Warner Home Entertainment has a new plan for how consumers can easily and safely — and affordably! — convert their DVDs to digital files for use on other devices! Let us rejoice!
Public Knowledge has the punchline and a takedown, because this approach is so hilariously far of the mark as to make us wonder if it’s some sort of performance art.
For the lazy (and who among Heathen Nation isn’t?), here’s their plan:
- Have DVD
- Drive to local brick-and-mortar store offering “Disc to Digital” services
- Pay shop for conversion
- Hope conversation clerk knows what the hell they’re doing
- Wait for conversion
- Receive digital copy almost certainly locked so as to play only on studio-approved devices
- Drive home
- Hope it works
What people are actually already doing, of course, is somewhat simpler:
- Have DVD
- Download free software
- Run conversion to commonly accepted format for use on laptop, iPad, etc. without regard to studio preferences, and without having to pay any more money.
The studios, of course, hate that this second alternative exists, and that people do it all the time despite the fact that it’s technically illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
It seems unlikely that “Disc to Digital” will be very successful, but I could be wrong. Some people are voting for Santorum, after all.