The Oscars Ends DVD Screeners For Reasons Other Than Piracy, Which Will Of Course Continue

from the screenshot dept

Oscars DVD screeners, the DVDs that get sent out to judges that are up for an award, have been an on again, off again topic for years at Techdirt. These screeners were at one time a very prevalent source for pirated films that showed up on the internet. There was once some irony in the MPAA and film industry insisting that piracy could be solved by tech companies if only they would nerd hard enough, yet here are these screeners going out the doors that supposedly were secure and turned out not to be. It was all bad enough that the MPAA wanted to ban screeners entirely, which pissed off filmmakers enough that the lobbying group ended up having to back down.

It turns out that technology actually could solve the film industry's screener DVD piracy problem. With better quality film rips showing up on pirate sites, ripping relatively low-res DVDs became not a thing. Perhaps because of that, alongside the stated desire to be more sustainable, there will be no more Oscars DVD screeners moving forward.

This year, plenty of discs will be shipped too but, after the upcoming Oscars ceremony, that will be a thing of the past. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this week that physical screeners will no longer be allowed in 2021.

“[T]he 93rd Awards season will be the final year DVD screeners will be allowed to be distributed; these mailings will be discontinued starting in 2021 for the 94th Academy Awards,” the Academy writes. Whether piracy was considered as a factor at all remains a guess. Some insiders believe that digital screeners are easier to protect and therefore more secure, but that is up for debate.

If it's a debate, it's not much of one. Already dedicated pirate groups have indicated that there are plenty of opportunities to leak digital screeners and that they have already been successful in ripping them. In other words, the screener DVDs may end, but the pirating will continue.

“We had access to digital screeners and they are indeed easy to leak. The DRM on it is a joke. We had an account last year with three screeners on it and they were pretty much MP4 ready to encode,” the EVO team informed us at the time.

Whether streaming or physical screeners are more secure ultimately depends on the type of protection measures that are implemented for each. The safest conclusion, for now, is that piracy will likely remain a problem no matter what the distribution platform is.

As it seems will always be the case. I'm somewhat encouraged that the announcement of the end of Oscars screener DVDs didn't carry with it complaints about piracy. Perhaps the industry is in some small way learning to live with piracy rather than fighting it at every turn.

Filed Under: academy awards, dvds, movies, oscars, piracy, screeners
Companies: mpaa

Hateful Eight Pirated From The Inside, Widely Available, And It Won't Stop Its Success At The Box Office

from the crying-over-nothing dept

If you're a Quentin Tarantino fan, just a movie fan, or someone who in some way sees advertisements, you likely already know that Tarantino's latest film is due for release on Christmas. What you may not know is that it's already widely available through illegitimate sources and that it appears that came to be because someone inside of a film industry company got their hands on a screener copy and uploaded it to the internet.

Andrew Kosove, co-CEO of production-finance company Alcon Entertainment, was sent the “screener” copy of Hateful Eight for year-end awards consideration. That copy was signed for by an office assistant and later shared online, where it is now circulating on multiple file-sharing sites. Sources say officials with the FBI, working in conjunction with distributor The Weinstein Co., have been able to pinpoint Kosove's copy of the film as the source of the leak from a watermark on the DVD sent to him. FBI agents are visiting Alcon’s Century City headquarters Tuesday to determine the chain of custody of the DVD and who is responsible for its uploading. Alcon is cooperating fully in the investigation.

It's worth noting that Kosove himself has stated that he never had actual possession of the screener copy, which is almost certainly true. The most likely route for the film ending up on pirate sites is some employee somewhere within Alcon swiped it and then uploaded it. Still, with so much public emphasis from antipiracy campaigns being placed on outsider n'er do wells, it's worth dinging the industry for not being able to police its own house, even as it asks service providers to police theirs.

Regardless, the damage is done, what damage there is.

Regardless, between 200,000 and 600,000 downloads of the film, depending on various reports, occurred the first day it was available online. Physical copies of Hateful Eight have been seen for sale on street corners in China and other markets.

