Hollywood Escalates "DVD Ripping" Case To International Incident (torrentfreak.com)

A group of Hollywood studios and technology partners have asked the U.S. Government to assist in solving a long-running court battle against the Antique based software company SlySoft. Despite an earlier conviction SlySoft continues to offer its DVD and BluRay ripping tools. To progress the matter, rightsholders have asked the U.S. to place Antigua on the Priority Watch List. "Circumvention through programs such as SlySoft's AnyDVD HD is a source for widespread, large-scale and commercial copyright infringement by users located in the United States, as well as Antigua & Barbuda, and many other countries," AACS writes (pdf).

Comments

Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who bothers with DVDs anymore? Unless your tastes are way off the beaten track, everything you might want is available for streaming anyway.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[hawguy]

Who bothers with DVDs anymore? Unless your tastes are way off the beaten track, everything you might want is available for streaming anyway.

There are still many DVD's that I can buy used cheaper than the "own it on streaming" price, *and* the DVD is really mine, so I can rip it to multiple formats for playing on a TV of mobile device. It's not like a streaming move that I "own" where the streaming provider decides where I can watch it, and can lock me out of my owned movie for any reason, including bankruptcy.

Though as people move towards streaming, there are fewer deals to be had on used DVD's.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[JoeMerchant]

And, for people who only want to rent the physical disc: http://www.redbox.com/

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't watch enough movies to make streaming worth it. Also, I'd rather use my bandwidth for just about anything else. And none of the streaming services have the stuff I want to watch anyway.

And, yes, I have a valid, paid-for, lifetime license for AnyDVD HD. I bought it because content creators deserve to get paid. I don't infringe copyrights. I don't download movies. I don't download warez. I have a torrent client, but in the last 10 years, I've downloaded exactly 2 types of things: various Linux releases and some OC Remix albums that were released by the authors as torrents.

I do circumvent "effective" copyright protection mechanisms when it interferes with my ability to use what I've purchased. So fuck you, movie studios.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Darinbob]

I am totally amazed how much new DVDs cost though. Saw one at the local drug store, the sort not frequented by posh purveyors, and a DVD for a low rated movie from last year was going for $20. I was completely surprised, it's so expensive and few people ever watch one more than once or twice, and it wasn't the sort of movie one would want to collect. It was also a price increase over buying it on Amazon too, but it was at the checkout line so presumably it was intended to be one of those impulse buys for people who don't shop around.

One excuse with some movies is that if you've got toddlers that the $20 DVD will be played at least once a week until it wears itself out (at which point the parents are ready to shoot themselves).

Now the armchair economic excuse to go out and see the movies at a cinema is that a ticket and drink and hotdog is less than the cost of a DVD...

For streaming, they never let you own a movie. It's $5 to "rent" which is more expensive than pay-per-view on some cable/satellite services. There often is a purchase option to "own" but in that case you are still not allowed to make a backup copy so that you can watch it after the streaming service goes bankrupt. DVDs have additional benefits that you can take them with you camping, onto an airplane. Annoying is that they're not that much cheaper than blu-ray; worse both physical forms on amazon are cheaper than the streaming copy, despite the extra costs to produce and distrubute, someone's getting ripped off in the transaction and it isn't Amazon.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[BLKMGK]

Folks that want higher quality? That want the extras? Folks with data caps? Folks that want stuff after the streaming service drops it? Folks don't want to be tracked or pay a monthly fee?

How long a list you need?

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[rworne]

Annoying is that they're not that much cheaper than blu-ray; worse both physical forms on amazon are cheaper than the streaming copy, despite the extra costs to produce and distrubute, someone's getting ripped off in the transaction and it isn't Amazon.

Yes, market forces and competition help force the prices down on DVD's & Blu-ray discs. Hence the reason to get them on "Release Tuesday" when they all go on sale on their street date.

Digital copies have no such market forces - the publishers dictate the price on the digital sites and they have no interest in any price except for MSRP. For example, this is why Game of Thrones Season 2 was around $60 MSRP for the digital download when it hit its street date on iTunes. That same day, you could walk into Best Buy and pick up Season 2 on Blu-Ray (DVD's also included) along with a digital download certificate for the iTunes content for $39.

The same situation exists today, where if you look up the price for a digital download of GoT, it's the same price as the MSRP of the box sets w/digital copies.

Digital downloads have to become a lot cheaper to reflect that they have absolutely no value after the first sale due to DRM. With physical media, there is always some resell value.

Re: Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your drug store is an anecdote - Walmart has a two-pack of low-end movies for $5 in giant bins by the registers. I have no idea why people buy them, but they do. I regularly get good DVD's from Amazon for $7-12. Unless it's a spectacle I don't care about the BluRay. When I do buy the BluRay thank goodness I have good software for format shifting; I'd never buy any of these things if I needed a living room and a couch and a TV and a 19" rack-width standalone BluRay player just to see a movie. I mean, I know they exist but aside from AV enthusiasts and grandparents there's not much market anymore. The plastic platters are just the least-bad way to get the data that the studios are too stupid to stream, in our current reality.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[scdeimos]

I think it depends on the shop. New releases in Australia tend to be around the AUD35.00 mark, more for the collector and special box editions. I saw at JB Hi-Fi over the weekend that Cowboys & Aliens was 9.98 and Aeon Flux (the movie, not the series) was 4.98. I saw The Martian, relatively new release, being flogged at Target for 14.98. Prices do come down over time but not quickly.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital downloads have to become a lot cheaper to reflect that they have absolutely no value after the first sale due to DRM.

The "pay per download" to "own it" model of digital streaming is all wrong. What consumers really want is a service like Amazon Prime or Netflix where a single monthly fee provides on demand access to an entire library or catalog of content that can be watched anytime from any device. The problem today is that selection sucks because the content owners don't want to play ball which of course fuels copyright infringement as billions of people buy bootleg DVDs or watch movies uploaded to locker sites that stream them for free and try to make money off ads. The content owners need to decide which alternative they dislike the least, widespread streaming on sites they don't control and get no revenue from and bootleg media sales OR a reasonable fee from most consumers for the convenience of access to a wide range of quality content through an official channel, like Amazon or Netflix. Unfortunately, the content moguls have been both stubborn and stupid so far. It may take a few more decades before millennials finally work their way into management at these firms and the old broken business models are finally thrown out. They're already heading in that direction anyway, albeit at a snails pace.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Applehu Akbar]

"Who bothers with DVDs anymore? "

That's why Hollywood is asking the feds to reach back through time to mail an "antique based software company."

