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Digital TV Restrictions Coming Soon
Kagato writes: "CNN reports here that Sony and WB have come to an agreements for Digital Content Control via cable. Even worse, Fox and Disney are making the rounds to get Content Control into over-the-air broadcasts. "...a controversial notion, since over-the-air is, by its literal definition, free and clear." It should be noted 80% of US households use cable/DBS." So when AOL/Time-Warner says you can record a show, you can. I'm sure we can all be happy with that much freedom.
... sponsored by Nike.
...but someone at PBS (or the Govment that contols PBS) will realize that they can end the subscription telecasts and get money from their secured content. Many PBS subscribers (not viewers...) will be for this as it keeps the subscription stuff off the air. Legislative types who think that the Govment should only promote boring grey McCulture will ensure that PBS go to this to reduce their government funding (in other words, Joe Blow Republican, wanting to score some anti-Liberal points back home, will ensure this by saying the above, while getting the Appropriations Committee to begin whittling PBS' govment allotment), to make it more "self-supporting".
This is the man who, back around the time that the first consumer VCRs were coming out, said that the VCR was to the American public and the motion picture industry as the Boston Strangler was to the woman alone.
I believe this is also the man who claimed that a version of the DMCA that banned circumvention only where it is done for the purposes of aiding in infringement would be "unacceptable".
With a track record like that, why should anyone heed his cries of "Wolf!"?
Access restrictions are great! Now I'll never have to accidentally see their shit during the five seconds between turning on the TV and hitting play on the VCR. Thanks, MPAA!
I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record.
Remember, they care diddlysquat whether you actually watch a show; it's your eyeballs on the commercials they actually care about. If you're using TiVo, then you probably aren't watching too many.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
What makes you think we'll continue paying for cable subscriptions? Once they make timeshifting as legal as just pirating the episode from the net, there will be little point in bothering with paid timeshifting anymore.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, you're completely full of it.
An author has ABSOLUTELY ZERO legal or moral right to "protect" their work. The whole point of copyright is not to create robber barons but to enrich the public domain. In order to do that, the works have to be accessable.
Read the law sometime.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You can't be that naieve.
Do you seriously believe that what you are advocating actually equates into "people getting paid for honest work"? You are sadly delluded.
Generally, what actually happens is that the creative talents are raped at gunpoint by those that control distribution channels.
The music industry is an excellent example of this. Rightfully, any works for hire should have an accelerated path to the public domain.
In general, ALL works should be accessable by the time they reach that point. This is infact the problem that the ALA has with copy protection/control. Copy protection seeks to prevent the eventual enrichment of the public domain and is thus fundementally inconsistent with the legal justification for copyright.
For every encrypted DVD pressed, there rightfully should be an unencrypted copy sitting the library of congress.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Napster is just radio that is easy to defame.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So? So the prices on HD sets are falling from ionospheric to stratospheric. They still remain remarkably more expensive than their analog counterparts. You're the one that's suffering from "geek centrism" in failing to realize that many of the "spiffy" features of newer gadgets like HDTV and DVD simply don't interest the common consumer. New TV technologies only start to get popular when they are reasonably cheap. This situation even played out with Tivo.
Your statistics are flawed and ignore the fact that prices on HDTV equipment is astronomical to begin with. It will be several cycles of "half of what they were two years ago" before people without a specific gadget-fetish will start to really start to warm up to HDTV.
DTV even now is only seen as an alternate to landline cable providers and has almost no impact on local cable markets and very meagre market penetration. If it weren't for the fact that DTV networks operated on a national scale, they would not have enough customers to survive.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The output of that chip is probably suitable for driving the tube - so it's RGB signals for the guns, and sync for the coils. So, no, you can't just grab that signal, without some extra processing. At least, that's the way I'd do it if I was designing the stuff.
I don't think the "I can't record" is going to be an issue. The media companies seem to want to move to a pay-per-view model - so you can watch anything whenever you want, as long as you pay every time. Also - (at least in the UK) the media companies can selectively decide what they don't want you to record on digital systems - so they could easily let you record soaps etc, but not the big films.
It's happened. All Sky Digiboxes have to have Macrovision capable outputs, and macrovision is enabled over the air for certain programs. It's even in the contracts that they won't supply certain programmes if your digibox can't do macrovision. The only way you can watch Sky Digital is with a Sky approved digibox, which must run Sky approved software, and come supplied with the Sky remote control (so that they can say "press the red button").
Digital input TVs are now appearing in the UK, that take the satellite signal directly - so the decrypted programming doesn't appear outside the TV. I expect these to grow in popularity, and have TiVo like functionality soon.
As for handshaking with the broadcaster (mentioned elsewhere), if you don't have your Digibox connected to a telephone line, you have to pay upwards of £300 ($420) for the box. If you connect it, the box is free. So, in the UK, almost all of the boxes are connected to a phone line - and they phone home at intervals.
It isn't encrypted with CSS. It's based on a elliptic curve type algorithm, considerably more difficult to "crack" than CSS.
You must be new around here ;->
You need to work on basic concepts like the requirement that a cause has to precede an effect. Napster did not happen early enough to be the cause of any of this. All of this technology pre-dates the brief flush of excitement over Napster. Specifically all the planning and engineering for encrypting over the air television has been in process for years. If there had never been a Napster, we would still be facing this crap.
Who is the dumb fool? You can't make a digital copy of anything you want from a DVD? DeCSS software is available for multiple platforms. I use DVDExtractor for the Mac but there are many options. The newer examples don't require knowledge of a specific key since CSS is so weak it can be cracked on the fly. Before insulting the intelligence of everyone else try to avoid making uninformed, over-the-top claims in the same breath.
Once they think they can get away with one aspect of the whole mess, expect that they'll try to run the other. Micropayments with ads and all- they're all trying to maximize profits, what's to stop them doing the next step?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Let the big corps lock up their precious "content". This will force more people to go out and find stuff that is free and provided by people who are happy to have an audience and are willing to share their music/writing/pictures....
Just wait. The best is yet to come.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
His article just happened to be one of the first few results of the Google search on the keywords "HDTV bandwidth 6MHz"
The stations don't have more bandwidth, we're just using compression to utilize the bandwidth more efficiently.
See Cringley's PBS article, Bandwidth Squeeze, for more info - such as how Japanese's HDTV standard uses 20MHz of bandwidth because the signal is not compressed(at least as of 98, when the article was written)
Whether or not it's due to copyright law (which really has nothing to do with property, you know) as opposed to developments in printing technology, photography, artificial lighting, new forms of content delivery such as audio recording and video recording, increases in literacy nation and world-wide, is kind of debatable.
So rather than give credit to copyright law, I'd give much more creedence to lowered barriers to entry by improvements in the technology of writing (or whatever) and in enlarging the audience by giving them enough lesiure time to be able to enjoy it. It doesn't improve the quality of writing across the board, but it does mean that there are more good writers, even if the overall percentage doesn't really change. PJ O'Rourke touched on this a bit, once: "When you had to carve things in stone, you got the Ten Commandments. When things had to be written with a goose quill and you had to boil blood or whatever to make ink, you got Shakespeare. When you went over to the steel pen and manufactured inks, you got Henry James. You get to the typewriter, you get Jack Kerouac. When you get down to the wordprocessor - you get me. So improvement in the technology of writing hasn't improved writing itself, as far as I can tell."
However, why don't we test this? We could revert our copyrights to the state that they were in in 1901, when both video and audio recording existed, (as did software technically, though it was not copyrightable for decades yet) and see if there continues to be an amazing development. (term lengths at this time were probably between 28 - 56 years, I'll have to poke around some to find the specific value)
I predict that there will be. Authors will _still_ make more money publishing, even when copyrights are significantly reduced in scope, than they will from not publishing. And that the public's ability to disseminate works freely sooner due to the shorter term limits, and other authors' ability to create works more derivative than at present, will increase the amount of art, raising all boats.
That doesn't mean the IP owners should be allowed to do whatever they want to but have a right to make sure they are getting paid by the people who use it.
At any rate, they do not have a right to make sure they are getting paid by the people who use their works. The expiration of copyrights, the fair use doctrine that derives from the Constitution, the ability of Congress and their designees to arbitrarily change the scope of copyright -- these all attest to that fact.
Authors will get what the people through its government want to give them, and it's more than they'd get naturally, so they ought to be happy with it. And should authors (or more accurately it turns out, publishers) manage to subvert the government here, that doesn't indicate that it's working properly.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Because:
1) Their work is not honest. When Stephen King writes a book, he's making use of plots, idioms, words and characters that other people developed and which he isn't compensating them for. (provided they'll even permit him to use them)
2) A world in which this was all carefully accounted would be so encumbered that it would probably collapse under its own weight
3) It would also conflict significantly with humanity's natural (copyrights are not natural, remember) freedom of speech, and on the whole most people would likely prefer the latter.
