Hollywood Escalates "DVD Ripping" Case To International Incident (torrentfreak.com) 174
A group of Hollywood studios and technology partners have asked the U.S. Government to assist in solving a long-running court battle against the Antique based software company SlySoft. Despite an earlier conviction SlySoft continues to offer its DVD and BluRay ripping tools. To progress the matter, rightsholders have asked the U.S. to place Antigua on the Priority Watch List. "Circumvention through programs such as SlySoft's AnyDVD HD is a source for widespread, large-scale and commercial copyright infringement by users located in the United States, as well as Antigua & Barbuda, and many other countries," AACS writes (pdf).
Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.
They should tell Hollywood to get bent. Piracy is going to happen regardless of what they do; this is money wasted anyway.
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I'm not in US jurisdiction either, and I have a right to format shifting for fair use purposes. The more Hollywood pulls crap like this, the less likely I am to send money their way in the future.
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
But on the bright side of this story:
Hollywood has basically let all of us know that this software works really good for ripping movies. Thanks for the well advertised endorsement!
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Wait what? I think I missed that Snowden revelation.
I was unaware that the NSA cared about Hollywood.
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We have a winner!
The NSA cares if the government cares ... (Score:2)
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Antigua is permitting this to happen LEGALLY, because quite some time ago, the US lost a ruling by the WTO that they were improperly blocking betting and gambling services in Antigua. http://www.ip-watch.org/2014/04/26/antigua-questions-efficacy-of-wto-dispute-system-over-ip-related-case/ [ip-watch.org]
The US does not wish to follow the WTO ruling, so Antigua is permitted to do this.
Hollywood knows this.
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Newegg need to start hiring out it law team, I would pay to see a showdown in court over this case.
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Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.
They should tell Hollywood to get bent. Piracy is going to happen regardless of what they do; this is money wasted anyway.
If you read the article, the AACS isn't asking Antigua to do anything this time after already trying and being ignored.
Finding out what actually is being asked for is left as an exercise to the reader.
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Finding out what actually is being asked for is left as an exercise to the reader.
Invasion
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:5, Funny)
Antiqua doesn't have any oil so it doesn't need any freedom.
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:4, Informative)
Copyright is worth more than oil right now.
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and hence the ridiculous provisions in the TPP (as if a secret international treaty wasnt creepy enough)
For example,
"The TPP requires that signatories hold civilly liable any person who “circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work,”[115] or otherwise makes available devices or products or service that are intended to circumvent[116] or have only limited commercial purpose other than to circumvent[117] or are primarily designed to circumvent.[118] There is no requirement that the infringing party be aware of their infringement in order to be held civilly liable (no knowledge requirement). The TPP requires that signatories provide for criminal penalties for persons who engage in these activities and are found “to have engaged willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.”[119]
From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's signed but not yet ratified. It's only 16 countries or so not the whole world.
Yet.
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"The TPP requires that signatories...." Antiqua is not one of the signatory countries, so TPP is little more than TP to them. They aren't required to do jack shit.
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Gentlemen, do my eyes deceive me, or does that Slashdot comment contain properly-rendered Unicode characters?
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They have been telling Hollywood to get bent, and venue shopped their base of operations to be able to do that.
Hollywood is trying to do what they can through international legal maneuvering. It should be a different kind of entertaining to see how this turns out.
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I've never actually used my copy of AnyDVD to pirate anything. I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish. I'm sure they'd likely disagree, but they can piss off.
Nowadays, I actually use streaming services more often than not, since they're convenient and reasonably priced. Do you know what makes me want to actually switch to pirated content instead?
1) Insane prices for watching previous seasons of a show (either rentals or purchase), when Hulu is only showing the latest season.
2) The bright, distracting network logo Hulu pastes in the corner of the picture for the entire duration of the show.
Can you imagine going to a movie theater and being subjected to an image of the movie company's logo in the corner of the screen for the duration of the show? Why does anyone believe this is acceptable for television? When the pirated content is superior to the paid-for content, that's not a good sign.
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Because I notice the pseudo-watermark logo for only a second or so, then my brain puts a blind spot there, the same as it does to the black bars when watching a 2.25:1 movie on a 16:9 screen. Do you find the television network's watermark distracting?
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It's pretty easy to block out the absence of something - black bars don't bother me. Keep in mind that many of these images I've seen are pretty bright. I probably wouldn't mind so much if it was more like an actual watermark (grey, translucent, and unobtrusive) which typically don't bother me and not a fully opaque logo. Yes, I eventually manage to block them out as well after a few minutes, but as soon as the screen darkens, my eye is immediately drawn to it again.
