Digital TV Approaches

renard writes: "The LA Times is running a story, which I have not seen mirrored elsewhere, on how the TV manufacturers are banding together to encrypt digital television. The stated goal: you watch when - and only when - the broadcasters say you can watch. No duplication (well - maybe analog); no time-shifting. Our friend Rep. Rick Boucher raises the question of whether this will undermine consumers' fair use rights. Undermine? How about `obliterate'?" One quibble with the article - when it talks about Firewire, it actually means the Digital Transmission Content Protection spec., which is implemented over Firewire. So your television may exchange data with various other boxen via Firewire connections, but data passing over them will be encrypted and will only pass with the permission of the copyright holder.

Comments

This is critical

[alewando]

Many of you are against encrypting digital television signals because of some ephemeral notion of your "natural right" to fair use, as though fair use weren't an artifact of positive law (passed by Congress) in another act of positive law (copyright law itself). But let's assume for a moment that you're correct, that there is a fundamental right here that's being abused by the industry. I'll grant you that, if you think it'll help your case. But it won't, and I'll tell you why.

Rights aren't absolute, no matter what Ronald Dworkin tells you. Your right may trump my interest, but your right cannot trump my right; trumps cannot trump each other without reference to a hierarchy of trumps (which is lacking in this instance).

That's all well and good, you say, but how is it relavent here? What right of mine are you abridging by having this turf-war with the television industry? Why, the most fundamental right of all: the right to continue existing without molestation by other moral agents.

You see, it is critical that digital television be encrypted. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day, television signals are being broadcast from our television towers to our homes, but not just to our homes, no. Into outer space.

There is an archaeological record of our daily human experiences being broadcast to extraterrestrials as we speak. Forget Species. The greatest horror won't be when aliens get our DNA sequences; it'll be when they get our reruns. Some time in the distant future, an intrepid band of extraterrestrial warriors will reach that distant blue planet that has been polluting their atmosphere with high-frequency radio signals, and they will know exactly how to destroy us at our precise weak spots; for they will have studied the Three Stooges ("Poke 'em in the eye!") and Survivor ("Give 'em money and they'll self-immolate!").

It will be a bleak day for humanity, and I will not countenance any industry policy that allows it to transpire. It is critical that we take steps today to encrypt our television signals so that if they ever fall into enemy hands, they will appear like mindless garbage and a waste of time to try to comprehend.

Thank you.

Your fair use right...

[Karpe]

has been revoked by the united corporations of America. It's bad for the economy. Get over it.

It's said how a country with such a beatiful history of defense of citizen's freedom rights is being changed by transnational conglomerates. The fact is that much of the role of the USA in the world economy is determined by these companies (You can't imagine how much intelectual property we get from you. Movies, Music, Cable TV, product brands. That means dollars flowing in your direction. Your government is pretty aware of that).

I guess that if the american citizen has to choose between it's civil rights and a good economy, he will choose the economy, afraid of losing his job. Fortunately I don't know the american citizen enough. :) Unfortunately, the decision may not be in citizen's hands, but politicians, and they will choose the economy.

Re:All this protections bothers me

[singularity]

So I have my local station sending out a HDTV signal into the air.
And my $3000 HDTV-ready television
And my $700 HDTV tuner.
And my $1000 Dolby Digital receiver.
And my $2000 PowerMac G4 with Firewire (or a $1000 yet-to-be-created HDTV recorder)
And I have a job during my favorite show's HDTV broadcast.

I spent all of this money and I have to watch my show in analog format?
I do not mind digital copy-protection. But, as I have said before, let me have that ONE digital copy, in all of its HDTV glory). Make copying more than once illegal, that is fine with me. But give me that one copy!*

*Yes, I realize that this will be hacked quickly. However, I am fully in support of cracking down on people that distrbute digital copies of movies. But please do not make it illegalfor me to have that one copy!

Broadcast TV generally isn't worth it anyways

[jht]

My wife and I have three TV sets in our house - a 27" in the living room, a 19" in our bedroom, and an old 13" in the guest room. All we have for cable is the basic antenna service - and that's just because our reception otherwise sucks horribly. Here's what we watch:

Most evenings, we watch either the 10PM news or the 11PM news.

About once a week, we stay up for a while and watch Letterman.

She likes the occasional cheesy drama (I believe she's currently on a "Dawson's Creek" kick), and I usually watch WWF SmackDown! on Thursdays (I can't help it - I've been a wrestling mark for years).

