I got curious, so I went to
AACS LA website. AACS is the DRM system used in Blu-Ray, and if you want to produce copy-protected content, you need to sign the contracts and pay the fees they're asking. I looked at the Interim Agreement which (as far as I gather) is supposed to be the first step in becoming a full licensor. Exhibit B says that you need to pay
$15,000 per year to become a AACS Licensed Content Producer.
Meanwhile, while
you're apparently unable to work out how to download BackupBluRay (I haven't personally bothered to rip Blu-Rays so I had completely forgotten AACS has been busted since
2007), anyone can walk in their favourite BitTorrent site and slurp the Jackass movie at full BR resolution without paying a dime.
Or - here's the fun part -
any other Blu-Ray film.
I know, I know, $15,000 is a drop in a bucket for a major company like Paramount, but one can still wonder
what else they could have paid for with that money. They clearly wasted money on something that doesn't actually prevent people from pirating their films, and in the age of perfect digital copies, the redistributing pirates either.
Oh, and how are
you going to pay the $15,000 fee? I know, as an indie producer it's probably far more reasonable to contact a media manufacturer that has already licensed the technology and would be willing to produce Blu-Rays... for a modest, no doubt negotiable fee. A significant portion of which goes toward that company's AACS licencing bill. (No, they're not suckers for licencing AACS. They figured that they can profit from suckers who think copy protection is worth wasting money on. The
whole scam is set up so that everyone profits!)
All the while you know that it's going to hit BitTorrents a week later,
whether you buy that service or not.
Tell me this isn't snake oil.
