Geek fixes defective rental DVD, breaks the law
Kyle rented Disney's mediocre movie Atlantis and discovered that the show was made even worse by the screwed-up engineering of the Dolby sound. He was able to fix it -- by breaking the DRM on the disc and therefore committing a criminal act.The re-encoded DVD-R played perfectly. The movie regained its full surround sound majesty in my home theater. Without the offending flags from the original Dolby Digital stream, my flagship Onkyo TX-DS989 AV Receiver had no problem. I enjoyed the movie I rented for $4.Link (Thanks, Kyle!)My $4 should have gone down the drain with this defective disc. But, through many hours of my valuable time and many expensive software and hardware resources, I was able to enjoy a very mediocre animated feature from Disney’s catalog.
Large corporations screw up and they don’t like to publicize it. Personal DIY can fix these screw ups. Part of this DIY process, defeating DVD’s DRM protection, was criminal. I don’t feel like what I did was theft. I just wanted to watch the movie I paid for.
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Cory Doctorow
Upcoming appearances
* Feb 9, 2012, DeKalb, IL: Day of Doctorow, NIU
* Feb 10-12, 2012, Chicago, IL: Capricon 32
* Feb 13, 2012, Arlington, TX: UT Arlington College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series
* Feb 16, 2012, Victoria, BC: 13th Annual Privacy and Security Conference
Recent books:
* Context (essays)
* With a Little Help (short stories)
* For the Win (YA novel)
* Makers (adult novel)
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