Space Shifting DVDs to Cost Extra? 361
Depending on who you listen to Steve Jobs has supposedly been pitching the idea of selling "premium" DVDs that would include an extra fee for the privilege of transferring your legally-purchased DVD to a different device. "The courts have held that "space-shifting" your CDs to a portable music device is a fair use. So you can legally import your CD collection to your iPod, or any other device, without paying a penny. But Steve Jobs apparently wants to charge you $4 for the privilege of doing the same with your DVDs."
No way... (Score:4, Funny)
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I don't think that the issue is if Mr. Jobs wants to make money of Consumers the question is how.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that the issue is if Mr. Jobs wants to make money of Consumers the question is how.
The thing is, I don't think that Apple is going to make much money off of this. They traditionally don't make much on content.
I have to wonder if this isn't a way to advertise "ripping" your movies as a feature of their hardware. Remember that the original slogan for the iPod was something like "Rip, Mix, Burn" but they had to stop that lest they be accused of encouraging infringement. This way, it's all DMCA friendly.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Insightful)
And Steve Jobs is on the Disney board of directors.
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Steve Jobs was CEO of Pixar... Pixar was bought by Disney.
CEOs of other companies being on the board of directors is actually pretty common. Up until a few months ago I worked at JP Morgan Chase. The CEO of Comcast was on the board of directors (probably still is).
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I do think that Disney and Pixar stand to make more, and I think that Apple will have a competitive advantage when they are allowed to incorporate DVD ripping into iTunes just like they have CD ripping.
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If Steve Jobs promotes these DVDs that allow you to copy the movie, and it only costs $4 to avoid a very in-depth discussion of your rights as a consumer in regards to intellectual property, there may be quite a few people who adopt to this format.
Now suppose, and this probably isn't too likely, the public begins to purchase these slightly-more expensive DVDs. Would we see price cuts in the original format as well as this new format
Re:No way... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, I have around 50-100 DVDs (not sure exactly how many, some are seasons of TV shows in boxed sets with multiple disks). Assuming around 7GB per DVD, that's 350-700GB. Even reencoding as H.264, that's a few more generations of iPod before I have enough space. More to the point, you don't need to buy too many DVDs a year to make your current storage device obsolete.
If iTunes let you rip DVDs in the same zero-click way it lets you rip CDs, I would probably have ripped a lot of my disks already, and would be a lot more interested in an iPod with video out (especially one that had support for 5.1 sound out via an external splitter). For $4, I'm not interested though. I suspect the aim of this is to get the functionality shipping in iTunes and then lose a class action lawsuit objecting to them charging.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Interesting)
- One iPod and PSP version video of the movie along with one version in a standard codec.
- One iPod and PSP version video of each episode (if it's something like a Futurama season DVD) along with one version in a standard codec.
- Flac/Wav/lossless version of the songs, if it's a concert DVD.
- No DRM on the ripped stuff.
I am sick of installing 10 gazillion CD/DVD rippers and encoders just so I can watch my DVDs on my PSP and my DSM-320. 4$ for me would be no big deal to pay for that service.
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In a Low Def format, they'd look great on mobile devices, and be about as go
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Indeed it does, but that isn't all THAT terrible. There is software available that will unscramble and recode a DVD, the DMCA notwithstanding. Just set the computer up in the evening and by morning the job is done, while you sleep.
The DMCA is the prohibition of the 21st century. Just like in the 1920s, people could get their booze, so today, people can get their entertainme
Re:No way... (Score:4, Informative)
All iPods [apple.com] have the same [apple.com] specs [apple.com] for the video they play... Presumably the iPod version of the video from the DVD would conform to the same standards as videos from the iTunes store. Your questions about various iPods and the AppleTV apply just as much to the iTunes video store as they would to these hypothetical DVDs, so I wouldn't think that your questions really pose a problem for this concept. Of course, the AppleTV is supposed to be HD-capable, so that could represent a good question here, but Apple doesn't give you a way to get HD content for it, other than some sample podcasts, at least that's all I've heard about it.
Personally, I think it's dumb that they would sell this for a 20% price increase to "let" you have a "legal" way to get videos to your iPod. I use HandBrake all the time (which the author of TFA incorrectly identifies as violating the DMCA... it doesn't violate it because it doesn't have any way on its own to handle CSS decryption... you need an external program/driver/library for that), and in a decent world, it would be perfectly easy for anyone to use it to put their movies on their portable players. But these companies step in and act like they're freaking awesome, because they've given us a legal way to do this.
If someone wants to pay $4 to make it easier to copy their DVDs, and they think the hassle is worth the price, then good for them. But I would hate to see people paying that extortion money because the content providers are pretending that it's the only way to get it legally.
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Expensive programs like SoundEdit could losslessly import CD tracks to WAV or AIFF, and later on (1997? '98 for sure) Toast could rip CD audio as well
I had a freeware DOS utility which would rip CDs as .wav files in '96. CDs did some with some copy protection, however. They included a copy flag and a copyright flag. When copying a CD with the copyright flag set, a duplicator was meant to set the copy flag (the status of the copyright flag was preserved during duplication). Copying a disk with both the copy and copyright flags set was not permitted. This did not take into account the fact that, once hard drives became more than a few GBs and CPUs be
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I would pay 4$ extra for a DVD that would include the following bonuses:
The thing I've never gotten is why no DVD producers have already adopted this practice. They're all about value-add with piles of special features and such; why not stick an iTunes compatible file on the DVD and throw the iPod logo on there?
You know, if one reads the actual article [nytimes.com] where the TFA got its facts from wrong...
You'll notice that this "premium DVD" talk actually is based on the Die Hard 4 DVD [wikipedia.org], which "is also the first ever to include an electronic copy of the film which can be played on a computer and that also be imported into several models portable of video players" and "costs $3 or $4 more than an ordinary DVD." And has nothing to do with Steve Jobs whatsoever.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No way... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple is able to pull in a few extra fees for developing and licensing the technology then good for them I suppose. They are in the business of selling hardware remember. I'm sure they would sell more hardware if there was an easy and legal way to transfer content from original media, but there is not and Apple is dealing with it in a way they are good at.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Insightful)
I worry about this as a precedent. If we keep going down this route, eventually media purchases will be tied to a single device, using digital hardware IDs. I could see a day when you buy a movie, and only have "rights" to play it on one specific DVD player. You would have to provide the hardware ID of that DVD player at the time of purchase. It's no secret that content providers want you to repurchase the same movie a dozen times. One for home use, one for in your car, one for your portable player, one for your PSP, etc. DMCA makes this consumer nightmare possible.
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So their real motivation is helping the customer buy their products, and licensed accessories on which they collect royalties.
There, fixed it for ya.
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After all, most mp3s being played on iPods were NOT paid for on iTunes, (whether they were ripped from owners' CDs or from the intertubes is another matter).
As the market saturates / competition hots up for mp3 players, the next big thing is HDTV hardware.
Except that DRM ensures that it simply does not work. Unless you download your non-DRM stuff from illegal torrents, that is, in which case
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It costs any US company extra money to create software for copying an encrypted DVD in the form of a license to do it; otherwise, I'm sure they would find their butt in court. Maybe this extra charge is for covering the costs that Apple has to pay the MPAA for the right to make a copy of a DVD?
Re:No way... (Score:4, Funny)
And the concept is old news - it's really just an extension of this program:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/itunes_to_sell_your_home_videos [theonion.com]
Re:But, you're missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is (apparently) offering to help. They would expect payment - natch.
Now with DVDs and Handbrake it is slightly different; i wouldn't pay $3 to $4 to save me the work of turning a DVD into h.264 format, but some people would. I would probably willingly pay some lesser amount. What people need to realize is that even though it is your right, it is still work.
Re:But, you're missing something... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But, you're missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:But, you're missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is (apparently) offering to help. They would expect payment - natch.
Generally I agree with you, although it's slightly more complicated than that because of the DMCA.
To use your 2nd amendment analogy (my thoughts on that subject being an entirely different story, but I'll go with it for the purposes of illustration), it would be like saying you have the right to bear arms, but then saying it's illegal to actually open the box that the weapon comes in because the copyright is owned by the box maker and they don't want you opening it. So then Apple comes in and says they have a legal box-opener that's sanctioned by the box maker, and only they can sell it to you.
