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Doctorow on the Demise of the Digital Hub
natpoor writes "Cory Doctorow writes an excellent piece in this week's TidBITS about how Hollywood is out to destroy the digital hub and what it means for citizens and open source. "In Hollywood's paranoid fantasy, digital television plus Internet equals total and immediate 'Napsterization' of every movie shown on TV." Slashdotters will know some of it, but this is the best write-up I've seen, and it is well-linked. Far more important than AOL on OSX!"
Of course Hollywood is out to destroy the digital hub. We know that, we see that, we hear that and we read that. Every day. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
We will Napsterize everything given the chance, its just our nature.
Can the Digital Hub Survive Hollywood?
by Cory Doctorow
This article refers back to:
Video Details of Apple iTiVo Revealed
Also in TidBITS 642:
iPod 1.2 Supports iTunes 3, Jaguar
CMS ABSplus Adds Mac OS X Restores
AOL for Mac OS X
The Branding of Apple: Brands Embody Values
The Most Important Rule: Build Products People Want.
iMovie, iPod, iPhoto, iTunes, television tuner-cards, composite video out, CD burners on laptops, flat-screen iMacs, Cinema displays, and QuickTime... seemingly every quarter, Apple ships another drool-worthy technology that further erodes the tenuous division between "entertainment devices" and computers.
Since 1979, Apple has broken every rule in business. It shipped a personal computer at a time when computers were million-dollar playthings of universities, insurance companies, and defense contractors. It introduced a commercial graphical interface to a market filled with power-nerds who sneered at the ridiculous idea of "friendly" computers. It brought video to the desktop, wireless to the home, and the biggest, sexiest titanium notebook ever made to laps everywhere. It put freaking open-source Unix underneath its legendarily easy-to-use operating system!
Apple has broken every rule except the most important one: build what your customers want to buy. Since 1979, Apple has achieved its every success by selling the stuff that people like you and I want to buy. Since 1979, Apple's failures (Remember the Apple III? The Newton? The Cube?) have been products that simply didn't sell well enough.
Today, Apple - and every other technology company - is in danger of losing its right to make any device that it thinks it can sell. Hollywood, panicked at the thought of unauthorized distribution of movies captured from digital television sets, is calling for a new law that would give it ultimate control over the design of every device capable of handling digital television signals.
This is bad news for any company that wants to collapse the distinction between entertainment devices and computers. Digital hub projects are exciting, but they're also squarely in Hollywood's cross-hairs. The more your Mac acts like a television device (think of TidBITS's April Fools spoof iTiVo coming true, or El Gato's new EyeTV) the more your Mac will be subject to regulations that are meant to control "only" digital television (DTV) devices.
We've seen some coarse attempts to reign in technical innovation from the likes of Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC), whose Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) is also known as the "Consume, But Don't Try Programming Anything" bill. There's a far more insidious threat to your rights to buy a Mac that does what you want it to do: regulations intended to speed the adoption of digital television are in the offing, regulations that will have a disastrous effect on Apple and every other computer manufacturer.
Digital Television and Hollywood -- Here comes digital television. Digital television uses a lot less radio spectrum than the analog TV system we use today. If all broadcasters were to switch to digital, the U.S. government could auction off the freed-up spectrum for billions of dollars. Understandably, the FCC is big on getting America switched over to digital, so much so that they've ordered all analog broadcasts to cease in 2006, provided that 85 percent of Americans have bought digital sets.
Hollywood says that digital television will make it too easy to make digital copies of its broadcast movies and redistribute them over the Internet. Never mind that digital TV signals eat up to a whopping 19.4 megabits of data per second, well beyond the ability of any current Internet user to redistribute without compressing the video to the point where it's indistinguishable from analog shows captured with a TV card. Never mind that you can always hook up a capture card to the analog output of a digital set and make a near-perfect copy.
Never mind reality. In Hollywood's paranoid fantasy, digital television plus Internet equals total and immediate "Napsterization" of every movie shown on TV. So the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has threatened to withhold its movies from digital television unless Something Is Done.
This has given the feds The Fear. If there aren't any movies on digital television (the argument goes), no one will buy a digital TV set, and if no one buys a digital TV, the feds won't be able to sell off all that freed-up spectrum and turn into budget-time heroes. So Something Will Be Done.
Perfect Control Makes Imperfect Devices -- In November of 2001, at the request of Representative Billy Tauzin (R-LA), the MPAA's Copy Protection Technical Working Group spun off a sub-group, called the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG). It's an inter-industry group with representatives from the movie studios, consumer electronics companies, computer companies, broadcasters, and cable and satellite operators. The BPDG's job was to consult with all these industries and draft a proposal that would set out what kinds of technologies would be legal for use in conjunction with digital television.
