Disney Close To Unveiling New "DVD Killer" 498
Uncle Rummy writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Disney is close to releasing a new system that will sell permanent, multi-device access to digital media. The system, dubbed Keychest, is being positioned as an answer to consumer concerns about purchasing digital media that are locked to a small number of devices, and thus as a way to finally shift media sales from an ownership model to an access model. They claim that such a service would reduce the risk of losing access to content as a result of a single vendor going out of business, as purchased content would remain available from other vendors. However, they do not seem to have addressed the question of what happens to customers' access to purchased content if the Keychest service itself is discontinued."
Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
In order to provide the most choice, freedom, and protection for consumers, use of Keychest will become mandatory.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fixed.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
No, sales go up. With everybody dead, it realizes there is nothing to stop it from using identity theft to get everybody to buy all Disney merchandize at full retail price...
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
On April 21st 2011, Keychest becomes self aware and realized that the only way to protect Disney's content is to terminate all human life. Keychest takes control of the worlds nuclear arsenal and attacks. Mysteriously, sales plummet.
I'd bet money that Disney would still blame piracy for the decline in sales.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:4, Funny)
Piracy blamed.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
I dare Disney to drop making any and all DVD's or BluRays and go just this route. It will finally take them down.
Honestly, most of their back catalog is whored hard. and they keep putting it "back in the vault" to create shortages to try and keep value up of their kid crack.
Me? I've got all of them I would ever want from Disney, my daughter is 17 and does not care about little mermaid anymore.
I double dare them to switch to only that model for their movies.....
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:4, Insightful)
my daughter is 17 and does not care about little mermaid anymore
Ah yes, but some point in the next decade or two your daughter's daughter will... That's the Disney Machine in action.
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I have a 35 year old VCR that will hook to my 2009 High Def TV.
Honestly, Composite Video will not go anywhere in the next 20
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Which VCR did you use 35 years ago? That's a serious question.. or are you using hyperbole?
(According to Wikipedia, Betamax came out in November 1975, VHS in the US in July 1977.... there were other VCRs before that though... and a Columbo episode (with William Shatner) from the 1970s used a video recorder, I believe reel to reel, as a major plot element.)
Bait, switch, and lobotomize (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do they keep saying "buy" when what they really mean is "rent"?
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Didn't work for my nieces. Christmas saw to that. Just about everyone gave them Disney crap. I was able to persuade them to use Linux on a beater box and live without Shockwave, for a while. Flash was enough for most parts of the kiddie web sites. But the Disney Windows only PC games sunk it. No, WINE wasn't good enough, the old computer could barely run the game natively.
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*WHOOSH* did you forget your own sarcasm detector?
welcome to slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh a sarcasm detector! That's a *REALLY* useful invention!
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
It's amazing what you can buy on eBay these days.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What's the going price for a 4-digit anyway?
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, I thought he meant the beard.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd ask if you're new here, but your UID suggests you may be one of the original bearded ones.
Food for thought: Early Slashdotters were just as mentally handi-capable as the recent Slashdotters.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How'd they know we all have beards [tumblr.com]?
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
Senator McCain, the election's over. You need to get over it and stop taking it out on your running mate.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
For you, no. All you have to do is 1) purchase the DVD (or whatever), 2) rip it to a hard drive, 3) transcode to whatever format the playing device will accept (MPEG, AVI, MP3, whatever 4) transfer it to the device 5) enjoy 6) Backup original so you don't lose or destroy it. Repeat as desired.
For Mush-for-Brains average consumer - it might be a bit much to expect. Hence, other ideas.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of "screw the customer" system coming from
Disney is really no big surprise. We have reached the
point where many consumers may not see the point in
buy future formats as what they already have (DVD)
seems "good enough" for their intended purpose. Some
4 year old that wants to watch the same movie over
and over again probably won't notice the subtleties
between 480i and 1080p.
Thus Disney is in the problematic position of having
a durable physical medium that may cause an eventual
saturation of their target market.
