Dave Long tells it like it is on copy protection, Blu-ray and High Definition

This editorial comes courtesy of Dave Long of Evolution Audio Video, a distributor of high end A/V equipment to the dealers. Dave's a little gonzo (I mean that in a good way), but he makes some very sensible points about how copy protection systems do a disservice to the end-user.

Reprinted with permission from his monthly newsletter:


With the advent of digital cameras and HD camcorders, anyone notice there’s suddenly no mention and certainly no pictures, moving or still, of UFO’s, Bigfoot, crop circles or the Lochness Monster? With computer technology so far advanced that it allows one to easily tell when a picture’s been altered, Photoshopped or buggered with, is it any wonder why no one’s come up with any new footage of pear-headed alien’s at Area 51? Sure, there’s still a ton of buck-toothed google-eyed people named Cletus or Thelma-Lou who still want to believe and sit on the porch nibblin’ on pickled Crawdad lips and deep fried pig nuts... swearing up and down that they experienced first hand, an anal probing from Darth Vader’s minions and dang it, their sister-wife has the pictures to prove it... but where’s their proof now? Who’s gonna buy into their exotic tales?

Technology therefore, has killed the fantastic imagination of the weird-o. Gone are the days of tall tales, fibs and outright lies. Science has removed the fun out of an ordinarily hum-drum life in the trailer park, where Earl could don his best overalls, brush his tooth and be on the 6pm Arkansas news, telling his side of some fantastic story he made up while in the outhouse just hours before. Now, life in the Ozarks has returned to what it once was. Quiet and simple with the odd Sadie Hawkins Day dance and old Marryin’ Sam advertising his three dollar wedding ceremony. No more spaceships… no more gigantic hairy beasts roaming the woods with meat hooks. All is back to normal for Daisy Mae an’ her chillun’.

It’s sad in a way, that our evolving technology has snatched away the reason for living, for so many slobbering boobs and it says something. It says technology, like science always taught us, has no room for fantasy and the more tech-driven we get in our lifetimes, the question is, will we use our imaginations less? Will things become either black or white with no gray area in between?

Nope. Despite the concept, people will still come up with stupid ideas. Case in point—Video piracy. If you own a crappy 20” RCA CRT television and a $60.00 DVD player, you’d rather buy a copy of a movie shot by some sleazebag in the back of the theater with a camcorder because you’re
cheap plain and simple. Those people are what the industry statistics use as part of an estimation for the 30 billion dollar loss over piracy but that’s not true. Those same people will NOT go out and buy a $30.00 disc no matter what. It’s the videophiles who buy legal product. The people who have 1080i/1080p displays with great sound systems. They buy store DVD’s. Not the blurry crap from the local flea market. You have a great system, you want the most you can get out of it and a camcorder version of King Kong aint gonna cut it. A 12” Emerson CRT looks pretty much the same whether running VHS or DVD so these people see spending $5.00 on a blurry current release as a wise investment, in fact by odd coincidence, the very same people trying to figure out how to prove their toilets actually tunnel down to Atlantis. Good luck with that.

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