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MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!
A month ago, the MPAA filed
its report [PDF]
with the Senate Judiciary Committee on the terrors of analog
copying. I quote: "in order to help plug the hole, watermark
detectors would be required in"
-- are you sitting down? -- "all devices that perform analog to
digital conversions." At their page
Protecting Creative Works in a Digital Age,
the Senate lays out the issues they'll be looking at, including
briefs from corporate groups, and provides a
comment form
so your opinion can be heard as well. As Cory Doctorow writes:
"this is a much more sweeping (and less visible) power-grab than
the Hollings Bill, and it's going forward virtually unopposed.
...the
Broadcast Protection Discussion Group
is bare weeks away from turning over a veto on new technologies to Hollywood."
Doctorow's article on the "analog hole"
for the EFF does a great job of explaining the issues to
non-electrical-engineers, and has many thought-provoking
examples of how requiring such technology would be a giant step
backwards.
MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!
:P
You know, I've made a similar comment to the MPAA before. Come to think of it, some Senators too.
There's no way the MPAA can succeed in this. All analog-to-digital conversion equipement?? I remember using a really simple A to D converter in one of my courses in University. I bet that chip costed a buck or two. Putting anti-piracy measures in it will increase the cost significantly, and for a really simple A to D converter? That's just ridiculous! Who are these morons coming up with this crap? This won't fly... no matter how dysfunctional these law-makers are.
....as I can't see the el-cheapo manufacturers in Taiwan wanting to comply with this. What's the betting that equipment from the Far East will come with DVD player style hacks to turn off watermarking?
Do these idiots realize that this proposed 'policing' of ADC(analog-to-digital converters) would include things like microphones and portable tape players? I'm sure they use these devices during their board meetings and hearings, and probably discuss confidential and/or copyrighted issues. Who's gonna police these?? Also, they will have to stop using their portable tape players to dictate notes for their executive assistants to scribe, since the information they want scribed could also be considered copyright material!
Bah, I'm getting my old VCR to plug up someone's 'analog' hole!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
So say i'm using a digital camcorder in the mall and britney's new single starts playing from the loud-speakers does my camcorder shut down because it detects the watermark?
Total BS, this would ruin consumer electronics if ever implemented.
I guess the supreme court ruling is irrelivent huh.
n ot-republican idiots who are in the pockets of Big media.
this is the problem in america today. Industry has TO MUCH DAMN POWER. they think they can just ignore rulings that the court places on society. THEY CAN'T, and for the Senate to even consider the issue leads me to believe that those people do not belong where they are.
the House Majority whip said yesterday, "In a time of war, we can not concern ourselfs about the constitutional problems when passing laws"
these are the idiots we have working for us. on the one side, we have warhawk who support big Industry, on the other, we have psudo-wanabe-whatever-is-popular-at-the-time-and-
yes there are a few with redeaming qualities and are not part of the larger crowd, but for the most part, we have a corupt, inept, retarded set of leaders who pass legislation based on the cash they get rather than what their constituents would want, or what there best intrests would be.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
This is getting amusing. The farther they go with this, the more crazy they sound. At this point it's just a question of whether they'll realize they're trying to dig a hole in water and try to make money off the new phenomenon rather than trying to suppress it, or will they just totally flip off the deep end?
In a previous ??AA article on CBTPTBPAPAwhatever, I mentioned I felt safer because they were unlikely to use the tactic of asking for something much more ridiculous than what they actually wanted, so they can get what they actually wanted in a compromise. Since having copy controls in all devices is what they want, and what they are asking for, the tactic won't work.
Welp, looks like I was wrong. Bet a dollar this fails, and they "compromise" by only having DRM (digital rights mangler) tech in digital-only devices.
How the hell did they get so much lobbying power?
The enemies of Democracy are
Since politics is often the art of compromise, I find myself wondering if this particular proposal is deliberately extreme so that the Hollings Bill suddenly looks more reasonable and has better popular and political support.
In spy movies it's common to run the shower and muffle the sound to evade listening devices.
