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

MPAA must find another way

[famazza]

Just like RIAA, MPAA must find a way to be much more attractive to consumers actually buy their product and avoid them to download it from internet.

Recently RIAA lowered their prices to US$10 for a regular CD. If I'm really interested in an artist I would buy a ten-buck-cd, I would pay for audio quality, and even for graphical quality (and of course know the real music name :o) and for a nice case.

This was the first RIAA intelligent step, and I hope MPAA follows its fellow.

Out of touch with reality

[iGawyn]

The main problem that both the RIAA and the MPAA have is that they have lost touch with reality. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, computer literate people. Because of this, you get idiotic decisions like the Cactus CD-Rip protection, the 0.99GB per .vob limit on DVDs, CSS, any all of the rest of the things that we love to laugh at.

If they wanted to sell their products, they'd lower the prices (seriously, 10$ CDs are good, but 30$ for a DVD? Come on, a DVD isn't that expensive, and you've already raped the consumer in the theaters, so drop the price. 15$ or 20$ for a new DVD would be nice), as well as try to get intelligent people to protect their goods.

Instead of going after whoever cracked CSS, the MPAA should have approached them, asked for suggestions to improve encryption, not sue them for copyright infringement, or whatever bullshit they currently are pulling out of their asses.

Information will find a way to be free, be it ripping CDs, DVDs, or whatever. As long as you have computer-illiterate people making the decisions, we'll always have news stories to post on /. and laugh at.

Gawyn

Seconds Out, Round 2

[bfree]

MPAA's Attaway said during the panel discussion. "We think the best thing is to develop something along the lines of the Copyright Scrambling System that was worked out by various players in the marketplace."

So it looks like they want to create another weak slap-on encryption scheme that allows them to control the hardware and software capable of playing their content! The question is how can you come up with something which will remain even after an analogue broadcast? The only way I can imagine an analogue broadcast could be in any way protected is by dropping the quality so no one would bother capturing it, but I guess lot's of people wouldn't bother watching it or paying for a service (on way to get people to shift when a digital service is launched). Let's face it, as long as analogue broadcast remains the signal can be captured and recreated at will, when everyone is on digital broadcasting we will however be screwed unless we ensure that NOT ALL hardware and software respects this. At present with DVD technology we find all forms of circumvention techniques (not least of which you could copy the encrypted stream) so let's hope that the United Corps of America's power does not increase any further in their influence over far-eastern manufacturers.

Re:Devil's Advocate Here

[Genom]

LOL - this will be fun ;P

Recording artists and movie stars command very high fees for their services. If we were to offer them significantly less, many of the most talented and popular artists would simply go into retirement. In short, no pay, no play.

Geez - that wouldn't be because they get paid a hell of a lot more than they should in the first place, would it? Imagine the money that could be saved if actors got reasonable salaries, rather than multi-million dollar movie deals...

Sure...initially the quality might go down as multi-millionaire actors and actresses who have been spoiled by disgustingly huge salaries decide to start retiring - but with the money you save there, you could hire more/different actors and actresses, and have a more diverse offering.

Sure, the studios make large profits on hit movies and albums. However, there are also our fair share of bombs. At the end of the day, our return on investment is not significantly different from that in other industries.

In other words, because you can't learn from your mistakes, you want to sock it to us. Why am I not impressed by this viewpoint? Again - if you cut the obnoxious salaries, more money could be put into things like writing and development, rather than just producing special effects bombs, or stupid teen flicks.

We realize the consumers' desires to make personal copies, pass programming onto friends, etc. We simply cannot make a profit without sufficient copy protections to ensure that people actually buy our products.

Again, this is because your overhead is far, far too high to begin with. Cut the fat, and your numbers would look a hell of a lot different. Offer your products with good quality at a reasonable price, and people will buy it. Otherwise, they will find other ways. That's the way it is.

Although there are good consumers who would abide by our copyrights...

...which have been extended ad infinitum by Disney /Sonny Bono/etc... such that the "good" "consumers" never get anything back as public domain...

...if we removed all watermarking and other copy-prohibiting technologies. Both you and we know that there are always a few bad apples in the cart, and we must take preventative measures to protect our copyrighted material. Instead of directing your anger at us, why don't you join us in our efforts to track down people engaged in illegal activites?

Join us! Turn in your neighbors for their subversive activities! Be rewarded!

Look - first, stop trying to manage your own financial blunders by taking our rights away. Second, start taking a realistic look at why people are turning to alternative distribution methods. They're turning to them because you're not offering your products with good quality at reasonable prices, you're offering a mediocre product at an inflated price. Third, start taking a realistic look at your budgets, salaries, and other offerings, and see where you can make some cuts to save money, lower your overhead, and make the numbers work out.

The idea that information is free is simply not true.

Hogwash. information is, and should be free. Products, however, should have a reasonable price based on their quality. The overhead involved should be carefully managed such that it doesn't force the price up beyond reasonable levels. But information itself has been, and should always remain, free.
Without a way of paying the producers for their time and effort, the amount of material would evaporate until nearly nothing remains.

The question here is not about payment. Noone will argue that for products of sufficient quality, which have reasonable prices, people will pay. Some people will choose not to, in any case. As you said before, there are always some bad apples. Instead of taking "normal" people's rights away in order to exert control over the bad apples, simply come to grips with the fact that they exist, have always existed, and will always exist. You can't simply throw your billions of dollars at congress and expect them to go away. They won't. But - you can sway more people to the paying side if you embrace what the people want, instead of trying to take away their rights.

Okay...it's far too early to have posted something like this - flame on!

Re:what law am I breaking?

[hearingaid]

They're both illegal.

Under the landmark Sony v. Universal case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to ban VCRs because they could be used for time-shifting: i.e. watching Starsky & Hutch (or whatever people watched back in the '70s :) at a different time than whenever NBC (or whoever) decided to show it.

They decided that this was a fair use.

It's not actually stated, but it's pretty strongly implied in the decision that the now-common act of building ad-free libraries of TV shows is illegal.

And it's certain that distributing videotape copies of shows is illegal. It's a violation of copyright, not saved by fair use, even in the U.S.

Of course, people do it all the time. This is just one of the many inanities of copyright law in the modern era.

Another inanity: The U.S. is the only country in the Western world with a fair use doctrine in copyright law. That means that probably time-shifting is illegal in every other First World country. However, the movie industry knows that if they were to, say, sue to stop Brits having VCRs, they'd win the lawsuit but then the Brits would change copyright law - to make it weaker - and they don't want that.