Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: DVD mystery
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 11:53:16 -0500
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
Current thread:
- IP: DVD mystery Dave Farber (Jan 05)