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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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."