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Hollywood's DRM Agenda Moving Forward
risingphoenix writes "The New York Times has a story about the progress Hollywood has made putting Digtal Rights Management in the marketplace. The story focuses on what technology is currently in place; what the next moves, technically and legally, are for the industry and how consumers are being affected by Hollywoods power grab."
"We need to put in speed bumps to keep people honest," said Jack Valenti
Personally, I think Jack Valenti needs a few speed bumps on his head to knock some sense into him.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w$ c=142;$ t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=(1 1,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])$t^=(72, @z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%162 :0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if ((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h@ b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$ h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$| (ord$b[4])>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^ $d>>4^^ $q>=8)+= $f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/p ack+/g;eval
# 531-byte qrpff-fast, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz
# MPEG 2 PS VOB file on stdin -> descrambled output on stdout
# arguments: title key bytes in least to most-significant order
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;
$m=(11,10,116,100,
-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?1
=5;$_=unxb24,join"",
d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256
$d^$d/8))>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8
From A Cave Somewhere In Amerika,
W00t
So what, Hollywood makes shit anyway. Turn off your TV, stop the flow of bullshit that will only numb your brain and not entertain you. Learn something new, build something, tell someone you love them, evolve from the dumb mass-market consumer that we are.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
made me wonder what they're actually offering us in exchange for what's being taken away - that is basically, easy to tape television and easy to copy movies. Is the picture going to get much better on DVDs? Will large, widescreen/wall TVs get cheaper? Will there a be a point where first run movies are released simultaneously in theaters and Best Buy? Or submitted directly to our homes via a set top box for 7 bucks (for each person in the room, of course)? Will Jack Valenti live to be an unholy 300 years old? Just thinking.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: If I can watch it, I can capture it and digitize it. After that I can encode it any way I want.
They cannot escape from this undeniable truth. Real mass piracy will never go away for this reason. This DRM technology only serves to take away consumers fair use and increases corporations control.
Either way, this won't ever become mainstream. People will demand the rights to use their media any way they want to. That means being able to make and burn mp3s for portable players in their car etc. As soon as people figure this out the hardware simply won't sell.
Why else do you think macrovision disabled region free DVD players out sell normal players?
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
The only address I could find is letters@nytimes.com which will be directed to the letters editor (duh) but perhaps one could try amy.harmon@nytimes.com or a.harmon@nytimes.com or some other variation.
If anyone *does* find her direct address, pls post.
It's easy to see what they're trying. They're going to come up with a draconian, unworkable model that everyone hates. Then they back off to something that we (that being the technically savvy users) still find offensive but that the normal schmoe thinks is a good deal.
After the media companies spin it into Hollywood backing off because they're good Americans and want people to have the right to watch TV (just like it says in the Constitution) the average guy is going to say "Hey, this is a reasonable tradeoff to get The Sopranos in high definition goodness! I sure am glad they didn't stick with that first plan. It would have been awful! Sure, I can't record it, but that would be piracy!"
Time and again, the informed people screwed by the ignorant ones. Same story here.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I wish the evil ones would just hurry up and bring all of this out. Put the DRM tech in whatever they want. Then try to sell it. The sooner they just do it the sooner I can go on and not buy a damn bit of it. They can stack all of that crap right there with all those copy protected CD's I'm not buying any longer. Or as Clint Eastwood might say, "Go ahead, make my Millenium."
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Hollywood and the music labels DO have a piracy problem and it IS growing. Napster, CD burners, and the like simply didn't exist a few years ago. Moreover, we're going in circles, this same essential battle has been fought before, over cassette tapes andf DAT (remember that? :) and the VCR. It's just a question of degree.
My question is that if you object to DRM because of the way its is done, what should be done? Please don't say "lower prices" because that's just a rationalization that they're somehow forcing pirates to do it. A boycott is a well-proven means of protext.
If you're against intellectual property in general, just skip this, because the industry is never going to work for free, nor accept your suggestion, nor IMHO should they. Folks who create intangibles are as entitled to compensation as people who build bridges.
In an age when it is orders of magnitude easier to copy, what should the rights holders do to protect their work? Think positive! Frankly, I don't know.
This year, several of the major music companies have said they plan to begin embedding copy-protection technologies on a sizable percentage of their CD's. DVD's are already protected by a digital wrapper that prevents them from being copied.
http://www.ucc.ie/acronyms/
From laymen, this is expected. From a journalist, who is supposed to understand basic grammar rules as part of the job, this is just sad. And in the New York Times, no less.
They make you *register* for this?!
