Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Blu-ray discs get Managed Copy

"The genius of the whole scheme is that these very same rights, which are free and easy to exert on non-encrypted digital media like CDs, is that rightsholders can then sell these very rights back to consumers for extra cash. Want to put a copy of your legally-purchased new film on your iPhone or laptop for that flight to LA? You can't—but you might soon be able to purchase the right.

This isn't the sort of change that could work in the marketplace—consumers don't like it and would simply bypass the encryption if the tools were easy and legal. Thanks to the DMCA, they are not, and the companies that traffic in them are usually located offshore.

The argument that this is about "stopping piracy" might have held water a decade ago, but it's now sinking like a leaky yacht. All of these films remain widely available online to anyone motivated to seek them out. Not that DRM has ever done much to stop piracy anyway, since all it takes is a single cracked copy to make a mockery of absurdly complicated technical lockdown attempts."

in reference to:

"After four years in the oven, "managed copy" is done—and boy, is it a stinker."
- Blu-ray discs get Managed Copy; hardware support nonexistent - Ars Technica (view on Google Sidewiki)

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