Any analog watermark is going to have to be quiet enough so that listeners can't hear the watermark tones when listening to the radio -- but loud enough that any recorder can hear them.
Wouldn't it be possible to watermark a recording of silence and play it loud enough to disrupt all recordings for miles?
Page 2, under "The Broadcast Flag" "Detection and response to the Broadcast Flag does not mean less functionality for video devices, including PCs that receive DTV. Rather it adds to these devices the ability to determine the difference between protected and unprotected works. The MPAA and its member companies have no desire to reduce the functionality of PCs or other devices and in fact want them to be MORE functional, not less. That is, so that they are able to provide a secure environment for digital over-the-air broadcast television content, in addition to everything else they do today." That is right up there with "[insert Spyware of choice] doesn't infringe on your rights as a consumer -- it is giving your PC more functionality by allowing us to market to you in select ways with select business partners."
Online wrestling as a trading card game? WWF With Authority.
Congress is spending more and more of its time considering legislation that requires technological enforcement of copyright laws.
It occurs to me, that if they are keen on using technology to actually enforce laws, rather than relying on the people's own good judgement and respect for the law, then they have much bigger fish to fry.
Why is it than we've not seen a legislative mandate that requires car manufacutrers to prevent drunk driving? How about limiters that prevent aggressive driving or speeding? Why have we not seen legislative mandates that require gun manufacturers to make guns that can't kill innocent people (or, at the very least, cannot be accidentally fired i.e. by a child)?
After all, these are issues that *kill* people. And human lives are more important than money, aren't they? Aren't they?
It's not that the technology in either of those cases is beyond the state of the art. It's that there's no money in it for them. The money in those two cases are in the hands of the automobile and gun manufacturers.
In the case for building copyright protection into the simplest A to D converters, the money is on the side of the MPAA. The electronics industry's position is unclear for now... they could stand to benefit by this legislation ('oh gosh, Mr & Mrs. Consumer! All of your electronics are now incompatible with the current releases from Hollywood! Tsk. You'll have to buy a totally new set of consumer electronics.'). They can also count on hackers breaking encryption scemes every few years, leading to another change in standards... forcing yet more upgrades.
I just have an image of all the senators manning a fast food joint "...that's the super legislative combo... would you like fries with that? OK... it'll be $5 Million in campaign donations, please pull up to the window."
Cory Doctorow writes: your cellphone would refuse to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted music coming from your stereo.
:)
That would put a pleasant end to all those wankers who use their mobile phone in movie theatres.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
My freedom, blah, blah, blah... out of touch legislators blah blah blah. Wanna even a chance to be heard?
1. Fill out this form. Really. Don't just read the comments, and don't just post here. Take a minute and write a thoughtful, well argued comment. Senators don't give a damn what people on Slashdot are saying, but they'll give a damn if it's on their own fancy website.
2. Vote with your vote. Get the hell out there and support candidates that see through all of this crap. As a community, we rant and rave that the whole system is munged then turn around and skip the vote en masse. Ever wonder why no one wants to mess with Social Security? Talk to this very consistent voting group. Senators listen to votes, not money. They only listen to money because it helps them buy more votes. Don't vote? Don't complain.
3. Vote with your dollar. If you rant, then continue to support these businesses, you have no one to blame but yourself. Just as politicians only respond to votes, most businesses only respond to money.
It's got to be more than talk, guys. If we don't start backing any of this up, we'll just be the cranky tech curmudgeons who desperately hang on to the antiquated notion of "freedom."
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
A less extreme plan is buy everything you want used, like on half.com. The Industry doesn't get any of your money that way.
Did you know the Industry once tried to purchase legislation that would let them tax the sales of used media? The law now (and then) is that once a copy of a medium is sold, it can be resold without any obligation to the copyright holder (because he got paid from the first sale, "exhausting" his rights in that copy). The Industry failed at that, for some reason.