Besides all that, I watch some sports - I like to watch Red Sox games and I'll watch most Patriots games and the Giants when I can get them.

We also like the occasional Discovery Channel program (Steve Irwin rules!), and she and I both love the Stooges (which proves that I married the perfect woman).

Why do I bring this up? Because for one, when you add it all up, we watch so little TV on a weekly recurring basis that we could easily learn to live without it, I think. I've considered getting a widescreen TV, but I'm so pissed off at the MPAA that I haven't bought a DVD in almost a year, and I only rent them when I get free coupons from West Coast or Blockbuster. The last time we went to the theater was in February to see CTHD. So I can live with my "obsolete" TV sets just fine.

And how do we survive without all this broadcast media? Well, today we read books, newspapers, and magazines, work at our jobs, do fun activities together, and go places other than theaters. I get current news and weather off the Web, and it's on my own schedule, not broadcast schedules. We went on vacation a couple of months ago and survived nicely without watching TV. We'll do it again (go away with no TV) a couple of times over the summer.

My point here is that the broadcasters need us more than they seem to realize. We're not just statistics or "consumers", we're people, dammit, and if push comes to shove, and we're only allowed to partake of their media on their terms, maybe we're not the only ones who can get by without them.

Memo to the big media conglomerates: You need us a lot more than we need you. If you're smart, you'll stop pushing us. Don't piss us off too much. You may have lots of money and power, but without our eyeballs, you've got nothing.

- -Josh Turiel

Re:Broadcast TV generally isn't worth it anyways

[nick_davison]

I moved out to the US in December from England. Before I moved I made my US wife promise that I could have 'five hundred channels' - it seemed to be the American dream and if I was moving 7,000 miles for her, I was going to have it.

I watched a couple of hours worth at her parents and completely gave up on the idea as it's so commercial ridden as to be unwatchable [from the point of view of an English person who's used to three three-minute commercial breaks an hour]. All of a sudden it seemed less appealing.

So, we ended up without cable. Our TV's hooked up to the VCR, though not to the aerial or any other signal. I spend about the cost of cable access on video and DVD rentals which means I get a couple of movies of my choice, with no commercials, pretty much every day (with BB's reward card, I'm unlucky if I pay for half of what I rent). All in all it seems like a pretty good deal cost/content wise.

The real rewards have been the unexpected ones. And no I'm not going to do the usual quality time I now get to spend with my favourite rubber ducky taking long baths. I'm pretty much stress free. The reality is that most highschool students aren't shooting each other, most mexicans aren't going to rob me the moment they see me, no one's been murdered, no one's been raped, the world's actually a pretty nice place. News shows need to sensationalise what's happening to keep people interested. Once you get away from the over excited reporting you realise that they present a totally skewed and totally depressing view of the world. I now read slashdot for geek news, the bbc news site for news from back home and generally get told by friends if there's anything I really should know about. As a result I get to hear about what I'm interested in without having a load of sensational crimes distorted to the point where the world seems too evil to live in (except for the MPAA *grin* slashdot sees to that).

As for music, I'm now buying way more than ever before because I'm listening to the radio instead and hearing way more that I ever heard on MTV.

So, for me, the quality of life improvement isn't the extra time, it's that I get a way less depressing view of the world and can actually target what I want, not what some executive at Fox decides I want.

As has been said before, the viewer enters in to a trade with the TV company. Every time they up the number of commercials, they make it harder to copy content, they up the costs, degrade the service, they push the customer one step closer to considering the options and, more and more, once people have considered the options they're saying "Thanks but no thanks."

If TV companies want to continue, they need to realise they need to make the customer feel they're getting what they want. Traditionally that's been with more captivating shows (Weakest Link may be drivel but it's addictive drivel) but they seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel on that at the moment. Soon, if they wish to survive, they'll have to address other means and that may actually be to backtrack and offer better terms.

When will they ever learn?

[Kiwi]

When will the manufacturers ever learn that putting strong copy protection in to consumer devices simply does not work. It does not work because the first people who will adopt a new technology are the technology-savvy users, users who do not want to be told by the big media companies how they are allowed to use their technology.

DAT died for anything but professional (read: Not copy protected) use in the early 90s. DIVX's failure is well known among the Slashdot crowd. Don't think for one second that DVD would have caught on the way it has if mod chips to defeat region coding were not so readily available. CPRM caused such an uproar that it was forced to be stopped, despite the refusal of many major media outlets (ZDNet, news.com, etc.) to discuss CPRM.

