The Business, the bloggers and Microsoft's 'one-play' DVD - Not A hoax After all?
WTF this is getting ridiculous

LAST week’s exclusive story in The Business that Microsoft was developing “one-play” DVDs was followed up by media around the world. It also sparked a bushfire of debate across the internet by thousands of web bloggers, with many claiming this newspaper had been hoaxed.

The front page story revealed that Microsoft’s new disposable, pre-recorded DVD discs would help Hollywood combat film piracy. Some online pundits applauded our report; but other do-it-yourself online journalists, known as bloggers, chose to vilify and ridicule instead. One blogger going by the unlikely name of Ed Bott claimed to have carried out a piece of investigative journalism of his own to prove the story was a “hoax”. Though dismissed by other online commentators, Bott’s blog found favour with a hard core of dissenters on the internet.

The Business has bad news for Bott and his followers: Microsoft has confirmed the story. Last week’s story, headed “Microsoft invents a ‘one-play only’ DVD to combat Hollywood piracy” was based on an unamed source. It reported that the new DVD discs would be burned to play once only. But this weekend the newspaper’s sources are no longer unamed. Alistair Baker, Microsoft’s UK managing director, told The Business: “Microsoft’s digital rights management [DRM] software generates a licence key to give the DVD content owner total control over how the content is viewed. This could mean watching a film only once, or over a limited period.”

Baker explained that Microsoft’s software would enable the DVD producers to control whether viewers watched it once or several times or for a few days only. He added that the software could also determine at what times the film could be viewed. According to Baker, there is a growing demand for parental control over what children watch and when. “It is also theoretically possible to control what times of the day the discs can be watched so that children, for example, only have access to a movie when their homework is done but before their bedtime,” said Baker, who has extensive knowledge of Mircosoft’s research work. The digital rights management software is embedded in the new generation of high-definition DVDs at the point when the movie is recorded on it. The new discs should not be confused with earlier industry attempts to make a disc that physically self-destructed after being played. Microsoft’s labs are working on rights management as part of a push to upgrade Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which powers most of the world’s computers, on to DVD players and digital televisions.

According to industry sources, the new DVD players are expected to be available by 2006. “Playing DVD discs using new digital rights management software will necessitate new DVD players from manufacturers like Toshiba supporting high-definition DVD and running Windows CE,” said Baker.

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I knew it wasn't a hoax. It sounded too much like something Microsoft would do to be a hoax. Of course, it's easy to bypass any kind of DRM if you know what you are doing, so this will just make cheaper DVDs, like Raid said in a previous post, that can be ripped once and thrown away.

Anyone who buys into this is an idiot.

"Microsoft has confirmed the story. "

GOOD. They have now also confirmed the rapid demise of them as an entertainment DVD company. Simply put, DON'T BUY THEM.

"The digital rights management software is embedded in the new generation of high-definition DVDs at the point when the movie is recorded on it."

This is designed for the new HD-DVDs, so it's the same old game, but on a new playfield.

"...Microsoft’s new disposable, pre-recorded DVD discs would help Hollywood combat film piracy."

This has nothing to do with combatting piracy. Instead...

"...Microsoft’s software would enable the DVD producers to control whether viewers watched it once or several times or for a few days only."

...this is yet another attempt to turn the "Play" button into a "Pay" button. If they could get this scheme to work, they could effectively side-step blockbuster and reap the profits of the rental industry. Since the disc is not destroyed, but rather rendered unable to play, they could also make it so that, once you have reached the limit on plays/time, an add comes up on the screen telling how/where you can pay to get additional plays/time. This would be similar to the old Divx scheme (the discs, not the codec.) If you pay up, they will send you a code that will unlock the disc for additional plays, after which it will lock up again.

Since it will be on a high capacity disc, they could also include additional movies and/or content on the disc which you could unlock (for an additional payment, of course.)

They already claim that we are not buying their product, but merely licensing it. Now they are hoping to make us license it a few plays (or only one) at a time. They see this as a neverending stream of revenue.

I bet they are banking on this continuous payment model making up for the fact that after HD-DVD/Blueray (or maybe only DVD -- my choice), they will no longer be able to get consumers to shell out for the same movies again on another format upgrade. This way, they wouldn't have to worry about it because we would have to keep shelling out to watch the ones we already have.

They are probably hoping that they can make this the only type of discs available in the new hi-def format. I'm betting the public won't go for it.

Again, this is not content protection, it is USE limitation. There will be contect protection on the disc, but the playability limitations don't have anything to do with preventing piracy. The piracy prevention claim is just a weak excuse for forcing that "Pay" button on us.

"It reported that the new DVD discs would be burned to play once only."

This is the part of the story that helps it to sound like a hoax ~~ commercial DVDs are not burned.

“Playing DVD discs using new digital rights management software will necessitate new DVD players from manufacturers like Toshiba supporting high-definition DVD and running Windows CE”

A DVD player that requires Windows??? Science takes a giant leap backwards. Take a relatively simple device, and introduce unneccesary complexity for the sole purpose of making entertainment more annoying to experience using software which will require a weekly patch of some sort which Microsoft will gladly sell you at a ridiculous price, unless, of course, you are willing to subscribe to the MS DVD subscription plan, ensuring that you have the latest version of their crappy software so that you, too, can experience the Blue Screen of Death.

For a DVD player.

You can fool some of the people all of the time and they'll snap this right up.

"This is the part of the story that helps it to sound like a hoax ~~ commercial DVDs are not burned."

...perhaps they will be now. After all, they have no problem selling a crappy download without any physical media at all.