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Hardware Copy Protection Battles
substatica writes: "Law.com is running this article on the content industry working to convince congress that not introducing hardware copyright protection ( as well as copy protection built into OS, Software, Web Browsers and Routers ) would eventually lead to the "industry's destruction", as put by Michael Eisner. We've been able to copy VHS for over a decade and they're still making movies. Does anyone really think that the movie industry will be eradicated due to copyright infringment?" Consideration of the SSSCA has been put off a few months, but it will be back. The Register covers one part of the split between content and hardware with this story about Philips getting more uppity about their Compact Disc logo, a follow-up to this story. The Reuters article that the Register refers to is here.
they're admitting there is no way they can beat the media pirates without a law requiring hardware copyright protection? Is it just me, or is that like admitting they already lost?
The future isn't what it used to be.
I often wonder whether Walt would have wanted it this way. I remember doing a bio in 6th grade on him and how he grew up pretty much out of nothing in KC. He was an incredible businessman and loved to make a dollar but he also wanted to make people happy. I wonder if he would have been as possesive over Mickey Mouse as Michael Eisner is.
Call it Copy prevention because that's what it does!! Perhaps Copy interference even.
does the industry deserve saving? Maybe it's destruction would not be all bad. I guess we can all be thankful that there was no big scribe's union when the printing press was invented.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
If you've noticed, the trend in the past 10-20 years or so has been for the entertainment hardware companies and the content companies to be acquired/merge/etc by one another. For instance, Sony owns Columbia, Matsushita (parent company of Panasonic) owns at least a stake in universal, etc. Or on the PC side, Microsoft is doing a lot with NBC.
It's possibly scary because now, instead of facing inertia from the electronics firms in terms of integrating DRM, now it changes the economics of the sitation, because now it will be in the hardware companie's best interests.
I don't know about this, but could this be perceived as possible anti-trust violation? Could you imagine if Microsoft bought a stake of a major PC maker?
Hmmm.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The only thing that will destroy the movie industry is itself. They keep pumping out crap movies, over charging for movies, and trying to restrict every right we have when it comes to using movies. This will eventually come back to haunt them. Greed kills.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Don't call it Copy Protection. Call it Copy Restriction or Usage Restriction.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Well, they have it half right. Hardware copyright protection is a pain to disable or bypass and would help [their] cause. That would work for DVD-RAM and the like imported into the U.S. But what about optical devices manufactured and sold overseas? How are you going to control that market, without resorting to shenanigans like strong-arming countries like the Ukraine. U.S. industry has to realize that it cannot dictate it's will to the rest of the world. See Microsoft vs. Chinese Linux.
The point here is that no matter what law gets passed we'll always find a way to get around it.
Do you really believe the record labels and film producing companies can get enough momentum to create an un-crackable copyrights protection system? I don't.
Maybe the big companies can pay expensive lawsuits, but I'm sure not going to buy a harddisk or other media that check's the content of whatever I want to put on it.
sig not found
I just received a letter from my senator, John Edwards (D-NC) on this very matter.
He says "Thanks for contacting me to share your thoughts on the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA.) I appreciate hearing from you."
"As you know, this legislation, which has not yet been officially introduced in the Senate, would prohibit the manufacture of digital devices which do not include government-sanctioned copyright-protection technologies. A number of people have expressed concerns that this proposed measure is overbroad and that its restrictions on the duplication and distribution of digital content could be harmful to the technology industry. I understand your concerns."
"As a member of the Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee, I will keep your thoughts in mind should the SSSCA or similar legislation come before the Senate. I will also continue to consider ways to improve our copyright and internet security laws so they better serve the public. Your letter will help me in that work."
"Again, thank you for contacting me. Please let me know if I can be of assistance in the future."
"Yours sincerely, John Edwards"
What scares me here is, the continued work to improve our copyright and internet security laws....
We propose that all motor cars be limited to 5 mph, redesigned to eat horse-nuts, and regularly drop excrement on the road where others might slip on it. Only through this can our industry, essential to the American economy, be protected from these new dangers.
Taken to the extreme, the only way they will ever ensure rights management (whatever that means) is to encrypt the data stream from head to tail. This is a boon for everyone involved. Hardware manufacturers will build new hardware to support encrypted content, software manufacturers will write software to run on that hardware, chip makers will make chips fast enought o support the new software. It's a win from top to bottom in the industry. People will pay per view/listen and the rights stream will be assured. The government will love it because they get to collect taxes. This is a Orwellian Utopia. Of course Michael Eisner loves it. The only person who gets screwed is the consumer.
Screwed is the right word. This will kill independent/non-commerical artistic work (you won't be able to use that perfect U2 song for your student film). It will cause a huge social detriment (If I hadn't pirated everything I could get my hands on ten years ago, I would be a administrative assistant instead of a network architect. Side note: I would also not be recommending the purchases of volume license of the program to businesses).
This is our society marching towards a new caste system. We are already being turned into one big sheep, consuming what we are given.
There is a huge solution, though... Let's turn the TV off and stop listening to commercial radio. Expand your horizons and listen to indy media. Take a walk or read a book, or hell, write a book. Stop playing video games and watching TV. Stop wasting life with instant gratification.
Mass media is the new religion (how many people attend the church of the West Wing every Wednesday?) and religion is a tool to keep the masses in check. How does that make you feel? How does it make you feel that Michael Eisner is using the money you paid for your kids to see the lastest proprietary disney fable as a detriment to their creative futures?
This is something my KAOS operating system deals with, I plan to use DeCSS as the DVD player part.
/. freak
This doesn't help piracy, it gets you past the stuff you can't skip. (copyright notice, adverts)
It also tells the CD Rom drive to behave like a CD player when playing a CD.
It should then work like a charm, but if you want to rip a protected CD, just play from an external CD player and plug the audio out into your computer's audio in port.
You can then rip Mp3's or OGG if you're a
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Creating crippled hardware wont make any difference in my behavior, and I suspect that it won't change anyone else's either.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
It is absolutely amazing there still exists those idiots who believe something can be copyprotected. History has shown us that there is nothing you can copyprotect. Let's keep it cool and forget the morons!
..that they will go away if congress dose not pass this law? :)
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The quality of movies may go down, but profits continue to rise, which is all the studios really care about.
...is that the proprietary schemes will be lost and we will have boatloads of information that we can no longer read. It is rather scarey that I might need to keep around my sdmi (or whatever scheme) player around forever because nothing else will be able to play those disks/tracks.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
No hardware protection will:
kill about 5% of Hollywood's business
However it will make the customers bigger consumers because we will finally be able to see:
1. Indie films!
2. Films from overseas (all those region 2-8 DVDs)
3. Films with original ideas and scripts
And seeing all those things will make us crave quality, and Hollywood will be forced to hire WRITERS, who can WRITE.
Film is an art form, dammit. Some art that is popular sells, but all that sells is not art.
The alleged upside of DRM to the consumer is supposed to be access to lots and lots of media that can be tightly controlled at a cheaper price. While there have been lots of failures (e.g., Divx), I have yet to see one succeed.
.NET architecture. That is, if they don't
get greedy and expect to collect $199 per user to upgrade.
This kind of system might work. The problem isn't the hackers. It's the ridiculously high prices they try to squeeze out of the consumer vs. any perceived "convenience" their product is supposed to yield. Divx failed because no one in their right mind would go through all the trouble and expense to watch a disposable DVD when a "regular" DVD was cheap enough to own in the first place.
The only company that might be able to pull it off would be Microsoft with the introduction of their
As the article said, the process of setting the standard is going quite slowly. I find it quite humorous that the process for setting the standard is rarely fast enough to keep up with the process of hacking it. Granted, it may be more difficult to hack hardware. But it's still done. Take a look at how long a game console is released before it's hacked. I don't think that they can implement the hardware copyright on all digital media before a solution for this kind of corporate fascism takes hold.
On the other hand...if they do...we'll have plenty to keep us busy for a couple years!
I have no desire to reach nirvana.
Philips had the great insight that it isn't copy protection, it's actually a "mechanism for stopping the playback of music", which it is.
"The Music Industry's" intention is to thwart PC playback until a later date, when CDDrives that enforce copy protection will be available.
My question - this obviously forces a spurious obsolence of existing CDDrives, for the sole purpose of forcing the above upgrade which has no actual benefit to consumers, and screws every existing CDDrive Mfg on the market. Doesn't this border on a predatory innovation under anti-trust laws?
I'd love to hear some insight on this.
-SBB
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Microsoft, bad as it is, is no where as restrictive and closed as Apple is.
"Think different", but only with our hardware, our OS, our approved dealers.....
