UltraViolet: Hollywood's giant digital gamble is here

It's a compromise.. you heard of those?

DRM is necessary. Otherwise one malicious customer can, without any technical knowledge, flood the net with un-paid-for copies of the work. In that environment, no producer will release digital copies at all. When you purchase work, you're entering into a contract with its producer, and in any contract, there is compromise.

If the DRM is open to use on a wide range of devices, I'm okay with it. Previous attempts have been manufacturer-locked (Apple) or with unreasonable restrictions, or have required users to compromise their PC (Sony). This is a good balance between users' rights and producers'. The rolling cache of 12 authorised systems is plenty: it allows you to play a movie you own at a mate's house, or in multiple rooms in your house, but it prevents you farming your keys out on the internet.

Personally, I don't give a shit if it doesn't run on desktop Linux, as long as it runs on the Linux on my TV or Set-Top-Box. I'll pay the thirty or forty quid and buy an embedded player, because what I want is a viable, legal, alternative to video rental or cable/satellite VOD services. UV looks like being it, in the way that AppleTV most definitely wasn't.

In parallel to this, I hope they're also pushing for a unified licensing model across Europe. There's supposed to be a Single Market, but it's still impossible to legally download content from one EU member state if you live in another, even though there's no such restriction on physical-media copies of the same content.

Yes. It sounds like another way of selling-without-selling to me. Another way of have their cake and eating it. Essentially they want you to buy something but after you have bought it you don't own it and you can't sell it. If anything about the industry or media changes in the future only the consumer can lose.

re: kevin

While I agree with the sentiment that DRM is evil, I think it is the only way to get the content out there in the first place with DRM initially. Once everyone is used to the idea that digital distribution is commonplace a big player (non content producer) needs to step in and set up a distribution system that get the DRM stripped out.

Similar to what happened with iTunes.

Of course the risk is that it all remains in the hands of the production companies in which case everyone fires up torrents like they do currently.

If I buy the UV 'lifetime licence' on a work...

...does that make one legal to enjoy the DRM-stripped version one pulls off a torrent?

There are a good number of titles I would be happy to pay a reasonable price to licence so long as I was free to consume them without the DRM inconvenience factor.

On the other hand, Steam in the gaming industry is proof positive that DRM, when applied in the right manner, can be something people will turn out strongly in favor of. I understand the concept of DRM-free, but sometimes people don't care that there are fences if the field is large enough. That's what UV is shooting for, and we'll see if it hits its target.

It probably needs more advertising if it's going to survive, though. As is, if it crashes and fails, I can't imagine Hollywood trying again anytime soon. Which may be the point.

Devil in the details

The difference here is that the DRM isn't used as a stick to make "the consumer" behave exactly as he is told to by "the provider". It's still DRM, and as such it's no surprise you're leery --I know I am too-- but there appears to be much more customer-centric thinking behind its use; less "you can't haave it" but more "here's the deal", and some parts of it are quite unprecedented for the telco-thinking* entertainment industry.

And with all but one of the big ones in the industry behind it, you run a bit less risk of some server having a hiccup or someone going titsup depriving you of all the content locked in the format. It's still there, of course, but less looming.

Maybe the DRM will make the scheme collapse again, yet maybe it'll be a showcase of "DRM done right", or maybe something else again. We'll see how it pans out. In fact some of us will have a whale of a time figuring out the limitations. Can you still play those DVDs with uv branding and codes without uv support, without going online at all? That sort of thing.

Or maybe the scheme will prove untenable on its own. We might find, for example, that they'll have to price their "digital showings" low enough for view-once because that's where the value perception is, while they're locking themselves into "lifetime" streaming availability guarantees. Banking on digital delivery costs falling until imperceptible, may or may not work on the scale they're dealing with.

The real kicker isn't so much the DRM, but the fact the scale just might make it appear to work, at which point the whole thing is back on the table. And the way to kill it might turn out to be to make as much use of the "lifetime" rights the scheme gives you as you possibly can. Welcome to the brave new digital world.

* You know, how they're becoming really just ISP-like data pipes, and they resent the notion of not "owning the consumer" any longer, which they've been doing much less than they'd like to believe anyway.

Re: Got wrong which part was wrong

Ever signed up to a OD2-run music shop that collapsed and lost all the music you had a 'lifetime' right to listen to? After the MSN music store shut down their DRM servers in 2008 I swore I'd never trust another service like that again because such promises are utterly meaningless. I'll just buy the discs and rip them thanks, then they'll work on devices whose manufacturers haven't paid a huge licence fee to the studios.

I'm not willing to pay extra for it

At least, not on top of a DVD or BluRay. However, if I could pay a little extra on a cinema ticket and get UV access then I'd probably do that, even if it's a case of redeeming now and being given access only once the home versions become available.

Yes, it isn't your lifetime, it's the product's lifetime which has now expired. Buy another copy!

That kind of lifetime.

People will pirate. This is unavoidable.

A small number will pirate anything they get their hands on. This is inevitable. They will never stop.

The majority can, but can't be bothered. And the lower the barrier to getting what they want, how they want, the less piracy.

It's a nice little step in the right direction. How important a step is yet to be seen.

...But it was a fine TV series; so who's to say...

I was wondering this too...

Actually I was wondering what happens if I buy the DVD and register the code, then sell on the DVD.

Am I still able to watch the online version of the film? I suppose so as I've licenced the thing forever.

Is the next owner of the physical disc unable to register for the online version? I guess the can watch the disc.