more like an awesome way for Google to grab a profitable patent in exchange for the prize money.

Except they are not claiming any of the IP, just a 100 hr license to use it for the test. Also, why they claim they will not open the box up.

But you never owned it in the first place... even when you had a hard copy. You only owned a license.

Google "First Sale Doctrine". You own a copy. Software is tricky because it comes bundled with a license to install it/run it. But the actual disks that contain the installer? Yours.

All these things go away if you buy a license directly from the stuido, and are guaranteed perpetual use

Yeah, but that won't happen. In fact, the studios are pushing for per-device fees, separating TV/Computer/Mobile rights, and going more towards a "per-view" model.

Even if they were willing to, even if that didn't cause all kinds of problems with residuals, even if it didn't impose a perpetual and unbounded cost on the studio... what happens when the studio goes out of business? How does fulfillment actually happen

My problem with physical media is that it's not possible to carry it all with you... so when you want to take a road trip you have to be selective and predict what your kids are going to want to watch.

You could ask them ahead of time and plan ahead. Or you could carry a hundred disks in a relatively small wallet. Or, depending on where you live, you may be able to copy the DVD to a hard drive for transportation.

When kids damage the media, you are stuck purchasing another license to something you already have a license to use.

Did you use your legal right to make a backup?

But personally, I find the times I am without access to stream, a la ton a plane, in a tunnel, or just with a lot of peopel using the Internet at my house, where ever, make me want a local copy. And that means a physical copy, in general, if I want it on a device I control that doesn't need to call home or self-destruct. It also means I can resell it, loan it to a friend, etc.

Well, you could use PS/2, or serial, or even say "fuck it, no mouse for you. Here's a command line and a tab key."

Huh? I'm all for shorter copyrights. But it's stupid to not anticipate the reaction of Disney, et al. And their solution will be to attempt to use technology, licenses as opposed to ownership, and every other non-legal monopoly method to keep their copyrights in practice once they are no longer supported bu the law.

What good is the copyright expiring if the day before it expires, the content-owner (for one more day) can destory/make unavailable all copies they don't own? And then maintain de facto control over the work, if not de jure.

How does it assure no deficiencies? And why don't other projects use that methodology?

you give my physical access to a box, it's my box.

Well, the BIOS could be password protected, the case alarmed if opened. In either case you could work around those, but if I put that box in a busy hallway, that's not going to happen. Combine that with no optical media or USB ports, and I think that's a pretty safe box.

Now, you could mess with the hardware, via a hardware key logger, but that could be mitigated by soldering the wires directly as opposed to allowing a PS/2 port. And the keyboard could probably be physically hardened to the point that you cannot easily open it.

Bottom line, physical access is one thing. But tamper-evident measures combined with regular but not continuous observations should enable me to trust that if you do gain access, I will know about it while you are present. Possibly even before you are able to finish gaining access.

How does that work? If there is an easy way to guarantee no deficiencies, why isn't it used always?

" when in fact I mean anyone who thinks that disks are the perfect medium, including the rights holders

Rights holders would love to move to an all-streaming, all-rental model. They just would cut out a large number of customers.

If they would let go of their belief that disk distribution is a good thing... then we can all move towards a world where streaming distribution is normal, easy and cheap.

The thing is, streaming puts you at other people's mercy. The studio doesn't make money streaming an old movie (it does cost something to host them)? Gone from the service. There was never a disk release? Possibly gone forever, like the old inflammable films of yore.

With physical media, there is still that first sale doctrine to keep the copies alive and circulating.

we can all move towards a world where streaming distribution is normal, easy and cheap.

It will be cheap and easy, then as it become normal, it will become less cheap. As it becomes less cheap, it will become less easy, because suddenly there is enough money in it that every media company can roll their own solution, and not lose money to another entity taking a cut. Hell, the later is already happening, as stuff is disappearing off Hulu to various network sites.

There is absolutely no way these companies would give it up voluntarily.

Well, the easier solution is not to give them the option. It's also a lot more failsafe, since people *will* break a law, but *will not* do things that are impossible/too difficult/too expensive.

Getting ads is annoying, getting ads for African American hair styling products when you're a redhead is infuriating. Targeted ads are a good thing, it's the completely unaddressed side affects of that data collection that's a problem.

Targeted ads are annoying as hell.

They are often something I would never be interested in, and even if it were rarely what I am interested in at the time I'm browsing.

Non-targeted ads bother me less, because I just tune them out. No need for my brain to waste cycles processing a fast-food commercial

Bill Clinton word style play shouldn't absolve you of negligence.

Bill Clinton (a lawyer) played a better game of technicalities than the guy (another lawyer) taking his statement. As stupid as it would be to use language like that in real life, that whole process was just a game.

No, it wouldn't.

This takes advantage of driver/hardware differences, and settings for graphics.

Therefore, unless you update the drivers/change your settings/change your hardware it will not block this.

That said, it shouldn't be that difficult to block; I mean, who uses the Canvas anyway?

(Showing my age here), kind of like how you could easily see the difference between the old Voodoo and TNT2 graphics card by how they rendered.

Hell, there are even bugs* that have 100% different failure states on ATI vs. NVidia cards. All ATI cards default to white, NVidia cards to black**

*For example, rendering a NULL texture

** May be backwards

I pray every night that god will smite the physical disk huggers... so that Netflix can shift their business to all streaming and actually improve the availability of streaming titles. It hasn't happened yet, but I keep praying.

You have the horse and cart backwards. Because of the first-sale doctrine, Netflix can offer a lot more movies on DVD than via Streaming. They would probably kill the DVD service if they could offer their full collection over Streaming. But the Movie Industry refuses to grant them sufficent rights (which makes sense... they want to sell DVDs too). And the OP probably would prefer to stream movies if he could.

Just another example on why it's better to buy then rent your media.

Err... not to the extent the law permits... to the minimum the law requires

But the two are related closely. In the US, metadata is considered the corporations, which obviously has no privacy right to the data. The idea is that the person has already disclosed that data. Hence, the government has a much lower, well non-existent, burden on law enforcement because they are asking for business records, not for personal information.

In Canada, it seems that just got inverted, so now it's private information vouchsafed to a company.

Bottom line, neither case seems to offer corporations a choice in the matter.

New accounts seem to require a phone number. Is there a way around that?