I was running through my Netflix Queue this morning and noticed an interesting warning on one of the movies. If you add Casino Royale, Crossover, Open Season and other DVD’s (total of 13) to your Queue, you’ll get the following Notice Message from Netflix:
NOTICE: This DVD is not compatible with some DVD players.
This is because Netflix still has a few Movie titles with the asinine ARccOS copy protection. ARccOS is a copy protection scheme developed by Sony that intentionally puts corrupted sectors on the DVD to prevent copying. It also tends to make the DVD unwatchable on several different DVD players on the market. It should be noted that Netflix has been replacing their inventory of these Discs and now only have these 13 titles. Here’s the FAQ on the Netflix site about the ARccOS discs.
This is just another reason I hate these copy protections that manufacturers are putting on media. It tends to penalize the legitimate customers and treat them like criminals, when those who are ripping and selling the content on the streets will still find a way to do it. In the end it costs you and I money while limiting functionality.
Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.
As I wrote on your blog, it’s bullsh*t. I’m glad to see Netflix replacing these discs. And hopefully the Best Buys of the world are letting people return their non-playable stuff. I doubt Sony will be held accountable and no surprise they didn’t learn anything from their rootkit experience.
This type of copy protection is frustrating from the consumer perspective – making a simple media disk unreadable by many dvd players just to circumvent copying is still making the media they are selling useless to some of the customers and penalizing those customers for the companies fears.
This nonsense has to stop somewhere.
Just look at the trouble DRM causes companies that want to make a good media gadget (Microsoft and Apple) and end up with consumer confusion, frustration and misunderstanding. Sony has been one of the worst in this category but they aren’t alone.
Not to mention it violates your ability to make a “backup” copy of the disc– I have a friend who has an autistic child, and was spending hundreds on replacing DVDs after his child scratched them. I showed him how to rip the DVD (decrypting it) and then re-author and burn it as a backup, even removing the menus (which can frustrate his son.)
This is a total legally protected and acceptable use of a DVD movie you purchased. And now they’re coming up with even more protections, so every now and then I get a phone call asking why my process has failed to copy a movie correctly.
Same goes for video games with copy protection.
The companies cannot honestly expect you to go drop another $20-$50 for another copy if it gets scratched or destroyed. It doesn’t cost that much to make a disc.
A
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Sony
What’s the worst is that there are some sony DVD players on there. That’s really dumb, considering that one of the key motives was to get more people watching DVDs on sony players. Lots of people assume that anything made by the same company will interoperate fully, and obviously this is not the case.
sony has ocd when it comes to copy protection. they had it for cassette tapes, cds, and now dvds. they sell media for recording so i guess they speak with fork tongue!