RealDVD Empowers Consumers — NOT
Friday, October 3rd, 2008 by Patrick Ross
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After speaking on a panel earlier today at a conference here at Ball State University (apparently their football team is 5-0, or so everyone told me), a student asked me why he couldn’t legally make copies of his DVDs. I don’t know if the question was prompted by news of the RealDVD service by RealPlayer that offers to do that or by the news that litigation is now occurring between RealPlayer and MPAA over that service, but given that the issue has been on my mind I was thrilled to answer the question.
I asked him if he had ever used video-on-demand services. He had. Did he think it was a good thing that sites like Hulu.com offer free, ad-supported movies and TV shows online? He did like that. Does he like the fact that if he chooses he can download-to-own a movie from, say, iTunes, stream one as part of his Netflix subscription or rent one via digital download from Amazon? Yes, he said, these are all good things. What did he think about the fact that some DVDs come with a free digital download as well? That too, apparently, was good. (I didn’t even bother to tell him that there are over 50 sites in the U.S. alone that offer these services legally for motion pictures and TV shows.)
Well, I replied, the motion picture industry is doing what everyone eight years ago was shouting at creative industries to do — develop new business models. But each of those business models is predicated on the notion of certain use rights associated with certain price points. When a consumer can voluntarily expand the rights that come with one of those services — in essence open the door to multiple copies of a work not licensed for that — that eliminates any monetization models except one: selling full use rights to the work at one fixed price. That’s the path RealNetworks has put us on.
RealDVD claims it is empowering consumers by allowing them to pay RealPlayer for the ability to make multiple copies of DVDs. But the end result of this could well be that one model of digital offerings, where we all pay one price and get the same set of rights. I happen to like subscription models. My in-laws like rental models with physical products (DVDs) but have no interest in versions they can store on a computer. Some people might want to put motion pictures on several computers, an iPod and a phone. Others might not need so many platforms. Yet all of us will eventually pay the same price.
That does not empower consumers. That denies them choice.
I recognize there is a demand to copy DVDs. That demand has been there for awhile, and circumvention technologies circulate online despite the fact that their distribution is illegal under the DMCA. But as was the case when iTunes and, yes, even RealPlayer’s Rhapsody service came along after the original Napster, just last month a new initiative was launched to meet demand in the video space. This is an effort to create a “buy once, play anywhere” standard. The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem includes technology companies, retailers and studios.
Sometimes we forget that creative industries don’t create these works to lock them up. They create them so people will enjoy them (and yes, they hope to profit as a result). When they see we want uses not initially anticipated, they work to meet that market demand. Are they as quick as infringers? No, and they never will be, because when running a business if things are working you stick with them. Innovative infringers, on the other hand, are looking to disrupt, not maintain. Disruption, or creative destruction as Joseph Schumpeter called it, is inevitable. But creative organizations adapt, grow and meet shifting consumer demands in new ways. That is what is happening with studios today.
So back to my questioner at the panel discussion here today. He probably didn’t want to hear about digital business models. He wanted to copy his DVDs and wanted to know why he couldn’t. I told him the economic reasons why that right didn’t come with his purchase, but we now also know that true mobility for a single movie purchase is coming.
RealNetworks is hoping they can find a lot of folks like this student, who are impatient and willing to adopt a technology that clearly infringes by circumventing CSS in order to do what they want to do. RealNetworks is counting on the fact that diffusion of responsibility will mean this student and other fans of motion pictures will not see their actions in the larger context of the negative impact on consumers in the market or on creators’ rights.
Certainly they will find some of these people. But RealNetworks knows better. They know they are promoting infringement. They know they have abused their rights as a CSS licensee. It’s not for me to get into an examination of why they might do this; it’s no secret they are struggling financially but only they know their reasons for starting this fight.
But this is not a fight from which creators should back down. MPAA is fighting this on behalf of its studio members. But in a way they’re fighting it on behalf of all creators who find technology companies adopting a model of “infringe now, sort out the details later.” In an age when creative industries are launching new and innovative business models on a daily basis, such an approach is inexcusable.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:36 am
[...] RealDVD Empowers Consumers — NOT [...]
October 16th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
[...] service does not in fact promote fair use and how in fact if the service were allowed to go forward consumers would be harmed, but it’s clear I must continue to hold a stop sign up to the tidal wave and make clear how [...]
November 10th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Hi.
I’m a student looking to get a job in the recording industry. I have been following both sides of the issue of media piracy since long before I enrolled in college to bring my passion for film audio to life.
And this article completely, utterly misses the point.
The reason why your statement that RealDVD does not empower the consumers is simple: it completely ignores the wildly postulated claims by executives and artists in most of the major industries that media transfer was EXACTLY where the industry was moving to. Look at John Lennon, telling fans that eventually they would be able to buy the Beatles’ music and transfer it to whatever format they wanted. there are thousands of similar promises made with the release of each new technology. And yet, the film industry and the recording industry are loathe to support them.
What is forgotten, is that while some consumers forget, many consumers do NOT, and the trail of empty promises abandoned in favor of CEO payouts is traced like a trail of empty beer cans to the drunk redneck in the trailer park down the road.
