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Recording Industry Hoist By Their Own Petard 212

Posted by timothy from the too-many-laws dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As reported by MSNBC, the recording industry has been unable to offer combination DVD / CD discs to consumers because of the IP ownership questions as well as licensing issues between CD and DVD content. All I can say is it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch!"
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Recording Industry Hoist By Their Own Petard More

Recording Industry Hoist By Their Own Petard

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  • There is a God. (Score:5, Funny)

    by sentientbeing ( 688713 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:44PM (#9910836)
    Nuff said.
    • Yes this may be an example of poetic justice, but as is usual, we, the consumers, lose. They may not get to sell this product, but as a direct consequence of that, we do not get the opportunity to buy it.

    • Re:There is a God. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Simonetta ( 207550 )
      I would like to see a really inexpensive portable stereo that could read MP3s on DVDs the way we can now get $20 portable CD players that read CD-R MP3 disks.

      When in the mood say for 1970's pop music, I'd put in a DVD disk that had 700 songs from that period in MP3 format. Then set the play function on randon selection.

      It would be like listening to a radio station with the DJs or the commercials. I tuned into a Clear Channel station recently while on a car road trip and I was just amazed at how mu

      • MP3s on DVDs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dmanny ( 573844 )
        There is obviously no technical reason that MP3s should not be usuable on DVD media in virtually every DVD player. It is only a matter of what the firmware does when encountering such a disc. There very well may be some players out there that will (portable or not) and there very well may be hacked firmware for some players to _help_ in this area. I would welcome comments giving examples that do work.

        Unfortunately I can tell you that my new Sony 400 disc changer only does MP3s on CD media. I tried a D

        • Re:MP3s on DVDs (Score:3, Informative)

          by dmanny ( 573844 )
          Your post got me thinking of this again. I tried googling for the phrase "DVD of MP3s". It got only 16 displayable results, many of which were people bemoaning the same situation as I have. However, there was at least one UK post about a player that does do OK, Ronin or some such. I just bought and am out of the market for a while but still interested.

  • hybrids (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:45PM (#9910843) Homepage
    DVD Plus and DualDisc are based on the same concept--hybrid discs with a DVD on one side and a CD on the other--and Warner sold its patent on the technology to Dierks, though the label retained the license to manufacture products under the Warner name.

    It is simple enough. DVD on one side; CD on the other. Everybody is happy... ...except not. Now this interesting technology is tied up in patent and copyright fights.

    And we'll probably never see it.

    Davak

  • I love their webpage (Score:5, Funny)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:48PM (#9910853)
    To sum up their website [dualdisc.com]

    24Kb two color JPEG: Loading Soon

  • possible harm? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zrobotics ( 760688 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:48PM (#9910857)
    Could someone please explain how this is bad for RIAA/MPAA? this just means that i now have to buy two disks-the cd and the dvd. or, they could package it as a two disk set like most special edition dvds that you see. really, i dont think it means much, especially to the /. crowd

  • It's being used! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:49PM (#9910863) Homepage

    Warner has released DualDisc albums by R.E.M., P.O.D., Barenaked Ladies, Donald Fagen, and Linkin Park. The CD side of the disc contains standard two-channel, 16-bit/44.1kHz audio, while the DVD side features a high-resolution, 5.1-channel mix of the album. BMG, on the other hand, has music videos on the DVD side of its Usher release. Sony has released DualDiscs by AC/DC, Audioslave, David Bowie, and Good Charlotte. RCA has issued an EP-length DualDisc by the Calling.

    Sounds like tons of people are using it to me!

    My belief is that record companies are looking for new high-bandwidth ways to sell media. Sure anybody can listen to the song from mp3 or the radio... but it's much nicer to have the video and additional content right in front of you.

    Davak
    • Bear in mind that most artists have little or no say in what their label produces on their behalf. If Warner wants to release a DualDisc release of a Linkin Park album, there's not a whole lot that Linkin Park can do about it.

      • Re:It's being used! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Davak ( 526912 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:56PM (#9910903) Homepage
        No doubt. Several friends of mine were in an excellent band 5 or 6 years ago. The won several contests and had a huge local following.

