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."

Comments

Copy-protected PC's?

[spectral]

I'm sure i'm not the only one who realizes it won't work without legislation. What incentive could companies posisbly have to add this to their products? ("Hey, let's screw over our customers and take it up the a** for the MPAA by adding expensive copy controls and limiting their use!") All it takes is one hardware manufacturer to tell the MPAA to go f*ck itself, and this whole thing falls apart. They might get pre-built companies like dell, gateway, sony (Since part of it is in the MPAA board), but.. what about build your own?

Are the people at the MPAA really so stupid as to think that they can actually allow us to listen/watch stuff, but not copy it? It has to get decrypted somewhere..

Re:Copy-protected PC's?

[joshsisk]

What if IBM, Sony, Dell, Microsoft, you-name-it got together and said "these movie people are a pain in the ass -- rather than build copy protection into our hardware/software for THEM, we'll just BUY THEM OUT and give away loads of free movies to our customers!"???

The problem with your theory is that many movie companies are owned by larger companies- companies like Time-Warner (Warner Brothers, New Line), Viacom (I think they own Fox, but I could be wrong) and, yes, Sony does own movie studios(Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures and I believe Revolution pictures), so it's unlikely they'd be a part of your plan. There is also Disney (who own Disney Pictures, Buena Vista, Miramax and maybe others), who may be partnered with another large company as well, I forget.

I find it unlikely any company could mount a hostile takeover of any of these studios. And if they did, they wouldn't be giving away any free movies- they'd be squeezing consumers for profits to offset the huge aquisition costs.

Re:Copy-protected PC's?

[Alpha Prime]

I wonder how they plan to protect against those of us that buy and assemble our own hardware and run Linux on that. The USA has no control over the Taiwan clones, and no one is going to support a USA version plus an International version of the hardware.

Mr. Jack needs to get serious and look at the real world, not just the insular United States of Hollywood.

Re:Copy-protected PC's?

[Monte]

That's precisely my point. You can get a different computer that doesn't have those features.

Agreed. But I'm assuming the copy protection will be incorporated most successfully in some new media format (say, a drive that plays holographic movies, just as a flight of fancy) - and this new technology will only work with compliant PCs. You can buy/build as many non-compliant PCs as you want, but you won't be able to use the cool new hardware on them.

Too many people are obsessing on today's technology, and how they can't protect it, and I agree, the genie is out of those bottles. But I think this proposal by the MPAA is them thinking ahead to tomorrow's technology.

Re:Copy-protected PC's?

[Wraithlyn]

"put that in your "2 out of 10" pipe and smoke it, Mr. Valenti"

Fuckin A. This kind of argument really pisses me off. They claim their have to be controls in place to guarantee that they rake in more money, because what they do is really expensive, and only 2 out of 10 of their products turn a profit.

Guess what?

NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM. Not the consumer's problem. Supply and demand, bubba. It makes the world turn. If movies aren't making as much money as it costs to produce them, then make them cheaper, or go find another line of work. Less ambitious projects, pay the stars less, work more efficiently, cut corners, whatever. The Constitution makes no guarantee that you will be able to continue profitting as you always have, otherwise scribes would have a monopoly on book producing, and printing presses (not to mention laser printers) would be illegal. If you gamble by spending 9 digit sums making a movie, YOU'RE GAMBLING. Don't come crying to us when you can't get people to pay you hundreds of millions of dollars to expose themselves to some nicely arranged photons and sound waves. I can't either.

It's the same old spiel with the recording industry... "well most music albums don't turn a profit, which is why we have to pass that cost-of-failure price onto you, the consumer". What a load of monopolistic doubleplusgoodspeak.

"in order to transport movies as agreed to by the consumer on a rent, buy or pay-per-view basis with heightened security"

Mr. Valenti, please define a public library, and explain how making everything rental or pay per use will benefit the general public.

"what the critics mean by "innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection"

Copyright law already protects these works. You're not talking about protection, you're talking about corporate mandated enforcement.

The future is independent content producers, who use the internet as their distribution medium, instead of short sighted, money grubbing, creatively vacant middlemen. The trick will be figuring out how to ensure creators get paid adequately.

Re:Copy-protected PC's?

[InfoVore]

"what the critics mean by "innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection"

Copyright law already protects these works. You're not talking about protection, you're talking about corporate mandated enforcement.

You are absolutely right. What is really busting their collective humps is that all these nifty new individually empowering technologies (PCs, Internet, Digital Recorders, etc.) make it impossible to ABSOLUTELY control distribution. That control is the core of their past and current revenue streams. They can't use conventional Copyright control (e.g. legal carpet bombing) on the new "threat". Even though record companies and movie studios are making record sales and profits and show all signs of INCREASING, they FEEL they are being cheated by a stinging swarm of evil copyright pirates.

