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"This disc will self-destruct in 48 hours". You might remember this story we covered months ago about perishable DVDs, Disney seems to be the first company to announce commercial use of self-destructible discs when the pilot movie "rental" program launches this August.

Developed by Flexplay Technologies, the discs start off red, but when they are taken out of the package, exposure to oxygen turns the coating black and makes it impenetrable by a DVD laser.

3 words: stupid, pointless, and fruitless.

Yea really...Surely there will be ways around this...mods, fruity supported lazers,etc. Im not sure I really understand it though. Is it so you can steal the DVD from a store or what?

One of the best tale-tale signs of a throw-away society is when you start throwing away everything!

It's a waste of materials, bad for the enviornment and will likely make Disney millions as it crushes the 2nd hand DVD industry....

Calling this moronic is insulting to morons.

Wont it just be possible to cover this in cling film or something so oxagen cant get to disc surface?

Maybe I am stoned and missing something, but it seems to me that if you still have a finite amount of time to use the disk whilst its still readble, then you still have time to rip it... Surely?

I think this may turn out to be potentially worse for piracy, not better. It will cause of flood of short time, limited life disks that will instantly be ripped and then thrown away.

If people can get hold of short life DVDs for less money, rip them and then share the rips on broadband, then I think this will lead to MORE movie rips on the likes of Kazaa, not less.

I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, so don't flame me for saying anything dumb please.

An EXCELLENT point, Mr Rick.

So much concern over the profits of Disney and people like that, where's the concern over the environment???

cat this_stupid_idea > /dev/null

Angry customers could make small holes to packages so that they'd be unreadable when sold already :giddy:

What a joke! A waste of money and natural resources.

This is pathetic, I won't be buying any DVDs from Disney anymore (not like I ever did ), not because of the "self destructing" crap, but simply because I don't support the way they think they can do whatever they want. Eventually this will lead to even larger environmentally unfriendly methods of stopping piracy, and they will all be cracked as they have been in the past, so it's all pointless in the end, they should just think of a method that will be more long term - like Microsoft's Palladium, I don't like it, but it's better than this!

I don't think this is to curb piracy - It is probably meant to stop stealing and/or 2nd hand DVDs.

If anything, pirated copies will be the ONLY permanent copies available.

Hooray for efficiency.... now they expect video stores to stockpile copies of each DVD to rent out???

What about the people who rent the movie but dont get a chance to watch it until the last minute but open it up on the way home to look inside at the papers and all. I know this sounds crazy but my family does not have time to always watch the movies rightaway. With this chances are we dont get to see it al all.

The graudual degradation of the DVDs will also not be uniform on every DVD player. I'm expecting this type of media to work worse, or not at all, in many DVD players. Especially when it is nearing its "death".