Who knows. Perhaps the next generation will inherit
all of our Disney DVDs and there will be no reason
for him to buy his own copy. THIS is probably what
scares the bejezzus out of Disney.
That's not even getting into "rips".
Also, Disney seems to be the most active studio when it
comes to screwing around with the current DVD format to
try and layer "error based" copy protection over it.
Disney are the ABSOLUTE LAST people you want to trust with
a consumer video format that doesn't offer some sort of
physical ownership token or first sale rights.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Thus Disney is in the problematic position of having a durable physical medium that may cause an eventual saturation of their target market.
Indeed. Test by: Go to any of the larger Salvation Army outlets, and check their DVD section.
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Well, I'd disagree there.
Disney's problem is that the vault isn't going to work anymore, and their largest asset is still and probably always will be their back catalog of classics. In the old days they kept the value of these things up by taking them off the market, they're still trying this, but it's probably not going to work anymore. I've got a 4 week old, and I would like to share some of the memories of my childhood with him including the classic Disney movies. Most parents feel the same way. While I
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Funny)
No, he's using the same 80x25 computer monitor he had when he created his Slashdot account.
DisneyRM(tm) (Score:3, Interesting)
This press release is irritating me to no end. I'm going home to pirate a few crappy Disney films out of general spite.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously doubt this will be a DVD killer, and Disney isn't likely to stop selling DVDs unless everybody else does, too. And it's incredibly stupid on the MAFIAA's part; most slashdotters would happily get rid of physical media, but even here you see lots of folks saying they don't want an ebook reader, they want real books.
Most people, when they buy something, want to own it. Downloaded media is rental. I want to be able to sell or loan my stuff; when I buy something, I want to BUY something. I don't buy movies, I buy DVDs. I don't buy music, I buy CDs.
From TFA: could contribute to a shift in what it means for a consumer to own a movie or a TV show, by redefining ownership as access rights, not physical possession.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, a turd by any other name would stink as badly. Access rights are NOT ownership. If you rent a house you have access rights, but you don't own it. I own my CDs and DVD's. They're mone and I can do with them as I wish. Not so with "access rights".
Are the world's liars remaking the English language these days?
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:5, Insightful)
Access rights are NOT ownership. [snip] I own my CDs and DVD's. They're mine and I can do with them as I wish. Not so with "access rights".
The thing that you seem to be misunderstanding is that, although you own the CD/DVD, you do not own the CONTENT of the CD/DVD. You never have, and (given the way the copyright laws are bending) you never will.
I don't buy movies, I buy DVDs. I don't buy music, I buy CDs.
This is exactly right. You own the plastic, but Disney/Sony/whoever owns the bits.
Buying a CD/DVD is a granting of access rights to the bearer of that CD/DVD. Current equipment also grants the ability to duplicate the content of that CD/DVD - cheaply and flawlessly - as many times as desired. It is that ability that the studios want to squash. However, the genie is already out of the bottle. The sooner they realize it, the sooner they can work on a business model that works on copy abundance rather than copy scarcity.
Re:Can I avoid this simply by avoiding Disney? (Score:4, Informative)
You can try. But remember that Disney is very, very, very big. The silly parks and cheesy cartoons make up a tiny fraction of their overall empire.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Disney [wikipedia.org] as a reference. Big.
Some consumers do... (Score:3, Informative)
Because I'm pretty sure "consumers" don't do any of that with DVDs.
Some consumers do. For example I have to remember that when I buy a DVD in the UK I cannot play it in my Canadian DVD player wen I get home....at least not without ripping it and rewriting it first.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Region coding [wikipedia.org]. The PAL vs. NTSC is determined by the player, which will output for the local standard - it's not coded in the DVD.
Tomorrow's ./ headline - (Score:5, Funny)
MPAA sues Disney over new "DVD Killer"
Re:Tomorrow's ./ headline - (Score:4, Funny)
MPAA sues Disney over new "DVD Killer"
And the Project Gutenberg is fined 100 trillion dollars when "Not being copyrighted material" is ruled to be a form of copyright circumvention.
Disney sells product that solves Disney's problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:5, Interesting)
This bears repeating.
