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MPAA Wants Copy-Controlled PCs
phil reed writes: "According to our favorite media mogul, Jack Valenti (as stated in this letter in the Washington Post, all PCs need to have strong copy protection built in. 'Computer and video-device companies need to sit at the table with the movie industry. Together, in good-faith talks, they must agree on the ingredients for creating strong protection for copyrighted films and then swiftly implement that agreement to make it an Internet reality.' Way to go, guy."
6 Gbytes per movie (compressed DivX at about 400x300 pixels) ... that's the most common size, because they want to burn them on cd's :)
Hum, 6 gigs per DivX movie? I'm sure you meant 600megs, or 0,6 gb
Life sucks.
Of course Jack Valenti wants this. This is the same guy who once said "The VCR is to the Movie Industry what the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone". He's not exactly a visionary.
The question the semi-intelligent people who listen to Jack have to solve now is this: how can we force consumers to buy something they don't want?
The proven formula for this is legislation. Government mandated airbags have killed more children than school shootings - and more importantly, they've created a precedent for how a corporation can incorporate non-features into consumer products.
Do you think consumers really wanted to buy DVD players with region coding and Macrovision? Was that a feature? The total ownership of the DVD standard presents a second way to force unwanted hardware down the customer's throats: patent a standard, license keys, and use the DMCA to enforce the keyring.
The infamous SSSCA is their attempt at bring approach #1, and they may also (in parallel) try approach #2. If there's any word I can use to describe the actions of the Movie Industry right now, it's "desperate". They know that the precedents set right now will last for hundreds of years, and they are fighting for what they believe is their very survival.
The question is, will consumers keep buying Dell and ignore the EFF? And if so, what's the most effective way to raise awareness...
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
I don't disagree that Mr. Valenti is drastically overstating the amout of bandwidth used, but your math is wrong - DiVX ;-) movies are only about 600-700MB each, not 6GB. So take off a zero on your calculations, and that puts movie traffic at 8.4%, which is still a lot, but not nearly as much.
mebbe this is right then?
350 000 movies x 650 000 000 bytes/movie = 227 500 000 000 000 bytes/day.
1820 000 000 000 000 bits per day.
1820 TB/day world downloads.
1820/20 000 = equivalent of 9.1 percent of all US traffic.
And I thought I was on a role too...
Really? And here I thought innovation meant creation of something new or 'innovative'. Apparently I was wrong. Never one to leave such a thing alone though I checked Webster's Online Dictionary. Imagine my further supprise when I found this:
Is Websters' Wrong? THE dictionary of the United States. Not necessarily. Mr. Valenti asserted that we were using the word in lieu of "legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection." Therefore the relation might not appear in the dictionary.Never one to give up on a trusted source so lightly I returned now to (drum roll) the Thesaurus! again however I come up dry getting only:
No discussion of copy protection there.But then I noticed something. I noticed vicissitude. Webster's defines this as:
Note the term Unfavorable Change. At last the mystery was solved. Jack Valenti was not (to my everlasting dsmay) wholly misdirected. Neither was my trusted Dictionary/Thesaurus wrong. Obviously Jack was just employing a nontypical pair of synonyms in an effort to drag the complex language of "unfavorable events", "difficulty or hardship attendant on a way og life, a career, or a course of action and usually beyond one's control" into the language of everyday life. Because, as he points out elsewhere in his letter: "Other ingredients are necessary to protect digital content, but it gets too complex to explain in a few sentences." Jack is just tying to save space.
Well my friends all that I can say is: Up with VICISSITUDE!
It's already well-known that the VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY grosses more money than the film industry (and hey, probably nets more too -- put that in your "2 out of 10" pipe and smoke it, Mr. Valenti!).
That's actually something a lot of people like to claim, but it's only factoring in US theater receipts (not home video/dvd/tv licensing agreements). Adding in the rest of that (or even just one) and it blows away anything the videogame industry takes in.
iluvpr0n.
My father was an accountant for 20Th Century Fox for about 30years. He once told me that a movie's "costs" included a long list of kick backs to just about every body who worked on a film, or handled the business of distribution. So people are pocketing vast sums of dough before the movie officially "broke even." The idea that only 1 in 10 movies makes money is rediculous.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
To answer the question in the subject, the MPAA sees the personal computer as the single most popular and efficient method of illegally distributing copyrighted music, and to a degree they're right. CD burners and personal MP3 players aside, how else can you transfer gigabytes of copyrighted music? Their pressure on the PC industry shouldn't surprise anyone.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
One states that Jack is always full of it, and 2 mention that Jack's reference to a "Maalox Moment" is a violation of Maalox's trademark, as he doesn't bother to credit Maalox for using their name.
Its good to see that people outside of the /. world also think that Jack is full of it.
The thing is PCs are an open platform.
Today. What will they be like in ten years?
They might be able to add something into a specific hardware component, but not directly into the motheboard...
I guess you didn't hear about the CPU identifier Intel put in their Pentiums. A big row was raised about it, but maybe the MPAA, RIAA et al, with their lobbying money, can raise a bigger one.
And my Dell laptop has something in there, I think in the BIOS, that carries a Dell ID. I don't know if that's hackable or not.
