g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Monday, May 19, 2003
14:45 - How To Beat Pirates
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030516/tc_nm/media_disney_dvds_d

(top) link
Use copy-protection technology that has nothing to do with computers, is the answer. Or Disney's, anyway.

Disney home video unit Buena Vista Home Entertainment will launch a pilot movie "rental" program in August that uses the self-destruction technology, the company said on Friday.

The discs stop working after a change in color renders them unreadable. They start off red, but when they are taken out of the package, exposure to oxygen turns the coating black and makes it impenetrable by a DVD laser.

Buena Vista hopes the technology will let it crack a wider rental market, since it can sell the DVDs in stores or almost anywhere without setting up a system to get the discs back.

The discs work perfectly for the two-day viewing window, said Flexplay Technologies, Inc., the private company which developed the technology using material from General Electric Co.

Chemical reactions can't be hacked. Cute.

I'm sure Disney is still miffed over the failure of Circuit City's pay-for-play DiVX disc format; I guess this shows they're not daunted by such things as massive market rejection. But for what it's worth, as long as these self-destructing discs are for rental only, I suppose there's not much to get alarmed about; they're real DVDs, not some crippled format, and the benefits of rental stores being able to turn into one-way retail stores are certainly good for that industry. It's actually a pretty clever solution.

It's almost a shame that Disney withdrew their pledged support for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. I was all set to make jokes about how appropriate it would be to release that movie using this format; just like these discs, Michael Moore's head starts out red, and then as it gets exposed to more and more oxygen, it gradually becomes less and less susceptible to facts and reason until it turns completely impenetrable and useless.

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© Brian Tiemann