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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."
come on kernel hackers, you heard the MPAA, i refuse to run linux anymore until the 2.4 tree includes strong copy protection
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
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..
Dear Editor;
w ar e/article/0,,5921_900241,00.html
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/hard
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.
He wants to sit down with everyone who develops Linux, FreeBSD and other open source PC products for some good faith talks? That's one big table.
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?"
I was just having a discussion w/someone last night about how unfree we are.
who the fuck are they to control PC's? If a vendor wants to force copy protection it is up to them. Tough fucking shit if we decide to boycott, destroy, crack, etc.
I am sorry but I would rather suckass w/the latest technology of today than suffer through copy-protected PCs of the future.
Fuck you MPAA.
They did. They lost. They fight on.
- Dan I.
Hang on to those old PCs folks. Sooner than you think might be illegal to use them under the DCMA.
They'll pry my TI99/4A from my cold, dead fingers.
Of course Jack Valenti wants this. This is the same guy who once said "The VCR is to the Movie Industry what the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone". He's not exactly a visionary.
The question the semi-intelligent people who listen to Jack have to solve now is this: how can we force consumers to buy something they don't want?
The proven formula for this is legislation. Government mandated airbags have killed more children than school shootings - and more importantly, they've created a precedent for how a corporation can incorporate non-features into consumer products.
Do you think consumers really wanted to buy DVD players with region coding and Macrovision? Was that a feature? The total ownership of the DVD standard presents a second way to force unwanted hardware down the customer's throats: patent a standard, license keys, and use the DMCA to enforce the keyring.
The infamous SSSCA is their attempt at bring approach #1, and they may also (in parallel) try approach #2. If there's any word I can use to describe the actions of the Movie Industry right now, it's "desperate". They know that the precedents set right now will last for hundreds of years, and they are fighting for what they believe is their very survival.
The question is, will consumers keep buying Dell and ignore the EFF? And if so, what's the most effective way to raise awareness...
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
If this happens, I will gladly violate the law. Period.
sulli
RTFJ.
Eat me.
Love,
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
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.
"MPAA wants a pony for Christmas"
Some things just ain't gonna happen.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
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.
Guns that won't shoot innocent people,
Microphones that won't record copyrighted soundwaves,
Pencils that won't write copyrighted strings,
Speakers that won't vibrate to reproduce copyrighted current patterns,
Film that won't change when exposed to copyrighted rays of light,
Oh yeah, and brains that won't remember copyrighted material of any sort.
snow
Crystal Meth: Would you ingest somthing made from a poisonous gas and an explosive metal? You do it every day -- Salt!
I have decided that I want Kraft Macaroni & Cheese to be even cheesier...
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.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
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?
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)
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.
As time moves forward, information will be replicated into infinity. Deal with it.
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).
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.
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.
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?
That's not what I meant.
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.
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.
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.
The movie industry is under siege from a small community of professors.
I'm blushing, jack. No, we're not all professors.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
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".
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?
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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...
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.
dinner: it's what's for beer
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.
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?
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.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
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)
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.
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.)
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
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.
1. Which has the biggest impact on profits?
A - Exact bit-for-bit duplication of products from legally obtained originals, with the resulting copies sold on streetcorners and eBay.
B - Production of products that rely on stupidity to make money and are of little or no value to the consumer.
C - Evil naughty hackers.
2. What should you do to ensure that "piracy" does as little damage as possible?
A - Produce products with enough value that people would prefer to purchase a legitimate copy rather than deal with quality and legality issues of questionable copies.
B - Encourage harsh prosecution of those who profit from the sale of "pirated" content and launch a PR campaign explaining your side of the case.
C - Punish all consumers for not giving you enough money and argue that you should have complete control over everything you sell for all eternity, followed by evil laughter.
3. When your product can no longer provide adequate profit in your market, you should:
A - Change your product to better fit the market.
B - Move to a different market.
C - Grab market by the legs, spread them wide, and shove your product up the most convenient orifice.
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
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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.
It would have to be in the hardware level or this won't work. Yeah I'm sure Microsoft would do this and maybe even Apple. But whos gonna tell the free community that they need to limit what they can do?
RIAA: "Hi Mr. Torvalds, we need you to enforce the DMCA in your kernel"
RIAA: "Hi Redhat, we need you to enforce the DMCA more and Mr. Torvalds told us to contact you."
RedHat: "Umm... we don't actually do the coding for those media projects, you'll have to contact Gnome, KDE, and all the other little developers"
RIAA: "Oh... thank you, you wouldn't happen to the phone number for 1337hac0rz34 would you?"
RedHat: "Haha... click".
Actually this would be funny, I'd like to see them do something like this, because in linux the dmca,etc will never be software. So unless they're hacking firmware which would be a whore, this won't work.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
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.
It is hilarious that they start making that argument about the costs that they need to recoup for their films... in well under a decade, the costs of studio quality cameras are going to be in the consumer price range. It is going to be hilarious when the first person says to Hollywood about their beautifully videotaped, independent, non-spaceship, non-effects heavy production, "I don't need you anymore. Buzz off. And I don't need your distribution. So double buzz off."
That is going to be a funny day. The days of the $20 million dollar stars are coming to an end. So are the griping Ally McBeals out there, and their perks. The market will be flooded with independent producers of television and movies (which will look the same in quality... totally) selling their wares for cheap with cheap actors, until they get more money to develop their shows. Actors that are good will have ways around the system, and not have to play games with some sex-driven producer. It will be much more equalizing.
By the way, I have never, ever bought the idea that some movies never make a buck out there. That sounds like crap to me.
I live in Nashville and have seen country lackeys that live like kings with zero name recognition for 20 years or more off of one b-side on a bad album. So to say that someone is not making a dollar off of the movies that I have heard of or seen in the national media, then they're lying or tricking for the tax man. After all, these are the same people who told you that Forrest Gump lost money.
- Riiiiiiight.
I don't care what your spreadsheet or your accountant said, Forrest Gump did not lose money. Whoever said that needs to be slapped vigorously.They (the MPAA) are getting desperate. They know what is coming. They're dead in ten years, unless they set up a state controlled monopoly.
Guess what? It ain't going to happen.
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.
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.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
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
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
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
Just a few comments...
They're satisfied with 56Kbps because that's all they can get. BTW, who did this survey and where were the results published?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just my opinion, mind you, but anything that obsoletes existing computer equipment will never be considered ``consumer-friendly''.
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!
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