Rogue Video Format Stirs Up Trouble

New ‘DivX’ video hack could stir up trouble: While DVDs and their massive MPEG-2
data files (four gigabytes and up) are far too unwieldy to trade on the Internet, a new video
hack is threatening to provide a medium-quality alternative to retail home-video — and it can
be distributed over the ‘Net. Inexplicably named DivX (and not to be confused with Circuit
City’s deceased pay-to-play Divx, which went out of business last year), the rogue video format can compress an
entire feature-length movie within a 660-megabyte-or-less data file, and folks with broadband connections can
download a movie, normally pirated from a DVD source, from some nebulous Internet locations in just a few
hours.

“DivX is what MP3 was to the music industry,” Wayne Chang, a college student and online music trader, told
CNET News.com. “It’s definitely going to stir up some trouble.” And trouble is right, because if the
naughty-by-nature DivX has some appeal, it’s flat-out illegal. DivX is not a format approved by any home-video
retailer, nor is the software behind the system on the level. The two anonymous DivX authors — only known as
“MaxMorice” and “Gej” — hijacked Microsoft’s ultra-compressed MPEG-4 video technology and then combined
it with MP3 audio. There isn’t even a DivX player, per se, but the Windows Media Player can be enhanced to
handle the files. Since the hack is just now gaining popularity on the Internet, there has been little comment from
the Motion Picture Association of America, but nobody doubts that the MPAA’s lawyers will keep on top of it –
and, like DeCSS, they probably will bring lawsuits against anybody they can find associated with distributing
copyrighted films as DivX files. The fact that DeCSS or one of its variants is involved with the creation of illegal
DivX movies only gives the lobbying organization an additional reason to pursue violators, and because of DivX,
the MPAA probably has a better chance of winning their two pending DeCSS lawsuits in California and New
York.

When home-video companies produce high-quality DVDs at reasonable
prices, most people will buy them, forgoing virtually identical copies that can be burned on blank DVD media. As
it stands, the new DivX hack poses even less of a threat to DVD sales than straightforward piracy, and for a few
reasons. First, while most observers agree that the MPEG-4 signal utilized by DivX files is superior to the
Web-standard MPEG-1 (aka, Video CD), the quality of the presentation simply is nowhere near what we get
from professionally authored MPEG-2 data on our DVDs. Secondly, even if DivX files can be downloaded in a
reasonable period of time, it’s still a hassle, especially when the logical thing to do with them once downloaded is
to burn each title on a CD-R. The time and effort involved gives serious video collectors no reason to bypass
quality DVDs. And third, since the DivX files are substantial in size, they have to be distributed in sections, and
these sections have to be collated and combined by additional software before the entire movie can be viewed.
Most folks who are willing to play around with DivX
files probably aren’t regular DVD consumers to begin with as much as people who just enjoy the idea of collecting
cheap copies of films, and that’s little different from folks who tape movies off television rather than buying DVDs
or even videotapes. And for people who don’t even collect films at all, renting remains the first, best option. DivX
is about as inconvenient as video piracy gets.

However, none of this should be construed as a defense of the DivX authors. Even though it all looks like fun and
games for people with too much spare time on their hands, Hollywood films are not public-domain items. They
are owned by the companies that paid to produce them, and the studios have every right to control the distribution
of their product (even when people tape cheapo flicks off TV, the studios still receive up-front money from
broadcasters and cable channels for the showing). MPAA spokesman Rich Taylor told CNET News.com that
everybody in Hollywood is well aware of how the digital world can compromise their control over copyrighted
materials. “But just because the technology is there,” he noted, “(it) doesn’t give people the right to manipulate it in
a way that is a violation of the laws.”