The Official Wirewize Blog

A conversation with a fellow tech geek and devoted cinephile recently veered toward foreign films.  He was recommending a new Italian movie called “Gomorrah” which was the big hit at Cannes. Described it as an unflinching look at real mob life — think “Goodfellas” with the charm turned down and the ugly amped up to eleven.  We’d love to see it, but we can’t.  Not playing anywhere. Not available on DVD.  Not on cable or satellite. A quick look at Neflix says “future availability is not guaranteed.”

So we’re SOL? Not as far as our friend was concerned.  He showed us a site where faster than you could say “illegal download” we could have had a full-length disc in our hot little hands, not to mention a cute little plug-in that would have provided the English subtitles as we watched.  Naturally, we recoiled in horror, as just one ill-advised click would have officially made us criminals.  Salud!

The MPAA has been ratcheting up its all-out war on illegal content distribution since, well, since P2P networks and broadband Internet access started making these things easy to do.  The MPAA’s point of view, clearly stated on their web site, is simple: “Whether you download a movie from an unauthorized source or sell counterfeit DVDs on the street, you are a movie thief whose crimes carry serious legal consequences.”

Ok, ok, we capiamo.  But there’s obviously another side of the story, one that might lead to the inevitable conclusion that the current laws and practices keeping the MPAA up at night may be out of date.

We live in an age where we expect our content to be available anytime we want it (or just about).  We read last night’s email on the commuter train.  We listen to yesterday’s radio show on today’s podcast. We can watch our local TV when we’re out of town on IPTV, and see missed programs later on our DVR.  Why shouldn’t we be able to watch our DVD movies — movies that we’ve already bought and paid for — when, where and how we like?

Take the MPAA’s recent legal action against RealNetworks.  Real has come up with a software program called “RealDVD” that lets you copy a DVD disc onto your PC’s hard drive.  This would basically make your PC into — more horrors — a movie server.

These two words have incurred enough legal billings in the last five years to make the payments on Beemers and swimming pools from coast to coast.  The MPAA is gunning — perhaps a bit indiscriminately — for any technology that might inhibit studio profits from legal movie downloads and video on demand.  Any company that dares introduce an alternate method is a guaranteed target of litigation.

Take Kaleidescape as an example.  Back in 2003, this Silicon Valley startup launched a high-end movie server that “imported” your DVDs onto a hard drive, retaining all the copy protections, menus, et al of the entire disc.  One reason why the system cost so much ($27k for a base system at the time!) was because the company paid all the appropriate licensing fees so that all the DVD copy protection remained intact on the hard drive.  The system was for personal use only, and movies could not be burned to DVD from the hard drive, once they had been digitized.

Nice eh?  Too nice.  Not long after launching the product, the company was sued by the DVD Copy Control Association (CCA), which maintained that Kaleidescape was “misusing” its license.  In 2007, Kaleidescape won the case, which (of course) is now under appeal.

Back to RealNetworks, which is now under a temporary restraining order to not sell RealDVD.  The company says that…”RealDVD is a completely legal product. It is properly licensed by the nonprofit group created around the DVD standard – the DVD Copy Control Association (CCA). RealDVD follows the guidelines and rules set by the DVD CCA.”

Why would you want a movie server when your PC or AV system already has a DVD drive and you can play movies that way?  Because it’s more convenient to have all your choices ready at hand.  If you took a 5-day business trip and wanted to watch movies in your hotel room at night, wouldn’t it be great to have all the choices of your movie collection with you?  Rather than just the handful of discs that you remembered to take along? Exactly the same way that you always have your music collection with you, thanks to your iPod?

Frankly, we’re not sure what the upshot of all this will be, besides a stalling of the inevitable.  There are already numerous programs that do what RealDVD does, with varying degrees of legality.

Note to the MPAA and its buddies — you can’t stop the future.  You can only hope to contain it.

What’s your view?  Let us know in your comments below!