While the economy and stock markets struggled, 2002 was a golden year for the silver screen. Thanks to blockbuster hits such as Spider-Man, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings, ticket sales hit $9.3 billion worldwide, a remarkable 13% rise over 2001's then-record receipts. So much for claims that piracy threatens Hollywood's livelihood.
decently done article, not toooooo long
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Entertainment could end up being another utility like water or power. Screw that - between income tax and sales tax I'm already losing over half my income a year, if everything we do requires constant usage fees, we end up as a kind of vassal caste for these people.
Anyway i dont even have to read this, i'll always disagree with DRM because if i buy a CD i expect to be able to do anything i like with it, listen to it in my car sterio, on my computer not just in my CD player.
I firmly belive it is my right to do so and so is it my right to be able to watch a movie i've paid for anytime i want in any format.
The industry cries about losing money, but do you actually see any of that? It would be nice to see if some of you have information on that, has the movie industry been loosing money since the whole DVD- ripping phenomenon started?
I think not...
Now you've done it, they are going to hunt you down with some new flashy, expensive, and dubiously constitutional surveillance system, and attack you for distributing circumvention devices.
(I wish this was completely joking...)
-PAPPP
While the MPAA has a "piracy" problem, I would like to know how much of that is due to commercial efforts especially in the developing areas of the world. Personally, I think that the "solution" is to aggressively pursue those making profits off their efforts and ignore the people who trade the grainy previews. Instead of DRM, why not commit to a common digital signature format. Player software would detect the signature, and _WARN_ if it is not present. Have a bounty for reporting illegally applied signatures, and a clearing house which allows the measuring of actual profits for any signature. The presumption is that in general, people do recognize that they should pay for entertainment, as long as they can do WHAT they want with their copies. The existence of unlabelled, hard to transfer content should be a competitor to the otherwise monopolistic scenario. Is the price and terms so onerous that your customers spend the time to get it elsewhere? And the ones that will copy, will copy. But maybe when they grow up, they'll want the "platinum memorial edition" of the titles they used to watch.
Its the slow progression into a world where *all* information is controlled, and every citizen is monitored for what content they consume.
This is just one more small step towards that ultimate goal.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's simple really the content industries will take as much of your rights as you are willing to allow them. If we the consumers do not fight for the right to do with what we purchase what we want to then I will be the first to welcome you to a world where pay per view is your only option. We must smack the hand of the congress people and the bank accounts of the movie and recording companies as they grab for more of the few rights we have left to us. Let them scream it is online file sharing reducing their profits we must simply scream louder that it's their attempted theft of our rights causing us not to buy the products they produce. Boycott for your rights, boycott for a future where you can legally own content instead of renting it, Boycott for your children's future.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
(if they're still around)
becuase they are licensing a product, to quote the story: "Instead of a product, consumers will essentially purchase licenses to use digital movies or music under certain circumstances"
A man brings up a copy of Ghostbusters VII (remember Hollywood hates taking risk, so they began to just make sequals to ancient hits) and begins to check it out.
The guy at the checkout counter asks "How many people will be viewing this?"
The man answers "None of you business"
"Well, sir, we need to know that so we can charge you a per person viewing license"
"What the fu**?
"Well, sir, remember, everytime a unlicensed viewer views a copy, they are viewing it with bin laden."
--if you don't find it funny, don't waste your points modding me down. Use your mod points to promote world peace, or something...
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
Why? Because digital video production is getting pretty cheap these days. Music production is even cheaper. The more Hollywood cracks down, the more opportunities there will be for grassroots art produced for love instead of money, or for tipping and Street Performer systems.
If Hollywood wants to abandon the most effective marketing system ever invented, I say let them!
What i do is that i go to the CD store and pick up the CD, then look like im gonna purchase it until suddenly i realice that its protected and i wont be able to play it on my computer (i of course make sure the staff know this)
Its also worth to note that the cheapest new CD's from that company cost $30 going up too $37,5. and you thought your CD's were expensive.
I admit thats not enaugh, without people actually mailing them in the masses protesting and not buying their products nothing will get better, and there simply aren't enaugh of us who actually care about these things. How many people actually know or care about DRM? 10% maybe and how many of those are willing to make a change?
The sad truth is that DRM wont go away unless we start actively protesting it.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
That evil box sitting on your TV and "media consolidation" are the keys to making every place as unserved by culture as North West Alaska in 1910. Media consolidation assures the current broadcasters that no on else will be able to provide content. MP3.com will die sooner or later under it's lawsuit loads, and all the others that would do likewise know better than to throw good money after bad. That evil box on your TV will makes sure no one else can create content that your TV will play. An equivalent box in the local movie theater already prescribes what content will apear on the screen and when - without a physical copy ever entering the building. Wanna try to get your movie distributed in a theater like that? Good luck trying to own the satilite, and escaping the FBI if you try. The theater owner can't help you even if they wanted to.
