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Having less legitimacy makes it a different thing to most people. The legality and legitimacy of an item, while social constructs, are important to many people

Having less legitimacy makes it a different thing to most people. The legality and legitimacy of an item, while social constructs, are important to many people and are worth value to many people.

thaumasiotes 13y ago
I believe in most people's eyes, legitimacy makes a difference to them because they believe it's relevant to quality. For example, a Sears tool is superior to a no-brand knockoff because the quality of Sears' manufacture is higher. That general idea is the foundational concept behind trademark law. I'm trying to point out that the concept doesn't apply to software (and in this sense, digital video files are "software"). The majority of people care about the legitimacy of software only because they don't realize that it has no impact on quality, that software is completely unlike physical objects in that regard. Now, there are counterexamples in the world; a Chinese producer of sunflower (I think) seeds became massively successful by taking the innovative step of branding his product ("Idiot Seeds") instead of selling it as the commodity "sunflower seeds". But I don't think that's the main force driving fear of bootleg DVDs.
- gamegoblin 13y ago
  I understand where you are coming from, now. I am unsure of the reason why the person you responded to wanted a "real" DVD, so we'll have to see if they respond to you. I am also not very well versed on DVD ripping techniques. If you are: Are they 100% lossless?
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    The most standard (I believe) is certainly lossless: dd if=/dev/cdrom of=name_of_disc.iso creates a bit-for-bit image of the disc. If you're trying to shrink the data, that's obviously useless, but it works fine for copying discs. Ripping to video files, instead of to a disc image, may or may not be lossless depending on the format you're targetting, but the norm (again, I believe) is to be lossy, since you can achieve really large amounts of compression. All that said, it's really not that difficult to judge video quality directly; what you can't perceive literally doesn't matter. In my ripped video of The Princess Bride (completely legit, in that I ripped it myself from a DVD I owned), I eventually noticed that color was occasionally washed out, but only because I was going frame-by-frame trying to get good images of the swords. I would never have known otherwise.

Having less legitimacy makes it a different thing to most people. The legality and legitimacy of an item, while social constructs, are important to many people and are worth value to many people.

thaumasiotes 13y ago

I believe in most people's eyes, legitimacy makes a difference to them because they believe it's relevant to quality. For example, a Sears tool is superior to a no-brand knockoff because the quality of Sears' manufacture is higher. That general idea is the foundational concept behind trademark law. I'm trying to point out that the concept doesn't apply to software (and in this sense, digital video files are "software"). The majority of people care about the legitimacy of software only because they don't realize that it has no impact on quality, that software is completely unlike physical objects in that regard. Now, there are counterexamples in the world; a Chinese producer of sunflower (I think) seeds became massively successful by taking the innovative step of branding his product ("Idiot Seeds") instead of selling it as the commodity "sunflower seeds". But I don't think that's the main force driving fear of bootleg DVDs.

gamegoblin 13y ago
I understand where you are coming from, now. I am unsure of the reason why the person you responded to wanted a "real" DVD, so we'll have to see if they respond to you. I am also not very well versed on DVD ripping techniques. If you are: Are they 100% lossless?
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  The most standard (I believe) is certainly lossless: dd if=/dev/cdrom of=name_of_disc.iso creates a bit-for-bit image of the disc. If you're trying to shrink the data, that's obviously useless, but it works fine for copying discs. Ripping to video files, instead of to a disc image, may or may not be lossless depending on the format you're targetting, but the norm (again, I believe) is to be lossy, since you can achieve really large amounts of compression. All that said, it's really not that difficult to judge video quality directly; what you can't perceive literally doesn't matter. In my ripped video of The Princess Bride (completely legit, in that I ripped it myself from a DVD I owned), I eventually noticed that color was occasionally washed out, but only because I was going frame-by-frame trying to get good images of the swords. I would never have known otherwise.