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot: Parents who have DVD players in the car/truck/minivan for the kids in order to keep their sanity on long drives.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Rinikusu]

Folks, like my parents, who live in the sticks with no real broadband options, as well.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever visited this little place outside america called The-Rest-Of-The-world? You should try it and see what legal streaming is like there.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[dwywit]

It's uneven, too. The entire Studio Ghibli DVD catalogue at Sanity are still AUD$27.00 each, even the oldest ones. For some reason (I'm looking at you, MadMan), those titles never hit the discount shelves. I'd buy the lot if they were priced realistically - but not $27 each.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Zumbs]

Who bothers with DVDs anymore? Unless your tastes are way off the beaten track, everything you might want is available for streaming anyway.

Maybe that is true in the US (or where ever you live), but where I live the selection is quite limited. Example: I have had Netflix for 1½ month, and I find it harder to find interesting stuff that I haven't already seen. In 1½ month.

Re: Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[jabuzz]

Really, a free download of handbrake and an Amazon Fire 7" tablet with a 64Gb microSD card makes far more sense than messing about with physical DVD's. Apart from anything else small kids ruin physical DVD's.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

My only internet option (4G LTE) is 30GB and $15 per GB afterward. I am sure there are millions of others who can't get Google Fiber much less any wired internet. One is not going to go through the expense of relocating so they can use Netflix.. unless they are really unable to cope without it. People ask such questions without realizing that cable or fiber internet isn't nearly universal.

Now I'm gonna go entertain myself reading complaints about only getting 300GB a month for chump change.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher quality?! Than what? I doubt many people are still buying VHS casettes.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[91degrees]

To be fair, at least in the UK, and Germany I can find a decent number of films "to buy" on Amazon prime. Can't see the advantage over blu-ray though and can see several disadvantages.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[DrXym]

The main disadvantage is when you "buy" your movie on Amazon you've bought a license to stream the movie under Amazon's terms and conditions, not the actual movie. You can't sell your license, you can't loan it, you can't donate it, you can't transfer it to another streaming service, you can't watch on devices not blessed with their software, you can't watch with your favourite player app. If Amazon feel like it you might be denied access to the movie (e.g. TOS violation) or because of your location. And of course you'll get a lower quality movie with no extras.

If the price were considerably lower to offset these disadvantages then it might be worth buying in this way. But digital movies are priced almost the same as their physical counterparts. I really don't understand why anybody buys media (books, music, movies, TV shows) through a streaming service - not from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony or anyone else's. And of course there's the whole free download thing where you can grab a high quality product which is not tied to any store.

Subscribing to a streaming service or renting is another matter entirely. There are no issues like transferability, or ownership. If Amazon Prime's streaming service sucks then you can just cancel and there is no expectation of retaining access to your collection.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

As another person noted the Drugstore example you give is anecdotal. In reality the Drugstore doesn't move those videos all that fast when new, and those you saw were likely new release inventory that they are still trying to recoup their costs on. Eventually they'll give up and mark them down just to clear the space for the next DVD bomb they are trying to overcharge for. Amazon, Walmart or any big box retailer has long since dropped their prices on those second rate movies and were cheaper from the beginning.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

IE where to get a dis to rip.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[TheRaven64]

What consumers really want is a service like Amazon Prime or Netflix where a single monthly fee provides on demand access to an entire library or catalog of content that can be watched anytime from any device

And that includes downloads, not just streaming. I really want to have access to rented movies when I'm on a long train or plane journey, but if I do have Internet on either of those it is going to be either unreliable or expensive. I want to be able to load the stuff onto my device first. And please don't cripple it with DRM, because I know that DRM means 'it works now, but will stop working when you actually want to watch it'. If I wanted to pirate it, I'd have done so already - high quality rips of all of your movies are already available illegally, please give me an equally good (or, ideally, more convenient) product that I can pay for.

I still rent DVDs, because that's the only format that I can guarantee that I can play. I'd love to see Hollywood as a whole hit with a carbon tax for every physical copy that's made and distributed because of their insistence on obnoxious DRM on everything else.

The worst thing is that DRM isn't even in the studios best interests. All it does is lock people into the platform that controls the DRM. The music labels learned this when Apple ended up owning the distribution channel as a result of their insistence that the iTunes Music Store used DRM.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Rockoon]

..which is why single people have an on/off relationship with Netflix. We subscribe for a month or two until we've caught up, then we unsubscribe for several months.

A normal business response to users like us would be to offer a 2 year contract that we cant refuse, but Netflix doesnt have the luxury to do that because none of their content is so temporary.

Netflix knows that its not in the power position in its relationship with its customers, and the studios could easily destroy them if they wanted to with an easy to follow one step plan: Do not sign any more contracts with Netflix.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[jdavidb]

Folks that want higher quality? That want the extras? Folks with data caps? Folks that want stuff after the streaming service drops it? Folks don't want to be tracked or pay a monthly fee?

For everything else, there's piracy.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never owned a DVD player (except of course the standard drive in a PC or laptop) because I didn't want to start to a collection when I heard they were copy protected.

When the DVD was released, it was one of the most efficient ways to store 5GB of data. The average disk drive cost at that time was still too high to store too many movies. But I knew it was just a matter of time before the average price for GB would go down and that it would be cheaper to store 100's of DVD-drives on a single hard drive.

The publishers never wanted to offer what people wanted. They decided themselves what the people should want. There is no competition in the media industry. What is wrong with buying movies and put it on your own home media server? Why do they insist on spreading the movies through copy protected disks? The copy protection never stopped pirates anyway. It was just an annoyance for legitimate customers.

And when you call a person who makes a personal back up of his DVD a pirate, than you go way too far in my opinion. I was happy I made the decision to never create my own DVD-collection. I would be stuck with a collection of unplayable shiny circles. Just like my unplayable collection of VHS cassettes and my unplayable collection of floppy disks.
 

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[RabidReindeer]

Who bothers with DVDs anymore? Unless your tastes are way off the beaten track, everything you might want is available for streaming anyway.

The BBC has taken Dr. Who off Netfllx and Hulu in the USA. So far, they cannot do that with the physical discs I have.

Of course, I presume when you meant "available for streaming" you meant legal streaming.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[RabidReindeer]

Don't use drugstore prices as a reference. DVDs at drugstores are often marked up horribly compared to other places.

And unless you MUST have Blu-Ray, conventional DVDs are cheaper.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[SharpFang]

Interesting. In Poland you can get quite a few couple-years old blockbusters in dollar stores (well, counterparts) and bargain bins.

A recent Auchan deal: 22PLN ($5.60) for a kilogram of DVDs. (boxes obligatory, unfortunately, can't buy just the discs).

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Netflix has already gotten into a position where studios would not license them new seasons of series that netflix was showing.

This is probably the reason why Netflix is now producing a lot of content on their own.

Re: Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[molarmass192]

That doesn't work. My guess is t's the old paradox of choice. With a DVD playing overhead, there's no choice ... it's on ... you watch. With a tablet their little minds wander into "what else is on / can I do" territory and the descent into anarchy begins.

Re: Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[dk20]

The problem is the DMCA prevents you from ripping DVD's you "own". Most do this, but legally it is at least "Gray".