Pay close attention to how Hateful Eight does at the box office, because it's almost certain to be a smash hit, even as it competes with a certain film franchise from a long time ago and far, far away. And that really is the point. Even as media reports will breathlessly detail the pirating of the film, even as we'll be told about street corners in China where copies of the film are offered, and even as the download numbers of the film will soar, the film will do well. Why?

Because those aren't the target customers of the film anyway. The kind of person paying little or nothing for the film is not the kind of person who would otherwise be lined up at the theater to hand over $20 for a ticket to the film. The film industry has yet to learn this lesson, instead putting in place windowed releases and other practices that do nothing but spur on the piracy the further. Ultimately, though, the success of a film at the box office and whether or not it is pirated have always been divorced from another. The theater is an experience, one that still can't be replicated through piracy.

Filed Under: andrew kosove, copyright, dvds, hateful eight, leaks, quentin tarantino, screener

DVD Makers Say That You Don't Really Own The DVDs You Bought... Thanks To Copyright

from the ownership-sure-is-a-funny-thing dept

So, we already wrote about some of the crazy filings from John Deere and GM claiming that when you buy a vehicle from them, you don't really own it, thanks to the software inside, which those companies argue they still really own. This was part of the opposition to requests for exemption from Section 1201 of the DMCA. Once again, Section 1201 is the anti-circumvention clause, that says you can't break DRM even if it's for non-infringing purposes. But... every three years, the Librarian of Congress is allowed to "exempt" certain classes of items from Section 1201. the responses above concerned locking down automotive software, but there are some other crazy ones as well.

For example, the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS LA) are so worried about an exemption for certain kinds of DVDs that it ran to the Copyright Office to claim that you simply don't own the DVDs you buy, and they'd really appreciate it if people stopped thinking they actually bought the DVD that, you know, they bought:

When consumers buy a DVD or Blu-ray disc, they are not purchasing the motion picture itself, rather they are purchasing access to the motion picture which affords only the right to access the work according to the format’s particular specifications (i.e., through the use of a DVD player), or the Blu-ray Disc format specifications (i.e., through the use of a Blu-ray format player). Consumers are able to purchase the copy at its retail price because it is distributed on a specific medium that will play back on only a licensed player.

Notice that even this statement is self-contradictory. The first sentence says they are not purchasing any content, but merely a "right to access." And yet, the very next sentence talks about the "purchase [of] the copy." So which is it? Are people purchasing a copy of the movie? Or are they merely licensing access to the content on the plastic?

This is a problem with Section 1201, showing how its expansive nature is fundamentally changing the concept of ownership in ways many people haven't even begun to understand yet.

Filed Under: 1201, anti-circumvention, dmca 1201, dvds, ownership, triennial review
Companies: aacs la, dvd cca

Analysis Of Pirated Oscar Movies Shows They're Almost All Available... In HD (And Not From Screeners)

from the because-of-course dept

As we've mentioned in the past, every year for over a decade, Andy Baio scours the internet to see what Oscar-nominated movies have been put online (the answer is usually almost all of them). He started this back in 2004, when the MPAA laughably claimed that the very first "screener" copy of a nominated movie had been put online. Baio realized that it was hardly the first and there were many more. His latest analysis is up and it shows that, yet again, nearly all nominated movies are available. He's actually kept the details of every year's search in a big Google spreadsheet.

There are some interesting findings in the data, including that screener copies don't matter much any more. For years, the MPAA -- which still can't get over its piracy obsession -- insisted that screener leaks were a huge problem. Back in 2003 the MPAA wanted to ban screener DVDs entirely, which pissed off a bunch of filmmakers who feared that their films wouldn't get voted on for the Oscars. Since then, they've focused on ridiculous proprietary systems that would only play on special DVD players -- which just pissed off viewers. In the last few years, they've just focused on watermarked DVDs, which means that when the videos inevitably leak, they can be tracked back to whose copy leaked -- like Ellen Degeneris' copies last year.

