AN ARTICLE in New 杏吧原创 recently warned Hollywood that outside the US and Japan it is easy to bypass copy-protection for DVDs by copying movie discs to blank discs, using the home DVD recorders now appearing in high street shops around the world (1 February, p 7).
No one in the industry showed any interest. But perhaps they will wake up now. On the very day the story appeared, anti-piracy inspectors spotted the first 鈥渃ompilation DVDs鈥� in a street market in Glasgow. A compilation disc is a home-recorded DVD containing several movies.
What the movie studios fail to realise is that the pirates can earn far more money making analogue copies on a home DVD recorder than by making perfect digital clones with a PC. This is because most digitally cloned movies take up two blank discs, whereas with analogue you can cram up to three full features and many music videos onto a single blank DVD. And Hollywood鈥檚 digitally fixated copy-protection doesn鈥檛 stop you doing it.
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MEANWHILE, reader Mark MacDiarmid has spotted another, quite different way that Hollywood is shooting itself in the foot: 鈥淚鈥檝e read a lot in New 杏吧原创 over the past few years of the music and film industries鈥� various fevered attempts to limit my ability to lay my cheatin鈥� hands on their property,鈥� he writes, 鈥渂ut there鈥檚 a fiendish little piece of technology that I鈥檝e never read about in your magazine. I鈥檓 talking about the low-tech plastic chastity belt that encases the invitingly naked body of every blank CD and videocassette. If I pull the tab that ostensibly opens these things, all I ever get is a piece of torn plastic in my fingers. I then inevitably have to scratch and wrench at the cover with things like scissors and paper-clips. Surely there must be some way to hack these devices.鈥�
MacDiarmid鈥檚 letter reminded a colleague of Feedback鈥檚 of how he once made himself deeply unpopular when visiting a tape factory in Japan. After the top man had finished his sales pitch our colleague told him: 鈥淭he TV programme you need to tape is starting now. So please show us how quickly you can get the cassette out of its wrapping.鈥�
The poor man, who had bitten fingernails, eventually had to give up struggling and ask for a pen-knife.
READER Ben Bicarisse has just received the course programme for adult continuing education courses in his home town of Milton Keynes. He says he was sorry (but not surprised) to see that of the 459 courses offered, the section for 鈥淪cience, Maths, Technology & Navigation鈥� listed only four. And he was even sorrier to see that the first of these was: 鈥淎S501BS Astrology 鈥� How to read a birth chart鈥�.
ONLINE surveys are wonderful things 鈥� particularly those on the BBC鈥檚 news website, with its well-chosen questions that allow anyone with Internet access to instantly put their finger on the national pulse.
Well, to a degree. Sometimes, it would be interesting to know how opinion is shifting with time of day on an issue such as the proposed war against Iraq. Naturally, you can鈥檛 tell from the numbers whether people are more warlike before 8 am or whether warlike people rise earlier 鈥� but it would still be nice to know what the trends are and how new news affects the result.
But as far as we can see, the only way to find out how many people have voted which way is to vote yourself. So we are forced to apply the electoral maxim from the bad old days in Northern Ireland: 鈥淰ote early, vote often!鈥�
Of course, the site tries to stop multiple voting. But it鈥檚 really not difficult to defeat, and it鈥檚 worthwhile in the interests of social science, which is of course the only reason Feedback does it.
Naturally, we vote alternate ways to avoid skewing the results 鈥� when we can remember what we last voted.
HAVE the UN inspection teams in Iraq been looking in the wrong place? Reader Colin Richardson entered a search for 鈥淚raq鈥檚 weapons of mass destruction鈥� on AOL鈥檚 search engine. It returned no results, but suggested: 鈥淪earch Shop@AOL for 鈥業raq鈥檚 weapons of mass destruction鈥�.鈥�
NICE to know that the Sultanate of Brunei has an Environment Unit. It鈥檚 even nicer to see how determinedly egalitarian it is, and how keen to avoid the irritating problem of contact lists that only list those important enough to have secretaries whose job is to stop you contacting them. The official website at lists everyone, including the tea-lady. Who has her own telephone extension.
FINALLY, reader Tony Currey has a relation who is in poor health and relies on help from Epsom and Ewell Borough Council鈥檚 social services department. She recently received a letter from the council that set out to monitor the service it provides. One of the questions asked was: 鈥淚s there any Council Service you haven鈥檛 been told about?鈥�
How many readers have received the spam that says 鈥淭otal PC protection from Norton on sale now!鈥�? And how many have wondered why they need protecting from Norton, the provider of antivirus software?