- Have a picture
As an electrical engineer student, I have built my own A/D converter circuit along with a sample and hold to signal inputs and put them into the computer. They are relatively simple both in overall design and the ADC chips themselves are also very simple: only about 16 pins with a single input and several outputs to represent the input voltage as a binary number. It is both ludicrous and impossible to convert this into something that checks a "digital watermark". Forget the linked article's references to how your cell phone would turn off if it were on near a copyrighted song.
A huge portion of our technology involves A/D chips. Your car uses one for the speedometer, for the fuel injection, etc. Digital audio amplifiers use it. VCR's use it. Any and all digital sensors use it. Adding in digital watermark checking functionality would increase the complexity of this simple, ubiquitous and cheap chip (prolly less than 10 cents, but that's just a guess) several orders of magnitude. It would be like the difference between your solar powered calculator and your desktop. Expenses in electronics industries would jump to compensate for this added complexity, because unlike the movie industry they operate very close to full efficiency.
In short, there is absolutely no way to make this request by the MPAA workable. None at all. Their execs wanting to control A/D conversion is just indicative of how far removed from reality they are. Unfortunately, that might not prevent them from convincing congress to allow this idiocy to go through, so i STRONGLY recommend submitting in the feedback form that NO you don't support it, and furthermore there is only one rational viewpoint on it. Feel free adopt my examples or argument.
Other examples of A/D :
How the telephone company decodes the tones when you press a button into a number
How digital cell phones work
How fax machines work
Digital medical equipment (measuring blood pressure, heartbeat, etc)
Literally any digital sensor
Your themostat in your house
etc
Sadly, the third part of the report's summary - 'Controlling the Internet' - is much easier than the EFF report on the BPDG suggests.
All it would require is a law banning all ISPs from forwarding incoming TCP connections, UDP packets etc on to a subscriber, unless such subscriber has a license to operate as a 'server'.
Similarly, anyone directly connected to the backbone would need a license to accept incoming connections.
The US could threaten trade sanctions against any other country that doesn't pass similar laws.
The licensing regime for 'servers' would be onerous, and include things such as mandatory logs with IP addresses, times etc going back 3 years, also a cache of the last 200GB of data transferred. Anyone trafficking in unauthorised protocols, or using unauthorised cryptography, would lose their license.
That way, only medium-large sized companies would have the funds and resources to fulfil the administrative requirements of license compliance.
This is war - no sooner has the internet exploded onto the world stage, than the powers that be are fighting tooth and nail to protect their monopoly.
The most powerful way to fight - stop going to movies, even 'Star Wars' etc - discourage your friends - boycott Hollywood.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
With this as the norm, and advertisers increasingly pushing new and more invasive ways to get their "content" to you, the abillity to record anything would be put in jeopardy. Billboards could prevent a photo of the skyline. Political speeches could be buried by someone playing "Who let the Dogs Out" on a boombox. Homemade Christmas videos would be a thing of the past, with copyrighted logos and packaging preventing recording, not to mention sound effects and music from toys.
MY question is: Is content really in that much trouble? Are books, movies and music copyrights being violated so much, that oppressive hardware solutions are the only answer?
I grew up thinking that copyright was to protect ME. If I wrote a song, or a paper, copyright would prevent someone from taking some or all of it and repesenting it as _their own work_. It now seems that that is not the case anymore, and copyright is being used to prevent duplication for ones own use (FAIR USE), and CREATION of content by the individual.
I urge everyone reading about this on /. to bring the message to people who aren't /.ers. The 'average joes' (w/ apologies to average joe ;) need to hear about these proposals. Too often, these things remain unheard of by the voting public. The media owned by the media protecting the media. Please spread the word.
All this talk of "plugging the analog hole" makes me feel like someone's about to rape me.
I mean, the government is always trying to rape us, but now they're finally talking about plugging the a-hole.
They just don't stop, they just don't listen, and they NEVER LEARN
You are right that the MPAA (et. al.) do not stop. But they DO learn. In fact, they have learned all to well. They have learned that sufficiently large donations to politicians result in legislation that protects their interests at the expense of the puble, and past legal precedants be damned. The MPAA does not have to listen to the likes of us, and the politicians will politely listen, but will not bite the hand that pays to re-elect them.
