By Jon Newton - p2pnet.net

321 Studios has bad news for Walt Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment, which apparently believes the answer to DVD copying problems includes trying to get people to rent discs that commit suicide after 48 hours.

Almost 4,000 people were asked, "Would you consider renting a self-destructive DVD?", says a new 321 survey.

And 76% said, in effect, Forget It.

The survey was conducted in response to recent reports that Flexplay and The Walt Disney Co home video unit, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, will launch a DVD rental program this August that makes DVDs unreadable after 48 hours, says 321.

"This move to create self-destructing DVDs by Buena Vista Entertainment implies that consumers are dishonest in their use of technology, and consumers are not pleased with this implication. Customers should not be criminalized when they go to rent a movie," says Robert Moore, 321 president.

"In addition, consumers are displeased with the negative environmental impact of these products," he went on.

"The creation of these non-recyclable, one-use products will create unnecessary landfill waste or release harmful toxins into the air when trash is incinerated.

"Environmental experts agree that self-destructing DVDs are extremely harmful to the environment. Instead of producing a disc that would be used when rented by 50 to 100 persons, the resources and energy used to create that disc will be multiplied by 50 or 100 times. Consumers that rent DVDs - like the 5,051 respondents that participated in the survey - overwhelmingly prefer to either to purchase or rent traditional DVDs.

Other survey results said:

15 percent (758 respondents) replied that they would rent a self-destructing DVD only if the price were low.
Nine percent (454 respondents) stated that they would consider renting a self-destructing DVD.

In the meanwhile, to, "thwart industry threats" to stop the sale of its DVD Copy Plus software and interactive tutorial for making personal backup copies of DVDs, 321 is currently suing nine major movie companies, including Disney, challenging the constitutionality of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and citing its free speech rights under the First Amendment.

The others named in the suit are MGM Studios, Tristar Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner Entertainment, Universal City Studios, The Saul Zaentz Company and Pixar Corporation.

They could save us all a lot of time and effort by making them self-destruct as soon as they were loaded on a truck at the manufacturer.

Remember, these are the guys who ran away from New York to escape Edison's tyrannical monopoly. They created Hollywood as a haven for independent filmmakers.

Now THEY are the tyrannical monopoly actively engaged in restraint of trade. Those who don't know history...

Here's the odd thing I don't get.

These CDs self-destruct after 24 hours.

How is that going to stop copying?

Think about it. If anything, it would ENCOURAGE copying... "Ooh, I don't have time to see this now... I'll copy it and save it for later."

Seriously, all that a 24-hour time-limited DVD does is make sure that the copier has to copy it within the limited time frame... it's only data, after all.

-- Funksaw

Umm... I'm pretty sure this was already tried. Remember DivX? It was pushed by Circuit City as the New Alternative to renting, where you keep the DVD and it just stops working. I used to rent using DivX until they gave up on it.

I agree with FunkSaw. I think that more people will be DVDXCopying and DeCSSing these DVDs!!!!!!!

Then, they will OWN a copy of it for a lesser price!

Movie rental works as a business model because most folks only watch a movie once. Recorded music however is a much more repeatable experience, thereby driving the desire for permanent access to the media. Because Americans are so accustomed to a "disposable" culture, I am afraid that the self distruct DVD idea just might fly. They will of course try the encription "protection" method of keeping us from making copies.
But for the same reason of only one (or just a few views) per movie being desired by most customers. The encription of dvds may just work to stop folks from bothering to record a copy of the dvd. It will be too much trouble to bother and besides, how often do we make a VHS copy of movies that we rent? Not very often.
They may have us on this one.

I researched this a while ago. The disc polymer reacts with oxygen. Remove the disc from its shrink wrap (applied in nitrogen) and 48 hours later its useless. Well, 48 hours give or take 24. The timeings not that accurate.

In order to keep the DVDs viewable on current equipment, they must be protected using the CSS system. It will be easy to copy a DVD to a hard drive or another DVD, and almost as easy to recompress it onto a CD.

The studios would very much like to stop people copying DVDs, but that would mean replaceing the CSS system and that would render every current DVD player obsolete. The customers wouldn't like that, espicially if the new "secure-DVD" didn't show any advantages for them. So they wait, and consider the possibility of a new HD-DVD format with higher capacity and bitrate for HD films, which they can use as an excuse to get people upgradeing to a new protection system.

AIN'T GONNA DO IT

Sorry to all those misguided music artists who have "signed" with a label.
I am NOT gonna buy your records. (Can we still call em records?) I like
much of your music, but I also know that the nearly $20 bucks per CD I
used to fork over to your label only meant a few cents in your pocket, so
it did you no good anyway.

If I like your music and you have a way to
sell it to me directly... with less of the media distribution dominating
corporated oligopoly's middle-men taking all the money (and then even
lying about how it doesn't just line pockets... as if it really costs that much
to promote you and all...)
If you WOULD sell it to me more directly...
THEN, maybe I would consider buying your CD. Just like I frequently buy
from local independent bands at there shows and from those music artists
who still do and have the ability to make their music available on the
internet or other means of distribution (you know... those who more often
than not SOUND like they are making true ART regardless just trying to
cash in on the latest CORPORATE sucsess in sound or style.)

