Slashdot Mirror
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."
[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.
.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
the MIDDLE one.