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FCC Adopts Broadcast Flag Scheme
sbrown continues: "However, the FCC isn't changing the format of DTV broadcasts at all. As a result, DTV equipment bought right now will continue to work forever, even though future-generation equipment will have fewer features. (For example, a current-generation DTV tuner card like this one can save any DTV broadcast as an MPEG-2 file on your hard drive. But that feature would become illegal in DTV cards after 2005.)"
And The Importance of notes "Note that the facts of the release include 'The broadcast flag protects consumers' use and enjoyment of broadcast video programming. The flag does not restrict copying in any way.'" CBS/Viacom says 'Today's decision by the FCC is an historic step forward for consumers.' The decision was unanimous, with detailed statements by the commissioners here, in PDF:
Doublespeak infiltrating our communications, eh?
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Its perfectly legal for them to beam these signals through our heads, on our property, but its not legal to decode the broadcasts that were in the clear without locking them down. God bless America.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
I am becoming more and more convinced that intellectual property is on a collision course with personal liberty. Unfortunately, neither the Republicans or Demorats seem to get this yet.
-- $G
What is to keep me from building a device to mask out the broadcast bit and then passing it through?
Can't be that complicated, and I'm sure someone will even start selling such devices, "for educational purposes only."
====
Crudely Drawn Games
This will work just as well. So the average consumer will be hampered while the clued techy will be able to do what they've always done. Seems silly to me, to requiring others to provide a means to protect somebody elses property. Thats like the government requiring all theives to respect a "please do not steal" sticker on any car that has one.
How do you reconcile 'The flag does not restrict copying in any way' with 'required to check for the presence of the flag and apply DRM restrictions to its outputs'?
What is the purpose of the DRM if not to restrict copying in some way/shape/form?
Of course, it doesn't matter. Just about everything on TV these days, broadcast, cable, or satelite, is pure shite these days.
-paul
responds to this with:
"Technically true, but extremely and exceedingly misleading. Were the definition of "lie" all but emptied of content by politics, I would call this a lie.
KFG
I wonder what effect this will have in DTV equipment between now and 2005? Will the devices made today have good resale value after that time due to the larger set of capabilities? Will they make it illegal to retail this equipment, or just illegal to mfgr (DNRTFA)?
How long after 2005 until they change the format just enough so that it is no longer compatible with pre-2005 equipment?
Don't worry, this will just sign the death of digital TV as we could have known it.
These guys think backward. People want more, not less than whatever they have today.
So tomorrow you'll buy a Digital TV and you'll find yourself unable to record your favorite show because of the fscking flag. Then you'll spread the word of wisdom: Don't buy this sh*t! And nobody will shift to this wonderfully restricted technology because it is worse (end-user wise) than what users have today....
Digital TV is dead. The FCC killed it. Will there be a trial?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
It looks like literature is the last refuge of the free these days. When they take that away, I'll memorize a few books and live down by the train tracks.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
With no encryption, I'm not sure that distributing hacks to disable the flag would qualify as a DMCA violation... that's the interesting question.
I think that Broadcast Flag is exactly what we need to solve the problem of Internet piracy. Let us also not forget about implementing the Security Flag from RFC 3514 while we're at it.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
It's a bad thing because it takes away people's right to fair use for the sake of ensuring that the networks feel safe. Freedoms are being lost under the assumption that everyone must be a criminal.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
somebody's going to make lots of cash selling a FPGA based circuit that removes the flag. The unmodified FPGA circuit will probably be legal, if it can be shown to have another use (signal amplification or DSP? Anyway, after buying the FPGA circuit you would have to find a program (the program will be illegal under DMCA due to its sole use being circumvention of protection) on the net that programs the FPGA to do the flag removal.
So is the idea that the hardware below the driver can prevent this content from being "saved" to my file system?
I'm confused as to how driver source code, if one had access to it, couldn't simply be altered to ignore this "flag".
Region codes and CSS encryption were supposed to "protect copyright" in a similar manner.
Anyone who knows where to go can get hardware that ignores these "protections".
I doubt it will be long before people are selling equiptment that ignores the broadcast flag.
And thus goes the eternal battle to watch TV when *I* want to and not when I am *told* to.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
not only have we lost control of our DVD players but now we have just lost television
and they wonder why TV ratings are dropping like a stone, raise your glassses to America(TM)(R)(C)
before it gets to your TV, with some device that does not care about their flag. Its what people do now with PVRs and VCRs, no?
