Will you be rushing into the new Hi-Def formats in 2006? (1 Viewer)

[JeremyErwin]

Mmm. flash memory, anyone?

 

[AaronMK]

And the fact that CSS has been broken, but AACS/HDCP has
not. While CSS being broken does not really make companies all of a sudden able to market compatible devices allowing cool legal uses that are not exactly studio approved, it allows people to distribute software on the Internet that does.

 

[JeremyErwin]

A bit of wiggle room, there. Not all copyright infringement is criminal.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Oooh, how I hate how the United States is slipping into a dictatorship based on unwritten, secret laws.

Oops. That's perhaps a discussion for another time and another BBS. Anyway,

my source is this and this. Both date from August 2005. How recent was this change?

 

[AaronMK]

Umm, no. It is not within their rights to disable a piece of equipment they do not own. If it is, I suppose they should also be able to slash the tires of someone's truck if, at their sole discretion, they determine it has been used to transport counterfeit DVDs.

 

[Edwin-S]

I'll agree with that; however, the entire sentence seems to indicate that fines or imprisonment can result whether the infringement is criminal or not. In other words, infringement of any nature is a punishable offense.

I also read the link that you posted about "fair use". It would seem that using "fair use" as a defense is little more than a "crap shoot". All factors can indicate that use of material is "fair" and yet the decision of "unfair use" can easily be made.

Francis P. originally stated:

"Also to violate any laws concerning copyright there has to be a gain from the act."

The FBI warning states that no monetary gain is required in order to violate the copyright act. So his statement was wrong. According to the FBI, unauthorized copying is considered to be a violation of the copyright act whether a gain is realized or not.

I think it is B.S, but under the present system copying discs, even for archival purposes, is illegal unless express permission to do so is granted by the original copyright holder.

Edit:

I read some of the statutes from the links you provided. The USC does differentiate between criminal and non-criminal infringement. They also stated under what conditions the maximum penalties of imprisonment and fines can be used. The FBI warning indicates that any infringement can be punished by imprisonment and fines; however, section 506 of the USC contradicts that statement.

It would appear that the wording in the FBI warning is too vague or ill-defined; however, like I said I'm not a lawyer so I could easily be misinterpreting what I have read.

 

[george kaplan]

Well here we have a major disagreement. The ability of them to shutdown any HD machine, or the ability to play any part of your collection on any HD machine does worry me. And not becaue I'm in the habit of breaking the law. But for 2 very good reasons:

1. There is absolutely nothing to stop them from attempting to kill the functionality of a movie you own for reasons that have nothing to do with you breaking the law. For example, Disney could decide that a scene in a movie is no longer PC. George Lucas might decide that he only wants you to watch some new version of American Graffiti where the girls have had their breasts CGI-enhanced. And so, they might send out an order to disable play of existing HD discs.

2. They might indeed determine that they think you broke the law. But they're probably not going to wait for a court of law to determine beyond a reasonable doubt that you did so before they kill your ability to play the disc, and even if they did, plenty of innocent people have been found guilty.

Therefore, even though I'm not in the habit of breaking the law, I most certainly worry about their ability to send shutdown instructions of any sort to my machine, by any mechanism.

BTW, I don't know how feasible it is to send out instructions on all future Disney HD discs to disable play of some previously released Disney HD disc, but I'm not (yet) convinced that the new hardware/software won't make this possible.

 

[Ricardo C]

I'm sure they would do that... If they had a deathwish for a class action lawsuit that would put them out of business.

 

[george kaplan]

Well, Ricardo, as you are in Venezuela, you are probably not very familiar with the U.S. Government, and I can't go into too much detail without violating HTF rules, but between lobbying and the current propensity of Congress and the current crop of judges in high U.S. Courts, the studios could very easily do those things and suffer no legal consequences at all. Washington D.C. is about as big business friendly, and consumer unfriendly as a place could be right now. :frowning:

 

[dpippel]

Hardly. Sony distributed DRM rootkit software on several CD titles that installed spyware on and seriously compromised the security of thousands of customer's computers. No class action suit yet, and even if there is one (which is probable) do you seriously think it could put a huge corporation like Sony out of business? Or Time-Warner? Or Disney? Etc., etc.? Not a chance. At the most they'd have to pay some token fine and/or change their practices, neither of which is a sure thing.

 

[Ricardo C]

Disabling a product is quite different from being caught using a rootkit (a concept most mainstream users don't even understand). Can you imagine Disney daring to disable one of their films, affecting upwards of 1 million people, a large portion of which are parents? Maybe I'm being too optimistic due to my lack of familiarity with internal US politics, but I really don't see it happening.

 

[Cees Alons]

Ricardo,

I'm getting very tired of hearing this argument over and over again. "They won't do it" ("they would be stupid", etc.). OK, then why is the functionality present? They cannot possibly have any objections to a proposal to remove it, can they?

And another reason why I hate that kind of functionality, is, because it could be used by other parties than "trusted" studios. "Funny" DVD's killing your player when played. Honest mistakes made by you or your kids, or a guest of your house (or someone you - quite legally isn't it - lend your player to for some time). Or by a bug, or other malfunctioning.

Point is, and I'm surprised people go on arguing about that: I DON'T WANT IT. That's all I'm saying: I won't buy into this concept until several things are much clearer than they are now.

This part is not directed at you, BTW, Ricardo, but to some posters in this thread.

