The movie industry is so freaked over  the music industry's forward march into quicksand that it will apparently embrace any wild idea without considering the most basic consumer values. Microsoft is reportedly developing play-once, throwaway DVDs. I have nothing against disposable media in principle (ecological considerations aside). But this disposable medium will cost about the same as a DVD rental, will self-destruct after one playing, and—get this—will require a new DVD player.

If this line of attack is actually transpiring as reported, Microsoft and the Hollywood execs who are "excited at the prospect of having a piracy-proof means of distribution" think that consumers will rush out to buy new hardware to play a disc that has less value than the discs they can already play. Presumably, consumers will do this to avoid late feed. Buy the disposable instead of rent the non-disposable. Never mind that families with kids (and without them I guess) leave a rented DVD in the player for the full two weeks of a Blockbuster rental period, watching it repeatedly. Never mind that the piracy segment, which copies DVDs either for personal use or for distribution outside the computer, will simply ignore this irrelevant technology. If Microsoft and Hollywood are marketing to legitimate DVD users who would never take the trouble to crack DVD protection, how does this thing remotely solve file-sharing? Surely Hollywood doesn't plan to replace traditional DVDs with disposables, thereby wiping out the entire rental industry, which is an absolute cash machine for movie and TV producers.

If the new discs were backward-compatible, and didn't require a whole new freakin' player, I could see popping them into Christmas stockings. As it is, this ludicrous product will appeal to a tiny fraction of DVD users who … well, I don't know why anyone would buy it, frankly, but there are always some. It will have no effect whatsoever on piracy. [via Cinematical]