The BPDG started off by ratifying two principles:
1.
All digital TV technologies must be "tamper resistant." That means that they need to be engineered to frustrate end-users' attempts to modify them. Under this rule, open-source digital television components will be illegal, since open-source software (like Darwin, the system that underpins Mac OS X) is designed to be modified by end-users.
2.
To be legal, a digital television device must incorporate only approved recording and output technologies. Some system will be devised to green-light technologies that won't "compromise" the programming that they interact with, and if you want to build a digital TV device, you'll need to draw its recording and output components exclusively from the list of approved technologies.
Hollywood Never Gets Technology -- The entertainment industry has a rotten track record when it comes to assessing the impact of new technologies on its bottom line. Every new media technology that's come down the pipe has been the subject of entertainment industry lawsuits over its right to exist: from player pianos to the radio to the VCR to the MP3 format and the digital video recorder, the industry has attempted to convince the courts to ban or neuter every new entertainment technology.
In 1984, Hollywood lost its suit to keep Sony's Betamax VCR off the market. The Betamax, Hollywood argued, would kill the movie industry. In the words of MPAA president Jack Valenti, the VCR was to the American film industry "as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone." The most important thing to emerge from that case was the "Betamax doctrine," the legal principle that a media technology is legal, even if it can be used to infringe copyright, provided that it has substantial non-infringing uses.
That means that even though a VCR can be used to duplicate and resell commercial video cassettes illegally, it's still legal to manufacture VCRs, because you can also use them to time-shift your favorite programs, a use that is legal. That's why the iPod exists: You can create MP3s legally by ripping your lawfully acquired CDs with iTunes. That you can also illegally download MP3s from file-sharing networks is irrelevant: the iPod has a substantial, non-infringing use.
The BPDG proposal compromises the Betamax Doctrine. Under Betamax, Apple can make any device it wants to, without having to design it so that it can never be used to infringe - it is enough that some of the uses for the device are non-infringing. Crowbar manufacturers aren't required to design their tools so that they can never be used to break into houses - it's enough that crowbars have some lawful uses. It's impossible to make really good, general-purpose tools that can't ever be used illegally - Betamax lets manufacturers off that impossible hook.
A Veto Over New Technology -- Consumer electronics and IT companies were willing to go along with the idea that devices should be tamper-resistant, and that there should be some criteria for deciding which outputs and recording methods would be permitted. Each company had its own reasons for participating.
Two groups now have proprietary copy-prevention technology they want to build a market for: Hitachi, Intel, Matsushita, Sony, and Toshiba are members of the "5C" group, and Intel, IBM, Matsushita (Panasonic), and Toshiba are members of the "4C" group. Since the 4C and 5C technologies have been blessed by Hollywood's representatives to the BPDG, a mandated BPDG standard will make it illegal to sell less-restrictive competing products, and so by participating in BPDG, the 4C and 5C companies could shut out the competition, guaranteeing a royalty on every DTV device sold.
Other companies, like Philips and Microsoft, have their own copy-prevention technologies and were anxious that if they didn't play ball with the BPDG, it would be illegal for them to sell DTV devices that incorporate their technology.
Finally, the computer companies became involved because they saw the BPDG as a way of setting out an objective standard that they could follow, and in so doing, be sure that they wouldn't be sued into bankruptcy if their customers figured out how to use their technology in ways that Hollywood disapproved of. But then Hollywood dropped its bomb. When it came time to setting out the actual criteria for DTV technology, Hollywood announced that it would consider only one proposal: new DTV technology would be legal only if three major movie studios approved it.
The tech companies at the BPDG had been there with the understanding that the BPDG's job was to establish a set of objective criteria for new technology. Those criteria might be restrictive, but at the very least, tech companies would know where they stood when they were planning new gizmos.
Hollywood suckered the tech companies in with this promise and then sprang the trap. No, you won't get a set of objective criteria out of us. From now on, every technology company with a new product will have to come to us on its knees and beg for our approval. We can't tell you what technology we're looking for, but we'll know it when we see it. That's the "standard" we're writing here: we'll know it when we see it.
The Endgame -- The BPDG co-chairs submitted their final report to Rep. Tauzin, the Congressman who had asked for the BPDG to be formed at the beginning. The report was short and sweet, but attached to it was a half-inch thick collection of dissenting opinions from the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation, and Digital Consumer, as well as commercial interests like Philips, Sharp, Zenith, Thomson, and Microsoft.