I contact my congressman over this stuff every time, and I will continue to do so.
And I would encourage you, and anyone else who finds this sort of legislation offensive. Unfortunately, until the campaign financing laws are changed in our supposedly superior western democracies to prevent corporations or lobby groups from buying politicians (and legislation), we should not expect the politicians to act on our concerns.
The problem is of course that the people who benefit the most from the present system will almost certainly fight the hardest to maintain the status quo.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Memo from Senator Hollings, et al.:
To Wit:
Given that there is a tremendous number of devices that can A/D music and video illegally and that once we have banned unmodified A/D devices, illicit A/D devices will soon be smuggled into our beloved country disguised as routine cocaine shipments, we are forced to take the next logical step:
Congress shall pass a law wherein all persons in the USD (United States of Disney) shall be retrofited with Digital and Analog Watermark devices on their visual and aural receptors. Said persons shall be prohibited by law to remove these devices once implanted and any person found to be without shall on the first offense be sent to a Intelectual Properties Reeducation camp. A second offense shall result in the permanent disabling of their Intellectual property receptors. Any child born in this country after the date of passage shall be impounded until such time they have been properly indoctrinated and fitted with their devices. All alien persons visiting the USD shall be fitted with temporary devices for the duration of their stay.
Since many people in this country have not been properly indoctrinated (or those who have resisted initial efforts to implant their devices), informational messages shall be fed to the subjects of this great land to inspire them to lead a better more wholesome life.
The honorable Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General has requested that to ensure that persons capable of excessivly creative thought or possess unfair physical capabilities or attributes, be required to have installed on their person, devices to render their unfair capabilities neutral.
Thank you.
Senator Ernest Hollings
In Walt We Trust.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
When people like us say A-D converter, we think of devices that convert a continuous signal into discrete levels.
However, when the **AA says A-D converter, they're thinking about content stored on analog media being moved onto digital media.
I'm sure the MPAA ain't thinking of digital thermometers or such lower level devices (though if a black marker can be a circumvention device, why not a digitherm?). They're thinking of analog content, in the form of audio cassettes, VCRs, TV, the like. Same 2 words, but their interpretation is completely different to the technical interpretation we're used to. Almost, a storm in a teacup. The MPAA doesn't care about your wristwatch, your alarm clock! (I suppose they're not smart enough to realize the potential circumvention uses of such harmless devices *grin*)
What would be an absolute tragedy though, is if this misunderstanding of a technical term became enshrined in law. Then, one day some idle lawyer could pounce on the idle wording and start issuing C&D's to, say, alarm clock manufacturers.
Hollywood says to NASA: All of the ADC's on your future Mars rovers will have to include a cop-chip to make sure that your sensors shut down if they sense any Metallica songs on the Red Planet.
NASA says to Hollywood: We're going to sue you for every time the "NASA" logo has ever appeared in a Hollywood movie.
Hollywood: Okay, never mind...
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I'll make this short, but sweet.
The United States was founded by people who believed in the public good. They set up commissions for public libraries and promotion of the arts, while at the same time granting inventors and authors the ability to profit from their works until they faded into the public domain. Our most hallowed documents, our most cherished music, even our national anthem come from the re-use of work written by authors and musicians a generation before.
Yet, the MPAA and the RIAA want to tell *me* that this is Unamerican. That my role in society is not as a citizen, or a voter, or a patriot -- but solely one as a consumer. Had this been the prevailing attitude in the late eighteenth century, there would be no Congress, no Senate, no President, no freedom; we would all be loyal subjects of the King, and Benjamin Franklin would be remembered as an eccentric intellectual imprisoned and executed for copyright violations.
I am not a consumer, or a "content provider", or a market statistic; I am a *citizen*. Please treat me like one.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
The purpose of copyright law is to promote wide distribution of quality content and information.