I'd expect cheap devices for stripping out the flag entirely to appear pretty quickly anyway.
It's not fair at all. I have every right to record a football game to view at my leisure at a later date, regardless of whether someone has 'exclusive' rights.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
is now required to check for the presence of the flag and apply DRM restrictions to its outputs. Currently, no such restrictions are required by law.
Not trolling but serious. When I first saw this, I thought wtf? A flag as in American, French or flag, flag. Seriously folks, stay away from the Jolt + Redbull + Oxy combo. That shit'll fsck with you
The FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt digital TV is to make it cost more and do less.
Sort of disagree with this statement. Being an American, I've become tired of the 'follow the Jones'" culture of materialism. The people who are spending outrageous bucks on these things are the ones driving up the price. Take a look at the entire DVD+RW/-RW/W/R/r/w formats or whatever is in nowadays.
If the people are dumb enough to keep dishing out money for it, you can't blame a company for going after that money. Now now now, before you troll this down, let me really type the meaning of that comment down. (On the Google post I used 1Billion figuratively because I was too lazy to look up the actual amount being offered...) I know in theory the FCC is not a company in the Microsoft sense, but somewhere down the narrow road of government and business there exists a thing called (kickbacks!) favoritism for corporations that coincidentally have contributed to, wow another coincidence, the FCC buyer/purchaser/spokespersons political party/bank account/etc.
MoFscker
You see, the FCC also recently mandated that all broadcasts be digital by 2006(?). So you can buck the system all you want but it won't make any difference.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
...the temprature at which boob tube glass melts...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
I suspect this is going to lead (post-2005) to a grey market in tuners and sets that are either actually old enough to be grandfathered in or are alleged to be old enough by the people selling them.
On top of that, of course, there'll be an outright black market in DRM-less tuners just like there's a black market in cable/satellite descramblers now.
All that said, I wonder if prices on devices like the mentioned DTV->MPEG2 converter are about to shoot up?
(As a sidenote, I really love how the various lobbyists and politicians are going on and on about how all of this is for the consumer's protection. Protection from what, exactly? Accidentally taping over home movies with the latest episode of the Sopranos?! But then, if our job is to consume, then recording a show is slacking off on the job.)
.... Capture the flag?
This thing will be hacked (DMCA or not, USA or not) faster than you can shed a fedora.
T.
This space for rent.
I know everyone here thinks that the freedom to copy other people's IP should be totally unfettered, and I guess I sorta agree :), but all things considered, to me this plan doesn't sound so bad.
At least, my cursory five-minute perusal of the FCC statement seemed to indicate to me that:
1) You can still copy and archive with perfect digital fidelity, you just can't redistribute it outside your home network.
2) You can still copy and redistribute digitally at a lower resolution.
3) Unprotected analog output is also allowed.
So what exactly is the problem here?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
when they pry it off my cold, dead arms.
$cat
Soon we'll have Tivos that are HDTV capable. My worry is that I'll set various programs to record, and later on I'll come home and see that it didn't record those shows that they've decided to flag. Seeing as anyone who has a Tivo is now free from the schedules that broadcasters set, what abuses will take place where advertisers will pay extra to have their ads shown on programs that are flagged, so people can't pre-record to skip commercials.
Uh.. then what's it for?
" It's not fair at all. I have every right to record a football game to view at my leisure at a later date, regardless of whether someone has 'exclusive' rights."
You did with an analog recording device because congress made a specific exception to normal copyright laws for analog home recording devices such as vcrs. The constitution protects copyright, not time shift recording.
I say this because my DTV card has analog outputs. DRM is totally useless if I can still patch analog to another source. The same can be said for audio CDs. Take the R/L RCA outputs of my CD deck to something else and record. You can't stop that.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Damn it! I was bummed before and now I'm just pissed. I literally just finished ranting about this in the Red Hat thread!
Corporations have destroyed our dream and our hobby that was technology. New ways to do new cool stuff whenever and however the hell we wanted.
Gee I wonder why music sales are down and the economy is tanking. They get what they deserve.
We handed them something great, tore down communication beariers around the world, toiled for decades building more and more for them, and they kicked us in the nuts, handed us the bill, and then told us we weren't patriotic because we didn't smile but that's okay because we are all just evil sons of bitches anyways.
Yup. Now I'm pissed.