That would be pretty ridiculous, right? You can buy the weapon, you can legally use it, but you have to buy the means to open the package separately from some third party? That's what's going on here.
I do agree completely that those offering a service should be compensated for it. I just bought an "MVI" DVD, for example, that includes the band in question's full audio CD, plus pre-ripped mp3's of the entire CD (and yes, real mp3's, on a Warner Music disc), plus 5 bonus tracks, plus about seven videos, plus extra junk like wallpaper, buddy icons, etc. I paid $2 extra over the standard audio CD for all that and I was happy to do it. I probably would have paid $2 extra just for the officially-ripped mp3's by themselves (only because I figure they've gotta have some better quality system to do it with than my LAME... although I'm probably wrong). Point being, it's an extra thing that I don't have to do, and I'm pretty tech savvy - I could do it myself pretty easily - but a lot of people couldn't, they don't even know how to import a CD in iTunes. So for them, they're paying for something that they wouldn't otherwise have at all.
But to pay for the right to do something that you otherwise should have anyway is the problem here.
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McFortner
Steve Jobs or the MPAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Luckily iTunes is not the only tool in town.
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OTOH, ITMS has never provided a good value for videos, does not compete with free, and I have spent relatively little money there. The vid
Re:Steve Jobs or the MPAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Even that sucks though, limiting the file to just an Apple format and charging far more for the file than it is reasonably worth it. And at that point, either the file is locked to one device or it renders the DRM on the disc completely useless. In either case it doesn't seem to benefit consumers much, if at all.
Shouldn't the courts acknowledge that DRM isn't a protection measure if most people can break it easily. I mean at that point, what's the real difference between DRM and exotic file format?
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For that price... (Score:5, Interesting)
I tell you, I *might* be persuaded to pay that price if it was some sort of continuous license w/unlimited downloads. For example, if I could take a DVD from my current collection, get it so if I lose the file I can always re-download from Apple, and if they release an HD version I get it for free, then that might be worth $4. Otherwise, screw you, I'll rip the DVD myself.
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I tell you, I *might* be persuaded to pay that price if it was some sort of continuous license w/unlimited downloads. For example, if I could take a DVD from my current collection, get it so if I lose the file I can always re-download from Apple, and if they release an HD version I get it for free, then that might be worth $4. Otherwise, screw you, I'll rip the DVD myself.
I'm speculating here, but I suspect what he's actually pitching will turn out to be something like packaging a code with the DVD that you can punch into iTunes to essentially "purchase" a copy of the movie on iTunes for no cost. It gets around the whole issue of space shifting because you're technically providing the service of downloading the movie off iTunes in another format, not just flipping an "it's ok to rip this" bit in the DRM. It's still slightly slimy, but somewhat less so than the summary makes
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Perhaps this is the real reason that Apple developed and applied for a patent on a special mini-DVD adapter for slot-loading drives. The iPod-encoded x264 version might be a little big to squeeze on next to the MPEG-2 version, but perhaps they will include a mini-DVD in the package that has an encrypted copy of the x264 version on it, and the unique Disc ID must be registered to your iTunes account before it will copy to your library or device. It would also give you a way to put a bunch of movies on your
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DVDs are encrypted (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess if you don't like it, you shouldn't blame Jobs who's trying to exploit a commercial opportunity, but rather contact your lawmaker and explain in layman's terms why this is messed up.
Re:DVDs are encrypted (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly Steve ONLY makes money off you if you CAN rip your DVD to an iPod. So I suspect what he's saying is hey MPAA, if we pay you a small extra fee will you let us turn off your encryption so my customers can put your movies on my iPods?
Re:DVDs are encrypted (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I read it, what he's saying is "hey MPAA, if our mutual customers pay you a small extra fee will you re-encrypt your movies in an iPod-compatible format so our mutual customers can put the movies on their iPods, but not on other devices which may not be compatible (and which are not sold by Apple.)
The ideal situation for the consumer would be no DRM and no DMCA... too bad consumers (aka "we the people") don't have any influence in Washington or we wouldn't be in this situation.
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No, no, no (Score:2)
That's why having Slysoft off shore is so helpful.
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So it says, right there in the legislation. But it does, de facto.
Not according to MPAA v. 2600 (which the EFF failed to appeal). Further, if you create a tool to help you in the decoding, you're violating the DMCA.
Depends on whether "trafficking" includes purchasing as well as distributing. Usually it does.
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Doesn't always work. Try it with Pirates of the Caribbean 2...won't work. Sony did something weird like putting in bad sectors on purpose that blow up bit for bit copying....
Might explain "Deauthorize Media" option (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Might explain "Deauthorize Media" option (Score:5, Informative)
------
Authorizing DVDs
When parental controls are enabled, the computer administrator must authorize a DVD before it can be played.
To authorize DVDs (if you are the administrator):
Select how you want to authorize the DVD:
To allow the movie to be played this time only, and then to require an administrator name and password every subsequent time, click Play Once.
To allow the movie to be played this time and every subsequent time without requiring an administrator name and password, click Always Allow.
Type the administrator name and password.
To remove authorization, insert the DVD and choose Features > Deauthorize Media. Then either quit DVD Player or insert another disk to complete deauthorization.
----
But how much to watch on an AppleTV? (Score:4, Insightful)
They really need to make up their mind. Either they're selling us a license to their content (in which case the media should be irrelevant) OR they should be charging us for a physical product, in which case we can do whatever we want with that product including turning it into something we can use in ways they didn't expect.
If I buy some boards and a nails from Home Depot, they don't get a piece of the action if I try to sell the cabinet I made.
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I have one - and love it. I'm not an Apple cultist, our house is a 'blended family' of O/Ss. The AppleTV has been great - most of our music is on it (about 300 CDs worth, plus downloads), some movies, our photos, etc. It's tied to our main TV and the whole-house audio, so it's really pretty ideal.
And no doubt something better
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What does the AppleTV do that a tivo, xbox media center, or mythtv box couldn't do years ago?
Let's do it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Charge me the extra $3-4 and leave off ALL DRM. That includes that macrovision crap and all of it. Don't require special software or hardware. Just don't put the DRM in place.
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The problem I could see is that if they release it with no DRM, they think that they will see it up on the net faster... which it may, but a large portion of the movies I download are because I personally cannot or don't have time to remove the CSS/DRM. I only rip
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Not intending that as a jibe - guess it'd be quite nice to have a service/app that'd provide an optional 1-click "send to my MP3 player" or what have you for people who aren't inclined to transcode their own or download an iPod-ised version from TPB... but I think the DVD publishers are missing a trick by not including an already converted MP4 file on the DVD itself. It'd be low quality and therefore useless to most pe
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It worked for MP3s, didn't it? They started offering DRM-free files, but charged more. People bought -more- music instead of less, and now places are offering MP3s at the same rate that they used to offer DRM-protected files.
Someone said that 'they' are worried that
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They're striating the market. They want to raise prices on content, but they don't want to look like they're raising prices on content. This way, the DRM crap will become a discount version--a reduced set of rights for a lower cost. The "premium" DVD will now act essentially as a VHS tape or a DVD without encryption or an audio CD.
The format changes and the license changes over time. The problem with equitable use arguments is that it presumes all media purchases ar
IMHO (Score:5, Insightful)
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This reminds me.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This reminds me.... (Score:4, Informative)
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Um.... (Score:3, Funny)
MythDVD
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This is one way for for a positive outcome. However, look at what (if this article is to be believed) Jobs is asking. He is asking for $4 (it's not clear if the money goes to him or the studio or both) for the ability to do something that we should be able to do for free. The reason
A Non-Starter (Score:5, Insightful)
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What do you Want to Pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you could pay someone to figure it all for you (Buy purchasing commercial software that has a nice GUI)
Or you could watch DvDs on your TV and not your iPod.
Which of these things is worth less than the $4 it takes to Steve Jobs every time? For most people I'm thinking option 3 will be the only one. A smaller group might opt for the commercial software that does the same thing. Very few people will make the effort to get it all set up with open source tools or to wait the length of time it takes to reencode all the mpeg files. I think that most people (who don't read slashdot) will be happy to pay Steve Jobs the $4. I think Steve knows that, too.
"supposedly", "apparently" (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this might be a radical departure for Slashdot editors, but have you ever considered only linking to articles that have, I don't know, actual facts? Instead of rumor and innuendo to drive Apple bashing for Page Hits.
Also, did you hear that rumor about ScuttleMonkey? Supposedly he likes to have sex with washing machines. Apparently it's something he does quite a lot...
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It's "Apparent", as in "obvious". Something that is apparently true is obviously true (though possibly untrue, if appearances deceive). On the other hand, if you merely suppose something to be true, then you are much more likely to be wrong, in that you don't have evidence, you just have a supposition.
More to the point -- dude this is Slashdot. I
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Yesterday?
Reasoning (Score:2)
That seems like a better argument than releasing an iTunes compatible version on their DVD's- a thing that would take up more space (the movies are not tiny) on the DVD. This would diminish the amount of content movie studios could add on their own.
Simply put, it's in Jobs' best interest to pry away at the DRM that disables the functionality he wants.
This is not how purchasing media should work (Score:3, Insightful)
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PLEASE don't give them any more bright ideas...
The EULA is on the disk. (Score:2)
Hey, buddy! (Score:3, Funny)
Thaks Steve! (Score:2)
I have one word for Steve Jobs... (Score:2)
And I will add that a few of my studio-pressed and paid-for DVDs are beginning to show signs of deterioration. I'm not paying for another copy when I can recover the original disc's file, repair it in the process, and re-burn it (as I should be able to do under Fair Use) to a replacement disc.
Keep the peace(es).
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Which Steve? (Score:2)
Reality check? (Score:2, Insightful)
Get real folks. If Apple pulls another $4 out of your pocket of course they're taking a cut. What are we? School children?
And Poor Saint Jobs, forced by the big bad media companies into doing this? C'mon! Jobs sat down with them and together they cut a deal that will hopefully see both of them make bigger profits. It's high
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Maybe I'll pay (Score:2, Informative)
Apple miscalculation (Score:3, Insightful)
There's just very little reason to buy video from Apple at this time. DVD players are overwhelmingly cheap, and DVDs are cheap and easy to buy OR RENT. Netflix, Blockbuster, Wal Mart, Target etc etc are all too happy to put DVDs in your hands. They are making loads of money on them, as are the studios, the only people not cashing in are the writers (see: WGA strike).
The primitive state of broadband means downloads are not pressuring the industry, there is piracy but it's just not like it was for music in the Napster days. At that time you could literally get virtually any song on your hard drive within a few minutes. For video, you need to figure out BitTorrent, then wait wait wait for the download. Or you need to set up iTunes and then wait wait wait for the download.
THEN you have to get your TV hooked up to your computer, and then tolerate visibly worse quality. This was not the case with MP3s, they sounded just as good as CDs to most people, despite the specs, and people already had headphones to plug in to their computers, or a miniplug to hook up to the stereo cost $5 at Radio Shack.
Amid this backdrop, Apple is trying to make a market for video downloads. But the effort is futile until broadband speeds get up closer to FTTP (fiber) levels. Even then, the studios probably won't hand Apple a new market to dominate like they did last time. Wired recently quoted one studio head who said he gave in to Jobs on iTunes because Jobs pointed out that Mac's 5 percent market share mitigated the risk -- if the studio's worst nightmares came true, the impact would still be minor. No one is going to be fooled this time around into thinking Jobs just wants to make an innocent little side service for Mac users. You can bet a Google or Netflix is going to get licensing parity (which did not happen with iTunes).
Bundling Does Not Equal Greater Profits (Score:2)
So, slap a $4 dollar download code onto a $12 dollar DVD and while you might get away with a $16 dollar price for a brief time with strong advertising, it won't be long before the thing sells for $12 dollars again.
Nobody bundles a strongly-demanded product with another strongly-demanded product. If both were strongly-demanded then they'd
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http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/would-you-pay-more-for-a-dvd-with-an-itunes-copy/?ref=technology [nytimes.com]
More interestingly perhaps, the studios are hoping to create "premium" versions of DVDs that include a copy of the movie that can easily be put on an iPod...