A big component of this obsessive control freak paranoia is a variant of Lottery Dreamer Syndrom: "If we could get all those dirty rotten pirates to buy AND we could charge everybody per use on all our properties, THEN we would REALLY see some mula!!! Muahhahaha!!!"

Couple all of the above with the sheer boom-town greed that all these guys feel about the prospect of a Brand New Distribution Frontier (the Internet) and the frustration of not being able to control it, they then turn to the only means they have left to control the situation: lawmaking. Hence, we have the WTO, DMCA, and so on, and more to follow. They have money, which gives them influence. That lawmaking influence is the only weapon they have against we rapacious pirates, er loyal customers.

I agree with you that their loud complaints about guarenteeing their traditional revenue falls on very deaf ears with me. What kind of unmitigated sleezy amoral GALL do they have to sweepingly call their customers thieves and lobby governments to force us to buy their product?

Do these media moguls have a point? Yes. Are they accepting that we who are many, but have faint voices, have a point? No. New technology, as it always does, is disturbing and changing the commercial and rights balance in the world. They are simultaneously panicing and power-grabbing. In fairness, many individuals are pirating and immorally profiting off of the work of others too.

The bottom line is that all this brouhaha will settle out eventually. However, unless individuals fight for their Fair Use rights and for a fair, open, and TRULY competative market then we consumers are going to find ourselves with unreasonble and unnecessary restrictions and unwanted mandates about how we live our lives.

I.V.

Mr. Valenti gets framed...

[Bobzibub]

Dear Editor;

I'm entertained by Jack Valenti's assertion in his Feb 25th letter that
"According to the Boston-based consulting firm Viant, some 350,000-plus films
are being downloaded illegally every day."

If this is actually the case, then 350 000 * 6 Gbytes per movie (compressed
DivX at about 400x300 pixels) = 2 100 000 000 000 000 bytes per day.

That is 16 800 000 000 000 000 bits per day (8 bits per byte) or 16 800 Terra bits per day.

According to CyberAtlas (please see link below) the entire bandwidth of the
US internet is only 20 000 Terra bits per day.

So Mr. Valenti is using figures to advance his argument which imply that
(world) 'netizens downloading pirate movies would utilize 84% of *all* US
internet bandwidth. There must be a very 'fat pipe' to River-City.

Yours,

Bobzibub

http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/hardw ar e/article/0,,5921_900241,00.html

Why?

[NetJunkie]

The problem with this idea is that there is no incentive for PC makers to put in copy protection for movies. Unless it helps PC makers earn money, they won't bother. Margins are too thin as it is.

Not everyone cares about the movie/audio industry and they need to figure that out.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?
Here's why.

MPAA will come out with some new format or copy protection on existing formats. Call it Format X

Now, they license drives to read Format X. It's hardware, not just sotware. But they will only license it to vendors who've implemented the copy protection they are demanding.

So, if Dell licenses Format X and Gateway doesn't, Dell has a very strong advertising bullet: "We're the only ones who can sell you a system that can play Format X!" If Format X becomes important, gateway will suck wind until they license the technology also.

You'll see vendors beeting a path to the MPAA.

Re:Why are PC's being blamed?

[daniel_isaacs]

"Shouldn't the Movie and Record industries have been attacking the dual cassette decks, recording capabilities of VCR's, CD-R's, and Dvd-R's a long time ago?"

They did. They lost. They fight on.

Like that'll ever happen...

[Drachemorder]

They'll probably be able to get Microsoft to include copy-protection in Windows. MS is already doing their best to do that, anyway. Of course, that strategy could cut both ways. If Microsoft keeps adding heinous misfeatures like copy protection and product activation to their OS, it will drive more and more people to install alternative OS software.

Anyway, Valenti seems to be saying that copy-protection needs to be built into the hardware. I think it's fairly safe to say that if such a thing were to happen, we'd all need umbrellas to protect ourselves from falling pig droppings. Number one, you'd have to have legislation to do it, and such legislation wouldn't be very popular. Number two, can you imagine the outcry from the public? And number three, the technical details for implementing such a scheme are not trivial. I may be a hopeless optimist, but I really don't see this happening any time soon.

Big Brother is in your computer

[keithmoore]

So, let's see... the MPAA wants to bug your computer to make sure you don't copy movies,
the RIAA wants to bug your computer to make sure you don't copy sound recordings, Microsoft wants to bug your computer to make sure you're not running copies of their software (and that you've paid your license fees for this week), and the FBI wants to bug your computer to make sure you're not threatening national security or communicating with terrorists. (And the ISPs want to tell you exactly how you can communicate with others)

If all of these organizations have their way, there won't be any general-purpose programmable computers anymore - just appliances that can do what Microsoft/MPAA/RIAA and the government think you can be trusted to do without taking away some potential money or power from them.

Ummm... licensing?