Actually, you may at the moment but you will not in the future. You may have had them before but you won't in the future. That's the way things go. You are losing rights as you read this.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; the system doesn't work.
I imagine you will be sued for posting plans to build such a device, though they will become common soon enough...
I think we can all look to the DAT tape for what will happen next. Except in the case of DAT, there was not a mandate that everyone had to stop using normal tapes and CD's... all broadcasters are going digital before too long. I guess then the result will be the death of broadcast TV.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
all this applies to is broadcast signals.
cable tuners will not be affected. so TIVO away!!!
but of course, the minute I can not TIVO something I will get pissed. but judging from Powell's statement, I do not foresee this as encroaching on my ability to record TV with my TIVO. it is a useless rule, but I don't see it as hurting me YET.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
the crack for this is already in the public domain.
Laws for sale! Laws for sale! No sales tax! 15% discount if you're headquartered in Texas, Southern California, or Redmond! Come on down and buy yourself a law while the going's good!
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
A broadcast flag is meaningless given that there are a number of solutions that already ignore it. I happen to have three such systems:
1. Samsung SIR-T150 ATSC receiver, not known to recognize broadcast flag or de-rez component analog outputs.
2. MyHD MDP-100 ATSC receiver card, not known to recognize broadcast flag or de-rez component analog outputs.
3. HD-2000 Linux Only ATSC receiver card, with source code, which does not recognize broadcast flag, and can be reprogrammed to ignore it.
And of course there's GNU Radio, a software only system to receiving, processing, and decoding digital television (and other kinds of) broadcasts, which can ignore the broadcast flag.
The only way a broadcast flag will be useful is if the FCC, the MPAA, and our in-the-pocket politicians take the next logical step: make ignoring it illegal.
How on earth is this going to work? It's just a flag, a bit flipped to true, saying don't copy this. Yet, DTV's right now haven't been engineered to respond to this flag, and the signal format isn't changing, so there's nothing stopping you from using an old DTV and recording video in violation of the flag. Someone needs to just buy up lots of old DTV video cards so shows can be recorded when all new DTVs come with the flag "feature"
I think you'd have to be crazy to buy any display device with a built in tuner - buy a projector, and hunker down for several years until they get this stuff worked out.
Don't forget to check for HDCP compatibility in your display device though, some things are requiring that for HDTV resolution support!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is nothing on tv worth viewing anyway. It is more economical for me to buy the dvds of the shows I like (mostly anime) than it is to actually pay for cable. So let them flag all the shit they want, I won't be watching it. Though it does give an unsettling feeling: what if the news companies flag all their broadcasts so they can't be copied? No way to archive what has already happened, so what will stop, lets say fox, from changing news broadcasts after the fact and then claiming it was that way all along since no one could copy it and say differently? And what about the loss of future culture simply becuase no one ever recorded the episodes. I mean, say if something is flagged as no copy and then only broadcast once. Then that is lost to us, the moment it is either destroyed or the technology to view is lost. Didn't they study history? How many books were only one copy was ever made survive from ancient greece? Heck, the books copied were largely lost. I've heard about how our culture is a throwaway culture but this is taking it a bit too literal. I can see it now: "This was the 21st century children. We know they watched this thing called television but the record of these shows ceases beyond 2005. The reason for this gap or what happened during the ensuing decades is unknown to us, since their records are undecipherable or lost but we believe this marked the beginning of the rebellion against the panglobal corporations."
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I for one welcome our . . .
::doorbell::
::Agent walks in::
::cries::
Agent: Yes I am very concerned about how you slashdotters always forsake your true overlords.
Me: WTF?
Agent: Yes, We the Illuminati are your true overlords. It makes us sad that you would forsake us so.
I agree, although they are assholes for decreasing the systems capabilities through artificial means (and not becuase of technical limitations as it has been the case historicaly). Besides it will be about 2 weeks before it gets out how strip the flag of anything you want.
I will start suing all broadcast companies for violating my private property and sending their radiation onto my property. If they want to restrict me from viewing it or copying it, then they damn well better keep it off my property.
Otherwise, I'll do whatever the hell I want with broadcast garbage that falls onto my property.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Congress already has told the TV industry to switch their broadcasts by 2007 to a digital format, which uses computer language, from the current analog format, which uses radio signals sent as waves.
Just about everything on TV these days, broadcast, cable, or satelite, is pure shite these days.
