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EFF Comments on HDTV Copy Restriction Plans
Seth Schoen writes: "EFF has been following the work of the Broadcast Protection Discussion
Group (which was featured in a
CNet
article linked from slashdot on Thursday) since it was founded in
November. Co-incidentally, we today released an
EFF overview of this work which contains some of our
criticism of these efforts to control the ability of future consumer
devices to record digital HDTV broadcasts."
Already it's tough to get people to spend the extra cash on those HDTV sets. Lets throw in some copy protection too, to make HDTV even more unappealing! Then we can all be stuck with NTSC for the rest of our natural lives.
As the article points out, PVR's do not use removable media (hey, now there is a good idea for me to patent... if only I believed in our patent and copyright system and it was how it should be). Therefor, it makes it nearly impossible for me to distribute/lend my copy to someone else (network TiVos are something else). This was the video industry's major gripe against VCRs when they were introduced. All though I would be quite enraged if they prevented me from recording broadcasts on a removable digital media, I would be far more enraged if I could not make digital recordings on a PVR.
Ultimately, IMHO, something like SCMS will be introduced to prevent multiple perfect digital copies originating from one source. However, SCMS was a joke for MiniDisc/DAT-- many units simply ignored the copybits or gave the option to turn them off. If worse came to worse, you can whip up a bit stripper and copy until your heart is content. Hopefully, if we end up getting a SCMS-like system on digital broadcasts, it will be taken as seriously as it was on MD/DAT and/or be very simple to beat...
...Then, of course, we would violate the DMCA and go to jail for months before our arraignment...
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
If they actually had anything on TV worth _watching_, this might make a wee bit more sense. I might as well stand by the curb next to my garbage... carrying a shotgun and hollering.
Who cares - waste your money protecting it if you want. Nobody's gonna steal what's on TV. Most of us like two or three channels which we need the full package cable to get, naturally.
I don't disagree with you there, on the content angle. I loved the part in the article that said studios wouldn't broadcast their movies over-the-air unless there was copy protection. That's BS. Most studio's and over-the-air networks are owned by the same corporation. (CBS=Viacom=Paramount FOX=20th/21st Century Fox ABC=Disney) They aren't going to forgo all those ad dollars. I really don't care there as I don't park my butt in front of the TV all that often. But if they insert 'flags' to prevent recording of movies, then they'll do it with any NFL, broadcast, etc. That WOULD make me angry.
I have a very simple solution. They say they won't broadcast high def movies without copy protection? Fine. Leave me my right to time shift, and I'll leave them their's not to broadcast a movie. (As well as not being able to shut down my TV. You DO know the copy group wants to be able to shut down a TV remotely, don't you? I know they've looked at that option closely.)
Actually lockpicks are legal.
It's how you use them that makes them illegal. In fact I can buy a tool that allows me to open most car locks at the local dollar store. If they are in your possession when you are caught committing a crime you're in trouble, and if the cops suspect that you are committing a crime (or about to) and you have them on you might have a bit more explaining to do, but just having them isn't illegal.
I think that's the main problem with the DMCA. It makes just having or talking about things illegal. The reason given is that they MIGHT be used to infringe on copyright. If that were the case then why don't we make steak knives, or hammers, or baseball bats illegal? I mean forget about copyright violations, there is documented evidence that people are MURDERED with these things. Sounds kind of ridiculous now doesn't it.
Using any tool to commit a crime is illegal. Murder is murder whether you shoot someone, beat them to death with a baseball bat, or strangle them with dental floss (Oops, perhaps I shouldn't have said that, they might decide to strictly regulate the manufacture and distribution of dental floss) You prosecute the person who committed the crime. You don't make possessing material objects illegal.
Perhaps the problem is that corporations and the congressmen that back them have their priorities all messed up. Murder, starvation, rape, assault that's ok. Just don't do anything that MIGHT effect their profit margin.
Heaven no. Not that.
Uggggg.....
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
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As far as I know no-one watches TV on anything that they have the ability or the desire to hack themselves. Watching TV on a PC used to allow people to copy it but no-one watches TV on a PC anymore. Even though copying DVD's was possible on PC's, it was already too inconvenient to play them on PC's let alone copy them on PC's.
That leaves hackers of X Boxes and set top boxes as the only meaningful grounds for copy protection. Unless kids start soldering PCI traces in their X Boxes or put up with an enourmous amount of inconvenience before getting the footage to even play, copy protection for appliances is going to be redundant.
Television copying restriction will fail, for one very good reason: advertising.
How much television do you watch live any more? Don't most people record many of their favorite programs for later viewing? Count out the people who can't afford a VCR; they're not going to be buying much of what's advertised anyway.
Now, what happens when a television studio tells their biggest sponsors that they've come up with a way to prevent people from recording shows to watch later? Suddenly the target audience drops by half, and advertisers will refuse to pay nearly as much to buy ad time.
