more on Spielberg loses out at the push of a button

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tim Onosko <onosko () gmail com>
Date: January 11, 2006 12:35:55 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Spielberg loses out at the push of a button
Reply-To: tim () onosko com

Also, re: DRM and Awards Screeners.

In his column in Monday's LA Times, Patrick Goldstein asserted that
Disney's reliance on a copy-protected DVD player that was distributed
(but not used) last year could be blamed if it comes up short in the
Oscar nominations department.

From Goldstein's column: "As it enters the post-Michael Eisner age,
the studio remains as enigmatic as ever, daring enough to make its TV
shows available on iPods, so corporately timorous that it locked
itself out of the Oscar race by making academy members watch its films
on those crazy Cinea DVD players."

"Those crazy Cinea DVD players" were made by a division of Dolby, led
by the principals behind the old DIVX pay-per-view DVD, designed to be
a strong-encryption DVD system and sent gratis to those who vote on
awards, as well as critics and some reporters.  Unfortunately, the
players were distributed last year, but no one made discs for the
system.  This year, Disney relied upon it, but by that time, many of
the players had been lost or forgotten in garages and kids' rooms --
anywhere but the living rooms and screening rooms where Academy
members watch these copies.

And, in the end, some of the films that Disney sought to protect (in
particular, it's hit "Narnia") were bootlegged and posted to the
Internet anyway when pirates figured out how to copy the discs.



On 1/11/06, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell () newcastle ac uk>
> Date: January 11, 2006 4:38:01 AM EST
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Spielberg loses out at the push of a button
>
> Dave:
>
> Here's a nice front page story from today's (UK) Guardian, about
> region-protected preview DVDs, and how Steven Spielberg is likely to
> lose his chance of getting a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and
> Television Arts ) award for his latest film.


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