I do not see digital TV replacing analog TV until a form of digital TV without the onerous restrictions becomes available.

- Sam

Who you gonna buy, what laws you gonna allow?

[maggard]

You've got a choice: Buy a TV / hard drive / solid-state-music-player / whatever that has encryption or don't buy one.

Most folks, all things being equal, will purchase the unfettered product.

The way manufactures, content folks etc. prevent this is by getting laws set preventing non-encrypted hardware. This is the case with DAT, DVD, etc.

However this is not yet the case with television and isn't likely to be. The public is getting wise to these tricks and lawmakers are starting to clue into the changing attitudes.

Furthermore this isn't putting limits on a new technology but attempting to reign in an existing one.

US Congress-critters are getting tired of feeling like TV's-patsies giving away spectrum and receiving nothing in return, no HDTV, no additional services. To now attempt to require content-protection on TV sets, that ain't gonna fly.

This hits Joe Sixpack in the couch with his remote in hand & as powerful as the lobbyist's are they don't match a nation of TV junkies.

Don't expect to see this sort of law get passed easily; it's too easy to make a cause cellebre against. It'll be an uphill battle & a very highly publicized one. I for one don't think it'll make it.

Without a law the model breaks down. Gonna buy a new TV set with all the new features? Manufacturers will quickly discover that the models with content-protection don't sell and those without do.

Are TV manufacturers in the business of protecting IP (except for Sony?) No - they just want to sell as many boxes as possible and don't have any stake what you do with 'em.

Short term: Companies will try to get away with anything they can. The long-term: In this case they probably won't but it'll be a fight. In the meantime get ready to write your own Congress-critters & tell them how you expect them to go on this issue.

well maybe analog?

[enterfornone]

Well since everyone can record analog signals there's really no point to this.

--

Re:well maybe analog?

[janpod66]

Don't bet on it. The intent behind these watermarking systems is that they survive digital-to-analog conversions and can be detected by any recording device, analog or digital. Besides, who says that ten years from now, you'll still be able to get digitizers or televisions with analog inputs? If all broadcasts and recordings go digital, why would anybody still offer analog devices for sale at a reasonable price?

In a worst-case scenario, any player or recording device, analog or digital, will refuse to play or record something unless it is explicitly marked, by a watermark, as "free to play" or "free to record". Furthermore, those cryptographic tokens would be handed out by a central authority, for a steep fee if you aren't Disney or AOLTW. For viewing, you would have to get decryption tokens via the telephone or Internet in order to be able to actually watch the content, giving the media companies a complete record of your viewing habits.

The end result would be that you would lose all rights to home recording or time shifting. Furthermore, any independent producer of content would have to pay for the privilege of distributing their content in a form that is viewable by the installed base of televisions and audio devices.

The political arguments are also foreseeable. Media companies will likely argue that they are entitled to controlling what you are viewing because they somehow "supported" or "subsidized" the creation of those digital television. They will say that they aren't really bound by any privacy laws, and that, in any case, obtaining records of the complete viewing habits of every television viewer will just be used to give viewers more of what they want. And 20-30 years from now, people who grew up in that kind of environment will wonder what all the fuzz was about.

Let's hope it won't go that far. We already have a glimpse of the kind of content and public life that would occur in such a world, and it doesn't look good.

All this protections bothers me

[flamingdog]

I don't get it. All this worry over all this copyright protection is just plain dumb. The fact remains that if you can see it or if you can hear it, it can be duplicated.

First off, music:
If you can hear it, it can be duplicated. For one, theres always the age old method of RECORDING it with a microphone. And actually, yes, you can get a nice quality sound from that especially with some tweaking. Hell, I still have a 1/8th to 1/8th cord I use to rip tapes to mp3. Just plug it from the headphone jack to the microphone jack. Works wonders. There are MANY other methods that I really don't feel like getting in to.

Second off, Video:
DVD ripping will ALWAYS be possible as long as it can be played on your computer. I have a million and a half programs that clock in at under a few megabytes that can rip video directly from a desktop. Hell, I use those to copy the realvideo movies that I can't download but want to watch without downloading again. On TV? Again, just use the age old method of screen camming. And again, you CAN attain a VERY nice resolution with the proper equipment. Again, there are also about a million methods of manual copying that I haven't mentioned.

