“I’m Sorry Dave, I Can’t Do That”

by on February 17, 2006 · 10 comments

TechDirt points out yet another article about how the content industries are shooting themselves in the foot with overly aggressive copy protection. Next-generation video formats will only allow themselves to be viewed at full resolution on certain hardware. A lot of computer hardware being sold today doesn’t make the cut, despite the fact that they are physically capable of displaying the content at full quality. The result: you buy a shiny new computer with a Blu-Ray drive, and find that it plays Blu-Ray movies at lower quality than your old computer played DVDs. That will really get users excited about adopting the new format!

Why is Hollywood going out of their way to piss off their own customers?

The copy-protection muddle stems from Hollywood studios’ desire to avoid the film piracy that was born when tools for unlocking the encryption technology on today’s DVDs began spreading online in late 1999.

But that completely misunderstands why the DVD’s copy protection system failed. Hackers didn’t use the “analog hole” to record unprotected copies of DVD content. Rather, they reverse-engineered the encryption itself, allowing them to decode DVDs directly. All the “analog hole” countermeasures in the world won’t do a bit of good once the content itself has been decrypted.

This wouldn’t be the first time Hollywood has done its best to strangle a promising technology in its cradle by treating its customers like criminals.

Update: Ars highlights another way that copy protection on next-gen video formats is likely to irritate customers: because the copy-protection specs are still being negotiated with barely a month to go before release, the first batch of HD-DVD players will probably require a firmware upgrade before they’ll be able to actually play videos.

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About Tim Lee

Timothy B. Lee (Contributor, 2004-2009) is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is currently a PhD student and a member of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. He contributes regularly to a variety of online publications, including Ars Technica, Techdirt, Cato @ Liberty, and The Angry Blog. He has been a Mac bigot since 1984, a Unix, vi, and Perl bigot since 1998, and a sworn enemy of HTML-formatted email for as long as certain companies have thought that was a good idea. You can reach him by email at leex1008@umn.edu.

Read more articles by Tim Lee.

  • http://www.blindmindseye.com MikeT

    I for one won’t be buying the new movies that come out on these. First generation DVD is all that I need if the alternative is “all your base are belong to MGMUniversalSonyDisney.”

    Just what is supposed to be the incentive to buy into a platform that takes the movies down to VHS, not DVD, quality anyway?

  • http://www.blindmindseye.com MikeT

    I for one won’t be buying the new movies that come out on these. First generation DVD is all that I need if the alternative is “all your base are belong to MGMUniversalSonyDisney.”

    Just what is supposed to be the incentive to buy into a platform that takes the movies down to VHS, not DVD, quality anyway?

  • http://zgp.org/~dmarti/ Don Marti

    If DVD DRM really mattered to the market, why did theater-to-DVD delays get shorter after DeCSS and DVD X-Copy, not longer?

    DRM seems to be about cartelizing the market for players, not about restricting copying.

  • dmarti

    If DVD DRM really mattered to the market, why did theater-to-DVD delays get shorter after DeCSS and DVD X-Copy, not longer?

    DRM seems to be about cartelizing the market for players, not about restricting copying.

  • Ned Ulbricht

    Speaking of “overly aggressive copy protection,” Techdirt also points out that Elektra’s attorneys have crossed the line by targetting Patti Santangelo’s children.

  • Ned Ulbricht

    Speaking of “overly aggressive copy protection,” Techdirt also points out that Elektra’s attorneys have crossed the line by targetting Patti Santangelo’s children.

  • phonon

    “find that it plays Blu-Ray movies at lower quality than your old computer played DVDs.”

    Not true. Crippled Blu-Ray viewers will play at quarter resolution, 960 x 540, which is more than a DVD (720 x 480.) Of course, it can’t compare to full HD resolution, (1920 x 1080.)

  • phonon

    “find that it plays Blu-Ray movies at lower quality than your old computer played DVDs.”



    Not true. Crippled Blu-Ray viewers will play at quarter resolution, 960 x 540, which is more than a DVD (720 x 480.) Of course, it can’t compare to full HD resolution, (1920 x 1080.)

  • http://www.angryblog.org/ Tim

    phonon,

    I stand corrected; my apologies. Still, it’s likely to irritate movie buffs whose displays are larger than 960 X 540, which these days is almost all of them.

    Thanks for pointing that out.

  • http://www.angryblog.org/ Tim

    phonon,

    I stand corrected; my apologies. Still, it’s likely to irritate movie buffs whose displays are larger than 960 X 540, which these days is almost all of them.

    Thanks for pointing that out.

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