        Several companies were fighting to sign them. They signed... but the company decided that they were not young enough. So the company just held on to their contract and their music to insure that nobody else could profit from them either.

        By the time they got out of their contract, they were out of their prime.

        They still perform now, and they enjoy making money by doing bars and small concerts; however, they missed that one golden chance that many bands have to make a mint quickly.

        The record companies are bastards.

        Davak
        • they should sue the company for acting in bad faith, i am quite sure that signing a band just to keep them out of the hands of competition with no intention of actually performing the duties of a record label would be seen as acting in bad faith.
          • The problem with that is the lack of recourse that the band has compared to the recording cartel. They'd keep the case in court for so long, the band would probably be bankrupt before they could see any settlement.

            Cynical? Maybe a little. But true.

          • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @12:03AM (#9911937)
            Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • but taking advantage of someone by claiming that they will sign them to produce music and instead sat on them would be in bad faith, just as a band trying to get out of a %X songs per %Y years releasing nothing but E-A-G progressions and snarling would , while tecnically still music, be in bad faith (or death metal, take your pick)

            • Re:It's being used! (Score:3, Informative)

              by glenstar ( 569572 )
              The point it, if someone signs a restrictive contract that can hold them hostage for several years (likely 7 at most if they signed in California or the label's headquarters are there), they should be held to the contract. If you promise to do something, you should keep your word. The promise is the contract -- not what others say about the contract. They signed it, they suffer.

              In California, the record label *must* pay you a minimum of 9k the first year and 12k (if memory serves correctly) each remainin

      • However there are some bands still remaining that have say, Rush comes to mind. They own their copyrights through Anthem Entertainment, which they own 85% of. I don't know how Atlantic comes into play perhaps Atlantic Records gets exclusive rights to distribute their works in US of America and if they decide to change labels the work done under Altantic remains their to distribute but atleast in Canada they are independent.

        Rush gets an unheard of payment per CD sold, something like $1.50 a CD, and their ra
    • The new Cure album also says it has "DVD content"
      • Unless it is a different version to mine, it just has a DVD disc included with it that shows some home footage of them recording the album, it's on a different disc to the music.

        Good album BTW.

        Stuart

  • New Dave Matthews Band album is combination CD/DVD (Score:4, Informative)

    by mgahs ( 686653 ) * on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:51PM (#9910877) Homepage
    I don't think this is industry-wide. The Dave Matthews Band just came out with a live album from their tour-ending shows in 2002. You can buy the best songs from all three shows on a two-disc set, plus it comes with a DVD with 6 or 7 songs from those shows, plus highlights of the Gorge venue.

    It's not as if it's a 2-disc jewel case and a DVD case, I mean it's all one case - open it up and the DVD is on one side, and the two CDs are overlapping on the other side. It's ONE unit.

    Now, the Dave Matthews Band has been around long enough that they have pretty damn good control over their own content, and they release their albums on Bama Rags (their own label, i think), but it's also distributed through Columbia, so it's not completely independent.
    • Also Phish has very good control over what happens, I guess. And, in their contract it explicitally says audience taping is to be allowed unless they say otherwise.

      I like bands that allow the audience to tape their shows, visit Etree [etree.org] for a huge list of live shows by a large number of bands - most of them in glorious lossless SHN or FLAC formats.

      When I found Etree and discovered SHN at the same time I almost came in my pants - among other things they have over 2500 Grateful Dead shows!

  • Not exactly a DVD and a CD but almost (Score:3, Informative)

    by Fred_A ( 10934 ) <fred@fredshomTWAINe.org minus author> on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:51PM (#9910879) Homepage
    Here a group called "Kool Shem" had their latest album released on a disk that has one side pressed as an audio CD and the other as a video DVD, a format they call "DVD [plus]".

    I've only heard of this because of the technical first and have no idea what kind of music they do, apparently it's some kind of rap thing.

    Sample link to an online store [amazon.fr] (Fnac.com)

  • *chuckles wickedly* (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07, 2004 @06:57PM (#9910906)
    Indeed, indeed. This is, as we say at the trekkie conventions, "being hosed by your own picard"

    Sweet, sweet ineed.

