I’ve been gone for a while, and I do apologize. I’ve been very busy working on the site lately, and that has left little time for commentary. A couple of weeks ago, a news item caught my eye that was so amazing that I decided I had to write about it. I didn’t find the time until now, but here it is.
The news item that so amazed me was this: Movie Studios Sue DVD-Copying Software Maker. Less than a week later, this headline followed: RealNetworks Forced to Stop Sales of RealDVD. The MPAA’s position that “making a copy is stealing a copy” should be well known, but what I found amazing was that the industry had turned on one of their own, RealNetworks, makers of RealPlayer and the legal online music service Rhapsody. Suing Real is like suing Apple! This is a big deal. I really can’t believe it.
Now, I have no love for RealNetworks. I stopped using RealPlayer years ago because I was tired of the ads, the way it inserted itself into my computer’s startup sequence without asking me, and generally acted like malware. Of course, Sony’s root kit opened a backdoor that allowed root access to anyone aware of the rootkit’s installation, compromising the integrity of the Windows operating system to such an extent that one U.S. senator called it a threat to the national security of the United States!
So I have no great love for RealNetworks, but at least they’re not as bad as Apple, who used DRM to use their iTunes monopoly to give their iPods a monopoly, or Sony who infected their customers computers and endangered the security of every nation in the world! No, unlike the small fry that the MPAA has gone after in the past, RealNetworks is a huge company that creates only legal products, some of which are from the industry that the MPAA supposedly represents. Their large library of legal products includes RealDVD, a program that lets you create a legal backup of your legally purchased DVDs.
Oh, did I say that backing up your DVDs is legal? The MPAA disagrees, and that’s why they’ve taken RealNetworks to court to prevent the sale of RealDVD. Unfortunately for consumers, if anyone is breaking the law here, it’s the MPAA. Allow me to make my case.
When I was a child, I remember seeing a notice at the back of instruction manuals that came with my Nintendo games that said that making backups of NES cartridges was neither legal nor necessary. They were certainly right about the latter: a cartridge filled with ROM chips is virtually indestructible. The contacts sometimes become unreliable, which can easily be fixed by cleaning them, but the ROM chips inside can only be destroyed by a massive surge of electricity — which would also destroy your Nintendo — or by deliberately using considerable force to break them, such as hitting them with a sledgehammer. Nintendo could legitimately claim that backing up their games was unnecessary, and the law agreed.
With computers, it was a different story. Backing up floppy disks was essential because they were made of flimsy circular sheets of plastic with a magnetic coating applied them, and they frequently developed bad sectors and became unreadable during normal use. Even hard drives frequently developed bad sectors during normal use in those days, and the motor could only be expected to last for about 5 years. While inexpensive, those methods of storage frequently failed, and making backups of your installation disks and important files was simply part of the culture of owning a computer. Not so with cartridge-based games.
Although cassette tapes were quite popular during my childhood, we still had a record player and mostly bought LPs. You had to be very careful about touching the surface of the record, and very careful not to scratch the record when you lifted the needle. One day I saw a commercial where a dog picked up a CD in its mouth and its owner fought to pull it away from him. He then put the CD into his CD player and it played perfectly. The ad’s narrator informed us that CDs could survive this kind of punishment, which would be impossible with a record.
The ad, of course, was lying. CDs are notoriously easy to scratch, no matter how careful you are with them. This can be an annoyance if it causes your songs to skip, but it can be disastrous if a single sector becomes unreadable on a CD-ROM. The fragile nature of computer files is that they are an all or nothing medium. When you copy data from a CD-ROM, if any file fails its integrity check, that file is useless. If it happens to be a critical file, your application or game won’t work. I’ve never felt the need to be as careful with my floppy disks as I do with my CDs and DVDs, carefully removing them from the spindle and holding them at the edge or with a finger through the hole, ensuring that the disc never touches anything besides the jewel case or the tray.
My futile attempts to prevent my CDs and DVDs from scratching force me to be more careful with my optical discs than I’ve ever had to be with any other medium I’ve used, including records, casette tapes, floppy disks and hard drives. I dread to place them on a table or on top of the TV or DVD player. Although they never touch anything but the jewel case or the tray, they always get scratched anyway. I have a couple of theories about this.
When a CD or DVD is placed in CD/DVD player or into the optical drive on your computer, a wheel-shaped thing rises and presses the disc against a wheel at the top of the drive. Once secured, the disc can spin at up to 10 000 rpm without coming loose. When you press the eject button, the wheel lowers the disc back onto the tray. Is it possible that the wheel spins slightly as it retracts, scratching the disc against the tray? The only other possibility is that the disc moves slightly when I gently place it on the tray or snap it back into the jewel case. In any event, there’s absolutely no excuse for the disc scratching for either of these reasons. With thoroughly, obsessively cautious use, every disc I own eventually develops a visible scratch, and sometimes that makes a portion of the disc unplayable.
Do you get what I’m saying here? Unlike records, casette tapes, floppy disks or hard drives, every optical disc will eventually become partially unreadable through normal, cautious, responsible use. CDs and DVDs are the most fragile storage medium ever!!! If you want to protect your investment, you absolutely must create backups of your CDs and DVDs. The MPAA wants doing so to be illegal. Why do you suppose that is?
It’s obvious to me that piracy isn’t the issue here. The MPAA wants to prevent you from making backups of your DVDs so that you’ll have to replace them when they get scratched! They know perfectly well that their product becomes unreadable through normal, responsible use, and they’re counting on that to drive future sales. Perhaps you think I’m a conspiracy nut for saying this. I wouldn’t say it if I couldn’t support my argument.
Somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago, I first started reading about CDs that had “armor”. They were made out of an especially hard plastic that was supposed to be virtually scratchproof. Reliable websites tested these claims by attempting to scratch them with everything from erasers to steel wool. While it was still possible to scratch them deliberately, their finding was that it was virtually impossible to scratch them accidentally. That’s all that should be required. Mission accomplished!
So, if the technology exists to make DVDs unscratchable and the movie labels are choosing not to use it, and also oppose the right of consumers to make backups of their fragile discs, what conclusion can one come to other than that they want your discs to fail and have to be replaced? If they used armor DVDs, they could make the same claim that Nintendo made back in 1985: backing up your DVDs is unnecessary because there is no reason for them to fail with responsible use. DVD makers choose not to employ an existing technology to make their discs scratch resistant, so they forfeit their right to say that consumers have no legitimate right to backup their discs.
The MPAA’s claim that consumers don’t have a right to backup their discs becomes even flimsier with recent developments. Today, you can buy a scratchproof DVD-R from TDK. They use a material called durabis (Latin for “you will last”). TDK claims that it is tough enough to resist screwdriver damage and make scratched optical discs a thing of the past. The interesting part is the reason why it was developed. One of the reasons why Blu-Ray discs have a higher capacity than HD-DVD is because the recording layer is much closer to the surface of the disc. Blu-ray discs are inherently more susceptible to becoming unreadable because a much finer scratch could render part of the disc unreadable. To prevent the discs from failing en masse, the Blu-ray format actually mandates the use of a scratch-resistant coating! Besides TDK, Sony and Panasonic have their own hard coating polymers to protect Blu-Ray discs.
In essence, the Blu-ray Disc Association has admitted that the plastic in CDs and DVDs scratches so easily that Blu-ray discs would become unreadable unless they were made of harder plastic. While the MPAA can argue that CDs and DVDs require more damage to become unreadable, they can’t deny that the discs are highly susceptible to scratches. If Blu-ray discs needs this coating, so do CDs and DVDs. If the industry won’t switch on their own, then consumers have an unchallengeable right to protect their investment by backing up their discs.
One way or another, the movie and music industries are absolutely aware that they’re selling a defective product. Their discs are so fragile that they become unreadable during responsible use, and that alone should leave them fearful of a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit. The lawsuit aside, for as long as their product continues to be defective, consumers have an inalienable right to protect their legally purchased music, movies and games by making a backup. Have a problem with that, MPAA? Then fix your &@^!ing product!!!
Tags: RealNetworks
I’m with you on this one. I’ve had DVDs crap out on me too often to keep count. I’m sick of MPAA’s bullshit. As if they aren’t going to make lots of money as soon as BluRay takes over as primary video medium. People will be forced to rebuild their movie collection they have paid for two times (or more) over (VHS-DVD-BluRay).
On subject though, backup rights should be unlimited. It reminds me of this DRM crap they’re putting in games nowadays. Being granted a limited number of installs is absolutely ridiculous. Sometimes I need to download a pirated copy after buying a software package because it either doesn’t work correctly or gives me a splitting headache. Ugh.