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.

Woohoo! Still more effective actions!

[BadDoggie]

Could someone please tell me how the flag on some file will stop my buddy taping, then ripping South Park, chopping it into 15MB RARs and placing it on an FTP so that some us over in Europe who are sick of the 2-year delay and piss-poor overdubs can watch? Or how it could stop me DLing those files?

I hear you yelling. They want to flag a lot of videos that are being transmitted through file-sharing networks like Kazaa and Gnutella, right? It's gonna be tough to get some marker or flag to remain in place through the various compressions and wrappers (mpg, div-x, asf, avi, wmf, etc.).

Of course, if they do flag files, then it may b possible to use the DMCA as another method to sue the rippers, since the loss of the flag would be circumventing a "copyright protection mechanism".

Just my 0.02 [1]

woof.

About that .02 Euro: The plural of the Euro-cent is also "cent", giving you "Just my two cent". We have prices like "Fifteen Euro and twenty-seven cent". I already miss the Deutschmark (but not the Franc).

Re:Woohoo! Still more effective actions!

[lynx_user_abroad]

Could someone please tell me how the flag on some file will stop [the transfer of video files over the Internet]

Let's take it in pieces...

...my buddy taping...

For as long as you (or your buddy, in this scenario) have an analog recording mechanism (like a VCR) you're okay. But the AV equipment manufacturers don't make much money unless you buy new equipment. Therefore, you will always be under pressure to but a new VCR, or a recordable DVD box, or even a TV tuner card for your PC. In each of these cases, it opens a vulnerability because you are at the whim of the equipment manufacturers. (I'm neglecting the possibility that you build all of your own equipment from scratch.) The AV equipment manufacturers are under legal and business pressure to ensure that copyrighted material remains marked that way, and is not easily copyable. One simple way to do this is to mark all material as copyrighted, and therefore non-copyable. So, you (or your buddy in this scenario) could be stopped by a failure of his current recording mechanism, or by his own desire to keep current and upgrade.

...then ripping South Park...

This presumes the ability to convert analog content into digital content, or to somehow get the original content digitally. There are many schemes which can already be used to prevent you from getting the original content digitally. We will presume that an effective application of the DMCA will cut off your access to the original digital content. And since the scenario you propose seems to indicate a tolerance of any analog adequate copy anyway (since it's coming from tape) lets's focus on this instead.
This would seem to be the place where blocking is least possible, but only if we presume that all of the equipment (computer, disk, digitizer, and software) are under your own control. But there have been initiatives to remove this control from you, even for equipment you "own", in each of these cases.
The DMCA represents a broad example of law dictating what you can (or cannot) do with your own computer in your own home. As long as you're using a non-free operating system, then you will only have the ability to digitize video content if the OS manufacturer chooses to allow that capability, and then only under the terms dictated by the manufacturer. And, regardless of size, OS manufacturers are too big of a target for content providers to ignore. Is it too much to imagine an operating system which refuses to allow certain copy operations except under the approval of a digital copyright management scheme? Microsoft doesn't think so, and they've already applied for a patent for one way to do it.

...chopping it into 15MB RARs and placing it on an FTP...

You don't own the Internet; maybe a small part within your own home, but not the whole 'end to end'. I could imagine your scenario being stopped here by any of:

a limit on your buddy's upload file size, imposed by his internet service provider.

a prohibitive surcharge to your buddy, based on upload file size.

the inability of your buddy to run an FTP service from his own equipment, based on firewalling or terms-of-service imposed by his internet service provider.

the inability of your buddy to find an FTP server run by someone else, due to a prohibitive cost, liability concerns on the part of the FTP site provider, lawsuits shutting down such a central server or their inability to run an FTP service from their own equipment for reasons detailed above.

the actions of "intelligent internet routers" which examine initiating and terminating ports, as well as content type, and choose not to pass content which is not beneficial (profitable) to their owners.

download limits, imposed by your internet service provider, which restrict what you can download, or your total download speed.

This last one is the "flag" you are referring to. It is not in AOL/Time Warner's interest to allow you to bypass their controls (and profitibility) on their content using their routers, so you can expect them to (Lessig puts it; "as corporations they are legally obligated to") take actions to prevent this type of content from being carried over their wires.

There are already software systems deployed which can "recognise" a song, even if it was performed by an unknown artist. It won't be difficult to modify this research to identify a portion of a South Park episode, no matter how bad the analog encoding was.