The only solution is to create a peer maintained independent wireless network. All the wires are owned by people who think they can screw you all day long.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
EPIC has a good site with information on DRM here.
Personally, I feel that "Hollywood" should be allowed to create and release whatever they want with DRM, but they should be required to call all such media something other than the common name for the medium. For example, they can release a DRM protected CD, but would not be permitted to call it a CD. Nor should they be allowed to use 'CD' in the name, as that would imply some sort of compatibility with existing CD players. This would probably dissuade the average person from adopting the technology without at least understanding the implications.
Further, they ("Hollywood") should be required to support legacy devices such as DVDs and CDs. When I purchased a DVD player last year, it was with the understanding that current and future media would be released in this format. When the industry adopts a standard and implements it, they should be required to support it for 'x' number of years. Otherwise the consumer pays the cost of their R&D for newer technologies.
-SignalFreq
" People who have become accustomed to recording pay-per-view and video-on-demand shows will probably still be able to, the studios say -- so long as they pay an extra fee."
As in the price of a VCR?
...two of them, so you can record what you want). The Supreme Court settled that issue long ago and there's not a thing these guys can do about that.
Instead, they are actively trying to move people to DVD and "digital" because they think it's a different medium and they can do to digital what they'd loved to have done to the VCR. Don't fall into their trap. You want a DVD machine? Fine, buy it. But also buy at least one VCR while you're at it (I have two that perform very well.) They figure if everyone moves to digital and they are successful in their bids they'll wind up where they wanted to wind up when they sued to have the recording VCR made illegal.
I'm guessing this issue will eventually move back to the Supremos again, and that these guys will lose again--but it's not a sure thing. They've already lost with the VCR, however. Just something to think about.
What really kills me are these ads on TV for new release DVDs that say "own it today!" They want your money, but their idea of own is much different than mine.With DRM, the ads really mean license under their restrictive terms.
Could they be sued for truth in advertising?
Pay per use is untenable in a competitive market. Just look at cell phone minutes which are rapidly moving toward an (almost) unlimited use model.
Why is pay-per-use untenable in a competitive market? People do not like it, so it suppresses demand for the pay-per-use service. In a competitive market where suppliers are trying to meet and create demand, this generates an opportunity to undercut the pay-per-use provider. Suppliers almost always emerge who will take that competitive opportunity.
Pay-per-use does however frequently does make sense in a non-competitive or ologopolistic environment where consumers must purchase the service. This situation existed for some time with hub-and-spoke in the airline industry. The commodity being metered was seat miles purchased at particular times. Here the supplier was able to charge to the hilt for demand that was inelastic (i.e., people have to pay because they have no other option).
Well, does inelastic demand like this exist for entertainment? Likely not. As we have seen with the rise of minor league baseball, web journalism, independent films, cd sales, and even blogs, people can find quick substitutes for the over-charged items.
I don't think regulatory relief will be quick (look at microsoft). We'll have to rely on the hacker community and all of the competitors who are seeking to create demand.
You have to wonder about an industry that for the first thirty years of its existence destroyed the masters after exhibition for the silver that they contained. It was only when television came that the library had any value but it took them ten years before it dawn on them the TV was a gold mine not a threat.
Before Enron existed the phrase was Hollywood accounting. One of the favorate subplots in Shakesphere in Love is the greedy money lender plotting to screw the actors out of their pay. The entertainment industry has always screwed the producers of the product. Now the middle men are plotting to screw their customers.
May be OT:
From the article
Already, people are finding unfamiliar constraints on how they can consume familiar media: listen to music on your PC, but do not try to copy it to your MP3 player; watch a movie in your home as often as you want for 24 hours -- because after that it will evaporate into the ether; marvel at your plasma-screen TV, but be prepared for your picture quality to be diminished if you do not have the latest model with anti-piracy equipment.
With crap like this I am glad GNU/Linux distros are still considered not ready for the desktop. Mr. Valenti might try to upgrade us (or outlaw us)!
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Its called "Daddy I want a Pony"
Its named after a ploy every child learns early. Here's how a kid gets a DOG from a parent who doesn't want to buy one:
Kid: Daddy, I want a pony
Dad: No, that's ridiculous where would we keep it, how would we...
Kid: WHAAAA! DADDY I WANT A PONY
Dad: We can't because we can't afford to...
Kid: DADDDY! I WANT A PONY AND I'M GOING TO HOLD MY BREATH UNTIL I...
Dad; OK OK. How about a Dog instead?
Kid: Well, I guess that'll have to do.
Politicians use it all the time to get new taxes. They'll typically threaten to raise taxes on 20 things. They finally "compromise" on 10. You lose again.
Hollywood has finally awaked to their inner child.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Suppliers almost always emerge who will take that competitive opportunity.
I think there's a problem with this statement: Movies are not truly a competitive market.
If I want a copy of one of the Lord of the Rings films, there's just one company that controls the ways it will be available. I don't really have any choices except those offered by that company.
I'd like to mirror this site. Does anyone know if there is a tar of this page that can be extracted and used on a website?
If somone with info about this could please contact me at z e u g m a @ p o b o x . c o m, I'd appreciate it.
This is an ex-parrot!
Of course these business models can be as irritating, restrictive, and coercive as all get out.
I can't help but notice that the entertainment industry (including sports), is all about getting more and more money for giving you essentially the same thing. Commodities of all other types become cheaper to purchase, higher in quality, and packed with more functionality. The reason the entertainment industry gets away with this outrageous behavior (other than their huge lobbying efforts in congress) is that by definition entertainment is perceived of as a luxury. If manufacturers of the necessities of life treated consumers this way they would be hauled before congress, and made to explain themselves.
Cable companies tend to be local monopolies and act accordingly. Our local cable is structured such that you can get a 10 dollar basic cable rate, but this only gives you the same channels you can get with a rabbit ear antenna, and at not much higher quality, the next "tier" is over 4 times more expensive. Throwing in a load of crap you probably don't want and making the next bump up to HBO and Showtime seem much more sensible (hell it's only 10 dollars more...). Do you know of any other products that go from entry level to more than 4x plus luxury model with no other steps between? Even with the full service, some ad-supported channels are scrambled. I have paid for "The Sci-Fi" channel, but I can't set my VCR to tape it directly, I have to be sure and leave the Sci-Fi channel on, and record it from my cable box (there is some user unfriendly way to program your cable box for a timed recording, so now you have two things to program, and multiple points of failure possible).
Of course the more money the entertainment industry can make, the more money that can be collected in taxes. Thus the government has the same addiction to increasing entertainment revenues, the same way they are now addicted to increasing gambling and lotto revenues, whether their citizenry spending a disproportionate percentage their income on these things is a good thing or not.
Worst of all is the disdain the industry has for its customers. We have all seen the FBI warning at the beginning of a VCR tape, and accordingly fast-forwarded through. Now comes DVD, and you must sit patently sit through this thing every time (which has been timed for slow readers), and if you try to skip forward, I think in some cases it resets the time out clock. Of late I also get to sit through this warning in two other languages as well. Some DVDs even force you sit through commercials for related projects. I bought this DVD, I own it, it shouldn't lock me out of controlling my DVD player. It also shouldn't surreptitiously put software on my computer if I choose to view it there, nor coerce me into installing special software to view. Guess what, that improved DVD viewer they offer you is likely to break your sound drivers, and if it's your mom or dad, being good citizens by following the DVD instructions, well then they are just screwed, since the DVD distributors really don't have any legitimate reason to be mucking around with your computer's settings, and now every thing is horribly broken (I still have trouble explaining to my dad why the play button on the DVD remote won't play the DVD, and he has to "select" play from the entry screen with the select button).
So now we want to give the over the air broadcasters the power to be just as manipulative and coercive as cable and DVD? Ironic that I took my digital rights for granted until everyone suddenly wants to manage them for me.
Letter To Iran
"That's what digital rights management does: it enables business models."
so does slavery.
Despite the recession, Hollywood's revenue has increased very substantially over the past year. If copyright infringement is hurting Hollywood in a way that makes DRM necessary, let the MPAA execs explain just how it is that they can both be simultaneously hurting from rampant copying, and have a banner year at the same time.
Unfortunately the entertainment industry's DRM drive is as much about driving out competitors as it is about protecting their ip.
One will expect that the next DRM enabled devices will be made in a way that would allow fewer and fewer companies to create content for them. And if those devices become popular, than independant producers will have to beg one of the big companies to release their movies/music for them.
Not a good prospect.
I am not very familiar with the SC's ruling on VCR but i am pretty sure there was no DMCA when that ruling came up, so it might not hold, unless it is based purely on constitutional law.
Because of the situation with DRM, and the custom players some DVDs try to install on your machine, I am much more inclined to download a DIVX rip of a DVD and keep it on my spare hard drive.
If the industry made thier products easier to use, and didn't markup the prices at such an obscene amount, I'd actually buy something. AFAIK, tapes are about 8 bucks around here, CDs are 18. Why am I paying 10 dollars more for something that costs less to manufacture as compared to the tape?
