Cannot legally back up depends heavily on the specifics. For a long time (IDK about currently) it was legal to rip your own discs for backup purposes, and even to break the encryption as long as you did it yourself. So it was potentially legal but not necessarily within reach to do it legally. And that is, of course, wrong. There should never be any uncertainty about whether you can back up the media you purchased.
Saying you're "renting" the disc is just plain disingenuous, though. You own it free and clear. You can give it to anyone you like, for free or for a profit (i.e. how Netflix did things back in the day). The original owner is not asserting the right to come and take it back from you. It is in no way a rental, it is a sale.
I wouldn't expect refunds for a product, but I would for a perpetual license to a copyrighted work that I couldn't access anymore. They can't have it both ways.
Buying a book doesn't give you any more rights or privileges that buying a dvd. Although I guess it's a lot easier to take a book and give all your favorite people a portion of it. You're paying for the physical object and have a license to read it or view it, but not to copy it (other than what fair use provides). Many books have an explicit statement of this on the copyright page.
The seller and law say you own the book but you don't own the content of the book. That is, you are free to read the book as many times as you like, you aren't free to start printing out and distributing copies of the book as "backup" for all your friends and family.
The laws around DVDs are the same. You have a right to access and view the contents of the DVD. You don't have a right to make copies of the dvd.
I'd also point out products like cheap paperbacks which obliterate themselves after 4 or 5 reads.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for some good reforms and regulations around copyrights and media access, especially in the digital age. I just think it's a little bit ridiculous to expect purchased media to never degrade.
If the books falls apart not from regular wear and tear but from a manufacturing defect that gives it a far shorter life than expected/advertised - then likely yes.
This article is new, but to be clear the disks started rotting within ~5 years of purchase, not just now after 20 years. The issue has been known for a long time, like in 2012:
> > Apparantly most releases from Warner Bros on HD-DVD have laser rot. I have many titles that just freeze in the middle of the movie. I thought it was a problem with my player, but I read on other forums that this is a manufacturing fault from the discs...
Or in 2015, where some forum users narrow down the year range and manufacturing code:
> > It seems like the problematic discs were produced from 2006 to 2009 or so. I haven't found any DVDs from before or after those dates that exhibit these problems (even the original DVDs I bought in December of 2000 still look and play perfectly).
If you buy a monitor and it fails after a week of use, should you be SOL? If the failure is due to a manufacturing defect, and not the user's treatment of the product or just the expected lifespan of that product class, consumer protection laws should protect the consumer.
Yeah, the 20 year timeline here requires some discussion.
We have the concept of the finite warranty. And part of that is because there's a point where it's infeasible to expect everything you buy to last forever nor someone to be on the hook forever for things that don't last forever.
Car warranties are typically three years.
But what about DVDs that break due to a defect after 20 years?
Maybe companies should be able to pick how long the warranty lasts on the media they distribute their copyrighted work on, but with the catch that the copyright ends early the same time the warranty does.
I don't think it's obviously reasonable unless you also get (or pay for) a 100 year manufacturer's warranty.
Yet the comments here talk like we have norms that don't exist. The actual norms we have are that you're SOL if your product breaks after the warranty, even due to a defect, and even for things that cost 1000x the price of a DVD.
In the case of copyright you are not buying the media. You are buying a licensed right sent as media. If they wish to make no impediments to making a backup then maybe they have no fault.
You are buying a DVD with the content on it. That's why it's $15 and not some sort of unlimited digital license that Netflex pays $millions for.
The fact that it's a limited license attached to the physical disc only makes my case more clear, I think. There's even less expectation that I have some claim to the content if the disc breaks in 20 years.
I don't understand why so many posters in this thread are being seemingly intentionally obtuse and insisting that the terms of of the original transaction are something entirely different from what it was. I expect better from this sites users than such naivety.
Copyright law has a long history ported from earlier media. People here want to say media is just some product but the US decided that is in no way true.
The nuance that most people miss is that prior to about the 1960s, books were effectively uncopyable on anything resembling scale. The only options would be to either copy it out in long hand in pen, or on a more industrial level to create new printing plates from scratch, resetting the entire thing character by character. You also wouldn't easily be able to replicate things like photographs or drawings.
It was only with the advent of toner based xerox in the 70s that photocopying books became vaguely practical, but still cost about 5 cents a page, at a time when a mass market paperback might cost $1.25.
You are paying more for the DVD because copyright law and fair use apply to it including the right to backup. Companies prefer to sell you new online licensing as a scam.
The US didn't correctly defend the right to backup, but that leaves a funny grey zone where WB being bad at making DVDs means less ability to shame "piracy" tool makers because backups is normalized and in no way suspicious if the media isn't perfect like they said.