"the Hollings bill would make it a civil offense to develop a new computer or related technology that does not include a federally approved security standard preventing the unlicensed copying of copyrighted works. In at least one version, the law would make it a felony to remove a watermark or flag from copyrighted content. It would also outlaw logging onto the Internet with any computer that removes or sidesteps the copy protection technology. "
So, if this gets passed, would we all be forced to upgrade our computers before we can legally log on to the internet? I can't imagine that most Americans would be able to afford this. Will the Cyber Police haul away Joe Poorman for not being able to afford an upgrade? And what about people in other countries? Could they use their old computers?
Tell me that doesn't scare every one of you.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
with one point-
"... not covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and lays the ground for the mother of all sue-fests with the number of large and rich companies who are most certainly not going to agree with him. Tin hats all round. "
Somehow I have a feeling whoever has the deepest pockets is going to with the lawsuits. Isn't that just about how it always works?? That and whoever squeals the loudest... Well we all know how the RIAA is!
to get such "cops" into hardware.
Case in point, the serial numbers in Pentium Chips. Everyone from the biggest geek down to your 90 year old grandma was screeming bloody murder about it. So much that (I believe) Intel has stopped the practice. Or if they havent, the bios can quickly disable this "feature"
The problem with hardware is "who is going first". Answer? No one. Its suicide. If Intel came out today and said our chips have the new "super-duper-clipper-dipper-chip" in it that stops all copying of copyright material (work with me on this one). AMD's stock would FLY through the roof, people would flock to AMD processors, and AMD would be king.
Until there is either an extremely fierce law or just one vender who makes hardware X, it is nothing but talk and wants by some very uneducated people who believe that a computer can do anything. Well there partially correct, computers can do anything, but others (programmer, hardware manufactors, etc) can do anything to stop there "anything". Nothing is "unbreakable".
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
There's a Vice President for Government Relations at Disney?? o.O
Important words and phrases noted:
"control"
"undetectable yet traceable" (eh?)
I especially liked the delineation between "consumers" and "users" I think the term "consumer" is demeaning and borders on insulting.
Consumers don't make choices or think, they simply consume. bleh.
This debate must have the purpose of restoring balance to public policy regarding copyrights. One guy in the article had the answer, but no time was taken to explain it further: having a good site with the features people want, etc. will be popular. Agreed. Where is it? Until those services are available, the "content companies" should be working on them, not complaining about some grainy DivX somewhere, or some 20-year out-of-date disco mp3s.
Have you noticed? They put effort into every
area except writing better scripts. Special
effects? Yes. Fancy actors? Yes. Executive
bonuses? Yes. Better scripts? Absolutely not.
The power of the internet is very different than VHS tapes. As bandwidth grows, and storage increases, no technology, with the possible exception of hardware protections (I for one think that widespread use of hardware protection would lead to an underground hardware market), copyright will not be able to survive. Copyright is a concept that only works when the medium and the media can't be separated. You can't separate a book from it's words, or a VHS tape from it's movie. Sure, you can copy it, but only to another medium. We now have a medium that is flexible enough to functionally separate the two.
I don't understand why anyone but the music industry cares if technology has made the business model of the industry unprofitable and unnecessary. I'm' sure the horse and buggy industry was pissed about cars, but I don't hear them still complaining (overused example, I know, sorry). Yet a lot of people actually seem to buy this whining about the death of the recording industry.
The internet is a big leap in human technology, and it's made a lot of our laws unaplicable. That's okay, lots of the laws that the founders of this country thought were a good idea, but we don't have around anymore. Why? Because things change, and the laws have to change with them. Copyright (and eventually the pattent system), are over. Deal with it, and move on hardware manufacturers/music industry/everyone else.
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Don't call it Copy Restriction or Usage Restriction. It ends up doing neither. There are always ways around this thing.
However, I'm not looking forward to having to park a camcorder on a tripod in front of the HDTV in order to copy a movie (until they force watermark technology to prevent screen filming...)
Better names? "Copy Annoyance". "Digital Rights Hindrance" (after all, they are trying to get in the way of you excercising your fair use rights over the files).
My favorite? "Piracy Encouragement". The non-working Fast and the Furious CD from Universal only helps convince you that it is a good idea to not buy it and instead get cracked files off Gnutella.
call me a crook, and throw me in jail, because I will NEVER, and I mean NEVER, obey this proposed law.
sulli
RTFJ.
Remember the dot-com boom? What if the politicians don't want to be left behind? They didn't pick up on "XML" as fast as they could have so that sort of venture went down the drain. Now this new "DRM" thing can cause all kinds of good stuff. Right? Let's help them understand, by writing our congressmen/women, that DRM is bad for us all and they will only be left behind if they buy into it all.
The politicians are there for YOU and ME, not for some self serving interest of a corporation. Make the point across that you aren't willing to give up your Fair Use rights for some corporate bully wanting money. If that corporation can't make money in the free market, they should revise its business model to fit that market. Not devise laws to fit that business model.
This might be mroe entertaining than some of the films the entertainment industry has put out lately (except Lord of the Rings)!!!! It will be fun to watch the lawsuits fly!
I'm glad to finally see them finally protecting the CD logo. When I go to buy CDs I want to know that the profuct I'm buying is what I'm actually getting. IMO, a "CD" that won't play on any of my CD players but contains this logo is nothing less than deceptive and misleading advertising.
---
I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Well performance goes out the window now doesn't it then? Open media file and computer then will: decrypt file, check for watermark, check to see if I am legal user, call home to super corporation that I am looking at the media file (also noting in a database what media I like to look at for business tracking), write a letter to my mom asking if I am of legal age to watch this media file, take my finger print/blood test to see if I am who I say I am, and then ask me politely if I am legal user. What the hell happens to the performance people?!
All they need to do is ADD VALUE to what they pedal- MAKE people WANT to buy it. Already there are audio cards that sample at over four times (@192 khz) CD quality audio - and at 24 bits... (and I'm NOT talking about oversampling... I'm talking hi-res audio, deeper bit depths) next we'll have surround sound. If they keep the quality so high and the files so huge, any digital portable copy will be a pathetic compressed comprimise.
As someone who works with audio production, I can only imagine the nightmare of production... production is all about manipulating and editing audio. I can't imagine having to unlock each audio track to edit it... but alas- when DATs hit the street years ago, there was a "consumer" version that was hardware locked with copy protection. All of my DAT interfaces now have a software switch to override this protection... and its entirely legal. I can switch over to the "pro" setting. I'm sure we'll eventually see the same thing.
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
There's a lot of discussion about "watermarking" digital content in the article so the VCR or DVD player knows it's legal and plays it, if no watermark is found it wont play it.
What is there to keep people from faking watermarks? Or hacking the DVD player to play it anyway. Is there anything anyone can do to keep "the public" from bypassing something if they're given enough time and have the patience? Doubt it. Protection on protection over the protections, doesnt matter - someone somewhere will break it and then everyone else has a piece of the cake as well. Will they release a "new" and "better" DVD player then? And force everyone to buy it, because as we all know it's illegal to bypass digital rights - even if it's not done on purpose.
"But honest to God sir! I didnt know the DVD I bought was illegal, you told everyone that the new system with watermarks would make it impossible to pirate a DVD and since it played fine I didnt think more about it."
"You've broken the law according to the DMCA, you circumvented our protection when you played that DVD, and no excuses can save you."
I dont like the future, at least not this future.
Anataka suki desu. Itsumo. Itsumademo.
I keep hearing the same argument over and over again that I figure it deserves some recognition.
The Great Lie is as follows: Without us (your friendly neighborhood content conglomerate) the entire well of human creativity would dry up!
Let me elaborate. They're saying that without the RIAA and it's member companies, nobody would create any more music! Without the MPAA and the big studios, we'd never see any more new movies. The Lie is that without big, greedy corporations continuing Business As Usual, nothing new or original would ever produced, ever.
History proves otherwise, though. Already we've seen small bands create their own music and give it away online, just for the exposure. In a few years of technological advancement, any talented bunch of people will be able to make their own "Hollywood style" movie at home. Writings? Ha! People will gladly write free work on any subject imaginable.
Heck, some people even lose money bringing original content to the masses.
So you see, whatever happens, you can't stifle human creativity. No matter how hard you try. We don't need Them to entertain us anymore; and the only reason they're still around - the only reason they were ever around in the first place - is by our good graces.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
The content companies...argue that failure to build copy protection into the very digital environment itself will lead to their industry's destruction.
And if it is built in then large corporation will control how almost completely how we get and watch our digital entertainment.
I will agree with the entertainment industry that the choice doesn seem to be quite simple, either they have complete control of digital entertainment or that they will have practically no control with very few possible levels in between.
However to put the options another way - should we put controls one the much larger electronics and communications industry, limiting their ability to (actually) innovate, restrict how people own their own property by outlawing people breaking in to watch DVDs they _own_ or should we insist that the entertainment industry does what every other business has had to do throughout history and adapt to changing times.
The Internet allows more access to information for more people than has ever been anticipated in human history....they must be able to figure out a way to translate bigger audiences, cheaper distribution and less control to make more money.