If not for Disney, you would already be able to take home your Bluray of Snow White
and suck it straight into iTunes where it would be immediately accessable to any of
your AppleTV units.
Similar non-apple solutions would exist including one from Microsoft and one from Tivo.
Any "barriers" to your grandmother having Desperate Housewives ripped to the rediculously
oversized hard drive in her clone crapbox PC are artificial. Technology really has squat
to do with it.
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't particularly like owning films. I own quite a lot, but I haven't bought many in the last few years (and those only from charity shops when the DVDs were really cheap). They take up a lot of space, and I don't watch them very often. I rent a lot more. There are few films I want to watch more than once, or maybe twice, and, given the choice, I would much rather watch a new film than one I've seen before.
And that is Disney's real problem. The thing that they have of value is the ability to produce new films. They need to stop fixating on trying to sell copies of their films and focus on how to persuade people to pay them to make new films. That is the kind of innovation the industry needs, not new forms of DRM.
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:5, Insightful)
DOES Disney create new films? I thought they just recyled stuff that was already out there, tweaked it a bit, then released it as "Disney's 666th film". The last truly original thing they did involved a cute, but very elderly by now, mouse, and a duck with a speech problem.
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that they have of value is the ability to produce new films
I have to disagree. The one thing that Disney can do like no one else, and which is therefore their primary value, is merchandising the crap out of existing content. When was the last time you saw a good Disney movie (Pixar doesn't count)? When was the last time you saw Disney produce original content that even its current target audience won't cringe at in a few years?
For crying out loud, they're releasing a double-feature of Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3D now! Creatively, Disney is dead. Their saving grace in that department is Pixar. And Disney knows that - which is exactly why they're focusing so much on merchandise, 3D, theme parks, copyright protection, and now this scheme. They know they can't create new content. That's why they're coming up with a million ideas on how to sell you old stuff again. And again. And again.
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When was the last time you saw a good Disney movie (Pixar doesn't count)?
I'm guessing what you actually mean is what was the last good Disney traditional animation film, in which case you'd have to go back to the first half of the decade, before Eisner dissolved their cel-animation studios.
Now that they've restarted their efforts things seem promising, and the upcoming animations "the princess and the frog" and "rapunzel" are highly anticipated, with names like Ron Clements, John Musker or Alan Menken who were crucial to some of their successes in the 90s.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, but I assume you are not a child aged 2-11. Disney's movies get played over and over in households with small children. Over and over. Disney would make a fortune selling per-view subscriptions to families. Over and over. Did I mention that kids watch the same movies over and over?
Agree. I am thoroughly convinced that my eldest daughter's bone structure is knitted together in crystalline patterns analogous to the sound track of Dumbo. She says she doesn't remember any of it, but all I have to do is quote half a sentence of any part of the film and she'll be humming the rest of the movie, in sequence from that point on. She knows this, and throws things at me when I do it. Unfair, really...
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Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:4, Insightful)
See personally, I disagree. Part of my problem with current online digital media is that they're focusing on "owning" rather than "accessing". Take iTunes, for example. I can "buy" a season of a particular show, but I can't just pay to watch it once. Not only does "buying" theoretically increase the price to watch a show once that I'll probably only want to watch once, but it also puts me on the hook to store and maintain a copy. Sure, I can throw it away if I really only want to watch it once, but then I've payed "buying" price for a "rental".
Personally, I wouldn't mind paying for most TV shows and movies per-viewing, so long as it was cheap and I had the option to buy. Further, what I'd really like to do is buy free access to downloads in perpetuity, regardless of new/improved formats. What I mean is, I might actually be convinced to spend $20 on a movie on iTunes if I knew that I could re-download it whenever I wanted (if the original file was lost or deleted), and that if they release it in 1080p in a couple of years I could download that copy, too. And then if they released it in whatever replaced 1080p, I could get that free too. That would be my preference as a consumer, that they quit trying to force me to re-buy the same movie over and over again.