What are these discussions about?

Let's take one topic: if I reject a stronger form of something I accepted in the past, that's not wrong of me. I weigh things against each other.

In fact, the question of whether or not we are willing to buy into this ill-defined format is what this poll-thread is about, and I really don't understand why a loud-voiced vocal minority tries to argue about the opinions others are giving to this simple question.

Fine to state your own point, but do not harrass someone else about his/hers. Discussions are nice, but don't tell other members they shouldn't have the opinions they do.


Cees

 

[RobertR]

Here's a question for those saying "they couldn't be that stupid": Would you have said the same thing if someone had described the rootkit incident in advance?

 

[AaronMK]

Actually, there was a class action lawsuit brought against Sony over the "rootkit fiasco". IMO, the settlement was very weak.

I would have much rather seen the case brought to trial so some stronger precedents could have been set.

 

[Cees Alons]

Yes, so would I. And although I didn't hear yet if the proposed settlement was accepted in the US or not, I'm not sure if a lawsuit isn't still going on, or in the make, in Europe.


Cees

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I'm getting a headache trying to read this mess..

Look.. Anyone with a hi-def player isn't going to have anything stop working (even if it is only on a temporary basis) if only legal disks are inserted for play. Although I can imagine information being stored in a player, I can't see it being done. With no output, the info would never go anywhere.

The other side of this is watching a movie on a PC. This is a whole new ball of wax, and we all know why. In this case, I can see info - via the Internet - getting sent off to some site without the user's knowledge. Depending on what the user is doing (outside of just watching it), I can see flags going up, both mentally and physically.

I really don't think that the hardware or the software makers are out to screw us. (Well, not totally anyway ). They know that they are going to - in the long run - make more moeny. If a disk shut a machine down, I can see nothing less than a replacement unit arriving, via next day air freight, at my doorstep.

As for the old subject of player output of 1080p - the majority of the buyers will never know what hit them. They may or may not know now that component connectors are butter than composite, and maybe even that HDMI is even better, but when they bring a unit home and hook it up, via whatever they have available, they will probably get a better picture than they can get now. A month or two down the road they might find out that getting a TV with HDMI will be even better, but this won't be a buying factor.

The factors will only be price and titles.

Glenn

 

[RobertR]

That assumes no "legal disk" would ever have instructions to tell the player not to function, or function in a restricted way. There's NO reason to trust these people not to do such a thing.

 

[Cees Alons]

Repeat: (1) What establishes a "legal" disc? I want to be able to safely any disc that's handed to me (or at least be sure playing it won't modify my player in any irresettable way) and (2) If that's true, why is the shutdown function there? For punishing people playing "illegal discs"?


Cees

 

[Nils Luehrmann]

Perhaps just as tiring as it is to keep hearing from the same group of people how they will do it to innocent consumers with no compensation leaving everyone with $1,000 paper weights. :rolleyes

Yes, the ability to revoke is built in with the hope that it may help deter piracy, and just as what happened with Sony's rootkit disaster, they know that any failure to use the technology appropriately will cost them severely both financially and with their public relations.

For a product fighting a format war for a market, which is currently extremely small, it amazes me that there are those who would seriously think that these companies would risk the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested so far by risking another "rootkit fiasco", which would most certainly result in the death of the format if it were to happen to these niche products.

I'm also tired of hearing from this same small group of people who show no concern about the companies who provide the content we so very much want, and in fact use derogatory and inflammatory words to describe them because they are trying to protect their products from being stolen. Its as if they think these studios are required to release content in unprotected form, and that magically they will be compensated for it by "honest consumers" who will subsidize the lost revenue from those less honest consumers.

Once again, these formats will live and die by how the early adopters react to them, and perhaps the popularity of bootleg and pirated video is so strong today, many early adopters will be furious about any new technology that "might" make that practice more difficult, perhaps even impossible. Perhaps the penetration and popularity of video piracy is enough such that it will cause these technologies to fail, but then one must begin to ask the difficult question. If video piracy continues to grow at its current pace, can we honestly expect studios, producers, filmmakers, etc, to continue to invest the billions of dollars into making content and/or releasing what content they will make in the highest quality media delivery system, which will only then be copied, sold and/or traded.

It is certainly clear that no good can come from video piracy, and yet there is a lot more criticism of anti-piracy methods than there is of those doing the pirating. (Shall we count the number of posts from Cees and Francis where they criticized those that have pirated copies of DVDs VS the number of posts where they criticize copy protection methods?) This trend, I'm afraid is going to lead to a huge shake-up in the entertainment industry that will result in far fewer productions, and shrunken budgets resulting in fewer films and significantly lower production values.

:star: For those that are being critical of these anti-piracy methods, what alternative solution do you propose that would prevent piracy while still allow consumers to enjoy the content hassle free? It is easy to just say anti-piracy methods suck and that they should just release all their content free and clear, but at the same time it shows absolutely no regard to the reality and consequence of what will likely happen to the industry if they do that.

 

[RobertR]

No one says the industry can't take reasonable anti piracy measures. What people are pissed off about is the prospect that HONEST consumers will have to put up with UNreasonable measures that would keep many MANY people from using the hidef displays they already have to watch these formats, and keep them from watching the movies they bought and paid for. The irony is this nonsense will NOT stop the real pirates. You may trust these companies to be rational on this issue, but many don't.