It's like a small grain of sand in you
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
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Still, animated ones are better than still ones. I know a number of plasma TV owners who have permanently had the still ones burned into their screens. Similarly, there's a podcaster I listen to who had the HUD for Destiny burned into his plasma TV, since it apparently didn't move around enough either.
Ideally, they wouldn't do it at all, but if they're going to do it, make it a subtle animation, if only to prevent burn-in.
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Oh yeah, I know the variety you're talking about, and those things are utterly inexcusable. Ugh.
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Well, years ago they weren't persistent. They show the logo for a few seconds or a minute or so every few minutes, or after an ad break. I guess to remind you what channel you're watching or something like that. Then at some point they must have decided that wasn't good enough and just left the up all the time. Used to annoy me a lot too, back when I actually watched much television.
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Logos and watermarks are a real problem for people with plasma screens, because they can cause burn in. Imagine having some shitty channel's shitty logo permanently burned in to your TV because you forgot to turn it off one time. That's what us plasma owners have to live with for deep blacks and colour rendition far beyond what the best LCDs can offer.
Re:Jurisdiction (Score:4, Interesting)
I use AnyDVD because Hollywood insists upon putting region coding on all the DVDs. I have DVDs in German, Mandarin and English and that would require 3 different DVD drives as Hollywood insists upon region coding things so that one drive won't support all of them.
It's ridiculous, but there you go.
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> Region free or unlockable players have been around since the late 90's. How can you not know this?
I first started using HTPCs because my last region free player wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It advertised features it didn't actually have.
On the other hand, I am in full control of my viewing experience with an HTPC because I'm the one that's building it. I can also impose the same interface on all of my players and make sure that interface stays the same over time.
I also never have to worry about
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Agreed. And the user interface/experience has degraded considerably in recent years. VLC 0.91 was excellent before they switched to the terrible new UI.
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VLC will play any region DVD and overcome CSS. The AC is an advert!
Depends on your drive. Some firmware doesn't even allow even raw access to the drive if there's a region mismatch, so libdvdcss won't work.
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Personally, I've never actually used my copy of AnyDVD to pirate anything. I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server
Rip? I use it to PLAY BluRays. It's cheaper to have a recurring subscription to AnyDVD than it is to buy a new copy of PowerDVD every year when they decide to release new versions and stop issuing new keys to the old one.
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"I've used it to rip my legally purchased copies of DVDs and Blurays to my media server. I'm not doing anything wrong by using the content I bought and paid for how I wish."
Actually it is illegal in the US at least.
"I'm sure they'd likely disagree"
They do.
", but they can piss off."
And they really should.
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You're not doing anything wrong. You *are* doing something illegal.
Same as I do when I rip my DVDs to the media server using HandBrake.
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Yeah, that's going to go over well.
My lawyer will cart my collection into the courtroom and hand one DVD banker box and one binder to every member of the jury. There will still be a pile of binders and boxes sitting on the floor in front of the jury box while they each peruse their own box and binder.
At that point, they will probably wonder what the complaint was again...
Re: Jurisdiction (Score:1)
I also want to make backup copies of the DVDs I purchase and remove the fluff so I can pop in the DVD and the movie starts playing right away and me and my 4yr old don't have to wait 5 minutes to get to the fucking menu. It's a tool every parent should have. Is Sony or Disney going to replace the DVD my 4yr old destroys? If the answer is no then Fuck off you assholes. I have a right to not have to purchase Snow White 10 different times.
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I've wondered about that - if you're only allowed to own the physical media, but licence the content, then it follows that faulty/broken media should be replaced with a 1/x priced copy, as long as you hand over the faulty/broken disc.
It's only fair - if I've licenced the content, then you should exchange a faulty or damaged disc for the price of the disc ONLY, and not the content.
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> Slysoft is not in US jurisdiction, so it doesn't have to follow US law. Full stop.
Unfortunately the government will use the excuse that if a business engages in commerce in the US then that entity is also obligated to follow US commerce law.
Even if they aren't selling any physical good the US will try to claim jurisdiction electronically.
Case in point, look what happened to the excellent Lik Sang [wikipedia.org]
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I don't know what kind of slip that is... (Score:5, Funny)
against the Antique based software company SlySoft
How on earth did Antigua become Antique? Just bad use of spell check?
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Antiguan?
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It happened over time . . .
hawk
First things first: Antigua is NOT under US juris- (Score:2)
diction.
Slysoft should just tell the Hollywood thugs to get bent.
Also: let's see some quality output instead of this suing from the hip bullshit, and we'll talk.
Antigua and Barbuda are in the right (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the Hollywood studios don't even have the law on their side in this case.
