Newsletter sign-up: 
Get Breaking News on your cellAre movie studios warming up to "managed copy"?
2:46 PM Thu, Mar 13, 2008 | Permalink |
E-mail News tips
 |
 |
 
|
|
July 2008
Recent Posts
'The Dark Knight' breaks opening weekend record 'The Dark Knight' raking it in Batman car rolls into Dallas on Friday Chris Vognar on KERA's 'Think' Categories
GuideLive.com
Entertainment Blogs |
It's a capability that the studios were talking about before either Blu-ray or HD-DVD hit the market, and I have to admit I was skeptical they'd ever actually implement it. So kudos to Fox and Lionsgate for taking baby steps in this consumer-friendly direction, and let's hope this is just the beginning of a trend. |
 | |
|
Spotlight
|
|
Comments
Posted by Holly @ 3:21 PM Thu, Mar 13, 2008
Do you think this is something they will embrace on regular DVDs? Or is time to just start upgrading to Blu-Ray now (even on my sad non-HD TV)?
Posted by Victor Godinez @ 3:26 PM Thu, Mar 13, 2008
Honestly, I don't think this feature will ever come to regular DVDs from the main studios. They want consumers to start migrating to the more profitable Blu-ray format, and I'm sure this feature is one of the incentives to make the switch.
On the other hand, there are all sorts of free, semi-legal (or just plain illegal) programs on the Web that let you copy regular DVDs to a hard drive or portable player. So there's that.
Posted by Holly @ 4:45 PM Thu, Mar 13, 2008
True enough. Do you think studios will ever accept the idea that copying a DVD to your iPod is no different than a ripping a CD?
Posted by Victor Godinez @ 5:09 PM Thu, Mar 13, 2008
Two thoughts on that question:
One, I think you actually have to flip the question, because music studios almost certainly wish you couldn't copy your CDs to a computer or iPod. But compact discs were created as an unprotected media almost two decades ago, before anyone even had CD drives in their computers. When everyone realized in the late 90's that they could easily rip the songs off their discs as digital files, it was too late to go back and rewrite the format. So it's not like the music companies had the best interests of consumers at heart. They just couldn't predict how CDs would eventually be used. But by the time DVD technology went mainstream, the movie companies were far more savvy and deliberately acted to sidestep what they saw as the flaw of CDs: the lack of copy protection.
Two, from a legal perspective, you actually are allowed to copy a DVD to your PC or iPod or whatever. What you are not allowed to do is break the copy protection on commercial DVD discs. So the DVD copying software you can buy on store shelves at Best Buy and so forth is legal because it invariably does not let you break the encryption on commercial DVD movies. If you want to break that encryption, you have to download software hosted on servers in Russia or Canada or wherever that is specifically designed to crack the copy protection software.
Bottom line: while it seems like, ethically, you should be entitled to watch a movie you've purchased in any way you want, the movie studios have managed a deft bit of legal jujitsu to make that seem like a privilege instead of a right.
So, no, you can forget about managed copy ever coming to DVDs.