In a passionate and detailed article, Popular Science takes the movie industry and the MPAA to task over their strangle-hold on content on DVDs.

The article describes the faustian bargain that we all made with the movie industry when we accepted their copy protection scheme, since broken many times and rendered relatively useless.

It goes through the history of the VCR and DVD and reminds us that Sony (then only an electronics producer and now a content owner) was putting its substantial might behind keeping the VCR available. There is no such champion for DVDs, and certainly not for the format to come next (probably either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD).

It also comments on the Sony acquisition of MGM and comments made by Steve Jobs that the industry shouldn't adopt HD-DVD unless it can secure a promise that recording drives will never be in a PC.