BPDG Not Much Of A Threat?

Captn Pepe writes: "According to this article in the NY Times, the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group could be less dangerous to consumer freedoms than has been suggested, because they apparently can't agree on anything. As happened with SDMI and similar efforts by the content industry to cram restrictions into digital devices, 'the central stumbling block to arriving at a broad agreement on the proposal may simply have been a bid by the studios for too much control over carrying it out.'" Read below for a related but very different take on the state of the BPDG.

DigForFiles writes "It seems that the media companies and the tech companies may be near an agreement concerning fair use of digital broadcasts. Apparently the basic plan is FOX's and is to have broadcast programs be digitally flagged by the media guys and the tech guys are responsible for building all home digital recorders so that they recognize the flags. Consumers would be able to record the broadcasts for home use and data transfers within their local LAN but the flags would prohibit the transfer of recorded data outside the household. Thus they hope to prevent P2P networks from trading the broadcasts online while allowing fair use within the household. Some of the presentation material can be found here. The guys in charge, Copy Protection Technical Working Group, meet on 5 June for further discussions. A list of attendees can be found here (it's in Excel format)."

Comments

Interesting, but huh?

[weave]

I can copy a digital signal for use inside my household, but not usable outside the local LAN? How is THAT accomplised? First, almost everyone's local lan is in a 192.168 block or 10. block. But besides that, I cap my TV shows on my computer, edit out commercials (oh oh...) and burn to VCD and watch in living room. Once on VCD, what then? It melts if it wanders out of my home, like a holodeck character walking out of the holodeck? (Unless he has one of those devices on his arm of course...)

Re:Interesting, but huh?

[delta407]

Once on VCD, what then? It melts if it wanders out of my home, like a holodeck character walking out of the holodeck?

No, you simply get hauled off to jail. Video capture cards will watch for a watermark, CD-burners will ensure they are used by only authorized software, and so forth.

Actually, what's kind of amusing is that I have been able to dub DVDs flawlessly by piping them through an old VCR; no need for the illegal Macrovision bypasser things.

Re:Interesting, but huh?

[MrMickS]

You'll only be able record digitally if you sign it with your Microsoft Passport (or similar) ID. Playback will require authentication based on the Passport ID.

Of course this will tie down the ability to record to certified devices, but that appears to be the way that it's going.

<dons flame proof suit>
Seriously, some sort of mechanism like this is the way that things are likely to proceed.

The producers need to try and protect their investment in content generation. From a consumer point of view we want to be able to make copies.

If those copies are somehow tied to a personal/family digital key then it makes a good compromise.
</dons flame proof suit>

Re:Interesting, but huh?

[dcavanaugh]

Perhaps the sheer impossibility of this is why the /. article suggests it's less dangerous than originally thought. I can't imagine a scheme like this surviving more than a day before the hackers rip it to pieces. Let the media folks try impossible things as much as they like. Better yet, make a standard from things that don't work.

Do you really think the digital video recorder manufacturers are going to tool up and produce millions of devices that nobody wants because they implement Hollywood's idea of copy control? Not unless the algorithm is flawed and readily defeated by consumers. At that point, sales will skyrocket when the consumers learn how to uncripple the hardware. Example: The easily hackable Apex DVD players. That hidden menu for disabling region codes & Macrovision was a brilliant sales tool.

When will they learn

[pinkUZI]

Didn't they learn anything from the Sony's mistake? You can spend millions, but someone will always be able to defeat the technology. Ah, well, I guess they have to do something to protect their assets...

Re:When will they learn

[Rogerborg]

• Didn't they learn anything from the Sony's mistake [slashdot.org]? You can spend millions, but someone will always be able to defeat the technology

That's taking a short term view. In the mid term, they can claim that because a few guys are savvy enough to crack it and put the latest Buffy out on gnutella, that they need to set the flags so that no content can be recorded. They'll do it with a big sigh, and they'll use phrases like "regrettable", "a few hard core pirates spoiling it for everyone" and "protecting the national economy", but they will do it.

