Sorry, what is this about Avatar? It's not going to be released on DVD?

yukamina Wrote:Sorry, what is this about Avatar? It's not going to be released on DVD?

For the movie release, the 3D version had DRM that only allowed the movie theatre to play it if it was licensed for it. We know this because in Germany, 1 licensing company failed to provide the licenses to theatres and a LOT of viewers were extremely upset.

I'm sure it'll be out on both BluRay (IN 3D!*) and DVD.

*If you have a BluRay player AND TV capable of 3D. The disc will still play in 2D on normal players and TVs.

JimmySeal Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:Imagine if I left my front door unlocked, thieves came in and took my stuff.

You seem to be doing a lot of finger-pointing at the entertainment industry for not working hard enough to prevent theft (and it is theft), but you haven't mentioned a single thing they could be doing differently to prevent it. What does this mean?:

Quote:Corporations want profits so they want to make it easier on the customer to get the profits.

How are they "mak[ing] it easier on the customer?" What could they be doing that wouldn't be "mak[ing] it easier on the customer?"

Jimmy, the very things they could do to prevent it are the very things that would ruin the reason they're selling it. It's one of those kill the patient to treat the disease. Extreme case is stop selling the merchandise, then it'll no longer be pirated. Less extreme is use proprietary methods that are not wildly available, but that equates to more costs (less profits) but works well.

Now, Sega did something amazing: It released proprietary platform with a proprietary CD player to play proprietary programs called the Dreamcast. It took forever to crack, and even then was just a minor oversight by Sega which was quickly plugged (but after millions of Dreamcasts were sold with the exploitable set-up). The program could be copied cause people turned the Dreamcast into a CD player of sorts, as the disks themselves could not be read by normal CD drives. Problem was, you couldn't reasonably get that program back onto a CD copy that the Dreamcast would recognize. Some crackers found a part of the dreamcast that looked at regular CD as a program (to display cover art) could be exploited to recognize programs on regular CD's. That was the exploit removed in later models. Even then, you're left using a 700mb CD to hold enough data when a Dreamcast CD held 1.1 Gb which meant loss of some audio or movies.

So yeah, looking at the above, all it takes are industries willing to release proprietary formats in both DVD and TV's that'll recognize only official media. Yeah, that means no more AV cables which are unencrypted media. Further, it can stream encrypted media that is unlocked only with a user entered random number generated by a device registered to that user.

The solutions are there, it's that the infrastructure is limited and the cost is high. Like I said, the entertainment industry wants an easy profit, complain about piracy, yet only makes the ease to pirate even easier. But it's easier because the industry gets insane profits by releasing it in this insanely easy format.

And yes, the irony of using Piracy as a term for copying stuff is not lost on me considering my job is, in a small part, to aid in stopping actual piracy off the eastern coast of Africa. You know the type of Piracy where actual stuff is stolen and actual people are killed or held hostage.

@mezbup

I admire your hopes for the future. They are a bit utopian, but that's a good thing, to my mind.

I guess my overall point is that today's actions (piracy) ought not to be justified on the assumption that at some point in the future the whole notion of piracy will be obsolete.

It's a bit like saying, "I won't pay my income taxes, because in the future there will be no income tax at all." That won't help you or your country right now... ;-)

There's really no need to attempt to justify piracy. If you want to do it, just do it. Anti-piracy zealots are always out looking for an argument. They're almost as bad as objectivists.

If you want to talk about a company which succeeded, talk about Sony. When did you last see a PS3 game online for download? I sure haven't found any.

Tobberoth Wrote:If you want to talk about a company which succeeded, talk about Sony. When did you last see a PS3 game online for download? I sure haven't found any.

So far. Give it time. The PS2 wasn't cracked instantly either, but once it was, it was craziness. And it was cracked multiple different ways, eventually.

On the other hand, the PSP has been completely destroyed by piracy, almost since the day it was released.

Sounds great that game platforms are doing better against piracy. It's just very hard to thwart piracy of visual media. If it's showing on a screen it can be filmed, if it's sent over the air it can be recorded, if it's shown on a standard monitor then that means it can be digital copied.

Only way to reasonably stop such tactics in today's world is sell a TV/Monitor that only plays encrypted media that's linked to one and only one user in some fashion. Problem is, it has to be media so popular that it justifies buying the monitor. Same could go with a sound system. With such a system, anti-piracy steps can be implemented by putting trace signals on output (video and audio) that'll easily identify what user allowed their system to be copied. That system is then no longer allowed an access key.

With that, it doesn't matter if you copied a disk thousands of times, that Monitor is not going to display the data on it unless you enter a code that'll match up with the what the disk has on it. Cracking the code would be equally irrelevant as it'll change based on the user and the show each time.

I'm not advocating piracy, I just think trying to enforce current laws with the current world layout is idiotic. Change the playing field so that it's not a matter of "enforcing" copyright, it's that piracy is not reasonably feasible like in the case of PS3 that Tobberoth pointed out. On top of that, those that initiate piracy are punished cause they're easy to find (via the very equipment they have to use).

@Nuke:

I hope that never happens. But I guess it's already heading that way :/ Maybe my views are too utopian too but I can hope heh.

Intellectual property & copyright laws need to be completely rewritten before any meaningful progress can be made. As it stands they're woefully out of date. It's hard to take the concept of copyright seriously when it's a crime to lend a CD or play it in the vicinity of a group of people.

[ファブリス]

I have a "Ninjapass X9" for what it's worth. It has a USB key adapter so you can load data on the SD card (to buy separately), and then insert the SD card in the cartridge adapter. All the Japanese kanji/language learning related software I've tried in the past work on it. I haven't used the DS for a year almost.

That said you know the forum guidelines (as for posting links to downloads and so on). In these guidelines I clearly say I am not advocating for or against copyrights, that's not my job. I am not pointing fingers at anyone downloading copyrighted materials either, just asking for keeping things in focus in this forum, which clearly is not a place designed to share such downloads.

As my personal opinion, I agree with harhol that those laws are completely out of date. But I don't think the solution is to steal. Men like Richard Stallman are doing the right thing, taking positive action. I think it's awesome that the Pro Git book someone generously donated to me a week ago, also happens to be freely available online. Apress publishes the book as Creative Commons work. The author has a repository where readers have posted translations and helped fix mistakes and typos. I'm sure there are many other examples.

Can anyone tell me if I'll be able to use this on my DS lite?

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30518

I'm not sure about getting it because its says "upgrade" which makes me think I'll need a previous version to use it. Can someone help me out?

Any DS flashcard should work with the DSLite.

Me, I am sticking with my Supercard DSOnei and EZFlash IV. Blood of Bahamut (DS) and Rhythm Heaven (GBA) have plenty of Kanji (ones that I learned)! Of course, there are also the Doki Doki Majo Shinpan games (which also have Kanji)!