That leaves two obvious routes your buddy might employ (obsfucation and encryption), each with it's failings and drawbacks. Obsfucation ("we'll ROT13 the file before we upload it") only works if everyone knows the obsfucation method, and you can bet the search and identify software will learn it, too. Encryption has the same drawback, unless the key is tightly controlled, in which case knowing the key in itself becomes a liability.

Instead of patting yourself on the back, secure in the knowledge (even if you're right) that they can never stop the trading of digital content, why not ask the question why they would want to? If you didn't value South Park so much, they couldn't justify taking such actions to protect it.

Imagine that. the answer was right in front of you all along.

Flagging TV uncopyable

[Alsee]

When I read about this, my first reaction was that every single second of TV broadcast will be flagged as uncopyable.

My second thought was "hmmm, I wonder if the comercials will be flagged as copy protected."

-

Re:Flagging TV uncopyable

[mccalli]

...every single second of TV broadcast will be flagged as uncopyable.

Perhaps they could also have nearly every single second of TV broadcast flagged as 'unwatchable'...

Cheers,
Ian

Consumers..

[onion2k]

When will these companies realise that until they start making money out of what consumers what to do they're always going to be in a pitched battle against so-called 'hackers'?

So people use the internet to trade music. And they might invent something to trade video without the adverts. And years done the line they'll be trading whatever comes next. Why do companies insist on trying to stop what is obviously going to happen, and start embrassing it. Instead of trying to stop people doing this why not work on creating a business model that consumers are happy with and would be willing to pay for. I'd certainly pay a bit for television sans adverts (a bit of in-show product placement would keep the advertisers happy, I just hate the breaks), and if I could get these shows over the net as and when and whereever I want them I'd pay even more.

Companies that are wholely antagonistic toward their customers are really annoying.

I must be missing something here...

[Tsar]

Suppose companies start distributing video using the CPTWG encoder (whatever they might call it) to mark it as nondistributable. What's to keep folk from sending the video output to a DV device, then reading it back and re-encoding it to whatever 'open' format they choose? This isn't the easiest way to accomplish it, I'm sure, but if media can be played, can't it be re-recorded and converted?

It seems to me that whenever the powers-that-wanna-be try to establish total control of digital media, they lose whatever control or influence they already had. Why not redirect efforts toward better fair-use policies, reasonable licensing schemes, and accept that somebody will copy your work no matter what you do?

I think the real trick will be to improve Joe Random's perception of the recording industry to the point that he feels guilty about having media he hasn't paid for. Their current tactics will never accomplish that, and in fact will tend to perpetuate the Robin Hood fantasy that Napsterites currently enjoy.

"The more you tighten your grip, Valente, the more encoding systems will slip through your fingers." -- Princess RIAA

Re:I must be missing something here...

[ishark]

Suppose companies start distributing video using the CPTWG encoder (whatever they might call it) to mark it as nondistributable. What's to keep folk from sending the video output to a DV device, then reading it back and re-encoding it to whatever 'open' format they choose? This isn't the easiest way to accomplish it, I'm sure, but if media can be played, can't it be re-recorded and converted?

The only workable solution I can see is not very workable at all. You need to watermark ALL the "copyrighted" stuff and make sure that players only play it when it's coming from "legitimate media" (CPRM anyone?). Tricks like disc regions unwritable by consumer-level recorders may work.
Now, if you rip and reencode the watermark is present, but since your copy is (of course) not on legitimate media the player will refuse to play it.

Now, this is all nice and wonderful, except for a VERY MINOR problem: i.e. nobody says that you should use the compression algorithm supported by the players. If I rip to some random video format and then use some random computer program to play it, the "certified" video player never comes into play, so no copy control is possible.

This too has solutions, of course, like embedding copy control systems into the output device (= monitor). By using a crypto handshake between all the devices, from disc reader to monitor, it can be the monitor itself which refuses to display the watermarked data. Since forging the crypto handshake can be extremely hard, you would be forced to degrade the video quality until the watermark is lost, losing the advantage of digital copies.

Now, technologically this is probably feasible and would be very hard to defeat. Flat screen producers would very much like to be able to include electronics on the screen itself, since connecting the matrix to the control electronics is a pain, and this would make the hardware virtually unbreakable. What I think the REAL problem is, is that economically the growth of the last years has been brought by the amount of free stuff circulating. I cannot prove this, but I think, for example, that the price of HD went down because of Napster/warez/broadband. By locking all the stuff down at hardware level you kill the incentive to buy new hardware, since: 1- people don't need it, 2- the new hardware is as locked down at the old, so there's no added benefit in upgrading (while graphics cards still have room for improvement, the current CPUs are already way too fast for "end-user" use, the RAM very cheap, disk space almost free, audio as good as it's needed.... and there isn't much else in the general "multimedia" PC....). Whatever company follow this strategy will basically gut itself in face of the "non-compliant" ones which provide added value in terms of less control.

You are perfectly right when you say:
It seems to me that whenever the powers-that-wanna-be try to establish total control of digital media, they lose whatever control or influence they already had. Why not redirect efforts toward better fair-use policies, reasonable licensing schemes, and accept that somebody will copy your work no matter what you do?

Video rental stores seem to live quite well, and a "global renting store" via internet downloads would probably work very well. The problem is that it would be forced to apply prices which people find reasonable, which would undercut the massive profits of the content indistry (this is why they are fighting this at full steam). To give an idea of a "reasonable price" consider the cost of storing it on HD (including classification/retrieval, etc.), of download bandwidth and (this last is a negative value) the nuisance of waiting for the download (if you already have it on your HD you don't have to wait). People now hoards warez/music for the fear that the only other way to get it will be paying lots of money (both now or in the future), but would they really fill up gigs and gigs of HD and CD if the knew that for $X ot $Y/month you can just redownload it when you need?

Overall, I think that the outcome is inevitable, my only fear is the "collateral damage" which will result while the fighting continues....

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.

Re:I must be missing something here...

[recursiv]

I'm sick of people complaining about the loss of quality they get doing D->A conversions and the general crappiness of analog signals. Think about this: What format do the craziest audiophiles prefer for audio? Vinyl, the decades old analog technology.

Analog isn't inherently lower quality than digital. The problem with it is that you can't make a perfect copy, and successive generations of copying tend to degrade the quality, but that isn't important in the distinction between digital and analog output devices because that conversion gets made at most once by any output device. Digital signals can have just as crappy fidelity as the worst analog signal, and conversely, analog signals can be just as good as the best digital signal.

[OT - kind of] Macrovision

[DarkEdgeX]

Macrovision has always been something I think the government should deem illegal-- especially in light of DVD players and how it infringes on a consumers rights;

Example: Mary has an old RF (coax) input TV that works fine, and she has a semi-old (1990) VCR attached to it to watch movies. This VCR has a video input on the back for hooking up other devices, camcorders and so forth. Mary decides she wants to take advantage of the latest price drops in DVD players (example: Pioneer DVD player at Costco for roughly $200-250). Mary buys said DVD player, takes it home and plugs it into her VCR using A/V cables (RCA jacks). Mary proceeds to try to watch The Matrix. Lo and behold, Mary notices that instead of a superior image, she sees the image getting extremely dark, then turning bright, then dark again, repeatedly. The culprit? Macrovision.

It's bullshit that people should have to purchase a brand-new television set to watch DVD movies (and this may in fact not be possible for the person used in the example above, after all, a new TV can cost three times as much as a DVD player).

It's also interesting to note that Laser Discs, for whatever reason, didn't employ Macrovision. Another problem I have with Macrovision is that (supposedly, based upon my little understanding of the subject) introduces errors into the video (and audio?) INTENTIONALLY, errors which the human eye supposedly can't see, but which confuse video inputs on VCR's and other 'video input' devices (video capture cards in PC's, and so on).

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.

If you can play it, you can copy it

[Anonymous Coward]

When is the RIAA and MPAA going to get it through their thick skulls that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PIRATE-PROOF DIGITAL MEDIA!

You can do whatever you want to a binary file, but the reality is that when the consumer wants to listen/watch the file (You know, guys, WHY you made it in the first place!), there has to be a translation from protected digital to unprotected digital before it is converted to analog. All I have to do to pirate is capture that stream before it goes to analog.

Their answer seems to be to force everyone to push the translation from protected digital to analog into hardware and pass laws to make it illegal to break their algorithm. This will never work. Everytime you change your protection scheme, you make all the current players obsolete - pissing off your customers.