Missing from the report were objections from any computer manufacturer. The information technology industry took its lead from Intel, which has an interest in the 5C and 4C technologies, and is quite pleased at the idea of a BPDG mandate becoming law. Apple, which has previously been outspoken on the subject of a free technology market, was silent, as were IBM, HP, Dell, Gateway, and all the other general-purpose computing companies who have the most to lose from a BPDG mandate.
The Future -- It's bleak. On 08-Aug-02, FCC Chairman Michael Powell announced that the FCC would open proceedings to mandate the BPDG proposal, turning this "standard" into the law of the land. Without any computer companies willing to carry the banner for the freedom to innovate, to make Betamax-legal technology without oversight from the film industry, the BPDG mandate will almost certainly come to pass.
The BPDG world will be extremely hostile to the digital hub concept. Think about a high-definition digital video suite of iMovie tools. These tools will exist to capture, store, and manipulate high-definition video streams - streams from camcorders, TV sources, and removable media like DVDs. They might support cable-in or a DTV antenna so that your digital hub doesn't require a stand-alone TV. And they'll need a DVD burner/reader and drivers.
Incorporating a tuner and a DVD player/burner into a Mac is just the kind of thing that scares the daylights out of the BPDG. If you expect to be able to play your existing DVDs on your Mac, let alone record shows that you get off cable or an antenna and play them on your TV set, think again.
Hollywood wants to be sure that you can't do anything with video from TV or cable without the film studios' permission. So while you may want to be able to stick a DVD full of home movies into your Mac and edit a five minute short for your distant relatives to download from your iDisk, Hollywood wants to be sure you won't be able to do the same with that episode of Buffy you recorded from the TV. When your distant relatives download your home movies to their computers and burn them to DVD, Hollywood wants to be sure that what they're burning is really a home movie and not a Law & Order episode that slipped through the cracks and made it onto a Web site.
How can this be accomplished? Once the video is on a DVD, a Web site, or your hard disk, neither your Mac nor your TV can tell the difference between Buffy and your holiday videos. There's no easy answer, and lucky for us, the Betamax doctrine says that just because someone might do something illegal with El Gato's EyeTV or a real iTiVo, it doesn't mean you can't have one. It's enough that there are legal things that can be done with the technology.
But absent any way to achieve Hollywood-grade perfect control over the technology's use, the BPDG simply won't let it come into being. It will be illegal to manufacture this device.
Hollywood's approval of an iTiVo will be contingent on its "tamper resistance" (so long, Mac OS X, hello again, Mac OS 9!) and its operating system will have to include a facility for marking files that can't be streamed over an AirPort card or Ethernet port (forget sitting in your bedroom watching video stored on a server in your living room!). The entire operating system and box will have to be redesigned to prevent unauthorized copying of Hollywood movies, even if that means your own digital video data can't be backed up, sent to a friend, or accessed remotely.
If the entertainment industry had gotten its way, we wouldn't have radios, TVs, VCRs, MP3s, or DVRs. Business Week called Hollywood "some of the most change-resistant companies in the world." No one should be in charge of what innovation is permitted, especially not the technophobes of the silver screen.
A Glimmer of Hope -- For all the likelihood of a BPDG mandate becoming law, it's by no means inevitable.
One technology company - Apple, IBM, AMD, Gateway, Dell, HP - could stall the process. All it would take is a public statement of opposition to the BPDG, a breaking of ranks with Intel and the other companies who are seeking to secure a market for their copy-prevention technologies, and the FCC would be confronted with infinitely more uncertainty about a BPDG mandate than it currently faces.
There are already a couple million DTV devices in the market that will be nearly impossible to accommodate under the BPDG mandate; another 12 months and there will be 10 million or more, and it will be too late to try to lock down DTV without permanently alienating DTV's most important customers.
Apple has been a strong champion of its customers' right to buy and use innovative technologies in innovative ways. If any company has the rule-breaking courage to stand up to Hollywood's bullying, it's Apple. If we're very lucky, Apple will agree. One press conference where Steve Jobs gives the MPAA what-for would likely derail the FCC's consideration of the BPDG process - maybe forever.
Mac users are fiercely loyal to the Macintosh, and Apple has always responded with new Macs with innovative features. Let's hope that they won't forget us now that there's pending legislation that could hamstring both Apple's entire digital hub strategy and the ways we already use our Macs with tools like iMovie, iDVD, and the SuperDrive.
(For further reading, I encourage you to read the following Web sites and articles: the EFF's BPDG weblog, "Consensus at Lawyerpoint"; Rep. Tauzin's memo to the BPDG representatives; the EFF's letter to Rep. Tauzin; the New York Times on the BPDG's final report; the EFF's comments on the BPDG's final report; a summary of the EFF's comments on the BPDG's final report; and the BPDG final report.)
