IP: DVD mystery

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> From: "David R. Guenette" <guenette () mediaone net>
> To: "Dave Farber" <farber () cis upenn edu>
> Cc: <rsolomon () dsl cis upenn edu>
> Subject: DVD mystery
> Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 11:48:11 -0500
>
> First, as to the technical merits of the various arguments regarding DVD 
> copying methods, including how DVD-RAM and DVD-R/W work, a good starting 
> place is the following URL, to what is still informally known as Robert's 
> DVD Page: http://www.unik.no/~robert/hifi/dvd/. From this page one can 
> find references and links to many relevant publications, including EMedia 
> Professional, of which I am former editor, and articles by contributing 
> editors Hugh Bennett, Dana Parker, and Bob Starrett, all of whom 
> understand the technical issues as deeply as anyone, unless they've given 
> up the field and turned to goat farming since my last contact. Replication 
> News, a Miller Freeman monthly, is a trade magazine for the duplication 
> and replication industry and can be useful; EE Times, published by CMP, 
> offers the best, but only occasional coverage of the fundamental 
> technology of DVD.
>
> Nonetheless, I believe that the issue about DVD and piracy is a red 
> herring. Pirate labs have had a number of ways to duplicate DVD-Video, up 
> to and including taking an original disc apart and making a master for 
> stamping new ones from the pits and lands of the actual source disc; this 
> "copy" would contain identical information, down to the hidden keys, and 
> hence be perfectly playable. There are ways to do this digitally (find the 
> right hidden sectors, and replicate the entire bit-for-bit disc image) as well.
>
> I have long held (as do most others in the field) that the security 
> implementations imposed by the DVD Forum have little to do with foiling 
> large-scale piracy and everything to do with discouraging individual 
> copying. What the movie studios are most concerned with is that Mr. and 
> Mrs. John Q. Public will make a copy of a rented film, and therefore not 
> rent it again, or, indeed, purchase it. The solution, the DVD Forum 
> concluded, was to make copying difficult enough so that very few Mr. and 
> Mrs. John Q. Publics will do it, and that doesn't involve making it 
> impossible, but simply enough of a pain in the neck.
>
> The inclusion of Macrovision is one sign of this intent. DVD-Video itself, 
> in its limited access output of the CSS (content scrambling system) 
> circuitry, inhibits typical copying on PCs, since the signal is physically 
> restricted through the playback card, making it a hassle to connect, for 
> example, the DVD-Video signal within a PC to a hard drive.  And, of 
> course, if you don't record the key in your copy, you don't have a signal 
> that can be played on DVD-Video players. There are PC system workarounds, 
> but not many folk are likely to create custom cable taps, and then there 
> are the problems of needing to get into the sector and bit levels of the 
> disc structure, and not too many of us really enjoy hexadecimal editing. 
> Even as most recently seen by DeCSS, there are other ways to do it, but 
> the techniques are hardly ones the typical PC user will try, never mind 
> succeed using.
>
> But what about DVD-to-VHS copying? In my opinion, this is much more of a 
> home market threat, and the reason why Macrovision--a technology developed 
> to make VHS copying difficult (by adding types of signal noise and quality 
> reduction to the copy, if I understand the technology correctly). The 
> reason is that the studios don't want people to copy movies, whether it is 
> DVD-to-DVD (which is only now becoming possible, with the marketing of 
> DVD-RAM, and DVD-R drives, but still very expensive), or, more to the 
> point, DVD-to-VHS. Disney's outstanding reluctance (it was the last major 
> studio to sign up for DVD) is telling: after all, how many parents have 
> rented "The Little Mermaid" a half-dozen times, before buying a copy? I'd 
> guess we're talking about hundreds of thousands, at least, multiplied by 
> the X number of Disney films, and that is big money.
>
> The most interesting question is, perhaps, does Disney really have a 
> right, morally speaking, to this big money? After all, if the studio is 
> making a profit on theatrical releases, covering costs, paying its talent, 
> marketing, etc., and then making money on rentals, and film sales, as well 
> as covering bombs, just how much more should the public shell out for 
> repeated viewing? At what point does the citizen earn (buy) the right to 
> make or own a copy of the art itself, especially when the art form is 
> inherently duplicable, and, indeed, is a distributable medium?