What Slysoft is doing is actually legal under WTO rules because the US was found
to be in violation regarding offshore internet gambling. The WTO ruled that Antigua and
Barbuda are legally entitled to ignore US copyright (to the value of the judgement) as a
result. What the US government has been doing in regard to this is disgusting frankly.
They have threatened to retaliate against Antigua and Barbuda should they choose to
actively exercise this right, even though the ruling went against them. Funny how when
the ruling goes for the US the other country is obligated to follow it, but when it goes
against them it doesnt. Arrogant doesnt begin to describe this behaviour.
https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds285_e.htm
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And yet, according to the original article, the operator of Slysoft was found guilty of copyright violation under Antiguan law and got fined all of $30,000. It's just that he's appealed, and the appeal has yet to be tried. (Though even if he lost, I imagine that $30,000 would represent pocket change to Slysoft.)
Personally, I hope that Hollywood continues to be stymied. I paid $100 for a lifetime sub to AnyDVD HD. :)
Glorious (Score:5, Insightful)
@boggle. I use that software a lot simply to get rid of the forced previews and the like so I can sit down to watch a movie and watch the bloody movie, which ought to tell the MPAA and company something right there. The biggest advocate of piracy right now is the MPAA itself, as they constantly and vocally equate simply watching a movie you've purchased legally with piracy.
Can't they ignore US copyrights? (Score:2)
The real crime (Score:1)
The real crime is government providing businesses with protections such as copyright or patent laws that are government provided monopolies and are both bad business and bad ethics.
Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (Score:5, Insightful)
The various recording studios just don't get it. If I'm going to shell out $$$ for a movie, I'm going to consume it in the format that suits me. I also don't want to be force fed adverts for other BS they'd like to sell me. Nor do I want to sit through the obligatory, "you'll go to hell if you copy this" FBI nuisance screens and other nonsense that you cannot skip on the disc before watching the content that I paid for. I don't feel the least bit guilty about ripping a disc solely to remove adverts/warnings and shift it to whatever medium I want to use to watch it.
All that said, I find myself increasingly reluctant to even bother. The content quality is trending down and I don't have the time I once did to jump through the hoops. Their loss.
Oh, Thanks (Score:2, Interesting)
If they didn't bring this case up, I would have never known about this software.
Great publicity job Hollywood.
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It's an obsolete/transitional software product. (Score:2)
I used to use Anysoft's software to rip DVDs (and the occassional BluRay).
Then I got to realized that it's better to keep my copies on the hard drive rather than burn a second disc for safety. Now I use makemkv to rip the disc and handbrake to compress to a reasonable size.
The plus is that with a small netbook computer attached to the TV I have access to my whole video library over wifi.
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Do they handle commercial blu rays well enough? I've got one I wanted to copy and I tried the Slysoft demo but all it would tell me is that it could not look up the decryption tables (or some such thing) while in demo mode.
So I could not really test it to see if it would work for what I wanted to do without first paying for it, but I didn't want to pay for it if it could not do what I needed. Kind of a paradox.
Wait, what? (Score:2)
"the Antique based software company SlySoft"
Yeah, OK, DVDs are practically antiques by now, but I'm pretty sure that's not a state. Antigua I assume?
$150 Million ways Hollywood doesn't get it (Score:3)
Deadpool just delivered a whole pile of new box office records and around $150 million in ticket sales.
The way to defeat piracy is to make movies, like this one, which are so good, people will happily pay to go see them. I know, the idea of people happily paying to go see a movie is a concept Hollywood hasn't understood much. But now they are looking at a huge pile of money, which of course will all end up as losses thanks to Hollywood accounting, but making good movies people want to see is how you fight piracy. Hollywood needs to wake the hell up and learn from this.
huh? (Score:2)
Still trying to figure out what "antique based software" is.
I'd been wondering how AnyDVD managed to exist in the current "tools are evil" environment. For the owners, it's sort of like a double-bonus: 1) have to live in the Caribbean, 2) get to live in the Caribbean. Reminds me of the guy who sold C-band satellite receivers that did the job without the subscriber cards who was chased away to the Bahamas. Poor thing.
"make your product worse" (Score:2)
HDCP cords, dvds with bricking, etc.
THE FUTURE IS NOW, AND IT IS DIGITAL.
I want to buy your product. I don't want to keep 100 dvds around. I want them all on a thumb drive. DEAL WITH IT.
Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who bothers with DVDs anymore? Unless your tastes are way off the beaten track, everything you might want is available for streaming anyway.