Remember, kiddo - the people permit there to be copyrights, which are entirely optional, because they find it convenient. Make them too inconvenient for the public at large, and they'll have Congress shut the whole system down or reform it significantly. Provided that the government fundementally still works, and it's a _seriously_ bad thing if it doesn't.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This is true. Libraries have indeed traditionally been private in one way or another (e.g. you had to be associated with the monestary or school, or library somehow in order to have access) and the books considered to be so valuable, often b/c they were hand-written, that they couldn't be left unattended or unchained.
;)
*But* books and libraries are not the entire scope of content.
If you went to a bar and performed, oh, I dunno, "Twist and Shout," even if from memory, you'll be committing copyright infringement. If you performed "Greensleeves" five hundred years ago in the same bar (there are some surprisingly old bars in this world) you'd be A-OK.
Even in a preliterate society, all content was free. Specific works, then as now, might have cost a small fortune to obtain, but could nevertheless be copied all you pleased.
There are wonderful stories told about the famous Library of Alexandria, which embraced this roughly 2200 years ago. Any ship or caravan entering the city was searched by customs officials for interesting scrolls and written materials. If there were any, they were copied by the Library staff, then returned. One of the Ptolemaic kings once convinced the Athenian government to let the Library borrow and copy the original scrolls onto which Sophocles had written his plays, giving them a large ransom as a deposit. Of course, they weren't above valuing the originals too, and kept them, losing their ransom. (but sending the Athenians copies at least
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Sure they can - but the basis for their deal, the existance of a copyright, and its nature as property (quite distinct from the nature of the content as not property) has nothing to do with freedom.
The government, acting on the behalf of the people, who formally recognize the usefulness in the development of the arts and sciences in the law of the land, grants copyrights. Conditionally, and with strings attached.
And copyrights are entirely contrary to the notion of freedom. Just look at them:
Let's say that Alice creates a work, Foo. She does not copyright Foo, and everyone in the world is free to (should they legally obtain a copy - breaking into her house is illegal regardless of what's taken) make copies of the work, and disseminate them at will. Perhaps Alice didn't want a copyright, perhaps in Alice's country there are no such things as copyrights, or perhaps the Copyright Office didn't find her work worthy of a copyright for some reason. At any rate, this is the natural state of things - everyone may exercise their freedom of speech at will, even to speak that which others have already spoken.
If Bob creates a work Bar, and copyrights it, the Copyright Office is incapable of granting him rights, although it's convenient to say so as a sort of shorthand. What they actually grant him could be considered a token which indicates that Bob retains his natural rights. The token may be shared or transferred, in whole or in part. Meanhwile, the Copyright Office infringes on everyone else's rights (with permission, as it's a democratic government, or else it all falls apart) barring them from freely making use of their natural rights. Only Bob, and other token holders may continue to do so.
Although the system is voluntary, to the extent that any legitimate government recieves its power to govern directly from the people it governs, it is all about infringing on the rights of the many for the benefit of the few. (in the short term - it's required that in the long run, the many will have their rights restored to them, and that it'll be worth it)
If you have a nation of pirates, then it seriously behoves the Congress to legalize that piracy, or face the danger of not representing their constituents. We're probably not there yet, but the copyright holders seem to be going down that road - grasping so hard that the object of their desire slips through their fingers.
So please don't go around making that sort of claim....
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If you continue paying for the monthly cable/dish subscription, I don't see why they'd _care_ if you actually watch or not. I don't think having a TiVo even enters their minds.
It doesn't even need to be old. Just buy any VCR with a manual input gain control (a.k.a recording level control), and Macrovision can't touch it. Macrovision works by fucking with the automatic gain controls in VCR with huge intensity bursts. Manual gain controls aren't fooled this way.
they are planning on encrypting the signal b/c they feel that even "amatuers" are going to be able to intercept the digital transmissions and get great copies of *whatever*.
so they are going to spend $ on development, driving the cost of the already pricy equipment up.
I honestly hate cable right now. The fuzzy crap (from too many splices and the low signal strength to discourage this type of thing), the poor channel options, and pricy service for nothing.
Are movies distributed over the cable far superior to the ones I can rent for $2.95/day on DVD? I watch like a movie a week. That's less than $15/mo. Why the hell should I be paying $40+/mo for that?
I guess I am rambling...
This was actually the firsat I've heard of that happening...
Actually, Region 1 DVDs aren't illegal to sell in themselves. There is a law about 'gray imports' or parallell imports, however, where a local company that's the official reseller of foreign companies' goods (like movie distributors) have an exclusive right to import those goods. I think that's what they mean by 'illegal'.
However, this law only applies for importing for commercial purposes (like reselling), so nothing can stop me from ordering DVDs from USA or anywhere for myself, as long as I don't do it with the intent of reselling them and making a buck.
Also, that law is fairly controversial - granting monopoly rights, screwing over consumers and all that, and there are signs that it might be overturned. This is partially for practical reasons (some medicines sell for less than a third of the Swedish price in southern Europe, and hospitals aren't allowed to shop there due to this law) and partially for consumer benefit.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Oh, yeah, IANAL, btw.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
At least here in sweden, one selling point has become that the player is region-free, i.e. that it it ignores the region coding, or can be set to whatever region you please. At first players needed to be modded, but today all but a few name brand players usually come region-free out of the box.
With consumers becoming used to the idea of buying copyright-avoiding technology, and manufacturers seeing there is a very large market for it, I'd expect tv-sets and VCRs that ignore this as well.
Remember, most manufacturers are not content providers, and has little incentive not to do this, especially with competitors taking market share with their products.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
... You still have another foot left.
First you provide what I would call ``oxymoronic'' programming -- content-free content -- that insults everyone who's got more than a half dozen brain cells. Then you want to restrict when we can see it. Next, you'll expect us to pay for it, too.
I've noticed my (and many friends', as well) TV viewing dropping precipitously in recent years. We had cable access for nearly ten years but turned it off in '91 and haven't missed it at all. I would like to buy a new set but there's so little worth watching that I cannot justify the cost. My rented videotapes and DVDs amount to 80%-90% of the use of our current set. Broadcast TV? I'd say that most of the time I'm only watching the Sunday morning political talk shows. What else is being offered that is worth my time?
So, keep it up guys! It won't be long before one point in the Nielsen ratings will correspond to 1000 homes. Of course, you'll find some means of explaining away the drop in corporate revenues.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Problems:
1. Copy protection is impossible
But you can make it illegal by using nothing more complicated than XOR.
2. It opens the market for no-aligned TV channels to jump into to offer royalty free non-copy protected programing. This may be twarted by having congress pass laws that to force everyone to join the alliance or protect alliance members from "foreign" competition.
Heck, who needs Congress to get off their duffs about this. Bring in the WTO.
3. People aren't stupid.
But the Department of Education is working hard on this one.
4. Some kid from Europe/Asia/Africa/wherever will crack this "protection" in a matter of hours and post a program that will let you take the DVI and/or Firewire signal, pipe it into your computer and recored shows all day long.
Ditto my above comment on the WTO. You think the MPAA and RIAA will not try to have this fall under the jurisdiction of some trade agreement rather than the courts? Hell, juries sometimes find the defendant innocent. (Can you believe it?)
If we are to beleive MS about WinXP. It's copy protection is only there to stop "casual" infrigment (two copies on your two home computers). It does NOTHING to stop the "billions" of dollars lost to pirates who sell software in Asia on a CD for $2.
This was already brought up in the DeCSS court proceedings. Did you forget already? :-)
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Why would TV stations do that? They'll just stretch it out for as long as possible and broadcast 2 signals. When 2006 rolls around, expect little old ladies to show up at capital hill crying about how the mean old government is going to shut off their TeeVee, and the deadline will get pushed out and out and out again.
Besides, mass-market HDTV equipment isn't even available! Instead of a 10 year transition, it's looking more like a completely unrealisitic 3 year transition.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Actually, I realized the DTV/HDTV brain-o right after hitting submit. Know the difference, but thanks for keeping me honest.
Also, I'm not sure if the logic holds -- rabbitear users are probably more profitable for the broadcast stations because they are a captive market. Someone else posted on this thread that cable/dish still has far less than 50% of the market, and not all of that is po' people. (at least I think I'm a good demographic and I'm on rabbitears.)
But the real reason they'll strech it out is economies of scale won't be at the point where DTV recievers will be $50 or less by 2006. Also, as far as can tell from friends with (H)DTV, the broadcast technology does not work very well as of yet. If people need to get roof arials for it to work, that essentially means that someone has to go and fight 200,000 little zoning boards. There is NO WAY that broadcasters will go dark on standard analog until they feel they've got 100% of their audience on digital, and the FCC/Congress will listen.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
You're right. It's your opinion. Personally, only one or two of my friends and friends of the family have a DVD player; the rest have VCRs, and a fair number still tape TV shows at least occasionally.
As another example, I work as a cashier at a wholesale store. One of the items that I see coming through a lot are blank videocassettes.
Not proof, I know, but it's at least a counter-example.
> Yes, the depression did come an go, and companies like the "huge Carnegie steel conglomerate" took a hit...but kept on trucking. And, big surprise, we are still Americans living in the *ahem* same system.
Umm.
Well, i'm not sure i agree with the conclusions of the person you're replying to, but i will say this: to state that we are still living in the same system as we did pre-depression is pure nonsense. The system is RADICALLY different, and it is different *because* of fallout from the depression (and because of a nationwide desire to make sure these problems never happened again..). Have you ever heard of the "New Deal"? The depression, and FDR's presidency, replaced the near-holy status of lasseiz-faire capitalism with a realization that certain types of businesses need to have oversight by law enforcement and by the public to ensure that they act in a responsible manner consistent with the safety of the public; this is why we have things like the Securities and Exchange Commision now. The horrible exploitation of the desperate during the depression has led to things like the federal minimum wage, and the transmogrification of trade unions from illegal entities into a recognized, respected part of capitalism's power balance. The trusts and corporate powerbrokers of the gilded age eventually exhausted the ability of the system to absorb their abuses, and as a result they destroyed themselves.
The intellectual property trusts (the RIAA, the MPAA, etc) and corporate powerbrokers of the information age probably have less to fear. The fact is, it takes a personal disaster for a person to realize that the system needs changing, and it takes a VERY wide-scale disaster to personally touch enough members of the voting public to actually change the system. Selfish behavior on the part of banking systems and industry-wide manager's associations can, if unchecked, cause massive economic turns and deaths; selfish behavior on the part of Microsoft and Adobe will if unchecked cause the degradation of individuals' constitutional liberties, but probably can't directly hurt enough people for anacron's predictions to be correct. Remember, Computers and DVDs and TV programs all live WHOLLY in the realm of disposable income. The corporations who try to control these things can abuse their power all they want, and the worst they can do (assuming your rights aren't worth anything) is hamstring computer users with bad software (like windows) and draconian regulations on computer usage (like the dmca) to the point where it hurts worker productivity a bit..
So if you're expecting a depression-sized wake-up call to come fix the current corporate abuses, it probably won't happen. If you want a model for effecting change, you'd be better off looking to Martin Luther King Jr. (or Malcom X...) than FDR..
What the hell did i just write?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If you don't want to pay, don't use it.
Witness the lack of a TV in my apartment (by way of mentioning... I don't actually want you to visit my apartment).
I think the general mood/hope here is that after the IP owners have made it too difficult, dangerous, and or expensive to consume their wares, people will just stop. Unfortunately, I don't think it's that easy. The image of success (spawned in America, and taken up in many other parts of the world) is a suburban home with a two-car garage (containing vehicles), a glut of consumer electronics, nice cushy furniture, a backyard with a grill and a lawnmower, and a couple of kids. The mentality that these things are an indication of success is firmly ingrained in the United States. I can't speak for other countries except to say that it is spreading. One of the problems with this "success image" is that if Joe Blow's version of it isn't "complete" then his perception of his own success is diminished.
My point is that many of us geeky/free software/homemade electronics types would give up on TV fairly easily. So would many activist types. But if you suggest to the average middle class American family that they don't need to own their own home, own or drive a car, or own a TV, they'll balk. It may be a knee-jerk reaction, but they'll even start their defense by saying "Yes I do!" WRT TV, they'll talk about their favorite shows and that they like to get the news and the weather. If you mention that they could spend the time they watch their favorite shows raising their kids or getting exercise instead, and that there are many other higher quality sources of news and weather, the defense with only deepen. Such is life when someone feels that their high perception of their own success is being challenged.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
I have no plans to get any TV. What would it get me, anyway? Talk shows, sitcoms, talking heads... and, oh yeah, a couple of channels with a couple of good shows (few of which are available outside of cable).
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
people should be free to determine for themself what they want or don't want. Thats not any of mine or your business.
I agree, but I think that most people would sooner give up the entire contents of their bookshelves or (in the US) even their 2nd ammendment rights before they gave up TV. That is my point. People here seem to think that when people "out there" have to pay money to watch or record TV, they'll stop. Fact is, most of them are already paying to watch TV (cable), and I think most of them would pay to record the things that they want to record. And if they aren't allowed to record the stuff they want, then they'll just find a way to watch it when it's on or just watch something else.
Simply put, lots of people can't imagine life without TV. They'll go pretty far with whatever scheme the industry invents before they give up and do something else with their time.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
So? They can buy it for whatever reason they want to.
./ the prevailing opinion seems to be that people will just give up on TV, and I am saying that no, they won't.
./ers* might think, they will.
./ers", not "./ers don't watch TV."
Yes. I agree. And you're still missing the point. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with people giving up an arm and a leg in order to watch TV (in fact, I have not stated my opinion of the phenomenon, quite intentionally). I am saying that here on
I'm going to repeat that just for you, codeforprofit2:
They can buy it for whatever reason they want to, and contrary to what many non-TV-watching
* And don't even try to interpret that the wrong way. It says "non-TV-watching
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
Frankly, consumers won't move to HDTV if they lost their ability to casually tape shows for later viewing. This extreme aversion to allowing rights recognized by the SCOTUS will kill the market for this stuff.
Sure, I want to watch wide screen movies at home, but I won't buy any of the crippled products being offered today including DVDs until the stupid restrictions are lifted.
DAT died and so will these.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
so, how are they going to prevent me from taping new "protected" shows on my old (very old) VCR? i can understand if they're targeting people with Tivos and whatnot, but if there's some way for them to prevent some shows from being recorded by joe average with a 3 year out-of-date VCR, then it'll work about as well as, say, macrovision on my DVD player, and do little more than tick off those of us that can't be home when DragonBall Z is on during the week, so we tape all the episodes and watch them saturday afternoon...
what was my point? damn. i keep forgetting to include one of those...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
It's not that power corrupts, it's that it attracts the corruptible.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Not at all. Every single 'fundraiser' I've seen on PBS has a 'spokesperson' with either a bad fake english accent, or is actually English with a bad speech impediment.
There is also the issue of all the English programming.
PBS also basically sucks unless your a pseudo-intellectual poseur.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
We saw it with DivX. People aren't going to spend good money on hardware that comes with artificial limitations.
When this technology starts appearing on store shelves and people find out that you may or may not be able to watch and or record certain shows, hopefully they will stick with their current status quo NTSC arrangement and wait until they can get what they want without the unfeatures.
Let the marketplace decide. And let's hope the marketplace makes the right decision.
It's supply and demand economics. And I don't see a great demand for crippled hardware.
How long after this Digital Content Control is implemented will we see a neat new hack to decrypt it? Combination cable descrambler and de-CSS?
\//
I'd say that the reason companies are screwing with consumers is:
1. companies are legal persons-- the people running them are somewhat immune from the penalties of their actions
2. public companies are run in the interests of their shareholders
3. There are huge penalties for company leaders who act against the interests of their shareholders.
4. In other words, it is much safer to obey objectionable shareholder demands than to disobey.
5. Shareholders care about money and profits, but are otherwise removed from the affairs of the companies in which they hold shares.
6. Shareholders themselves are often part of part of larger organizations. Pension funds and mutual funds are run by stewards on behalf of others even further removed from the companies in which they invest.
As a result, shareholders demand that company leaders maximize profits, regardless of taste or morality (and sometimes legality), and the leaders obey.
Or you could move to the UK
Where they already have encrypted digital broadcast TV ! (OnDigital), though at the moment I don't believe there is copy protection it is just encryption to make sure only those people who payup get it. The next logical step for the UK of course is to link the "free"[1] channels to your TV license.
[1] There really is no such thing as free (as in beer) TV in the UK because if you own equipment capable of recieving any broadcast or satelite TV then you need to pay the TV license. Not paying isn't an option they will get you and they have the technology to find you....
Between you and me if 'over the air' meant literaly free and clear that would cause a lot of trouble everywhere. Just think about wireless network, they would have to be free and clear, wouldn't they??
That doesn't stop the idea to be silly. Anyway, who cares about TV now? Is there any TV set left in the US?
The latter. US Copyright law, in this century, has been written by the companies who have the biggest stake in IP. The relevant parties are invited every few decades, by Congress, to get together and hammer out an agreement that pleases all parties. It is assumed that the companies understand the issues involved better than the congressmen.
Unfortunately, nobody from the public is invited and the congressmen themselves (who's job description is to represent the public interest) don't get involved until the very end, when the text of the law has been decided, to apply their rubber stamp.