It takes months or years to get the new algorithm distributed to consumers in the form of hardware, but is takes only days or weeks for hackers to reverse engineer it in software and start pirating.

It is a game they can not win. They need to simply make it a hassle to pirate, accept that a certain percentage of people are going to pirate no matter what they do, and focus on their legitimate customers. Accept the price that the market will bare and get on with life.

It the day of ReplayTV and Broadband, it is moronic that I can not tie into media servers of all the major studios and download any movie or tv show on demand on a Pay-Per-View basis. They technology is *ALL* there today to do it ... the studios just need to do it.

And they have to understand that once I have downloaded it ... in my mind, I own it! I am not going to pay $1.99 an episode for each episode every time I want to watch a tv show I missed. I am going to download once, "time-shift" it on my Replay TV, and if I like it, I am going to archive it to VHS, VCD, DVD, etc.

That is reality. That is your market. Sell to it and stop trying to using the government to be your Guido the Killer Pimp that throw people in jail because they dared to watch a DVD on Linux!

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

[AgTiger]

> You can do whatever you want to a binary file, but the reality is that
> when the consumer wants to listen/watch the file (You know, guys,
> WHY you made it in the first place!),

Actually, I'm sure the MPAA and the RIAA see the actual viewing/listening to their product only as a secondary necessary concern that furthers the real reason they make the products and sell them: Revenue.

Everything that they've done with regards to innovation on the technology front the past couple of years has been to protect the content from copying, rather than focussing on what the consumer wants. This is a recipe for long term disaster where market share is concerned. First rule of business: MAKE MONEY. However, never ever forget that the first rule is very impacted by the second: SERVE YOUR CUSTOMER. Make them _want_ to come back to you. If you don't do this, you won't last.

Failure to innovate to the customer's needs will eventually be what leaves them looking around asking, "Oh no, where did our market share go? What did we do wrong?" Many of us will just look at them and shake our heads.

I keep returning in my mind to the video game copy protection conflicts in the 1980's, and how that turned out. The producers eventually got the crucial points:

1. Those who were going to copy the products rather than buy them weren't very likely to buy a manufacturer-produced copy anyway.

2. Annoyed customers don't buy more of your products - you lose future sales. In the 90's, copy protection on games has once again reared its ugly head. Electronic Arts found from me what annoying a customer does to future revenue from said customer. I purchased a copy of Electronic Arts' Dungeon Keeper 2 Best Buy, and could NOT run it on my Plextor UltraPlex CD-Rom due to the copy protection method (Safedisc/c-Dilla). After wasting a half hour on the phone to customer support to find out they knew about the problem with Plextor drives and weren't about to release a fix/patch, I finally informed them I would have to go download the crack, and play the game THAT way, and that this was a crazy way to make a customer go to play a fifty dollar game they just purchased. They actually tried to tell me I shouldn't do that. *shaking head* Now when I see an Electronic Arts logo on the box, I avoid the game, much as I might want to purchase it. Sucks that they want my money, but it sucks that they make their games unplayable on my equipment. Even if they fix the problem now, I'll probably never know and will keep avoiding their products.

3. For every way to protect media, there's a way to break it, and there are uncontrollable distribution methods to get the cracks/breaks out to people who want them.

Okay, enough of my rant. Time to go serve my own customers and make money. :-)

Re:Predictions

[alen]

If they can limit it to a very few tech minded people they've achieved their goal. You can never eradicate piracy 100%. Napster was a threat because it was availble to so many average users and no real tech knowledge was required. Just install and download all the music you want. You don't really have to eradicate piracy anyway. Just make it hard enough that 90% will never figure out how to do it and you're good to go.

Businesses WILL fail

[Alsee]

I would like to address the legislature (US, EU, and everywhere else).

The internet is the greatest developement in communication since the invention of the printing press. More people have access to more information than ever before deamt possible. The cost of distributing information to unlimited numbers of people is virtually zero.

We can embrace this new technology and it's benefits, or we can reject it, cripple it, destroy it.

The adoption of any new technology means change. Any bussiness unwilling or unable to adapt to that change will fail. The adoption of the automobile meant the doom of the buggy-whip industry.

With the adoption of new technology businesses will fail. They will make way for new businesses and new possibilities. We will all reap the rewards.