Top Quote from Telsa Gwynne it's copy protection - protection as in racket.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
See trustedpc.org the "Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, or TCPA, formed by Compaq, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
It "trusts" the hardware from a special chip on the mainboard, which trusts the BIOS, which trusts the Harddisk bootblock, which trusts the OSloader, which trusts the OS, which trusts the software application, which trusts the stream. This is done through a "privacy certificate agency" that just identifies your pc uniquely (and really, we will not keep records of who you are, those will be destroyed after you've submitted your identity and we have checked it!)
Ofcourse, trust here doesn't mean that YOU can trust your PC, but that THEY can trust YOUR PC.
If this standard makes it, the opensource community has a big problem.
Agreed. I hope you replied with a sufficiently scathing and eye-opening letter, threating to contact every geek you know in his district, and recommend never voting for him again. ;)
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
There will inevitably be overhead involved, where the hardware devices perform checks on file save operations to determine that copy protected files are not being saved or illegally modified without authorization.
As a customer, I'm not going to accept performance bottlenecks in my hardware for, say, my database server, just because the movie and music industries need protection against college kids on Napster v.8.
The content companies can't win this one.
sounds like a good time to buy Cisco since all routers, hubs, etc would also have to get destroyed.
I guess the old saying (joke) "The Internet is Down" would actually mean something.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
...not introducing hardware copyright protection ( as well as copy protection built into OS, Software, Web Browsers and Routers ) would eventually lead to the "industry's destruction"
Two things. One, such a statement is gross hyperbole.
But two, so what?! The argument IP proponents always make is that they need more and more government protection or their industry will suffer. Well maybe it should suffer. If you build a business method on an anachronism, you will, and should, suffer. You should suffer, because this is how the economy minimizes the amount of total suffering. Which is what lawmakers should really be concerned about. The economy as a whole - not particular outdated outliers.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Maybe the problem is the idea of the "content industry" in the first place.
Those words show just how much meaning art has to these executives -- zero. "Content" is a way of referring to art as commodity, and it devalues both the artist and audience into sellers and buyers in a market.
Maybe we don't NEED an industry to feed us "content" anymore. Maybe we can make it up and share it amongst ourselves. Maybe we'll pay those of us who we really like. Maybe we won't be bamboozled by the bright lights of big money spectacles anymore. Without their ludicrously large promotion budgets, the Nsyncs and the Pearl Harbors of the world will fade away, replaced by new choices that mean something.
I think it's this future that we're seeing emerge, and I find a lot of hope in it. I think it terrifies the "content industry". And it makes me glad. Because to be successful, their content will have to become art again.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
He argues that the protection system is not a protection system as such, but simply a mechanism for stopping the playback of music. This interesting claim allows him to contend that the protection systems are not covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and lays the ground for the mother of all sue-fests with the number of large and rich companies who are most certainly not going to agree with him. Tin hats all round.
If they can manage to do damage using that particular argument, then DeCSS cases and anything related to it can also be won. "Playback protection != Copy protection"!! If the courts agree, then DeCSS's arguments will definitely hold the water in the courts. And then it may even break up the whole "playback license" issue as well!
This is an exciting case where two companies butt heads instead of "politician-buying-corporate-interests" vs. 'the people.' Obviously, the people no longer have influence... and that makes perfect sense since the people don't elect the officials any more... clearly, the corporate interests buy their people into office.
Yes! This is HATE SPEECH! I hate where politics have gone and that they forgot where they came from.
Companies are willing to spend millions to keep the customer base from saving $100,000.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
`` Supporters of the Hollings proposal
don't couch the legislation in terms of
protecting embattled copyright
interests. They frame it as a measure
designed to promote digital content
and the use of broadband, high-speed
Internet services. If Hollywood could
be assured that its content would be
protected on the broadband Internet,
the argument goes, it would develop
more compelling programs for the
Web and spur greater consumer
demand for broadband.''
Excuse me. The single greatest spurs for broadband *ALREADY* exist; Hell, hollywood is doing their utmost to shut them down. They're Napster, Morpheus, Gnutella.
If it hadn't been for those programs, internet bandwidth would be a fraction what it is now. Furthermore, there'd be much less reason to PURCHASE broadband anymore.
Hollywood: If you don't put your own goods online now, where people want them, then someone else will do it for you. (which is already occurring.)
I was in a well-known copying establishment a couple of days ago, watching a small, polite, quiet woman at the counter talking to the attendant:
Woman: "I'd like a copy of this please" (holds out inkjet print of a picture)
Attendant: "I'm sorry, but that picture is copyrighted. I can't copy it."
I was floored. I got really, REALLY angry for a moment, then started thinking: do these people have a neural link to the Library of Congress? How do they know it's copyrighted? What if it's public domain?
The woman was crestfallen. So I said:
"She might be planning to make Fair Use of that picture."
Attendant: "Still can't copy it. It's our policy. It's only Fair Use if it's educational."
To which I replied:
"or journalistic, or non-commercial and limited in other ways, or for criticism, or properly attributed. There are four criteria for Fair Use."
So I asked the lady, "what's it for, school report or something?" and she says yes, that her daughter was going to use it for school. So I turned to the attendant and said
"There you go, black-letter Fair Use."
He just shakes his head, still refusing.
Is this what we're looking forward to? Copyright police behind the counter at copy places? Taking an I.P. attorney's pager number along as well? I really felt bad for this lady. It was late and she looked very tired and the report was probably due the next day. I'm sure whoever made that picture would have filed an immediate Federal injunction to bar this woman's daughter from turning in her report before requesting a licensing fee schedule.
(uh huh). I actually considered going back to the office and making something similar in Bryce for her to use with a signed letter placing my picture in the public domain.
I kind of wished she had brought her daughter along. Imagine the media frenzy/public relations disaster possibilities of a copy place attendant, arms folded, refusing to copy a picture for a crying 5th grader's school report. heh heh heh.
It's sad, and it has absolutely *nothing* to do with the original purpose of copyright law. This needs to be fixed, and soon.
Okay so when can I expect my video camera to mosaic out advertisements and mosaic out the television screen if the person I am video tapeing walks infront of my television which is playing "Star Wars Episode 1"?
Because it is an absolutely unworkable law. It cannot be enforced. They might as well requires all cars to drive as 100 years ago, limited to walking speed following a flagman. Or require everyone to salute cops and call them Sir Yer Royal Higness Sir.
When they stoop to unenfiorceable laws like this, it is a sure sign they are running scared.
Let's suppose the silly thing passed. They'd have to redesign the hardware of course. Make it not work with old hardware. Well, let's call that doable.
Now how do they ban Linux, *BSD, etc? They have to, you know. The hardware won't protect Hollywood without the right (M$) software, you do understand that? Right, good. Now let's suppose they make distribution of free source OSes illegal. They will certainly shut down major servers after many court battles. Let's suppose they do so. Let's suppose that the only way to distribute Linux is via anonymous news groups, or email with friends, etc.
Obviously they can't crack down on every single person. They probably couldn't even crack down on enough of them to scare everybody else off. So how do they stop people from working on free source OSes?
They make compilers illegal, that's how. Just like they made Linux and *BSD illegal. They have to, because you couldn't make a compiler which recognizes (and refuses to compile) operating systems, as opposed to harmless applications.
Now tell me, how much of this can they really get away with? I say none of it. Even if they were naive enough to pass the legislation, by the time the courts got done with it, there wouldn't be anything left worth spitting on. The practical aspects of it would get people's attention and there would be so many loopholes that it would be a seive.
IT IS UNWORKABLE and a sign of desperation. They know they have lost. When will you realize it too?
Infuriate left and right
I don't see what Hollywood is so worried about. For a DVD to be pirated, it means at least one person at some point bought a legitimate copy of it.
For the vast majority of crappy movies Hollywood puts out, one person buying a DVD copy is pretty optimistic sales prediction, DeCSS or no DeCSS.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
Looks to me like a laundry list of companies to avoid giving your money to whenever possible, if you don't like this.
Could it be possible that Phillip's really just wants the powers that be in the record inustry to pay them money to get this protection entered into some specification that will allow them to be called CDs? Make them squirm a bit and they'll pay?
Let them get into this stupid scheme of hardware protection. When every manufacturer got into it, I'll start a company that manufactures old style hardwares, with a label saying that the hardware is not compliant and must not be used for playing the "compliant contents".
:)
The trick is to publish details hardware specs, and make the hardware such that the microcode can be upgraded, and that it is easy to do too.
With all these OSS hackers creating new softwares for my hardwares, the market is all mine.
It's like making guns. The manufacturer doesn't care (or pretends it) how you use the gun. They just label it as a tool. You do whatever you want. My hardware is also a tool, you do whatever you want with it. And obviously, I'll have very good support for OSS hackers too
Even Philips doesn't consider hardware "copyright protection" to relate at all to copyright - just COPYING.