---------------------------
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"

Re:All this protections bothers me

[SomeoneYouDontKnow]

But, as I've said several times before, this has nothing to do with piracy. It doesn't even have anything to do with stopping the technically-inclined from finding a way around it. What is is intended to do is stop the average consumer from exercising their fair use rights so the media companies can sell those rights back. You want that program you just saw? It'll cost you. It's all about maximizing profits. The broadcasters tried to stop time-shifting when VCRs first appeared. Now they're going to try again, and the DMCA makes it illegal even to try to reassert your fair use rights. Beautiful, ain't it? I don't think I could have thought of a better way to screw consumers.

I will point out, however, that no one is forcing us to consume this mass-produced junk. People can turn it off and go outside to play ball, or at the very least, we can come up with alternative programming. I'm still convinced that an open-source (so anyone can build it), easy to use (and I can't stress that enough) set-top box with an Ethernet jack plugged into a broadband Net connection could allow Internet TV channels to be streamed onto a standard television. Can you imagine the possibilities? Anyone with a fat enough pipe could launch their own channel, and if you can build a box to let the average Joe watch it on his TV, you'll have the chance to break the video stranglehold of the media companies. You wouldn't even need slick programming. Many people would try it just for the novelty.

Media

[the eric conspiracy]

One of the most thought provoking photgraphs I ever saw was a picture of the interior of Albert Einstein's house when he was living in Princeton NJ. The picture showed a bookcase, desk with papers and open books, and a piano.

There were no electronics in view.

It seems to me that in the overall scheme of things the encryption of digital television signals is not exactly important. If you personally are put out by this, I think that you should take a step back and think about what is important. I can guarantee that in the long run cheap mass entertainment and the materialism that it engenders is a dead end. What really is important is your humanity, spiritualism and your personal relationships. Real quality of life does not come out of Hollywood.

Lies, and Damned Lies

[scotpurl]

First, most of the music that is distributed over the internet (music wise), is MP3 files, which are not perfect digital copies of the original. They are highly compressed, high-loss, low-quality versions of the original. In short, they are sort of an analog copy of the digital original.

Second, pirates do not, will never, need to break encryption to create pirate copies. Pirates get copies of originals (that's from inside the industry), be it film negative, multi-track studio tapes, or whatever, and make their copies from that. That is exactly how songs and films appear in public before they have even reached, or gone beyond, their debut.

Third, a pirate just needs the same mastering equipment that the studio owns. And a factory to churn out those copies.

Fourth, the digital nature of things has not changed the laws. The laws about copyright are stronger now than they ever have been, and somehow that's not enough. I beleive that the ultimate goal is pay-per-view, with the retention of ownership and all rights in perpetuity, which may go against the U.S. Constitution, but certainly seeks to reverse a few Supreme Court rulings.

Fifth (and finally), if there is piracy, pass new laws to increase the number of police officers. Pass new laws to stiffen existing penalties. We have a legal system. The legislative branch creates law, the executive branch enforces the law, and the judicial branch does political favors to their appointers. Be that as it is, this is a problem of enforcement of existing laws, not the lack of laws.

Right to be able to time-shift?

[dirk]

I'm sure htis will be marked as a troll by some people, but where exactly does our right to "fair use" come from? I know all about time-shifting (and support it), but I have never seen anything that says they must make it so you are able to make a backup copy, only things that say they can't stop something from being produced because it can make a backup copy. I know it's a weird thing, but those really are 2 different things. It's like saying if I can, I have the right to make a copy, but they are not required to make sure I can make a copy.

"Fair use" is very important, but I can completely understand where they would not have to take into account whether or not you are able to copy it. Imagine if sometime in the future there is a technology that is great, except it cannot be copied (not through encryption, but because of some flaw in the technology or whatever), what happens then? Do we throw out a good technology (that many people may want) because the companies can't ensure that people can copy it? Or do we let them use it, as the only thing "fair use" ensures is that they can't outlaw things that let you exercise you're "fair use" privilege? So, is the "right to fair use" actually ensured by some law or court ruling or something similar, or is it only that they can't stop things that would enable people to use their "fair use rights"?

NO FAIR USE ANYMORE IN THE USA

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

According to Judge Kaplan, "fair use" does NOT allow you to even tell people where to get a technology that enables you to make a fair use of a work if that technology circumvents any copy/access control measure. Fair use is only allowed if the copyright owner gives you unencrypted access to the content. Legal precendent as of now is that fair use ONLY exists where the copyright owner PERMITS it to. Yes, this goes against what fair use is supposed to be about, it is supposed to allow actions that the copyright owner can NOT prohibit. But with the DMCA, UCITA and shrink wrap licenses, the law says the providers has INFINITE rights, and you, the "consumer" has NONE except those the producer lets you TEMPORARILY exercise, for as long as HE/SHE wants you to.