[GMontag]

Wait!

The DVD players are "licensed" already. That did not stop this?

The DVDs are already encrypted (if they wish to be protected) and that didn't stop this?

There are already laws "preventing" "illegal" copying and that didn't stop this?

What the hell is up with Jackie V? His only solutions are to make things more complicated and more expensive!

Here is a clue: prosecute movie pirates instead of magazines owners and DeCSS programmers!!! Get the cops to arrest people selling pirated movies RIGHT IN FRONT OF MPAA HEADQUARTERS for starters!

Ingenious!

Yes, I do expect a royalty if the above idea is actually ever used.

Theoretical problem...

[Lictor]

Let me get this straight... he wants hardware that will detect all possible programs that will copy digital media...

So, from a theoretical computer science point of view, he wants a Turing machine that will recognize all Turing machines that compute a fixed function f. That sounds remarkably like a problem that is equivalent (by reduction) to the halting problem for Turing machines... Oh, did we mention that the halting problem is unsolvable??

But hey, if *Mr. Valenti* says so, it *must* be possible. After all, everyone knows that you can simply legislate away fundamental laws of mathematics...

Whats next? Valenti proposing that we set Pi equal to 3.0 to simplify calculations?

Re:Also, we'll need...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microphones that won't record copyrighted soundwaves,

Could be done.

Speakers that won't vibrate to reproduce copyrighted current patterns,

Could be done.

Film that won't change when exposed to copyrighted rays of light,

Could be done if film = CCD chip.

Re:freedom?

[FFFish]

Q: Who the fuck are they?

A: They're the king-makers. They're the rule-breakers. They're the ones who buy and sell the souls of Congress and the Senate. They're the ones who have the power.

Q: Who the fuck are you?

A: You're no one. You're to keep quiet, go to work, and spend as much money as possible on immediate material gratification. Shut up, sit down, be good, give them the money, do what they say, and you better damn well like it.

Re:isn't this like...

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason thsi has all come about is because of one thing - digital copies.

They didn't give a monkey's about VHS tapes as the quality downgraded somewhat, but digital is different - it could really screw them.

The irony of it is - so what? They chose digital as a format - it's selling point is that it has better image quality, not that you can copy it. We didn't ask for DVD's and CD's, we got them because they were sold to us on a "digital is better" premise.

Now after all these years being sold digital medium at a premium price over tapes (because it lasts longer, sounds better), they suddenly turn round and want to change everything because one characteristic of the digital medium works to their disadvantage...

If that isn't an abuse of market position I don't know what is...

Laughable

[Daunting*Alligheri]

What's truly humorous about this whole tirade (and thats all you can positively call anything spewed by Jackyboots) is that Mr. Valenti has this misnomer that a) its feasible to put copy protection to control the copyright interests of one party (in this case the MPAA) b) that other industries won't want a part in this copyright management free-for-all and that c) customers will buy it.

He manages to say in the same breath that while consumers are evil, we'll go ahead and latch on to the idea that less functionality is good, and moreso, that customers will eat the cost for such a machine. Oh how soon we forget the trials and tribulations that IBM went through merely trying to get a CPRM hard drive to market, and how they eventually backed down, i'm curious how Mr. valenti proposes an entire system would be willing to go the distance just to placate the film industry.

Here's a likely scenario: The MPAA has these supersecret talks with the major computer manufactuers (HP, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, Sony, etc.) and they hash out a preliminary. Word gets out to the rest of the copyright community -- Record labels, content producers -- hell even artists wanting to perfect a way for their pictures to be copy-proof on the websites -- and soon, the manufactuers are tweaking and tuning, and reconfiguring and modifying their parts in such a way that the box is nary more than a glorified television, streaming the content of -their- choice, at their discretion.

If such a system comes to be, I"ll become a luddite.

Rebuttal/Light Flamage

[Dino]

The movie industry is under siege from a small community of professors who argue (1) that broadband access to the Internet will never gain consumer acceptance without movies legitimately being made available on the Net and (2) that producers deliberately are holding back the exhibition of movies on the Net because of -- in the words of Lawrence Lessig ["Who's Holding Back Broadband," op-ed, Jan. 8] -- "the threat the Net presents to their relatively comfortable way of doing business." Add to this (3) the accusation that copyright owners are stifling innovation in the digital world.

The first claim is true: The great omission in digital downloads is the lack of legitimate movie availability. Text is mainly what the Net offers. A recent survey revealed that 68 percent of all home computer users say they're satisfied with their normal 56K computer modem. It can download pretty much all that's on the Net, as not much (legal) material is out there that's chock full of graphics and in a consumer-friendly format to create the need for a cable modem or a digital subscriber line (DSL).

Ooou, 68 percent of people who HAVE 56K modems are satisified with them....well that's probably why they have them! If they weren't satisified, they would get broadband. The remaining 32pecent probably live where they can't get broadband. And has claim that only illegal material is large is pure fabrication and opinion.