The "digital providers" will offer "Enhanced TV+", at a low cost initially. These boxes will allow recording of non-feature shows (95% of TV), and won't let you fast forward through ads. A few other trinkets will be thrown in.
Basically, Big Business will provide the lowest level of service *that they know users will put up with*.
DVDs: can't copy them, can't fast-forward through ads
public reaction: "great picture quality"
Twenty years ago, when the majority of software changed from being Free to being proprietary, there was no revolution, despite the public no longer being able to see what the software was doing, modify/fix it, or share it.
Today, people think "stupid hippies want everything to be free". In twenty years time, people will laugh at you for expecting to be able to record a TV program.
It's going to take a lot of work from a small number of people to prevent digital TV etc. from spoiling modern culture/freedom.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Oh boy, this is really bad. I remember when they put that region encoding on DVDs, and boy, you sure can't find any region-free DVD players on the market, no sirree.. And it's not like big name brands make DVD players with "unintentional" "secret" "maintenance" backdoors that can switch off the region code restrictions by entering some code that was "accidentally" "leaked" to the internet. That never happens! If it did, why, perhaps people would start buying the models that did have those "accidental" backdoors, in preference to the models that don't..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Given the way that the 'flag' is defined, it should be trivial to engineer around it. Aside from it being simply a field in data transmitted in the clear, there are exceptions for obvious required cases like professional equipment. So this will serve as enough of a "speed bump" (by keeping non-technical folks from redistributing movies and TV shows using off-the-shelf consumer equipment) to make the media companies happy, but can be bypassed by professionals, hackers, etc.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
"MPAA advances the use of a redistribution control system which would limit the redistribution of digital broadcast television content, but not restrict consumers from copying programming for their personal use."
I don't see what's unreasonable about this. If the system allows copying to a limit of 3 machines, like the Apple iTunes DRM, that wouldn't be unreasonable. That seems like the direction in which things are headed.
Vote for Pedro
all this does is add the flag to the stream. and it says that receivers must SEE the flag. it does not say what the box does with the flag..if the box lets you record it to DVD, allows you to make a DRMed file for your PC, if it lets you TIVO it, etc. companies will come up with tools that use the flag, and all they have to do is make sure the content is protected from being transmitted over the internet on a massive scale.
this is just a bit that lets the box know "hey, you need to make sure what ever you do to me, I can not easily be thrown onto the internet"
no rule exists as yo what the restrictions are. so we have the power to buy a box that does what we want it to do (as long as it does not give us unrestricted use on the internet.
of course, many of you will say that it still hurts you. I say, worry about it when it actually does hurt you, if you can not do your basic things like TIVO or DVD-R or VCR, that is a problem that limits your ability to use the data. but if I can use the data that way, I am happy and don't care about being able to move a DiVx encoded file to Kazza.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
someone will always find a way to kill the restrictions one person on someone else.
This has happened since the beginning of time.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
First Tomacco, now the Evil Bit?
Where will it end? Science, Technology and Philosophy are turning into parodies of themselves... are we transforming into Bizarro world?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This sounds like the flag they have in Redbook audio. Whenever I copy a CD in Nero, I see that the tracks are flagged as protected... but that doesn't affect the software in any way.
Don't the news outlets report "FCC moves to erode fair-use rights?" Are they daft or just owned?
Earth is a single point of failure.
This is as stupid as the evil bit.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Allow politicians to continue to say pretty much what they think will please us, but require that they set the "liar bit" for any communications they originate that contain lies. Have as penalty immediate removal from office for any lie told without the bit being set. Require all TV equipment to decode the bit and trigger an antique-style police-car light atop the set whenever the bit is on.
This is the "rights management" we really need!
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
keep the Tivo, or switch to a free version.
use GNU Radio. (Ha, as if that will be user friendly in any way. still, I like the concept.)
DIVX died. DAT died. DTV will be next.
sulli
RTFJ.
From the PDF:
MPAA advocates adoption of the ATSC flag system and characterizes it as an effective and unobtrusive content protection mechanism that will serve as a "speed bump" to ensure that DTV broadcast content is not indiscriminately redistributed. MPAA stresses that an ATSC flag system would only limit redistribution of content and not prevent consumer copying. (III.A.14)
We do not believe, however, that individual acts of circumvention necessarily undermine the value or integrity of an entire content protection system. The DVD example has been instructive in this regard. Although the CSS copy protection system for DVDs has been "hacked"... DVDs remain a viable distribution system for content owners. The CSS content protection system serves as an adequate "speed bump" for most consumers... (III.A.20)
So not only do they admit that CSS cracking wasn't all that terrible for them... But they imply that CSS is meant only to prevent unauthorized distribution, and not copying? Then how come they've gone after every DVD copying software they can, and gone after DeCSS?
