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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?"
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).
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."
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
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
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 $200-250). Mary buys said DVD player, takes it home and plugs it into her VCR using A/V cables (RCA jacks). Mary proceeds to try to watch The Matrix. Lo and behold, Mary notices that instead of a superior image, she sees the image getting extremely dark, then turning bright, then dark again, repeatedly. The culprit? Macrovision.
It's bullshit that people should have to purchase a brand-new television set to watch DVD movies (and this may in fact not be possible for the person used in the example above, after all, a new TV can cost three times as much as a DVD player).
It's also interesting to note that Laser Discs, for whatever reason, didn't employ Macrovision. Another problem I have with Macrovision is that (supposedly, based upon my little understanding of the subject) introduces errors into the video (and audio?) INTENTIONALLY, errors which the human eye supposedly can't see, but which confuse video inputs on VCR's and other 'video input' devices (video capture cards in PC's, and so on).
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
The main problem that both the RIAA and the MPAA have is that they have lost touch with reality. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, computer literate people. Because of this, you get idiotic decisions like the Cactus CD-Rip protection, the 0.99GB per .vob limit on DVDs, CSS, any all of the rest of the things that we love to laugh at.
/. and laugh at.
If they wanted to sell their products, they'd lower the prices (seriously, 10$ 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
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
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!
... the studios just need to do 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.
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
And they have to understand that once I have downloaded it
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!
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.
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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Excuse me?
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.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.