The second professorial indictment is palpable nonsense. It is a charge issued only by those who have a blurred knowledge of the financial fragility of the film industry. Because making movies is so expensive, only two in 10 films ever retrieve their production and marketing investment from domestic theatrical exhibition. Distributors have to use other venues -- delivery systems such as cable, satellite, TV stations, videocassettes, DVDs, international markets. Every producer yearns to use the Internet as a new delivery system to speed movies to consumers' homes for rent or sale, at fair, reasonable prices. Any producer who chooses to reject Internet exhibition is a fiscal lunatic.

Interesting. It's nonsense that producers wouldn't want to be online...yet they're not online? Explain that one to me...oh yes, because we don't legislation forcing all computer and manufacturers to the whim of Jack Valenti. Your arguument is spurious. You fail to address the fact that movie companies are keeping their movies offline. Guilty as charged.

According to the Boston-based consulting firm Viant, some 350,000-plus films are being downloaded illegally every day. Some are still in theatrical exhibition when they are illegitimately recorded, mostly by those who use state-of-the-art university broadband systems. Those who don't have broadband but find it beguiling to download movies free simply start their computers whirring at bedtime, and when they wake in the morning they have a movie. Free -- and illegally.

As time moves forward, information will be replicated into infinity. Deal with it.

The reason pitifully few films are legitimately available on the Internet is not producer hoarding. It is that those valuable creative works can't be adequately protected from theft. The analog format (videocassettes) and the digital format (DVDs) are different. Videocassette piracy costs the movie industry worldwide more than $3.5 billion, even though the sixth or seventh copy of analog becomes unwatchable. But the thousandth copy of digital is as pure as the original. Moreover, digital movies on the Internet can be pilfered and hurled at the speed of light to any spot on the planet. This is what gives movie producers so many Maalox moments.

Poppycock. I'm sure your "we're losing 3.5 billion dollars to VHS piracy!!!" rests on the SPA assumption that everytime sone one pirates, they would have paid for it. As far as digital copies remaining the same, apparently no one has told Jack that DIVX is a far, far, far cry from MPEG2 DVD (they only way I copy & store my DVDs).

What's keeping the movie industry from making its creativity theft-proof? Simply put, in order to transport movies as agreed to by the consumer on a rent, buy or pay-per-view basis with heightened security, computers and video devices must be prepared to react to instructions embedded in the film. Other ingredients are necessary to protect digital content, but it gets too complex to explain in a few sentences. At this moment, that kind of interaction is nowhere to be found in any computer or set-top box. Some security is available, but it is porous. The movie industry is, however, consulting with the finest brains in the digital world to try to find the answer.

Boo hoo hoo, it's all Congress and the PC industry fault! Nothing to see here, move along. Can't blame the movie industry, nope. Not their fault movies aren't online. Uh-huh. Sure.

As for the third charge -- that copyrighted movies are destroying digital innovation -- what the critics mean by "innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection.

Silly strar-man arguement. I'm sure that when scientists claim the movie industry is holding back inovation, they were ONLY talking about cracking codes. Perhaps they were talking about the movie industries harrassing of competing P2P, distribution, pay-per-view, compression and related "digital movie" technologies, all of which Jack and co have no interest in because they can't controll it 100%. And they'll sue you over it too. Jerk.

Movie producers are eager to populate the Net with movies in a consumer-friendly format(emphasis added). There is a way to achieve adequate security for high-value movies on the Net. 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. Without concord, one option is left: Congress must step in to protect valuable creative works on the Net and thereby benefit consumers by giving them another choice for movie viewing.

Since when is restricting fair-use, first-sale doctrine and free-speech "consumer friendly." I think you meant "consumer limiting." The rest of this paragraph is you and your pipe dream.

What's on USENET TV these days?

Re:Freedom and Guns...

[argoff]

I've never owned a gun before, but if anyone fucks with my freedom or free use of my computer all in the name of an obsolete distribution industry like the MPAA and RIAA... then I'll go to their house and mess them up.

With them being such bullies, I understand where you're comeing from, but it is always important to renember - they are the ones who are bullies, not us; they are the ones who are inclined to violence, not us. The simple truth is that we can win this war without taking one drop of blood, all we half to do is act in defiance and civil disobedience of copyrights and eventually they will run out of steam. Not that your response would be unwaranted because when all is said and done they are threatening fundamental freedoms, but we will be far better served if we force their hands and let them initiate the violence so as to show the world who they really are and proove to us who we really are.

Re:....not to mention China

[Quarters]

So the Taiwanese and other Pac Rim mb companies don't make motherboards with copy protection on them. Ok.

Well, now that those MBs are in violation of the DMCA (they could be considered content protection circumvention devices) they will no longer be allowed inside the US. The shipments of them will be stopped by customs.

