There's a beast in every man

Can't wait 'til it starts ...

Digital Copy -- Not Acceptable

Before Christmas, I bought the Prometheus blu-ray disk with came with a digital copy. In January tried to download the so-called digital copy. The download itself was easy and fast to my computer (Windows Vista). The 1.4 GByte large WMV file downloaded in less than 10 minutes. But -- brave new world -- the provided serial code in the box as required (by the Windows Media player) didn't work. After writing an email to the Fox customer support (and answering some questions about the bar-code on the backside of the case, I got an a replacement serial number and everything worked fine, even without downloading the WMV for a second time. But .. what makes the digital copy worthless (immediately and in the long run) are the following several issues:

• The immediate disadvantage is that it lacks any subtitles. As a non-native speaker I like to watch the movie at least for the first time with subtitles for better understanding. No subtitles are definitely not acceptable.
• It is restricted to one audio language only. For me this not an issue, but for others this might be.
• Only the movie is part of the digital, nothing more. Regardless of what the features on the original medium are.
• The last one really is the one restriction, that makes it non-usable for me. The Copy is for use on one non-mobile device (e.g. a computer) and one mobile device only. Which means, the copy is not transferable at all. Once I got a new computer I lose that digital copy, since I cannot transfer it at all to the new computer.

As Wikipedia quoted one source put it in the Digital Copy article), digital copy is an "attempt by the industry to sugar coat DRM". And what makes it worth, the industry always implicates that with "Digital Rights Management", it's always the industries rights, not the consumer rights. If it were truly the consumer's digital rights, then at least two points would be addressed properly:

• the customer would be able to upgrade the product (like it it's possible with software) for a reduced fee. Not being charged the full cost again, e.g. when buying a new copy of the same movie when upgrading from DVD to Blu-Ray, or from Blu-ray to the next technology (that's coming up for sure?!
• the files/content would be transferable. You could move the file to another computer/device, and deactivate the use from the old one

Not technically possible you say? Then I challenge you to make it work! You're able to put up new encryption modes for Blu-Rays every few moths, develop new protection every other year .. so why it's only possible to make new restrictions possible, instead of enablements for the paying customers??