Did you know that Blu-ray discs can report back to studios when you play a disc? Yep. The BD-Live feature (which was initially touted as a way of delivering extra content to customers - as though Blu-ray didn’t offer enough space in the first place) is being used by studios to keep track of how often you play a disc. [More]I really don't know enough about this technology to articulate an informed conclusion, but figured I'd throw this out there so those of you who do can educate us.
The author's conclusion?
I don’t know about you, but as a consumer I’m getting tired of being spied on.That and as a citizen...
[Via Carl S]
6 comments:
Yes, as a citizen, but also as a consumer. One premise of commerce is that you can possess the goods that you buy -- not so with BluRay. They can monitor your usage and, at their pleasure, disable your usage. It's not even a "rental" -- as a customer you have no contractual redress at all. That's a fundamental right that's been abridged.
Imagine a future where information is a controlled substance and books burn themselves by remote control. That future is today.
It is safe to assume that in ANY CASE where you are downloading or receiving an item, or visiting a place not under your control, information is being gathered about you at the same time. Whether you're purchasing bananas at the grocery store (yes, grocery stores are installing cameras now to specifically watch and study buying habits - without asking your permission) or watching videos online, the fact is, information has value. On the slightly more benign side, people want to know viewing habits and the like to help pick better advertising (like google). But there's nothing stopping them from doing more, and in the case of industries with a history of abuse (RIAA, MPAA), you should EXPECT them to abuse it, if not today, then tomorrow.
Now here's where geeks have beaten just about everyone else on this site. People who are fed up with things like this have taken their own measures to counteract this. "DVD Jon" is famous for his little proggy that disables copy-protection on your DVDs so you can actually make copies of your property. People regularly download pirated copies of music, movies and software *they already own* because the pirated copy is more convenient to use.
If you paid for an item, you have a right to it, and you shouldn't be threatened by lawyers to only use it in the way the seller wants you to. In this world, the MPAA will never have a monopoly on anything for long. "Lump it or leave it" are no longer your only two options.
(As an aside, neither I nor, I'm certain, Mr. Codrea in any way support the illegal downloading of content. Mr. Codrea is not responsible for my comments, nor am I responsible for anyone else's behavior. I simply wish to state the undisputed fact that millions of people use bit torrent and sites like piratebay.org to get "cracked" versions of media for the sole purpose of gaining the expected functionality or privacy associated with a privately bought and owned product. Please don't break the law. If you do, it's your fault, not mine, and certainly not Mr. Codrea's.)
when i buy a computer, i build it myself. that computer becomes my dvd player, for both music and movies. it can also become my telephone, my alarm clock, a gaming station, a TV and radio tuner, word processor, you know. all that good stuff.
so i don't really have this problem, and it didn't cost me much extra to break parts and learn how computers are built in the process. i've done this once, in 1999, and haven't had to think about building a new one until just this year.
the same could be said of cars, or guns, or a lot of other consumer goods.
don't buy something that spies on you! you'd take the time to, say, research and build an AR, if you wanted a match rifle, right? it's fun and educational. don't roll your eyes like i just handed you a copy of war and peace. i like things to "just work," but sometimes that means i have to put in more effort to understand how they work so that i don't have a false sense of confidence.
also, if there's any lack of understanding of the technology, i should point out that the disc itself is harmless. it stores data.
it just so happens that the "officially sanctioned" players from the vendors will only play bluray discs due to the physical properties of the medium AND certain contents of the disc.
it is entirely possible to slap together a player that will read any bluray disc and simply ignore most of the format (filesystem). something that works for the physical properties, but ignores certain disc contents.
you could say that the "official" players simply make up their mind not to play certain discs, even though they recognize the physical object as a bluray disc.
sure, it's a little fascist. but the opposite choice in this case was HD-DVD, a technology-community-driven exercise in keeping everyone happy with a multipurpose disc format that would be totally open spec and totally huge and unwieldy. sound familiar?
the happy medium usually comes when someone starts selling drives for computers that just read the whole damn disc. open drivers, usually on linux, mean using any filesystem you like, therefore maximizing the disc usage, because they'll treat the physical object as simply another "block device" -- like your hard drive, USB stick, whatever.
so that's basically what the end of both bluray and HD-DVD formatting looks like. even today, existing DVDs are just used for storage, while movies are encoded in software.
and now cars have been coming out with cd/dvd players that will read mp3s right off a common filesystem (FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3) and play them, no need for a "music cd." so not only do computers' drives and drivers get around the problem, but the technology then finds its way back into non-personal-computing applications! three cheers for market anarchy!
It is not your blu-ray disc or blu-ray disc player that is reporting anything. If you have software divers that enable communication via network connection or telephone modem on your computer, than ANY activity on that computer can relayed to an outside party.
The solution? Simple. Unplug the modem line or the network connection.
My TV is not on line and there's no battery in the disc. End of story.
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