Re:freedom?

[macsox]

if you are an american writing the above, get over yourself. 'I was just having a discussion w/someone last night about how unfree we are.' compared to what? owning your own island in the pacific? the democratic republic of the congo?

i went through the 'america is imperialistic and big brotherly' in high school too. now i am mature enough to realize that, despite the horrible influence of money on politics, america is as free as you get. can it be freer? sure. anything could be. but bitching and moaning about how you aren't free because you can't copy copyrighted movies is callous and ignorant.

move to china, liberate it, and then post to slashdot. i'll be more receptive.

</offtopic>

Don't defend just attack

[rlongfield]

Hey this just be my simple minded approach to things but instead of spending Millions if not Billions of dollars coming up with protection schemes and filing suit against those that break them. Would it not just be cheaper, make more sense and be far more effective to make the movies such a good deal that you don't want to put the effort into stealing them? Sell the movies for $10, there would be no extra cost for distributing a digital movie other than bandwidth. No editing (to fit your TV), production (movies onto tape and DVD), shipping, or shelving fees, all you'd have is the bandwidth cost. Would I download a movie for free when I can have a legitimate copy for $10? Hardly, leave all the special features etc for the DVD just give me the movie, cheap, and I'll buy. But hey, again thats just my perhaps overly simplistic way of thinking.

Cheap, Greedy and Stupid

[Zeinfeld]

'Computer and video-device companies need to sit at the table with the movie industry. Together, in good-faith talks,

The problem for the MPAA is that they cannot understand that as far as the economy goes they are not all that important. The computer industry is an order of magnitude larger. The not very hard to spot plan here is to bribe enough congressmen to push through their scheme. that is a pretty hopeless approach if the computer industry has more money.

I have done the DRM bit. I have even gone to an SDMI conference. My conclusion is that the MPAA and RIAA are Cheap, Greedy and Stupid.

First off, as every vendor that has attempted to get into the DRM space knows, the content owners want all the work done for free, or as near to it as makes no difference. One leading content provider had the idea that a complete DRM system should cost no more than $0.50 per device with the option of buying it out for $100K, this for a bespoke product that would cost several million to develop and would save the customer several hundred million a year.

Secondly the content 'owners' are greedy. Look at the little scheme they had in the DMCA (now repealed) to steal the 'returned rights' of artists by retrospectively designating them 'works for hire'. The scheme that is planned for insertion into the Hollings bill at the last minute will redefine publication through the Web to be a 'mechanical right' and not a 'Performance right'. This will allow them to steal the copyrights currently controlled by the composers.

Thirdly the content owners are stupid. They seize upon every piece of cryptographic snakeoil that comes to the market. The demands that the computer industry save their ass for them sound remarkably like the demands made by the likes of Louis Freeh over key escrow 'we do not believe that it cannot be done, your denial clearly means you must be lying'.

what we need to do is make congress aware of the abuses these people are already engaged in. The DVD zone system has one purpose, to allow the price of DVDs to be set by the amount individual markets will bear. This is illegal under EU law and they will get their just deserts in the end. But why should people like this have the benefit of niche laws to protect their interests if they don't obey the law themselves?

MS Digital Rights Management OS patent

[Faramir]

Remember Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) OS patent? If Congress were to enact legislation requiring this kind of copy protection at the OS level, then I imagine MS would be quite intent on making sure everyone pays them royalties, whether they're actually due or not. And that's assuming they'd place "nice" and even "allow" other OS's to contain copy protection. A few years ago, I would have thought the feds wouldn't let them get away without freely sharing a legislated key technology like this, but now I'm not so sure... . Not to sound too pessimist, but royalties like this could be a big pain in the arse for struggling Linux vendors.

Course, if it did happen, I could just start using a European-based Linux distribution, since they don't treat software patents the same. For now, anyway...

this has been another episode of pure speculation and meaningless FUD...

Time out from the rhetoric for a sec...

[Mr. Neutron]

Ok, Jack does have a point:

The ability for millions of Internet users to zap perfect copies of movies around the Net destroys the current business model of the movie industry. And I find very little reason to deny that claim.

That leaves the movie industry with two options (logically). Either prevent millions of Internet users from being able to zap perfect copies of movies around the Net, or change the business model of the industry. Both are fraught with problems.

Let's take on the topic of copy prevention. Essentially, it's not possible, as long as the PC in its current incarnation persists. You can encrypt media to the gills, but somewhere, somehow, in a PC, that media needs to be converted to a cleartext stream in order to be played. And anyone with a bit of technical know-how can capture that cleartext stream. The only way to prevent such copying is to embed copy prevention into the very lowest levels of hardware. Which will render the PC useless for doing anything useful. Besides, it precludes fair-use.

Next option: transmission prevention. Slightly more feasible. And with more of the broadband "biomass" being rounded up by a small number of media companies and telcos, this is probably the first avenue the MPAA is going to take in this battle. In six months to a year, most Morpheus users (for instance) will be forced by their ISPs to shut down their clients or lose their accounts. It's probably happening already. Sure, there will be a few maverick ISPs that don't play by the rules, but P2P filesharing systems become useless without a critical mass of users. Now, the MPAA will win the battle on this front, but at the cost of killing the biggest "killer app" to hit the Net since the browser. And at the cost of depriving Internet users from sharing perfectly legit files: stifling what could prove to be a huge revolution in human communication. Oh, well.

Of course, the other logical option would be for the movie industry to change its business model to something like TV: free and advert-driven. I don't know if this is possible, because I don't know much about business. But, I'll tell you this: destroying the PC or destroying the free exchange of ideas in a new an exciting medium, so that a few companies can keep their bottom line, is wrong.

Yes we have seen this before, but in another way!

[argoff]

Yes we have seen this before, and yes it failed with the HD manufactures, but we have seen this even a 150 years before that.

In the 1830's there were those who thought that the entire purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gyn to extend the size of their plantations for unlimited profit. Today we have a similar problem in the information age - people who think that the only usefull purpose of information technology and the internet is to extend the use of their intellectual property rights for unlimited controll. Today as back then, they couldn't be more wrong, couldn't be more delusional, and couldn't be a bigger threat to individual freedoms.

The only real solution is cut the vine off at the root and attack copyrights directly with defiance and civil disobedience till (like then) they run out of steam and quit trying to take away our freedoms.

Do better! :-)

[WinPimp2K]

Now that's just the sort of mindless MSFT bashing I would expect to see here. Now observe the proper way to bash Microsoft:

In December of 2001, MSFT was awarded a patent for an operating system that incorporates strong Digital Rights Management (do your own darn google search). This means that anyone and everyone that has any device that uses an "operating system" and enforces copy prevention technology needed to eliminate the potential for copyright infringement will be paying licensing fees to Microsoft unitil at least 2018. Naturally the license fee will just happen to exceed the retail price of the corresponding MSFT operating system by ten per cent. Just like the currenty MSFT tax, it won't matter if you recompile your own kernal to exclude the technology, you will still have to write that check to MSFT. If you do not license from them, well yes it really will be illegal. But you have to explain these little details. Just spewing anti-MSFT sentiment du jour is simply unacceptable laziness.

Combine this with the earlier story about howMSFT has determined that HTTPis "obsolete" and you will soon find yourself unable to network with other computers without paying Microsoft for the privilege of using MS-HTTP.

Flame me, I don't care...

[stubear]

...but don't you think it quite ironic, nay hypocritical, that many here cry foul when anyone suggests violating the GPL yet when anyone violates another's copyrights many here cheer? Little do you know that without copyrights your GPL becomes unenforcable. Before you condemn thers for wishing to control their work, think about what you're doing when you place the GPL on your software.

this stuff scares the sh** out of me.

[Narcocide]

It's hard for me (a practiced paranoid) not to be really worried when this type of stuff bubbles up to the surface. Imagine a world where it's *illegal* to have full control over your computer. Imagine a world where running a non-copy-protection-compliant operating system (like anything not made by microsoft) is illegal.

Terrifying.

Congratulations

[TFloore]

Yep, you just described the perfect setup for the American consumer. No, there are no more American citizens, just consumers.

Now go out and spend some money to help get us out of our recession. It's your duty as an American.

My, but I hate getting cynical.

(Yes, this comment is obviously not meant for the sizeable number of non-American Slashdot readers... but don't worry, our government doesn't have a problem passing laws it thinks applies to you anyway.)

Re:This is from the guy

[kenthorvath]

That the idea... you will violate the law.

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand

Anyone else notice...

[kennylives]

... this bit:

Some are still in theatrical exhibition when they are illegitimately recorded, mostly by those who use state-of-the-art university broadband systems.

So, somehow, my PC has got to distinguish between video that I shot myself of something that I'm "allowed" to shoot and a film in the cinema that I'm not allowed to shoot (to make a screener to distribute)?? Not gonna happen. What's more likely is that the MPAA will push to throttle all media creation on a consumer-grade machine without express permission from them. Or, at least cripple any such media creation as to make it worthless (ripping MP3's with the stock WMP springs to mind).

Of course, there's quite a few comments here that claim that Linux is the solution to our woes, but I wonder... what is the Linux equivelent of iMovie? or iPhoto? But even more than that, is Linux even legal if the PC's are meant to incorporate these controls at the hardware level? How many minutes would it take for the MPAA to declare Linux a circumvention mechanism under the DMCA and wipe it off the face of the earth (or at least the US market)?

My heart is filled with dread at the thought of what happens when the interests of the MPAA in controlling their content is at odds with my interest in making my own films/music with a modern (content-control-enabled) PC.

Suppose they showed a movie and nobody came?

[Fill Dirt]

Perhaps the reason folks are happy with their 56K modems and existing broadband is that it's good enough to read email, visit web sites, and read the news. Why would I want to spend hours downloading a movie (legally or not) when I can jump in my car, drive 5 minutes to a shopping center, and rent the movie for 5 nights for a couple of bucks? Duh! I'm sorry folks, watching anything more than a few minutes long on my PC has no appeal at all. The TV in the living room has surround sound, a decent sized screen and there is a comfortable chair in front of it. I think in the long run, most movie goers/viewers will agree: The PC is not the motion picture venue of choice.

Is it really that big of a problem?

[roXet]

I know there are alot of people downloading whole movies from the internet, but is it really that big of a problem? People have been downloading pirate software for as long as I have had internet access, and the software industry is fine. I remember the advent of mp3s and the initial downloading craze, and the music industry is still kickin'.

I guess the big quesiton is, how much of the entire consumer base is downloading and not buying. Yeah, we all know somebody who is uber-1337, and likes to brag about how he doesn't pay for anything. This person is usually very immature and just generally annoying. But take me for example. Here at work I have access to all the bandwith I can handle, a cd burner and an Internet full of illegal movies. But do I horde them, laughing the whole time because I am getting away with something? No, I don't even bother because it is not worth my time.

Also, I hear about how digial copies are so pure, and just as good as the original. Heh, I hate to break it to everyone, but a divx movie that I might download from any of the many sources on the internet, is nowhere *near* what I would consider DVD quality. Hell, it's barely watchable quality. Not to mention the fact that I will have to view said movie while sitting at my computer desk. Well you don't *have* to watch it on the computer, but they alternatives aren't much better.

I can make a crappy vcd out of the file I downloaded. But it will take god knows how long to convert the movie into vcd format, plus the fact that it will be generally pretty crappy. Oh I guess I could hook up a computer with a tv-out to my tv. An easy thing to do, but I'm just too damned lazy.

Basically, the movie industry is going through the same thing that every industry does when it becomes painfully evident that their revenue stream is in jeapordy.

Also...

[isaac]

Sony is a pissant company compared to, say, Microsoft or IBM.

Sony's market cap = ~$42 billion
AOL Time Warner's market cap = ~$100 billion

Microsoft's market cap = ~$319 billion
IBM's market cap = ~$169 billion

I know market cap is not the only or even the best measure of a company's size, but it's a decent measure of the leverage a company can wield. To put things in perspective, the total value of all Sony's floated stock (i.e. market cap) is a bit more than the amount of *real, liquid cash* that Microsoft has on hand (~$36 billion as of their last filing).

Media giants like AOLTW are small fry compared to the giants of tech or many other industries. They just have disproportionate influence with politicians and the public. Why? For one, they have a long, long, long history of brutally effective lobbying and tight political connections. Jack Valenti was riding in the car behind JFK in Dallas, and was the first advisor to LBJ to be sworn in. The main reason, though, is that they have enormous influence over the public. Politicians don't get elected without the media. Elections are won and lost by media coverage. Popular entertainment media like movies and TV can shape public opinion.

That's why politicians get on their knees for media companies - nobody who cares about reelection wants to piss off the owners of CNN (AOL Time Warner), FoxNews (NewsCorp), ABC (Disney), CBS (Viacom), etc.

-Isaac

He doesn't say anything about streaming...

[thumbtack]

I find it interesting that Jack Valenti doesn't mention stream in anyway shape or form, but places the entire focus on downloading. Before Movie 88 was shut down, they were doing streaming via realvideo which at best was fair. At a $1.00 per 5 day rental it had gr4eat potential. If you remember last year Madonna did a webcast of a mini concert in London that was streamed. 26 million people tuned in. Imagine $1 each. Even if half decided they didn't want to pay, that would leave 13 million. More than any single concert has ever grossed, by far. Imagine Harry Potter opening on the web, or Lord of the Rings. You think your numbers for a weekend opening are good now?

Remember this is the same guy that said that the VCR is to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler was to women, in testimony before congress, and lived in the White House as an aide to President Johnson.

This Needs to Happen -- sortof

[namespan]

What I've been thinking lately is that this actually needs to happen. A reasonably secure, widely implemented SOFTWARE spec for DRM needs to happen. And it's in our best interest not to fight it.

Hardware security, if it happens, will be draconian and will limit any kind of open development platform. And it's what Media industry biggies will push for -- are pushing for -- because they can't see a succesful software alternative.

Of course, there can't be a totally secure software solution. There can't be totally secure solution of any kind. But assuming we stopped fighting soft security -- or at least didn't distribute tools for doing it -- we'd soon see media biggies start to release their holdings. Slowly. Expensively. And a total rip off. And 90% of folks would be herded through the DRM scheme.

And I think, over time, in that market, it would fail. Eventually, someone would release suffeciently compelling media at a competetive price and they'd win.

I think the media biggies know this, and so they're pushing for a platform that not only allows copy protection but also utter control. They do it under the auspices of copy protection. If we give them copy protection, they lose their weapon.

Simple Solution:

[psxndc]

2 out of 10? Make less crap. That should bring the price down. If the movies cost less, more people would go to them. I know I've cut back my movie going (at one point a few years ago I had seen every movie at the local Loews 10) when I realized it costs 10 friggin dollars to go see a movie.

People are pissed about stifling innovation not because you don't want them to pirate movies, but because Alen Cox and others won't give lectures in the US because they are afraid of being arrested for violating the DMCA, the worst piece of corporate interest legislation in recent history.

The people that don't want the government to influence business are the same ones trying to use business to influence government.

psxndc

Re:This is from the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is one of the reasons why
Music
Was eventually made
Illegal.

-- Frank Zappa, Joe's Garage

Dear Jack,

[rnturn]

Just a few comments...

``A recent survey revealed that 68 percent of all home computer users say they're satisfied with their normal 56K computer modem.''

They're satisfied with 56Kbps because that's all they can get. BTW, who did this survey and where were the results published?

``not much (legal) material is out there that's chock full of graphics and in a consumer-friendly format to create the need for a cable modem or a digital subscriber line (DSL)''

Way to go. When I get my DSL line will my name be enshrined in a manilla folder at the MPAA as a potential copyright infringer?

``Because making movies is so expensive, only two in 10 films ever retrieve their production and marketing investment from domestic theatrical exhibition.''

Two solutions, in my mind: Don't make the other eight if they're money losers. Or, perhaps, make decent movies without all the multi-million dollar special effects. If you're looking for reasons why noone's going to the movies, it's because most of them assume that their audience has the intelligence of a cabbage. We're looking for a good plot, believable characters, and other things that, frankly, you'll never be able to get by adding more and more expensive CGI. Not everyone is distracted by the fancy computer generated effects to the point that they can't tell that the movie, as a whole, stinks.

``use the Internet as a new delivery system to speed movies to consumers' homes for rent or sale''

But you'll probably push for a prohibition of the consumer's ability to store this purchased movie onto anything more permanent than a hard disk. When that dies then I'll have to buy another copy won't I? Ah... I see the plan for the studios' future revenue stream.

``Other ingredients are necessary to protect digital content, but it gets too complex to explain in a few sentences.''

I, personally, suspect that it's difficult to explain briefly because it'll take a new 200-page law which will trample the rights of most every computer user. And you don't really want the general public actually knowing what's being planned until it's too late anyway.

``...that copyrighted movies are destroying digital innovation -- what the critics mean by "innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection''

Nice try. Lessig doesn't (in anything that I've read anyway; I'm still reading his latest book) say that ``copyrighted movies are destroying digital innovation''. It's the new copyright extensions that you and the rest of the MPAA have lobbied for and gotten enacted into law that threaten to kill off innovation. Particularly when they're being applied to things other than your precious movies.

``Movie producers are eager to populate the Net with movies in a consumer-friendly format.''

Just my opinion, mind you, but anything that obsoletes existing computer equipment will never be considered ``consumer-friendly''.

``Congress must step in to protect valuable creative works on the Net and thereby benefit consumers by giving them another choice for movie viewing.''

Here's a clue (free of charge): The internet does not exist to provide the movie industry with a convenient conduit to pipe their crummy movies to the public. And, since the vast majority of the people using the Internet seem to be happy with slow, slow, 56Kbps connections (your assertion), they're not going to be lining up to replace their modems with DSL routers any time soon. Besides, if you haven't noticed, most of the U.S. cannot even get broadband. Consider those who have cable access: why haven't more signed up in large numbers to receive pay-per-view movies? It's a dud. If it were popular, wouldn't you think more people would have demanded that their cable providers include it (or more of it)? BTW, most of the people that I have heard of even having a PPV service cancel it after a short time. Are you and your cohorts banking on the public paying for movies that they'll watch at home because it'll be more convenient to see a bad movie at home as opposed to having to get in the car and drive to see the same bad movie? I'm pretty sure that the movie-going public isn't that gullible.

You need to get over this fantasy that we're all clamoring for Hollywood's product and that the MPAA members are performing some sort of noble service by churning out the drek that passes for a Hollywood movie.

Have a nice day!

Re:The GNU PC

[base3]

For the last two years, OpenCores [opencores.org] has been designing a PC (among other things) from raw gates. The design is covered by a GNU license.

The building of and trafficking in which will be illegal if Jack Valenti, his minions, and his purchased legislators get their way.