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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.'"
Imagine! Video beamed right to your TV through the air. What's this world coming to?
Always encrypt with rot13 TWICE for extra security.
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...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Just when we were starting to like them for that whole red-book thing...
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
The problem with this digital rights management solution, just like all of the others, is that they cannot force people to upgrade. Although there is a certain segment of the populace that will desire to own the latest and greatest everything multimedia, and therefore trip himself into owning devices embedded with DRM, the average American won't want to spend the extra money to upgrade.
Therefore, unless you give them a major incentive, the RIAA/MPAA is foiled again. No upgrades means that all of the time they spent plotting up yet another scheme to control what we can and can't watch is ruined by consumer apathy.
If they really wanted people to upgrade, they would (a) develop a new, proprietary format, (b) stop release of all current and future products on CD/VHS/DVD, (c) release ONLY on aforementioned proprietary format. Eventually, enough people would switch to make it worth their while.
Even with this, though, people will find a way around the Digital Rights Management schemes, as they also do.
To use a famous quote, "Where there's a will, there's a way." And when it comes to copying CDs, VHS tapes, or DVDs, there is most certainly a will.
Gawyn
Freedom of Speech?
Keeping aliens from infringing on copyrights. Engineers will have to figure out a way to track down all the radio signals that have left Earth in the last 100 years and block them as to prevent alien beings from enjoying content they have not payed for.
This is related to the article too because phase 2 of the plan is to prevent all wireless transmissions of anything so aliens that have reached earth cannot use thier moon-transglobifiers to enjoy content they haven't paid for. The aliens will just have to rent a house and order cable like everyone else.
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.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
That depends. Am I the company that won't get to sell you the additional DVD player, or am I the company that won't get to sell you the wireless receiver?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Back in the 80s it was perfectly legal to use the wireless Rabbit (remember those?) to transmit TV signals from the living room to the bedroom. This went for broadcast, rented movies, etc. Heck, you can even legally transmit on the FM 88-108 MHz band as long as it follows FCC Part 15 (no external antenna, and under a certain wattage... 100mw I think). Considering that these allowances were made for home-based Fair Use usage, I would consider this a clear-cut violation of Fair Use rights just like copy protected CDs. If you want to make *public* broadcast over 802.11 illegal... Well it already is. Just like it would have been illegal to use the Rabbit back in the 80s to re-transmit cable for the whole neighborhood.
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.
It's sad we've all been so corrupted by IP theft. Thank God Phillips is there to keep us in line.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries