Consumer Electronics, Hollywood Work Against 'Video Napster'

cadfael writes: "The EETimes reports that "a new working group within the existing Copyright Protection Technology Working Group (CPTWG) will review a technical method for flagging video content that is not authorized for Internet transmission. ... The group was formed at the suggestion of Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), in a letter sent roughly two weeks ago to Jack Valente, head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)." Does this make sense in the light of this article?"

Comments

Re:MPAA must find another way

[f00zbll]

I'll second that sentiment. Media companies are getting more lazy every year. Look at the TV shows the last 3 years (few exceptions like west wing)or the movies. There are rare exceptions like American Beauty that really tries to be unique and insightful. As some musicians have said, "it's crap music that hurts the music sale." Rather than attack the problem of "how do we stay profitable" at the root of the problem, companies would rather maximize the profits on a few products to make up for garbage.

The real problem is deeper than just "we need to protect our investments." It's about the constant change in taste. Our society changes it's preferences much faster than say 1960's. Large corporations simply can't move fast enough to take advantage of a new trend. By the time they notice a new trend, it's close to its peak.

Record and movie companies rely on artists to create/notice a trend before it get big to take advantage. Problem is a lot of executives hate artists and artists dislike executives. Record companies know this and are afraid artists will go on their own. My opinion that's what they're really afraid of. By controlling distribution, production and equipment, they force artists to go through their system.

Hock Leow's statement "The encrypted CD will be an absolute nightmare" is on target. It's one to for new technology like DVD's to start out with encryption built in, but if I have to replace my CD players, it ain't gonna happen for 5-10 years. I sure as hell ain't going to replace every piece of audio/video equipment I own, just so they can control how, when, and where I watch/listen to something. That's why I buy DVD's. I want to own a piece of artwork.

Re:If you can play it, you can copy it

[arkanes]

For what it's worth, EA doesn't seem to use SafeDisc anymore - probably for exactly that reason. I have 3(4?) games that I really enjoy that use SafeDisc, and it's an amazing pain to have to crack them each time I re-install them.

Re:I must be missing something here...

[regen]

... you would be forced to degrade the video quality until the watermark is lost, losing the advantage of digital copies.

It is fairly easy to prove that you can remove any watermark without significantly changing the signal to noise ratio of the image. Several people, including myself (as part of my PhD research in 1995) have proven this and published the proof. Unfortunately, the people watermarking digital media don't pay attention to research that doesn't match what they want to hear.

video warez common in colleges

[Anonymous Coward]

A decent movie is about 2 GB, compared to 5 MB for a five minute song. This about 400 times larger. No problem for the high speed InterNet II in many colleges. Less than five minutes to copy there. Lord of the Rings was on the net before broad theatre release.