The mechanism of copyright law was designed to protect powerless content producers from powerful content publishers.
Custom and usage has turned that on its head. The law now primarily protects the powerful publishers, and it does so more each year. Copyright law does not promote quality, nor does it encourage migration into the public domain, the original and quite explicit goal.
The goal of commercial publishers is now clear. It is to buy laws that - de facto - prevent self publishing by raising the technological and cost bar so high that only established interests will be able to distribute work that can be used by a significant proportion of the people. Instead of protecting talented people from ruthless publishers, copyright laws will soon mandate the effective enslavement of the very people they were meant to protect.
This is not what copyright law was invented for. And it was an invention. There is no "natural" or "social" law or convention that prevents people from sharing or repeating information. Copyright law was invented, and it was invented with a particular purpose in mind. We have now very nearly inverted that purpose through creeping amendments and fiddling with the original laws.
If you do write to your elected representatives, I'd suggest that you make it clear that you understand this, that you haven't been brainwashed by Disney into believing that only huge commercial publishers should control all distribution and dissemination of information, that you want a complete cleanout of copyright laws, and a return to the original intent.
Once more for luck: the original and explicit intent of copyright law is to promote the distribution of information and content from individual producers to individual consumers by ensuring that distributors - those with the money and power - could not dictate terms, steal work, and become even richer and more powerful at the expense of the people at either end of the chain.
I'd say we're well overdue for a return to that situation, and I'd bet good money that a vast majority of (nameless, faceless, powerless) authors, musicians, scriptwriters, and garage inventors would agree.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
"Owners of copyrighted works remain concerned that valuable digital copyrighted works are subject to infringement when distributed in American homes to analog television sets in free over-the-air terrestrial broadcasts, and in peer-to-peer online services."
I have three comments on the above statement.
The first is that valuable works are already being transmitted over-the-air via terrestrial broadcasts. And consumers in their homes can record these broadcasts already using a VCR. I cannot understand how one can differentiate between digital content and analog content when displayed by an analog television set. While placing rights management on analog television signals may look like a solution, it places the full cost burden for protecting those copyrights on the owner of that analog television set. If such a law were enacted, every television set currently in use would be unusable and have to be replaced. And anyone who owned and used their current television set would be a criminal.
In addition, the airwaves are a public resource whose use is governed by the FCC. If a law were enacted to halt free and public use of the frequency spectrum, doesn't that defeat the purpose of having that frequency spectrum be public?
The second point to be made concerns the aggregation of the public frequency spectrum and peer-to-peer networks in use over the Internet while discussing potential law. These two must be kept separate, as they fall under two very distinct categories of governance. As the frequency spectrum is regulated and licensed on behalf of the public by the FCC, the Internet has no such regulatory rule or licensing. In addition, the FCC can license only those transmitters that reside inside US borders. With the Internet, any regulation cannot be mandated by a single country.
The third point is to examine, honestly, why the current copyright laws are inadequate. In the case of analog television sets, what has changed since the advent of the VCR? Can't the VCR be used to make unlawful copies of copyrighted material? The fact that the signal is digital or the content is digital is immaterial to the violation of copyright law. Can it honestly be said that other copyrighted works, such as books, are less vunerable to having their copyrights violated? The question for the content providers to answer is why does a digital representation of a work deserve a higher standard to protect it.
In the end, the costs to the public must outweigh the needs of one industry to protect its business model. America has always been called "the land of opportunity." Rather than squelching opportunity by legislating, the US Government in all its branches should be promoting new ideas and opportunities. I would hope that the public of the US, and the potential opportunities they have, will be a more powerful ideal to uphold.
When you make a budget, always include a bogus item (example: .5 million paperclips) for the bean-counters to eliminate. Otherwise, they will cut something real. The beanie boys have to justify their existence by quantifying how much money they saved the company through budget analysis and streamlining.
When you lobby for something from the government, always extend your request well into the realm of the ludicrous. That gives the lawgivers something to eliminate, thus demonstrating their statesmanship, technical savvy and willingness to compromise.