Of course, this won't stop the same few guys from recording and distributing the shows anyway through good old video capture, but that's not the point. The point is to stop most of us making any recordings.

I know this is speculative, but it fits the pattern, and frankly I'll be happy to forgoe the pleasure of saying "told you so" in favour of nipping this in the bud right now. We need to remind our elected representatives that the explicit purpose of copyright law is to protect the individual creators (and implicitely, consumers) of content from big publishers, and not to give publishers carte blanche to control creation, distribution and consumption. That's a travesty of the intent of copyright law.

when will they learn?

[havaloc]

When are people going to learn that these kind of restrictions only hurt people who would not pirate anyway? Its only going to inconvience the vast majority of people who do not steal/pirate.

I don't understand why hollywood does NOT want their shows rebroadcast. Any exposure is good exposure for them, and will only increase the following of their so called entertainment programs.

Also, I will not buy any device that restricts me in any way. I only bought a DVD player because I was able to get one of those Apex machines.

In any case, its going to be cracked, and the digital copies will be on p2p anyway. Too bad...

Not much of a threat? Maybe more of a threat...

[dinotrac]

This could be a good sign, but I'm not sure.

Failure to reach consensus in the industry group may be all the reason our good "friends" in Congress (are you listening, Fritz Hollings and Diane Feinstein?) need to impose some really wretchedly awful solution.

Things may be better now.
The tech companies may have learned a thing or three about lobbying Congress.
The Bush administration may be more receptive to tech companies than the Clinton administration was.
Maybe.

Here's what I know for sure:

The last time that the entertainment industry went head-to-head with the tech industry over intellectual property protection, we got the DMCA.

That's reason enough to get worried and stay worried.

And then some.

NIC cards

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

Looks like NIC cards are going to basically have full packet filtering & application level firewalls built in. "Hmmm, does this stream of packets have a broadcast flag when I attempt to assemble them thusly? Yes? Hmmm, what's the destination IP? 204.*? Yikes, start dropping packets on this connection!" It'll have to know TCP/IP, UDP, and whatever network & transport level protocols anyone dreams up. The race for protocols is on. Anyone see IPX coming back in style quickly?

Boy, I bet those babys will be a joy to design. And market. And dirt cheap, to boot!

Of course, it's possible that we'll all be mandated by law to switch to TCP-DRM/IP-DRM and UDP-DRM/IP-DRM and all other protocols will be outlawed. Patent lawyers, start your engines!

Meanwhile, I'll be programming in the Cayman Islands.

let the studios do what they want

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

before modinf me down, read further.

the largest producer of movies is India. France AFAIK has restrictions in importing intelectual production from overseas, worlds largest potential consumer market (china) has also restrictions on these subject.

so let the american studios byte theyr own tail. if they start pushing to much control crap over the consumer, the level of rejection against their products will grow in other countries too, then 2 things can happen:

1- media produced in US will end up restricted to a niche market (US itself) OR;

2- The media industry in US (studios, recording companies, etc.) will end up losing money and learning what other industries already know: The consumer is KING. do what the consumer wants. give the consumer liberty and they'll respond buying your products.

Misinterpretation?

[Masem]

When I read the NYTimes articles, I get the feeling that it's not that the studios want to block the sending of the recorded programs, but to make sure that the digitial content is strongly encrypted as possible to even require a hidden unique device ID as part of the key for decoding. Thus, while you could send the encrypted programs left and right, the receivers couldn't do anything with the data. This is a much more technologically feasible way to doing things, and would take the question out of how to avoid problems of blocking older computer hardware. However, as the article does point out, this would mean that if/when DVD-R are used as a recording medium for digital TVs, current DVD models won't be able to play them due to strong encryption.