Ask a lawyer for real legal advice.

Re:Looking into the crystal ball

[EvlPenguin]

The next advancement in this trend will be TVs that you can't turn off. And then TVs that pick up signals from your end.

Sounds double-plus good.
--

Remember, put your money where your mouth is

[ckedge]

I enjoyed Napster hugely, and it's loss (and the loss of services like them) is a massive step backwards in time (as the RIAA would like I'm sure).

So I should be concerned, but I'm not. Why? Well, I've found myself exclusively using mp3.com for my music needs. Tons and tons of free music. I have not had any trouble finding good stuff (except when I purposely delve into the bottoms of the categories to do my part in 'discovering' new talent).

It makes sense. If information should be free, it will be free. Not because we force *all* information to be free, but because if information isn't free, there is always other information that delivers the same value that *is* free. Capiche?

Let me restate that: I don't have to buy Jennifer Lopez music at $20 a pop, or MS Office at $300 a pop, or MS Win2K at $400 a pop (CDN $), because I can easily find 10 artists who sound like and are as good as Jennifer Lopez who give their 'information' away free, and because I can always use GPL office software (and use open standard documents like HTML), or use GPL/free operating systems.

In a world with a billion digital citizens, all it takes is one person to make an entire class of information free, by creating something and giving it away for free! And we can all help out!

Everyone here realizes that giving money directly to the artists would be most efficient, what with the distribution of information costing nearly nothing. "Cut out the greedy fat cat middlemen!!" is the cry. Now with mp3.com's "BackTheBand", I can put my money directly where my mouth is!

In not too long a time all other media will follow in the same path. First came free software, then free textual entertainment, then free music, eventually free video must follow. (You've heard about the project to make a free fully rendered movie using POVRay, right?)

It's pretty hard to compete with free. If these bastards want to commit financial suicide, what the hell do I care!

Looking into the crystal ball

[Gaijinator]

The next advancement in this trend will be TVs that you can't turn off. And then TVs that pick up signals from your end. And after that (which I predict will occur in 2009), we'll go back 25 years to 1984.
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"Remember, your friends will stab you in the back for the price of an Extra Value Meal."

I can play too

[sonofepson]

OK, fair is fair. I'm going to start encrypting the checks I use to pay my cable bill using the public key from a small bank in Alaska. If the cable company wants to cash it they can use the bank I choose.

After all I wrote the check so I retain the copyright to it, and that is how I wish that work particular work to be used.

If they cut off my cable I will declare that the lack of service is an attempt to circumvent my copyright protection and sue.

So There.

Re:As they have a right to do.

[nightfire-unique]

The duplications and 'time-shifts' (read: piracy) are simply copying without the authorization.

While this is a true statement, it is not relevant. The supreme court of the United States has determined that authorization of the copyright holder is not required to legally timeshift material.

It's the same situation as illegally copying mp3s or downloading movies off of gnutella.

No, it isn't. It's different because it is not illegal (see above).

It's illegal, and it's robbing the ones who created it by allowing you to sit around and watch it without even looking at their ads--their one source of lifeblood. How would you like it if your source of income was subverted based solely on the cry "Information wants to be free!!!"?

Again - it is the supreme court which ultimately determines the legality of doing things, not you. While it may be "robbing the ones who created it" in your view, that view is not similarly held by the court.

On a more personal note, I would not appreciate it if my income was subverted based solely on the cry "information wants to be free," but rather than fighting a losing battle agains the supreme court, I would modify my business plan to avoid this "subversion of income."

Hope this helps to clear things up.

--
All men are great
before declaring war

Count me out

[Rick the Red]

Between letting the broadcasters use digital TV to not deliver HDTV and letting the cable companies not carry the analog signal once a station broadcasts in digital, coupled with the requirement that all analog broadcasts cease in 2006, the FCC has lost it's collective mind.

Maybe they think they're doing Industry a favor, but by excluding the public from this decision, they're destroying the very market they wish to exploit. They won't sell any of them to me, that's for sure. I'll miss television, but with my growing DVD collection and more content available over the internet, I doubt if I'll miss it much. Hell, between the PS2, GameCube, and X-Box I won't have time for television!

Won't AT&T Broadband be suprised when I tell them "Thanks for bringing me @Home, now you can cancel my cable TV subscription."