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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."
If you try to make it a hardware device, I won't buy it, or people that buy preassembled PCs will pay a geek to remove it.
If you make it software, I won't install it. If you build it into Windows, that's OK, I'll just boot into Linux. Want to include it in Linux? Fine, I have the source code and the knowledge to remove it.
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
Jack, you should know that some companies in the computer industry make more than the entire membership of the MPAA combined. You won't have much luck twisting their arm...
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
But, if a divx movie is only 600MB, rather than 6GB, then we get to drop everything by a factor of 10.
8.4% of US bandwidth is movies?
Seems plausible.
If this happens, I will gladly violate the law. Period.
sulli
RTFJ.
When are the RIAA and MPAA going to get it into their skulls that they are not the main source of artistic creativity in the world?
I always hear these protectionist arguments along the lines of, "well, if you don't protect the RIAA/MPAA, society will decay because there won't be any music or art." Hogwash. These organizations didn't even exist a hundred and fifty years ago, and somehow we still had art and music. In fact, I seem to recall art and music going back to the dawn of human history? What, are they going to give out licenses to take piano lessons next? That'll be the day.
Jack Valenti is just a middleman, he has no talent on his own. I doubt he even knows that people build their own computers. What, is he going to lobby for that to be illegal next? I wouldn't doubt it. How schizophrenic can society get, people hating Microsoft, but being all right with the crap these control freak organizations put out? It really scares me most times I think of it.
</rant mode>
---Windows 2000/XP stable? safe? secure? 5 lines of simple C code say otherwise!
'Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.' -- Bruce Schneier
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
That editorial written by Valenti was placed because Congress will be holding a hearing on content protection and broadband on Thursday morning. Even the Washington Post's editoral page can be hijacked by the MPAA's powerful lobbyists... The legislation to be considered will probably be Hollings' SSSCA.
SSSCA Working Draft. (via Cryptome)
What incentive could companies posisbly have to add this to their products?
What incentive is there to put region coding in a DVD player?
Oh, that's right - it's part of the spec. If you want to license the DVD technology you have to agree that you'll honor region coding.
There's your answer - the copy protection will be part and parcel of whatever new nifty whiz-bang thing that you can't continue living without (say, HDTV maybe) and the manufacturers won't have a choice.
And rest assured anything that ain't Wintel or Mac will surely get screwed.
Won't work *without* legislation???!? Won't work *WITH* legislation!
I really really wish that the Movie and Record industry would lose their image of self-importance in our society that's largely propped up by the Hollywood star machine. 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!).
And more to the point, IBM alone grosses more than the film, TV, and music industry put together! If I were Valenti, I'm not sure I'd be making such a ruckus. 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!"???
Indeed.
This is precisely the tactic anti-gun forces use, (and which was so prevalent during the Clinton administration)... instead of encouraging the Justice Department to enforce the (quite sufficient and strict) laws currently the books, they try to add more on top.
It smells like it's building to the day when *surprise!* all of the laws will be enforced.
0x0D 0x0A
I won't buy a PC with copy restriction 'features'. Hear that, industry? I refuse to support freedoms being taken away. This world will be a sad, sad place if content is so tightly controlled.
.AVI. Then I'd have it in the background as I'm manipulating a character I created to get a feel for how Mr. Chan moves. In other words, I have educational reasons for wanting to use a DVD rip.
I am a 3D Artist. Most of the learning I did was at home. I started with replicating scenes from Star Trek. Now let me explain something about myself, I'm not a foley artist, nor am I a musician. So I had to find some sound effects to accompany my animations, along with a sound track. This means I had to go purchase both a soundtrack from one of the ST movies, and an ST game with sound files in the appropriate format. (in otherwords, they were paid.) If the Music Industry or the MPAA decided to target me, they could still harass me with the DMCA. The only thing protecting me is the huge PR issue that'd ensue.
Today I'm moving into Character Animation. But in order to solidify my skills, I need reference footage. One of the ideas I had was to rip a Jackie Chan DVD and convert clips of it into an
When I finally assemble a demo reel to get a job with, I'm likely going to add a song for the sound track. Now I respect the artists out there making music, but I'm not paying a license fee for a limited use Demo Reel intended to get me a job. Just as I wouldn't expect them to pay me if they used their music with my artwork to get a record deal.
If I were to purchase a 'Copy Restricted PC', then the hardware would fight with me over the content I'm trying to use. This is *not* good. This would be a serious blow in my ability to learn how to work for the same industry that's responsible for that 'feature' going in. I have a feeling that if this idiot has his way, one of the casualties would be the talent pool that suddenly has nothing to start with. How about guys that do remixes of songs we listen to today? I've heard some incredible remixes out there. I really think there are people who have done some of these remixes who really should get hired by a music company somewhere, becuase man they are talented.
They didn't make the song, somebody else did, but they spun it in a new way that's really cool. I didn't like that song 'Torn' by Natalie Imbruglia (sp?), but I stumbled across a remix of it that really made me enjoy it. Whoever did that mix is seriously an awesomely talented person. If they were prevented from using that song, then what would they sharpen their skills on? You can't go learn how to remix in college. You can't learn how to be a talented effects animator for a movie studio from college.
So if you take my fair use rights away just because you think you're losing money to piracy, then you're also drying up your talent pool and you'll have a drought on content.
I wonder if they're expecting to suddenly gain 3 billion a year if this goes into place. They're basing sales losses on Napster without even thinking about the other conditions going on out there. The content sucked this year, the economy stinks (altho I suppose Intel and AMD having slow quarters could be linked to piracy of processors on Napster...), and the Sept 11th attacks have made people happier to stay home then go out. Perhaps the real problem is that the RIAA isn't making their content available to purchase online.
"Derp de derp."
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.
He's right, you know. That's also the reason Napster got shut down and KazAA is trying to be: the movie and music industries will not put out their own copies of their media. I want freely-downloadable media for pennies a copy as much as anyone, but I can't get it because the owners won't put it out without copy protection.
What am I stuck with instead? P2P software that gets me assorted copies of pirated media, some of which is at an unusable quality, all of which is subject to interruptions and highly variable download speeds. I've been saying for years that I would gladly pay a single site $10 a month if it meant I could download my heart's content of music (or movies) of reliable quality, at reliable speeds over a reliable connection, with a useable search engine giving me complete results.
If having MS install copy-protection at the OS level means the media companies will finally make this available, then I can stomach it. They don't have to eliminate MP3s or AVIs, they just have to include something that will play files that are copy-protected enough to satisfy the media owners. If they don't want me copying it to recordable media, then it should be free or pennies apiece. If they don't mind me making copies for myself, then I'll pay more. And they can quote me on that.
As poorly rewritten as this editorial is, it hammers on Lessig on three points:
- People don't want to pay taxes, and they don't want the economy slowed down by "overregulation". So we adopt the passive compromise. Passively regulate by letting things like copyright law govern the market rather than active oversight. When industries realize this, they push to rewrite the law that shapes the market (there is no "free market", just different kinds of legal control) to give themselves plums. The current case in point is Enron, but let's not forget the previous Bush-deregulation debacle: Michael Keating and the S&L crisis.
- People don't want to lose their jobs either. This means when a big business or a whole set of them encounters rough financial straits - maybe they did something stupid, like Enron, maybe the world changed, as in the case of steel producers (who now use subsidies and tariff regulations to stay afloat), or maybe both as for the MPAA and RIAA, there's a lot of pressure on the government not to let them fail. But subsidies and payouts make good targets for "government waste" exposees, and arcane legal restrictions do not. This is why
- Anyone with the wherewithall and the disposition to realize the above two points is probably and intellectual and possibly also and academic. By naming a small community of professors Valenti's ghostwriters put in the only piece effective writing in this whole sham of an editorial. In short, if you're a cardigan-wearing, pipe-smoking, hoity-toity professor, you hate people who work hard and make money.
Wish I knew how to counter those, but that's where government's relationship with business seems to be headed these days.One the other hand, iff you're a hard-working, truck-driving, music-loving regular guy, you're with us and our good ole way of doing business, and you'll tell you government to support us supporting you. And those charges are damn hard to shake off.
We should consider ourselves normal, because as every other generation has shown, freedom is gained through risk, fight, and struggle and no other way (not even voteing sometimes). However, today our risks are a lot less thanks to others who have got us this far.
Here, I think the best solution is defiance and civil disobedience of copyrights alltogether. It is only when we get to the root of the problem that we will "free up our children" to go onto the "next generation of fighting".
In some countries, such as New Zealand, it's illegal to sell DVD players that honour region coding, as it's against Fair Trade laws.
Apparently, it might also be the same in Australia, too. (Alan Fels, of the ACCC, is my personal hero!)
What's next? Do you plan to require that my friends each purchase the DVD as well when I have them over to enjoy my home theater?
You have to ask? Really?
In Switzerland most shops officially sell them region free (mostly with a pre-installed unlocking device).
I don't think this will change any time soon. Switzerland doesn't even want to be a UN member fearing to loose its sovereignty, let alone to adapt its laws for foreign lobby groups such as the MPAA.
Should the government do such things, I'm sure a referendum shall be initiated to abolish such laws.
You'd be surprised at how many whiz-bang things you can continue living without.
If you don't download movies or share songs, you don't really need broadband. And that's what the MPAA/RIAA are really afraid of. Not that the Internet will destroy them, but that the Internet will never materialize as a market they can control.
If you convince yourself that you don't need broadband:
you can browse the internet using a text-based web browser and avoid the pop-up windows, the banner ads, and the 1x1 pixel web bugs.
you can network over telephone voiceband channels, which by law cannot be port-blocked, sniffed*, bandwidth-hogged by your neighbor, or QOS'ed into the ground by your provider.
you can completely avoid DOS attacks, script kiddees, etc, because you know exactly which computer you connected to
I've had enough of this wonderful Internet. Bring back FidoNet!
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Why hasn't this been started in the technical community? There could be a slash site with info on representatives with the potential to support or harm our interests as geeks, and organize some contribution/lobbying for certain causes. I'm sure the support would be there, and this might end up having a significant impact on US politics. Imagine a site with the traffic of /. geared towards lobbying representatives for causes we care about. The site would have to be sectioned geographically. If well-implimented, this could change the way democracy works, with people actively supporting causes they care about, and a government resposive directly to the people. PAC groups, or Political Action Commities already can serve a similar function, but the organization is lacking to get individuals involved in their political system, and business interests are often at the heart of such groups. A sort of open-sourced lobbying would be a good way to bring the influence on the political system back into the hands of the people it is meant to represent. Work should start on this immediately, although I personally lack the technical ability, or time to impliment such a system. Time to ask the community for some help.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
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.
No, Mr. Valenti, what we mean when we say "innovation", are things that give the consumer, the end user of your products, the choice of what we want. Surely, as head of the MPAA, you must be aware of your own members outstanding lawsuits against the truly innovative device makers Replay TV and TiVo. Perhaps it is time for you to stop treating your customers like criminals and thieves.
Times are a changin'. Those who choose to go forward will reap the rewards of satisfying consumers needs. Those who choose to drag their heels will fall by the wayside.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
People will base thier moral perogative on YOURS. What does this mean? It means if you are morally right 99% of the time in your own business dealing, you will find that 99% of your customers will play fair with you.
People, unlike corporations, don't steal from the weak just because they can. If that were the case, *every* church collection plate would come back empty. But they don't, ever. Becuase a church is morally just, and so the people who contribute feel that they need to live in the same moral framework.
If you are worried about piracy, take the moral high road. If you take the low road, all the legislation, copy protection and strongarming in the world won't save you, but if you are morally justified in everything taht you do, you could give you music away for 100% free and find people donating money to you out of thier own good will.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Whenever a person or an industry asks for legislation, one should always ask two questions:
I understand very clearly how what Valenti wants is going to benefit the movie industry, but I do not understand how this is going to benefit the people of the United States of America in the long term.
Which is better for the people of the United States in the long term? A movie industry dominated by a few very large oligopolistic Hollywood producers that make movies that cater to the common denominator, or a movie industry with hundreds of small, vibrant, innovative but independent movie producers that cater to a wide variety of styles and tastes, in other words, that offer consumers a choice?
Do we want to support with legislation all current business models? or should we let the MPAA adapt their business model to the times or go out of business?
Firstly, the real cost is only the sales foregone. Many, probably the huge majority, of these "pirates" would simply not buy, and so their "piracy" doesn't represent any real loss.
Secondly, the loss is hugely inflated by using the full retail value instead of something more realistic like the either the wholesale value or better yet, the lost profits.
What Valenti wants to legislate is a permanent revenue stream, a tax, if you will, on visual entertainment, with the MPAA as the sole beneficiary.
I, for one, object to Valenti's proposed tax on visual entertainment.
"The problem with this idea is that there is no incentive for PC makers to put in copy protection for movies."
Sure there is -- PC sales are in the toliet and the OEMs are desparate for any applicaiton which moves machines. Machine X which can connect to might have more percieved value than Machine Y which can not.
Furthermore, as you note, margins are tiny and a MPAA subsidy of $100/box could make a huge difference in the profitability. (This would be like the ISP subsidies which are common.)
But I suspect that the greater aim of the MPAA is to generate an alternative to programmable PCs and replace them with closed media terminals (such as settop boxes). Due to economies of scale, these terminals will be based on standard PC hardware, and therefore the DRM hardware standards are required if the PC companies want to play ball in that market. After all Gateway could care less if you buy a $500 PC or a $500 Media Consumption Terminal.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
but this guy is on crack.
...a charge issued only by those who have a blurred knowledge of the financial fragility of the film industry.
Computer and video-device companies need to agree on the ingredients for creating strong protection for copyrighted films...
I guess he thinks all computers are sealed-case, off-the-shelf pieces of crap that can be built to keep an eye on the contents of your files, and what you do with those files.
Because making movies is so expensive, only two in 10 films ever retrieve their production and marketing investment from domestic theatrical exhibition...Videocassette piracy costs the movie industry worldwide more than $3.5 billion
Hey, I'm all for copyrights and piracy prevention, but let's get real. Just because clever bookkeeping makes most of your movies "losers" doesn't mean that you aren't swimming in cash from the few successful ones. Just walk across Wilshire Blvd up into the hills, knock on some doors, and ask people what they do for a living. Not a lot of insurance salesmen up there.
I think Mr. Valenti has a blurred knowledge of technology. As I said, I'm all for copyrights and piracy prevention, but depending on an entire industry of manufacturers, programmers, and users to base their standards and protocols on your security needs is ridiculous. Might as well ask car makers to build their cars so you can't fit a duffle bag full of pot in the trunk.
And, an unrelated aside:
A recent survey revealed that 68 percent of all home computer users say they're satisfied with their normal 56K computer modem.
Hey! Isn't that equal to the number of users on AOL/MSN?
Evil is the money of root.
If the students weren't able to download movies, they would still spend their money on beer and getting laid, and just not watch movies, or make VHS copies.
I don't see where the studios are losing money.
Only people with jobs can afford to buy a movie on VHS and then again on DVD.
Perhaps you could pound some sense into them. If they offer people a good product at a fair price, they don't have to worry about "piracy." It just won't be worth it to people to go to the effort of obtaining a copy if they can get the real thing for a decent price. Same goes for the RIAA. But they don't want to listen to such thinking because it means they would have to stop gouging their customers and saddling them with ridiculous restrictions.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Two.
How many do I know that publish pirated videos for people to download?
None. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Why?
Because despite what Valenti and co. think, even most so-called "pirates" have morals. The two people I know who "pirate" videos make copies to share with each other because too many of their DVDs were damaged by mailing them back and forth. If a couple CDs with a DiVX gets trashed by the post office, it's only some effort and $1.20 worth of CDRs that are lost.
I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in downloading free movies, but I think it's safe to assume those are people who would rent or borrow the movie rather than buy a copy.
It's the same as the Napster demographic -- most Napster hoarders I know didn't spend a lot of money on CDs before Napster, they didn't spend a lot after Napster was shut down, and they never will. Back in the pre-digital days, they were the people who taped songs with a cassette deck from FM radio, while the industry cried that they would be ruined.
It's time Hollywood got off their monopolistic high horse and accepted that their industry is losing money because it's churning out crap, not because of piracy. I haven't been to a theatre in four years because there hasn't been anything worth paying theatre-ticket prices.
Most of my DVDs are of movies produced years ago, less than 10% are "new" releases from the past couple years. A huge chunk of that collection is B-movies and anime, neither of which are produced on a tenth of the budget wasted on the advertising budget for the typical Hollywood flop.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.