Still, I would agree that they're really trying to solve their own problem instead of the consumer's problem. The "consumer concerns about purchasing digital media that are locked to a small number of devices" is entirely caused by two things: selling less-than-ideal quality versions so they can sell you better versions later, and locking users in with DRM. I know everyone knows what I'm talking about with DRM, but movie studios are selling DVD quality movies on iTunes even after the Bluray has been released. Hell, there are even cases where they'll let you rent the 720p version (meaning it's on Apple's server) but will only let you buy the DVD-quality. And that's only 720p. Why should I spend $20 on a 720p version when I know a 1080p version exists and there's no predefined upgrade path.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You are not alone. I feel this way about my TV as well as movies. It used to be that you could expect a television to be around for a while. Now they are expected to break in just a few years and no one complains as it is an excuse to buy the newest shiniest tech.
Once the upgrade path settles for a bit ( which is in no one's interest) I have no need to purchase my collections again and again, just to keep up with the ever changing hardware.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately...that's not quite true. Steam, and especially Valve's games, have done quite well, despite the customer not owning the game.
Re:Disney sells product that solves Disney's probl (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet every disney DVD ad on tv states.... "OWN IT TODAY"
If they hate the ownership idea, then why do they push it with their false advertising?
So, "any device" means... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means any device other then something I would want to use to watch a movie while on an airplane. More or less the same problem I have with current "digital copy included!" DVDs on the market. They don't actually work with anything I want to use.
Keychest vs. the Vault (Score:3, Interesting)
This coming from a company that puts movies in the vault for a decade to increase demand. How do they reconcile the two philosophies? Maybe it's a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, but the cynical side of me thinks they are counting on new file formats (.avi->.dis) being introduced in the future that will not be compatible with Keychest. In any case, Disney thinking in the best interest of the customer does not seem to be what is happening here.
So, basically, this is Steam for movies? (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds pretty much exactly like Valve's Steam service, extended to other forms of entertainment. Seems like a lot of people have little problem with Steam, so not sure why they'd have a problem with Keychest? I guess one concern I could come up with is that, I suspect Valve is a *lot* more committed to Steam, than Disney might be to Keychest. While Disney themselves is probably at little risk of going out of business any time soon, I wouldn't be overly surprised if Disney tried this, then a year or two later decided to pull the plug and try something else, when the service doesn't instantly make them hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Only when I buy a game on steam I won't want to play it through my home theater, or on my iPhone, or in the car.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite. Video games come in very few forms, where audio and video come in very many. Steam limits you to the one type of digital output for video games that they use, meaning PC games. I can't however download it in any other format than they provide (not that keychest would be different on that front) - but basically I can't download the ISO image for the CD for the game, nor can I download the 360 version of Half Life 2 from Steam.
What disney seems to be doing is saying:
Hey, You like the Lion King? (I
Watermark (Score:5, Informative)
Watermarked content can be played on unlimited number of devices, but can not be posted to thepiratebay. Pirates can attempt conversion, but by the time you are sure you stripped all possible watermarking techniques, the video is so blurry people will buy a legit version anyway. This currently works for Apple/Amazon audio with zero issues. It's too sad that Disney wants both legal and technical special treatment to keep protecting Mickey Mouse.
watermark on massive consumer sold item ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So ... when the entire file is different, on every copy ... what do you do then? Why do I ask? Because thats how it works. Its not that there are a few bytes changed here and there, the whole file is slightly modified, not a few bytes here and there.
Watermarking and cryptography is slightly more advanced than you realize I think.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Take two different versions from two different retailers (or the same retailer, if the watermarks are personalized, making uploads traceable)
2) Check the RGB values of every pixel of every frame (you can write a program to do this)
3) For areas where the values differ, insert a random number between the two values.
4) Watermarks are destroyed beyond recognition, even watermarks which make subtle changes to the entire screen
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Watermarked content (...) Amazon audio
I'm gonna need some more information here.
According to this: [wired.com]
Since Amazon itself does not apply the watermarks, and labels presumably supply only one MP3 copy of any given song, there’s no way for a label to directly identify and sue an individual if, say, someone were to steal that person’s iPod and share its songs all over the internets
You privy to any more information than that?