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
I refuse to obey this law either.
And I also refuse to be jailed unless I do something wrong. And connecting to the internet to get my email is not wrong, nor is viewing a DVD movie that I bought on my CDR player in the DIVX format.
I am free and will always live free as long as I draw a breath.
I mention again.. if your going to bitch, Bitch Productively. Ranting on /. is good for one thing alone: Getting ideas up to write your congresspersons. If you don't agree with something, use due process. Don't make the call of anarchy - change using the established CCS. For god sakes, use the same (Real IT, not Open Source im-14-and-a-sysadmin-for-mynameco-industries) methodologies you would use for anything else. Structured Change. Its how it happens, folks. That and bribes. Big hoking bribes.
Anways, I feel obligated to point out:
www.house.gov
www.senate.gov
www.whitehouse.gov
also let the MPAA/RIAA know. All you do by biznitchin here is ruff up feathers, get everyone hot and bothered, and then.. do nothing else. Evaluate your goals, and take steps towards it.
Just my $0.02
If Eisner is so concerned about the industry's destruction, why doesn't he consider what his customers want? I realize that most people have the IQ of various garden vegetables, but I'm not going to buy something that's a pain in the ass to use. If all of this copy protection crap becomes mandatory, I'll just have to fall back on all the books I've been stockpiling at about 5 cents each. I already have enough to last me many, many years, so I think I can afford to miss the characters on Friends whining and the characters on ER facing yet another personal crisis that has nothing to do with medicine (yes, I know that those are on NBC and Disney owns ABC, but I don't know what shows are on ABC, I don't even know what number channel it is around here), not to mention the recent torture fad... I suppose I should start recording the few good shows out there that aren't likely to be released on a reasonably priced set of DVDs (not that I particularly care for CSS and region coding, but at least there are ways around those) while I'm at it. It feels like an information cold war - better stock up while you can, it might not be around tomorrow...
...it was accompanied by 1) a significant increase in the definition of "fair use," and b) a serious reduction in the length of copyrights.
I like the musicians I listen to enough to pay them for their work. And I have little interest in making massive copies of the latest albums to distribute on the net for free. I understand that these people need to get paid for the investment they make in artists.
So they can put DRM stuff in my CD burner, I'm cool with that. But the trade off for them doing so is that they have to release their choke hold on creative works. I want copyrights that last for an absolute maximum of 10 years before the work goes into the public domain. I want to burn my sister one of my CDs for her birthday. I want to be able to remix tunes and post them on the Internet. Or add a soundtrack to my home movies.
Basically, if the content industry wants all of this additional ability to protect their copyright, I want something in return: COMPULSORY LICENSING. I have no issue with paying a nominal fee to these people so that I can remix their music and post it online as my own work. That seems rather fair to me.
It breaks down like this: copy protection is going to happen. There's too much money in it for the tech companies. Now as I see it, we have two choices here- we can either 1) fight this legislation, and spend valuable game playing time figuring out how to crack the latest encryption schemes, or b) utilize this opportunity to get some copyright laws that make sense.
That was my attitude all along. So called 'copy-protected CDs' are corrupted, not copy-protected. I have a right to either fixed them or return them.
Everyone knows that copyright (and other IP) laws are a balance. Maybe we could restore some of that balance if they were applied across the board. Let's require the same level of "protection" for our own personal data that the corps demand for their content:
all personal data must be put in some special encrypted file format, with tags which say who it belongs to and a "license" for accessing it legally.
a PDAA (personal data access association) might arrange licenses to purchase use of personal data. It will be copyrighted for 150 years of course.
The hardware that telemarketers, customer databases, marketing depts. use must have built in protection to respect the limits in the above file formats.
federal raids and frequent audits to make sure no one is accessing the data without a license.
I'd personally like to make a statement which must be viewed and acknowledged each time any of my data is accessed. I might license my data for a bit more in exchange for disabling this feauture.
criminal penalties, pressure on the rest of the world to adopt similar laws, etc. need to be included.
Sounds too burdensome? Takes away the rights of businessess?
Well.. maybe we can work out a cross-licensing agreement.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Phillips could argue that companies who do not clearly label copy protected disks are violating their copyright by fooling consumers into thinking they are buying real CDs when, in fact, they are buying copy protected discs that won't work for half of the legal, non-infringing uses a consumer might have for it.
In fact, the consumers might be able to win a class action suit against the record companies to that effect. The content companies are intentionally trying to hide copy protection so that the consumers don't know what they are really getting, and if they did know, most of them wouldn't buy the copy-protected CDs.
IANAL, but I am sure there are laws against decieving the customer about what he is really buying.
Repeal the DMCA!
A quote got me to thinking:
``All you have to do is attempt to put some kind of technological protection system that controls access to the work -- it doesn't matter how effective it is.''
My mother has a website that pops up an alert box saying "Don't copy my page" when you right click on it, which has become pretty common. Mozilla/Galeon ignore the javascript that generates these warnings and is therefore bypassing a copy protection mesure.
Does that put them in violation of the DMCA?
How stupid IS this legislation?
Aaron
AaronCameron.net
Think about the book, that ancient storage miracle. There's nothing in a book to prevent someone from copying it, short of the "if this book has been stripped" moral appeal inside some. And widespred photocopying of books does go on, as does some (limited) net piracy.
In the early days of the printing press, illegal copying was much more widespread than it is now. Gradually, it dissipated in the First World, but not to due to any kind of technological enhancement of the book. It was due to old-fashioned laws, cops, courts, and decreased acceptance of pirated works. Also helpful was the library, which allowed the sharing of works so sholars didn't have to own every book they worked with.
Despite the technological vulnerabilities of the book, centuries of change and the web the book publishers are still here, and still raking in the dough. The book publishers reluctantly accept used bookstores and libaries, and you could make a good case they benefit greatly from them, because they encourage a literate population that will buy their works.
While I realize that the printing press is a far from perfect analogy to the Internet, (copying by press is much harder than point and click) both were quantum leaps in communication. The printing press certainly didn't destroy creativity and artists, and in fact greatly aided both. I believe that the same will be true of hte Internet, that making communication easier always stimulates creativity.
I also wonder if the "content companies" will just accept a certain level of piracy as the cost of doing business as background noise and accept like the book publishers have taht people are willing to pay a premium for clean, easy to use, legal content. And also realize that police and society will tend to kill the larger offenders.
I posted and all I got was this stupid sig
Mosts artists have been rooked royally by these content control freaks, just like consumers. Vote with your wallet, buy directly from independent artists. Also, with respect to hardware manufacturers.. again, vote with your wallet. Manufacturers or cartel associations (and their lapdog governments) that do not respect consumer fair use, or PRIVACY do not deserve consumer greenbacks. PERIOD!! You have to ask, who is actually the real pirate? It aint the consumers, it *is* the RIAAs, MPAAs and their crook international brethren. I'm VERY tired of my tax dollars being used to police senile industry distribution channels. The time has almost come when Adam Smith's invisible hand will break free again, and it's a clenched in a fist this time - thanks alot Greenspan, you freakin' genius. :-) Grab a second hand guitar.... :-) and plant yourself a garden
You can make it happen by voting with your wallets. Be forwarned though that the crookery of the IMF over the last several decades will mean that many people won't have anything in their wallets any damn way. So we'll be arguing about foodstuffs first
* It is easier. Computer with a CD-burner and a fast connection is everything that is needed and it is faster too. Burning a CD is a 10 minute job. Copying VHS movies takes time. Same thing with music - not so anymore (combine that with the last point).
* It is cheaper. CD-R's are dirt cheap.
* The quality is mostly better or at least good enough.
* No quality loss when copying.
The last point is important - earlier, the copying was limited because the copy was not as good as the original - not so any longer. Makes spreading stuff much easier.
I'm not defending RIAA or MPAA, but I understand why they are worried.
We would go back in time to the age of Live Performances. Opera, Plays, Concerts would rise in prominence. You would need to hire musicians to ride in your car if you wanted to hear music there. Why?
Music, as well as other forms of art have existed since long before recording and copyright. We have never left the age of live music, it's just changed. Bands always have made money performing live, ask any real musician, and they'll tell you that. The recording industry is what makes possible these super-rich musicians (you know who I'm talking about), and if musicians can't be millionaires, too fucking bad. Go out, and play your music, and make your money. Without copyright law, the internet and the technology will not go away, and we'll have more music and movies than ever before, because we will be able to copy them freely on this beauitful information network. Then, when we want to really experience that music with our fellow human beings, we'll do what human beings have always done, they congregate and entertain eachother.
Because there would be no incentive.
Bullshit. Art is passion, and whether they're getting paid or not, artists will always create their art, it is the excrement of the human imagination. I think this dilema is a fundemantal flaw in capitalism.
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
No, greed does not kill.
Greed creates absolute power. Absolute power creates absolute corruption.
If you don't like it, join a religion.
We should be allowed to copy, distribute, and especially modify TV and movies as we choose. If such a new paradigm means that the only way the producers can be compensated for their productions is pay-per-view and per-use billing, that's fine with me - so long as that billing is a fair price, it's low enough for everyone to afford (and it's WAY higher than it should be at the moment), and it passes into the public domain in a reasonable time.
Why am I saying this? Because the biggest problem with the media today is that the producers, and the government, and especially the distributors exert entirely too much control over how and where their products are used, which is precisely the reason the US constitution was so specific regarding copyright and patenting. There is nothing inherently wrong with copying someone's idea or work, despite people's territorial urge to the contrary. Art and invention rest on foundations of previous ideas and works laid down over the years, to the benefit of everyone. The free dissemination of ideas enriches all involved and in turn allows further improvement and better understanding. Governments (or at least the US government) and companies have no business telling you whether and how you use that information - that's censorship. This is why allowing people to modify works is so important. Excerpting clips, commenting (via additional media tracks in the case of video), parodying, and most importantly translating (as in the case of fansubs) works allows people to fully utilize them.
The only argument (besides matters of national security like nuclear technology, or products of criminal acts like child porn) against allowing people to copy freely is that it would remove the profit motive (and how strongly the profit motive is relative to other factors is a matter of some controversy), thus encouraging secrecy or discouraging people from innovating altogether. Thus patents and copyrights are granted for only a set period of time to allow their makers to recoup their expenses. They are a bargain created to serve the public good by encouraging innovation and dissemination of those innovations. People used to understand that, but greedy companies and their lawyers have obscured that through intimidation (as in the case of Disney) and legal loopholes (as in the double whammy of restrictive software licensing and anti-circumvention legislation) to devastating effect.
(I apologize, this is a repeat of an earlier post I made on a story that was already off the front page - so I decided to reuse it)
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Keep you eye on the prize, they say, and the prize is this: pay for play. These guys won't rest (because they're out for profit) until you are paying for every single viewing of their movies. This kind of legislation facilitates that and the piracy issue is a diversion to hide that fact.
It's a control thing.
I'm just waiting for their next trick when it becomes mandatory to watch their movies.
As an European, I have nothing against American Law putting American business at a great disadvantage, as long as they don't imply that us Europeans should accept the same disadvantage just to protect American business...
In Murphy We Turst
2002-01-18 21:50:48 Xbox emulator trojan confirmed (articles,security) (rejected)
Could you please open a journal with this article?
It doesn't matter if it was rejected, many of us would like to know and make comments. You could then change your sig to something like this
2002-01-18 21:50:48 Xbox emulator trojan confirmed (articles,security) (rejected)
Kilroy was here!
Anybody can publish anything, including original works.
Of course, we can't have everybody publishing whatever they want to, it might be copyright infringement.
To enjoy Freedom of the press, you must first own a press.
Presently, anyone connected to the internet is potentially a publisher.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
"I am too busy, under too much stress from the recent reorganization, layoffs and increased expectations and get paid too little to copy your damned book. Go do it your self in self serve. Learn how to be the least bit independant rather than crawling to the front counter every time you want to save a few bucks by copying Johnny's school picture rather than just buying them from the photographer. Sure it might be fair use--but I'm not the judge who'll be trying the case against Kinko's if I'm wrong, so I won't be making that determination for you on pain of termination. Thanks for shopping Kinko's."
We've been able to copy VHS for over a decade and they're still making movies.
It's a heck of a lot easier to burn a loss-less quality DVD than to dupe a sub-generation VHS. The impact on the film industry could be more real than implied.
Slashdot should sponsor a boycott in protest of these changes, just to remind the industry that the consumer is king.
Slashdot has a quite a bit of influence among the technically inclined, who buy a lot of stuff. The admins could break this site out of the news and bitching mode and into a proactive force... if they wanted to. I think a TV boycott would be hard to pull off - but a music or theater or DVD boycott wouldn't. Hell, if we got enough momentum we might actually be able to kill the incredibly corrupt music and radio industries off, and then see to it that it was rebuilt around the artists instead of parasitic companies. And once you've scarred one industry the rest will think twice before screwing the consumer.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
The mandate to add UHF to TV receivers was not a mandate that had as a tradeoff to break VHF reception. The only tradeoff was that it added about $30.00 to the price of a $300.00 TV. TV prices went down from there and the UHF tuner component price went down even faster. The only damage this mandate caused was it destroyed the market for those set top UHF converters.
Of course /. readers know that what the content industry is wanting will destroy the capability to make your own music, trade in free music, and play either of those, as well as the same for movies. This will also hurt independent artists who have not signed their soul over to ...
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I haven't thought about this in years, but it might be interesting to "fake banner ad" collectors:
- fake Law.com banner or, if that becomes unavailable, fake Law.com banner.
(An interesting side note, both accounts related to the above-linked sites have been cancelled for some time, but the pages are still accessible).-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
We've been able to copy VHS for over a decade and they're still making movies. No, the vast majority of people cannot copy (well, a good copy anyways) VHS movies. Macrovision prevents this by added noise and such to a copied version of the movie (pretty clever actually). You get bad colour, distorted sound and other annoyances. This has prevented myself from copying a VHS movies, and has prevented many others. If VHS tapes didn't have a copy-annoyance scheme, you can bet that I would not be paying $5 to Blockbuster for the latest movie rental.
Meanwhile, the second barrel of the Philips shotgun is CD burning. In a Reuters interview Gerry Wirtz, general manager of Philips' copyright office, said that the company would be building CD burners that can read and burn copy protected CDs. He argues that the protection system is not a protection system as such, but simply a mechanism for stopping the playback of music. This interesting claim allows him to contend that the protection systems are not covered by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and lays the ground for the mother of all sue-fests with the number of large and rich companies who are most certainly not going to agree with him.
I think this is awesome! Changing the definition rather than changing the law. Is this not similar to the idea in Asimov's "Foundation and Earth"? I think I am buying a Phillips product next time I buy CD player/driver/writer/whatever.
ato
Even if such movies as LOTR were made freely available for anyone to watch via copying, there's no substitute for seeing such big-budget special-effects-laden films in the theaters. Less fancy productions are getting cheaper and cheaper to make all the time - the most expensive part is hiring the stars at millions apiece (a dubious value). Either way, films make much money on the big screens. Musicians make much money on concerts. Books don't make the transition to electronic media well, art requires higher resolution than a monitor will support, comics are entirely the bastion of collectors, and TV and print are supported by advertising anyway. The circumstances may change in the future, but the fact is that at this moment in time all the major media could still make money even if copies were freely available to everyone - just less of it. What shortages there are could easily be supported by a widespread patronage system.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
No, Hollywood is doing what they are best at: manuipulating emotions. They have a hundred years worth of experience in making otherwise rational people cry at imagined tradegies, or laugh at any silly character they choose to show.
And now that they have become a part of our culture, they use this power - like anyone who has great power - to reinforce that power, at any cost. Especially any cost to anyone else but themselves...
By this reasoning, movies should have killed live theater since "nobody" would choose to get dressed up to look at distant figures instead of watching nice clean closeups in the comfort of jeans (or less, if watching at home.)
Records and CDs should have killed concerts.
All this technological change will do is eliminate the blood-suckers who act as middlemen between performers and audiences. It means that the market for a recorded performance may dry up, but the artists will be able to sell live performances to fans who are unable to attend in person.
The result will be a blooming of creativity. If you have _a_ performance of the Nutcracker Ballet, you're going to play it straight. If you have a live high-quality video feed to people willing to pay a reasonable fee (say 1/10th the price of a ticket to the actual performance), you'll be able to see a straight performance. You'll be able to see the 'cracked' performance that's often done at the close of the season, when all of the performers (and the audience) blow off some steam. You'll be able to see some experimental productions, where up-and-coming directors get a change to try out ideas.
Same thing with concerns. Performers can't stray too far from what they did on their albums because a lot of the people in the audience will be pissed if they pay $50+ and don't hear what they expected to hear. But if you can pay $5 for a feed from the current live performance on a concert tour, the artists will have more flexibility - especially if they announce that some of the dates will be more experimental than others. Listen to a night of jazz with Garth Brooks, or the down home back street boys.
If you care about the art, there's no question that hardware protection will be a disaster. Not only would you have the current pressures to do more of the same damn thing, you couldn't even let "black market" experimental stuff out to see how well it would fly. "Art" would be reduced to what middle-aged accountants like. *shudder*
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
If I can't copy shit... why am I going to get on the internet.?
Seriously though, the problem is no good content is legally available.
I'm paying money for cable internet, but there is little available to fill this bandwidth. Except! pr0n, warez, media.
Since my ISP ownes the rights to most of the content out there, they shouldn't be mad if I take something for myself.