Empowering consumers? Hell yes. See, unlike the MPAA, the people who are eventually going to take YOUR jobs are realizing something: our consumers AREN’T your shareholders or CEOs. The people who are our future current and future consumers are the folks who, in a very short period of time, are going to wonder why they are paying for media saddled with laws and restrictions that affect them far more than any piracy organization. They are going to wonder, and then they are going to dabble, and then experiment, and pretty soon we’ll have to switch to a system that completely ignores media sales. Because YOUR ORGANIZATIONS are placing short term unit profits ahead of actually retaining or raising support amongst new fans. You know, fans? Those people who actually hand real currency to their local (or online) retailers to experience our products?
If the entertainment industry adapts to a world where the consumer is always right and always willing to prove it to you, it’s a foolish move to ignore their demands. the Warners, Disneys, Sonys, Viacoms and General Electrics of this world would do well to keep that in mind. It’s time to buckle down, and start using real consumers, not monetarily-imbued sheep, in their business plans.
But go ahead. After all, you’re only protecting the consumer’s empowerment.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Wow this article is the pendulatimate in stupid reasoning so typical of money hoarding idiots who cannot see the money where it is. So you like subscription services and thusly those of us that prefer to keep a movie in dvd format backed up because the format is flimsy and prone to programmed demise should be forced into your mechanism? How are you any different than the folks at Real whom you disparage? Are you also aware that streamed media may be captured and stored indefinately or aware of devices called DVR’s? So why are the folks who choose a media to be on demand somehow deserving of keeping the movie they paid for stored as a backup but those of us who choose to backup our DVD formatted movies are reviled as being ignorant of economic models and ulitmately pirates? Perhaps it is you who lacks a grasp on reality and simply clutching at pennies when the dollars pass you by, ahh but then again you get paid to have an opinion no matter how asnine or ignorant it may be.
MPAA and RIAA have never had a grasp on reality when it comes to the people who made them the few dollars they have recieved. More and more bands and movies choose to go independant and bypass your “empowerment” every year, yes we can see that you are all for the artists studios and people you represent when even they jump ship enmasse. But the overall loss of sales, middling numbers, and a failing market for movies and music are surefire sign that your economic model is perfection, carry on, perhaps someday you too can expect a 7 trillion dollar bailout for running a market into the ground.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
My goodness, such vitriol for a blog entry that’s weeks old.
Josh: Good luck with your search for a job in the recording industry, although your blog suggests you’d wish that industry go away. I’m assuming you’re just out of school, but I think once you are employed and realize the symbiosis between sales and employment you might have a slightly different perspective. But regardless, I wish you had actually addressed my point that it is important for consumers to be able to buy the rights they wish at the price they wish, and not enter a world where we pay one flat price regardless of what uses we desire, instead of going off on a screed against me and corporate America.
Fiend: Like Josh you get sidetracked into the music business, when this is about motion pictures. Any studio, large or small, can give any permissions it wants with DVDs, and many now include a free digital download of the movie with the DVD. I suspect we’ll see more of that. Consumers can accelerate that by not purchasing DVDs that don’t offer them what they want, but many DVDs continue to be sold and they seem content with not copying their DVDs. I know that flies in the face of your interest and those of your social circle. Oh, and the word you were looking for is “penultimate,” but that actually wouldn’t be used here because it means “second to,” as in the penultimate hole on a golf course (17th) or the penultimate quarter in a football game (3rd). Also, I assume you meant to call me a money “hoaring” idiot, not a money “hoarding” one, unless you are suggesting I am hoarding DVDs. If so, I’ve been called worse by strangers who go by pseudonyms.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Without getting too far into the actual litigation and technical jargon that so many consumers are obviously confused by…I am noticing a vastly muttled perception of RealDVD and its intended purpose. Patrick, that answer to the student who asked you why he coudn’t make copies of his DVD’s is simple - it’s not legal based on the laws of copyright and DVD CCA. However, there is an exception known as “Fair Use” that allows a consumer to create one back-up copy of their own DVD’s, and this is precisely what RealDVD is allowing, nothing more and nothing less. You get to make one copy, there is no sharing, no multiple copies made, no stealing. It’s simply another platform for consumers to back-up/store their movies should something cause their DVD rack to fall over and damage every movie s/he owns. RealDVD operates well within the parameters of fair-use and does not strip the original DVD of any security codes that would allow someone to make additional copies for their friends.
February 16th, 2009 at 4:16 am
I suspect you’ll deride me for posting my opinion on a blog piece that’s months old, but this does happen to be the latest thing posted in the “MPAA in the news” section of http://www.mpaa.org/newsStand.asp so I’m not sure why you’d be surprised.
There are many different situations that people find themselves in with DVDs and movies, and there is also a difference between the fantasy and reality of consumer habits. For the consumers you mentioned that buy DVDs and don’t even have the thought that it would be necessary to copy them, that is fine for them - until they get one that doesn’t play in their DVD player. This is a problem with some discs that are implementing DRM schemes that aren’t in the DVD specification, such as introducing bit errors. Not all DVD players handle this kind of thing. This is a defective product, but it is highly questionable whether or not they will be able to return an opened DVD.
