Unfortunately, step 3 of the plan ignores the new subscription fee TBP will expect from all 1000+ of your BitTorrent bots. In the end you are just paying yourself or somehow stealing money from the owners of the bots.

Apple allows lots of direct competitors for things like keyboards, mice, monitors, routers, external drives, printers, etc. There are a raft of HW competitors out there that happily interoperate with Apple products even while they directly compete against Apple branded versions. Why should a Palm phone vs an Apple phone be any different? How would Apple like it if Microsoft kept changing their file sharing protocols such that you couldn't network a Mac to a PC?

Redirect visitors to http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/03/214229 Duh

MPAA, click here: http://google.com/images?q=movie+poster

RIAA, click here: http://google.com/images?q=cd+cover

OMG! Rampant contributory copyright and trademark infringement! Right here in the US by a Fortune 200 company.

(Just thought I'd help you get started on your next case.)

Well, iPod was never mentioned but supersloshy wasn't very specific. Many portable DVD players might be described as portable media players in which case, copying a DVD to a DVD-R would certainly be an option. For example, my own portable media player is a Philips DCP750 It's cheap, plays DivX from SD cards, video from iPods and (surprise) plain-ol-DVDs.

Also CNet has a category for ISO Portable Video Players. There are a few.

To be clear, "Xvid" is an encoder (like DivX) and it makes MPEG4 ASP video streams. Calling a file an "Xvid" file is like calling a photocopy a "Xerox". It might have been created with a genuine Xerox machine but just looking at the paper, you wouldn't know or care.

MKV is still the bleeding edge. The reason AVI/ASP/MP3 is popular is because over 100 million DivX certified devices can play those files. DivX DVD players start around $30 at Wal-mart and are by far the cheapest way to move video from your computer to your living room.

There are also "DivX Ultra" devices that play AVI/ASP/AC3 with chapters, interactive menus, multiple audio and multiple subtitles. Other than the ASP codec, DivX Plus offers most of what you want.

Just recently "DivX Plus" was launched which is MKV/H.264/AAC/AC3. Some day DivX Plus devices might also cost $30 but for now MKV is only useful for people with a PC connected to their TV. Sure it has a lot of advantages over AVI/ASP/MP3 but broad compatibility trumps minor improvements in compression ratios.