Oh wait, I'm not. =)
So, after looking at this information, why does the recording industry insist on spending so much time and money on a protection scheme that will do little to stop pirates from getting the data, and will make it HARDER for people like me to listen to thier CDs?
The question is to what extent hardware manufacturers will actually allow this level of intrusion to be mandatory. Note, they have opposite interests to content producers. They want their equipment to be usable by the most people possible with the least headache.
Hardware manufacturers are fighting back per recent stories in slashdot.
You're exactly right. However, a few things to note. The studio does not own LOTR, only the screen rights as long as it has not entered the public domain. You can enjoy LOTR in many other formats without having to pay the movie studio.
Further, you are not obliged to go to movies. This is the idea behind minor league baseball beginning to make inroads to major league baseball. People are looking for entertainment, major league is too expensive, minor league is almost the same but much lower priced.
The question facing the studio is this: How restrictive can we be before people switch? My argument is simply, "not very in the general case." Look at CD and DVD sales. My cut is that studios need to focus on making the packaging of their products truly value-added and probably lower prices. The are effectively complaining about not being able to charge monopoly rates.
Unfortunately their arguments will be mostly correct, probably 99.5% of the user-created disks will be pirated content and to the average person on the street and the average legislature outlawing that other .5% is a minor side effect compared to the overwhelming amount of piracy.
Nobody will realize that in fact that .5% represents all the free speech in the world. They will have outlawed free speech in a way that Stalin could only have dreamed of.
the supreme court has jurisdiction over all federal law.
I'm not sure exactly what this means, but if new development, especially games, continue to force people into DirectX upgrades, all it takes is MS flipping the switch and we're trapped.
Im talking all content, books, magazines, news, radio, basic speech, tv, movies, *everything*. Eventually even historical information.
Total control of ALL content. Not just the latest movie, as you put it. ( I do agree with your statement, only that i meant a much broader and sinister concept )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Price resistance is a biggie. Most of us have done it. The 12 inch laserdisk was supposed to be less expensive than videotape because it could be pressed cheaper than recording and assembling a VHS tape. It never happened. The royalties for the content went through the roof for a media that could be higher quality and could possibly have a used market. Very few people purchased movies on laserdisk. RCA came out with the capacitive disk which did have lower prices, but of course were plagued with reliability problems. These formats have basicly died. I was burned by the promise. I have a laser disk player, but still have less than a dozen movies in that format due to the cost. I opted for the much cheaper tape instead.
Now we have consumers having to buy decoder boxes to receive the new DTV. Anybody bought a DTV that includes the DTV tuner? Most people that have done anything HDTV, have a monitor, not a receiver with a DTV tuner. Nobody has anything on the store shelf in the 20 inch size showing my local broadcast shows on DTV. The only HDTV demo I have seen has been some subscription stuff. Needless to say, those who don't have the time and money to spend on the junk on TV are not buying them. The manufactures know there is no market for it. Nobody can produce and sell a DTV receiver in the 20 inch size for under $500. I don't have room for home theatre as well as not having the budget.
So Yes I have done something. I haven't bought a subscrition box or any content that requires it to view it.
Let the market forces do their job and show the industry that the laws of economics still rule the market.
The truth shall set you free!
I have only listen to music on the net so I can listen to an album to see if i like it. If i do I buy it and if not then I don't and any trace is deleted from my PC immediately. I usually don't even bother downloading it, just listening to it online.
:D
I recently purchased a CD "Foo Fighters - One by One" This won't play in my DVD Player or my PC even thought there is a label on it saying will play on PC's with the software included.
Problem is my PC (And the DVD) see it as an audio CD with tracks of the right length, but silent, on it.
Oddly enough since I couldn't listen to it, the "CD" went back (I quote CD since it meets no CD standards). I have now told everone I know not to buy this CD and I am never going to buy any music from this company (BMG / RCA) until they stop this lunacy.
I wonder how much it would cost all the retailers to change their 'CD' signs to '12cm pieces of plastic containing stupidly restricted musical content'?
Seriously since these 'protected' dics don't meet any CD standard then they really ought to change the signs. Otherwise I think I will be going to the office of fair trading to say that the venders are misrepresenting the goods. They are claiming to sell me a CD while not doing so.
Mmm Sounds like fun
You point out an interesting "negative externality" problem - when someone decides to copy content without paying they are gaining a lot for themselves (a free copy with little chance of being caught), but losing a little for everybody (more ammunition for pro-DMCA arguments). Everyone is making the decision that benefits himself most, but when you add it all up it's going to be a huge net loss for everybody...