So; if you want to pass a law requiring digital copyright protection in all computers, ask for digital copyright protection in toasters and vibrators too. Then weep crocodile tears when your real legislative objective becomes "a reasonable compromise between affected parties".
"You know, a DEAL deal. Maybe he's a republican!" -Crapgame (Don Rickles) in "Kelly's Heroes"
The government wants you to speed.
The government wants drunk drivers on the roads.
And in any case - The government really can't control either. But to back up my statements; There is an industry of crime in the US. There are too many people making too much money on the status quo to turn back now. When you speed, the government writes tickets; It's kind of like every highway is a toll road, but only for those who utilize it to its fullest. A lot of money is made based on speeding tickets. In fact, Texas eventually had to pass a law saying that a given county could only make a certain percentage of it revenue from writing tickets. The city responsible for this is Johnson CIty, where I - shock amazement - got a ticket.
As for wanting drunk drivers; That's an important part of the system as well. Remember that the government (like the new RIAA/MPAA wing of the government) exerts control through FUD. The drunk drivers keep people scared. The penalties don't begin to keep people off the street.
And in any case, people would only defeat them anyway. They'd tamper with the systems and override the speed limiter, or replace the sensor element in the breathalyzer, or something. BMW tried to make cars too complex for a drunk to work with that new car control system, but it turns out that didn't work. :)
All in all, there are too many people making too much money for any part of the system to change significantly. Marijuana is illegal because of DuPont, more or less, and it stays illegal because of the poverty industry; Selling it puts money into the hands of minorities and the poor, which the government doesn't want because it wants to keep those people in poverty - Again, maintaining the social order from which they profit. Then they get to bust people for selling it (or occasionally for owning it or buying it) and fine those people, or sometimes throw them in jail. Prisons are a multi-billion dollar business in this country, largely as a result of our drug laws, whether directly or no. You can't stop putting people in prison, running them through the judicial system, and so on, because we'll have a bunch of unemployed prison wardens who let's face it, are not the most retrainable people around.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
MPAA knows the game plan all too well. One day you'll pick up the phone to your senator one time too many and he'll send you to jail for harrassment. The MPAA knows this and so will keep hammering at the legislators' door with variations on the CDBPPTA until this passes. Same as sysadmins gets pissed when one user calls for tech support 5 times a day. People bitch about that guy that has trouble inserting a floppy disk so calls tech support all the time, that's exactly how all our congressmen will look at us IT people and EFF if we constantly bug them.
We've already got a taste of MPAA tactics with how they treat Kazaa, only unorthodox and semi-legal tactics succeed (like selling a system under litigation for the purpose of evading this litigation).
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
24 May 2002
I am particularly concerned about the "Content Protection Status
Report" filed by the MPAA on 25 April 2002, which speaks of an alleged
need to ``plug the analog hole'' (their words) in the distribution of
copyrighted works such as movies and music.
The MPAA would like to implement universal analog watermarking of
their music and movies, and would like to encourage legislation that
requires all A/D converting devices to detect (and, presumably,
respond to) their watermark signal. This idea is fundamentally
flawed, because it seeks to solve a global problem with a local
solution. The MPAA's tract contains at least three hidden assumptions
that are wrong: (1a) that it is possible to prevent _all_ illicit
production of digital copies of analog works, or (1b) that reducing
illicit A/D conversion will also prevent illicit distribution of those
works; (2) that it is reasonable to require manufacturers of A/D
converters -- extremely general devices with applications throughout
society -- to include useless (to most applications) detection
circuitry; and (3) that it is right to prevent citizens from enjoying
the fair use of copyrighted audio and video information that they own.
In short, the MPAA idea is wrong because it cannot work; because the
restrictions they propose would be overbroad, imposing impossibly
difficult restrictions on an entire industry; and because the restrictions
would violate the quid pro quo exchange of rights that is the basis of
copyright law.
