What's wrong with DVD? Well, the problem lies in the DVD Copy Control Association's worthless excuse for copy-protection.

Supposedly, their scheme protects the movie industry's works from copying. BUT IT DOESN'T. A DVD can easily be copied, bit-for-bit, and that copy will play on any industry-standard DVD player.

The second problem is that because the DVD CCA is asking for major bucks for CSS licenses, and since they discriminate against smaller developers, the only DVD players for alternative platforms are made from the infamous DeCSS code (or other CSS decrypters derived from establishment DVD players), which, because of laws bought by the technophobic media industry, is illegal in the US and possibly other countries.

DeCSS is illegal because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is little more than a law against activites that harm no one, except maybe the media companies, but even then only slightly. Remember that it takes several days to download a DVD movie through a 56K connection!

But still, the MPAA, the group that also gives movie ratings, defends CSS and the DMCA and is trying to drive DeCSS into non-existence. Guess what--THEY CAN'T WIN! Every time they shut down a site, many more pop up.

Hey you, CCA, take your CSS and put it in the public domain, where it belongs! IT DOESN'T WORK!

I SAID, IT DOESN'T WORK!!!

By putting CSS into the public domain or licensing it as GPL, rather than charging to license it, it would make DVD players cheaper, it would make DVD programs for OS/2, Linux, Solaris, BeOS, DOS (well, it could happen! ;-), etc. possible, and it wouldn't make copying DVD's any easier.

Region Coding Sucks!

And about region coding: it's a load of bullsh!t! All it is is another scheme to make money at the expense of those who are willing to buy the DVD's in the first place. All the while, some folks will stick with VHS, even if it gives them a worse picture, because at least they can still get import tapes that WORK, and they can skip the previews.

Which brings me to another issue: Circuit City's plan to get rid of tapes is premature and will end up costing them a bit. But that's for another rant.