Why would they want you to format shift when they can sell you the DVD, and then sell you a DRM'd copy for your amazon fire (which hopefully you got on black Friday for $35, Great deal).

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[nospam007]

"Who bothers with DVDs anymore?"

Doesn't matter, it's the only thing the judge understands.

Re: Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The complaint is about the HD version which let's you rip blue ray discs.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of that is that Netflix doesn't show you its whole catalog. You bubble yourself by watching/rating a few shows/movies and now it thinks that's what you like, so it tries to show you more of "what you like" and what's more like what you like than what you've already said you like?

Ok, I don't know that they're doing that for sure, but I do know that on certain platforms I am never offered certain titles unless I search for them by name.

I wish they would just import as many fields from IMDB or whatever and just let us search for stuff by, say, {genre} {year} {budget [cmp] x} {[not] watched in last [n] [days/weeks/months/sessions]}, etc.

Re: Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[jedidiah]

Except it's not just the drugstore, it's pretty much every where. Although the $20 price tag seems a bit odd since all sorts of B&M stores have been selling deeply discounted DVDs for the last 10 years and don't seem to be letting up.

Physical media is sold at a wide variety of retail outlets at various price points and rental kiosks are similarly widespread.

Inside of our little echo chamber here we tend to forget that we're the 1% of technology users. What we do or what we think other people should do really has no relationship to what happens with the population at large.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[jedidiah]

> Higher quality?! Than what? I doubt many people are still buying VHS casettes.

Higher quality than any streaming service.

If you actually care about the actual content, then there's still no substitute for a bit of spinning plastic.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Sloppy]

Streaming is the tech that people upgraded from, when they got their VCRs (and later: DVDs), and the reasons to upgrade from streaming are numerous and obvious.

Downloads are next in the upgrade path from physical media distribution (so: two tech levels beyond streaming), but currently Hollywood doesn't want that money, so it's mostly just used by pirates and Louie C.K. customers.

This whole case is about the ways that Hollywood is telling its paying customers to stop paying. People will just have to decide whether or not to take Hollywood's advice and move on to piracy, or keep fighting Hollywood by shoving unwanted money down their throats as they gag and curse you for doing that.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Chaos Incarnate]

You can't have both - if you want to be able to download stuff you're paying a monthly fee for to use offline, it's going to have DRM. Otherwise, you could download everything, then cancel it, and keep watching it indefinitely.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[TheRaven64]

So limit the amount that I can download per month. I am renting DVDs and the same argument applies: I could rip every DVD that I rent and amass a big library. I don't, because why would I? I pay the subscription for two reasons:

• Access to new content. I don't just want to watch films / TV shows from before a certain snapshot point, I want to keep having access to new material.
• So that I don't have to keep a huge library of things that I'll probably only watch once or maybe twice.

These are both good incentives for me to keep paying a subscription and not to download everything. Even without caps, the amount of disk space that I'd need to download everything that I might possibly want to watch for even a year would be huge (and it would be fairly easy to spot people who signed up for a month, downloaded a huge amount, cancelled their account, then repeated the process a year later).

Neither of these requirements would be satisfied by downloading things. I don't want to have to curate a collection of movies and TV shows, I want to pay someone else to do that for me and to keep adding new things that I might want to watch to it. And I want the economic incentives for the supplier to be to keep creating new things that I want to watch (and, actually, the studios probably want the economic incentives for companies like Amazon and Netflix to be for them to have to keep adding things to their library). And, most importantly, if I were happy to pirate then I wouldn't bother signing up for their service anyway. I sign up because I want to give them money in exchange for something of value to me, in the hope that this will cause more stuff that I like to be created. I'm pretty sure that anything that I want to watch is available illegally already. The existence of DRM wouldn't stop me from getting it from The Pirate Bay, or whatever the kids use these days, but it probably would stop me from using it legitimately. And that means that it also stops me from giving them money.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Zumbs]

Part of that is that Netflix doesn't show you its whole catalog.

While I actually have browsed the entire catalog in the genres that I'm interested in, I have occasionally found interesting things in other categories that (IMO) were mislabeled. As an example, the Swedish Science Fiction series Real Humans was labeled as a Scandinavian TV series, but not as a Science Fiction series. But, yeah, I tend to agree that the whole exploration part of Netflix is horrible.

I have also heard some claims that Netflix only display those titles where they have local subtitles or audio. I'm not sure if that is correct, but I haven't found any titles in my local Netflix without local subtitles, nor have I found any way to disable that filter if it exists.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[dogvomit]

I really don't understand why anybody buys media (books, music, movies, TV shows) through a streaming service - not from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony or anyone else's.

For movies, for sure I understand. But buying books from Amazon is great. The DRM is trivially removed (like with DVDs), the azw format is easily converted to others, and their ebooks are often very high quality. Amazon is now my preferred book vendor for this reason. I get to own the book for life.

—G

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[AK Marc]

And, it's almost always cheaper to rent from a DVD rental place, then rip that and keep a copy than it is to buy the same thing, and the DVDs are in the shops months or years before it shows up on the streaming services.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[AK Marc]

New stuff, catalog changes, storage, and other reasons should provide a value in the subscription, even if you could download it all. A quality movie is over 1G. That's $0.50-$1 to store it. Storing 10 new movies a month, vs Netflix, and Netflix is cheaper. So if Netflix is cheaper than "free" you'd be stupid to download.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[DrXym]

The DRM may be trivially removed but you're certainly not supposed to remove it and they've made a criminal of you by even requiring you do so. I'm sure that Amazon can and occasionally do change the DRM and proprietary format as they see fit.

Same issue, only more so for loaning, selling, transferring the book too. You've bought a license to view a book, not the actual book. In some countries like the UK this even means paying extra taxes because you've bought a software licence (incurs VAT) instead of a book (does not incur VAT).

IMO, all portable digital media should have the same rights as physical property. Even if that means there is an escrow or distributed blockchain that tracks ownership and provides the facility for media to transfer permanently or temporarily to another owner. e.g. perhaps the media file is encrypted with a token. The token can change owners and whoever owns the token has the means to view book / movie. Will there be piracy? Yes of course, but there is today too. And besides, the blockchain could be used in conjunction with the content to develop some practical countermeasures.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[jrumney]

Who bothers with DVDs anymore?

Finally, someone who gets what an Antique based software company really is.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[Phreakiture]

It may come as a shock to you, but broadband is not yet universally available.

Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs?

[QuestorTapes]

You missed one thing; if the provider of the movie decides to end their contract with Amazon for that movie, it may also disappear from your library. I recall that happening with at least one movie.

Jurisdiction

[ZorinLynx]

Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.

They should tell Hollywood to get bent. Piracy is going to happen regardless of what they do; this is money wasted anyway.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not in US jurisdiction either, and I have a right to format shifting for fair use purposes. The more Hollywood pulls crap like this, the less likely I am to send money their way in the future.