After all, every /.er will be pounding the web searching for the last "free" DTV cards! That will move the stock right now and get TV stations looking at real numbers...As long as the REQUIREMENT for the flag doesn't go into effect till 2005, the current add-in card vendors should start doing Very well [until intel changes all our PCs to PCI express, making the cards USELESS!]
Well, that's sort of the point of intellectual property today. It imposes limits on the liberties of everyone other than the creator/rights holder, in order to protect that individual's rights. Most people would say that that isn't inherently a bad thing.
There are two problems below the surface, though. The first is a sort of teleological point - whatever the practical purpose of IP today, there's an ongoing debate about what that purpose SHOULD be. What is the best balance between using IP law to protect the rights holders and using it to encourage the creation of new works? There is a lot of overlap, but they aren't the same goal - there are a lot of nuances that have huge impacts on consumers.
And that's the second problem, and where I think your frustration is coming from. Congresscritters, regulators, and judges don't seem to be doing a very good job of finding a good balance - the incentives of influential rights holders (not necessarily IP creators) are leading further and further down the path of commoditization of intellectual property, and those holding the reins aren't doing enough to look beyond those short-term goals to either the basic premises behind IP law or the eventual effects of the curent trends.
Final result? Who knows. I tend to think that once these restrictions start to bite down on regular consumers (as in, not early adopters or techno-fetishists) there will be more push back towards consumers' freedom to use and enjoy the IP of others. If not, well, I'll buy the rights to some starving artist's masterpiece and live off the proceeds in perpetuity.
So how long will it be before someone creates a device that you plug the cable/signal into directly that then erases the flag or sends that there is no flag before it's sent to the digital box/television? I can't imagine this to be difficult since it's unencrypted. What a waste of time and money.
Striking a balance between consumers' expectations that they will be able to turn
new technologies to their advantage and content producers' expectations that they will be
able to protect the products of their creative genius is a real and growing challenge as we
enter the digital age.
"protect the products of their creative genius"? BULLSHIT. It's all about protecting their bottom line, not to mention that the ones who make the money aren't necessarily the ones who create the content.
Their new season is sucking in the prime 18-49 demographic. And the networks want to implement technologies that make it more difficult for these young people to watch their shows (Tivo, taping, etc.)
These folks are scared. They're content distribution monopoly is getting taken over by the Internet.
Slashdot and other independent content mechanisms are the the future. Not flags on broadcast signals.
Ok. I'm posting this from a commercial operating system (Mac OS X) that includes an open-source core, using a web browser that does the same. I run a personal servers using OpenBSD and FreeBSD. I'm writing code to (in Perl, which is open-source) convert the publicly documented file format (APXL, aka Keynote) of a program I bought to HTML.
The revolution happened. Or more correctly is happening. It just took a while.
Now that, unfortunately, is true.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
the restrictions are applied even though the input signals are completely unencrypted.
Yeah, if you call ROT-26 "completely unencrypted".
Duh.
> Twenty years ago, when the majority of software changed from being Free to being proprietary, there was no revolution
The only "Free" software 20 years ago came with a giant dongle called a mainframe. Oh, and Bill Gates and numerous other software barons were already richer than you will ever be.
Maybe there was some "Free" software in that MIT office where Stallman was living, but the real world had established the commercial software market decades earlier.
So maybe Sony will license someone to start making Betamax systems again?
But on the other hand, I've maybe been watching whatever's on Cartoon Network when I get home for about maybe 30 minutes before going to bed.
Had stuff going on Sundays, so I've not even caught the Simpsons. (and it's just not been worth the trouble to set up the SLHF-900 (one of the easiest to program VTRs ever made)).
let 'em copy protect it.
no one has to even bother to watch it.
Twenty years ago, when the majority of software changed from being Free to being proprietary, there was no revolution, despite the public no longer being able to see what the software was doing, modify/fix it, or share it.
That's because the public doesn't care. Only people who hang out on Slashdot care. And even then, most of them simply want a product that works rather than one that's Free (remember, most Slashdot users use IE).