There are still many DVD's that I can buy used cheaper than the "own it on streaming" price, *and* the DVD is really mine, so I can rip it to multiple formats for playing on a TV of mobile device. It's not like a streaming move that I "own" where the streaming provider decides where I can watch it, and can lock me out of my owned movie for any reason, including bankruptcy.
Though as people move towards streaming, there are fewer deals to be had on used DVD's.
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And, for people who only want to rent the physical disc: http://www.redbox.com/ [redbox.com]
Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am totally amazed how much new DVDs cost though. Saw one at the local drug store, the sort not frequented by posh purveyors, and a DVD for a low rated movie from last year was going for $20. I was completely surprised, it's so expensive and few people ever watch one more than once or twice, and it wasn't the sort of movie one would want to collect. It was also a price increase over buying it on Amazon too, but it was at the checkout line so presumably it was intended to be one of those impulse buys for people who don't shop around.
One excuse with some movies is that if you've got toddlers that the $20 DVD will be played at least once a week until it wears itself out (at which point the parents are ready to shoot themselves).
Now the armchair economic excuse to go out and see the movies at a cinema is that a ticket and drink and hotdog is less than the cost of a DVD...
For streaming, they never let you own a movie. It's $5 to "rent" which is more expensive than pay-per-view on some cable/satellite services. There often is a purchase option to "own" but in that case you are still not allowed to make a backup copy so that you can watch it after the streaming service goes bankrupt. DVDs have additional benefits that you can take them with you camping, onto an airplane. Annoying is that they're not that much cheaper than blu-ray; worse both physical forms on amazon are cheaper than the streaming copy, despite the extra costs to produce and distrubute, someone's getting ripped off in the transaction and it isn't Amazon.
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Yes, market forces and competition help force the prices down on DVD's & Blu-ray discs. Hence the reason to get them on "Release Tuesday" when they all go on sale on their street date.
Digital copies have no such market forces - the publishers dictate the
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What consumers really want is a service like Amazon Prime or Netflix where a single monthly fee provides on demand access to an entire library or catalog of content that can be watched anytime from any device
And that includes downloads, not just streaming. I really want to have access to rented movies when I'm on a long train or plane journey, but if I do have Internet on either of those it is going to be either unreliable or expensive. I want to be able to load the stuff onto my device first. And please don't cripple it with DRM, because I know that DRM means 'it works now, but will stop working when you actually want to watch it'. If I wanted to pirate it, I'd have done so already - high quality rips of a
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So limit the amount that I can download per month. I am renting DVDs and the same argument applies: I could rip every DVD that I rent and amass a big library. I don't, because why would I? I pay the subscription for two reasons:
These are both good in
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It's uneven, too. The entire Studio Ghibli DVD catalogue at Sanity are still AUD$27.00 each, even the oldest ones. For some reason (I'm looking at you, MadMan), those titles never hit the discount shelves. I'd buy the lot if they were priced realistically - but not $27 each.
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Don't use drugstore prices as a reference. DVDs at drugstores are often marked up horribly compared to other places.
And unless you MUST have Blu-Ray, conventional DVDs are cheaper.
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Interesting. In Poland you can get quite a few couple-years old blockbusters in dollar stores (well, counterparts) and bargain bins.
A recent Auchan deal: 22PLN ($5.60) for a kilogram of DVDs. (boxes obligatory, unfortunately, can't buy just the discs).
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Except it's not just the drugstore, it's pretty much every where. Although the $20 price tag seems a bit odd since all sorts of B&M stores have been selling deeply discounted DVDs for the last 10 years and don't seem to be letting up.
Physical media is sold at a wide variety of retail outlets at various price points and rental kiosks are similarly widespread.
Inside of our little echo chamber here we tend to forget that we're the 1% of technology users. What we do or what we think other people should do r
Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs? (Score:4, Informative)
Who bothers with DVDs anymore? Unless your tastes are way off the beaten track, everything you might want is available for streaming anyway.
The BBC has taken Dr. Who off Netfllx and Hulu in the USA. So far, they cannot do that with the physical discs I have.
Of course, I presume when you meant "available for streaming" you meant legal streaming.
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Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the price were considerably lower to offset these disadvantages then it might be worth buying in this way. But digital movies are priced almost the same as their physical counterparts. I really don't understand why anybody buys media (books, music, movies, TV shows) through a streaming service - not from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony or anyone else's. And of course there's the whole free download thing where you can grab a high quality product which is not tied to any store.
Subscribing to a streaming service or renting is another matter entirely. There are no issues like transferability, or ownership. If Amazon Prime's streaming service sucks then you can just cancel and there is no expectation of retaining access to your collection.
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You missed one thing; if the provider of the movie decides to end their contract with Amazon for that movie, it may also disappear from your library. I recall that happening with at least one movie.
