What if Kaliedescape, Inc. WAS the VAULT?

[iansilv]

Alright- here is an idea, just putting this out there for shits and giggles- what if you bought your Blu Ray, loaded it, and sent it to K. The system then checked with K over the internet once to confirm you had bought the disk, and the authorized its playback.

Sure you may have to wait until the disk gets authorized and cataloged by K, but that would be the price. However, you would not have to reauthorize the thing overtime, just once to confirm with K that you own it.

Delete the file from your local system, you could rerequest it to be sent back, pay a fee with shipping, heck maybe you just rebuy the damn thing. But K puts in to its database that it is holding your library of blurays that you have loaded, authorizes it over the internet.

And, taking this one step further, maybe you buy the bluray through K and either load a local disk you have, or download it from K.

Either way, you have confirmed that you own the disk, you have purchased it, and no one else can copy it from you. This would even be better, as you would then not be able to load your friend's disk and borrow it, or even load from netflix. Might incentivize more people to buy disks instead of renting them.

And yes- if K burns down, you're effd.

Thoughts anyone?

[AnOutsider]

Problem is, I believe the article stated they did this to get around the "disc must be present" issue. I'm not sure if it needs to be in the same household, but I think storing a vault of discs somewhere and remotely authorizing them MIGHT be bending things a bit too far.

Would be cool though. K charges a fee to store your discs and then remotely authorizes your players. Sounds like a good solution IMO.

[JerryL]

Me likey.

[josh]

It's an incredibly attractive idea! But if I remember right, I believe Michael Malcolm told me that this had been examined by Kaleidescape as a possibility years ago, even for DVDs, but found to be impossible according to licenses or something the studios would reject. had to be done and stored in the home.

Your logic is sound - what's really the difference where the vault is as long as it validates you're a legitimate owner of the content? But as we know, logic rarely plays into these decisions for the studios...

[iansilv]

I would think that this would be an easy negotiation to make- it would literally GUARANTEE that eve single K customer bought and paid for every single one of its disks, never rented and then returned, and they would not even be able to loan the disks to a friend. I would think that this would be an easy solution for AACS-La to agree to, unless they are just a complete bunch of idiots. It would not sell any fewer disks, it could only possibly sell equal or greater numbers of disks.

[josh]

there you go, assuming a logical argument will convince them.

[JerryL]

Agreed. Though, I would actually think this would be difficult from the stand point that you've got little new revenue coming in- unless K would pay a fee to them- and you've got probably some healthy legal costs to do this- or anything.

[AnOutsider]

Wait, WHO would have little new revenue? Movie companies? We'd have to BUY their discs... K? There'd likely be a storage fee... not sure who loses fee-wise here

[JerryL]

If there is a storage fee then that goes to K yes? If K pays a fee to the association than thats a different story. My point is simply that if I am the licensing body and if you want to make some kind of negotiation with me then that immediately costs me money to start considering it and if its for a tiny subset of enthusiasts then I'm not real motivated. Basically, consider K's position with regard to the audio issue, it only affects a small % of its clients- so regrettably- they are doing what they have to do. This would be an even smaller % of BR disc owners. Not worth it to engage expensive legal counsel unless there is a nice payday. Sad but true.

[Transepoch]

Requires internet connection to verify content... where have I heard of this as a bad thing before?