Warranty is in no way predicated on issues of copyright or ability to backup. Warranty law applies to a copy of A Court of Thorns and Roses the same way it applies to a copy of Frankenstein.
Warranty is about fitness for use, merchantability, and honoring sales contracts. It has nothing to do with issues of intellectual property.
If you sold someone a book, filled with public domain content, and the ink faded after a week, you can't just throw up your hands and say that the buyer should have made another copy. You'd likely be liable for warranty of merchantability.
> The actual norms we have are that you're SOL if your product breaks after the warranty, even due to a defect, and even for things that cost 1000x the price of a DVD.
That's not technically true. Implied warranties are a thing. The law in the US and many other places does place obligations of warranty on sellers beyond the whims of their voluntary warranties.
There's a reason every piece of FOSS software doesn't simply come without a warranty, they all disclaim warranty.
Now it isn't likely that it would be applicable to products quite as old as these, but the idea that "the manufacturer's written warranty is the only warranty" is a total falsehood that large companies want you to believe.
I've got bitrotted cds that the case says lifetime warranty or something similar. Of course, it also doesn't include contact information for getting a replacement, and I don't have a receipt for cds I bought 30 years ago, so there's that.
And that's what WB is offering, isn't it? A replacement. The question is whether you should expect to own and use something for almost 20 years, then get a refund. It'd be nice if they provided one, but I wouldn't say it's obvious to me that they must.
When no replacement discs are available, that's a more interesting edge case where they should feel obligated to do something to make it right in some other way, and I'd say a refund should be on the table.
>However, as some of the affected titles are no longer in print or the rights have expired, consumers have been offered an exchange for a title of like-value.
I'll trade you a copy of "Big Momma's House 2" for your damaged copy of "The Two Towers".
A refund of 2025 dollars for a purchase made in 2005 ones doesn't sound like a great deal. I bet it wouldn't even cover the cost of "buying" the same movie again digitally in many cases.
Ah, I bet this is what happened with my boxed set of extended edition Lord of the Rings trilogy. I bought it years ago, finally opened it a few months back to show my kids—only to find that several of the disks failed half-way through. That was a really frustrating experience.
It's been a couple of decades, but I believe that was the one that had an issue at time of purchase (which they replaced). The replacement worked about five years ago when we last watched it.
Beyond personal images and documents of important, this was the second reason for establishing a home NAS with 3,2,1 backup [1]. Physical media fails, so you better have a plan for dealing with that if you care to maintain access.
Neither are hard drives. You cannot legally copy them. You’ve missed the point of the article. This comment you made was unrelated to the topic being discussed, which was about the issue of discs rotting and the fallout from that.
This matters because discs are not a physical product so much as a representative of a license you own. If the license doesn’t expire, the format shouldn’t matter at all.
So again, your comment was way off topic because this has nothing to do with the idea of superior storage techniques, but fallout from licensing-based approaches.
Who said you can't legally copy them? Let the stuck up DRM control freaks sell video DRM-free, then you would legally copy it. Otherwise everyone will copy it ignoring their DRM anyway.
Disk is a physical copy. Those who think it's a "representation of the license" are just luddites who cause harm to preservation of art.
The law says you can’t. You have a license for one copy of the movie, to be played via whatever medium you bought it on. You absolutely cannot legally copy it.
If your solution is “just break the law”, there are an enormous number of problems you could get past.
Again, you’re not really figuring anything out if the only way around a problem in your eyes is “just break the law”. No duh - that works for 90% of problems.
And if the other half is throwing up your hands and hoping the companies with a vested interest and legitimate use cases will randomly stop, I have bad news about the likelihood of that succeeding.
Of course DRM proponents will never stop this garbage themselves. But people don't need to oblige these crooks and their corrupt laws. As above, nonsense laws are self defeating either way and proponents of 1984 style thought police can move along.
This was known about HDDVDs a few years back too. I pulled my Harry Potter collection out for my kids and their friends to watch and evntually concluded that every single WB disk was bad, even some that weren't even opened. It was unique to WB, other companies disks continued to mostly work.
Some people online at the time mentioned WB replaced a few of their disks with bluray's but I never managed to get WB to respond to my inquiries.
I ended up flying the jolly roger, I mean I own a legal copy, so its just format shifting...
Yeah, it would seem if they're not responsible for providing a disk that as a documented and known longevity, there's really nothing you're buying but a license to view the material and that's unrevokable.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadIf I can't pirate it, then I expect it to be replaced, this is the system they demanded.
Saying you're "renting" the disc is just plain disingenuous, though. You own it free and clear. You can give it to anyone you like, for free or for a profit (i.e. how Netflix did things back in the day). The original owner is not asserting the right to come and take it back from you. It is in no way a rental, it is a sale.
The laws around DVDs are the same. You have a right to access and view the contents of the DVD. You don't have a right to make copies of the dvd.