As for recording TV, that's something that's common for even grandmas to do (yes, I know several grandmas that know how to work their vcr).
Divx failed. DAT failed. DVD Copying Software is available on the shelves at CompUSA. Anywhere but the US, Region Free DVD players are the norm.
It'll take a lot for a heavily restricted digital TV to win.
you suck dick
I guess the FCC just doesn't want me supporting American business. I'll definitely be in the market for a hacked box from Europe.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
A nice introduction can befound here (in the form of a FAQ):
http://www.burnedbytheflag.org/
This is what The Glorious Revolution[tm] has been waiting for!
Once the digital-only broadcast law goes into effect in '06, citizens ("the consumers") will suddenly wake up to the fact that they're screwed. They can't record their shows the way they want. They can't timeshift or ffwd through commercials.
The masses will pour into the streets! People will abandon their TVs in droves! The remaining Public Libraries will have record attendance! People will remember that they know how to read!
Then, they'll notice that they weren't just screwed on their choice of opiate^H^H^H^H^H^H entertainment -- the entire political system was sold out from under them while they were watching dramatizations of the Enron debacle on Lifetime. They'll notice that their jobs don't pay well (since all the good jobs went overseas), and that all that cheap crap they buy in mass from Wal*Mart lacks any redeeming qualities. Strangely, buying crap doesn't bring them happiness any more. The void cannot be filled.
Pretty soon, American Civilization as we know it (i.e., late 20th Century consumerism) will utterly collapse because people can't have their MTV and eat it too...
Communities will go to the public squares. People will talk to one another. People will gather in the cafes to talk philosophy and play musical instruments together. No-one will buy CDs or DVDs, because they'll be making their own music, living their own movies (or enacting the stories on a stage).
(Yeah, yeah, I know. But a boy can dream...)
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
It,
Looks like the idiot politicians are moving full force towards what the MPAA and the RIAA think will be the ultimate in IP protection for them.
Anyone who thinks the broadcast flag is the final step is not looking at the big picture. Pay-per-view-for-everything, nothing distributed over the internet, and so-on aren't that far off.
And if you don't think Michael Powell (or his successor) will make up a new set of laws to make those things come to pass you're crazy.
What they don't get is that the more they restrict the 99 percent of citizens who could care less about Kazaa, etc. the more they alienate those same citizens.
And just like in California with proposition 13 and with Arnold S. the citizens will rise up and put in office a set of people who will dramatically reverse the oppression put upon them.
It's only a matter of time. As soon as my dad finds out that he can't do the things he has done for the past 40 years with his tv is the day that the 99 percent is so disaffected that they throw out the politicians who have allowed all of this to come to pass.
It's just too bad that the US Constitution doesn't allow for California type propositions/ballot measures.
Jeez, I sound like I should be living in a cave with my twenty-nine rifles, a years supply of food, and my twelve dirty children.
Caution: Contents under pressure
You see, the FCC also recently mandated that all broadcasts be digital by 2006(?). So you can buck the system all you want but it won't make any difference.
It doesn't matter to me. I will just stop watching TV and do more reading. I like to watch television but I love to read. I guess Hollywood and their ilk just lost some more customers. They can't force me to watch their crap and pay for it. If they try, they will just have to kill me because I refuse to be forced into anything.
I was afraid this would happen. I bought a TV last year that has one of the finest quality pictures you can get, ask anyone on AVS Forums, the pioneer elite pro 520 is amazing. I had it calibrated by a world renowned ISF engineer friend who works on Pixar, ILM and PDIs monitors. $6000 later I'm dialed into HDTV nirvana. but my TV does not have DVI digital connection with copywrite protection crap. Just good ol analog component video inputs. I was bummed when they came out with the new DVI input but thought nothing of it since I could enjoy every bennefit without it.
That was until they started making inexpensive DVD players which would upconvert the 480p material to 1080i. Wow, this sounded AWESOME, but oh no, they only allow this upconversion to take place over the DVI connection. Why you ask? Copy protection, the powers that be would not allow samsung to send high res upconverted video over an analog connection which could easily be recorded. So here I am ready to buy a new DVD player just for that feature, getitng rid of my perfectly good exisitng player, but oooooh noooo, you dont have DVI with HCP so you must be a pirate.