  • not exactly new (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LeninZhiv ( 464864 ) * on Saturday August 07, 2004 @07:01PM (#9910921)
    Philips Electronics, the licensor of the CD logo, has refused to allow the hybrid discs to be sold with the CD logo unless the labels guarantee to assume responsibility for "read errors" on the CD side, a spokeswoman for Philips said.

    My personal RIAA boycott has been ongoing for some time now, but the last few CDs that I did buy did not have the CD logo on them, nor do the discs in my wife's (who has not yet seen fit to join the boycott) collection. It seems to me that the big labels have been eschewing the official CD logo for some time now--so the lack of 'official licensing' for DualDisc shouldn't actually be a factor for its acceptance, at least from the CD side.
  • Phrasefinder [phrases.org.uk] gives the meaning of this reference to Petards. Funny, I always thought petards were a suicidal Age of Empires 2 unit...
    • Shakespeare used the phrase "the enginer hoist by his own petar", meaning a (military) engineer blown up by his own bomb.

      The Bard was a master of puns, and knew that his audience would also snicker at the thought of a soldier riding the mushroom cloud of a giant explosion situated between his legs.
    • Petards are a dangerous (to friend and foe alike) early gunpowder weapon.

      Basically, a big metal bucket held against a wall or door filled with gunpowder and shot (sometimes). It's set off via a wick in the back, intention being to make a big hole in the wall or door. Usually they were used for siege situations. The explosion sent the petard flying backwards in parts, and caused damage or breach in the wall or door.br>
      People setting the thing off often died if they could not get away (gunpowder wic

  • Isn't that sort of like SACD? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Graemee ( 524726 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @07:13PM (#9910986)
    Sony's SACD are a CD layer & a DVD (type) layer on the same side of the disk. But the extra layer is not compatible with any players, other than SACD ones.

    Would a real DVD layer work on a player that could support both? IFAIK DVD & CD players currently see the CD layer then ignore the DVD^H^H^SACD layer. I don't know if this is due to the SACD layer being ignored when the player detects the CD layer first or that the DVD layer is not detect as a DVD video layer first. But if the SACD layer was a valid DVD layer would DVD players pick it up? My guess the patents/licensing for this type of disk prevents use or most current hardware would not work without a firmware change.

  • Silly idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @07:26PM (#9911015) Homepage
    Ya know, they could put anywhere from 400 high bitrate MP3's on a single layer DVD to 1600 good bitrate MP3's on a dual layer DVD.

    Nahhhhh, what a silly idea. Who the hell would ever want to replace an entire shelf worth of CD's and cassettes and what-not with one disk you could toss in a (large) jacket pocket?

    -
    • ...across the TOC. Oh, well. (-:

      Most of the CDs you buy aren't anywhere near full, either. Rip and re-burn one, then hold the clone up to the light and see. Unless it's got extra digital content, the commercial CDs are rarely more than 1/3-1/2 full.

      For example "Thick as a Brick" - the full version - is a 43-minute song. Yes, one song. That's the entire album, on an 80-minute medium.

      You should be able to get over 4000 typical high-bitrate Ogg tracks onto a dual-layer DVD. You could probably fit the entire
    • ...people would never pay the same $$$/track as for a plain CD. Not even with a quantity discount. This actually reminds me of a post I replied to earlier, which basicly said "if they were selling it at a fraction of the price, I'd be willing to pay for it". Doh.

      Try taking some basic economic theory. At any price point, there is always someone willing to pay more than $0, yet it is not profitable to offer it to them. Why? Because 100k albums at $10/album is still more than 110k albums at $8/album. From you
    • It's called the "Golden DVD", and our friends at Downhill Battle [downhillbattle.org] have already come up with that. Which means that the odds of the major labels doing it are slim to none. ;-)
    • given the right mix of music...

      They could put this on a website and let folks choose their own! No bandwidth issues, just a card number, and a bit of shipping.

    • At current per-song pricing from "them", with discounting since it's such a large purchase, that slDVD will cost you $320, and the dlDVD will cost you $960. "They" will even throw in an extra backup disc in case you scratch the original, and "they" will even guarantee your purchase for 20 years (if there are any bad recordings, or you destroy the original AND the backup).

