Let’s start off with the really important news. Marvel Comics have decided to scrap their plans to use the late Princess Diana as a mutant superhero. No, I’m not kidding. Read the news report Marvel Shelves Mutant Diana Plans. Or if you’re a traditionalist as far as comics go, then browse through The Many Faces Of The Man Of Steel.
Of course, you might prefer just getting offended while reading a fairly vicious (and adults only) comic strip about an Angry Right Wing Pixie.
Or for a rather noisy but curiously nice experience, try the Flash cartoon known as The Little Goth Girl and the Robot. Then for a non-moving cartoon with a dreamy Goth feel to it, take a slow meander through The Freakshow of Pipingrad.
Then how about a Flash cartoon that combines everyones favourite things – ie: gambling and the killing of farm animals, to a very cheerful musical soundtrack? As a vegetarian, I am appalled and delighted by The Bouncing Cow Tester.
On to drawings of a different kind. Do yourself a favour and browse through the many examples of UFOs as recorded in drawings and paintings throughout history, at Historical Artworks and UFOs.
In other important news, the trend for modification of things you dont expect, continues online. Go stare at the photographs and wonder about the motivation of the man who decided to Make A Sauna Out Of A Car.
And in atrocities of a different sort, Harvard are planning to put online over a million documents from the trial that still sends shivers down the spines of many of the so-called ‘leaders’ of most countries today – TThe Nuremburg War Crimes Trial. For a look at their page so far, try The Nuremburg Project.
Now we’ve chased away lawyers and others who don’t like comics, let’s dive into the meat. Having recently made the leap into slightly newer technology and bought a DVD writer, and discovering how useful it is to reduce the chaos from piles of CD’s lying everywhere, I thought a brief, highly inaccurate and fairly lurid look at DVD itself, might be useful. For those of you debating whether to take the step beyond ‘cd writers’ – get over your fear and do some reading at DVD Recordable.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, the various corporations who control the release of entertainment were freaking out and doing everything legally possible to prevent the widespread use of something we now take for granted – the VCR. The VCR would kill the entertainment industry, they said. Now the video sales and rentals of films equal or better the cinema runs. (They said the same thing about the photocopier, and now with DVDs) For some useful info, here’s a Brief History of DVD.
The world has been arbitrarily carved into different coding zones, and both disks and players themselves have been assigned a coding which keeps these artificial borders. This is to prevent, for instance people in Zone 1 (the US) from sending over copies of films to friends in Zone 2 (SA) to watch, before the films have been released ‘officially’ in SA. Take a read of an angry but informative take on the region coding, at Video Idiocy.
All this keeps an artificial control over the global entertainment industry, allowing for massive profiteering and laziness from distributors worldwide. (For example, Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro enjoy a ‘legal’ protection to release films when they choose, delaying some films by up to a year – Bowling For Columbine and Gosford Park, for example – or choosing not to release titles at all.)
DVDs themselves are protected with a coding system CSS (Content Scrambling System) – and 15 year old uber hacker Jon Lech Johansen made history by cracking it, creating a ‘DeCSS’ program – unleashing howls from the various companies who had hoped we would all behave and be good consumers. Read Salon’s The Criminal Code, then Norway Prosecutes Teenager. And to see the english-language article complete with pic, from a Norwegian newspaper of the day when the code hit the fan, go to Police Raid Teen Hacker. The legal battle itself went on a long time, read the BBC’s report from January of this year.
Things got surreal when shirts with the software code for DeCSS printed on them, got people sued (for ‘misappropriation of trade secrets’) — Original DeCSS Shirts. Read the viewpoint of someone who pitched up in court to watch The DVD Trial. You’ll notice they don’t display the code for fear of legal action. Take a look at Court To Address DeCSS Shirts.
Then the courts started trying to block online publishing of the code itself, failing miserably in the process. Read Blocking Of Online Code. If you’re curious as to why all this fear and loathing, read Fear of a Pay-Per-Use World.
For a history and links to both legal documents and copies of the code to play with (and be advised that this one’s mostly for the geeks) try The Gallery of CSS Descramblers.
To keep an eye on the ever expanding war, as well as the move to lose all the different artificial ‘zone’ aspects of DVD, go do some reading at Open DVD.
Most of the fuss is about the ability to ‘decrypt’ DVDs – in other words, stop folks from being able to grab the goodies off DVDs – but once DeCSS emerged, the battle was over. so amidst all the legal growling and anger and whining about the poor starving artists, (yeah right) go to this next site, and if you have a DVD drive, experiment with DVD Decrypter.
Or for a really huge list of ready to download software to play with all aspects of DVDs, get busy at The Ultimate DVD Backup Resource.
Here’s a fairly angry site that talks about the ongoing floods of legal suits as the MPAA tries to stop the flood of information: PigDog.
But global corporations don’t give up their profits easily. To get a sense of the next round of coming wars, read this news report over attempts to legally clamp down on the ability of VCR’s to tape TV shows in the future:
Gear change. And to return to the happy silliness that the column started with, try something to scare your friends. It’s a Flash enabled simulation of a blue-screen (ie: when your PC goes boom) The PC Crash Simulator.
Or – to simulate what some of the local DVD sellers might be doing after seeing this week’s column – try the amazingly funny collection of true stories from people who accidentally sh*t themselves. Walk verrry carefully with buttocks clenched to Tales of the Smear.
Until the next time, if DVD hit squads don’t get me.
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.