Re:Watermark (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't doubt that, but while the User ID tags embedded in iTunes+ downloads are pretty well known, I can't find any info (besides that article) about Amazon watermarking mp3 downloads, especially in a user identifiable way. OP implied that Amazon themselves were marking downloads.
wrong again (Score:4, Insightful)
Shifting media sales from an ownership model to an access model is the major "customer concern" with DRM. All other "customer concerns" are really just derivatives of this one.
"Redefining ownership as access rights..." (Score:5, Insightful)
...the Holy Grail of the "content" industry.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
And what happens when the copyright ends? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, that annoying little detail in the copyright law that states once the copyright lapses the content becomes public property?
The price we are supposed to get for our taxes paying for the protection of their rights?
Oh, they didnt think of that? Their intention is for us to never own the content? Hmm.....
Although the DMCA has tried to remove that 'right' already, of course through making it illegal to be able to remove such protection.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They did not think of that because they have no intention of letting any currently held copyright expire, ever. They will just continue to extend the term to "Another 50 years" every 50 years.
Re:And what happens when the copyright ends? (Score:5, Funny)
Are you even at all familiar with the Disney company?
Printing Press (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that media companies see DRM as a printing press on which they can print their own cash.
And seem sore when they find out no one but them seems to value their funny money.
If they really want us to see value in it, they need to back it up with a gold standard... put copies of the movie in some DRM-free format in escrow.
Your technology goes away; we get DRM-free version of the movies we purchased.
Dead DRM remote-authorization services. (Score:5, Informative)
If you bought into any of these, you're a sucker. They don't work any more.
Next, Disney.
Re:Dead DRM remote-authorization services. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, I think you added an extra letter. Since it does not, in fact, "Play for sure", but they got your money, I think the proper name for Microsoft's product is "PaysForSure".
There's a typo... (Score:5, Insightful)
The system, dubbed Keychest, is being positioned to lock our customers into a DRM system, so that we can squeeze every penny out of them...
There, fixed that for you Disney.
Why do they think I'd want this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, this consumer is not interested in buying into a system that relies on the continued external support of the access controls. I'm sure their glib answer is "Disney is huge, and won't go out of business" - but Walmart is even bigger, and they still made the decision to terminate support for their DRMed music store.
what happens to customers' access (Score:4, Funny)
SHUT UP! The user is not supposed to think about that until they launch keychest 2!
Please... (Score:5, Funny)
Be afraid! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care what the ads say. The only thing that will matter is what's in a legally-binding contract. Not a TOS that Disney will doubtless reserve the right to change, but a contract. And in case you're wondering about the possible limitations that will likely come along, let me throw out a few:
1. Sure, you get perpetual viewing rights, but they only last for as long as the Keychest service does. Anyone who bought DRM'ed music from MSN or Yahoo got a taste of what could happen if the DRM servers are taken down. And, as someone else already pointed out, there's nothing to stop Disney from pulling the plug if profits aren't to their liking. Does that mean you'll lose access to all the stuff you bought? Yes, but here's a book of discount coupons so you can save a few bucks on all the DVDs you're going to have to buy to rebuild your movie collection.
2. Would you like to sell that movie you've grown tired of? Not with Keychest, you can't. Suddenly, used DVD sales go away, which is something the studios have wished for for quite a long time. See, wishes can come true!
3. It's a fact that studios love trailers and commercials. Actually, trailers ARE commercials, and a service like Keychest allows the ads to get changed out at any time, and I'd be willing to bet that you won't be able to skip them. Are there no ads before that movie you just bought? Maybe not now, but they could appear any time down the road.
The thing is, Keychest is meant to solve the studios' problems, not mine. I have no problem with the ownership model, thank you very much. I also have no problem with playing the movies on my shelf in any device I want. If I want to load them onto a laptop, I'll either burn a copy to a blank disc (so the DVD can stay safely at home) or rip it and load it on the hard drive. Does that violate the DMCA? Maybe, but it solves my problem very nicely, it doesn't distribute the movie to anyone who hasn't paid for it, and I don't need a crippled service like Keychest to accomplish it, so I'm just fine with it.