      Now, will you buy it? {snort} Of course you won't. OR, yes you would ... you and the 346 other customers the business gets across A

  • "hard-hit music industry" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @07:33PM (#9911042) Journal
    hard-hit music industry had been counting on to aid its recovery
    I'm sorry, I did not realize that increased revenues [kensei-news.com] means an industry is "hard-hit" and in need of a "recovery".

  • Does the price look familiar? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mingrassia ( 49175 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @07:56PM (#9911099)
    From the article:
    "They have sold for about $18.99 in retail stores."

    Does this price sound familiar? It is roughly the price CDs were before they were caught price fixing.

    It seems to me that the recording industry only has one business model ...
    1. Take one good item
    2. Bundle a lot of crap with it you don't want (now this includes video content)
    3. Sell it at a high price that it totally unreasonable.
    DVD of movies are still cheeper than this.

  • And thus spaketh the geeks (Score:4, Funny)

    by davmoo ( 63521 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @08:07PM (#9911131)
    As ye shall sow, so shall ye reap.

  • Petard? (Score:4, Informative)

    by azav ( 469988 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @08:08PM (#9911135) Homepage Journal
    I do not think that means what you think it means.

    Petard [m-w.com]

    • Re:Petard? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bhorling ( 42813 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @08:40PM (#9911255) Homepage
      The phrase "hoist with his own petard" comes from Shakespeare. Petard, as you noted, means an explosive of some sort. While hoist means to lift up. Shakespeare was referring to a sapper, which duing a siege would place an explosive under a castle wall in order to bring it down. If you've been hoisted by your own petard then you've managed to blow yourself up with your own bomb.

    • Re:Petard? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fishstick ( 150821 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @08:45PM (#9911271) Journal
      tell it to the bard:

      http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=petard [reference.com]

      Word History: The French used pétard, "a loud discharge of intestinal gas," for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. "To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices." The French noun pet, "fart," developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, "fart."/i
    • To clarify, the phrase should be "hoist with their own petard" (or hoisted, in modern usage), not "hoist by their own petard." A petard is a bomb that would be hoisted into position to breach a wall or door.

      People who don't know what a petard is commonly hear the phrase "hoisted with his own petard" and think the petard did the hoisting, and then they misrepeat the phrase as "hoisted by his own petard."

      Common usage may have replaced the obsolete verb hoise with its participle, hoist, but it has not change

  • Is it just me?... (Score:5, Funny)

    by KermitJunior ( 674269 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @09:31PM (#9911429) Homepage
    Am I the only one that read this "Recording Industry Hoist By their Own Retard?"

  • Idiots!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gregoyle ( 122532 ) on Saturday August 07, 2004 @09:32PM (#9911430)
    Check this out:

    They see these "DualDiscs" as a next generation product that marries the booming market for DVDs with declining CDs.[emphasis added]


    and then:

    They have sold for about $18.99 in retail stores.


    These things are not unrelated!! Why are DVDs doing so much better than CDs? Gee, could it be because I can get a feature length movie for much LESS than a 74 minute CD? Forget the whole problem of timebomb-popularity industry manufactured arists for just a moment, and think about price. Why is it that I can get Ghost Dog or Pulp Fiction at many movie stores for 10 bucks, but if I want to get the soundtrack it'll set me back 17 or 18? They're older albums, there is NO REASON for them to cost so much.

    The problem with the music industry is that they don't remember the laws of supply and demand. If they lowered the prices of their music, more people would buy it. I have long ago ceased feeling sorry for them. They are digging their own graves by refusing to listen to the market. Here are some quick and dirty solutions...

    People aren't buying CDs? Try lowering the price!! People still aren't buying your manufactured artists? Try signing artists with actual talent and promoting THEM over the plastic hype! People are downloading too many songs for free? (Hey let's sue elementary school kids! Great plan!) Try offering the songs EASILY and INEXPENSIVELY. If you had paid attention to this when we were all screaming at you 4 or 5 years ago this wouldn't be a problem now. Instead you opted for the head-in-the-sand technique and needed to be strongarmed by a computer hardware and software manufacturer.

