Re: [TCLUG:12994] Local Media and DVD Stuff..

[Philip C Mendelsohn <mend0070@tc.umn.edu>]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Mike Hicks wrote:

> Chris McKinley wrote:
> > 
> > Userfriendly posted a link to a page with a petition against the treatment
> > of Jon Johansen, the Norwegian teen who helped reverse engineer the DVD
> > read protocols.  The petition can be found at:

<snip>

> 
> I think I'll save my "The Media is a Rotten Piece of Elephant Dung"
> speech for later and see if anyone is interested in coordinating with me
> to put together some fact-filled, yet easy-to-understand information
> about the DVD mess and its relationship with intellectual property,
> copyright, etc..

It's unfortuante that this debate has come up again, in a different forum
this time.  3 years ago, this same type of thing was thrown all around in
the mastering community, who either joined up or found that they just had
no leverage in the situation at all.

While I may agree with any given viewpoint, I have been to enough DVD
standards related things to know where the muscle and money are coming
from, and the inertia of the mass market -- i.e., those who just want to
buy a player and aren't particularly techy -- is large enough to let the
bad ideas (intellectual property, dividing the planet into
"regions," watermarking (one of the leading researchers, btw, is at the
U of M), etc...) steamroll any sort of rational thinking.

[For *my* rant, someone ask about the FCC's *MANDATE* that TV go digital
-- how is that not a pork barrel for manufacturing?  Don't even mention
the specs for HDTV!]

Anyway, not to be negative, and I may yet sign the petition, but I think
that it's important to recognize the scale of the 'evil'.  This has been
brought up before by those much closer to the development, and nothing has
changed.

I think the intellectual property issue is going to be one of the biggest
questions to be settled.  It's hosed now -- based on books (where the
money is made in the physical object), but now with various IT things,
there ain't no object... hmmm.

Whatever... Pardon the bandwidth...

Phil M.
(Hotdish mastering)

-- 
Life is complex:
It has real and imaginary components.
                     --Unknown