Comment Honesty and piracy (Score 1) 220
The real issue here is that NBC Universal started a contest in the schools, and created a "front" to divert everyone's attention from the fact that this is a corporately-sponsored contest, where the only winners will be those who agree with the corporation's goals.
That's dishonest and this is why this contest is seen as "evil." Presumably NBC Universal will benefit from a whole bunch of free Public Service Announcements made by these people who were duped into thinking this contest was honest.
With respect to piracy, the real danger to the studios is not in the home user burning a copy of a DVD. The real danger is from organized criminals who will literally pull up to a duplication facility loading dock with a semitrailer and steal the duplication apparatus to make copies from the original master disc. Or the Chinese government officials, sworn Party members all -- and "untouchable" because of that -- who reverse-engineer the original master and crank out millions of copies that can undersell the official studio version (because they're not paying the studio). Go down to Chinatown or Canal Street in NYC and you'll see these pirated copies all over. And these illegal copies often come out before the official release date from the studios.
But now, the studios see the writing on the wall. DVD player-recorders did not have "sufficient" copy protection built in, so home "piracy" was fairly simple. So the studios all refused to allow for a high definition system without "sufficient" "safeguards." And the studios were so intransigent that we did not have a standard for high-definition DVDs until very recently. Meanwhile, the Internet has gotten faster (despite the fact that cable and telco companies have done everything they can to not increase speeds in the United States because they like collecting money without needing to create better infrastructure) and most people will simply bypass the new Blu-Ray standard by acquiring their media through electronic delivery, instead of by buying some soon-to-be obsolete player and the media it plays.
So all of the studios' dreams of being able to lock down their content (with Blu-Ray) have been for naught. Home hard drives are big enough to contain many high-definition films and consumers can build their own libraries of the films they like without needing to rip (and bypass copy "protection" schemes) from discs. Delivery is now digital and over the Internet. DVD stores are going the way of the record store. And companies like Apple and Netflix will be the distribution channel and the studios don't control them. These studio executives all sit around their offices and meeting rooms and worry about Mom and Pop, Timmy and Mary sharing their movies with their friends who have not paid for the movie.
But the real threat is elsewhere. Right now, in Romania, Ukraine, Russia or China, there is an organized criminal who has hacked into their computer system where the unprotected film is sitting. And they are downloading everything on the computer they have hacked into. And I would not be surprised that the computer in question is actually editing the studio's film. This criminal will certainly be able to release the film as soon as it hits the theatres to consumers as pirated downloads.
So what NBC Universal is trying to do here is to find a way to get Mom, Pop, Timmy and Mary to not share their movies with Dick and Jane across the street.
Pathetic.