(1) The MPAA proposal cannot work
The MPAA hopes to solve a problem -- the allegedly widespread copying
and illicit distribution of audio and video works -- by attacking a
slightly different one. The current proposal seeks not to prevent
digital copying but to prevent the conversion of analog signals to
digital ones, presumably preventing widespread copying by making it
more difficult to convert hard-to-distribute analog signals into
easy-to-distribute digital ones. The problem is that, once a single
digital copy is made, that digital copy may easily be spread far and
wide via file sharing or the world wide web. Raising the difficulty
of the initial conversion will not prevent the production of
high-quality digital copies.
A very similar case now exists with ``pirated'' digital movies which
are often recorded in the theater by people with digital video
cameras. Considerable effort is required to generate a digital movie
by copying it in the theater, but (as the recent pirated pre-release
of the _Star_Wars_ Episode II movie shows) once a single copy is
available tens or hundreds of thousands of copies may easily be disseminated.
Even if, as the MPAA suggests, ``analog watermarks'' become universal
in movies and audio streams, and A/D conversion devices that do not
recognize those watermarks become illegal, such A/D conversion will
still continue both within the United States (by scofflaws) and
outside of the United States (by foreign nationals who are not
restrained by U.S. law). But because of the power of the digital
distribution medium, even a tiny number of people can let the digital
cat out of the analog bag proposed by the MPAA, nullifying the goal
that they hope to achieve.
(2) The MPAA proposal unduly restricts an entire industry unrelated to
the publishing industry
Analog-to-digital converters are simple, general purpose circuits with
uses at every level of society. For example, digital still or video
cameras, nearly all modern automobiles, all cellular telephones, all
digital telephone answering machines, and most PC computers contain
A-D converters that are capable of digitizing music content. A-D
converters have too many specialty applications to mention, both as
individual modular integrated circuits and as complete appliances.
Preventing analog to digital conversion of copyrighted material would
require every such circuit to have a watermark detector and
corresponding digital signal processing capability. That would impose
undue burden on the manufacturers of such devices.
(3) The goals of the MPAA proposal are flawed and contrary to the spirit
of copyright law
The MPAA seeks to prevent certain types of access to copyrighted
analog audio and video works, but doing so would also impopse sweeping
restrictions on perfectly legitimate activities using those
copyrighted works.
For example, once a piece of music is digitized it is possible and
(with modern software) easy to analyze exactly nuances of voice and
timing that are otherwise very difficult to discern. Furthermore,
music is often stored much more compactly in compressed digital form
than in the original CD form. By copying and compressing the music on
CDs, a music lover can store the equivalent of 2,000 CDs in a single
hard drive with less volume than 10 CDs (in jewel cases), reducing the
need for large racks of CDs. By digitizing and compressing music
signals, users can transfer audio signals to much more mobile and
convenient devices for travel, remix sequences of audio tracks, enhance
particular aspects of the sound, and generally make much better use of
their copyrighted material than they could without doing so.
Similarly, broadcast video is often digitized by the modern digital
equivalent of a VCR -- a digital personal video recorder such as those
made by TiVo. This enables much easier time shifting and storage of
video than is possible with a conventional analog VCR. These uses of
broadcast video have been upheld by the Supreme Court for analog recordings,
and digital storage is simply a more effective way to engage in these
legal uses of broadcast material.
Conclusions
In general it is not wise to restrict the _tools_ required to engage
in an activity rather than the activity itself. Doing so requires
legislators -- who are wise but not inhumanly so -- to anticipate
every possible use of the tool. For example, an unmodified hi-fi
stereo amplifier can be used to fill a room with music, as a high
precision AC power supply for delicate equipment, for degaussing video
monitors, as a sound synthesizer, as a PA -- all legal. But it can
also be used for public performance of copyrighted music, for
telephone wiretapping, for eavesdropping, or to make unlicensed
LF radio broadcasts -- all illegal. Yet we distribute hi-fi stereos
without requiring them to have subsystems that prevent them being
attached to the telephone network or to a large external antenna, and
without limiting the amount of output power (which would prevent using
them for public performance).
