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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.