Linux already has strong copy protection, it's called the GPL, and it protects your right to copy and share the Linux sources as well as binaries.
Quote from a reply on the WP site:
I'm on his side. Property is property and property theft is wrong. But is it just me or is this guy just so completly full of it that you want to go the other way just to avoid getting any on you? Paragraph one is just Jack re-iterating the argument made against him and his. Paragraph Two is where we need to start keeping our boots handy. "A recent survey revealed that 68 percent of all home computer users say they're satisfied with their normal 56K computer modem." All home computer users, all mind you, now have a "normal 56k modem". 68% are satisfied with them. It does not make sense. I'm not being obtuse and just looking for something to pick at, anything that ends up in the Washington Post with Mr. Valenti's name on it has been as carefully groomed and lubricated as his hair. If the wording is circuitous, slippery and strange it is because Jack and his "people" wanted it that way. The final line in paragraph two is so bizzare that I will not touch it except to point out that would seem to imply that anyone who pays for broadband access, does so in order to pirate illegal materials. Paragraph Three: "The second professorial indictment is palpable nonsense." Suitable for framing. This "sentence" is everything Mencken was warning us about. He then talks about the "financial fragility" of the industry. Explaining that "making movies is so expensive" because only 2 in 10 of their products even manage to make their nut back. If I was in a business where 8 in 10 of my products were rejected by my customers, I would probably experience some "financial fragility" myself. Independent film makers have recently demonstrated that you don't need millions of dollars to make a quality product. Hmmm, but if Jack and Co. can get in there and lock down the Internet as a medium of distribution, in the name of protecting Hollywood from piracy, maybe all movies could someday cost millions again. And just what is "domestic theatrical release" compared to total profit, which I guess would include "foreign theatrical release" and other profit making channels? Just more vague specificity. I am tired of wading through this muck, I will hit a few more highlights and dispense with it. He states that university broadband systems are mostly what are used to "record" movies illegally. Try sneaking into a movie theater with Ohio State's computing infrastructure under your coat. Again, if it seems not to make sense, it is because the senstence was engineered that way. Just cast a vague accusation and move on. I just can't think about this anymore, it has taken up far too much of my time already. It is so obvious that what he wants is akin to banning typewriters to protect Tolstoy. It is bizzare and infuriating. And has anyone who is reading this ever seen one of these digitally pirated jokes of a film? It's not like you're downloading DVD quality Gladiators the day they come out. The one I saw, and the guy was telling me how great the quality was, was grainy, dark, and came with a soundtrack that sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. It was worthless. I laughed at it. There is no way I would consider that an alternative to the DVD. Finally, to state the piracy costs the industry X amount of dollars is pure baloney. Why universities? Because many college kids don't have alot of money. Just like a guy who packages DVDs in some third world country, he can work all year and not be able to afford Disney's latest offering. He wouldn't have bought it except that he got to view the "pirated" copy at what he and his would consider a reasonable price. And he would not have bought it otherwise so it didn't cost any industry any sale.
c_j_n(at)yahoo(dot)com
Even if you don't live iun the DC area, you can still help. Information for handouts and so forth.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
It is hilarious that they start making that argument about the costs that they need to recoup for their films... in well under a decade, the costs of studio quality cameras are going to be in the consumer price range. It is going to be hilarious when the first person says to Hollywood about their beautifully videotaped, independent, non-spaceship, non-effects heavy production, "I don't need you anymore. Buzz off. And I don't need your distribution. So double buzz off."
That is going to be a funny day. The days of the $20 million dollar stars are coming to an end. So are the griping Ally McBeals out there, and their perks. The market will be flooded with independent producers of television and movies (which will look the same in quality... totally) selling their wares for cheap with cheap actors, until they get more money to develop their shows. Actors that are good will have ways around the system, and not have to play games with some sex-driven producer. It will be much more equalizing.
By the way, I have never, ever bought the idea that some movies never make a buck out there. That sounds like crap to me.
I live in Nashville and have seen country lackeys that live like kings with zero name recognition for 20 years or more off of one b-side on a bad album. So to say that someone is not making a dollar off of the movies that I have heard of or seen in the national media, then they're lying or tricking for the tax man. After all, these are the same people who told you that Forrest Gump lost money.
- Riiiiiiight.
I don't care what your spreadsheet or your accountant said, Forrest Gump did not lose money. Whoever said that needs to be slapped vigorously.They (the MPAA) are getting desperate. They know what is coming. They're dead in ten years, unless they set up a state controlled monopoly.
Guess what? It ain't going to happen.
I knew I heard a quote like that somewhere. Which book is this from, as I'd quite like to read it.
It's from "Atlas Shrugged".
For the last two years, OpenCores has been designing a PC (among other things) from raw gates. The design is covered by a GNU license.
Blocks underway include a CPU (already running Linux), a video card, serial ports, ethernet, bluetooth, USB, wlan, PS/2 mouse interface and firewire. The rest of the modules are waiting for a developer to volunteer.
This design can be used, in conjunction with an FPGA, to build a working PC. With enough interest (and money), the same design files can be used to build custom chips.
New developers are welcome.