A/D conversion of electrical signals and even of audio and video signals
are general enough activities that the MPAA's ideas are not only infeasible
but also just plain wrong.
I would like to urge those who claim to represent me to please recognize that the existing proposals are clearly not in my interests.
* Enacting the type of controls proposed by the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America would, if perfectly implemented, completely eliminate my ability to exercise Fair Use rights in the content I have legally acquired.
* Any attempt to implement digital watermarking on every Analog-to-Digital converter would make literally thousands of common products impossible to manufacture economically. For a few examples: Consider that you would, as a conservative estimate, more than double the complexity, size and cost to manufacture of hearing aids; design of medical sensors and tools would be set back decades as the increased size of components would make them unsuitable for microsurgery; automobile emissions controls would become less efficient as their behavior would be dictated by artificial constraints imposed by the watermarking technology.
* Common consumer devices would function erratically as they attempt to prevent recording of watermarked content. For example video cameras might become non-functional at wedding receptions if the DJ is playing any watermarked content. Digital telephones would cut out if there is a TV or radio nearby playing watermarked content.
* Content would be unavailable after copyright has expired. Any content controls would have to be automatic, with special actions necessary to access it. Once the copyright term has expired, there is no economic incentive to the previous copyright holder to provide this mechanism. All content controlled by such a mechanism would disappear forever into a vault to which it is illegal to create a key.
* Finally, even if it were possible to create a technological solution that provided exactly what the content industries are requesting, there is no precedent for requiring the $600 billion tech industry to absorb the expense to satisfy the $35 billion entertainment industry. It is not at all unreasonable to suppose that the direct costs of complying with these requirements would cost more in real dollars than the entire value of the entertainment industry. Given that the only possible justification for enacting these controls is to protect the entertainment industry, it seems that causing a greater loss to the technology industry is the wrong way to go about it.
Nope, no sig
Unfortunately, until the campaign financing laws are changed in our supposedly superior western democracies to prevent corporations or lobby groups from buying politicians (and legislation), we should not expect the politicians to act on our concerns.
Despite what you might think other western democracies doesn't share the US campaign finance system. Many european countries have have wildly different systems, as well as some cultural election differences.
For example, in my country most of the parties expenses are paid with taxes. Now, don't scream: "Communists, I knew it!" just jet (we are not).
The law guaranties the parties a pretty handsome budget if they get more than 4% of the votes. The more votes, the more cash. I'd argue that this is good because it reduces the need for the parties to whore for company money. Getting votes has a direct monetary reward attached to it!
IMHO that is worth the extra taxes if it pays for a government that is more responsive to the people.
Of course this isn't an ideal system either. Of course, we still have our share of trouble and corrupt (or more commonly just plain incompetent) politicians.
However, it would be interesting to see what this kind of system would do to the US political system.
...though i realise this would probably be a hard sell in the US. What? Pay the darn politicians MORE money? Hell no!
I wonder what kind of effect it would have though...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Talking about A to D converters is pointless...
1. They will obvious make exceptions if they want this law to pass.
2. As long as you're debating about A to D converters, no average person is going to care what you're saying.
Make this situation relate to people
If you tell people this bill aims to outlaw thier Tivo's, and copying from VHS to DVD, they will wonder why.
THEN you can talk about A to D converters
There will be more laws
Even if the MPAA doesn't pass this bill, they will submit another. I'm sure they've gone through a number of ideas for bills and scenerios for getting them through.
One will get passed
As soon as this issue reaches a critical mass the MPAA/RIAA is BOUND to pass another law, as the general sentiment from the public will be, "they had to do something, we can't let mass piracy go rampant."
How can we detour mass piracy while preserving fair use?
Unless you don't believe in copyrights, you should be talking about this question, because it's the question the public wants an answer to. You're trying to convince the average person we need to preserve fair use, right? Isn't P2P piracy an abuse of fair use? People want to preserve fair use, but not at the expense of the copyright. How can we return the system to what it was before Napster?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce