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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.
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.
I don't know. Let's thaw him out and ask.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Correction: he wanted to make white people happy. He was a nice little racist and anti-semite. I know that in some of his writings he talked about what Epcot (Experimental something Community of Tommorrow) was meant to represent. It was meant to represent a future community which was free of the criminal blacks and mexicans which infest the inner cities. He quite specifically mentioned blacks and hispanics; this is not a troll or an exaggeration. I believe he also mentioned some stuff about taking away control from the jews, but I'm not sure on that. Yes, he was a great businessman, incredibly detail-oriented and perhaps altruistic at heart, but he had some character flaws.
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?
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!
I had heard differently about him. I heard that he really never had too much control over his company and that in the end his brother (Roy) was pretty much running everything. I also heard that he was an artist first and foremost. He may have had incredible business sense but he still was just an artist at heart.
I find that most talented artists care more about sharing their talent with the world than they do about protecting it to the point of hiding it. It is those with less talent (i.e. Mettalica) that insist on holding all rights. I think a lot of the business that is Disney nowadays is all Eisner. He saved Disney from the crap Roy had done but at the same time he changed it from an artists studio to a multinational conglomerate.
..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
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
"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
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.
I apologize for whatever moderator rated you a Troll. The truth is that I think that some of what you say may be true but you have to remember he came from a different time. You have to remember that he grew up before Martin Luther King, before Rosa Parks and the other great black leaders who helped make the US (and the world) a better, more tolerant place to live. That doesn't make it right but it does explain a little.
You also have to know that a lot of the controversial stories he based his cartoons on (Tarzan, Brair Rabbit, etc.) were not written by him.
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!
That's Mickey Mouse©
--Mike
call me a crook, and throw me in jail, because I will NEVER, and I mean NEVER, obey this proposed law.
sulli
RTFJ.
Sure there'll be a way around it. But it will be illegal. The way the system is heading everybody will do illegal things all day long. When you can't watch anything without fear of being arrested or paying a hefty fine, what do you do? When a population becomes subject to arrest at any time, what happens?
Bad laws have the effect of making more people criminals while simultaneously lowering the respect for laws.
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
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.
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.
`` 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.
But that's a *good* thing. Because you won't be able to use old, obsolete stuff anymore, you'll have to buy the newest movies and music, thus generating more revenue for the content producers. Why do you think software companies don't want people playing their 20-year-old computer games?
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
...was an FBI informant during the McCarthy era, doing his best to rat on the "different" people in Hollywood. This gives a new twist to "Mickey Mouse" surely.
"Good old Walt" was a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, red-baiting SOB who probably checked under his bed every night for communists. He was also a control freak, as you say, whose legacy survives at Disneyland, etc. with prohibitions of facial hair on employees, common practices of false arrest and strip-searches of (usually ethnic) "suspected" shoplifters, and on and on.
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
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.
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.
Good Old Walt actually used the HUAC proceedings as a way to get back at the artists who were trying to organize Walt Disney Studios during the late 1940s. Many of these artists formed UPA Studio, a company which despite the popularity of Mr. Magoo was basically hounded out of business by the Red-baiters.
He was also an anti-Semite who is probably still spinning in his urn at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA, US knowing that a Jew runs his studio now.
Not the nicest individual to ever walk the earth, contrary to what the Disney Centennial people would like you to think.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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 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
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
Get an analog-to-digital-to-analog converter box. The picture is cleaned up en route, I am told.
Anyone use this? They cost about fifty bucks US at electronic stores.
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?
About as stupid as someone depending on JavaScript to protect one's page from being copied...
;-)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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!
There is no satisfying ebook program/device, and there may not be one for some time. Books (at least the good ones) will be available in print forever anyway, because there will always be literary fans. Books will always be written because many people write for the prestige, not the money (how many rich authors do you know of?), and because good writers will have people pay them to continue writing. Visual artists and photographers will continue to do work for other media on commission or sell their art in galleries in the usual way. Magazines will continue to be supported by advertising, and probably remain in print for some time since monitors and bandwidth do not yet support such high resolution images. Analysts will continue to gather and analyze information, because it's tedious work and that's what people pay them for (same for reporters and any number of jobs). Poets don't make any money anyway, except through patronage and books. Software will go increasingly open source, and tools will evolve to make programming easier for prosumers.
People give a damn about these things - that's why they pay money for them. But even if you take much or all of the money away they will still stick around, albeit in a less commercialized form.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
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.
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
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.
Hmm...who was it who used to publish manuals for its products that included schematics and assembler output (source and object, side by side) for its products? Who is it that has made a sizable chunk of its latest OS open source? It certainly isn't these guys.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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?
It's not Copyright protection!! It doesn't protect copyrights.
Call it Copy prevention because that's what it does!! Perhaps Copy interference even.
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]
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!!