[Cory Doctorow is Outreach Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He's been using Apple computers since 1979 and has a 27-pixel-by-27-pixel tattoo of a Sad Mac on his right bicep. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards, and his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, will be published by Tor Books next Christmas. He is the co-editor of the weblogs Boing Boing and Forwarding Address: OS X and is a frequent contributor to Wired.]
TidBITS hub in particular.
.. *router in peace*
RIP
For years the industry has promised video on demand, but not delivered. They want to have a good firm grasp on it and be able to charge per search/view.
Now that people can already do that, their vaporware is no longer profitable.
and
Digital Hubub: Companies vie to create a single device to handle all your home entertainment needs
The Largest Players rule the Media Playground (which shows the spaghetti like relationship between all the big players and the current crop of set top contenders).
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
Have you seen what's on TV? I've got better uses for the hardware.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
The problem is, the coked-up producers and flashy lawyers have both money and political influence (the latter boosted by the former), so their paranoid delusions have a very good chance of breaking out into "Reality land".
Maran
"When the leaders become oppressive, it means their time is drawing to a close"
This holds true for governments as well as corporations.
It's only a matter of time.
Greed they say is good, it makes us strive for more than what we have. In this case excessive greed is disgusting, this has more to do with control than money, how long untill you are force fed the "good fact" instead of the truth? *sorry off topic* *on Topic* Witht he advent of sony's new plan to report the number of times any given media is played or recorded this seems like the next step in the process. The real problem is by the time that nay show/movie has reached television it has earned 97% of it's revenue. What more can they hope to gain. Anything i record off of television has already been paid for by my subscription to Cable or network tv I either pay for one or put up with advertisement for another they have my money already. THIS MY FRIENDS IS IMPERIALISM RUN RAMPANT!!!! We must do something, I don't know what but something. Any suggestions? Che
-For it is the very essence of imperialism to turn information systems into wild, bloodthirsty animals-
Far more important than AOL on OSX!"
Yes, but will it be as important when it's accidentally reposted to slashdot in about 6-9 months?
Okay, the FCC filing (here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/ FCC-02-231A1.pdf ) isn't a preperation to enact the rules. It's a request for comment from the public on whether or not they should implement the rules.
So, what we have here is yet another person to flood with negative responses to industry insanity.
To quote the pdf file:
To get filing instructions for e-mail comments,
commenters should send an e-mail to ecfs@fcc.gov, and should include the following words in the body
of the message, "get form <your e-mail address>."
Hollywood's fears are based on "Napsterization" of exact, perfect copies of digital content... they've seen digital music turn into easily copied MP3s. However, they do not realize that if the industry didn't push CDs, and were still selling tapes and vinyl to the masses, people would take that content and compress it and pirate it instead.
At least immediately, digital content probably will not be the first choice for video pirates. Video capture cards and RCA jacks makes napstering "The Simpsons" and VCR tapes easy. There's no encoding hoops too jump through, and no reason to bother with maintaining integrity of digital content.
In my view, digital video-based content and piracy of digitally-compressed video are two completely different subjects.
The consumer has the power to not buy it. Something that you all obviously have forgotten about.
If you don't like how it's being given to you, DON'T BUY IT. People survived for thousands of years without digital television, the Internet, and everything else. If they make it illegal for me to buy anything that isn't Holly-wood approved, I just won't buy any of it. End of story.
Digital TV? I don't even get cable. Waste of money. Too many channels, with too much crap, making the stuff I might want not worth the effort. Learn to live without it, or please don't take some mythical high ground. You're so greedy, even if this stuff goes through you'll still shell out for whatever media product you've just _got_ to have, and let the people you supposedly hate walk all over you and rob you blind. No sympathy.
See, this is why it's such a bloody good thing that Apple moved over to Open Source. Instead of being a bunch of weirdos with proprietary everything, the fortunes of a large constituency are now tied in with the fortunes of free software. Unlike the masses of clueless Windows users, the masses of clueless Mac users will be affected, will be restricted.
*poof*, we have a lobby! Declan what's-his-face was wrong, there are plenty of people directly affected by this who aren't coders, aren't geeks.
Someone wrote about creating a library of canonical "this is why the DMCA-etc is bad" examples, so that Joe Average can understand the issue. That's exactly what this columnist is doing---reaching out to the average Mac user and explaining that usage restrictions are evil.
Mmm, I've got a warm fuzzy now.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
They'll just be developed in other countries. You'll be able to import them, somehow.
Only terrorists would do that. You're not a terrorist are you? Then why are you advocating a crminal enterprise that can only aid and abet terrorists? I've got my eye on you, boy.
From now on, if you ever go talk to your terrorist friends, I'm going to know. Then we're going to hold a nice secret military tribunal for you and the rest of your terrorist organization. Don't try to complain about being mistreated; Only the guilty complain about "civil liberties" being "violated." Don't you get it, boy? We're at war with the terrorists and you're either on our side or their side. And it looks more and more like you're on the side of the terrorists.
Now, so far, we still have to have such outdated notions like "evidence" when it comes to putting terrorists like you away. For now. You and your terrorist buddies won't be able to hide being the Constitution for much longer.
I explained that the brand new technology of compact disk was a far more flexible medium than we knew, that it could hold any kind of information whatsoever, not only music, but computer data, movies, etc.
I spent a very long lunch trying to get this concept across. It was simply impossible for this vice president to wrap his mind around the notion that a CD could do a lot more than just deliver music.
The article is absolutely correct but doesn't go far enough. Entertainment execs not only just don't get it. They are not capable of getting it.
Not that they're dumb. They just are not capable of thinking about technology in terms of abstract possibilities. They think of gadgets only in terms of already available functions.
Therefore, in order to prevent the demise of the digital hub (because, after all, senators/congressmen have much the same skill set as entertainment execs,which includes an excessive will to power), no argument except a financial one will work.
I would suggest the following:
1. Hold a No CD Buying Day. The day after,
2. Hold a No Movies/Video Day. Next, of course
3. No TV Day >P> Use the time to hug a tree, talk to your loved one, surf the net, read a book, listen to your iPod, etc.
Repeat steps 1 to 3 every month with enough people and anti-Hub legislation will stop cold.
Nothing else will work.
Yes, I know that even under pre-DMCA law this wasn't true. I read all the fine print. But I think this is the rallying cry under which the public can be engaged. Most people BELIEVE that it is true in some very fundamental sense--and that if the laws say it's not true, the laws are wrong.
Most people think that it IS "theft" if you fiddle with the wires and cable box and watch programs that you've haven't paid for.
But most people think that once you PAY for that television signal, you have a perfect right to invite friends to watch it with you, or watch it on two TV's at the same time, or record it on your VCR.
Property rights go deep into human history, society, and psyche. Congress can pass all the laws they like, and the RIAA can hire all the lawyers they like, and they can get people put in jail and so forth. And they can conduct all the "educational" campaigns they like. People are STILL going to believe:
"I bought it. I own it. It's MINE, and I'll use it as I darn well please."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Not a very nice thing to think of, where I don't have the right to record my own history.
All I want is on demand television. I want to sit down when I want, and watch what ever I want on my TV without restrictions. I want to pay a small fee per show, but I do not want to pay more that I would for cable today[1]. I want freedom of entertainment.
I know this is possible, and not to much to ask. So why can't I have it?
[1] A monthly cap, much like Bell Canada has on my long distance charges would be great.
These people rely for a big chunk of their income on ad revenue that they incorporate in programming they then GIVE AWAY (broadcast). Why not offer a service, either for PVR users, or all computer users with a fast connection, a download by subscription service?
/month I'd happily pay for a service like this. I'd prefer to obey the rules if they make sense.
Let's say I miss program "A." Right now my choices are 1) Remember to tape ahead of time (yeah, that might happen), 2) Find someone I know that might have taped it themselves, 3) If it has a following on usenet or on the net, watch for a post of the ep I missed (great for scifi, not so much for, say, Good Eats!), 4) Wait for rerun (soon if its cable, maybe 3 months if it's network).
Those choices mostly suck.
Why shouldn't the networks take their content and encode it themselves, commercials and all (or new, different commercials!), and let me download it to my pvr or pc and watch it when I want? Use reasonable DRM if you must. Be cross-platform compatible (DivX or raw MPEGs), turn off my commercial skipper if you must (if I'm watching network TV, I can't skip anyway -- and you can add the numbers to the ad figures). But for $15
Of course they are different subjects! But that's not what Hollywood really wants.
The "perfect copy" argument is only a way of trying to win the same battle that they *already lost* in the 80's in the Betamax case. They know that this precident will shoot down any attempts to legislate anti-copying measures of analog recordings, but they're trying again with digital files on this perfect copy BS. They never mention that most illegal MP3s probably sound about the same whether ripped from CD or input from cassette, because that would lessen their case for a need for new laws. Wow, can you imaging the space required for a "perfect copy" of a digitally-broadcast movie?
The arguments being put forward by Hollywood for this legislation are hogwash, they know it and so do we. However, they sound a lot better to their argument than "we need new laws because technology is making it too easy for consumers to avoid our attempts at controlling what they see and hear."
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
In the past these information sellers were protected by three things: the expense of producing a copy of their information, the fact that the information was not easily transferrable from one media to another, and by (to use a term from Star Trek) replicative fading (A copy is never as good as the master). Sure, people could photocopy books, but that is more expensive than buying the book in the first place. Sure, people can plug the output of their turntable into the input of their tape deck and record songs off of an LP, but the quality will drop. And if you copy that copy, the quality drops even more.
Enter the digital age. The media is unimportant. Audio, video, software, text are all just bits of information. They can be burned onto a CD. They can be sent over the internet. They can even be written to floppy disks. It no longer expensive to copy something. There is no longer any degradation. A seventeenth generation copy is as crisp and clear as the master. The three pillars holding up this scam are gone.
The software industry has tried various things to stem the flood. Activation codes, dongles, special floppy formats, read only distribution media. All have failed, and for the most part software companies have given up trying to copy protect stuff. They have decided to sell their software for a fair price, trusting that enough people will be honest and buy their product rather than obtaining a copy from somewhere else. Open source software vendors have realized that the write once sell many model is dead. They don't sell the software. They sell ready to use installation media. They sell professionally printed manuals. They sell help desk service and support. In short, they sell convenience.
The entertainment industry is slowly realizing that their create once, sell many business model is mortally wounded. They are trying to keep it alive with the DMCA, with various broadcast bits, etc. They will try with encryption, and other copy-proofing systems. They are even trying to control everything digital. Eventually, they will realize that it is too expensive, and too much of a hassle. People will crack any technology they try to implement. They need to reach the same solution that the software vendors reached: Either they sell the entertainment at its true market value, or they will go under. Either sell convenience, or sell nothing. The cash cow is dead.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I see three main areas of use for computers nowadays:
/.-ers use their comps for all three. However
/etc.
;) - ask yourself what exactly for.
a) old-style number crunching: weather, nuclear warheads and whatnot
b) work: shuffling documents around, making the odd powerPoint presentation
c) play: from iTunes to pac-man
Most
Number crunching -- considering that today's desktop is probably more powerful than a comp used for global weather forecast as of ten years ago, there's not much of this going on. Or if there is, 90% of the cycles are probably going into a pretty GUI with translucent whatsits.
Work -- companies are flexible towards legal mandates. There is no specific desire for a general-purpose comp in most work places - it just has to do what it is supposed to, and there has to be a vendor to blame when it doesn't.
Play -- this is where the general population is. Stuff like iTunes is really nice and easy to use, as are xboxes / PSs etc. right out of the box. Very few people look even at all the configuration possibilities, much less anything that has a hex number in it somewhere.
So actually very few "play around" with this stuff. This goes from replacing the sound card & feeling like a 1337 h4X0r about it, to cracking the encryption of the xbox bootup sequence (which I *do* consider to be pretty 1337). And these things are done for the same reason as mountain climbing: because they can be done, and it's fun. So it doesn't get the chicks & studs juiced up, because a byte is something *they* take out of a burger, but it does pass time (and/or get you a degree).
Now to my point: this isn't about the digital hub, but I see the issue as a broader one: it's about the demise of the general-purpose computer. So-called general-purpose comps nowadays are pretty closed-system anyway. How many have any clue what the schematics of their 3/5/7/~ layer moBo looks like? How many have actually de- and/or re-soldered an SMD? You're getting everything from some shop or other. The best you can do is to hack a board with a DSP / Z80 / HC11 whatever for some arcane highly specialised use. And the shops that build even those things are highly specialised in turn. The general-purpose comp of today is already an illusion. Even overclocking is just setting some jumpers and tweaking the BIOS - it's all within the parameters set by the manufacturers. The jobs computers are used for is cut out already. To recap:
- Crunching: use big iron. Not affected by CBDTPA / BPDG
- Office: don't care. Would use an "xbox office edition" if it increased productivity. Would even welcome P2P-inhibiting features
- Play: a large majority neither care, nor are capable of grasping the issues anyway
Which means that the 1337 are left with closed-shop systems which are likely about to become just a little more closed-shop. OGG will die, and no-one (who matters) will care.
If you read this and are thinking to yourself "but I want my general-purpose computer" (with only a smidgen of "this guy's full of shit" and "his rhetoric stinks" - both of which I am aware of and take pride in, not necessarily respectively
The most positive answer I can think of "I don't know - yet" (to which Hollywood's response will be "great, we're going to tell you").
