with DRM. It's still DRM, but it would be better than what we have now.
CSS is DRM, but my DVDs will play no matter if I have an internet connection or not. If DVDs needed an internet connection, you wouldn't be able to watch them from a plane, train, or even a car most of the time. As it is you can take your laptop to the park and watch a movie sitting under a shade tree. With this stupid sceme you won't be able to.
Free Martian Whores!
Instead, what's involved are two different approaches intended to help content vendors somehow survive in the face of plummeting revenues
2010 was a record year at the box office and (I believe) the video store. Where's the damage that they are attempting to mitigate?
DRM just seems like a way to force me to rebuy what I already own 10 years from now.
I can't wait to register every device I own with one central authority.. Especially registering all the ones that connect to the internet!.. Bye bye freedom of speech, and anonymous cowards...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
DRM is the software version of Perpetual Motion. It is simply not possible to make the device described work as intended. But because of "the enormous potential income" should someone succeed, the greedy interest keep flushing money into the pockets of charlatans and charging the populace a tax for their stupid avarice.
Since DRM can only work if all the parts of the system are controlled by external DRM, including all the DRM enforcement parts, you end up with "its elephants all the way down."
So we will never be done until it is simply illegal. Just like the patent office will not accept patent applications for perpetual motion machines, and the FDA will not let unproved drugs out into the wild (in theory anyway 8-), the FTC (etc) will eventually need to refuse to let people try to sell things with this snake oil in it.
But like those remedies and limits, it will take a couple hundred years of corpses and bankruptcies cause by the offensive practice of duping companies into "DRM" before anybody finally acts to stop the scam.
And even then, people will still try to sneak it in the back door as "holistic systems engineering" or whatever.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
You have hit the nail on the head there, friend.
It's not about legal vs illegal, or morality and certainly not about the "protection of content creators".
If people have the technical ability to exceed the speed limit without penalty, they will exceed the speed limit and nobody talks about it being "immoral".
And regarding the "protection of content creators" I have yet to see any reliable data that downloading of movies has any impact on the income of content creators. Nobody believes that if there were a way to completely stop the downloading of movies (and music) tomorrow that the creative people involved would suddenly make more money. Somebody would make more money, but it would not be the people who do the creating.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And even then, you must have been able to switch to offline mode/verify the install initially while you still had an internet connection.
I found this out the hard way when I lost internet for a month right after a reinstall. "Nah, I'll be fine without internet - I still have this whole orange box to play through." :P
the MIDDLE one.
It is impossible to get behind any DRM scheme while a full flat ban on decryption remain in effect. Works that have fallen in the public domain but wrapped in encryption need to have a provision in law before we can even begin to talk about universal DRM.
Good-bye
Although another shitty battle might be ahead of us, for the first time I feel like the industry is heading in the right direction.
It might actually give us the urge to purchase our movies and music!
Don laugh at Y2k. It was serious. Not the media part, but the actual washing of all that COBOL and PL/1 and all those terrible boundary cases. Much of the Y2k money was well spent.
But paying good salaries for no benefit, and DRM is _no_ benefit, sucks our money into a vast entropy sink. Sure some marketing execs, corporate execs, and charlatans skim a little off the flow of your cash into nothing. Notice how all those three profiteers have one thing in common? (okay, maybe several, but none of them are "smart producers of lasting value").
DRM is theft. An economic drag. A criminal dissipation of resources in pursuit of the idea the _totally_ _bizarre_ notion that there are a select few who deserve a lifetime of income for a days worth of work.
There, I said it. I think that copyright (the right to keep someone from bastardizing your work) should continue for the lifetime of an artist, but the charge-for-it-right ought to basically evaporate once everyone has made a decent wage for the time invested plus maybe 10% profit.
In what sane universe would I be paying Peter Frampton (deceased) or his heirs (all also deceased) for a performance of "Do you feel like I feel" if the purpose of copyright is, as stated, to encourage Peter to make more music (aparently from the beyond), while that "encouragement" happens by paying a record executive's lawyer to sue my dead grandmother?
Its all crazy talk. (and I am an author, so I understand the desire to keep the furries out of my mythos, but I don't see that the grand children of my nieces and nephews deserve to "live off of" me writing one book. [see Gone with the Wind.])
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
They solved the DRM problem decades ago. Macrovision worked. DVD_CSS works.
They both stopped people from making casual copies.
I don't understand this drive for unbreakable DRM. It can't work. At some point you must possess both the lock and key in order to view the content.
You're never going to stop the motivated ones. Someone will always break the DRM. If for no other reason than to prove they can.
Both macrovision and DVD_CSS stop the casual copier and unless you tried to copy you didn't even know they were there. You still had your rights of first sale. You could play on any device. You could lend it out.
The only flaw they both have is the physical media requirement.
I find being offended by me offensive.
That's what I was thinking. It's not two sides, it's three. Whatever is happening between the media companies, their real war is against their customers.