But, as Baio notes, in the online release market, screener copies aren't good enough:

But here’s the thing: screeners are stuck in the last decade. While we’re all streaming HD movies from iTunes or Netflix, the movie studios almost universally send screeners by mail on DVDs, which is forever stuck in low-resolution standard-definition quality. A small handful are sent in higher-definition Blu-ray.

This year, one Academy member received 68 screeners — 59 on DVD and only eight on Blu-ray. Only 13% of screeners were sent to voters in HD quality.

As a result, virtually any HD source is more prestigious than a DVD screener. And with the shift to online distribution, there’s an increasing supply of possible HD sources to draw from before screeners are ever sent to voters.

And of course, the data also shows that cammed copies (someone sitting in a theater with a camera filming it) are virtually non-existent here. This is another issue that we've covered for years, with the MPAA famously making up numbers out of thin air concerning how big a "problem" it was. But, of course, the quality on those copies suck, and so people focus on HD, which they inevitably get.

Of this year’s 36 nominated films, 34 already leaked online in some form — everything except Song of the Sea and Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me.

But only 33% of those were leaked from screeners, down from a high of 89% in 2003 and 2004.

As he notes, with the MPAA stupidly focused on screeners, they think they're winning the battle, because here's the percentage of actual screeners leaked: So, I'm sure the content protection team at the MPAA are all excited about this. They're vanquishing the screener piracy monster. But as Baio points out, that's bullshit, because just as many films are leaking, but in HD quality from HD sources instead of screeners: While this year's figure is currently 89%, there's a decent chance it will go higher before the Oscars happen. As Baio notes, 44% of the films this year are HD sources, not from screeners or from retail releases.

In other words: all this effort from the "content protection" team at the MPAA yields absolutely no benefit at all.

Filed Under: andy baio, copyright, dvds, hd, movies, oscars, piracy, screeners
Companies: mpaa

Here's A Taste Of What Publishers Will Do If First Sale Rights For Foreign Goods Disappear

from the goodbye-first-sale,-goodbye-jobs? dept

As Techdirt reported a few months back, the Supreme Court Justices seem rightly concerned about the "parade of horribles" -- things that would happen if the decision in the Wiley v. Kirtsaeng copyright case over whether or not you have the right to resell a foreign-made product you bought were applied generally. In the oral arguments, the line of Wiley's lawyer was essentially: nothing bad will happen, because copyright holders would never dream of using the decision to make outrageous demands.

But a fascinating post by Kevin Smith on the Scholarly Communications @ Duke blog recounts a couple of troubling stories of how publishers are already making outrageous demands that could become the norm if the Kirtsaeng decision is upheld. The first concerns a film:

In response to a faculty request, we purchased a DVD of this film through an ordinary commercial channel. Going directly to a retail outlet in this case was the fastest way to fulfill the request, as librarians will surely understand. But somehow the film's producer found out that our library owned a copy of this film, and they have been asserting to us that we need to buy an additional license, at three times the retail price we paid for the DVD, in order to lend the film.

That's not the case, because first sale allows the library to lend out the DVD if it wishes. However, if the DVD had been manufactured abroad, and the Kirtsaeng decision applied, the library would not have been able to do that. The second story concerns physical books:

A donor to [a] library had given them some books, amongst which was a copy of a specialized textbook that is currently in use at the school. Subsequently, the library has been contacted by the publisher of the textbook who has told them that they are not permitted to place the copy of the book that they were given in their library.

Apparently, the fear was that students might make photocopies instead of buying the book. But again, the first sale doctrine means that the publisher has no power to demand the book be removed from the library in this way. And once more, if the Kirtsaeng ruling applied, and the book had been printed abroad, the publisher would have that extraordinary right to determine which of its books could be lent out - thus ripping the heart out of the present library system.

In fact, so great is the additional control that publishers would have over titles not printed in the US in this situation, that Smith suggests there is likely to be a rush to off-shore operations:

If the Supreme Court does hold that first sale applies only to copyrighted works made in the U.S., publishers will have a strong incentive to move their manufacturing operations off-shore. In making its ruling in Kirtsaeng the Second Circuit admitted as much. If a publisher has its books printed or its DVDs pressed in the U.S., it will be very difficult for it to implement truly tiered pricing [that is, to charge libraries extra for books or DVDs that will be lent out -- something publishers are keen to do.] But if it moves those operations overseas, it might be able to stop libraries from lending materials without a separate, expensive license. It might also be able to forbid libraries from lending certain books entirely, like textbooks. It might even be able to stop students from selling their textbooks second-hand to the next crop of students taking the course. The experiences libraries have had with e-books proves that these goals are important to publishers.

In other words, it won't just be the public and libraries that lose out massively if the first sale doctrine is not upheld for foreign goods involving copyright: it's quite likely that many US workers will suffer too, as a wide range of industries move manufacturing offshore in order to obtain even more control over how people use their products.

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Filed Under: copyright, demands, dvds, first sale, foreign goods

DMCA Exemptions Announced; Exemption For DVD Ripping Rejected; Phone Unlocking Going Away

from the ridiculous dept

It's that time again, when the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyright announce their triennial "rulemaking" on DMCA exemptions for the anti-circumvention clause. Just the fact that they have to do this every three years should show how ridiculous the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA is. Basically, it's so screwed up that, every three years, the Librarian of Congress gets to randomly decide when the law can be ignored. Maybe... instead of doing that, you fix the law? There are some interesting exemptions, though they're limited. For example, people making "noncommercial" remix videos can apparently use clips from DVDs with specific limitations.

Motion pictures, as defined in 17 U.S.C. § 101, on DVDs that are lawfully made and acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System, where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary because reasonably available alternatives, such as noncircumventing methods or using screen capture software as provided for in alternative exemptions, are not able to produce the level of high-quality content required to achieve the desired criticism or comment on such motion pictures, and where circumvention is undertaken solely in order to make use of short portions of the motion pictures for the purpose of criticism or comment in the following instances: (i) in noncommercial videos; (ii) in documentary films; (iii) in nonfiction multimedia ebooks offering film analysis; and (iv) for educational purposes in film studies or other courses requiring close analysis of film and media excerpts, by college and university faculty, college and university students, and kindergarten through twelfth grade educators. For purposes of this exemption, "noncommercial videos" includes videos created pursuant to a paid commission, provided that the commissioning entity's use is noncommercial.

In explaining this, they specifically call out the examples of remix videos as to why this should be allowed:

Creators of noncommercial videos provided the most extensive record to support the need for higher-quality source material. Based on the video evidence presented, the Register is able to conclude that diminished quality likely would impair the criticism and comment contained in noncommercial videos. For example, the Register is able to perceive that Buffy vs Edward and other noncommercial videos would suffer significantly because of blurring and the loss of detail in characters' expression and sense of depth.

Of course, it's not all good news. Public Knowledge had put forth a request for an exemption for being able to rip legally purchased DVDs for the sake of watching them on a computer or tablet. This is something that a ton of people already do, but which technically violates the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA. Unfortunately, this request was rejected -- even though it's already acknowledged as legal to do the same thing with CDs -- and, as PK's Michael Weinberg points out, even movie studio bosses seem to recognize that it should be legal to rip your own movies:

And the RIAA and the MPAA agree with you. In 2005, their lawyer (now the Solicitor General of the United States) assured the Supreme Court that "The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their Website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

Movie executives agree as well. Mitch Singer, the Chief Technology Officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment explained to author Robert Levine that the idea for the movie industry's UltraViolet program evolved out of Singer's own frustration with transferring movies between PCs in his home.

So do members of Congress. Earlier this year, Representative Darrell Issa did a IAmA on Reddit. Rep. Issa told Redditors that it was already perfectly legal to make personal copies of DVDs for their own use.

So what is the reasoning for the rejection? Well, they argue that space shifting might not be legal after all, despite all of the above. They claim that key cases involving the VCR and the mp3 player -- both of which were found to be legal -- do not "provide the legal basis for a broad declaration that space shifting of audiovisual works is a noninfringing use." Think about that for a second.

Also troubling: phone unlocking -- which was an exemption for the past few rounds -- will no longer be an exemption:

In 2006 and 2010, the Librarian of Congress had permitted users to unlock their phones to take them to a new carrier. Now that's coming to an end. While the new rules do contain a provision allowing phone unlocking, it comes with a crippling caveat: the phone must have been "originally acquired from the operator of a wireless telecommunications network or retailer no later than ninety days after the effective date of this exemption." In other words, phones you already have, as well as those purchased between now and next January, can be unlocked. But phones purchased after January 2013 can only be unlocked with the carrier's permission.

And politicians wonder why no one respects copyright any more.

Filed Under: anticircumvention, copyright, dmca, dvds, exemptions, fair use, movies, ripping

The DVD Is Dying. Hollywood's Plan? Do Nothing And Cede Ground To File Sharing

from the there's-no-business-like-no-business dept

David Pogue, NY Times columnist and known copyright infringer, has a new post up over at the Scientific American discussing piracy; more specifically, Hollywood's insistence on driving people to piracy with its lack of digital offerings and a distribution system that depends heavily on artificial limitations.

The first issue plaguing Hollywood's thinking? The DVD is dead and no one in control has realized it. The future lies in streaming movies, not plastic discs. It took the recording industry several years to realize the fact that its customers were not nearly as attached to its physical products as it was. Add to that the fact that many people prize convenience over ownership and it's clear that trying to steer people toward purchasing all of their entertainment isn't the way to go.

Netflix's CEO says, “We expect DVD subscribers to decline steadily every quarter, forever.” The latest laptops don't even come with DVD slots. So where are film enthusiasts suppose to rent their flicks? Online, of course.

Streaming movies offers instant gratification: no waiting, no driving—plus great portability: you can watch on gadgets too small for a DVD drive, like phones, tablets and superthin laptops.

The demand is already there and, as the technology catches up, it will only increase. You can take your music anywhere but most DVDs are still relegated to DVD players. Yes, there are workarounds, but when consumers are looking for the least amount of friction, streaming a movie easily trumps burning off a copy or ripping it to the hard drive. If they can't get the films they want in the format they want, they'll either skip it entirely, find a "competing" provider or look for something else readily available through streaming services.

Streaming services or online rentals, if implemented correctly, would give the motion picture industry some steady, if not increasing income well into the future. But it's completely disinterested in implementing these services in a realistic fashion, instead choosing to double-up on artificial scarcity.

For all of the apparent convenience of renting a movie via the Web, there are a surprising number of drawbacks. For example, when you rent the digital version, you often have only 24 hours to finish watching it, which makes no sense. Do these companies really expect us to rent the same movie again tomorrow night if we can't finish it tonight? In the DVD days, a Blockbuster rental was three days. Why should online rentals be any different?

Yeah. Exactly. Why? Why 24 hours? Netflix, your main competition in this arena, will let you keep the DVD(s) all the way up until they actually shut down the DVD service, only this time for real. As for their streaming "rentals?" Whatever's available stays available for repeated viewings all the way up until it's yanked from the lineup, usually by one of you (points accusingly at the Motion Picture Industry).

Speaking of holes in the lineup, when are you (again with the pointing) going to stop doing this sort of thing?

[P]erhaps most important, there's the availability problem. New movies aren't available online until months after they are finished in the theaters, thanks to the “windowing” system—a long-established obligation that makes each movie available, say, first to hotels, then to pay-per-view systems, then to HBO and, only after that, to you for online rental.