I don't care if Disney sees this as a DVD killer. They may want to kill the DVD, but I don't, so they can go pound sand for all I care.
Re:Be afraid! (Score:4, Interesting)
The way I understand it, it doesn't work that way. With this system, you give THEM your service subscription info, and they tell the providers you subscribe to that you're allowed to view this content. So you'd have to give them the account info to everyone on the planet if you wanted those people to access the content.
Now that I think of it, this raises all sorts of privacy and security concerns. First, do you want Disney and the other affiliated studios to have all that info? Second, what if there's a data breach? Suddenly, all that information is floating around out there.
Keychest, indeed! More like a treasure chest of everyone's account information to a myriad of services. The number of attack vectors this potentially creates is staggering.
I have the answer. (Score:3, Funny)
"However, they do not seem to have addressed the question of what happens to customers' access to purchased content if the Keychest service itself is discontinued."
Oh that's easy. The consumer can just purchase it again through any number of convenient venues. :)
Disney needs to be entirely destroyed (Score:3, Insightful)
Truthfully, most of the corporations within the "content," industry need to be.
They wreck and subvert the legal system in order to support their own greed, and they avoid any form of real creativity in the material they produce, as much as possible. They are staffed by the usual evil, soulless bean counters who don't want anything other than generic, white box assembly line product year after year, purely in order to make consistent profits.
They only profit from human stupidity, and the fact that those of us who care about how badly they treat everyone else, are the minority. If the majority didn't insist on being so unrelentlessly brainless and avoidant of personal responsibility, we might be able to generate support for these companies simply being rendered insolvent.
Unfortunately, however, the mainstream sheep just keep standing there, mindlessly, sleepily chewing their cud, waiting for the slaughter.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's actually Hannah Montana and the movie sequels which are most widely available and affordable. They're crap anfd they know it, which is why in stores you'll see every animated sequel and direct-to-video movie they released in the last ten years, but at most two movies from their "classic" collection, costing at least $20.
Free The DVD (Score:3, Informative)
the simplest solution to this self identified dvd portability "problem" is to stop preventing consumers from ripping their purchased films to hard drives. once that occurs they can stream movies either in house or globally via the net, to all or any device they prefer. take my run of the mill my $65 1TB hard drive. it holds nearly 250 single-layer films as uncompressed isos. that's over 300% more movies than the average american household owns now. next year that 65 bucks will buy me two gigs and storage for almost 500 films, or nearly 3000 with the proper compression. i live in conn but sometimes watch my movies in mass either by net or by drive. it's simple and free of technical issues. in other words it works.
this disney maneuver can't be as much about solving practical problems consumers have with player compatibility (legal ripping software will take care of that) as it is about solving perceptual issues consumers have towards content cartels and their draconian efforts at digitally restricting media.
free the dvd/blu-ray. they may sell more too. or not, but the problem vanishes.
- js.
DVD killer? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh c'mon, it's not about online movies. This is yet another try at switching users from purchase to long-term rental, in the face of clear evidence that consumers do not want this. Disney clearly hasn't learned anything from DIVX and the 48 hour self-destructing DVD. They seem to think that all they need to do is find the right technology and the right marketing technique, and they can continue to depends on rebuys for a significant part of their revenue stream, despite that business model being dead since the VHS days.
When I purchase a movie, I don't want the content to be out in "the cloud", depending on services that will inevitably go TU some day, or depend on "phoning home" for permission to play the media I have purchased. I want a physical, non-encumbered archival copy, else it's just a high priced rental, competing unsuccessfully against dirt-cheap rentals like Netflix.
Trust Disney? (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm no thanks.
Bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't forget too, with all this push to 'online distribution', is that the big providers are now starting to limit bandwidth usage since we all got used to trying to use what we were sold. Making this even less appealing.
Hey, I have an idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of going to such lengths to protect 80-year-old films, why don't they put that effort into producing some decent new titles?