Here's why

[ProfBooty]

"I don't understand why hollywood does NOT want their shows rebroadcast. Any exposure is good exposure for them, and will only increase the following of their so called entertainment programs. "

They don't want their shows rebroadcasted because of several reasons:

1) they don't get paid. If no one actually sits infront of the tv, the broadcasters won't pay them with the money they recieve with their advertsing income.

2) Hurts syndication rights which also hurts actors too. Actors can get paid residuals for when shows go into syndication (unless they were on the show giligans island and missed out on a ton of money http://www.gilligansisle.com/court.html)If everyone buys the dvd it hurts the value of syndication rights. Thats why you have to wait so long before tv shows go to tape or dvd.

3) Hurts dvd sales. why buy it when you can download it. Granted their is a quality issue, but this is moot when you have a replaytv or filesharing tivo.

Do most people pirate. No, it takes too much time and effort. Besides, at least in my experience most pirating college students wind up buying most of their media/software after they get money in the jobmarket.

Does the media need to change its business model? yes. the easiest way i see doing this is to bring back sponsorship to programs. For example, the reason soap operas are called that is because they were sponsored by soap manufacturers.

Remember with PVR technology, primetime isn't an issue, you can broadcast any content you want 24 hours a day, people will just watch it when they want. Besides, if you include 1-2 short sponsorship messages ala pbs before each program (i.e. 5-10 seconds) the time you save is not worth skipping. This basically means you can offer more content to your viewers since they don't have to be there to view it at a set time. A somepoint someone will catch on to this, probably once there is suffiecent dvr market penatratoin.

Re:Not much of a threat? Maybe more of a threat...

[ahfoo]

As a fellow patriotic American I'd like to politely suggest that assuming all the important decisions about media are made by the US Congress might not be accurate.
We've recently seen China and Taiwan discussing a separate DVD standard despite the fact that this appears to be totally illegal to many American observers. Now Taiwan is following in Mainland China's footsteps by insisting on free as in both beer and speech software in the government and schools.
People in the US often talk about controlling the media in ways that might not be practical no matter what kind of rhetoric is used to justify the measures. Fox's plan is fine. They've been putting watermarks on their shows for years now and so do many broadcast affiliates. But so what? Assuming that the US walks the entire digital media world around on a chain is a feel good proposition, but certainly not a realistic description of how things work in this day and age.
And as other posters have mentioned, we --here we being all Americans-- are the government. If restrictive measures are passed that result in higher costs for products that have to be customized to suit the restrictive US market, it's going to be seen as a hidden tax and that's not gonna fly too far.
These companies would be so much better off putting up their archives on the net right now and taking just enough to keep the operation profitable while they've still got the option. Sadly it looks like many of them would rather "kill every motherfucking last one of you." It's too bad they take that approach, but if that's what they want then they get what they deserve.

Give them enough rope...

[bryan1945]

With the increasing amount of crap we have to put up with to watch anything, and with the decreasing creativity of the media conglomerates, they will eventually push me right out the door because I won't care enough to watch. Throw in the increasing prices of cable and/or satellite, and that's one more step closer to the door.

I guess that the majority of the US public won't really care and will continue to watch "When Animals Attack Survivors in Extreme Celebrity Cop Chases Part 4" (that might actually be interesting), but I've found myself reading books and re-watching my DVDs a lot more than TV. I even (gasp!) went for a walk yesterday.

The harder these fools push their crappier fluff the more people will just give up on it. It will be a rather shallow curve, but I think it is inevitable.

They ARE a threat.

[Irvu]

Right now these groups command the attention of pooly informed but nevertheless powerful Senators and Representatives. Even if they do not agree on everything they do agree that the provisions of the CBDTA and the DMCA should be enacted/strengthened. They are serious about plugging the analog hole.

In some sense this may be worse news. If they could agree on provisions then they would draft a single, oppressive but consistent piece of legislation. If they cannot agree then we are likely to get some hideously general bill that is so vague and unspecified that only the rich can afford to do anything. Either way its not good.

See here for a nice asessment of the BPDG and the CPTWG. See here for more info.