Worse, some movies never become available. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, A Beautiful Mind, Bridget Jones's Diary, Saving Private Ryan, Meet the Fockers, and so on, are not available to rent from the major online distributors.

How's that "plan" working out for you, Hollywood? Keeping those pirates at bay with your sometime/later/still later/possibly never windowing? To be honest, I don't think you really care. Once all the distribution lines have been wrung dry of any cash, it's time to retire back to the boardroom and blame filesharing for any numbers that seem slightly weak. Blame them if you must, but who's screwing who at this point?

Of the 10 most pirated movies of 2011, guess how many of them are available to rent online, as I write this in midsummer 2012? Zero. That's right: Hollywood is actually encouraging the very practice they claim to be fighting (with new laws, for example).

Look, I don't want to tell you how to do your jobs, but sweet something of somewhere, someone needs to be offering a little guidance. You don't offer rentals of movies people actually want. You do offer rentals of movies that everyone's sick of after their multiple appearances in various windows. Other movies you just flat out don't offer at all. And yet, it's piracy that's keeping you from "breaking even." I would assume someone has put a bit a thought into this self-inflicted predicament. Pogue finds something akin to an explanation browsing around Disney's website:

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to release or have all our titles in the market at once.” Oh, okay. So they're not available because they're not available.

"Not possible" being PR code for "not until we're absolutely forced to, but we will fight this every step of the way." But why all the fighting? It didn't work for the recording industry. It won't work for the movie industry. The television industry seems to have weathered the disruption slightly better, but still expends a lot of effort locking up currently running shows and shutting down live streams that would actually GAIN them additional viewers to sell to advertisers.

Pogue has appended a list entitled "5 Ways Hollywood Can Stop Digging Its Own Grave" to his post and they're all common sense (at least to the "layperson"). The largest Hollywood-wielded shovel should have disappeared long ago: the release window. Related: "When it's buyable, it should be rentable."

This is the way things work these days and it's not just something that went into effect over the last 72 hours. If pirates have your stuff several months before you're planning on releasing it to paying customers, how many paying customers do you expect to have left once you deign them worthy of throwing money at your product?

Final word from Pogue:

Listen up, Hollywood: Nobody ever went out of business offering a good product for sale at a reasonable price with an eye toward pleasing the customer. You should try it some time.

Filed Under: copyright, dvds, hollywood, strategy, windows

Warner Bros. Sues A Ton Of Amazon Resellers For Selling 'Counterfeit' DVDs

from the counterfeit?-resale? dept

The Hollywood Reporter has a story on Warner Bros. filing a lawsuit against a bunch of individuals who use Amazon's marketplace offering to sell DVDs that Warner Bros. claims are counterfeit. The lawsuit is pretty weak on details so far. The THR report speculates on whether or not this is about packaging up downloaded or camcorded movies and pretending they're official.

However, if you look at the Amazon profile of the named defendant, Todd Beckham, you see that he has very good reviews. Currently, he has a 4.9 star rating with over 2,000 reviews. If he were selling inferior counterfeit products, you'd think people would complain, because his listings certainly suggest they're new official copies. So buyers seem to feel they're getting what they thought they bought. It's possible that he's just a really good counterfeiter, but THR wonders why WB doesn't just use Amazon's existing internal controls to terminate service for users who sell infringing works.

WB apparently told THR that this isn't a case of going after used product sales (where it would have a tough case, given the first sale doctrine -- and, again, would likely lead to negative reviews, since the offerings don't seem to indicate "used" conditions), but it's unclear how or why the company thinks these DVDs are counterfeit. Again, given the sparseness of detail, it's entirely possible the targets are creating (apparently high quality) counterfeit flicks and selling them. But it would be nice to see a bit more evidence that that's the case, and this isn't just a case of being worried about being undercut by the secondary market. What's a little worrying is that, according to THR, WB is claiming that the sellers are violating its "distribution rights" to the films, not reproduction rights. That raises at least some questions over whether or not the concern is just competition, or actual unauthorized copies. At the very least, this will be a case worth following...