Any other answer will evoke a response from Hollywood of either "you can still do that" or "that's exactly what we want to stop, because it is / is going to be illegal.". No big deal either way.
signed,
- the Devil's advocate
yes, we have no bananas
I am currently getting REALLY hooked on Farscape. Problem is, I can never catch it when it's on. I fireup KazaaLite and download each and every episode in order so that I can catch up on it.
/end rant.
So, while I'm helping the creators brand their show into my mind so that I can buy the video game and watch more episodes, I'm hurting them because I don't watch it through the distributed channels complete with commercials.
Sorry folks, I LIKE catching missed episodes cause I had to work late, I LIKE showing them to my brother so he can enjoy the show as well.
Illegal? Probably, but my mentality is the same as everyone else. It was aired, why can't I watch it on demand?
Family Guy realized this, and have their eposides downloadable off their website. BRAVO I say. Wait here's a money making opportunity, SELL the episodes for a couple of bucks each off your site, LET ME have the episodes I missed, but charge me a convenience fee. Like everything else, I'd pay a little a lot of times, rather than a lot once.
So wake up **AA, give us what we want, when we want, charge us a small amount for it and make a lot.
- Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I remember seeing some time ago the text of a graduation address made by Guy Kawasaki that (in part) addressed this very issue. (Karma whore solicitation: go find this speech -- I'm feeling too lazy at the moment to hit Google myself.)
In his speech, he analyzed the home refrigeration industry, going back to ice harvesting for ice boxes. Some bright person invented ice makers, but instead of adopting ice makers, the ice harvesters struggled to compete with the manufacturers of ice makers. Down they went. Then someone invented the refrigerator, and the same thing happened to the ice maker manufacturers. They saw themselves as purveyors of ice, not of food preservation systems.
And that's what we've got today with the entertainment industry. The MPAA/RIAA are so fixated on selling CDs and DVDs and movie tickets that they've completely lost sight of the fact that what they're selling is entertainment (if you can call it that), not the distribution media.
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
It is not a scam to write once, charge many times. Just like any product, the buyer and seller have to agree upon a reasonable prifce for the product. It is up to the buyer to estimate the value. The actual cost of developing said product is irrelevant. When selling goods, you charge so that you not only make up for the production of the goods, but also for the development thereof.
If you are a doctor, you charge your patients not only for the costs associated with having a clinic, but also for the costs of acquiring a M.D. degree. No different if you manufacture cars, music, software or knowledge.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
We do cache all frequently accessed content out of our database, but the database server is behind a 128K ISDN line (long and ugly story related to DSL firms self-destructing), so the turnaround time was just too long even on the article file.
:-)
Now we have the article cached on our main server, so all the database server has to do is redirect hits to the main server. That's working fine - even the 128K ISDN line can do that. Our main server is handling 75 simultaneous connections at the moment - I had it up to 100, but brought it back down after a crash. That will remain the bottleneck - digital.forest has an OC-12.
Keep in mind, folks, that our hardware, software, and bandwidth solutions have arisen in a situation where we're trying to do things in a way that's as cheap, appropriate to our primary audience (savvy Mac users), and simple as possible. As such, all this was put together over the last four or five years and is changed only when necessary, not just because there's newer hardware or software available.
So the database server is a Performa 6400 running WebSTAR 3.1 and serving data out of a FileMaker database (don't get me started) via Lasso; our main server is a Power Mac 7600 running WebSTAR 3.0 and serving static files.
And yes, we'd like to move everything to a coherent Mac OS X solution running on an Xserve, but when you've built a huge amount of infrastructure using strings, twigs, and baling wire, it's not an easy thing to do while still trying to put out a weekly publication.
cheers... -Adam
(From an actual conversation with my mother.)
Mom: "I don't understand why this is bad. Copying this stuff is bad, right?"
Me: "OK. What they want to do is lock this into a specific player."
Mom: "Okay..."
Me: "So, you have all your Abba and Barry Manilow CDs that you listen to while driving in the car."
Mom: "Okay...."
Me: "They want to make it so that when you sell the car, you have to buy all new CDs."
Mom understood it right away.
We need to make it SIMPLE for people to understand. The phrase, "If this happens, you'll need to buy a copy of everything for every player you own, ever" explains it.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
I have been pirating music digitally since 1992.
The first thing I ever did with my Thunderboard 8 bit mono sound card was buy a stereo to mono step down cable and rip a Weird Al song to VOC format. It took up roughly a quarter of my hard drive. The card was $100.
In 1997, when the first mp3s hit IRC, I pulled them down to my Cyrix-based win95 box with its 1.1 gig hard drive as fast as I could -- 19.2kbit. The line cost me $15 per month and the new and huge 3.5 gig drive around $300.
And when napster came out, I bought new headphones (Sennheisers, $170) so I wouldn't wake up my roommate trading Jiker tracks with Germans.
When I bought my burner ($240, plus the SCSI card), I turned it into a $30 per month CD habit. Mp3s, porno, whatever. Movie clips.
Then, suddenly, whole episodes. Vivo, then RM, then MPG when I got DSL ($50 per month). I got a new video disc array to rip my own hong kong films from the chinese place down the road( 2 40 gig drives, $500, raid card $170, videos $1 each plus $3.99 late fees).
Eventually, I started burning everything as VCD. To reencode I needed more ram and a dual processor machine ($800 plus cooling devices when I o/cd). VCDs played like shit on my player so i bought a new comb filter ($75) and a pioneer elite series dvd player ($500 plus 4 year service contract) to go with my AV setup (mostly McIntosh and Sherwood tube stuff, around $5000 in all).
Did I mention that I also bought everything I burnt to VCD the minute it came out on DVD? That I burn songs to CDs, then like the albums so much I head to borders and buy the originals (I call it "voting for good music")? That I have budgetted over $700 per month for CDs, books, movies, new hardware and internet lines?
If computer hardware companies think they're going to make MORE money when piracy dries up, they're fools. They should be fighting the CBDTPA tooth and nail.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Don't be fooled by all this "pirate" stuff, none of this stuff is going to do the tiniest bit to change piracy. Real pirates in Asia who are making money on duplicated disks do not care about encryption (they copy the entire disk), can steal or threaten or bribe to get any piece of technology they need, and certainly don't care about DMCA type laws (they are breaking far more serious ones).
The MPAA/RIAA are well aware that they are not going to have one iota of change on how much piracy is happening. And they are not stupid, they would not waste the time, money, and effort, and bad publicity, of these schemes if it were not for a higher goal.
That goal is to make all possible competitors illegal by making any kind of recording device where the data can be removed or played back on any device other than the original recorder illegal.
I agree with the general statement, but the comment is somewhat trollish. Here are a couple of important corollaries:
1) The failure of DAT is almost directly tied to the copy protection that was built-in to the format (at the consumer level). The people won, kind-of, and you can bet the industry paid close attention.
2) The lesson the industry learned was "people won't knowingly buy copy protected items". This resulted in great efforts to keep consumers in the dark. How many people knew the DVD was content-controlled up the ying-yang? How many people know those new VCR's they are making have copy protection in them. The manufacturers do not tell you they do, the people selling the products don't tell you, the only way to find out is when it fails to do something you expected.
3) Another lesson learned from the great DAT failure, was that people would use other options in preference to the crippled format. People use a MP3 or a computer CDR instead of DAT or CDR-Audio, because it works better and is not hobbled by features they don't like. This is why the RIAA and MPAA are so hot on getting congress to mandate content control for everything! To eliminate consumer choice.
4) New items are very flexible, think of TIVO for a moment. I liked the way it worked when I bought it, but what happens if they configure it in a way that I don't like tomorrow. At best I could stop the service, unless I had already done the "lifetime" service.
In summary, not buying can work. But it does not solve all problems. Don't forget we have active, rich, and politically-connected monopolies doing everything they can to ensure it that consumer preference won't be taken into account!
How are you going to solve problems 2-4? Even if you are willing to boycott all forms of media (I can respect that), it does not help the damage to society. The public domain is shrinking, the future won't be able to read our DRM protected content, and we have powerful people trying to control information dissemination in our society. This needs more action than a boycott (although a really good boycott might help).
No, no, no, no, no.
Piracy is being used as a smoke-screen. For starters, since day one the **AA has complained that Napster/MP3/DivX/etc. are new and horrible type of piracy because they make perfect copies that are indistinguishable from originals.
Except they're not. MP3 and DivX are lossless, lo-fidelity media. The quality of the copies is closer to cassette tapes than CDs, and the videos are only marginally if not worse than the VHS tapes you can buy from some street vender. Nevertheless they continue to use this argument. The media companies don't like piracy, but they've adjusted their business plan to account for it.
The reason they continue to argue against piracy is to deflect the argument away from the real issue. What they are afraid of and what they are fighting so hard to prevent is not that the people who will make unauthorized copies of content that they own. But that people will be making content that the media companies DON'T own.
And that is what is so insiduous about the legislation being considered and passed. And that is why the public is being lied to by the media companies, using congress as their mouthpiece. And when the public does find out that they've been bamboozled, the fall-guys will be the congressmen while the Valenti and Rosen, who are accountable to nobody, walk off with the whole world in their pockets.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.