Whether you think that this means that there will be an iTunes-DRM'ed copy on the physical DVD or an iTunes download code in the packaging, it's still bundling.
It's all in the spin. (Score:2)
And it basically says Jobs likes the idea of a company selling a "premium" version of a DVD that includes an iTunes download of the same movie. And so TechDirt spins it as "the DMCA at work"-- which is a reasonable explanation, given that technically a tool like Handbrake _is_ illegal.
(Funny, of course, that nobody wants to take the folks who make Handbrake to court yet...)
It would've been so easy for Apple to spin it the other wa
Won't be an issue (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say all this has led to people wanting quantities of music and not quality music. In past when everyone paid for music you listened hard to who you were going to spend your money on. Record companies had to try their best to put out good music so get your money. Now a days people just want to say "I have 10,000 downloads of stuff". How much of that do you actually listen to versus just occupies space on a hard drive and is all that really stuff worth listening to??? I only bring this up because the war between the downloaders and RIAA has many bad side effects and a boatload of crap music is one of those side effects.
Why Should We Have to "Buy" Back Our Rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, it may be the case that through DRM they have made it difficult to exercise my rights without paying them (i.e. I have to break the DRM to enable my rights), but that brings up another problem with DRM and specifically the DMCA. It is unlawful (technically) to break the DRM (aka access protection mechanism) even if I break it for the purpose of re-enabling my rights to time or format shift or for fair use. As the law is currently written it is unlawful to break the DRM no matter what the intent and that is wrong. The DMCA needs to be changed so that safe harbors for breaking the access protection mechanism are created when the consumer is re-enabling RIGHTS that the creator or owner has seized improperly via DRM (aka the access protection mechanism).
Am I missing something? Where does Jobs say this? (Score:5, Informative)
The following paragraph continues, "More interestingly perhaps, the studios are hoping to create "premium" versions of DVDs that include a copy of the movie that can easily be put on an iPod (and presumably a laptop with iTunes or an Apple TV). Fox has tried this already, with a version of "Die Hard 4 that includes a digital copy. Mr. Greenfield writes that this version costs $3 or $4 more than an ordinary DVD."
This paragraph doesn't refer to Jobs at all, but rather to a DVD that Fox released.
I'm missing the connection between Apple and Fox that Tim Lee's seeing. Can someone explain where this is hiding?
For Apple, this is about hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
This is probably the only way they can get the content providers to agree: Show them the money carrot. Make it legal for your customers to move movies to different media, and you'll get money. I think it's not so bad; everyone wins:
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Oh? How do the other ones do it without circumventing the copy protection?
Either the DVD was not protected by DeCSS (some Harry Potter DVDs are a rare example) or the copy is still encrypted and the player applies its own DeCSS.
Yes, Virginia, it is possible to create a DVD player that will play encrypted copies of DVDs where the key is not included on the disk. Then the copied disks will not violate the DMCA; only the player does.
(A third option is that the encrypted disk image also contains the key. Just because you can't burn a key onto a DVD-R doesn't mean it can't be prese
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Not when it's wasting a gigabyte of space that is of no use to anyone who doesn't have an iPod. I'd rather have better picture quality with all those extra bits, or more extras.
In any case, DVD 'copy protection' is history; why charge people more for something they can already do for free?
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If it wasn't for DMCA there would be plenty of commercial software out there that would do this, (just like there are plenty of polished products for ripping CDs). Because DVD ripping software is effectively illegal, no company is going to invest $$ into writing a polished piece of software. The best we get are home-brew solutions, and half-assed products both of which get sued out of existence (or at least out of the
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Fine, so they should state how they'd like to sell us such a piece of software, but they can't because of the law... please write to your local congress critter to help us change this. Jobs has already mentioned that he'd like to sell music without DRM, so this isn't too different.
And besides, is the law really so cut and dry? They could make the arguement t
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Oh right, Verizon and Sprint and AT&T are selling them for $3 or more, and then delete them after a few months and make you pay again!
Apple charges users $1 to convert their purchased tracks into a custom made ri