Fewer People Copy DVDs Than Once Thought

MasterOfMagic writes "According to a survey reported at the NY Times, very few people actually have and use DVD copying software. The survey reports that only 1.5 percent of computer users have DVD copying software, and of those 1.5%, 2/3rds of them don't even use it. The survey also revealed that users were more likely to download DVDs than copy DVDs that they borrowed or rented, and that about half of all downloaded DVDs are pornography. According to the survey's lead analyst, 'With music, part of the appeal is sharing your own playlists and compilations with your friends ... I'm not sure people share their porn the way they share their music.'"

Really not surprised

[wawannem]

To me, the appeal of a movie is seeing it, not seeing it over and over again. If a friend has a movie I'd like to watch, I'll borrow the DVD, watch the movie and give it back to him. Even the movies I like, I can't see myself copying... Now my kids on the other hand... Put it this way, if I have to watch Monsters, Inc. one more time!!!!

That's because it is very hard to do...

[maillemaker]

I played around with at least 6 different free applications that purported to, in conjunction with DeCSS, rip and copy DVDs, so as to archive DVDs I already own in my collection, and safegaurd the originals from getting scratched.

I can't even get the damn ripping part to work. Without fail, either the video is crappy or the audio is out of sync with the video.

Then we get to the burning part. It seems a crap-shoot as to whether or not the finished burn will actually work. DVDs I've burned seem to play OK in my new $30 Walmart DVD player, but pixellate and stop playing on my 1998 vintage RCA DVD player.

So I quit trying. I mean it takes hours to rip and burn, and in the end it was a crap-shoot as to whether or not the DVD would actually play.

It's easier to download and play off of the hard drive.

Re:Really not surprised

[Captain Splendid]

Well, that and DVDs, unlike CDs, are priced decently. You can do a lot of DVD buying and still not go over $10 a piece, whereas you need to shell out $20 easy for a CD. can't believe the RIAA hasn't figured this out yet.

Re:Really not surprised

[LordNimon]

The cost of a movie is frequently paid (at least, for the most part) when the movie is in the theaters. By the time the DVD is made, there's already been significant revenue to cover the costs. With a CD, however, the only revenue is generated only once the CD is sold.

Re:I have copied DVDs

[griffjon]

Indeed, I often rip my DVDs to insure against scratches, especially if I plan on loaning them to friends, carrying on a trip, etc.

Re:Really not surprised

[Fallingcow]

Uhh.....

Concerts?

Licensing for any and all commercial uses of any tracks from the disc?

CD sales are far from the only revenues generated by the music on a given CD, especially if it's at all popular.

Yeah, some artists don't do concerts and aren't popular enough to get any licensing deals, but I don't think that very many of them are with the RIAA anyway...

Re:Really not surprised

[SerpentMage]

You hit it right on the head here. It is amazing a movie that typically costs X million to produce costs about as much as a CD. Somewhere, somebody is not understanding the economics of this. I personally have a huge DVD collection and do watch films multiple times. And I even buy TV Series on DVD, especially since many series missing one or two episodes on TV means you loose a thread. And the last reason why I buy DVD's is because burning or copying a DVD takes AGES! To get a similar quality you have a huge honken file.

Really?

[morari]

No one surveyed me... Why do you think I pay for NetFlix?

Re:Really not surprised

[Wavicle]

Well, kids are a great example of why I would like to START ripping DVDs.

I can tune out the 421st showing of Dumbo. But what I have trouble tuning out are the 10 minutes of advertisements that Disney tacks on IN FRONT of Dumbo. There is a 5 second window when I can press a button on the remote to skip the advertisements, if I miss it, I must either watch the advertisements, or eject/inject the disc again and sit through the FBI warning (doesn't hold on all players, one of my players can jump to the root menu after the advertisements start).

I would really like to rip a copy of Dumbo that starts playing as soon as I put the disc in, removes macrovision and encryption. I'd also like to transcode it to fit on a 4.7GB DVD. Yes, I know it sounds like I want to pirate the movie, but really I just want control over how I watch a movie I legally paid for! (okay, that's a little white lie, my mother bought the kids the Dumbo movie.)

Can anybody point me at a utility (Linux or Windows, I have both) that does this without me having to baby step it through 5 different utilities and a hundred command line options?

WHAT KIND of IDIOTIC headline is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fewer People Copy DVDs Than Once Thought

Is this what Slashdot has come to? PLEASE. Next topic up, "Some people think that there are more dolphins than whales in the ocean"

This site is run by morons.

Re:Nah, not so hard, try it this way...

[fireman sam]

6) Realize that your Netflix account name is the same as your slashdot account name
7) Answer knock on the door
8) Disappear

No profit for you.

Yeah, right

[cdrguru]

I know something about the 321 Studios product DVD X Copy. The company was raking in well over $15,000,000 per month while this product was on the store shelves. With around a $50 price tag, that equates to 300,000 new users each month. Were they just buying it to have it and didn't intend on using it?

This is one product and the company was sued out of existance. There are dozens of products available today some free, some costing $50 or more. The folks behind 321 Studios are apparently selling their product from Canada now. Do you think there are no customers?

I suspect there are still well over 300,000 acquisitions (free or otherwise) each month of some type of DVD copying software. In the years since this got started this probably means there are over 100 million users.

Yeah, not as prevalent as once thought. Sure.

Re:Really not surprised

[Grym]

At the point of being redundant, this is again because the DVD is priced at the optimal point on the supply/demand curve -- and not based on the cost of the plastics or even the production costs.

Okay... so when people stop buying CDs in droves (often while citing the price of CDs relative to other goods in their lives), what does that have to say about the location of the current price of CDs on their supply-demand curve?

-Grym

Re:Really not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything about the RIAA/MPAA's loss of revenue were true then we wouldnt be hearing about their strife anymore because they wouldnt have the money to buy off every government on the planet, while buying a significant percentage of airtime on television and throwing up billboards all over. The fact that they are still so loud is damned good proof as any that they are still rolling in money. They need to adapt, their business model is like a hundred years old and this isnt the same world that used Vinyls. What's worse is their reaction to their percieved loss of revenue. They are still reporting profits from their industries, but are blaming pirating for decreasing their perceived profits. Their reaction has been to accuse ALL of their customers of pirating, which no one likes being accused of because the old penalty was to be hung from the gallows at dawn. You pay for a movie at a movie theatre, or you buy a CD - and the movie starts up and an ad plays calling everyone in the theatre a pirate, when obviously they are still supporting the industry because they are already In The Theatre, or printed on the CD is some bullshit equivilant. People dont like ads, so not only are you accusing your customers of something they are clearly not, or are at least not doing right then, but you are also wasting all their time, because either they are not pirates - or they support this product enough to pay for it in the most overpriced fashion possible (a theatre, or buying a CD at release, or buying $60 t-shirts at a concert). They need to radically redefine their business model, and then they would go back to being the corporate fat cats they always were (and still are).

First off, understand that not all pirated music would have been legitimately purchased otherwise. That's huge, because honestly, if someone has 40 gigs of music on their HD, that doesnt mean they would have bought like 400 albums in real life, they are just downloading whole band discographies because they can thanks to the internet. They might have bought one album (probably the newest, or the one they heard a song from and liked), but to expect them to have gone out and bought 10 albums of a band they liked one song from is absurd.

Secondly, CD stores are a waste of time for many of us, decrease their number (which will decrease their cost of running them at loss), and move into the online world. Pull together a cartel as you had before on CD's, though you may have to grandfather certain new companies that moved in during your failure to act, such as iTunes Music Store (pull them into your little government sanctioned cartel). Cut off all other competition (since for some reason you are allowed to do this legally), so that anyone who wants music has to go through you).

Thirdly, you need to make it sound easy and cheap to get music legitimately, you also need that to be true. So make a system that is easy, and cheap, to distribute music to the customers - much like iTunes. The success of iTunes is a reflection of their better business model, and that they thrive despite piracy is because they are offering people a legitimate alternative at only a small cost, while providing a more cohesive music experience (no dealing with bittorrent or irc and extracting zip's and rar's and then sorting them into WinAmp Playlists, their program does it all for you.

Fourthly, stop calling your customers pirates - it annoys your customers to be wrongfully accused of crimes they are obviously not committing merely by the fact that they see the ad you place (ie. place them in different spots with penetration into the pirate community, not the customer database). Meanwhile, every actual pirate takes pride in the term, and are getting delusions-of-freaking-awesomeness, because pirates are freaking awesome! Yarrrr!

Fifthly, stop buying off governments at great expense, stop trying to attack your customers through sideways taxes on related media like CD-R's as well (and I dont mean just taxes on CD-R's, stop all sideways attacks on customers). Get your act together, build a modern business model, ENACT it, then you will see the return to your ancient glory your so adamant on telling us all about.

Re:Really not surprised

[dangitman]

And the last reason why I buy DVD's is because burning or copying a DVD takes AGES!

I guess if you consider 20 minutes to be "ages." I don't - because it's a background task. It only takes a couple of minutes of actual human interaction. The rest of the time you can do something else.

But buying DVDs sucks, because they often have those unskippable anti-piracy ads and FBI warnings at the start. By making a copy, I can eliminate those and other navigational restraints from the DVD. It's quite amazing really - the copy is actually a better product than the original! I always find this hilarious - because the anti-piracy ads on DVDs actually encourage me to copy because I can get rid of them that way. Buy the commercial DVD, and you are stuck with that crap.

To get a similar quality you have a huge honken file.

Similar quality? No, I get the exact same quality. It's a bit-for-bit copy. And why would I worry about the size of the file? I store it on a blank DVD, it's not taking up space on my hard drive.