US Library of Congress report to be published.

UK magazine Computer Act!ve recently revealed this tiny piece of information from the hopefully to-be-made publicly available report: A DVD-R can only be expected to last 5 - five - years! Good to know in these days when major studios charge big buck$ for subpar DVD-R releases, but never underestimate their power to be able to suppress such reports if they should get the notion...

We're really at critical mass here with the studios decision to focus on truly disposable media in the quest for a cheap buck. It's definitely time to meltdown and panic-- Carrie Brownstein, take it away: "This is fucking AIDS! This is 9/11!"

Why, The Dollar will always reign supreme, didn't you know?

Maybe not the best place to put this, but apparently some rule changes in the US regarding copyright for DVD's:


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_wguy/2010 ... y_tc3236_2
It's just a quick hit in an article about other new regulations, so no further details at that site. Sounds like it is just allowing what is probably already common practice, but good news for the scrupulous.
There should be more info on this out there.

It's very good news for academic support professionals who are constantly asked by faculty to break the law in the service of education.

Does this mean universities don't have to pay $400 anymore for 'educational use' DVDs and can just buy the regular edition?

Well, that's always been the case if you could get around it. But no, this is entirely different. This means that instructors can rip clips from a DVD to, say, put in a PowerPoint presentation for a lecture (or for people to make fair use mashups or documentary films). The act of making clips for lectures was always legal, but DMCA made it illegal to break the encryption on a DVD for any reason.

This new rule is a big step toward restoring the legality of acts that were made illegal-on-a-technicality by DMCA, but it's not the last step.