(On interpretations of vacuous press releases)
I think it's easy to make that argument now, seeing that Apple have been so daft about it, but I think it's hard to argue that was the impression being given by joining the BDA board and talking about consumers waiting to "burn their own high def DVDs."
I agree with where you're coming from - - although it does come down to where we place our cynicism.
For example (and no offense intended), to now look back at the same announcement and to suggest that it was possibly a "sneaky" attempt to damage BD is also a quite cynical viewpoint.
FWIW, there's an art both to writing a press release ... to infer what people want to hear without making an sort of legally binding commitment. As well as an art to read press releases ... to read precisely what was (and wasn't) a firm declaration or commitment.
I mean, in what way does "waiting anxiously to burn their own high def DVDs" translate to 'no BD drives in macs though, it'll be downloads all the way!'?
Contextually, the BD -vs- HD-DVD format war was still underway, wasn't it? As such, why would Apple choose the language of "high def DVD" in the press release instead of "BD" disks? Afterall, they are joining the competitor of HD-DVD.
In retrospect it looks like Apple only joined the board to try and damage BD's chances from the inside, which would be fairly sneaky if so.
As mentioned above, a pretty cynical view. Less cynically, I'd conjecture that their motivation was that they believed that they had to buy a seat at the table, so as to try to address their DRM concerns by trying to work from within.
Originally Posted by blair.harringto
Will there ever come a day when 1080p DRM free movies will be sold through iTunes?
possibly. But unfortunately Apple doesn't control the whole game so the DRM Free might never happen
Agreed. Intellectual Property (IP) rights are essentially a government-guaranteed monopoly, and if the IP holder doesn't want something, there's no way to force him...the old "lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink".
(HD DRM stripping)
Give it time and it will exist.
Agreed. Even military levels of encryption can be eventually cracked through brute force ... it may be pragmatically impractical, but that's only by today's paradigm of affordable computer performance.
He has zero control. He has merely leverage. You know how DRM was removed from music files. It wasn't just Steve saying "I'm doing it get over it". They wanted the power to control the prices. Specifically to raise them. Steve said okay he would let them control the price, but they had to give up DRM. Otherwise the contract terms stood.
He hasn't found that kind of leverage with the studios yet to force them to allow 1080p/5.1 files even if such a thing was reasonable in terms of download sizes. When he has that leverage, he'll play it. And we'll see if physical disks keep going up in sales. They might, they might not.
IMO, it was the decline of music CD sales ... probably in part due to the success of ripping and piracy ... that finally opened the eyes of the record labels into realizing how unsustainable their business model had become, and thus the concession into the iTunes business model. A recent
NPR report on the topic covers some of the factors.
Basically, the movie studios aren't yet convinced that their business model is particularly likely to follow the precedence from music...partly because they are taking steps to hedge their bets (Batman on Facebook, etc) and they don't believe they need Apple as a partner.
But regardless, despite your disdain for this "good enough" mentality and how perhaps 2% of the world (many of whom are on this very board) thinks that such music and movies are 'crap', the general public doesn't agree...
Actually, the public can agree - - but that doesn't mean that they'll agree enough to change their priorities. The basic innovation of the iTunes store is to deliver what the customer wants
more, which (bluntly) is immediate gratification.
... And as Apple is a business and is about making money via sales, who do you think they listen to. The people spending the money for whom 'good enough' is good enough, or the 2% that sit on boards and whine about how they won't even consider buying until it has X, Y, Z.
And even if it did, they'll only open their wallet for a whopping $100
Record labels no. But we aren't talking about record labels. We are talking about studios. And the studios are definitely still pushing physical. I work with studios, I hear it day in and out. Discs, Discs, Discs. They are scared of digital cause they "know" that if they put it out there, folks will find a way to rip the DRM off and pirate the hell out of the files. Mind you they forget that you can rip the discs also but try pointing that out to them and it doesn't make things better in regards to convincing them to go digital
The studios resist change believe that their business case will be different and as such, they're not vulnerable like the record labels were.
On the one hand, they're right, because part of what brought down the record labels was that the consumer valued singles more than albums (and the MP3 technology facilitated this), whereas a movie is closer to the "album" paradigm.
However, where they're missing is that computer technology continues to advance quite rapidly, so even the computing power for ripping or for storage aren't the insurmountable obstacles that they were even but two years ago anymore. For example, a 2TB drive is $100 for storing 40 movies, which works out to <$3 each, and a "sneaker net" giveaway to a friend of a BD-R is now under $2 per disk...which also bypasses ease-of-traceability via internet based transfers or networks. Perhaps the studios should ask the record labels how many unformatted cassette tapes were sold back in the "Olde Days".
Yes, the ethical challenge here is piracy, but the first question is the motivation: if it is piracy for sake of theft of revenue, or for sake of consumer convenience. The Studios neglect at their own peril the reports about how watching a pirated BD movie is a friendlier-to-consumer experience because it allows the viewers to skip directly to the feature attraction, whereas the legal copies do not, and rudely impose non-skippable trailers and advertisements, which is being utterly disrespectful of their customer.
In a truly competitive marketplace, we would say that "Capitalistic Forces" should rapidly correct this inefficiency in servicing the consumer. However, because of the IP Laws that gives the IP holder a legal marketplace monopoly, this imbalance does not get corrected. Thus, the seeds of "Social Injustice" are sewn which may very well rationalize counteracting an "unjust" restriction on IP through civil disobedience.
Please note that I'm not condoning such behavior, but seeking to understand & explain it.
-hh
