RSSSingle-Play DVD Hoax Fools Windows Sites
By Nate Mook | Published October 5, 2005, 12:22 PM
On Monday, news surfaced that Microsoft had invented a single-play DVD that would no longer function after being watched once in order to combat piracy. The story was quickly repeated, often without source, on a number of Windows enthusiast sites and blogs. There was only one problem: the news was not true.
The report was initially made by British Web site "The Business Online," claiming, "Showing a video of himself dressed in a sailor suit pretending to audition for the blockbuster Titanic, Gates pitched Hollywood with the proposition that only Microsoft could solve its piracy problem by making its DRM software a standard across every home entertainment playback and recording device."
Well-known Microsoft MVP Paul Thurrott was one of the first to jump on the story, writing, "Further damaging to the new format is that it will require a new type of DVD player, which will be in the market in early 2006. And let's not even tackle the environmental issues of a disc-based format that is designed to be used once and then thrown in the trash."
"The new single-play DVD format that Microsoft will sell will utilize the company's DRM scheme and movie technology formats, not those of rivals," Thurrott claimed.
Other Windows enthusiasts including Steven Bink quickly reposted the news, which eventually made its way to the popular Slashdot.org community site. Responses by readers were predictably similar: self-destructing DVDs failed once with Circuit City's DIVX and Microsoft's format would suffer the same fate.
And to its credit, Microsoft agrees, telling Windows author Ed Bott it has no plans to build or offer a single-play DVD. Windows Media digital rights management does allow content owners to set a maximum number of plays, but the technology is not related to DVDs.
"It appears to be confusing an existing feature within Windows Media DRM that allows for single-play of promotional digital material," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "This has been an option for content owners to use for some time for the Windows Media format - it does not apply to MPEG2 content found on DVDs."
But the story didn't end there, instead sparking a war of words in the Windows community. Fellow Microsoft MVP Robert McLaws questioned Thurrott's journalistic integrity, which prompted a harsh reply.
"No offense to Ed, who is a Monday morning quarterback at best, harping at people from the safety of his home, or Robert, who is a blogger that, frankly, hasn't been at this very long, but I must call bullshit on this one," Thurrott wrote. "I worked with Microsoft to uncover what happened here. I had used two sources for the original article I wrote."
"I have some pretty good sources at Microsoft too, and when I called, I couldn't find a single person who had ever heard of anything remotely like this story," countered Bott. "Because it's a complete fabrication."
Even Microsoft's own blogger Robert Scoble chimed in on the matter. "Yes, the news system can be hoaxed. But, it cleans itself out pretty fast. Bloggers, please include links to original sources and the source where you saw it. Also, correct any post where something false is reported. Help the system clean itself out."
No mention of BetaNews having egg on its face for running the faux story? Oy. Self-correction won in the end.
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|BetaNews never ran the story.
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|This is useful technology for advertisements. You can prevent the same ads from coming up over and over and annoying people. Maybe even sticking 10 different movie ads on a DVD?
That way the companies know they'll each get 1 view of their ad for their new movie, paying perhaps a certain amount based on their position in the list of 10.
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|More evidence that Paul Thurrot has no clue what he is talking about.
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|I'm sure I rememeber single use rentals about 6 or 7 years ago.
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|No, they were called Divx. They were not single use, that is impossible. You can't take a medium that is read only and make it used only once. How would you write back to the medium that it was used in the first place?
The deal was there were players, that would allow viewing of a Movie for 48 hours. You can watch a movie as many times as you wanted during that period. After that you had to link to dial-up site built into the player that would "authorize" the movie to be played for another period of time, or you could "unlock" the disk for 15 dollars for life.
The biggest bull of this whole thing was the movie costs 5 bucks. So you play it for 48 hours, something most people would do anyway, because they only watch a movie once maybe twice. But if a year from now you wanted to watch the movie again, the player "remembered" the medium (again requiring a first time dial-up to allow the player to start the clock) and you could then unlock it for another 3 dollars for 3 more days, OR pay 15 dollars for a lifetime "unlimited" viewing.
This is rediculous because you could have simply bought the DVD for 20 dollars at the store in the first place and watch it as many times as you wanted. This became a source of controversy because some DVD's were priced differently due to competition from Divx. So the DVD afficianados were upset because Divx created a license to watch theme. Its a stupid principle.
If you bought a new player, the license wasn't even transferable.. if the site was down, you couldn't unlock the movie... there were so many problems, it was just disruptive.
ESPECIALLY when at the time, rentals for a movie were like 4 bucks for a 2 night rental.. like umm.. DUH!! do the math. It made ZERO sense.
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|When I initially read this I passed over it, thinking sounds like an idea that someone is thinking about, but won't ever come to fruition. it does no benefit to only allow a single play for the end user and the content manufacturer. it only does benefit if it can remain in the consumer's "realm" and allow playback on multiple, personal devices. This is what MS is aiming for.
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|You obviously didn't read the article AT ALL. This is a HOAX. It was made up. MS didn't even have anything to do with this. They don't have this device, because a single use DVD is NOT possible.
So MS isn't aiming for anything as far as this article goes, because its a fairy tale.
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|A chimp probably could have worked out that this was a hoax. So much for "bloggers", the internet version of CB radio.
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|imafurby, that is freakin' hilarious!
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