I've found a place to watch Gorillas in full screen-awsome quality Real video. Other than this, there is very little out there besides bland web-pages. Sure getting linux iso's is nice, but that's a small part of the broadband market. One page I like is netbroadcaster.com, even though it's pop-up city.
Stop piracy? Give us something else to do.
Get your Unix fortune now!
People buy computers for the power it gives them. I just can't see people upgrading to something that limits that power.
Going to the movies is an activity people enjoy. Millions of people go to see movies at $8/person when they know they can wait 6 months and the whole family can rent it for $3. But yet we go to the movies.
What will probably dry up in the end is the residual income that the MPAA is used to earning from rentals and PPV. I believe that form of income is as good as dead. Technology and laws will not stop that form of income from disappearing. But plenty of money was made from movies when the only income was made in the theaters, and that will continue to be the case.
The RIAA, however, will become extinct. They no longer serve a useful purpose.
I would say that they should get whatever they want BUT that all players incorporating the technology could only play unlocked or unencrypted content, or that with a G rating (they can build that in). Then make sure that a PG-13 key requires a tax of $5, R costs $100, XXX costs $500, and require anyone requesting such a key to send their driver's license and a checking account or credit card or something else to prove their identity and have their name come up on the device, and if any minor gets a key, throw Jack Valenti & company in prison for 20 years for violating the Minor Ratings Protection Act.
Since unlocked content would not require a key, Nor would "airplane cuts" of most movies, there should be no free speech concern. If they are going to require interlock technology anyway, it isn't really free expression anymore, but a peep show. Don't want to pay the tax? Just release it unlocked.
We've been able to copy VHS for over a decade and they're still making movies. Does anyone really think that the movie industry will be eradicated due to copyright infringment? You are not being objective : VHS copy is lossy, digital copy is not. The movie industry will survive : they own the talents, they just have to find out new creative way of creating value from it. CD sales may be dead, but there are many other ways. For example, I know a label that publishes CDs but mainly lives off advertising, movies and evenemential performances. In any case, they are in for a hell of a rough ride : reinventing a business model from the ground up is not for the faint of heart.
... No Microsoft will just force everybody to upgrade to be compliant with the latest software.
...
They will not continue their product line anymore or something will be forced so that product NEEDS to be used.
I know it's difficult though the majority of users is using Windows so who will be the first one to implement copy-protection technology ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Clerks who moonlight as constitutional law scholars has been a problem for a long time. Today it's the clerks at Kinkos, a decade ago it was clerks at 7-11 who had absolute knowledge of what constituted obscenity.
"Sorry, can't sell you that issue of Playboy. My boss makes us carry it, but I refuse to sell obscene material."
"But I want it for the interview."
"Sure you do.... She's 5'2, likes kittens and rain. Get out of here!"
"Really. There's an interview with President Carter that I want to read!"
"Look buddy, get out of here or I'm calling the police."
I didn't actually have this conversation, but others did and I definitely saw many "letters to the editor" and talk show callers who didn't understand that _Playboy_ had more hard journalistic content than most other magazines out there. It just also happened to have nude women. So did Time and Newsweek... but they always put the nudes on the cover as part of a story on art so the clerks grumbled but couldn't deny that they were legitimate news magazines.
It doesn't surprise me that Kinko's (or whoever) is following in this fine tradition. But what worries me even more than this story are the people who have reported having problems making copies of their own material!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Post makes reference to being able to copy to VHS and how it has not destroyed the movie industry. That is largely true, however it is not nearly as simple to mass distribute copied materials on VHS, so only a handful of people close to the original source "benefit." That model has completely changed. Now one person can purchase the item legitamitely, make it available, and within days the internet is saturated with it's existance. Considerably fewer people have to pay because there are considerably more options to acquire the product without having to. Of course this scares large distribution companies. I frankly don't care that much about them. It's the artists I care about, and they deserve compensation if they desire it and you like what they do.
The LA Times has a great article on the coming copy protection for video. It has a truly halarious ending...
Consumer-electronics executives say they don't want consumers who've invested in HDTVs--about 2 million so far--to lose any of the value of their investment. But Preston Padden, an executive vice president of Walt Disney Co., said the impact would be extremely limited. "If the biggest problem to getting this solved is the 13 people who've already purchased HDTVs, I will personally drive the converter boxes to their homes and install them myself."
If it really is 2 million people, Preston Padden has some serious work ahead of him.
Basically, the article says that the studios and networks are desparately trying to get a standard in place for watermarking video before they are mandated to begin transmitting digital signals in just a few months. The article unfortunately doesn't explicitly point out the implications of this technological solution -- that all current computers would have to be made illegal for this to work.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
and 30 minutes after it hits the market there will be hacks and patches to override it.
Yes it will be illegal. and yes I will use it.
Any law that makes what I do with my computer in my own home illegal will be broken, and I will openly break it. It's my fricking computer, it's my fricking OS (I use linux so I can say that), and it's my fricking CD. I am going to play it on my system.
Prohibition failed miserably and created all the crime syndicates we have today and made over 70% of the population criminals. any law they pass regulating the hardware and Operating system will cause the same or worse changes to society.
How about all the geeks get together in say, florida and then seperate from the union, a collective flip off of the US govt just might get the attention of the legislators.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You certainly can't call music by those singers "intellectual" property, can you?
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
I don't know how many people noticed this part of the article at the end, but Mike Godwin at law.com clearly has a pretty poor opinion of the Hollings bill. And he's challenging us to take notice and do something. Are slashdot and the EFF going to bark all day like little doggies, or are they gonna bite?
What gets lost in the debate is the voice of consumers -- whatever they are called. Maybe they are willing to trade away open, robust, relatively simple digital tools for a more constrained digital world in which they have more content choices. But maybe they aren't. The Hollings bill is unlikely to attract them to the debate, pitched as a "security standard" rather than as a new copyright law.
Like the larger philosophical war that is raging around the world in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the looming war between these two sides has the potential to be a long, difficult fight without a foreseeable conclusion. And if and when peace talks begin between the two sides, there's no guarantee that the rest of us will have a seat at the table.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
ok all this sudden talk about copyright protection is driving me nuts. it is like a new napster or OJ Simpson thing. look I am gonna copy anything I want when I want and no one is going to stop me no matter how much protection they put on someone will come up with the solution to get around it very quickley so STOP! jeez.. and I will kill as many wives as I want.. ohh wait! no..
I'll pass on modding this time, I have to jump in it.
:). This is totally ridiculous... I don't even conceive how someone can actually think it's going to work that way and consumers are going to go for it... Encrypted hard drives? good luck for server/datacentre drives that need every extra bit of performance they can get, where are you going to encrypt? controller? forget that, strong encryption on a U320 raid won't happen, weak encruption will get killed, and putting that on each individual drive PCB without losing ANY performance? it will be overkill and not rewarding. People will simply turn their heads and look elsewhere for the hardware they need, there's not just USA in the world. I admit that they are strong enough to force other countries to support this, but if they are the only ones to support it, they'll drawn in their own crap, it's just a matter of how the other countries will react.
You want to do hardware encryption for displaying movies? GOOD LUCK.
CASE #1. Lame protection scheme a la DVD.
A: Someone gets a key, goodbye.
CASE #2. A bit better hardware encryption.
A: Put some decoding circuit at the output of the video signal and sample it (it's probably going to be digital anyways so no loss).
CASE #3. Encryption between the media and the decoder, encryption between the decoder and the display.
A: a1. They'll nevew go that far, they are pencil pushers right? ok let's say they do.
a2. They do. You will STILL be able to sample the pixel writtent to the screen SOMEHOW in hardware.
Conclusion: Make is as HARD as you want, the only way you can 100% prevent people from duplicating content is by not showing/displaying it, which is what they seem to going straight to without even knowing it
Either way, if it passes, it will die by itself, I remember the DIVX DVD rental system... prototypes were there, it was working, and it died. Consumers and especially internet people are more educated, and the funny part is US is all against China's way of treating human rights, and they are going the exact same way China is, limiting the information, punishing people that give information, lobbying against any freedom of thoughts that goes against their way of seeing things... I mean... wow.. 50% of the people actually voted for that.. sad.
To get back on the subject, like I've already stated earlier, How about lowering the price of the medias?, or even better, you want to refresh your hardware buisness? Super! how about investing in a new buisness model and technology to make people actually *Want* to get new hardware? how about a HDTV resolution SDVD format with newer cd technologies? how about 24bits audio for the audiophile, how about etc etc... something BETTER for the consumer, not pointing a gun and tell him "buy this, it's crappier than your other unit, it has more restriction and will probably have firmware issues, but heck, I got the gun".
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The better counterargument is that I've been able to copy VHS for over a decade (actually, closer to two decades), but I haven't been able to distribute 100,000 VHS copies to friends at essentially no cost. This is the key difference with digital: unlimited reproduction with fixed labor and bandwidth (I don't pay by the byte) costs.