Filed Under: counterfeit, dvds, lawsuits
Companies: warner bros

NZ Judge In Dotcom Extradition Case Speaks Out Against TPP & US Copyright Extremism

from the good-for-him dept

A bunch of news reports are highlighting a story in which New Zealand District Court Judge David Harvey supposedly called the US "the enemy," and are pointing out that he's the judge overseeing the extradition case for Kim Dotcom. Upon seeing the headline, I was pretty amazed as well, figuring that might cause problems with the case, but the details show that his comments were not about the US in general, or about the Dotcom case. Rather, they were in response to the TPP negotiations that we've been following closely -- and how the TPP will take away certain rights from New Zealanders, like the ability to get around region-specific DVD players:

It is legal in New Zealand to use methods to get around these regional codes and make the DVDs watchable but Judge Harvey said the TPP would change this.

"Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited... if you do you will be a criminal - that's what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn't criminalised. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S."

His point is that the US is trying to expand copyright protectionism and curtail current rights of New Zealanders, blocking them from doing something that is currently legal and seems perfectly reasonable (getting around regional restrictions to watch legally purchased DVDs from other regions). It's a good thing that more people are seeing the problems of American extremism on copyright law, but I wonder if this will be used (as it appears to be in the press) to hit back on him for his role in the Dotcom case.

Filed Under: anti-circumvention, copyright, david harvey, dvds, new zealand, policy, region free, tpp, us
Companies: megaupload

Does Anyone Who Develops New Products In Hollywood Ask 'Would I Ever Actually Use This?'

from the you-do-what-to-do-what-now? dept

For all the lip service the MPAA has been paying to the claim that it loves tech innovations and wants to work with the tech industry to build cool things, why is it that every new "innovation" the industry comes up with only seems to make life complicated for people in ways that make no sense at all? For example, we recently talked about Warner Bros. ridiculous disc-to-digital offering in which people who want a digital version of movies they have on DVD can drive to a store where someone will rip the movie for them. In a world where the ability to rip your DVDs in the comfort of your own home is commonplace, that makes no sense at all.

I think we can add to this "huh?" discussion: the new effort from Fox, in which the studio will be putting up giant murals in malls to try to make it "easier" for you to buy DVDs. Here's how it works according to Deadline.com:

As part of an exclusive one-year partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, the malls will have a wall with cover art and QR codes for many the studio’s home videos. People who want to buy the movie or TV show can download a smartphone app called Fox Movie Mall, available for both iPhones and Android devices. It will enable them to scan an image and go directly to a Web site to complete the purchase for a DVD or Blu-ray disc shipped free to their home.

So, yeah. You go to a mall (physical) and download a special app (digital) which you then use to scan a silly QR code (digital) to be sent to a website (digital) to order a DVD (physical) to be shipped to your home (physical). There are a bunch of ridiculous extra steps here and I can't figure out how any of this makes sense. If you have people in a mall already and you're trying to get people to buy physical product, why not just let them scan and pick up the physical product? If you're focusing on the digital components, why require a specialized app that no one's going to want to download, and then not offer a digital version of the film?

Fox execs claim that they expect this new effort "to reach as many 60 million people over the next four months with the mall wallscapes." I guess that depends on your interpretation of "reach." If you mean 60 million people may walk by and ignore these murals, perhaps that's true. Though that suggests Fox must be spending a ridiculous amount of money to get these murals pretty much everywhere. If you mean that 60 million people will actually pay any attention at all to this convoluted system to buy an obsolete product fewer and fewer people actually want, well, then someone's done a miscalculation somewhere.

Seriously: how hard is it for folks in Hollywood to ask this simple question: "Would I ever use this product that I'm developing?" If the answer is "not in a million years" perhaps it's time to move on to building products that consumers actually want.

Filed Under: dvds, malls, murals, promotions, sales
Companies: fox