Re:Jurisdiction

[davester666]

Antigua is permitting this to happen LEGALLY, because quite some time ago, the US lost a ruling by the WTO that they were improperly blocking betting and gambling services in Antigua. http://www.ip-watch.org/2014/04/26/antigua-questions-efficacy-of-wto-dispute-system-over-ip-related-case/

The US does not wish to follow the WTO ruling, so Antigua is permitted to do this.

Hollywood knows this.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.

They should tell Hollywood to get bent. Piracy is going to happen regardless of what they do; this is money wasted anyway.

If you read the article, the AACS isn't asking Antigua to do anything this time after already trying and being ignored.

Finding out what actually is being asked for is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re:Jurisdiction

[ikejam]

Yes and hence the ridiculous provisions in the TPP (as if a secret international treaty wasnt creepy enough)

For example,

"The TPP requires that signatories hold civilly liable any person who “circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work,”[115] or otherwise makes available devices or products or service that are intended to circumvent[116] or have only limited commercial purpose other than to circumvent[117] or are primarily designed to circumvent.[118] There is no requirement that the infringing party be aware of their infringement in order to be held civilly liable (no knowledge requirement). The TPP requires that signatories provide for criminal penalties for persons who engage in these activities and are found “to have engaged willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.”[119]

From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's signed but not yet ratified. It's only 16 countries or so not the whole world.

Yet.

Re:Jurisdiction

[JoeMerchant]

They have been telling Hollywood to get bent, and venue shopped their base of operations to be able to do that.

Hollywood is trying to do what they can through international legal maneuvering. It should be a different kind of entertaining to see how this turns out.

Re:Jurisdiction

[fustakrakich]

Finding out what actually is being asked for is left as an exercise to the reader.

Invasion

Re:Jurisdiction

[Dutch Gun]

Personally, I've never actually used my copy of AnyDVD to pirate anything. I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish. I'm sure they'd likely disagree, but they can piss off.

Nowadays, I actually use streaming services more often than not, since they're convenient and reasonably priced. Do you know what makes me want to actually switch to pirated content instead?

1) Insane prices for watching previous seasons of a show (either rentals or purchase), when Hulu is only showing the latest season.
2) The bright, distracting network logo Hulu pastes in the corner of the picture for the entire duration of the show.

Can you imagine going to a movie theater and being subjected to an image of the movie company's logo in the corner of the screen for the duration of the show? Why does anyone believe this is acceptable for television? When the pirated content is superior to the paid-for content, that's not a good sign.

Re:Jurisdiction

[tinkerghost]

Finding out what actually is being asked for is left as an exercise to the reader. Invasion

Antiqua doesn't have any oil so it doesn't need any freedom.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah Grenada went well. Time for another clear cut military success.

Re: Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I also want to make backup copies of the DVDs I purchase and remove the fluff so I can pop in the DVD and the movie starts playing right away and me and my 4yr old don't have to wait 5 minutes to get to the fucking menu. It's a tool every parent should have. Is Sony or Disney going to replace the DVD my 4yr old destroys? If the answer is no then Fuck off you assholes. I have a right to not have to purchase Snow White 10 different times.

Re:Jurisdiction

[fustakrakich]

Copyright is worth more than oil right now.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Ichijo]

Can you imagine going to a movie theater and being subjected to an image of the movie company's logo in the corner of the screen for the duration of the show? Why does anyone believe this is acceptable for television?

Because I notice the pseudo-watermark logo for only a second or so, then my brain puts a blind spot there, the same as it does to the black bars when watching a 2.25:1 movie on a 16:9 screen. Do you find the television network's watermark distracting?

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I use AnyDVD because Hollywood insists upon putting region coding on all the DVDs. I have DVDs in German, Mandarin and English and that would require 3 different DVD drives as Hollywood insists upon region coding things so that one drive won't support all of them.

It's ridiculous, but there you go.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Their first step is to go to the source of AnyDVD, next step is to go after the users. So if they can track that you bought it, or track your IP address as getting updates they will do their best to fine you. Like most of these cases, they won't have any proof you did anything wrong, but it won't stop the lawsuit for $bazillion against you.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the price and level of oil production is market driven the ole "no war for oil" is 100% bullshit. The only time oil became important related to war is when Saddam Hussein used oil to bribe countries in the UN to let him skirt around the sanctions imposed after the 1991 war.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Dutch Gun]

It's pretty easy to block out the absence of something - black bars don't bother me. Keep in mind that many of these images I've seen are pretty bright. I probably wouldn't mind so much if it was more like an actual watermark (grey, translucent, and unobtrusive) which typically don't bother me and not a fully opaque logo. Yes, I eventually manage to block them out as well after a few minutes, but as soon as the screen darkens, my eye is immediately drawn to it again.

It's like a small grain of sand in your shoe. No, it's not a big deal, but it's an irritant. The TV watching experience, at least for me, would be improved without it. Some people can probably also block out a crying baby when they watch a movie. Me... not so much.

Re:Jurisdiction

[bigfinger76]

Animated 'corner ads' have been creeping in for the last few years. They certainly are distracting, and consuming more screen real estate as time goes by.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Gription]

And thanks to Snowden we now know how the US is strong arming (read as extorting) countries around the world to bow down to the Hollywood lobby.

But on the bright side of this story:
Hollywood has basically let all of us know that this software works really good for ripping movies. Thanks for the well advertised endorsement!

Re: Jurisdiction

[dwywit]

I've wondered about that - if you're only allowed to own the physical media, but licence the content, then it follows that faulty/broken media should be replaced with a 1/x priced copy, as long as you hand over the faulty/broken disc.

It's only fair - if I've licenced the content, then you should exchange a faulty or damaged disc for the price of the disc ONLY, and not the content.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because its using up an important natural resource I am chronically in deficit of - my attention.

Re:Jurisdiction

[drewsup]

Newegg need to start hiring out it law team, I would pay to see a showdown in court over this case.

Re:Jurisdiction

[thegarbz]

Personally, I've never actually used my copy of AnyDVD to pirate anything. I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server

Rip? I use it to PLAY BluRays. It's cheaper to have a recurring subscription to AnyDVD than it is to buy a new copy of PowerDVD every year when they decide to release new versions and stop issuing new keys to the old one.

Re:Jurisdiction

[davester666]

Then the TPP is not an impediment, as the WTO has authorized that Antigua is legally permitted to violate copyright because the US is illegally preventing Antigua from providing betting/gambling services to US citizens.

Re: Jurisdiction

[davester666]

"it's only fair".

Hilarious.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

... engaged willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain ...

Interesting: The lawyers make a distinction between civil liability (everyone) and criminal liability (intent). I suppose that makes it easy to fit into jurisdictions that consider a 'criminal mind' when defining a crime.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Also maybe remind Hollywood that the movie industry only moved to California to evade the patent which applied in (their original location) New York.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

> Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.

