This is going to be short and sweet, but I feel like making this statement. This week, the HD-DVD encryption key was posted on Digg.com, quite a few times actually. When Digg.com took it down, the users revolted posting it in every type of story they could.
While I am a huge proponent of being able to back up your DVDs (specifically to an home media storage system) I have to cry foul. The people like me, who have a legitimate reason to want to back up their originally purchased media, are not the same people who are using tools like decss or other DVD decrypters for the purpose of basically copying Netflix. It’s a sexy idea, you sign up for a cheap service, get movies every week, copy them and send them back.
The problem is, that’s why DVDs and the companies that produce them are fighting allowing us to back up our DVDs for legitimate purposes such as transfer to iPod or Zune, making a copy to let the 9 year old take in his room, or storage to a central media system. Those are the features I truly want. I wish it was as simple as it is with music but that is not likely to happen.
In the mean time, stop stealing movies so I have a better chance of being able to get them at reasonable prices with reasonable licenses. Seriously, our DVD collection is nearing 500, and a large portion of them were purchased used or discounted for $5-10. If you want the movie, just buy it. Sooner or later the technology will catch up to give us freedom to use it.
If you honestly think that the movie studios will stop trying to force the consumer how to use their media if piracy ends please stop buying or talking about the subject.
The mpaa, & riaa have proven over and over and over again that the consumer is not allowed to do anything that the content providers don’t approve.
Basic reasons for moderate piracy or what the studios CALL piracy:
1. Why rebuy all my media when the new hotness comes along (vhs > dvd > hddvd/bluray).
2. Legitimate backup copy (this is evil! The record labels fought it when fm radio came out, when tape recorders came out and just about every other thing that threatens their profits)
3. Price fixing/gouging (the record labels and movie studios have been doing this for years, and then just paying the fines to the government. Yet the consumer still gets screwed).
If you honestly want change then do something about the studios lobbying for legislation to protect their old deprecated methods of making money. At no time did our founding fathers intend for the government to make laws to keep a business making a profit. That’s the way it’s become and is quite ludicrous.
I will quite happily pirate materials until the following is true:
1. Responsible copyrights. Happy birthday should NOT still be copywritten. There are hundreds of thousands of orphaned works that are still copywritten. Copyright laws now stifle expression while encouraging musical squatting (very similar to patent companies that collect patents then sit on them doing nothing with them. Very profitable but despicable and dishonest)
2. Real Fair use. If I buy the disc, it’s my property. I can make a backup, convert to whatever media I see fit. It’s not a “license to play what’s on the disc at the whim of some suit wearing idiot who can’t set the time on his dvd player.
3. The studios figure out that DRM only affects the real consumers not the pirates (they strip out drm before production of pirated materials)
4. the government remembers that it serves the people and not the corporations (odd that corporations rarely pay taxes yet have all the power isn’t it?)
Once those requirements have been met I will happily purchase more music on emusic.com or itunes.com but my days of buying big label cd’s are dead since my $15 usually only buys me single good song and 14 tracks of filler.
Movie studios also need to stop churning out super megadeluxe version 1.0.40.3. of movies. Come out with the good version for us all and quit with the constant churn of rereleasing. It’s annoying. Oh and quit with remaking old movies and start working on some of the hundred thousand or so excellent ideas (here’s 5: Robotech, battletech, Ringworld, Good Omens, House of Leaves. There that was easy wasn’t it?
Blegh I’m done with this topic. Stop blaming the fighters and blame the system that produces them.