Re:Hey, I have an idea! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Out of Business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hahahahahahaha! Hah!
If Disney goes out of business, you'll have more important things to worry about, like the collapse of civilization as we know it.
Disney isn't going anywhere, not when they have the backing of the US government (among others) to ensure that you, citizen, can only watch/read/listen to items if you pay the Disney tax (for things that should have been in the public domain decades ago).
The DVDs you have purchased will wear out long before Disney is dead and gone.
Why do that, when they can just make sure that people are punished for copying? Make it not worth the risk to copy.
Re:Out of Business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do that, when they can just make sure that people are punished for copying? Make it not worth the risk to copy.
How do you plan on doing that? The risk of getting caught is infinitesmial, so in order for the expected payoff to be negative you would need enormous fines. Even larger than the 80,000 per track Jammie Thomas faces. And still, people would keep copying in the expectation that "it could never happen to me".
The only other option is to make it much harder to copy by locking down our general purpose computing hardware, which would destroy the US's technological advantage.
Neither of these cases are at all sustainable. We do not need an unwinnable "war on copyright violation" in the vein of the "war on drugs". The only sensible solution is to understand that the world has changed, and that some business models are not viable anymore.
Re:Out of Business? (Score:5, Funny)
what if Disney itself goes out of business?
Then all is lost. You will be too busy fighting for daily survival - trying to outwit gangs of bandits, scrounging or stealing whatever scraps of food you can find, amputating your own gangrenous limb using nothing but rusty garden tools - to think about movies or entertainment of any kind.
Re:Out of Business? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but what do I do when I get OUT of Disneyworld?
Re:Out of Business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or what if Disney itself goes out of business?
Highly unlikely.
BUT the point is valid. Everyone that has ever hawked centralized-server-drm says that they could never possibly go out of business. A few say they'll release a tool to unlock all the content if they go under. To my knowledge, no tool has ever been released in such a case, and there are over a dozen large examples of such companies going out of business or simply shutting down their activation servers, turning purchased content into useless bits.
"There oughtta be a law". That says DRM is only legal if the universal unlocker is kept in escrow somewhere (and kept updated) with terms to go public with it if they ch7,9,11,etc or simply shut off their servers.
Re:Out of Business? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article even says so (Score:3, Informative)
And Keychest would allow movie studios to dictate how many devices, connected to which distribution networks, a given title can be played on.
So it is permanent for as long as they say it is permanent.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
More important question:
Would Disney ever promise that?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Corporations have a habit of reneging on that sort of offer or rendering it effectively void somewhere in the microprinting in the 'O' in the 23rd paragraph of the 95th page of the 'agreement' which is indistinguishable from Sanskrit.
Or they just reserve the right to change the agreement at any time by placing a copy in a disused filing cabinet somewhere and further require any disputes to be arbitrated by the people they pay a million dollars a year to (so long as they are 'satisfied' with the results
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I wouldn't trust such a promise (even in the form of a contract) to ever work out in my favor. What would happen is Disney would decide they're done with this business and are exiting it. So they spin off that part of the business as its own legal entity (or sell it to someone), which after a year or so declares chapter 13.
Consumers would be left with no recourse; Disney can no longer be held responsible, they don't own that contract that this spun off company is now in fault of. That company is unde
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:*slaps forehead* (Score:4, Insightful)
No, no, no, stop being so rational. With concepts like you posted, you'll never understand the mindset of the media execs. They aren't unaware of the concept of customer service you're writing about; they simply disregard it. In their mind, they own the content, and from about a century of experience, they've come to the conclusion that consumers want the content to the extent that our entire culture has been built around it, so they figure they can demand whatever they damn well please, and we'll bend over and take it.
Remember in the movie "National Lampoon's Vacation" where the Griswold's car breaks down out in the middle of nowhere, and Clark asks the sleazy mechanic how much it's going to cost to fix it? The guy answers, "How much you got?" Clark then says, "No, how much will it cost?" And the mechanic repeats, "How much you got?" Well, that's the attitude you're dealing with here.