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New Yorkers Get a Taste of Digital Restrictions
InfoMinister writes "From SiliconValley.com, another peek into the future of Digital Rights Manglement. A software conflict at the set-top invoked copy restrictions on all unscrambled digital TV programming delivered to Cablevision's 3 million subscribers in metropolitan New York."
I think the point they were getting at was: "Now they have a taste of what it will be like when DRM bugs"
Can all fish swim?
Perhaps the time has come for some sort of legal recognition of common access rights for some technologies...
- You don't have a conversation quota that you can't exceed.
- You aren't blocked from using the roads - there is open access to everyone.
That's because these are commons.
Perhaps, at some penetration point, there needs to be recognition that a technology forms a cultural commons and should be open to all without barriers.
In the same way that monopolies are regulated as a special case, perhaps it would be sensible to have a body of law governing the use of commons.
I would think it would need to:
- Guarantee access
- Prevent enclosure
- Promote innovation
- Provide for the designation of new commons
Lawrence Lessig are you reading this?
(Bozo's big thought for the day. Now back to work...)
I thought that was the interesting part.
The most discriminating customers, who had spent the most money on their home entertainment equipment were the only ones affected.
This is where this is going to be a big problem. How the hell are they going to convince anyone to buy "the new digital" stuff when people see stories like this and start hearing anecdotal evidence from people that this did affect.
The abuse of the consumer is reaching unhearlded heights in this country, I think in this battle the consumer will speak with a closed pocketbook.
Just this week my cable company called to try to get me to switch to digital cable, the upside was a few more channels, the downside $30 more a month! I'm sorry but I want more value for my dollar than that. The same goes for digital TV's, sure they're cool, but not $2000 cool. That's where the industry is going wrong. We're not buying enough of this new stuff, so they will be trying to mandate. That is where the true battle will be.
I think DRRM, or Digital Rights Restrictions Management, is a more appropriate term. It addresses the fact that it involves the users' (which most people are rather than creators) rights, but only as a method of restricting them.
end of line
I would assume this can also include other forms of digital recording
Depends.
As with any other restrictions technology, it's up to all parties involved to participate. If you have a digital VCR that doesn't grok 5C (such as the original D-VHS decks from Panasonic (I think)) then it will happily record any digital broadcast regardless of the flags on the broadcast saying not to, or to only record in reduced resolution.
The same goes for computer based recording with a HDTV card - the only ones that will pay attention to the digital no-record bits are the ones that implement the restrictions in hardware. Put them in firmware or software and they'll get disabled -- just like you can disable region locking on most DVDs or the no-copy bit on DAT decks.
Can we cut the crap here and start calling them Digital Restriction Mechanisms or something.
But if they called it that, then Joe Consumer might think that it's a bad thing. Kind of like Copy "Protection". You want to know that the system you are buying is Protected, don't you? If it was "Prevented", you might not be quite as willing to buy it.
I also think "Copy Prevention" or "Copy Prevented" is pretty good too. Very accurate and same acronym as the RIAA is using.
In both cases there is a reasonable chance that our wording will catch on, if everybody uses it consistently in all documentation, including ones in support of DRM or DRM schemes.
You can piss off a whole lot of people, but you can never stop everyone. And it only takes one.