That’s all beside the point, though. I want to explain how DRM is restricting my rights. There are several things that have affected me over the years.
I have a large DVD collection of several hundred titles. I used to buy them all the time, and I didn’t have much money as a high school and college student - I spent a very high percentage of the money I did have on DVDs because I love movies. That’s the thing - I love movies and am happy to pay for them, even when I can’t afford it. Yet I’ve stopped purchasing DVDs that contain DRM, region encoding, or other schemes, and that is almost all of them.
And why? I break the law to just be able to play DVDs that I have payed for, on my computer running openSUSE Linux. There is no technical reason why my computer and operating system shouldn’t be able to play DVDs - as I said, I do watch DVDs on it - but the MPAA and others don’t want me to be able to because I haven’t paid the licensing fee for decrypting CSS. Yes, I know there are ways to pay for that license using Linux, but do you see the failed logic there? My hardware and software has the capability of playing DVDs that I paid for. I should not need to pay for the arbitrary ability to decrypt data I’ve already paid for if I already have the capability of reading the data!
Now it’s even worse with Blu-Ray, where a piece of hardware’s capability really doesn’t come into play - it is, again, artificially restricted if there is no HDCP certification somewhere along the way. I don’t have a TV, much less a High Definition one. Yet, while I can play purchased DVDs on my computer legally if I wanted to (because the computer is more than capable of doing so), I can’t buy a Blu-Ray drive for my computer and legally watch HD movies on my high-resolution screen, because my operating system and video card aren’t HDCP certified. I’ll let you in on a secret, though - 1080p HD movies downloaded from the internet run just fine on my computer.
Do you see what the problem is here? You’re artificially trying to restrict what consumers can do with technology and content that we are paying for, when we are well aware what the capabilities are. Why should we pay for something we can barely do anything with, when we could instead just download it from the internet and do whatever we want with it?
I like having physical goods. I have, in fact, purchased a few Blu-Ray movies for use with my Playstation 3 - but after realizing I couldn’t use them the way I wanted, I stopped buying them. By the way, “the way I wanted” was NOT copying them for upload to the internet or for my friends.
I do actually understand your position of offering different options, such as downloads vs. buying a disc, for different uses. But with the systems that MPAA companies are using now, consumers must pay each time they want to use the content in a different way. That makes sense from a corporation’s point of view, but NOT from the consumer’s point of view. If I buy an expensive Blu-Ray movie, I should be able to do what I want with it, including ripping it for use in a computer, a regular DVD player, an MP3 player, or whatever. Providing access to a digital copy is not enough - unless you are willing to provide the digital copy in an open format without DRM. The ones that have been put out are in strange formats requiring special software to use.
So it comes down to this - by artificially restricting what consumers are able to do with purchased items, you are driving us to “copyright infringe” the stuff instead, by downloading from the internet. Have you illegally downloaded an HD movie from the internet before? It runs and looks great on a computer screen, or you can hook computers up to HDTVs or projectors and that looks great too. You can keep the file on an external hard drive or burn it to a disc, making backups so you don’t lose it. You can use it wherever you want - including on someone else’s equipment. You can re-encode it to play on other devices. You can do whatever you want with it. The alternative is paying money for something that offers you little to no ability to do these kinds of things. Even using corporate logic you should be able to figure out which option gives more value to the consumer.
As I said - I like physical products. I like to be able to have a physical collection of movies - and I like to pay for them to support artists I like, and to support the preservation of older films, for example. To get big-spending customers like me, the MPAA needs to offer me value. DRM does not offer any value to anyone. And it doesn’t even prevent copyright infringement one tiny bit - it only hurts paying customers.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
You’re a jerk and you suck. Thanks
June 5th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I think that the copyright alliance should be flexible and allow people to make a copy for their own personal use of a DVD. RealDVD should be legal. After all, RealDVD is a late bloomer to the DVD world, when earlier tools allowed the same thing like DeCSS, HandBrake, MacTheRipper, DVD Decrypter, and others. Also, DVD is an older technology. Even BluRay and HD-DVD have their encryption cracked, and people have already played them on Linux using an open source player on a non-HDCP complaint monitor at full quality.
More importantly, there is a big difference between a person who makes one copy for their personal use, or makes a backup to prevent their original from being damaged and a person who uses a tool like RealDVD or DeCSS for a commercial scale piracy operation. By all means go after the big commercial piracy operation and shut it down, but leave non-commercial, home users of this software alone.
July 1st, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“That does not empower consumers. That denies them choice.”
Being able to purchase something and then having the rights to use it as you see fit? Sounds horrible. Of course when you sell something, you should be able to follow the purchaser and make sure they use the product exactly as you want them to.
The internet was created as a place to freely share information with people. Whats wrong with the MPAA usurping the technology, banning its original purpose, to try and make a windfall profit at the same time? I’m sure they pay royalties to Al Gore when they use it, right?