  • I really like this headline (Score:5, Funny)

    by petard ( 117521 ) * on Saturday August 07, 2004 @09:45PM (#9911472) Homepage
    and am, sadly, absolutely not the AC who submitted it :-)
  • Issue two discs. One a standard CD, and the other a DVD. It costs them like what, 50 cents to burn a CD? Maybe $2 to burn a DVD? It will cost them more in R&D and legal fees to get a dual-format disk.

    Using the Wisdom of Solomon, this problem is solved! Split it in two, and have two disks!
  • hmm, i was confused by the statement 'they have been unable to offer' these discs, because i have seen them in stores. but i guess boston (and the surrounding areas) must have been a test market, according to the article.

    besides that, this is stupid. i hate double sided discs, (the only ones i've seen so far are movies with a fullscreen and widescreen verison on a single DVD). i like the idea of bundling a separate cd and dvd in one package, what's wrong with sticking with that model?
  • All I can say is it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch!"

    Not a Troll, I seriously don't understand the hatred of this industry. Are they any more abusive of thier employees and customers than any other?

    Enlighten me.

    Bill

    • The movie and music recording industries have committed several major sins:

      • Lobbying to make anything that could infringe on copyright illegal.
      • Lobbying to make illegal any activities that could later lead to copyright infringement.
      • Pushing to cripple computer hardware (i.e. DRM) to protect against copyright infringement.
      • Lobbying to extend copyright well past the point at which an objective observer would agree is "limited" as the founding fathers intended.
      • Treating the Internet as something to
    • Well, if you're a musician you hate them because they will only give you a contract on their terms, they promise to distribute and market your record and don't, they will cheat you out of every cent you make and send you a bill for it, they will put you in a holding pattern for as long as they can if they want to keep you away from other labels yet not release your record.

      They assume ownership of music that is not theirs, yet blast you with lawyers if you desire to sample music of theirs. They encourage the flavor of the month, but will not invest in the long term career of an artist. They pay radio stations to play what they want you to buy, leaving less or no room for music not controlled by them.

      (Hours later)

      If you're a customer, you hate them because they treat you like a thief, they only admit the right of Fair Use when backed into a corner, they lobby incessantly for backwards technologies that make the act of listening, using, and enjoying music difficult if not impossible. They push format after format yet say the new format hurts sales. They preach that you can't own a CD - only license it from them, yet won't replace a scratched CD because you own it.

      (yet more hours later)

      If you're a /.er, you hate them for their fake statistics, their inflation of CD burner speeds to number of burners to make piracy sound like a larger problem than it is. You hate them because they fail to address the issues at hand, and attack 'straw men' of their choosing. You hate them because your favorite band broke up after being dicked around by some A&R guy. You hate them because they make backing up your CD collection annoying, difficult, illegal and tainted with 'cracker' spin. You hate them because they lie, they cheat, they steal, they are a monopoly and they use their power to keep others from competing on a equal footing. They have the ear of congress, and use it to make you a criminal - whether you are 'stealing' or not.

      (hey is the sun coming up)

      There you have it Bill. Consider yourself enlightened. There are more stories out there, and not that hard to find. Enlighten yourself, and see what happens when people sell other people art.

    • Are they any more abusive of thier employees and customers than any other?

      Probably not - if you compare with cocaine drug barons and Mexican border slave-farms.

      Be entlightened, ignorant one! [google.com]

  • If only this served as a lesson to RIAA/MPAA/everyone else that patents, trademarks (and copyright too!) do stiffle innovation. If this idea occured to pirates, they would be happily printing such disks in millions without worrying about those pesky patents. But RIAA must suffer from long negotiation with those damn lawyers and the technology that might have saved them (i.e. offering something valuable with CDs to differentiate their product from MP3s) goes unused.
  • I had (have, somewhere) a FreeBSD 4.3 ina DVD box with two disks - a double sided CD, and a combination DVD-CD. I have never had read issues with this.

    Re. the story, all I can say is *smirk*.

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