> I read that main DVD companies (like: Matsushita, Pioneer and Victor Co.)
> delayed new DVD release because of a craker in Norway who found a way to
> uncode the DVD and allow it to be copyed to a hard disk in a very easy
way,
> they knew that it would be a matter of time before someone did but what
they
> where not expecting was that it would happen before the actual new
release!
This is an interesting development.. What actually happened is that the
cracker in Norway found a way to crack the encryption for DVD Video. This
wasn't motivated by piracy (at least not completely :), but simply because
Linux users have been waiting too long for someone to write an officially
sanctioned Linux DVD player and so far, nobody has. So, industrious as they
were, they figured out a way to decompress the DVD video, simply to write
players for Linux.
Anyway, the new DVD release that's being delayed is DVD Audio. The spec was
complete and the companies were just about ready to start shipping products,
when the DVD Video crack caught them by surprise, and they hurriedly delayed
it purely because they want to put stronger encryption in there. Once more
screwing over their customers.. Personally, I don't get it! This is the
same thinking which has brought us "features" like SCMS, that only serve to
annoy musicians, Linux users, and anyone else who wants to make legitimate
backup copies or mixes of the media that they've purchased, while not doing
anything to stop the serious pirates, who ALWAYS find a way to bypass it.
Remember the on-disk copy protection on those 8-bit (C64, Apple ][, etc.)
computer games some of us used to play in the 80's and how they banged up
the disk drive head? Remember how easy it was to get cracked versions of
any of those games? Remember how it sucked if the floppy disk went bad and
you didn't have a backup copy? Well, the big companies still haven't
figured it out..
Anyway, this doesn't really affect most of us. If 99% of people can't tell
the difference between MD and CD, or MP3 and CD, then won't 99.99% of people
not be able to tell the difference between CD and anything better? Why are
they bothering? Right now Sony's selling their competing format, Super
Audio CD, and the only player I've seen costs $3500 from Crutchfield! The
only thing remotely interesting about DVD Audio to me is the multi-channel
aspect (which Sony's SACD is theoretically capable of, but Sony hasn't
shipped any players to support it). Since I was born in 1977 I never got to
experience the wonders of "quadraphonic sound", but it's highly amusing to
me that the home DVD phenomena seems to be making the idea of 4 or 5-channel
discrete audio promised and not quite delivered in the 70's, a reality in
the late 90's. While it makes sense for movies, will it make a real
difference for music? We'll just have to wait and see..
The nice thing is that, once these companies slip, and their pathetic
attempts at keeping control away from us, the consumers, fail, there's no
turning back. DVD Video is cracked and they can't do anything about it
because they won't dare start shipping new DVD's that don't play on the old
players! Similarly, whatever happens with DVD Audio and SACD, record labels
will have to keep shipping music on plain old CD that we can happily
continue to copy to our MD's and MP3's.. But 20 (or even 10?) years from
now, when the big companies get ready to roll out their new technologies, be
very afraid, because they'll have learned from their mistakes of the past,
and they'll have discovered even more annoying ways to screw us, the
consumers, over.
Ok, that's my political rant for the day. :)
Here's a link to a good slashdot story covering the DVD audio situation:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/02/1246247&mode=thread
and one on the Linux DVD crack:
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/11/14/0524254.shtml
-Jake
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