I'd also point out products like cheap paperbacks which obliterate themselves after 4 or 5 reads.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for some good reforms and regulations around copyrights and media access, especially in the digital age. I just think it's a little bit ridiculous to expect purchased media to never degrade.
Nobody expects that. We just expect to not have to pay for the content again just because the media degraded and needed replacement.
And would anyone have paid the extra money for a 20+ year warranty for some DVDs? Absolutely not.
> > Apparantly most releases from Warner Bros on HD-DVD have laser rot. I have many titles that just freeze in the middle of the movie. I thought it was a problem with my player, but I read on other forums that this is a manufacturing fault from the discs...
https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?p=10181&sid=5039399ce60...
https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=840
Or in 2015, where some forum users narrow down the year range and manufacturing code:
> > It seems like the problematic discs were produced from 2006 to 2009 or so. I haven't found any DVDs from before or after those dates that exhibit these problems (even the original DVDs I bought in December of 2000 still look and play perfectly).
https://nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=20399&sid=3238...
If you buy a monitor and it fails after a week of use, should you be SOL? If the failure is due to a manufacturing defect, and not the user's treatment of the product or just the expected lifespan of that product class, consumer protection laws should protect the consumer.
30 years later, still sticks with me.
We have the concept of the finite warranty. And part of that is because there's a point where it's infeasible to expect everything you buy to last forever nor someone to be on the hook forever for things that don't last forever.
Car warranties are typically three years.
But what about DVDs that break due to a defect after 20 years?
That's the point of a "copy right". That only one entity holds the legal right to make copies.
I would for my cello if a repair or replacement wasn't doable because it came with a lifetime warranty against defects.
At some point, things just don't work anymore, even if two decades is significantly less time than other DVDs.
Heck, I have DiscoVision discs from the 70s that still work.
DVDs from 2006 should definitely still work.
Also, storage conditions can deeply affect how well a medium lasts but that's no excuse for defective discs.
It would be like if you had a known batch of badly-bound books that fell apart prematurely even under good storage conditions.
When your media is advertised to last for 100 years, it is reasonable to want a replacement when it lasts less than a quarter of that time
Yet the comments here talk like we have norms that don't exist. The actual norms we have are that you're SOL if your product breaks after the warranty, even due to a defect, and even for things that cost 1000x the price of a DVD.
The fact that it's a limited license attached to the physical disc only makes my case more clear, I think. There's even less expectation that I have some claim to the content if the disc breaks in 20 years.
It was only with the advent of toner based xerox in the 70s that photocopying books became vaguely practical, but still cost about 5 cents a page, at a time when a mass market paperback might cost $1.25.
The US didn't correctly defend the right to backup, but that leaves a funny grey zone where WB being bad at making DVDs means less ability to shame "piracy" tool makers because backups is normalized and in no way suspicious if the media isn't perfect like they said.
Warranty is about fitness for use, merchantability, and honoring sales contracts. It has nothing to do with issues of intellectual property.
If you sold someone a book, filled with public domain content, and the ink faded after a week, you can't just throw up your hands and say that the buyer should have made another copy. You'd likely be liable for warranty of merchantability.
That's not technically true. Implied warranties are a thing. The law in the US and many other places does place obligations of warranty on sellers beyond the whims of their voluntary warranties.
There's a reason every piece of FOSS software doesn't simply come without a warranty, they all disclaim warranty.
Now it isn't likely that it would be applicable to products quite as old as these, but the idea that "the manufacturer's written warranty is the only warranty" is a total falsehood that large companies want you to believe.
When no replacement discs are available, that's a more interesting edge case where they should feel obligated to do something to make it right in some other way, and I'd say a refund should be on the table.
I'll trade you a copy of "Big Momma's House 2" for your damaged copy of "The Two Towers".
[1](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/)
This matters because discs are not a physical product so much as a representative of a license you own. If the license doesn’t expire, the format shouldn’t matter at all.
So again, your comment was way off topic because this has nothing to do with the idea of superior storage techniques, but fallout from licensing-based approaches.
Disk is a physical copy. Those who think it's a "representation of the license" are just luddites who cause harm to preservation of art.
If your solution is “just break the law”, there are an enormous number of problems you could get past.
DMCA 1201 shouldn't exist too for the reference. Its proponents are all corrupt crooks.
I already mentioned the solution above - start selling video DRM free. Repealing junk laws like DMCA 1201 is just a bonus to that.
And if the other half is throwing up your hands and hoping the companies with a vested interest and legitimate use cases will randomly stop, I have bad news about the likelihood of that succeeding.
Some people online at the time mentioned WB replaced a few of their disks with bluray's but I never managed to get WB to respond to my inquiries.
I ended up flying the jolly roger, I mean I own a legal copy, so its just format shifting...