[plug] Open source DVD playback

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Tue, 9 Oct 2001, alan howard wrote:
> On Mon,  8 Oct 2001 09:30, Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> > On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, John Knight wrote:
> > The DVD consortium has devised a standard, then expressly prohibited the
> > (through force of law) implementation or even use of that standard by any
> > competing party. That is anticompetitive to a fault.
> just a few comments. this has all hapenned before with JVC having rights to 
> VHS, sony with beta and video 8, sony and philips with cd, sony with minidisc 
> etc. i cant really see the piont. they devoloped the system and therefore 
> have rights to make as much money as they can out of dvd.

The point is that the consumer is clearly being hurt, whether they have a
legal right to do what they are doing or not. There is litle doubt these
things would have been developed without the incentive of a legislated
monopoly on the market, so locking out competitors has no benefit to
consumers whatsoever, and a does a whole lot of harm.

Why are we noticing it more this time around? Because this time it is
software, and consumers can make and manipulate software in ways they
never could with the hardware. For this reason, the restrictive effects on
the consumer are far more readily apparent in the DVD case.

> it may be anticompetive to some extent, but i'm sure if you paid the
> right fees you to could make a dvd player.

You are very wrong. All the fees in the world will not let you make the
player you want to. It is anticompetitive to a massive extent.

-Greg