>
> And when it comes to home copying? Price the darn titles low enough and 
> the studios would further expand their market, add profit, and reduce 
> illegal copying to inconsequential levels. After all, how many people want 
> to set up a dual disc drive/recorder configuration, buy the blank media, 
> and spend the time recording the stuff, when they can simply buy the 
> films, music, etc. they want to have, for a reasonable price.  There are, 
> of course, some really interesting digital rights management technologies 
> coming to market, and these represent another type of solution.  Please 
> note that I'm not against protecting intellectual property; I'm against 
> this protection being intrusive, clumsy, and too much in the interest of 
> intellectual property holders at the undue expense of citizens.  (Ask me 
> what I think about CEO and sports franchise salary/profit trends.)
>
> I think that the larger issue is the copyright issue, and the balance 
> between the public good (arguably, not having to pay $100 for repeated 
> rentals and purchase) and the property rights of the creators. The legal 
> pendulum has clearly swung in favor of the property holder, and the 
> corporate holder at that (200 years of copyright protection? Only 
> corporations have that kind of lifetime). I think that it is a very good 
> thing that the technology is well-positioned to return the situation to a 
> more reasonable balance in a de facto manner. By the way, when it comes to 
> large-scale pirating, there are existing legal enforcement mechanisms, and 
> while these are no doubt somewhat inefficient, watchdog organizations such 
> as SIIA, BSA, and the individual publishing companies themselves do have 
> protection. Basically, the studios don't want to have to make the effort 
> to protect their businesses from such threats, and are happy enough to 
> inconvenient consumers with such things as regional coding and copy 
> protection, in effect making everyone else do their work.
>
> The biggest problem may well be the greed of the studios (in the case of 
> music and film) and the consumer electronics companies behind the players. 
> Like CD, DVD represents both a great improvement of the reproduction and 
> playback art, plus a realizable reduction in cost of goods and 
> manufacture, both in terms of replicated discs and the players themselves. 
> Yet CD-Audio titles remain, typically, in the mid-teens in price, and 
> DVD-Video discs are as expensive or more expensive than VHS tapes, while 
> DVD-Video players are much more expensive than VHS players. The strange 
> thing about this is that DVD devices are cheaper and easier to manufacture 
> than VHS players and tapes, since they are more digital (ICs, benefiting 
> from the economics of silicon), and have no complicated transport 
> mechanisms, and leverage the research and development and manufacture 
> infrastructure of CD-Audio, a twenty-year-old, highly successful product. 
> The discs themselves hold many of the same advantages--well-established 
> manufacturing processes and facilities, inherently cheaper replication 
> process (no linear duplication requirements that VHS demand), and even 
> packaging, shipping, and handling is cheaper. But, wait, there's more! 
> Whenever a new medium comes to market, content holders get to re-sell 
> existing product in the new medium, usually at high margins, as music 
> studios have done with LPs, CDs, and now threatening to do with DVD-Audio, 
> while movie studios have moved from VHS to DVD.
>
> Unfortunately, the culture of the studios and electronics companies is to 
> want their money now, as much as possible, to overcome investment and risk 
> of development, manufacture, and marketing, and, in all likelihood, make 
> the next quarter and the stock price look as good as possible. The irony 
> is that their products are quite compelling and that they could be making 
> more money by selling much more product (further reducing costs per 
> product) at lower prices. DVD-Video could have been many-times more 
> successful in terms of installed base, market penetration, and resale of 
> already amortized content in the new media, if only these companies had 
> believed in their own marketing message. In short, they are greedy, fairly 
> stupid businessmen, who intentionally delayed the start of the DVD market 
> by at least one year, or two, if you also count the delay caused by the 
> jockeying for advantage in the format battle between the Philips/Sony axis 
> and the Toshiba/Time Warner axis. One or two years of missed market seems 
> like real money lost, but then, what do I know? I don't have an MBA.
>
> Ever read Frank Norris' The Octopus"? What the railroad was in the 
> mid-to-late 19 century, media (including telecommunications and 
> cable/satellite, etc.) is to late 20th-early 21rst century. I can only 
> hope that the relative lack of entry barrier, will help even the match 
> this time around. After all, it is much easier for electronic publishers 
> to do their thing than for would-be railroaders to build competing railroads!
>
>
> David R. Guenette, Editorial Director
> New Millennium Publishing (http://www.nmpub.com)
> 18 1/2 Tremont Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
> 617/868-6093 (voice/fax); guenette () mediaone net