Blu Ray licencing issues...

Ther has been some panic amongst independent media producers I (and I mean truly independent, as in wedding videographers, film students, educational producers, documentarians, etc) about certain licencing issues with Blu Ray. The rumour has been going around that Blu Ray requires AACS (Advance Access Content System, i.e. the copy protection system that Blu Ray uses that's already been cracked several times over) as a mandatory inclusion in order for the discs to play in certified Blu Ray players. The stinger comes that the licence for including AACS on your discs is $1000 per title.

Seems that there was too much worrying too soon. This post from a Mr Brian Standing on the DV Info boards contains communications with a Mr Kappei Morishita, licencing officer of the Blu Ray consortium. He doesn't answer all the questions, but the gist seems to be:

Yes, it will be possible to make and distribute BD-R discs without AACS that are at base compatible with the Blu Ray players in general. HOWEVER at the moment not all Blu Ray players support BD-R but will only play manufactured commercial Blu Ray discs (so called BD-ROM). However this was true of DVD in the first half decade of it's existence. In time, BD-Rs will approach hear universal compatibility, as DVD-R/+Rs do now.

These have to be produced by approved replicator firms, who will only do runs of 10,000 discs or more, at which point, if I'm reading my Morishita's response right, AACS does become mandatory, but for licencing rather than technical reasons.