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Same issue, only more so for loaning, selling, transferring the book too. You've bought a license to view a book, not the actual book. In some countries like the UK this even means paying extra taxes because you've bought a software licence (incurs VAT) instead of a
Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks that want higher quality? That want the extras? Folks with data caps? Folks that want stuff after the streaming service drops it? Folks don't want to be tracked or pay a monthly fee?
How long a list you need?
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Folks, like my parents, who live in the sticks with no real broadband options, as well.
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Folks that want higher quality? That want the extras? Folks with data caps? Folks that want stuff after the streaming service drops it? Folks don't want to be tracked or pay a monthly fee?
For everything else, there's piracy.
Re: Do People Still Watch DVDs? (Score:2)
Really, a free download of handbrake and an Amazon Fire 7" tablet with a 64Gb microSD card makes far more sense than messing about with physical DVD's. Apart from anything else small kids ruin physical DVD's.
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The problem is the DMCA prevents you from ripping DVD's you "own". Most do this, but legally it is at least "Gray".
Why would they want you to format shift when they can sell you the DVD, and then sell you a DRM'd copy for your amazon fire (which hopefully you got on black Friday for $35, Great deal).
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> Higher quality?! Than what? I doubt many people are still buying VHS casettes.
Higher quality than any streaming service.
If you actually care about the actual content, then there's still no substitute for a bit of spinning plastic.
Re:Do People Still Watch DVDs? (Score:5, Funny)
"Who bothers with DVDs anymore? "
That's why Hollywood is asking the feds to reach back through time to mail an "antique based software company."
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Who bothers with DVDs anymore? Unless your tastes are way off the beaten track, everything you might want is available for streaming anyway.
Maybe that is true in the US (or where ever you live), but where I live the selection is quite limited. Example: I have had Netflix for 1½ month, and I find it harder to find interesting stuff that I haven't already seen. In 1½ month.
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A normal business response to users like us would be to offer a 2 year contract that we cant refuse, but Netflix doesnt have the luxury to do that because none of their content is so temporary.
Netflix knows that its not in the power position in its relationship with its customers, and the studios could easily destroy them if they wanted to w
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Part of that is that Netflix doesn't show you its whole catalog.
While I actually have browsed the entire catalog in the genres that I'm interested in, I have occasionally found interesting things in other categories that (IMO) were mislabeled. As an example, the Swedish Science Fiction series Real Humans [imdb.com] was labeled as a Scandinavian TV series, but not as a Science Fiction series. But, yeah, I tend to agree that the whole exploration part of Netflix is horrible.
I have also heard some claims that Netflix only display those titles where they have local subtitles or audio
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"Who bothers with DVDs anymore?"
Doesn't matter, it's the only thing the judge understands.
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Streaming is the tech that people upgraded from, when they got their VCRs (and later: DVDs), and the reasons to upgrade from streaming are numerous and obvious.
Downloads are next in the upgrade path from physical media distribution (so: two tech levels beyond streaming), but currently Hollywood doesn't want that money, so it's mostly just used by pirates and Louie C.K. customers.
This whole case is about the ways that Hollywood is telling its paying customers to stop paying. People will just have to decide w
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Finally, someone who gets what an Antique based software company really is.
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It may come as a shock to you, but broadband is not yet universally available.
Re:Good, finally some common sense in copyright la (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not being ignored, nor is it being stolen. A company makes software that allows people to do format shifting. In the US, format shifting is legal under the DMCA. What's not legal is selling the software to do it.
Antigua does not have such an obvious contradiction in their legal system. The software is legal where it is produced, it is legal to use for it's intended purpose. Hollywood doesn't like that because they have to actually find and sue people who are actually infringing on their works rather than just banning a technology. They also don't like it because if there is software available to perform format shifting, you (as a consumer) aren't forced to buy a digital copy if you've already bought a DVD.
Just because the US entertainment industry would like the entire world to drop and suck, doesn't mean that the wold's legal system should comply.
A software version of the Streisand Effect. (Score:2)
Stop this dvd ripping tool and 20 others pop up anyway. What a waste of money
It's a software capability version of the Streisand Effect.
For anyone not allready familiar with it, the first sentence of the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] gives a fine definition:
Chop off one head of this software hydra and no
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As it is now, Slysoft is actually contained. They make money off of their work, so they aren't inclined to share. This limits the impact of their work considerably.
Successfully liquidate Slysoft and their "nuclear option" may be to just open source everything.
Re: Why the focus on this software? (Score:3)
MakeMKV will rip anything to disk, blueray and dvd included. Handrake will then happily encode your mkv to the format of your choice.
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