Sell-outs sell their soul... and it shows. The first album or 2 from a "good"
artist is almost always their best work... WHY? because it was mostly
conceived BEFORE the sell-out occured. Once signed, then SOLD OUT!
THUS, no longer TRYING! ...This is a WRONG path for artists to follow if
you are a true artist. (More in it for the art/performance sake than the
fame/$$$ even thou fame/$$$ SHOULD be bestowed on the worthy ...but
once that fame/$$$ becomes the REASON for the sounds you make...
FORGET calling yourself an Artist! You are then just a PUPPET!)

Go ahead, LOCK UP YOUR TUNES untill someone pays your Master (the
label) all of your money... and GO AHEAD and think just because you are
lucky enough to be overly shoved down everyone's throat by an ever
narrowing media marketplace trying hard to find the smallest common
denominator in order to maximumize proffits... WE DON'T WANT TO
HEAR THOSE TUNES ANYWAY!

That is WHY sales are slipping (in addition to a depressed economy!)
Don't blame P2P and "pirates" for all your woes. Blame your damn
labels.

Why not GIVE UP the cozy exclusive practice of being allied to those
labels? Are you too lazy to promote yourselfs??? Hell, you already
have fame... why not turn it into fortune and freedom to be what you
want to be musically too? End your indentured servitude! Quit the
labels and become REAL artists again... you were true artists once.
(Why the hell did they want you in the first place?)

Go INDEPENDENT !!!

In the meantime... I will NOT buy your records !

Shmoo, of Electric Gypsy

Support Local and Independent Music!

To 'gdZiemann' about that point of the Hollywood establishment having been created to escape Edison's de facto goon squad, vs. today's situation: Ironic, isn't it? And as for that saying you ended with, I remember it as "Those who do not remember the past . . . ", but whichever way you put it, how true it is. Especially as these same thoughts have entered my mind.

To 'independentm...': It seems the only "artists" I see still swarming to the major labels in any quantity are those premanufactured, work-for-hire "teen popsters" whose work you only hear if you happen to accidentally stumble onto the Radio Disney station in your area while dial-surfing.

There arn't many radio stations playing anything except those teen popsters, unless you count the local ones with very small audiences.

Music now isn't about makeing good quality music people want to listen to. Its all about createing an image which sells well. The popular artists (those that actually get fame, if not fortune), can usually be classified into just a few image catagories.

There are the Britneys, females who cant sing or write but look like every teenage males fantasy. They make music videos wearing almost nothing. Sex sells.

There are the Bad Boys. Eminem or 50 cents. They try to make music thats right on the edge of socially acceptable, selling to the teenage rebels, those people who dislike any authority because its cool. If bad language, violence, guns and very graphic descriptions of sex are not socially acceptable then they must be cool. (The great irony is that these people, trying to be as indepedant of authority as possible, simply become a stereotype

Other than those two, there are of course a few kids "artists" (I assume someone has to sing "bob the builder", through they may not admit it), the soppy emotional types who sing about love, and various others.

The important thing is that within one of these one artist is almost indistinquishable from the next

Pop, rap, rock etc classify music. They dont classify the image used to sell it.

I personally would not buy into the whole self-destructing DVD's deal. I shudder at the thought of the environmental implications involved as was mentioned. I do, however, believe that they will have to stray away from any solutions to piracy that involve a major revolution in the systems that legal movie viewers use to watch movies. You may not lose as much money due to piracy, but you will lose faithful customers which will hurt in the long run. And, many of the people engaged in piracy wouldn't actually pay for what they pirate. But they can have it for free so they do it. If I could get something for free, I would be more likely to try it even if I may not like it than if I had to pay for it...obviously. But stopping them from pirating it won't earn you their money. The percent of piraters who sell what they 'steal' to others for money are the only money that they'd stand to gain, and how much is that really?

Ahh and the main point that I wanted to make and accidentally left out: If they went ahead and tried to mass market this self-destructing DVD's and I made use of one...I want them to go all out! When the time expires, I want to see smoke billowing out of my DVD player-ala Mission Impossible. You know: "Your mission, if you choose to accept it, watch this movie before it disintegrates in your player."

Also, I think that the survey may have been a bit skewed. If you ask someone, "Do you want your rental movies to explode?", most people will say no. If you ask them, "Do you want your rental movies to stop working after a set period of time, thereby not requiring you to go back to the store and return them, avoiding the entire institution of late fees as we know them, and eventually achieving world peace?", I think you could get a solid percentage to agree with you.

Re-writable CDs and DVDs are environmentally freindly. These corporate cabals making disposable DVDs could care less about the environment, much less the consumer. If there's no environment, there's no LIFE, let alone no JOBS to be had.

I laud each and every consumer who votes against this outrage with their dollars and cents!

This is an extremely stupid idea.
Go 321, I hope some of those stupid laws are ruled unconstitutuinal.

Since most video stores, especially Blockbuster & Hollywood Video, rent movies for 5 days (or in some cases a full week) does that mean we'd get 3/5 off the rental prices if the discs self destructed in 2 days? Let's see, if the average rental is $4 and we got 3/5 off of that, it would cost less than $1 to rent a movie! On top of that, think of all the income stores would lose from not being able to sell off the used discs they don't need anymore. Then Sony would have made 20 more sales of the Spider Man dvd instead of the sales going to Blockbuster when they sold off those 20 extra copies they didn't need anymore at half price after the rentals waned. Yes, they have to stop those wretched video stores from cutting into their profits by selling a handful of used discs at half price! I'd like to think the rental stores would be strongly against this idea seeing as how any store that gives rentals for more than 2 days would be forced by the disc manufacturers to change their rental policy against their will while removing part of their income at the same time.

yeah this is pretty stupid