Americans Want More Freedom With DVDs
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
Americans are weighing in on a court case pitting Hollywood execs against Real Networks, which wants to sell an inexpensive package to let consumers copy DVDs to their hard drives. The National Consumers League just gave us a new survey that finds some 90 percent of consumers want the new technology, called RealDVD. Reasons: Consumers are sick and tired of having to repurchase lost or scratched DVDs, and they want to load lots of movies on their computers for long trips. "Consumers' attitudes toward saving content have been shaped by their ability to freely copy the contents of their CD collections to the computers and iPods," says Sally Greenberg, executive director of the consumer advocacy group. "Our survey shows that they are eager to have the same ability with their DVDs." The survey is the latest twist in a case, now in a California court, in which Hollywood has blocked the release of RealDVD. The movie industry fears it's simply software for pirating. Real Networks, however, claims that only the owners of DVDs can download a copy to their computers and that downloads can't be shared.
Other survey highlights:
—More than 35 percent of consumers own more than 50 DVDs.
—93 percent of households with children want to be able to download DVDs.
—55 percent of consumers say they are buying fewer DVDs in the economic recession.
—40 percent said that they would buy more DVDs if they could download them.
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Reader Comments
Uhm, not quite!
The argument that "Real Networks, however, claims that only the owners of DVDs can download a copy to their computers" is incorrect. There's absolutely no way to know if the DVD that was inserted was one the user owned or if it was merely rented. And that's what has the studios concerned. Real claims (wink, wink) they don't think anyone would ever do that but concedes there's no way to prevent a "rent-rip-return" scenario.
Also, in order to make RealDVD work, they have to be able to copy discs that have copy protection. Well, guess what? You can't do that. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) says you can make backup copies of copyrighted works but not if doing so requires defeating any copy protection. Whether RealDVD's method of copying a copy-protected DVD does or does not amounts to "defeating" copy protection is an issue on which we could certainly disagree, but it's disingenuous to pretend it's not a serious question.
Finally, while surveys may indeed show that consumers would like to make copies of their DVDs, I think it's unfair to report on those surveys but conceal the fact that they were paid for by RealNetworks.
But if we concede that consumers probably would like to make digital copies of their movies, the next question seems to be, who should be allowed to make money off those copies? The movie companies have already stepped up on their own, releasing two versions of their latest movies, one with and one without the right to download a single digital copy. No surprise, they charge a couple bucks more if you also want the copy on your PC. But is it fair for Real to step in and make the copy for you? What right do they have to the content?
DVD
The latest DVD I purchased, "Marley and Me", the Blu-Ray edition included three discs: (1) the Blu-Ray version (2) a standard definition version of the DVD and (3) a DVD called a digital version that can be download to a computer or a portable media player. Maybe the movie industry is waking up. It certainly made the premium I had to pay for a Bi-Ray Disc more palatable. Best Buy charged the same price as any new release on Blu Ray. I is called the “3 Disc Bad Dog Edition.
DVD lease
Consumers do not "buy" DVD's. The RIAA/MPAA allows consumers to "lease" the rights to view the dvd copyrighted material. You only purchased the physical media, not the actual movie. If you scratch it, then buy another one. Brought to you by the people that sue kids and anyone else deemed to use P2P to down load music and movies.
Other's beleive when they
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