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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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Perhaps Gil-Scott Heron was mistaken and the revolution will be televised, but it'll be heavily encrypted pay-per-view.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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...
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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?
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."
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!
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?
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.
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.
So what you are saying is that you don't mind your rights being taken away until they infringe on your lifestyle?
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
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!
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.
-- 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
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!
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
Well, if you take a simplistic approach, equating IP to real property and fair use to theft, then things are very simple.
This approach would also lead to a world that's both awful and quite unlike anything we've ever seen in human history, however.
--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."
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.
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~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
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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
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
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.
Mass media becomes more and more pervasive with every passing year, to where people cannot even imagine life without it. The massive media machines that wield this power are telling people what to think, what to buy, how to behave. They are slowly but surely gaining control over all information, to disseminate and distort as they see fit, which mostly likely means in whatever way will keep you in line, buying their products and not questioning their ideals. And all the while, they continue to slowly eradicate any rights that you may have as an individual, in case you might one day decide to (gasp) think differently.
But do you honestly think People care? People, as in the millions upon millions of drones whose sole intellectual input comes from mass media, simply do not understand, and never will. They've been told what to think for so long that they do not know how to think for themselves.
If a revolution against this system ever formed, these same people would simply be informed that Nazi Fascist Renegades were trying to take their God Given Right to Television away, and that would be the end of that. There simply aren't enough people in the know to overcome the masses of drones out there, and that ratio is only going to get smaller with time. Buckle up for the Brave New World heading our way.
I'm sorry sandwich! --Brak
IP laywers on the left side of the gallows, media corp execs on the right.
We'll need a more scalable solution for the mindless masses who let it happen.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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.
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.
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Racists should be sent back to where they came from