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July 14, 2004
Bill Gates: DVDs Soon to be Obsolete
Posted by Ernest Miller
Tom's Hardware carries a report of an interview with Bill Gates in a German Newspaper in which Gates apparently said that DVDs would be obsolete in ten years (Bill Gates: DVD player dead within ten years):
Gates did not elaborate if the DVD-player will just die or if it will be replaced. In his view, it is "ridiculous" that today we have to carry around music and movies which are stored on "silver storage discs", since they easily could scratched or misplaced.
Well, gee, I guess I'll just have to buy all the movies I already bought all over again. Won't Hollywood be happy.
I'm a young guy. Some of the DVDs I own are already five years old. I expect that I should be able to watch those DVDs at least another fifty years from now. The only way that is truly feasible is if I'm permitted to rip the DVDs to another medium and put the DVDs into a nitrogen-filled storage container for preservation. So, don't tell me that making backups of DVDs isn't really necessary or not a permitted fair use, or simply not permitted under the DMCA.
See also, NY Times on DVD DRM.
Comments (1)
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Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
1. BrunoUsesBBEdit on August 10, 2004 06:35 AM writes...
The whole reason for the DVD format is do that you will have to replace your movies often. Hollywood realized that CDs get destroyed and need to be replaced. But, VHS cassetts are rugged and last forever. Even when you have a 2 year old playing VJ. But now, my 2 year old nephew went from tossing around my 10 yr old niece's VHS movies with no problems to DVDs. What a disaster! My brother actually ends up buying the same movie twice in one week sometimes!!!
Remember the DVD-RAM disks? It you were in the Graphics Industry you probably do. It was a recordable DVD disk that was permanently fix in a protective casing. This made the DVD-RAMs more durable than a CD in a jewel case. And the drives... they were all backwards compatible with CDs. They were perfect. But Hollywood didn't want to sell rugged media. Want to double, triple, quadruple, etc. your profits? Make your product: 1. desirable 2. fragile 3. illegal to preserve
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