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Stop the Anti-Divx Madness! Posted by Chris Williams [IP: 207.241.63.142] on November 15, 1998 at 19:15:41: In Reply to: Stop the Anti-Divx Madness! posted by David on November 15, 1998 at 06:53:05: : : 1: The vast majority of the money and control of the system is in the hands of one company and a group of lawyers. If they succeed in pushing this, and killing the VHS rental market and DVD rental market, they can start raising prices...even on the discs you curently have in your "library". Cheap initial rentals are like "free" software from Microsoft. : No, they CAN'T raise the prices; you can only charge what the market will bear, and NO ONE will watch Divx for more than $4.50; it's a tough sell at $4.50. The fact remains that they can change the rental price of a DIVX disk you already have in your house. That is a very annoying precedent. : : 2: It allows one huge marketing machine to have far more information about one's viewing habits than any reasonably prudent person would wish. When you combine the information in your credit report with all this info about what you watch, the value is so high to them they could give you the films for free, and still make money. : Actually, they can be sued for selling that information w/o permission. Hah. The government tried to try trusting the "market" to provide privacy and security of digital information. The GSA concluded that they had done a miserable job, and laws are necessary. With modern "data mining" tools, it would be impossible to prove that a huge conglomerate had coorelated your movie viewing habits with your financial status, and doubly impossible to take them to court. All you'd notice is more specifically targeted junk mail...and maybe you'd have a harder time doing other things. Like getting a loan if a search discovered that you had watched a DIVX on bankruptcy. : : 3: It's the proverbial "camel's nose". If they can succeed in getting the public to accept the idea of a Pay-Per-View disc, they'll try for a Pay-Per-Listen audio format next. Don't think for a minute they haven't considered this. What's next? Pay-Per-Read books? : Again, the market will not bear the concept of pay-per-listen audio unless it's for pennies per song. Pay-per-read won't fly because library cards are free. You *really* don't get it, do you? Currently, we do not HAVE to pay to listen to our CDs, nor should we. When I buy a CD, I can listen to it as many or as few times as I wish. I can pop an old disc in the CD player without having to worry about charges. I don't need a credit card (I have none). This is the way the framers of the constitution intended it to be. I buy a copy of a copyrighted work. I can enjoy it in my own home any way I choose *except*, specifically, to make copies for sale. That is the only thing I cannot do. Libraries are the purest expression of the Doctrine of First Sale. They buy books and lend them to people without paying any additional money for the privilege. But if Ben Franklin hadn't started the first one, and you were to try it now? They'd have you tied up in court till the end of your days. Publishers would squeal like stuck pigs that you were depriving them of their rightful earnings. The reason libraries still exist is publishers used libraries when they were kids. They also know that libraries are the birthplace of writers, that if the poor didn't have access to libraries we'd have never read some of our greatest writing talents. : : This is a canard. If DIVX succeeds, DVD will be killed. If Hollywood studios can get money from every play, as opposed to selling it once, they will not release anything on open DVD. : I don't agree. There's something attractive about the lump sum of an outright sale. There will always be a sales market and a separate rental market because some people rent once and never again. No. Studios will always want to rent it again and again, rather than sell. It's the better deal for them in the end. They could give a damn what the consumers prefer. : : : Let's not force people to choose between VHS rentals and DVD purchase. Divx is a nice happy medium between the two for many people. Isn't this a country whose founders came here to avoid having the views of the majority forced upon them? : You can't resell a Divx disc because you don't own the copy, not because Divx is somehow cheating the system. Please. I'll try this again. * A book contains a work created by a writer. * A DVD contains a work created by a director (for the sake of simplicity). * I buy a book and can read it as many times as I wish and can lend it to friends. * I buy a DVD and can view it as many times as I wish and can lend it to friends. DIVX is *nothing* more than an greedy attempt to subvert this paradigm. Please try to explain *exactly* why the director's expression is somehow *different* than the writer's. Don't assert that it just *is*. :You should be able to sell a silver or gold disc; if not, then THAT'S a travesty that cannot be tolerated. Exactly. You can't. It's serialized to a particular player. You're almost there. Please...think about this. Imagine that every book you've ever read and loved were to suddenly go blank. In order for the words to reappear to read a fairy tale to your child, you had to rent it. Sound extreme? OK, how about this: Until recently, Disney was only going to release on DIVX. Disney has never been happy about selling their films on VHS. If Disney were to make a new film exclusive to DIVX, they would *never* make it available as a "Silver" or "Gold". They know that children can watch the same film over and over...sometimes every single day. That "lost revenue" just gives Disney executives heartburn. P.S. Ever notice that, in general, DIVX opponents know more about DIVX than DIVX supporters?
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