So, the IP companies have, this time, written themselves a law that goes far beyond anything the public (or even the worst sell-out of a congressman) could dream of.
We had our opportunity to tell our representatives "vote No to the DMCA", but we apparently didn't take it.
Read this book.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Remember, the public only gets to speak once every two years (when they elect new representatives). The "public" in this case is represented by Congress, who has given media companies permission (via the DMCA) to do all kinds of crazy things.
And, as always, you get what you pay for...
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
They won't give us an Emmy nomination? Well, they can go screw themselves. Let's prevent them from taping Buffy!!
(We don't have that anymore, sir)
Well... Shit.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yea but, when that Author looks around and nobody is listening, watching , or reading the work he is protecting. Then what? This is a bunch of crap. Bite the hand that feeds you, piss off the fans. They will turn away in time and markets will fall. If there is no demand... ahh now you see. People who respect that Author will pay for his works, let the others have their fun.
How long till people like me start using our second amendment rights to prevent corporations and the government from exploiting us?
I'd love to have a list of all the lobbyists behind the DMCA, any lawyers they had working for them, and especially the legislators that drew up the bill. Then I'd like to line them all up out in a field in some remote location, give them all shovels, and force them to dig their own graves before blowing all their brains out.
I would not do that of course, because it would be utterly counterproductive and only give license to those who would seek to take away our guns, but that doesn't mean that the idea of it doesn't make me smile.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I wasn't talking about the type of TV being broadcast, just the general content. Sorry for the confusion.
Analog stations will stop broadcasting in a few years. Their signals are being taken away and replaced with HDTV signals. All othse with analog signals will need to get a converter, which can handle the conversion. It really, sucks. The TV stations get 4-6 times the amount of bandwidth (for free no less, those signals could easily raise a couple billion) and all they've been able to figure out with what to do with them is broadcast 4 channels instead of one. No interaction, no HDTV, just 4 channels instead of one. Really great. But anyway, everyone will be force to upgrade to digitial whether they want to or not. Digitial Cable, Digitial Signal Receivers for Analog TVs, and Digitial TVs. There is now way around it, since the FCC has said to make it so. Analog TVs are on the way out, really really fast, before anyone gets any silly ideas like they really aren't all that bad after all.
"I really doubt that things are going to roll out according to their timeline. I mean, how often do you have to replace a TV? I guarantee that not even 50% of the households in the country will be able to accept the digital signals by 2006."
We subscribed to digital cable at our house. For a moderate additional fee we get a bunch of extra channels. All with the same TV. If we had a digital TV we would only need the set top box for the Pay and PPV channels, but at present our other TV sets are still capable of recieving all the same channels they ever got.
I don't know what percentage of the viewing public has cable, but I would expect by 2006 there will be a few reasonably priced solutions for those people that can't or won't pay for a cable or sattelite subscription. and more for those that do.
The record companies were already doing lots of testing back then, but they couldn't get the nerve to trust any system with their content. Napster just gave a name to their fears.
The major fear of all the existing publishing companies (of whatever media) is that a change in technology will render both their business and business model completly obsolete.
companies are legal persons-- the people running them are somewhat immune from the penalties of their actions
Except that they are not always legal persons. Effectivly (in the US) they have most of the rights real people have, but none of the responsibility. This is most notable when they break the law.
By the bye, the books that are released on computer media haven't been reduced in cost.
If the newer media is actually cheaper it simply means more publisher profit. More likely the double whammy of cheaper media sold at a higher price (e.g. DVD vs VHS.)
My biggest irk in the whole deal is that the people that scream the loudest about IP theft are the least creative. They are the distribution channel, the printers, and the conglomerate.
They always have done, best example would be movies, the very first name you see on the screen is that of a film company...
The problem is that it's not the authors or artists who are enforcing ip for their own benefit. It's media corps. that enforce ip for the benefit of the media corp. Copyright SHOULD reserve certain rights to the author - most of these rights should NOT be transferrable to other parties, and should always revert back to the author after one 'printing' as in the book world, not remain in the hands of a corporation that's never written lyric one, as in the music industry.
THen you have the problem of changing the status quo so as to make "publishing" something licenced by the author.
The publishing corps are considerably more powerful than the average author, musician, singer, director, actor, etc. So if he or she wants their work to be published then they have to do it of the corporation's terms.
Also if someone gets to the point of being in a position powerful enough they probably don't have much incentive to change the system anyway.
Yep. I work in the cable business and I keep trying to tell them, "this is a technology fight that you cannot win." If it's an analog signal, it can be digitized, compressed and recorded. If it's a digital signal depending on a handshake, it can be spoofed. If it's a digital signal and it's encrypted, it can be broken.
You can be sure that encryption will be broken. All encryption does is make it harder to get at something within a certain timescale.
The studios (that are driving this) are doomed by the fact that they are dependent on mass-market consumer electronics. They have to choose a set of algorithms, then implement them in silicon to get the costs down, then stick with them for 10+ years
Also the information is still valuable for nearly a century.
The kind of data encryption is useful for sensitive commercial and military communications tend to only require keeping secret for a lot less time.
In the UK, 625 line TV was introduced in 1964, and 405 line broadcasting was offically obsolete in 1969. Yet it took until 1985 until it was finally switched off. This was with the upgrade being to colour, more channels, sets being valve based, and consequently with shorter lifespans, and the increasing uptake of TV.
If it takes 31 years for 405 line TV to disappear, it won't take 8 years for NTSC TV to go.
Links: http://www.videosystems.com/2001/03_mar/features/n umbers/numbers.htm
http://www.gvmag.com/issues/2001/0301/editor/0301. shtml
http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/405-Lines/
Oh, wait, since these same IP-down-your-throat goons are going to be collaborating with electronics corps anyhoo, we can forget about recordable media at all. Actually they are one-in-the-same: Sony Corp, for example.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I'm sure that among all of us, we've got every episode of The Simpsons as MPEG, every movie ever released on DivX, we could do this.
Accessing the media stream would require a software key. And when the MPAA and RIAA break the encryption, we'll throw the DMCA at them.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
As far as I know, though, there's no legal requirement for them to make it possible for us to do so.
You might be thinking of the BBC, not PBS.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Copy protecting TV broadcasts is like putting defecation in a safe. I just hope they don't touch PBS.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Actually last I heard TiVo had over 200k users. Still not much, but it's growing quite fast and probably expotentially.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Well, I for one am glad that the media industry is doing everything in its power to see that I don't change my mind anytime soon about not watching TV...
The studios (that are driving this) are doomed by the fact that they are dependent on mass-market consumer electronics. They have to choose a set of algorithms, then implement them in silicon to get the costs down, then stick with them for 10+ years because they can't get away with saying "I'm sorry, but you have to replace your TV, your DVD player, your cable box every three years." Ten years is more than six Moore's Law generations and in that much time, GP hardware and software will catch up and the algorithms will be reverse-engineered.
Okay, saying "if it's encrypted it can be broken" is an overstatement. I absolutely agree that the encryption used in modern digital cable systems is quite good, and breaking it would be very difficult. However, as long as GP computers are allowed to receive and display digital video on the output side of the cable box, there is some point along the chain from box to display screen where the signal is "accessible" to someone willing to go to enough trouble. Common sense suggests that you attack where the defenses are weak.
Personally, I think the economic risks of such piracy are being greatly overstated. How many people are going to drop HBO because they get a pirated copy of "The Sopranos" from their brother? Will the availability of quarter-frame versions of "The Matrix" on CDR really cut into the DVD sales? Has anyone ever seen a sixth-generation digital copy, or do they die out after one or two generations, just from inertia?
BTW, I am in favor of throwing the book at people doing wholesale copying and distribution. Copyright is a social compact, where the producers get some protection (but not absolute), and the consumers have some rights (but not a right to do everything).
Sigh.
.. there are things that mean a crap-load to me, and nothing to the next man. But when everyone is forced to play by someone elses rules-for-unearned-profit, I don't think you have to be shallow to want to fight back. Almost the opposite .. I think that those that are shallow just assume everything will be hunky-dory until their coffin lid is closed.
a) I'm not upset that I can't record Cagney and Lacey reruns. However, I'm sure Cagney and Lacey fans would be upset. Me, I'd be upset over different shows. Deliberately using an outdated show as an example isn't particularly effective or clever if you are interested in actually discrediting my justification in being upset.
b) I'm not American. I'm Canadian. And I'm civil war constitutes people versus their own government. Perhaps the one nice offshoot of globalization is that the eventual backlash will be globalized as well. Neato.
c) People are probably more shallow than anyone else thinks, although I realize this is subjective. Note I'm not putting myself above this group
d) Civil wars are foregone conclusions. The question isn't if, but when. A glance at history will indicate that no (or very very few) societies have endured long-term political/economic/social stability. So I think my question is valid, in so far as pondering when issues like these may finally push people to action outside of the democratic and judicial process. Indeed, we can see this happen from time to time already, in the form of protests, violence, and terrorism.
I'm not referring to this only. I'm referring to ALL efforts to protect 100% of IP and copyrights. Eventually the populace will feel like they can't even walk up the street without first making sure they arn't infringing on copyrights or patents. Since the government has long-since resigned itself to pandering to their financial backers (otherwise you dont have the money to hammer your name into the heads of the increasingly disinterested members of a democracy), no one will step in to provide the neccessary 'balances' against companies 'checks' (pun intended). This is why I don't think it's such a crazy idea to suggest that we're only a century or so away from some kind of uprising. Yes, obviously, the scope of my jabbering probably isn't deserved in this thread, but I can come to slashdot everyday and read about 5 more companies attempting to go from super-rich to unaccountably-rich by making sure that 95% of all fair-use activity that doesn't result in a loss of profitability is squashed for the 5% that does cause a chip in their bottom line.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I really wonder how long it will take before we collectively (and by this, I mean, including the technophobe business types) admit that fair-use and lack of nazi-like-restrictions were probably responsible for at least SOME of the stability and complatency of the public at large during the 20th century? How much longer till people say 'the hell with it' and starting throwing around flaming beer bottles like in some other countries that contain regular, average people who are sick of their government-imposed disposition?
Honestly, if this keeps up, I really dont see how the western world can survive under its own canabilistic economically-driven laws and policies. Time/Warner, you're rich enough. Stop paying the drug addicts and bimbos millions of dollars to ply on the ignorance of mass media consumers so you can start affording your own business without having to chase pervasive fair-use-infringing legislation (oh wait, too late.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
Realistically, will the switch over to 100% digital ever happen? And if so, does anybody think it will be done before 2006?
On a recent trip to Best Buy looking at TVs, there were only about a dozen HD TVs amungst 6 or 7 dozen models, and most (all?) of the HD tvs were 36 inch or larger costing significantly more then an identical model (w/o the HD features). I don't want a 36 inch TV in my bed room. I don't have room for that size, let alone the need for a super sharp picture to fall asleep to at night. Until the cost drops big time soon and smaller TVs appear on the market, I honestly don't think that the average consumer will tollerate being forced to shell out a grand or two just to watch Friends and E.R.
Just give me a 19 inch television for $150 and then we can talk about switching over.
Hrm. I don't think we'd make a blip in ratings. What kind of people do they use for ratings anyway? I'm sure they'll find some way of automatically finding compliant viewers as their subjects.
---
Not just Tivo users, but I am sure a lot of people will not want to switch when they realise they will lose the ability to record when they want, what they want, how often they want, and watch it how ever many times they want. I refuse to switch to digital tv until at least two things happen.
One, the equipment has to be good and cheap. I can't afford to, nor would I, spend $2000.00+ on a digital tv! Not to mention the fact that I will not be able to record the shows in digital. There is not a lot I watch in real time anymore !
I want the ability to record when I want, what I want, how often I want, and watch it how ever many times I want. At this point, it doesn't look like I will have the ability to do this.
I am sticking to my VCR until at a minimum these things get solved! If it happens that I can't watch TV because they upgrade to digital tv without me, then so be it. I know I won't be the only one.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Sinmple, if I am not watching TV because I am not provided with the services I want, then that's one less viewer that see the comercials and other proganda the push. I may fast forward through commercials on my vcr, but if there is something I might like I watch some if not all of the commercial. Content providers are in the business of providing a service, in this case content, and you won't be in this for long if you do not give your customers what they want. My brother doesn't even watch tv anymore. The reason they should provide me with the capability is simple--if they don't I will look elsewhere for my entertainment.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Sure, go ahead and ask those hackers. Perhaps they'll answer you in between the free porn and PPV movies they're watching. The DirecTV anti-hacker hack was the biggest marketing FUD I've seen in quite awhile.
so join netflix.com instead. $20 a month, have up to 3 dvds out at a time, for as long as you want, they send the next one in your queue to you as soon as they get one back from you in the postage paid mailers they come in.
The problem is that it's not the authors or artists who are enforcing ip for their own benefit. It's media corps. that enforce ip for the benefit of the media corp. Copyright SHOULD reserve certain rights to the author - most of these rights should NOT be transferrable to other parties, and should always revert back to the author after one 'printing' as in the book world, not remain in the hands of a corporation that's never written lyric one, as in the music industry.
It is licensed by the author. At least in the book world. The author grants the publishing corp. a limited license for one printing of his work.
In the music world, the artists sign a contract effectively transferring all rights, indefinitely, to the record company. So that all licenses are then granted by the record company - a situation so absurd that the artist no longer has a legal right to copy their own music, only the corporation has that right. (Note: only talking about legal rights.)
MP3.com, Napster, the Web in general have changed the definition of publishing, and made it much easier for amateurs to distribute their content.
They won't let us copy over-the-air, "high value" programming, but how many of you will watch a movie when it comes on TV even though you already own it in several formats? How many of you have started buying DVDs of your favorite VHS movies?
.001 cents per keystroke?
When did this whole "us vs them" attitude start where these companies are putting so many restrictions on new technology because they feel like there is POTENTIAL for their IP to be lost. Well, bullocks to that. Anything they do will be broken anyway. Why not just forget the whole thing and move on. Hell, they're so damn scared they MIGHT lose IP they will spend millions to prevent it.
And all of you will say Napster was a Good Thing, but I say Napster brought the end of the Good Thing. The free ride is over my friends. Copy protection on CDs, TV you can't even watch. Digital Rights Management on downloaded things. What's next? A car that gets 10MPG less unless you pay a yearly fee to the company that sold it to you? A keyboard that disables the letter 'e' unless you pay
Napster screwed everything up. It made companies afraid of technology that they're willing to sacrifice features (e.g. TiVo) for fear of lawsits from other companies. And this "Intellectual Property" they banter on about is so etherical anyway.
Oh? So you can only make 3 billion dollars next year instead of 5. Oh, so record sales have doubled in the past year after lagging for 5 years yet you'll still put a business out of business.
Capitalism sucks when the people with the power aren't the ones with the money. I'm not sure when it happened, but it'll be the downfall of everything we currently hold sacred. Our paradigm shift will be watching all the things we used to enjoy going away. Our children will not think twice about paying to breathe, and we'll hate the fact we pay for it.
You just wait. The worst is yet to come.
.anacron
Nevermind the potential for timeshifting and convienence features that the Tivo users have already experienced. The content producers would rather shit on the food after eating their fill rather than allow anyone else to have a bite. Doesn't matter to me though. When my room mate moves out, so will the TV and I have no plans on getting another one. I'd just as soon avoid their table altogether.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Not that I agree with blocking recording (I have a ReplayTV), but couldn't your same arguement be used against people using wireless ethernet like in the earlier article today? What if a hacker sued because someone had encrypted "free air" transmissions and they were unable to read them?
------
James Hromadka
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
This is a trade-off I'm willing to make. Likewise, if I tape Family Guy because I'm working late - I usually am lazy and forget that I'm watching a tape and end up watching the commercials (or at least some of them) anyway.
As far as how many times a "high value" program can be copied is pretty much moot to me. I don't typically make copies of copies. I don't know to many people who do.
Now I will be pissed if the scheme is implemented where I can't pass a copy of my recording to a friend to watch. Or if I can't go back and watch the same episode of a show more than xx number of times.
-----
You might want the ability to do this, but unless there's something in it for the person offering you the service, why should they let you?
A link was here on /. about how to extract the video files from a TiVo. In the past, adding ethernet to the tivo has been posted.
I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record. I'm certainly in that group. If I can't record it, I'm not watching it. The networks need to stop the "fast forward" button more than anything.
Carry it out one more step.
One way to propagate those kinds of belief systems is to ingrain them into a religion.
For all practical purposes, Materialism is the new religion. Instead of writing down precepts on scrolls, however, its tenets are promulgated on television. Other religions must be envious of the way Materialism can get its adherents to watch TV for many hours per day while they have to goad their parishioners endlessly to get them to come to church for an hour a week.
Just wait. One day people will get tried directly by the corporations, and the gov't will enforce it.
It's beyond that!
People will get indoctrinated
The government and its piddly laws are irrelevant to you if you have a chunk of people's minds working on your behalf.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
It means they'll buy the cheapest whore they can find (Judge Blanche Manning of the 7th Circuit US Court of Appeals, for instance) to overturn Fair Use.
-Legion
For those who don't see it yet, the fact that we are able to live as civilized beings in relative leisure, safety and health is due to countless incremental advances in human arts and sciences over millenia. I couldn't be typing this now without language, the alphabet, boolean math and logic, oil exploration and drilling, organic chemistry, mining and smelting of copper, Jewish concepts of the permance and importance of the written word, Christian concepts of the importance of the individual soul, idealistic Americans who advocated universal education, and countless other innovators.
Compared to the magnitude of their contribution, mine must necessarily be tiny. How arrogant, then to claim special rights in the 'content' I produce. Can I afford to pay the heirs of all these creators who benefit me? Can I even afford the accounting involved in figuring my debt?
That's baloney. All you need to record something is a visual output signal. Regardless of what crap they incorporate into it, there will always, *always* be a hack just one step ahead.
Got Rhinos?
No joke. AOL/Time/Warner/Megacorp/Whatever can bet that anything they put on the air will be on the internet within half an hour.
Broadcasters say they will be crippled if over-the-air programming isn't protected. A content provider will turn exclusively to cablers, leaving broadcasters out of the mix.
Help! Protect us! We're been left behind because of our outdated technology and poor content!
In the early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that consumers have the right to record TV programs for home viewing. Consumer advocates say that decision means over-the-air broadcasts can't be copy-protected -- period.
Amen, Amen, and Amen.
Got Rhinos?
Every time this topic is discussed, I think the same thing. This will introduce handshake authentication between your DBS/Cable box and your Digital TV (or TiVo). There is no way that there are enough people using Digital televisions that this should be a problem. As long as there are still analog sets, they can't implement this technology across the board. How upset would the consumers be if they wake up one morning and they have an AOL symbol on their $2,500 RPTV. "We're sorry, this cable service is no longer compatible with this television/device. Please upgrade to a Digital Television to experience this service." Spare me.
I've said it before, and I'lls ay it again. Stay the hell out of my living room.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Get Dish Network's TIVO system free with their service. Problem solved.
More
Well, I'm not actually here to guide humanity through it's next stage of evolution, but yes, that is where I got the name :)
Nicely spotted. Not many people appear to have read that particular book.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
The difference between cable and broadcast signals though is that if you get cable, you sign a contract saying "I agree not to crack this thing and try and get stuff I've not paid for"
If you just design something that pulls stuff that is being beamed into your home without you having asked for it straight out of the air and does some wierd stuff to it before piping it to your TV, where's the harm in that?
No contract, no foul.
K.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Got an old 4 head top-loader for just that very purpose.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Man that is funny as hell... thanks for the link...
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Break free from the tyranny of television!
I have no time to watch TV. I work from 10 or 11 AM until about midnight every day. Most people I know would rather be surfing, reading a book or listening to the radio. TV is almost dead. Let's hope this finally kills it.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Why 2004 will be like 1984.
Linux hackers getting sued and arrested won't annoy the public much.
People trying to record the Simpsons (and the helpful neighbor with the "Record enabler" (circumvention device) getting sued and arrested for it WILL annoy the average person.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Speaking of the children, there are plans to indoctrinate kids into believing anything a content provider does not like is wrong. It was mentioned back in the days of the IITF white paper/green paper and I believe has been mentioned in the UK now.
They'll think recording a show off TV is as morally wrong as copying CDs or as wrong as stealing cars.
The content owners will have the government issue propaganda in their name. The Department of Justice is biased against DeCSS, yet they are getting sued in the Federal Courts. Conflict of interest bigtime. When the judicial system in which you are being tried issues a brief in favor of the plaintiff, there is no chance at anything even approaching impartiality or a fair trial.
Just wait. One day people will get tried directly by the corporations, and the gov't will enforce it.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Umm Judge Kaplan's DeCSS decision DID eliminate fair use.
You only have "fair use" if the content owner and their "protection" racket (pun intended) allow you to have it.
That does defeat the purpose of fair use...
We need to get the DeCSS decision reversed, or else fair use WILL have been legislated and judicially ordered to be illegal.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
True. I browse at +3, so that DOES tend to cut out the lunatic fringe.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
FAIR.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
They still are, and are supported by property taxes in most states. In Texas, it's part of the county and city tax. I think that's a fine idea.
Listen, no one here says that all IP should be free; don't be an ass. What I am saying is that copyright in this country is limited. First sale means the IP owner can't dictate terms of sale (or use) of the IP after the first purchaser. (For instance, the IP owner can't demand you only use Brand X light bulbs to read the work), Fair use means all sorts of things, like you can make a copy for archive as long as you own the original, you can media shift (copy a book from bound to xerographic copy, for instance, or use VHS to record a laser disk), you can quote it, you can make a joke of it, you can cretique it, use small portions in your own work. The home recording act means you can record programs and *give* them away (not sell), and many other things.
Traditionally, IP owners were not able to collect a fee after the first sale, EG, you didn't have to pay for each time you read the book, only for the purchase of it.
Times change. What needs to be determined is how access to IP is going to change, what's going to be free after first sale, and what isn't.
There is a move on to change text books from paper to DVD/CD-ROM. Fine and dandy. However, the IP owners are using encrypted text and time limited software. I still have many of my electronics engineering books from the 80's and 90's. If I took a course now, and my books were on DVD or CD, I couldn't use them past the year I purchased them. Not only does that kill my use of them after school, but others now cannot sell used books. Some of the books I needed were US$ 600 new. I don't know about you, but I couldn't have purchased them new, and didn't. By the bye, the books that are released on computer media haven't been reduced in cost.
Contrast that with www.baen.com, who sells 4 or 5 electronic book versions for $10.00. Purchased seperately, they would cost abount US$25.00 - $30.00 for paper back, over US$100.00 in hardbound. Yet everyone is happy! Why? Because the publisher and author make a ton more money on the electronic version vs. the paper version. (It's on the web site somewhere, but I'm too lazy to go find it.)
My biggest irk in the whole deal is that the people that scream the loudest about IP theft are the least creative. They are the distribution channel, the printers, and the conglomerate. They didn't create the work, frequently don't pay for it (Yep, they don't f'en PAY the guy that created the work in the first place.), and they don't even respect those that buy it, even as only a customer if nothing else.
Don't bother to flame my spelling, I don't give a rats ass anyway.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
So, why are you ignoring the "fair use" argument? Not all copies are for devious uses.
Think "Time Shift."
Nobody is "losing money" on time shift. Advertisers still pay for commercials, content providers still get the gazillios of $$$.
What is the problem?
I mean, even if we can crack it, it doesn't really matter
What used to be simple, now is frustrating---
Doesn't matter anyways, soon some court desicsion going to eliminate fair use.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
In the early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that consumers have the right to record TV programs for home viewing. Consumer advocates say that decision means over-the-air broadcasts can't be copy-protected -- period. Disney and Fox say otherwise, arguing that advancing technology has changed the boundaries.
Does this mean they are above the law, or do they merely get to change them at will?
That's absolutely true if you spell car "R O L L S R O Y C E".
"Population 1,656"
It's that "hehe" part that makes life hard for the rest of us.
godwin's law... before it even starts
-- In a landmark deal that could provide crucial momentum to the nation's foundering digital TV transition,
Foundering? HA! How about Withholding? As in, "In a landmark deal that will provide Sony, etc with the incentive to stop withholding the digital TV transition from America until they can damn well lock it down and control it...".
Another priceless one: Hollywood's top lobbyist, Motion Picture Assn. of America president Jack Valenti, has said digital TV produces such a perfect picture that even amateurs could successfully pirate the content.
Who exactly are we going to pirate it to? Does Jolly Jack think the nation as a whole has collectively agreed to have 1 person subscribe to digital cable, then throw it up on the Internet for the other 249 Million of us?
Ask that to all the DirectTV hackers that can't use there DirectTV reciever anymore...
Everyone I know who scams DirectTV now either uses an emulator, or pays the minimum fee. They get their free DirecTV fine. With an emulator, every once and awhile it stops working and they hit reset. But if you pay the cheapest fee, then hack your card to get all the channels, they apparently won't wipe your card (or so I'm told). I don't scam DirecTV myself, because I think it's a bit lame plus I don't really watch much TV. I watch Conan sometimes, but I can get that with my rabbit ears.
Josh Sisk
I know this is a stretch, but does this apply to cable-modems? Are they trying to take a chunk out of AOL/Time-Warner's business here?
Ask that to all the DirectTV hackers that can't use there DirectTV reciever anymore...
--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Godwin's Law exists because it is well established that calling your opposition nazis (or accusing those with moderate views of being tollerant of nazis) almost always indicates both intellectual laziness and fanatical dogmatic extremism.
In a world where relatively few things are held as moral absolutes anymore, we all still seem to agree that "Hitler == Evil", therefore the easiest way to defend a view which you hold as axiomatic and unchallengable is to present it as somehow being the opposite of German National Socialism.
Godwin was right. Whenever somebody resorts to such a tactic, they probably just lost the debate.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
...quote him correctly
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
And yes, corporate Americanism is the closest thing we have to Nazism in this day and age so you are quite right.
After all Hitler advocated corporations rights to make profits at the expense of millions of humans (what is called "predatory capitalism") and was supported by all capitalists in Germany, including the bigwig tycoons of Krups, Thyssen, AG Farben, etc.
And it was a brave band of international socialists and communists who defeated him primarily.
The Russian revolution of October 1917 is a good example of it. Sure people were fed up with the Czar and he had been forced to abjocate in March 1917.
But without the guiding light of Lenin, Trotsky and the other leaders they would not moved for a completely different society, they would have settled for some of their demands being met by the existing order.
The American revolution differs in the fact that it was instigated by members of the ruling elite (wealthy landowners with political power) who wanted to get rid of influence of other parts of the elite (ie: the British crown). With that respect it was not started by the "havenots".
I would think that the /. audience would be far to left-leaning and enlightened to support old General Lee and his greyclad bunch of KKK card carrying black-hating redneck goons.
So, all I need to do to copy this is grab the digital signal (easy) decrypt it (probally CSS...) and then write it to my harddrive? That's just adding one step to the recording process, shouldn't be too difficult if I want that information. Oh, yeah, the TV has a circut for decryption, couldn't I just grab the digital signal on the other side of the decryption chip? Cummon, encrypting things for home use is rediculious. I guess I don't understand why they have no problems with me recording days or our lives (never watched it) on a VHS tape everyday so I can watch it after work, but recording it digitally is a crime? get real MPAA. If I end up with a digital TV and I can't record something I want to, you can bet your ass that I will "modify" my TV to allow recording. I can't wait to be talking to my mom on the phone and tell her she needs to smash the stack in her TV so she can record something.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
We discussed this in a cultural anthropology class last week. We predicted that in the next 50 years the changes in american culture will be away from consumerism and toward a lifestyle more like that of the amish. Don't get me wrong, there are many misunderstood concepts that the amish hold dear, you may think that they shun technology, but they don't. They choose which technologies will be better for thier lives and ignore all of the other garbage.
I honestly think they have a lot more going for them than most people think.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
The depression, and FDR's presidency, replaced the near-holy status of lasseiz-faire capitalism with a realization that certain types of businesses need to have oversight by law enforcement and by the public to ensure that they act in a responsible manner consistent with the safety of the public
...
If you want a model for effecting change, you'd be better off looking to Martin Luther King Jr. (or Malcom X...) than FDR..
How about George W? He's working hard to roll things back to the pre-depression era - the interests of big biz are more important than those of consumers, workers, our children, etc. - tax cuts which fuck us 11 years down the road, regulatory agencies which have decided they shouldn't be too mean to those poor companies (what if the Justice Department took the same philosophies), etc.
My poing being, eventually things will get bad enought that voters (remember us?) will get pissed off and some serious changes will come about again.
-- Sigs are for losers
Let's start our own network. Not just one that can be gotten via the usual methods, but through various other transports. Let's give cable and DBS the boot and make up our own system!
We don't want to watch what you think we want to watch any more!
- Court
says we are allowed to time shift television programs. Furthermore you are NOT allowed to do anything that would prevent us from doing so. If you do this, I hope you all get your asses sued out of existance! I AM SO Damned tired of this.Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Expect the prices of "officially released" episodes of your favorite shows to jump.
Oh, wait, since everything's coming out on DVD now, it will, anyway.
Oh, wait, since these same IP-down-your-throat goons are going to be collaborating with electronics corps anyhoo, we can forget about recordable media at all.
Oh, wait, this is actually legal & justified under the DMCA.
*sigh*
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
Quick counterexample. How many times on DVDs during logos or FBI warnings have you seen the words "Current Operation Prohibited" when you try to fast forward. Heard much griping about it?
It's only a matter of properly training the sheep.I don't own a TV (except a WinTV card with the open source Linux driver), and this kind of crap doesn't make me want to run out and get one. So screw them. The local bookstore doesn't have annoying copy control, and there's less advertising.
I posted this yesterday in another comment, but my feelings on MagicGate Memory Sticks are relevant to this too:
http://treklink.net/~overcode/copy-rant.txt
-John
Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
One of my old punk friends had a tat that said "Give war a chance" in 4 inch tall gothic letters across his back.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
So I take it that you agree with the media megacorps that libraries and fair use are the devil's spawn?
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
You just think you're kidding:
I'm just tired of it all. There's not enough good content out there on the channels for me to pay their ever-increasing prices anyways, so I settle for local antenna-based TV and a DVD collection of my favorites with no commercials. As long as it costs me as much time and trouble as this to get something for free, I'll continue to just pay up front and keep it simple.
I'm tired too, but if we keep giving them our money for content we can't fairly use, you can bet they'll keep selling it that way.
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I'm not sure if it was 20 or 40, but something in the lifespan of a typical person. All this news about corporatism taking over makes so many people not just upset, but _angry_, that I wonder what the next revelution will look like. The last revolution was flower power and peace. The next one will be ???
science is a religion
My tv is a book. When dissapearing ink becomes the publishing industry standard, then I'll worry. But not now.
On the other hand, region-free DVD-drives for computers are almost non-existant without a firmware upgrade that allows some drives to be modified to RPC-1.
As I understand it, the drive-manufacturers made an agreement that all drives made after January 2000 must be region-locked.
Luckily I have a DVD-drive that I was able to make RPC-1 (=region free) with a firmware upgrade. But I haven't ever watched a region 1 DVD, and it is possible that I never will or even want to, as region 2 DVDs have better picture quality (=resolution). The resolution of region 2 DVDs are often 720x576. Region 1 DVDs have usually a resolution of 720x480, and to make things worse, it often has to be de-interlaced (BOB'ed) to avoid artifacts, which (depending on the BOB-method) can reduce the effective resolution to 720x240 (=to half).
In the case of the region 2 DVDs the de-interlacing is usually (in the cases of 24fps film-based material) not necessary, so the DVDs can be viewed at full resolution of 720x576.
Has anyone looked at digital satellite receivers on eBay lately? Notice that the old receivers are more expensive than the new ones. Why? Because the old ones can be easily hacked to get any channel.
The point? When all you can buy is controlled recording devices, the old analog recording devices will be more valuable than they are today. Quality not as good as a straight digital copy? So what. You can bear to watch that analog stuff today; you can watch it tomorrow. And yes, there is always a way to make an analog recording.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
This is not going to happen over night. It will come in stages.
1. Start moving people to Digital Cable or Satellite.
2. Offer a compelling reason to upgrade your TV to those who have a digital channels (HDTV over the air, nice wide screen movies at hi res)
3. Once you have a threshhold of people, being moving the shows in #2 to a copy protected broadcast...(pay/view, HBO specials). This is a crucial step. If it fails, they will have to rethink things...
4. Slowly move all if not most show to copy protected status.
Problems:
1. Copy protection is impossible
2. It opens the market for no-aligned TV channels to jump into to offer royalty free non-copy protected programing. This may be twarted by having congress pass laws that to force everyone to join the alliance or protect alliance members from "foreign" competition.
3. People aren't stupid.
4. Some kid from Europe/Asia/Africa/wherever will crack this "protection" in a matter of hours and post a program that will let you take the DVI and/or Firewire signal, pipe it into your computer and recored shows all day long.
If we are to beleive MS about WinXP. It's copy protection is only there to stop "casual" infrigment (two copies on your two home computers). It does NOTHING to stop the "billions" of dollars lost to pirates who sell software in Asia on a CD for $2. The same can be said about Digital TV copy protection. Its only intenet is to make the home user keep paying for pay/view and other such stuff. It has nothing to do with stopping pirates...
Burn Hollywood Burn
You might want to check the history books a little before you consider the British too conservative to conquer the world.
Anyone remember the East India Company? Pretty much responsible for the entire government structure in India. Also, if I remember correctly, the Brits also divided up the Arab nations as they are today (Lawrence of Arabia), though I don't know if that was corporate.
Also, look at Hong Kong. Great Britian gave Hong Kong, arguably one of the world's largest capitalistic cities to China. Why? Because they promised, or because it will force China to become capitalistic a lot sooner than China would have on its own.
Remember when everyone had the scare in the 80s about Japan buying up American property? Well, Great Britian's holdings in the US makes Japan look like amateurs. The UK (or its people) are the largest foreign owners of US property.
Don't underestimate the power and influence of Great Britain and her economic powerhouses.
Great Britian's Plan:
1. Conquer.
2. Give it up.
3. Live off the profits.
Anyway, sorry about the bit off-topic rant, just thought I'd clear a myth.
--Rumbeck.
I think that our morals and ethics should be based upon those of our leaders.
the Apex digital TV model come out!
dave
This is why I won't go see any Disney movies... this and the baby deer and sailors they like to show dying in their movies.
---
Developers: We can use your help.
If Disney and Fox made cars, I wouldn't be permitted to open the hood and see how it works. I fear that if the DeCSS rulings end up in favor of media corporations, it'll set a precendent for future court cases on issues like this one posted here.
---
Developers: We can use your help.
The various companies will create an encription scheme to protect their IP. Only with a licence will you be able to build a decryptor. Anyone else building such a device would likely be in violation of patent law and the DMCA.
If they are smart, most content providers will not use this feature initially, in the hopes of people not getting into an uproar. And the first step of The Right to Read will be here.
Gosh I'm in a dark mood....
Mark
As Nietsche famously said, "If you stare too long into the Abyss, 1d4 Tanar'ri of random type will attack you."
Look, this isnt gonna happen. The point is when DMCA stopped Linux users from viewing DVD's via DeCSS, the common man didnt care. The problem is, Joe Sixpack has grown used to being able to record whatever, then being able to fast through the ad crap.
;) at least its still SOMEWHAT sane... business culture over here is too conservative: "World domination? I dunno, that sounds a bit risky..."
Now, try telling the common person that s/he can no longer timeshift because of 'digital content piracy'. Let's face it, they can mount all the propaganda campaigns they want, however at the end of the day people are going to get PISSED. Slashdotters may yell how unfair it is that DMCA is squashing their right to view DVD's or something, but I doubt several million americans are going to give up their right to record programs without a fight.
Or you could move to the UK
How long until the devices that defeat the mechanism are found in Canadian newspapers?
What country the hack will come from?
How long until the corporations involved manage to get the hacker(s) involved arrested despite the lack of a DMCA in their country?
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
You're right. DeCSS just came to mind because I was thinking of the decoder. Set-top boxes will need technology "equivalent to DeCSS"-- that is, something that decrypts scrambled content. Only, legal.
In the longer run, I think their aim is primarily towards the HDTV and high-quality digital markets. HDTV is still a few years from being practical for more than a few channels, especially over standard cable networks. But perhaps offering higher quality via the digital connection may be a selling point for the cable companies, if they could get away with it. In any case, with DVDs taking over from videotapes, and services like Tivo going into the cable headend, most consumers may choose not to own analog recording technology in a few years.
... let's see those HD sets *fly* off the shelves when consumers see that they can't record those episodes of Baywatch, or the Simpsons, or whatever...
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
If you can see it, then you can copy it. Time-Warner, Fox, and other broadcasting corporations need to figure this out. Then they could stop wasting millions on encryption and give us show we like. If people can break CSS and 56 bit RSA encrytpion, then I think anything the media tries to do is futile.
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
If it's a digital signal and it's encrypted, it can be broken.
;-).
But it hasn't been (yet). The cable box manufacturers learned from the DSS hacks and used better security. Even though the Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta boxes (used by AT&T Broadband, Time-Warner Cable, Charter, Videotron, Cogeco and just about every other US & Canadian cableco) have smartcard slots, they don't use them.
They do use some obscurity, but they don't rely on it- there's some real thought here (not just XORs!).
Think about it- if there weren't any PC DVD decryptors would we have DeCSS and other "unauthorized" decryptors today? *Maybe* if the key were in the clear (but it would be in ROM rather than in a DLL/EXE), but what if the key were embedded in a chip and that takes an encoded stream in and gives a clear one out. There is technology to scrape off the top of a chip and read its design or contents using an electron microscope, but there's also technology which uses a bunch of layers of metallization piled on top of the sensitive stuff (probably developed for Clipper
Here's something on Mot's box (formerly GI):
"The fundamental elements of GI's approach include: (i) a secure, non-reusable, single die VLSI custom decoder chip; (ii) a cryptographically secure mating verification scheme between the buried secure processor and the renewable element (if and when renewable elements are installed); (iii) battery backed-up volatile memory for secure storage in both the fixed and renewable security elements; (iv) working key (control word) which changes several times per second; (v) use of proven and strong cryptographic algorithms (e.g., DES and DES variants); and (vi) renewable security"
And here's something on S-A's:
"Scientific-Atlanta's PowerKEY System is the broadband industry's first CA system to support both public key and secret key cryptography. PowerKEY's use of public key (RSA) cryptography allows it to address the issues discussed above in a unique way that traditional secret key-only CA systems cannot match."
"The PowerKEY CA system employs a multi-level key hierarchy. Control words are fast-changing keys used to encrypt the services (video, audio, data). Mid-level keys called multi-session keys are used to protect the control words so that they can not be discovered in transmission, except by authorized units. The multi-session keys are sent to individual decoders using messages (EMMs) that are encrypted with the RSA public key algorithm. These EMMs are also digitally signed by an Entitlement Authority. "
(the original URLs are broken now, but look around for DigiCipher and PowerKEY if yer innerested)
The work on the connection between cable boxes and digital TV sets/decoders and on retail (Circuit City) cable boxes is mostly going on under the banner of OpenCable, run by Cable Labs. You'll buy a TV or cable box or D-VCR with a PCMCIA-like slot into which you'll plug a Point-of-Deployment (POD) module rented from the cable provider.
The generic box doesn't know DigiCipher or PowerKEY, but they don't want the POD to output a clear stream so it's re-encrypted using a generic system- 5c. The digital connection between a cable box and HDTV decoder might also be 5c-encrypted MPEG over firewire, but it also might be decompressed DVI with some other nasty "generic" (less proprietary than DigiCihper- more like CSS) encryption applied.
They could XOR their shit, and it would be illegal to reverse engineer it according to the DMCA. I don't even know why they try sophisticated methods of encryption. Clearly the weapon of choice for controlling powers is to sue anyone for violation of DMCA, rather than digitally protecting their products. Could this have really had a big impact a few years ago. Not really, but now its illegal to talk about tools that could circumvent this. At least illegal enough to be restrained and/or litigated. It's pretty bad when Canada seems appealing.
Sie ist tunbar!
Isn't that up to the author and the corp to agree upon?
/. users seems to think that freedom is about them having all the rights to take others work, freeloading, do whatever they want to, etc. And that the other parties don't even have the right to try to stop the freeloading.
I don't think someone is holding a gun to either parties heads, do you?
How come a site that is supposed to be about freedom don't regognise the freedom for individuals and organisations to make deals between each other out of free will?
Most
What kind of one-way freedom is that?
"When the tiny handful of parties who control such things "
It is abolutely clear that for our system to work there must be good competition. Thats why the DOJ is trying to break up microsoft. Pricefixing (witch is only possible in an environment with competiton problens) is a bad thing.
"Nor is the ability to "timeshift" your viewing by any other means; "
I agree that timeshifting should be ok. If the individual has paid for the content he or she should be allowed to view it whenever he/she wants to.
I want to get drunk with Hoagy Carmichael and
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
The ability to use a digital video recorder is not "freeloading." Nor is the ability to "timeshift" your viewing by any other means; courts decided that this was perfectly legitimate behavior.
There are other aspects of IP I am sure we would disagree on, but that would involve more arguing than I'd care to deal with....
I want to get drunk with Hoagy Carmichael and
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Yes, the depression did come an go, and companies like the "huge Carnegie steel conglomerate" took a hit...but kept on trucking. And, big surprise, we are still Americans living in the *ahem* same system. I think everything will be okay, and we will survive this huge turn of events..or we won't even feel the pinch at all.
Those with the money have power huh? Maybe that's the reason for all the "dot-bombs."
Whatever man, I spelled it write!
I don't see why companies should be allowed to broadcast copy-protected data over the airwaves. After all, we own the airwaves, we can have a say about what they do or don't get used for. I don't see how it's in the public interest at all to allow such use of public property.
So what is "high-value" in this case? The first run airing of Jurassic Park 3? The 20th anniversary airing of Trading Place? A syndicated rerun of The Simpsons?
Not like there won't be someone to make ANOTHER device to make these $2,000,000 slobs look like idiots for trying to impose content control over what we choose to record (for "home use" hehe)
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" -- George Orwell
that copy-prevention measures are morally and legally justified.
This will be sold as the necessary protection of Intellectual Property Rights to insure the continued viability -- read 'profitability' -- of producing, distributing and marketing of 'creative' or 'inovative' intellectual 'product'.
The language of public disscusion, the generally available tools (jiggered consumer electronics/appliances/computers/OS's), and the likely evolution of common law will, under corporate pressures, combine to make J.Q. Public see this curtailing of previously common and "fair use" options as necessary and inevitable. Indeed, the consuming public will become percieved as making these measures necessary by virtue of its previous, irresponsible abuse of available technologies.
Anyone caught circumventing various copy 'protection' schemes may be seen as unlucky, but also as in the wrong.