Studios OK Burning Movie Downloads 216
SirClicksalot writes "The DVD Copy Control Association has released a statement (pdf) announcing that it will make adaptations to the Content Scramble System (CSS) used to protect DVDs. The association, made up of Hollywood studios, consumer electronics and software companies, licenses CSS to the DVD industry to protect content. The changes will allow home users to legally burn purchased movie downloads to special CSS protected DVDs, compatible with existing DVD players."
Re:Further evidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is a nice gesture of how sincere they are about making you pay twice for the movie. Once for the download and again for the blank media to burn it to.
Special media? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Further evidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple showed that people will pay for downloads, if they are presented with few enough restrictions. So, the MPAA is trying to pre-empt the P2P people by getting legal downloads in place before illegal ones take off.
Why Bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Further evidence... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why must they put DRM on it? CSS has already been proven not to be effective, so what are the Media Companies afraid of?
This is certainly a step in the correct direction for video downloads. Certainly the movie business must be realizing that customers want freedom to use their products how they wish. Being locked into only "approved" viewing on a pc could only have appealed to a small audience.
I suppose DRM is an attempt to make people buy content more than once, because it certainly will never stop piracy. Studios are finally realizing they can't get away with doing that. Very few, if any, people would be willing to purchase the same movie more than once. If legal video downloading is ever going to catch on, this will make it at least possible
Re:Sadly encouraging, but.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"special" discs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are customers finally winning? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did we finally get a message through that the majority of us aren't criminals?
To whom are you trying to deliver this message? The MPAA members?
A criminal can make a perfect copy of a DVD and resell it without touching the encryption. A criminal can point a video camera at a TV playing a DVD and make a file. A criminal can break the encryption anyway, since it is weak and the only thing stopping them is the law. A criminal can download a cracked copy from the internet.
All of the the so called "copy protection" schemes and DRM are not about stopping criminals. They are about stopping the law abiding. They are about making sure they can charge more money for the same product in the US where people can pay more, without sacrificing other markets that can't afford to pay as much. They are about making sure when your DVD gets scratched, you have to buy a new one instead of using a backup you made. They are about making sure you have to buy a second copy of the same movie for the car, or your portable game console. They are about making sure that when the new format comes out and players gradually transition to it, your kids will buy a new copy of the same old movie yet again, because the DVD you gave them no longer is useful.
If you think this has anything to do with stopping criminals, you've bought into their marketing propaganda.
It's not just about the content (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't like to flip thru my dvd/cd binder and see handwritten titles. I like to see the movie/music are on the actual disc.
How many people have their DVD or CD collections on shelfs? It's nice to look at. It's easy to find the movie/cd you're wanting. Not the case with download-n-burn processes where, even tho the purchase was legit, still looks like crap and looks copied/stolen. People are much more impressed (and so am I) with a shelf of a few hundred movies all in their nice cases than a bunch of dvd-r's sitting in a spindle.
I'll always be for going to the store and buying my media if it costs the same as teh digitally delivered version. No compressed downloads for me. I can guarantee the movie downloads aren't filling DVD9 discs. And if they're not, you're losing quality. Why pay for less?
Re:"special" discs? (Score:1, Insightful)
In order for this to work the way they describe (backward compatible with existing players), the only thing that can be changed is either requiring everyone to get new, special burners that write the CSS area with new, special discs that don't have the CSS area written to (an obvious non-starter, not to mention a loss of control if everyone can burn to the CSS area), or for the discs to already have the CSS keys written on them.
The obvious way this would work is either a single secret key would be used for all discs, and the consumer would download a pre-encrypted image using this key (simple and easier to distribute, but also very easy to break), or the downloading software would read the CSS area from the disc and transmit the contents to the download service, which would then send you the encrypted image for that particular disc (a lot more likely, in my view).
Any changes to the CSS spec will probably be more on the lines of changing the legal restrictions imposed by the licensing authority, not technical changes.
DVD Rentals?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice troll (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, the rest of the parent post pretty much confirms the subject line: "whine", "whining", "whiny babies", "cheap bastards"...
Grow up.
For the record, charge me money for a product with no restrictions and no ads. I'll pay. I'll pay a lot, as is evidenced by my large CD collection that I purchased during the Napster days, before all this non-standard DRM crap started showing up on CDs. And my large VHS collection. And my large book collection. Guess I'm not a "Slashbot", whatever that's supposed to be.
Screw'em (Score:4, Insightful)
See, here's one way to look at the problem. Let's say I subscribe to HBO. HBO plays "Tears of the Sun," to use an example. I record it on my VCR. That's legal. If I take an A/V output from the satellite box and record it, that's fair use as well. If I then convert the VCR or whatever recording and convert it to a DIVX so I can play it on my PC, that's legal. But if I skip the work myself and grab a copy off the Internet, that's illegal.
The person who is effectively breaking the law by default is the guy who is uploading the movie, not the person downloading it. That isn't to say that the guy downloading it isn't breaking the law as well, but there are plenty of legitimate ways that he could have obtained the same exact result, legally, making the entire argument stupid.
Re:Further evidence... (Score:4, Insightful)
It was at this point I realized that they needed to start selling the stuff or the "problem" would only get worse. As I told a coworker at the time, 'net surfers are going to take the path of least resistence. If they can get music more conveniently than dealing with ratioed FTP sites (I hated those things), they will happily pay a reasonable fee.
Unsurprisingly, the RIAA members ignored the wonderful business opportunity that was staring them in the face. So then they had to contend with Napster. By the time the entire debacle was over, every person on the planet now knew about the convenience of online music! To get support from congress for their legal tactics, they actually started claiming that they would have a music store out Real Soon Now(TM). Of course, one never materialized. (At least the MPAA members were smart enough to launch MovieLink.) If it hadn't been for Apple, Lord knows what would have happened.