As specified by the founding fathers in the U.S. Constitution, copyright is a gift from the governnment, given to authors and inventors to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
In it's current form, copyright has become a gift from the politicans, given to corporations to promote increased campaign contributions.
Interesting how, when the jobs of the middle classes are lost, it is attributed to the natural evolution of the economy in a capitalistic free market system...
...but when the jobs of CEOs are threatened, it is attributed to evil forces that must be halted by government intervention
Hey, I don't know about you, but watching Brittney Spears, her music is the last thing I'm enjoying. Push the mute button for all I care.
or are we not slowly moving towards a society where the consumer will not OWN anything anymore. off what i understand if this law came to pass, then they would be able to legally force out of the internet a user who doesn't fulfill their requirement (maybe through a proprietary authentication protocol). that's pretty scary, because we'd have to fullfill their criteria to have access to something we've paid for. gosh this sounds more and more like 1984!
if the sites slashdot links to get slashdoted, how come slashdot itself never gets slashdoted??
the movie industry has just watched the music industry lose, badly. the only thing that saves Hollywood at the moment is the lack of generally available cheap broadband.
what frustrates me is how stupid these industries are. if they thought creatively, there are plenty of new (valid, fair, reasonable, profitable) ways to make money in a world where almost all media can be shared online anyway. I can think of lots of examples where I would be happy to pay for some kinds of content online, but in a world where all the media and its players was largely open.
People are not going to steadily "forget" that they can share mp3s over the internet, or download films and watch them, whilst geeks create copy protection schemes for the studios to use.
Its too late. Battle lost. Why are they so stupid?
They make compilers illegal, that's how. Just like they made Linux and *BSD illegal. They have to, because you couldn't make a compiler which recognizes (and refuses to compile) operating systems, as opposed to harmless applications.
Additionally, they'll make universities etc. stop educating programmers and forbid existing developers to do their job, as these people might use their knowledge and try to circumvent "secure" technology.
Afterwards they will have to go after lots of musically-skilled ex-programmers who try to make a living by playing copyrighted songs with their guitars in downtown places and subway stations.
The reason why the United States has survived, and more importantly thrived, over the last 200+ years is because of freedom. How many people do you see trying to sneak into Cuba or the Communist Block (when it still existed)? Forcing people to follow laws farted out by some corrupt burocrat is the reason why the Communists couldn't hold it together. We're not there yet, but this is the first step.
Also, the reason why this is a law abiding nation is because in general, the laws make sense. I can see why I'm not allowed to key peoples' cars or why a 5-year-old can't own an Uzi. But I don't see why I can't use a Rio to play a song which I PAID FOR while I jog.
To the invention of phonorecording. Before that, if you wanted to hear music you either hired someone to play it for you or played it yourself, there was qutie a bit of scandal surrounding who's music you could play in public, and what you had to pay for sheets of it.
The phonorecord basically killed the cottage industry that was music at the time it was invented.
I can see why a politician would think that gross copyright infringment would be a BadThing(tm). After all "The entertainment business is the largest US export. It is its largest export by one third." After all entertainment is the only thing we still do make our selves. So if the entertainment industry suffered a melt down our already-up-shits-creek-with-a-turd-for-a-paddle economy could continue its spelunking extravaganza. Think about it, I don't have official numbers (and anyone claiming to is a liar), but I would not be one bit surprised if Napster caused more copyright violations in 2 years than all the copyright infingment since the law was enacted until Napster, put together. I'm not really for the proposed law but I can see why some one would be. If we really don't want the law passed we should try and convince our representatives that it is in the countries best economical intrest to not pass the law, ie no one ever won by stifling technology (except M$). We should convince them that even IF the entertainment industry kernel panics (there's no garuntee it will) then the US will still thrive (maybe foreigners dig the lo-fi shenanigans of shows like jack-ass). What it really sounds like to me is that Hollywood is claiming that the internet/software/computer industries created a "bad toy" and now the entertainment industry wants a recall. When in fact the i/s/c industries created a new revolutionary, all encompassing medium that Hollywood can't wrap its stodgy, old-fart, mind around so it's sluffing of it's own responsibilities on some one else. Just my $.02
Holy cow!! Will you design me a T-shirt?!!!
Sure, you can return you disk for a non-protected one...but to do so you need to call a number (thus likely giving them your phone number) and likely give them your name, home address, and maybe the store you got it at.
Seems to me like a pretty good way to start making a list of potential "law breakers". "See how many people are ADMITTING to breaking the law!"
Of course, all this is mute if one can exchange the disk without disclosing any information at the record store or such (hidden cameras not withstanding), but still for those that do call and do it by mail, who DOESN'T think they will make an explicit effort to create such a list?
My
Why is it that Hollywood is so imaginative when it comes to worst case scenarios, but nearly every movie ever made has a sequal? *eyeroll*
Okay, first, they *can't* make every bit of hardware protect their content. They C-A-N-N-O-T. It's, as Ralph Wiggam would say, unpossible. They talked about making routers not send copy-restricted (I refuse to use the term 'copy-protection' here) data through them. But the thing is, if I break apart the data blocks, randomize them, and then have the computer on the other end reassemble them, then the routers won't work. That philosophy likely applies to the rest of the hardware. You'd seriously need sentient hardware to look at the data to know what's up.
Secondly, they can't get every piece of hardware out there to stop it. Sorry. Too late. Btttz. Unable to comply.
Third, it is ridiculous to believe that every single piece of Hollywood content is going to be made accessible on-line. I can imagine more popular shows like Red Dwarf or the Simpsons or Family Guy or whatever to get pretty well captured and made available, but the people who make that available are true fans of their respected shows. I'm not going to be able to find an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (*gag*) available. You know why? Because I seriously doubt anybody's going to take the time to capture it and make it available. And if they do, I'm not going to waste my time downloading it just to watch it. Stream? Maybe, but not download it.
There's too much content out there! Lets say I build a computer designed to capture a show as it's downloaded, I still would manually have to go in and edit out the commercials. (editing out the commercials is a condition of actually hurting the industry) There's NO WAY I'm going to be able to manually do that for every single show every day of the week! I have a life! Are some people going to do it? Maybe, but not ever on the scale that the industry is afraid of.
Anyway, I have drifted off topic a little bit. Back to my topic "They're fighting the wrong battle...", well Hollywood is taking a really backwards approach here. They think that by stopping piracy they're going to save their revenue. They also think that if they protect their content so it can't be copied that they're going to have a growing market for the rest of time. It won't work! The truth of the matter is that if anybody doesn't watch the show when it's first aired (which is the prime time to see it, if you miss that then you're likely to have some dumb ass friend or radio DJ spoil the ending for you), then the value diminishes. More and more people have less and less time to catch TV shows when they're first aired. That's exactly why VCR's are in every home! If somebody wants the show bad enough, they'll either set it up to get it themselves, or they'll find a way to go get it. If that means that a Napster clone is the way to get it, then the people will go there.
So there's demand here, right? That means there is a market! Instead of fighting the 'piracy', fill the demand! Ever hear of Video on Demand? I wouldn't need to go to Morpheus or Kazaa if I could just go to a website that has the show ready to stream and click play. If they want to insert commercials into it, THAT'S FINE. That works!! I love it! I'll embrace that! But PLEASE give me that opportunity before you claim that piracy will destroy your market! Fighting piracy won't save the market, but filling demand will.
*He who finds it amusing that Hollywood is willing to spend money to stop losses they don't have, but isn't willing to try to make money on demand to watch shows at our leisure.*
"Derp de derp."
Hollywood seems to think that people share TV shows because they are thieves. That isn't true. You cannot buy or rent a TV Show that was aired a week ago. If you missed it's airing (frankly, any element of life takes priority over TV), then you're stuck. Either you go to the web and download it or... well.. you really don't have a lot of choice because Hollywood's 'oh so valuable content' isn't available to acquire legally.
"Derp de derp."
I think most forms of copy protection are wrong and abuse the consumer, but... can you really brush piracy off as financially inconsequential to businesses, and then post an article just an hour later about Adobe failing in the Asian market due to widespread piracy, without sounding biased and stupid?
Obviously, with how powerfully piracy affects the Asian market, piracy IS a legitimate matter for businesses to worry about financially. The real question isn't whether it affects them, but rather whether or not copy protection abuses the consumer far too much for businesses to be allowed to use it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're thinking about Aqua, the GUI.
Darwin is the CLI, check http://darwin.apple.com
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
Of course, this has been the content industry's siren song for almost a century. Virtually every major new form of automation has been labeled a harbinger of death to copyright, to with:
Piano Rolls
Radio
Audio Tape
Television
Video Tape
DAT
Other digital sound media
Every one of these technologies were identified as a damning threat to the "content industry," and to an extent, this is true, when the "content industry" is defined as an entity committed to entrenched business models and technology for exploiting works of authorship.
