FCC Pushes Digital TV and Digital Restrictions

Mansing writes "The Washingington Post has an article describing the FCC's new push to move digital TV more into the homes of consumers. While this sounds like a good thing, read on. The Congressmen who are "helping" this to happen are none other than Senator Fritz "Disney" Hollings and Representative Billy "Baby Bell" Tauzin. And why do you think they want digital TV rolled out faster? Can you say Pay to View?"

Comments

Perhaps...

[cleetus]

If we are forced into a "pay to view" regime, Americans will watch less television. Perhaps they will talk to their neighbors, take up a hobby, read a book, exercise (gasp!)...perhaps this is not a bad thing at all.

cleetus

Can I ask a naive question?

[scenic]

I understand the greed motivations of Disney et al in moving towards a charge-for-every-movement-of-a-bit system. I also understand why laws such as the SSSCA/CBDTPA. So, don't jump down my throat for this question.

My question is, essentially, what's wrong with pay per view? I mean, is advertising really a better model for you and I? As viewers, sure we get loads of content for free, but doesn't advertising have it's own effect on the content?

For example, advertisers tend to like shows that are non-controversial (unless it's sensationally controversial, like Temptation Island or The Bachelor) and inoffensive. Regardless of their precise preferences, their preferences tend to more directly impact on what shows make it on the air than our own preferences.

Aside from that, wouldn't it be more efficient for me as a consumer to directly pay the producer of the content?

Anyway, I'm just curious about what people think about this. Is it really better to have an advertising driven TV industry or not?

Sujal

Re:HDTV / DVI situation

[Rogerborg]

• I don't know where this will all end, but there's going to be some serious backlash if this keeps up. Consumers will NOT tolerate this kind of abuse

Damn right! We'll never buy system with increased quality at the cost of built in encryption targetted at squarely at stopping fair use casual home copying (because it's trivial for commercial pirates to crack but just hard enough to flummox Joe Sixpack).

Yes, it's a good thing that white elephants like CSS encrypted DVD's will never take off, right?

</sarcarm> aside, what's your basis for thinking that there'll be any kind of "backlash"? What's the single action that's going to spark this huge wave of protest, and what's going to sustain it for days, weeks and months?

I rather fear that we're going to keep going right on with this DRM crap, a little nibble here, a tweak there, a watered down bill, a few arrests, nibbling and cutting a tiny bit at a time, adding a couple of dollars a month to the bills of the average citizen (not consumer, dammit). A little carrot here, a little stick there, all done so gradually that only us reactionary geeks notice or care. And who listens to us? We're all pirates and (evil) hackers, right? To paraphrase a Salon cartoon:

• Citizen: I have some reservations about this bill in the Senate.
• Government: Why do you hate America so much?

I can see your fingers hovering over the "troll"/"flamebait" buttons, but instead of that, I really would like to hear what the one single event is that will actually effect enough Joe Citizens at the same time to wake them up. I thought it would be DVD region coding, but it wasn't, because Region 1 gets all the goodies. Then a lot of us thought it would be the DMCA passing, but that barely registered on the mainstream radar. The DeCSS case passed the people by: nobody cares that you can tell people how to make bombs, but you can't link to DeCSS code. When I wore my "Free Dmitri Sklyrov" shirt at work last Friday, one coworker - one - knew what it was about. In a software development house. CDBpthhhhpptpp... see, I can't even remember the name, post SSSCA (let's just call it the Hollywood Retirement Fund Bill). Even if that monster passes, it'll be years before the effects are seen at retail level, and (I'm sure) there will be enough compromises that it won't force everyone to go out and buy new (crippled) hardware all at once, it'll be a little carrot, a little stick.

So - and this is a 100% genuine question - what on earth is the trigger going to be for this "backlash" that I keep hearing about?