Downloading DVDs Leagally
Amazon.com are a typically innovative crowd that understand their users needs, and they understand the way the internet works. They have opened a DVD download service called ‘Unbox’ which is very unlike Amazon in that it’s terms for that service are nothing less than socially repugnant. I suppose there was a race on to get the ‘first mover’ advantage for video downloads. This race was extremely important to win after Apple had won the legal music downloads race, and have been staunchly un-cooperative with the music labels greedy behaviour.
I am guessing the MPAA didn’t want to submit to Steve Jobs ‘iron headlock’ and all of the big content providers (except Disney) got on board with Amazon’s Unbox service. I was thinking, ‘Goodness, I wonder what Amazon offered them in order for them to get on board?’. After reading this blog post it was pretty clear. Amazon had to offer them complete control over the content, and over their customers computers.
Apart from the fact that you have to use Windows Media Player to play the movies (for me a sufficient enough deterrent never to use the service) there are lots of other MAJOR deal breakers in the licensing agreement, making piracy look very attractive all over again. Even if money and bandwidth weren’t issues for me, I would still rather pirate all my movies than submit to the following (copied from here):
- You must install any software patch Amazon releases or you can no longer watch movies you have already purchased. Imagine if you couldn’t watch DVDs anymore unless you agreed to let Sony poke around inside your DVD player anytime it wanted.
- You must agree to let Unbox report what movies you watch back to Amazon without notice.
- If you try to uninstall Amazon’s Unbox player for any reason, Amazon has the right to automatically delete all of your movies without notice to you.
- You have to agree to let Amazon spam your computer with “promotional downloads” that appear unsolicted in your Unbox player. You also have to agree to let Amazon delete these promotional downloads from your computer without notice.
- Amazon can discontinue the Unbox service at any time without liability. What happens to all the movies you bought then?
- Amazon can change the terms of the agreement at any time and you must agree to the changes or you lose the right to continue watching all of the movies you bought.
Basically, you pay what you normally would pay for a DVD except you can’t play it on your DVD player, and they retain the right to come into your house and snatch them off you (wtf?). MPAA are the most gigantic fuck heads ever born to consider this as reasonable.
September 12th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I read an article the other day about apple’s iTunes dvd on demand service thats supposedly coming. Personally, I wont be buying any DVD’s online in the forseeable future. I think the apple store is planning on selling DVD for $15, Apple’s research said people wouldnt use the service for that price and recommended $10/DVD but the MPAA didnt like that price! Total wankers.
September 13th, 2006 at 12:53 am
They have always been totally in control of everything until fairly recently. Their business model is a stretch these days – it is becoming a socially intolerable stance to take. They have to resort to cunt acts because they think they have no other option. I would happily classify it as ‘extremist behaviour’. It seems desperate – which is strange because they haven’t taken a substantial profit hit that can’t be attributed to incompetence.
However, the clowns in control right now will eventually be replaced by people who actually ‘get’ the situation – or they will be systematically dismantled by their own ineptness (one of the better things about a the corporate culture).
Currently they are outsourcing the solution to their business model woes. Is it their fault that the people that presented the best case to fix the situation happened to be a bunch of bloodless lawyers? Yes. Yes it is.