As it turns out, all these things ever turned out to be, were changes. For the most part, each new technology enriched our nation, and enriched those in the "content industry" smart enough to effectively exploit them.
The reason great technologies occur, is because innovators are free in our market to test the value of their inventions. Alas, these content "moguls" are not only seeking to protect the works of authors they have exploited, but also to control and limit innovation and develop new "threatening" technologies.
And this is why technology regulation is not intellectual property law -- it is precisely the opposite of the policies justifying IP. Instead of glorifying and supporting the market, record companies and movie companies are seeking the right to shut down those who are neither copying nor duplicating their works, but who are simply innovating their works into irrelevance.
Such pro-dinosaur economics can only lead to the ruin of the new economy, and at a moment it is at its most tenuous position. Sure, a few will stay rich, for awhile -- but at what cost?
In the article there is the comment:
"Encryption is what protects DVD movie and video game software from piracy."
This is simply not true. Encryption requires a key to "play" the contents. In this case the key is provided by an "approved player". Any DVD which is a bit for bit copy of another will play in exactly the same manner as the original not matter by whom the copy has made. DVD encryption is simply a method of forcing customer to use approved players.
I wish we could slam dunk this idea that DVD encryption has something to do with copyright protection.
The only way something like this will ever work is if they completely prevent the ability of consumers to record music or video onto their computers. The new regulated playback devices (assuming this idea were to become reality) would have to use standard outputs so the consumers could still use it. A standard output can then be run into a standard input.
How is your computer supposed to be able to tell the difference between the latest music chart topper and 2 yr old Suzie singing Jingle Bells into the computer mic to be recorded and sent to relatives with the christmas e-cards when the data is being fed into the line in on the sound card? Or are we no longer going to have the right to record our own voices anymore?
It's not Copyright protection!! It doesn't protect copyrights.
Call it Copy prevention because that's what it does!! Perhaps Copy interference even.
The internet, and digital medium in general, is relatively new. An equilibrium that favours corporations will eventually be met. Corporations push and push until they meet some resistance. By "resistance" I do not mean writing your senator or casting a vote. Your government officials / organizations have little to gain by representing a powerless citizen such as yourself - unless it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy.
Recently I imagined a system of democracy in which every citizen takes part in government through the use of wireless networks and electronic units issued much like passports. Citizens could vote on things on a daily basis, making self government a part of life. There are some obvious problems (i.e tivo hackers would run the planet), but it could be made to work. Electected officials would still be needed, but they would be less powerful.
We gotta try something new -- every system of govenment thus far has been crap. Maybe our technology can be the key to liberation, like a modern day printing press.
Failing that we can have a good old fashioned coup.
You would also have to have an enforced compulsary license.
IE, while that world could exist and be self-consistent, it won't be a dream world. Mainly because nobody has obligation to license 'their work' any way they see fit.
For example, you can kiss goodbye to parodies.
Kiss goodbye to research, especially research that the copyright owners don't like and are unwilling to license, if that research contains any excerpts that they don't like.
Kiss goodbye to reviews where one wishes to quote another book and the origional author doesn't wish to be quoted. (for whatever reason)
Kiss goodbye to historical research. Say, if *anyone* you quote doesn't like the conclusions of your manuscript, they can block that quote.
Kiss goodbye to reasonable prices. Cause you'll only find value-based pricing. (Charge the percieved value to each entity.) Three people buying the same product at the same time could pay 3 different prices, based on their past viewing history.
Overall, kiss goodbye to any sort of 'unauthorized derivative work'.
Sorry, I don't like it.
Now, in a world with compulsary licensing, kiss goodbye to any control over yoru artistic work, cause if someone does want to use it, you have no choice but to acquiece. (XXX rated mickey mouse porn anyone?)
Um. I don't like this.
There are good reasons for noninfringing uses of copyrighted material.
"Mr. Eisner, the lawyers for the Shakespeare estate our on line 2. Shall I reschedule your appointment with the Victor Hugo estate lawyers?"
[Insert pithy quote here]
It was a law passed and never repealed.
I am glad they care about me and whether I am following their copyright laws, but the Internet is(was) more about the exchange of information and knowledge than a vechile for companies to sell their wares upon us. Which are hidden across webpages, betweeen and around the content and substance of the Internet, because most people don't care about them.
Maybe we should be looking at a way to create a "free" Internet, like a public Internet, that is not bound by the expensive cost of high speed Internet access.
Create pockets of wireless computers and connect them. Something. I would love to hear some brainstorms.
I hate the fact that I don't live in America yet I'm still affected by this sort of crap.
Fuck America.
...that it takes about 15 minutes to download an mp3 where you can't tell the difference between it and the CD. With a film, it would take AGES to download, and then you only get a shitty little window and crap sound.
Think about that for a moment... since it is now illegal for us to *reverse engineer* any aspect (hardware or software) of a system... or even REPORT about how something works... therefore we can't protect ourselves.
What that means is that a manufacturer can now imbed elements into a system that watch you, report on you, and compile statistics on you. Not only is it illegal for you to find out about it... it's now illegal for you to TALK about it to anyone if you DO discover it.
So... manufacturers THINK they have the right to our personal habits... our personal information... without charge. BUT... we don't have the right to make sure our privacy is protected!!!
This is akin to the *old* days where at the checkout line they ask you for your zipcode for their *database*. My standard response is... SURE... $5. Usually they look at me agast... EXCUSE ME???? Yes... you want my personal data? $5.
Same thing has to now apply to these fucked up manufactures who think that just because you bought something of theirs, they get a chunk of your private life. SAY NO to all these technologies...
Furthermore... REVERSE ENGINEER EVERYTHING -- it is our RIGHT as citizens to protect ourselves. Would you buy a CAR where the manufacturer told you "if you open the hood you can go to jail"?? Of course not.
These manufacturers have to learn a lesson -- the *no servicable parts inside* can NOT be applied in such a way that it prevents the buyer from insuring that the device is NOT doing more than advertised!!
Something the manufacturers will probably overlook is that there are other OSs besides Windows. I'm not going to say Linux specifically, because its not like thats the only OS affected. Most if not all of the standards they are talking about will not work with a PC running anything other than Windows. In many cases this means that you couldn't use the hardware at all. If all the manufacturers include copy protection, then all the consumers will be forced to use Windows.
If they implement hardware copy protection, it would basically be pointless, because anyone could just get hardware without copy protection and use that to copy a CD, DVD, etc... This means that the only way copy protection could "succeed" is if a law was passed forcing all manufacturers to include copy protection. If all the manufacturers included copy protection, this could be a very big problem in some circumstances. As I said ion the above paragraph, it probably wouldn't run ANY OS that's not Windows(at least on a PC). Many people use other OSs, and have to use them. They might be using a program that only runs on that OS, might have hardware that's not supported by Windows(but is still on a PC), Windows might not be stable enough, or any number of other reasons. Copy protection also simply gives the user a harder time copying legitimate files. The RIAA and MPAA always seem to think that all music or all movies belong to them. What if you hold the copyright for a particular song, movie, or other copy protected file? This could even protect against the consumers "pirating" their own files.
Citation?
I just don't believe this. Copyright owners have sued novel devices claiming contributory infringement, but they usually lose (RIAA v. Diamond, Universal v. Sony). Photocopiers still exist without a "paper tax" paid to book publishers.
Kodak does support watermark detection and won't copy prints made on Portra III paper, but they've discontinued the paper because "the reality is that there are many more non-Kodak methods for making high quality copies that are readily available to consumers today."
http://www.hjpro.com/news_copyright.cfm
I still see Kodak Picture Maker kiosks at my local stores....
Folks, this is still a free and open society we live in. We, the people, still control it ultimately. We are the government. We are the corporations. If anything too horrendous comes of this nonsense, remember that mass civil disobediance is still an option to regain our freedom. Fortunately, I don't think it'll come to that simply because corporate execs have zero power without the techies they employ.
...is what will replace the RIAA and/or MPAA if both were to vanish from the face of the earth. Here's a summary (in my own little, demented world):
All artists are going to want exposure. Some more than others, but it'll be as much as they can get. Some independents will show up on the scene to provide a place where artists and audiences can meet (online, real, or otherwise). Keeping in mind that nobody really liked the RIAA and/or MPAA to begin with, nobody will infringe on anyone else's rights by using the honor system. This will work for a time, until one of the "honorable" promotions organizations starts to get a little greedy. Nobody will complain because they are still providing that essential meeting place for artists and audiences. Time goes on, things progress (or digress), and we're back to where we started. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The framework of our capatalist society is both the cause and the solution to this problem. The system works on popularity so if a solution isn't popular, it isn't implemented. There's exceptions to every rule, but this is how the system works.
I don't like the RIAA or MPAA any more than the rest of you. But I'd rather deal with a system I'm familiar with (and can reliably predict) than to eliminate an organization who has a place in our economy, good or bad.
And remember: Keep your friends close, and your enimies even closer.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant