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?

[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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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:....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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!