As for the other choice, that road leads to maddness. In this specific case - flagging video - for this scheme to work EVERY SINGLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE must respect this flag. This means all other devices must be made illegal - including existing devices. It must be illegal to alter devices you own. It must be illegal to create your own device. It must be illegal to attempt to understand how these technologies work. It must be illegal to explain to anyone how these technologies work.

KNOWLEDGE MUST BE MADE A CRIME.

Furthermore, such restrictions must be enforced GLOBALLY. Any nation who resists must be crushed into submission.

Such is the madness of the DMCA, EUCA, and other attempts to "protect" us from progress.

-

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.

Re:Revenue Models

[StormyMonday]

There's no proven revenue model for content that doesn't depend on keeping unauthorised copying to a minimum.

Excuse me?

• Broadcast television. Video tapes that you make yourself are easy to copy.
• Every stereo system in the world can copy records/CDs onto tape. A computer here, BTW, looks just like a tape deck.
• Ditto FM radio.

These have all been making money for years.

"But", you say, "The quality deteriorates with these copy methods."

Franlky, consumers don't care squat about audio or video quality. This little fact is what killed Betamax and laser disks, and will soon kill HDTV.

I just don't get it...

[Cereal Box]

Okay, let me get this straight:

Movie studios took a risk a few years ago by putting money and support behind a new format (DVD -- and don't come back by asserting that there was no way the format could fail so therefore it wasn't a risk). DVD brought consumers high quality, non-degradable copies of their favorite movies in a small, convenient, and AFFORDABLE package. Why is everyone so intent on spitting in their faces? Let's take a look at some of the common reasons:

1. "If they would price DVDs reasonably, I wouldn't pirate them." $20 (or less) isn't a good enough for movies that are of excellent quality, will never degrade (theoretically), and usually come in very nice packaging? I've got news for you... just because it cost $1.00 or so to produce that DVD doesn't mean that companies are making $19.00 of profit when it's marked up to $20! These movies cost many millions of dollars to produce and market, and many fail to even break even. A lot of my favorite movies were complete box-office failures or are very obscure... I think it's very GENEROUS of movie companies to take a risk and produce thousands of copies of movies which they might lose money on just so a relatively small number of people can have high-quality copies of their favorite (obscure) movies!

2. "Sure, lots of movies bomb, but that wouldn't happen if the studios weren't making crappy movies." I've got news for you... studios aren't nearly as stupid as you may think. They've been in the business long enough to know what moviegoers want, AND THEY MAKE THE MOVIES THAT AUDIENCES WANT TO SEE! Teens love stupid teen movies, so movie companies produce them. Most people enjoy crude humor, so movie companies produce crude comedies. It's just that simple. Movie companies are only willing to take a risk on cutting-edge movies if they have a feeling that audiences will go for it, which usually doesn't happen. Maybe our society should broaden its tastes and then Hollywood will respond.

3. "Movie companies aren't willing to embrace the internet revolution and they're getting what they deserve." Okay, hotshot. You've just spent $50 million on a movie. Naturally you want to make that money back, right? How do you plan on doing that if you distribute your movie on the internet with no copy-protection whatsoever? Charge a "reasonable" price for a download of your movie (which can be viewed indefinitely)? What might be a reasonable price to you is a ludicrous price to someone else. You may think $5 to download your movie is reasonable, but there's a bunch of pirates and freeloaders who think your movie sucks far too much to be worth a whole $5. And, since you don't believe in copy-protection, it's even EASIER for said pirates to share your hard work with everyone on Morpheus. Good job. You're now bankrupt.

I think the whole pro-piracy/anti-RIAA/anti-MPAA issue boils down to this:

1. If given a choice, most people would take a movie at 90% of the quality for free over 100% quality for $20.

2. People who support pirating movies/music believe that if the tools to reproduce and redistribute movies/music are there that it is their God-given right to use them.

What you people have to realize is that movies and music ARE NOT PART OF YOUR INALIENABLE RIGHTS. Companies can charge WHATEVER THEY WANT for their products. Movies and music are LUXURIES, they are not necessities. Things would be different if the MPAA had a stranglehold on milk/bread/fruits/vegetables/etc. and started charging ridiculous prices for them -- BUT THAT ISN'T HOW IT IS. They have luxury (non-necessary) items that they spent billions of dollars on FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT -- all they ask of you is that you give them a modest amount of money to compensate their efforts. Grow up and stop trying to get a free ride.