False. As soon as you rob/steal/fence US property, tangible or intellectual, you are under US jurisdiction. Cue the case of the "Golden Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer III", Holocaust survivor heirs versus Austria. The american court case ended with great humiliation of Austria and the painting was eventually auctioned off in New York, making the heirs rich. The painting now hangs in US museums and austrians still mourn loss of their Mona Lisa.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

VLC will play any region DVD and overcome CSS. The AC is an advert!

Re: Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hollywood" has sadly become just another rent-seeking whore. There are many business 'models' (get it?) that are attempting just this with tv ads. As their blockbuster draw has hit rock bottom, they now pair up with the cable providers, another pos rent-seeking whore. Hollyood along with cable tv can suck a flying dick in hell. Neither are worth the time of day. I ONLY pirate movies and music and software and books and anything else I damn well please. Gfy if you want to live in a rent-seekers hell of slavery!

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

TBS is the worst!

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

does the US care? maybe kinda, they have a navy,,,

this is one problem with setting up ventures off shore.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

... any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work...

If it can be circumvented, it's clearly not effective! Job done! Case close!

Re:Jurisdiction

[houghi]

I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish.

qnd then

I'm sure they'd likely disagree, but they can piss of

Depending on what the disc is and where you live this might or might not be legal, regardless of the fact if it will be moral or not.

e.g. in Belgium this would probably be illegal, but the court will not waste time on it and it then becomes illegal, but not punishable, like a law that says that it is illegal to ride a pig on sunday, or whatever silly laws are still in existence.

I am still using illegal torrents that might or might not have been using AnyDVD. They movie industry, I'm sure they'd likely disagree, but they can piss off.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Ginger Unicorn]

Region free or unlockable players have been around since the late 90's. How can you not know this?

Re:Jurisdiction

[robbak]

Because, often, they don't work. The media corporations have been very creative in the ways they break the DVD standard to make region-free players fail to play the movie. This should mean that the corporations lose their license to implement the DVD patents, but of course they see no penalty.

Re:Jurisdiction

[drb_chimaera]

VLC is a long way from a perfect DVD player - it's mostly good enough but has some irritating shortfalls - the main one I run into is subtitle handling is not as good as it should be (lack of support for embedded "Forced" subs is a real pain at times).

Re:Jurisdiction

[GrumpySteen]

"The TPP requires that signatories...." Antiqua is not one of the signatory countries, so TPP is little more than TP to them. They aren't required to do jack shit.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law.

While I agree with you, the unfortunate truth is that where the US is concerned, the phrase "might makes right" applies all too often.

The US has used force for the benefit of US business interest for many years, and it's likely to get worse until the US empire collapses,
which I expect will happen in the next 30 to 50 years ( I am old enough that it is unlikely I will be around to see it, but all empires
follow a cycle which ends in ruin, and the US will not be an exception, despite the hubris of sacks of shit like Dick Cheney, all the Bushes,
Rumsfeld, and other idiots who think it's ok to make war against countries which own resources the US wants. Whether it is growing
fruit, or pumping oil out of the ground, it's all the same ... ).

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I've never actually used my copy of AnyDVD to pirate anything. I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish. I'm sure they'd likely disagree, but they can piss off.

Bzzzt! Wrong. It is illegal for you to rip the media that you own, regardless of purpose. (At least in some jurisdictions.)

Just because you don't feel that it is wrong does not make illegal.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's called pirating. If it were up to Hollywood you wouldn't be allowed to buy 3 different DVD drives,because that isn't what Hollywood wants you to want.

So what does it matter if you 'pirate' by DVD's that are not sold in your region or whether you pirate by making 'illegal' copies and don't pay for it at all. What does it matter when you buy a legal license but 'pirate' it to a back up or worse, to a home media system? Everything you do that involves storing the bits on another medium is called stealing. When you are stealing anyway, you might just as well just torrent the content.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, even when it is static. Worse when it is animated.

Also it burns into plasma screens.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky nobodies robbing, stealing or fencing anything then.

Re:Jurisdiction

[jgtg32a]

Wait what? I think I missed that Snowden revelation.
 
I was unaware that the NSA cared about Hollywood.

Re:Jurisdiction

[jedidiah]

> Region free or unlockable players have been around since the late 90's. How can you not know this?

I first started using HTPCs because my last region free player wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It advertised features it didn't actually have.

On the other hand, I am in full control of my viewing experience with an HTPC because I'm the one that's building it. I can also impose the same interface on all of my players and make sure that interface stays the same over time.

I also never have to worry about unskippable content or intentionally misleading menus on an HTPC. I also don't have to worry about the fact that every new DVD menu is it's own special snowflake that may or may not be terribly usable.

Plus BD consoles are just plain SLOW. It's amazing how much time it takes a BD disk to load in a "proper player" vs off of a media center.

The 'Tivo' or 'Netflix' or 'iTunes' style standardized interface is much more usable.

Physical media is a great token of ownership. It allows consumers to be in control of the supply and transfer of product. The interface on spinny disks is an improvement over VHS in some ways but still inferior to other options.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anubis IV]

Still, animated ones are better than still ones. I know a number of plasma TV owners who have permanently had the still ones burned into their screens. Similarly, there's a podcaster I listen to who had the HUD for Destiny burned into his plasma TV, since it apparently didn't move around enough either.

Ideally, they wouldn't do it at all, but if they're going to do it, make it a subtle animation, if only to prevent burn-in.

Re:Jurisdiction

[jedidiah]

Yeah, that's going to go over well.

My lawyer will cart my collection into the courtroom and hand one DVD banker box and one binder to every member of the jury. There will still be a pile of binders and boxes sitting on the floor in front of the jury box while they each peruse their own box and binder.

At that point, they will probably wonder what the complaint was again...

Re:Jurisdiction

[Mattcelt]

Agreed. And the user interface/experience has degraded considerably in recent years. VLC 0.91 was excellent before they switched to the terrible new UI.

Re:Jurisdiction

[AmiMoJo]

Logos and watermarks are a real problem for people with plasma screens, because they can cause burn in. Imagine having some shitty channel's shitty logo permanently burned in to your TV because you forgot to turn it off one time. That's what us plasma owners have to live with for deep blacks and colour rendition far beyond what the best LCDs can offer.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyright is worth more than oil right now.

Yes, because oil will eventually run out. Copyright is forever!

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Videohelp.org has many of the secret codes for making DVD players region code free.

I've opened up every player I have to region code zero (plays all region codes).

Re:Jurisdiction

[UnknownSoldier]

> Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.

Unfortunately the government will use the excuse that if a business engages in commerce in the US then that entity is also obligated to follow US commerce law.

Even if they aren't selling any physical good the US will try to claim jurisdiction electronically.

Case in point, look what happened to the excellent Lik Sang

Re:Jurisdiction

[amicusNYCL]

Gentlemen, do my eyes deceive me, or does that Slashdot comment contain properly-rendered Unicode characters?

Re:Jurisdiction

[RDW]

VLC will play any region DVD and overcome CSS. The AC is an advert!

Depends on your drive. Some firmware doesn't even allow even raw access to the drive if there's a region mismatch, so libdvdcss won't work.

Re:Jurisdiction

[LWATCDR]

"I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish."
Actually it is illegal in the US at least.
"I'm sure they'd likely disagree"
They do.
", but they can piss off."
And they really should.

Re:Jurisdiction

[bigfinger76]

Sorry for your friends' losses, but the animated ones are far worse - some of them even have sound!

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anubis IV]

Oh yeah, I know the variety you're talking about, and those things are utterly inexcusable. Ugh.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, buying something from Hollywood is enabling them to bribe even more politicians. It is immoral to pay anything for content these days.

The more Hollywood continues and succeeds in using the US government to bully other countries, the more necessary it is for citizens of these countries, to vote for parties that do not bend over to the USA.

In more and more european states the sentiment towards the USA is shifting. But apparently the USA think they can handle even a world full of enemies.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes, because oil will eventually run out. Copyright is forever!"

No, no, no!

Copyright is forever - 1 day !

That's the difference the whole Con Game hangs on.

Re:Jurisdiction

[mikeiver1]

Agreed. I simply us it to put the optical disk on a network storage array so I can play a movie from any room that I am in. DVDs and Blueray disks are a pain. The encryption is there to force issues and make you more likely to buy the disk rather than copy it. Hello assholes, I bought the fuckin thing, gonna watch it how I want and in the most convenient way too. Keep up the crap and I will start ripping the Netflix disks I get daily...

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait what? I think I missed that Snowden revelation. I was unaware that the NSA cared about Hollywood.

He's invoking the standard boogieman. Make claim about US, then claim Snowden revelations backs it up. As was easy to predict, Snowden has become the go to, catch all, justification for any anti-american argument - factual basis not required.

Re:Jurisdiction

[toddestan]

Well, years ago they weren't persistent. They show the logo for a few seconds or a minute or so every few minutes, or after an ad break. I guess to remind you what channel you're watching or something like that. Then at some point they must have decided that wasn't good enough and just left the up all the time. Used to annoy me a lot too, back when I actually watched much television.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Bzzzt Wrong. It's not illegal in any jurisdiction that I know of. It might be a violation of the license in which case they can sue me (or kiss my ass), but it's not a criminal matter.

Re:Jurisdiction

[AK Marc]

The NSA is used to ensure everyone involved signs things like the TTIP and TPPA.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Full stop is that in all my brand new laptops, only ONCE I could start watching a DVD movie then it all went broken. I am even trying to get some audio from the last laptop with OEM customer service help, because sound breaks in all laptops as soon as I use it! Now I no longer have the DVDs or CDs, they were stolen and some were destroyed... with no backups. Not the big titles, silly small titles purchased at 1.99-4.99 because they had some content I was personally interested in, so finding them again is rather impossible! So it is the same moral: people who BUY will buy repeatedly, experimentally and will ALSO make backups and RIP and reorder, etc. People who do not will not care at all! I cannot imagine my mother not buying a DVD because she can RIP it from a friend s! IT WILL NOT HAPPEN. But nothing will prevent said friend from lending her the same DVD for her to watch and that is also a breach, as it is to invite mother to have coffee to watch a DVD! Moreover, few go commercial with ripping, then OEMs _can_ go through distributors enacting due payments from infringement (enforceability of copyrights and patents). If they do not do that it is their issue! They stand to win more letting information go widespread than restricting it, if they are indeed big companies with big spenditure and reveue.

Re:Jurisdiction

[steveg]

You're not doing anything wrong. You *are* doing something illegal.

Same as I do when I rip my DVDs to the media server using HandBrake.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Gription]

DingDingDing
We have a winner!

I don't know what kind of slip that is...

[damn_registrars]

against the Antique based software company SlySoft

How on earth did Antigua become Antique? Just bad use of spell check?

Re:I don't know what kind of slip that is...

[arglebargle_xiv]

They use steam-powered presses shipped from England in the 1890s to make the DVDs.

Re:I don't know what kind of slip that is...

[JoeMerchant]

Antiguan?

Re:I don't know what kind of slip that is...

[Ransak]

Slysoft has been around quite awhile, in tech terms it probably could be considered an antique. Doesn't make the summary correct, though.

Re:I don't know what kind of slip that is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Antiguarian

Re:I don't know what kind of slip that is...

[hawk]

It happened over time . . .
hawk

First things first: Antigua is NOT under US juris-

[ihtoit]

diction.

Slysoft should just tell the Hollywood thugs to get bent.

Also: let's see some quality output instead of this suing from the hip bullshit, and we'll talk.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so infringed!

Hey wait, how does Hollywood even still exist if piracy is so bad for them?

Antigua and Barbuda are in the right

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Hollywood studios don't even have the law on their side in this case.
What Slysoft is doing is actually legal under WTO rules because the US was found
to be in violation regarding offshore internet gambling. The WTO ruled that Antigua and
Barbuda are legally entitled to ignore US copyright (to the value of the judgement) as a
result. What the US government has been doing in regard to this is disgusting frankly.
They have threatened to retaliate against Antigua and Barbuda should they choose to
actively exercise this right, even though the ruling went against them. Funny how when
the ruling goes for the US the other country is obligated to follow it, but when it goes
against them it doesnt. Arrogant doesnt begin to describe this behaviour.

https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds285_e.htm

Re:Antigua and Barbuda are in the right

[Robotech_Master]

And yet, according to the original article, the operator of Slysoft was found guilty of copyright violation under Antiguan law and got fined all of $30,000. It's just that he's appealed, and the appeal has yet to be tried. (Though even if he lost, I imagine that $30,000 would represent pocket change to Slysoft.)

Personally, I hope that Hollywood continues to be stymied. I paid $100 for a lifetime sub to AnyDVD HD. :)

Re:Antigua and Barbuda are in the right

[phorm]

Given the middle finger the US has raised at Antigua regarding gambling and the WTO, I wouldn't be surprised if the appeal goes Slysoft's way...

Re:Antigua and Barbuda are in the right

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that the Antigua and Barbuda authorities are content to let the situation
simply continue as is. They can argue that they convicted Slysoft and decided not
to operate their pirate site. But they are going to do absolutely nothing about shutting
Slysoft down. Why would they? has the law on internet gambling in the US changed?
of course not. So why should they lift a finger to help..? Doing nothing seems like a
reasonable course of action to me...

Glorious

[Todd Knarr]

@boggle. I use that software a lot simply to get rid of the forced previews and the like so I can sit down to watch a movie and watch the bloody movie, which ought to tell the MPAA and company something right there. The biggest advocate of piracy right now is the MPAA itself, as they constantly and vocally equate simply watching a movie you've purchased legally with piracy.

Re:Glorious

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Blu-Ray player for my PC just so I could occasionally watch Blu-Rays, but I found out too late that my drive didn't come with any license to watch a BD movie. So now the drive just sits collecting dust because that's all I ever wanted it for.

FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD FOR MAKING ME WASTING MY MONEY!! And fuck you again if you ever think I'll stop torrenting your goddamn movies while you pull bullshit like this.

Re:Glorious

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Blu-Ray player for my PC just so I could occasionally watch Blu-Rays, but I found out too late that my drive didn't come with any license to watch a BD movie. So now the drive just sits collecting dust because that's all I ever wanted it for.

FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD FOR MAKING ME WASTING MY MONEY!! And fuck you again if you ever think I'll stop torrenting your goddamn movies while you pull bullshit like this.

If only there was some kind of software that would let you watch or rip the Blu-Rays on your computer...

Re:Glorious

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a legitimate complaint, and one I share because I have a near useless blueray drive myself. Used to be you got a dvd drive and software to access those dvd's. I know its a car analogy, but it like buying a car that doesn't include spark plugs.

Other tools

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop this dvd ripping tool and 20 others pop up anyway. What a waste of money

Re:Other tools

[jedidiah]

As it is now, Slysoft is actually contained. They make money off of their work, so they aren't inclined to share. This limits the impact of their work considerably.

Successfully liquidate Slysoft and their "nuclear option" may be to just open source everything.

Good, finally some common sense in copyright law!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because a copyright is owned by a person in another country doesn't make it right to steal their work. Just because I live in Germany doesn't mean I should be allowed to steal and redistribute works that are copyrighted by people in the US or Canada. That's not right. I am glad to see copyright law violations across international borders being considered international incidents.

Can't they ignore US copyrights?

[scmcclain]

Unless something changed, didn't Antigua and Barbados get the legal right from the WTO to ignore US copyrights due to the US's ban on internet gambling? http://blog.legalsolutions.tho...

Re:Can't they ignore US copyrights?

[Anonymous Coward]

*Antigua & Barbuda (Barbados is a separate country)

The real crime

[roman_mir]

The real crime is government providing businesses with protections such as copyright or patent laws that are government provided monopolies and are both bad business and bad ethics.

Their software is amazing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought it years ago when they gave free perpetual upgrades. Every time there is a new DRM, they promptly release a new version.

Why the focus on this software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me for posting as AC, but I don't understand why they've focused their gaze on this software. Is it because it's commercial software?

When other software like libdvdcss exists, and you can rip any DVD using it with Handbrake or VLC (etc), why are they focused on dvdfab? There may be ten thousand people who've purchased their software, but I'm almost certain there are more who use the OSS alternatives mentioned above.

Is it just because SlySoft is making money, or is this some attempt to build case law before they go after FOSS? I don't mean to be an alarmist in asking that.

Re:Why the focus on this software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, HandBrake is French. They probably said, "We are French! Fuck you!"

Re: Why the focus on this software?

[glitch23]

Anydvd HD also handles Blu Ray discs very well. Libdvdcss is just for DVDs. So there is probably more reason to go after them for that reason too.

Re: Why the focus on this software?

[jabuzz]

MakeMKV will rip anything to disk, blueray and dvd included. Handrake will then happily encode your mkv to the format of your choice.

Re: Why the focus on this software?

[khelms]

Shhhhhh!

AACS lulz

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

"Such circumvention also harms the legitimate consumer electronics and information technology companies that build compliant content playback devices that 'play by the rules'."

That's hilarious. Does the AACSLA realize that three its members are Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba? Who also make some devices that *do*not* "play by the rules"... which they're able to do because they don't have the "DVD" logo anywhere on them, their marketing material or the boxes.

Re:Good, finally some common sense in copyright la

[tinkerghost]

It's not being ignored, nor is it being stolen. A company makes software that allows people to do format shifting. In the US, format shifting is legal under the DMCA. What's not legal is selling the software to do it.

Antigua does not have such an obvious contradiction in their legal system. The software is legal where it is produced, it is legal to use for it's intended purpose. Hollywood doesn't like that because they have to actually find and sue people who are actually infringing on their works rather than just banning a technology. They also don't like it because if there is software available to perform format shifting, you (as a consumer) aren't forced to buy a digital copy if you've already bought a DVD.

Just because the US entertainment industry would like the entire world to drop and suck, doesn't mean that the wold's legal system should comply.

Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

The various recording studios just don't get it. If I'm going to shell out $$$ for a movie, I'm going to consume it in the format that suits me. I also don't want to be force fed adverts for other BS they'd like to sell me. Nor do I want to sit through the obligatory, "you'll go to hell if you copy this" FBI nuisance screens and other nonsense that you cannot skip on the disc before watching the content that I paid for. I don't feel the least bit guilty about ripping a disc solely to remove adverts/warnings and shift it to whatever medium I want to use to watch it.

All that said, I find myself increasingly reluctant to even bother. The content quality is trending down and I don't have the time I once did to jump through the hoops. Their loss.

Re:Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

[Anonymous Coward]

A good dvd/bluray player can skip the FBI nuisance screen and go straight to the movie. Vote with your feet - buy what works instead of "what's being marketed as the next great thing."

Re:Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic

[Anonymous Coward]

But *why* would I have to be forced to spend more money on a device to skip warnings against unlawful use to play films I legitimately I own?

You didn't vote with your brain or wallet there.

fi85t

[Anonymous Coward]

the8e are

Michael Moore - I have the answer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding the Michael Moore film "Where do we invade next",
Jeb? or Biff should definately take the fight to Antique.

Re:Michael Moore - I have the answer...

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be like a bull in an antique china shop

Oh, Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

If they didn't bring this case up, I would have never known about this software.

Great publicity job Hollywood.

Re:Oh, Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea... in other news slysoft profits go through the roof after mysterious increase in sales.

Re: Oh, Thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it ironic if I pirated it?

Re:Oh, Thanks

[eWarz]

MakeMKV is better. I rip all my DVDs and Blurays to my nas, then stream them to my Raspberry Pi running OpenElec with WMC remote. Very nice setup.

A software version of the Streisand Effect.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Stop this dvd ripping tool and 20 others pop up anyway. What a waste of money

It's a software capability version of the Streisand Effect.

For anyone not allready familiar with it, the first sentence of the Wikipedia article gives a fine definition:

The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.

Chop off one head of this software hydra and not one, but several, grow out to take its place.

It's distinct enough that it rates a name of its own. Any suggestions?

Re:A software version of the Streisand Effect.

[Anonymous Coward]

No sh*t, I think we've all read Techdirt.

FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not right. I am glad to see copyright law violations across international borders being considered international incidents, because, given that this article really has nothing to do with that, I'm either a troll, a shill or a idiot, or perhaps more than one of those things.

Bzzt. Sorry Mr/Ms AACS PR rep, close but no cigar.

Quick, we'd better outlaw:
Photocopiers, disk duplicators, DVRs, old school VCRs, GoPros, Slingbox, iTunes.... hell, computers, tablets, smartphones, and the Internet. They might be used to "steal and redistribute works!" Think of the poor starving Hollywood execs! A DVD ripping program couldn't POSSIBLY have any legitimate non-criminal uses whatsoever.

Bottom line: Copyright is just fine, when used for its intended purpose and not abused by the rich and powerful to hurt paying customers, gain a never-ending monopoly and crush anyone or anything that even attempts to make it slightly easier for people to consume their own legally purchased content. The DMCA was already a major over-reach without trying to take it to these even greater, ETJ extremes. Period.

They're AACSsholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you could potentially end up on some moronic "watch list" just for buying it and continuing to download updates.
Nice going AACSsholes!

Most of us here are rather technologically inclined. How about we all tell INTEL, MICROSOFT and IBM what we think of this kind of stupidity, and explain that it's yet another reason to avoid their products and technologies because they are anti-consumer, anti-competitive, protectionist wankers (perhaps not in those exact words),

Re:Good, finally some common sense in copyright la

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a strange country that outlaws a device that MAY be used for illegal copying - which is easily settled by forcing the perpetrator to pay damages. Devices that MAY be used for killing people, on the other hand . . .

It's an obsolete/transitional software product.

[MMC Monster]

I used to use Anysoft's software to rip DVDs (and the occassional BluRay).

Then I got to realized that it's better to keep my copies on the hard drive rather than burn a second disc for safety. Now I use makemkv to rip the disc and handbrake to compress to a reasonable size.

The plus is that with a small netbook computer attached to the TV I have access to my whole video library over wifi.

Re:It's an obsolete/transitional software product.

[RubberDogBone]

Do they handle commercial blu rays well enough? I've got one I wanted to copy and I tried the Slysoft demo but all it would tell me is that it could not look up the decryption tables (or some such thing) while in demo mode.

So I could not really test it to see if it would work for what I wanted to do without first paying for it, but I didn't want to pay for it if it could not do what I needed. Kind of a paradox.

Do not support Slysoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of applauding Slysoft, people should be more worried that there is no free and open method to play your purchased Blurays. There haven't been any successful hacks in years. Many do not realise how vicious Bluray DRM really is. It gets continuously updated and simply inserting a disc causes your drive to update its list of allowed players, possibly stopping you from playing back ANY disc, old and new, until you purchase a player with updated keys. And this is only 1 component of the DRM

Slysoft is a commercial entity. They are not "nice". They do not share their hacks. As soon as they shut down their servers, you are no longer playing any Bluray using AnyDVD. As soon as there is no more money to be made they are gone. Or they may get defeated by AACS, in legal ways (forced to shut down) or technically (they can't find any new hacks). They are not really different from any AACS licensed software such as PowerDVD. They might give you some extra options such as copying but they are in control, not you.

Currently, the best option is to extract disc keys from the commercial player DVDFab (you don't need a registered version even) using a program called FindVUK and then contribute the discs keys (which cannot be revoked) to a public database using AACS Updater. This allows you to play Blurays using VLC with libaacs (at least titles without BD+ and bus encryption)

Re:Do not support Slysoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even know it's that bad with Blurays. I already thought that DVD's went too far with a technology that is easy to crack but that is accompanied by a too powerful media industry who can write their own laws. We just have a law that forbids circumventing any copy protection. I do not agree with this, but the only thing I can do is vote with my wallet which means no DVD's for me but also no movies. Not that I really care though. It is a case of out of sight out, of mind. After a while you don't care for movies anymore.

As long as the media industry doesn't provide an easy to use system where both parties can trust each other, than I don't want to be part of the system. But a Bluray system that is able to cripple devices is even worse than DVD. It's like that Sony rootkit disaster 10-15 years ago but with the exception that people agree with buying the components of the system.

I think that systems like Steam and iTunes are a convenient way to distribute content, but there is still the problem with: how long will they last and in the case of iTunes, vendor lock in. But for now I'm happy that iTunes gives me the possibility to buy from their store and play it on any device. So I can still take care of my own back up. And from Steam I like it that I can install the games on any system and sometimes even cross platform. At least they offer a service where you can keep on downloading the content while CD/DVD/Bluray only gives you one copy that works until it breaks or becomes outdated.

Wait, what?

[Krakadoom]

"the Antique based software company SlySoft"

Yeah, OK, DVDs are practically antiques by now, but I'm pretty sure that's not a state. Antigua I assume?

Laugh

[koan]

"Antique based software company SlySoft"

*Antigua*?

$150 Million ways Hollywood doesn't get it

[RubberDogBone]

Deadpool just delivered a whole pile of new box office records and around $150 million in ticket sales.

The way to defeat piracy is to make movies, like this one, which are so good, people will happily pay to go see them. I know, the idea of people happily paying to go see a movie is a concept Hollywood hasn't understood much. But now they are looking at a huge pile of money, which of course will all end up as losses thanks to Hollywood accounting, but making good movies people want to see is how you fight piracy. Hollywood needs to wake the hell up and learn from this.

huh?

[DriveDog]

Still trying to figure out what "antique based software" is.

I'd been wondering how AnyDVD managed to exist in the current "tools are evil" environment. For the owners, it's sort of like a double-bonus: 1) have to live in the Caribbean, 2) get to live in the Caribbean. Reminds me of the guy who sold C-band satellite receivers that did the job without the subscriber cards who was chased away to the Bahamas. Poor thing.

First Fruits of the TPP

[Anonymous Coward]

The title says it all

Please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Be more mindful. It's Antigua, not Antique nor Antiqua.

Would you like your country to be called United Skates? Or Ignited Slates?

Finally...

[Anonymous Coward]

..someone is going to do something about those Freedom Hating DVD-Ripping Terrorists - their behavior threatens the very fabric of a good capitalist society.

"make your product worse"

[johncandale]

Stop making your product worse and then getting mad when we don't play ball. Did you learn nothing from riaa..

HDCP cords, dvds with bricking, etc.

THE FUTURE IS NOW, AND IT IS DIGITAL.

I want to buy your product. I don't want to keep 100 dvds around. I want them all on a thumb drive. DEAL WITH IT.

The NSA cares if the government cares ...

[Gription]

Among the treasure trove of government actions he brought to light, were emails and other documents showing how the US government was secretly strong arming other countries into adopting the MPAA's version of copyright. (Hey, the MPAA paid for their government so they are getting some mileage out of it...)
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...