People today lead busy lives. Stop allowing them to record programs, and they're generally not going to shift their schedule around to watch 'em live.
Consumers will not stand for it. HDTV gear is largely going begging because people won't stand for the inability to tape their favorite shows.
And when push comes to shove, the guys in DC listen to the guys with beer cans in their hands and cave in when the deadline nears.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
1. If the HDTV signal is unencrypted, flagged or not, creating a workaround, or a non-compliant device would be trivial. Since the copyprotection is a one-time thing (that is, once it's out, it's out), it won't work. (Yes this means they'll have to break all current systems, or upgrade them).
2. So let's assume we have an encrypted HDTV signal, which TVs can somehow decrypt, most likely with a CSS-style encryption, I'd guess 128/256 bit this time around.
3. We must assume that the signal being transmitted is in a format that makes it impossible to record directly, either by a varying session key (negiotiated through public-private cryptography) or artifically inflated size. If not we could just hook up any genenric device in the middle and replay the same signal.
4. Due to 3., the video will need to be able to decrypt the signal, it can't just store the encrypted signal and play it back as needed.
5. It's unreasonable to assume that the recording media, harddisk or DVD+RW, can be kept kept secure (they've dumped the contents of the Xbox already). So, we need a cryptographically strong encrypted file format.
6. Since we from 5. don't trust the disk, we can not uniquely identify it. To ensure that this is a recording we should play, we need an authentication system.
7. Presumably the best option would be to have a system like pgp, where there's a symmetric key, and public keys to find the symmetric key. Naturally the recorder would encrypt it using its own public key. This is basicly overkill until we introdouce the next point.
8. Limited sharing. In addition to adding its own key, the player could also add a limited noumber of other keys. These public keys you could get in any format you'd want that the player would understand (delivering your recorder with a stack of cards to give to your friends, an electronic version, whatever, this is public). However, since we can't trust the disk (add max noumber of friends, copy back the one without friends, add new and so on) we need either to include these keys only at recording, or keep a track of how many keys we've added pr. recording in a secure flash RAM or similar. The last is clearly preferable, and as we have a built-in encryption we might as well keep the data there encrypted too. Naturally, only the original recorder would add keys, any other would simply only play it.
9. Now I feel we have a reasonble digital VCR. It'll let you give your movies to some friends (I haven't specified a noumber, that's a matter of opinion), but you can't put it up on the Internet for all to leech. You can use standard media (harddisks, writeable DVDs, writable cds. You can backup the media, and they will still work. This was for your basic Reciever -> VCR -> TV setup. However, there is still some way to go.
10. VCR to VCR hookup. As it's all digital there's no quality loss, obviously it's a potential leak. Basicly we need a flag to tell if this should be recordable and how we should pass it on, only now that it's encrypted it's working. It would be a standard SCMS-system (No copy, copy once, free copying) The problem is that this will probably be abused by the media companies to sell you content (uhh sorry, licence you the right to see content) that you can't record. The solution would be to require by law that all broadcasts should be set to at least copy once, I don't see any possibility of technically identifying the source.
10. HD-DVD -> VCR -> TV. High Definition DVDs present a problem. Surely we'd like to be able to make a backup of a HD-DVD, and to keep one on the harddisk instead of putting in the disc every time. However unlike broadcasts a DVD can be played over and over again, and we wouldn't want an unlimited supply of copies, nor do we want an unlimited noumber of people able to make a copy, so the encoding in 10. would have to be set to no copying.
Once again I see using the recoders public key as useful, this time when buying the DVD. When buying you should get the DVD, and also the encryption key to the DVD encrypted with the recorder's public key. Once at home the recorder can take the encrypted data (I assume here the VCR has a built-in DVD player, if not, a way to request the encrypted data from the external player, which should be possible as they're harmless without a key) and create a backup that can not be played on other players.
However, you can now make as many backups you want of the file on your harddisk. So you have a disc which will play on all players, but can't be recorded, and as many backups as you want, however all backups will only play on your recorder. Naturally, this does not work with second-hand sale but it's unfortunately impossible to make neither the player nor the disc aware of this and allow a new owner to make backups.
11. When going to the store as described in 10., it's vital that the key is the recorder's, and not a public/private pair that is known. So, the key must be signed by the VCR producer. Also, all stores would have to have an (on-demand) electronic connection to a server which will give out the keys. So if the phone lines are out, no keys. The DVD will still work as a DVD, but you'd have to come back later to get key for your VCR.
12. Lost/stolen. All depends on the encryption keys, doesn't it. So, we'd want a backup of the private key to exist, however we wouldn't want someone to actually *have* the private key, nor do we want the Big Brother register of keys. Solution: Smart card or similar with the private key, encrypted with the manufacturer's key. This should be consider a valuable right up there with your silverware. With it you should be able to get a new one just like you would if it was permanently broken or you wanted to upgrade it, see below.
13. Upgrade/broken. Fundamentally, we could replace it with an exact copy, provided we had the private key. However, it would be much more convienient if we could take a different player and make it play the old disks. And we can. Once again we'll need the connection to the manufacturer, who'll return the private key of the old player, encryped with the public key of the new player.
14. For 12. there'll probably be some fundamental abuse checks. If the player is lost/stolen, a copy of the police report or similar. The upgrade feature should transparently upgrade all disks made using the old system (decrypt key with old, encrypt with new) to make it more difficult for people to use both the new and the "lost" player. The old player should be blacklisted in the server in 10., to note if someone is still buying DVDs to backup them on a "lost" or stolen player.
The automatic upgrade also saves some complexity as it won't have to deal with upgrades of upgrades of upgrades, only one generation.
15. Unsolved problems - limitations. The biggest one is the problem of what happens if one machine is replaced by several. Several old machines being upgraded to one new is no problem, but what if the family buys another machine for their son/daughter, or who gets the recorder in a divorce? Naturally, they could (and would) be designated as one of those that can play the recordings, but that doesn't give them the recorder's ability to add others that can watch them, nor can they move the DVD backups.
Potentially one could create a profile system, where each profile could get upgraded individually, however it's unlikely that people would bother using it, as there's no point until the day the problem arises. Maybe if it could be tied in with some value-adding components, like a personal TV guide with your channels, your "tell-me-when-this-is-on"-list, "record-this-for-me"-list etc., maybe some fundamental access control (pin code for those porn flicks you didn't want anyone else to see) and so on.
Another limitation is that of fair use. This grants backups (compared to none of todays DVDs, short of using DeCSS or similar), it grants lossless but limited sharing of broadcasts (compared to lossy but "unlimited" today, but I wouldn't want the 30th generation video tape, I'd say it's fair enough). However, it doesn't allow you to use that clip in any other way. The fundamental problem is that there is an unlimited noumber of copies, all exactly alike. One of the key conditions for fair use is that it usually involves a small part But those unlimited noubmer of small parts can easily be put together to an unencrypted whole, so I don't see a way to reasonably implement fair use digitally, without at the same time opening up Pandora's Box. First generation analog, at some reasonable quality will have to do, there's a balance to be kept here. As you'd have to have set-top boxes for current analog standards, I guess NTSC/PAL would be it.
16. Bottom line. The bottom line is, I haven't seen them trying very hard to come up with a technical, instead of legal, way of doing things. It's possible, it can be made fairly reasonable (except for all those that have bought a system that can't handle an encrypted HDTV), but I admit, I prefer my normal DVDs (after DeCSS) and DivXs as much as the next guy. But I see how they skew things too much to the side of the consumer, and I don't blame MPAA for trying to prevent free copying. There's a balance here between what's fair for the industry and what's fair for the consumer, but like most other things in the digital world it's very fast either 0 or 1 - rarely a good balance.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
[Soundtrack: documentary music. Off voice recites:] Note that the movie industry now heavily relies on revenue from home video sales and rentals, which is often higher than box-office revenue. Which proves that MPAA is clueless and not even able to understand the benefits of analog recording technology. This alone should definitely disqualify anything than Valenti ever says.
[Soundtrack: grinding cogs.] Wait, Valenti is still president of the MPAA. In spite of having fought against a technology that generated tens of billions of dollars of profits for the very movie producers he is supposed to represent. So Hollywood actually supports Valenti.
But then it means that... Ohmygod... [SFX: blinding flash] Oh no! It can only mean that HOLLYWOOD IS CLUELESS! AAARGH! How can that be? [Fade to black, soundtrack plays Wagner's Götterdämmerung finale, the part where the world comes to an end.]
But seriously...
Seriously, Hollywood's worst nightmare seems to be that every home has its own high-speed Internet connection and will copy the latest movies off the equivalent of Napster. That's why they oppose the growth of broadband.
Hollywood should realize that grown-ups with even just a bit of disposable income do not have either the time or inclination to boot their PC, fire up a search engine and slurp a huge file through a hypothetical broadband connection. Even at broadband speed, an IP connection cannot deliver the same "bandwidth" as a trip to the local video rental store, which is a full 2-hour movie (6 Gig on a DVD) in 15 minutes. Or 20 if they pick beer on the way home.
Adult with disposable income see their relaxation time as a precious commodity. If they can get a movie on DVD for $3, they won't have the patience to download anything even if it's free. The only potential users of movie download sites are students with ample bandwidth, no money and plenty of available time. They aren't a potential customer anyway (no money) and they accept to watch a movie on a PC screen, which most consumers sternly refuse to do. Marketing 101 teaches that you shouldn't harass regular, paying customers to attempt to deter a minority of shoplifters. Valenti slept through that class, obviously.
In summary, Hollywood, misled by Valenti et. al., does not have its facts right and is trying to shoot itself in the foot again. The MPAA cries wolf to justify its own existence and reinforces that kneejerk reflex.
Let's hope the producers will realize it and get out of the MPAA.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/