Philips Targets Wireless TV Retransmission At Home

cadfael links to this EE Times story, excerpting: "Philips is attempting to start yet another industry initiative to tackle digital rights management, this time focusing on the wirelessly networked home. 'At stake here,' said Leon Husson, executive vice president of consumer businesses at Philips Semiconductors, 'is the "free-floating" copyrighted content that will soon be "redistributed" or "rebroadcast" to different TV sets throughout a home by consumers using wireless networking technologies like IEEE802.11.'"

Comments

Big Problem, I hear

[merlin_jim]

This is a huge problem. You know, I have friends who are all the time buying 802.11 gear ($200+), and content encoders/decoders ($100/each and requires a PC to run) just so they can broadcast cable from the living room to the bedroom.

Oh wait, no that was a dream world. Sorry, I'm just not seeing how wireless piracy is a big problem, especially since, by focusing on wireless piracy WITHIN the home, there's an implicit assumption that the transmitter of the content has the rights to view it in the first place... otherwise, the focus wouldn't be in-home transmission, but rather how the content got to the home in the first place...

Buy Now or Pay Later...

[Iguanaphobic]

Is it just me or is now a really good time to start buying uncrippled hardware? I've noticed that the current generation of devices (PVR, MP3 Players, DVD+RW, CD-RW, Hard Drives etc.) do not have DRM technology included. I've also noticed that the next generation of hardware will have this technology included, possibly at gunpoint by the content providers. I will be buying lot's of tech soon to avoid the DRM cripples that are due in all our hardware. I will also be closely monitoring the computer situation to buy my next machine just before they encrypt the BIOS and only allow DRM enabled operating systems to run on these systems. If you don't think this will happen, you have learned nothing from 100 years of corporate behaviour. If they can, they will. Usually just because they can.

it's not really explained, is it?

[mblase]

I was puzzled by this concept, myself -- surely I have the right to broadcast my cable TV signal to as many televisions or computers in my own house as I see fit?

But if we're talking about Wi-Fi, then the problem isn't just inside my house. I'm essentially empowering any Wi-Fi receiver within my broadcast range to see what I'm watching on my own system -- whether it's television, cable TV, pay-per-view, or pre-recorded home video.

Think of the potential problems. A student in a dorm room could broadcast a rented DVD to every other student in their building, a clear violation of the big "at-home use" FBI warning you see at the start of the movie. A pay-per-view sports broadcast could be sent to everyone in my apartment building. My next-door neighbor could pirate my cable TV feed just by tuning into/cracking my Wi-Fi frequency. It's not a problem if we're talking about broadcast television signals, but anything else is a major violation of copyright, essentially turning my home system into a small pirate broadcast station.

Re:it's not really explained, is it?

[merlin_jim]

I wouldn't have such a big beef if that's what they said they were going after, but they never explicitly say that's a problem. They probably don't want to admit that 802.11 and other wireless technologies tend to be very easy to hack, otherwise this wouldn't be a problem at all. As a result, they only mention piracy within the home. I looked for direct quotes, the closest I could get was:

At stake here, said Leon Husson, executive vice president of consumer businesses at Philips Semiconductors, is the "free-floating" copyrighted content that will soon be "redistributed" or "rebroadcast" to different TV sets throughout a home by consumers using wireless networking technologies like IEEE802.11.

I wonder how close the above paraphrase is to what he actually said... if he used the phrase throughout a home I would be VERY concerned with what this means for fair use, as I mentioned in my original post...

Re:I fail to see the issue...

[Zeinfeld]

The problem with wireless is that other people in the neighborhood can free ride off your signal. One student in a dorm might subscribe to cable and rebroadcast it via 802.11 to the rest of the dorm. Or you might have your neighbors hooking into your 802.11 net without your consent and find out that you watch the porn channels or the 700 club.

The Philips proposal sounds to me to be of the form 'what do we need to do to make this pass likely regulation' rather than 'what can we do to support the RIAA and MPAA'.

While no DRM solution can ultimately be proof against a moderately determined attack it is certainly possible to produce stuff for the consumer market that does not support piracy without deliberate modification. For example you might see 'home media servers' being sold that store several hundred CDs and DVDs that can be broadcast to a number of access points in the house. These access points would initially be set top boxes but could be embedded in the TV if there was a recognized standard.

I don't fault Philips for anticipating likely regulation here. I would much rather that Philips produced something that was a reasonable compromise than waited for the RIAA and MPAA to buy votes in congress to either impose something completely derranged or try to kill the field altogether.

There are already attempts to kill off ReplayTV, the broadcast media would much rather support Tivo which has made it clear will roll over whenever asked. So we lose features like the ad-skip button.