Which makes me wonder, who the hell is going to be trading uncompressed HD video files of some shitty sitcom over the internet? I dont see this as an immediate threat.
Same thing will happen with the broadcast flag, they will use it to screw over all the suckers like me who dont play by their rules. They are slowly eliminating what we used to be able to do with our electronics.
So yes, I can keep using my tv and the existing hardware, but their plan is to make the shit obsolete every few years. Every time they introduce some manadatory copy protection and it gets cracked, they change the specs, make it illegal to use anything but those specs, making upgrades impossible because it would sacrifice the integrity of their precious copy protection.
This rant wasnt very coherent, no real good points were made and it wasnt really well thought out. I have so much freakin anger and hatred for the RIAA, MPAA right now that it makes it difficult to think.
Not awfully unlike the evil bit...
Who doesn't like free music?
I am becoming more and more convinced that intellectual property is on a collision course with personal liberty. Unfortunately, neither the Republicans or Demorats seem to get this yet.
The problem is more widespread than that. Here is a very brief email exchange I had with the anchor of a certain cable news program:
Me: I was dismayed to see Mr. XXXXX's interview with the new president of the RIAA on Monday night. The issue of downloading music from the internet is not quite as clear-cut as your show presented. It would have been much more interesting to have the RIAA president interviewed side-by-side with a representative from the file-sharing community. The issue of illegal music downloads is the tip of the iceberg for a range of important topics concerning the meaning and relevance of intellectual property and copyright in the 21st century. You are missing a valuable opportunity to examine these complex and important issues and are doing a poor job of reporting impartially when you conclude such a one-sided interview with a comment along the lines of "we wish you good luck" as you did with the RIAA president.
Mr. XXXXX: thanks for the note. My daughter shares your view. She's wrong too:) Stealing is stealing and this is theft. Do I think the industry has handled this correctly? I think my questions suggest probably not. But at the end of the day it is stealing. I am a bit at a loss that you see it otherwise.
I did send a follow-up email that made another attempt that persuing the file-sharing story beyond the shallow depth that they have been could lead to some interesting material for them. I never received a reply.
I was disappointed that this particular individual who, supposedly, is always interested in finding the hidden story behind the headlines, was so quick to compare me to his (persumably) young and immature daughter. I don't believe his quick dismissal of my point was due to spite or pressure from his boss. I think it's just because almost no one (outside of slashdot and a few other niche places) seems to realize that there are much bigger issues at stake here.
I think we need to somehow get "one of us" on one of these news programs to help "the masses" see that there is really an important battle coming in the very, very near future. That being, of course, the collison course you mentioned. How we get someone from our side on one of these programs is beyond me...
GMD
watch this
After all, consumers will have no direct ability to share content, even when they have a legal right to do so. They will have to go the marketplace to get the content they desire. In most cases consumers unintentionally patronize pirates whether it be for knock-off Microsoft products or for mod chips and duped CDs. They simply aren't aware they not using legitimate products. High quality knock-offs are going to be easy to create given the digital content and lack of encryption.
Scene in a fleamarket in 2009 :
child: Wow mom! It's a DVD of Treehouse of Horror XX! I haven't seen that yet! Can we get it!?! Can we get it!?!
mom: Hmmm.. $5? That's pretty cheap... sure.
I am sure there people in <insert usual suspect countries> rubbing their hands with glee. Thanks FCC, you just created a market for them.
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
The reason we use IE is that we're used to it (if I were to learn about Mozilla earlier, I would be using it. I'm currently trying to get use to Mozilla). Another reason? It's free.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
So the average consumer will be hampered while the clued techy will be able to do what they've always done.
I kid you not: this last weekend I tried to play a DVD I rented from the video store and got an error message complaining that I needed a Region 1 player. I have a Region 1 player. I have never had this problem playing a rental disk before. I tried again and again and every time got the same error. What was I to do?
Well, fortunately, I happen to know there are many 'soft' hacks for DVD players listed on the web. So I used one of them (it basically entailed typing in the first few digits of pi into the keypad) to disable the region check and I was finally able to watch the DVD. I was kind of amused but also pissed off. It's fine for us techies to find some work around. My mom, on the other hand, wouldn't have had a clue how to get it to work.
Has anyone else ever had this problem with faulty region encoding?
GMD
watch this
Danm, if the revolution is already happening, it kinda kills my theory that Microsoft is secretly a subsidary of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
I have every reason to believe that this is completely false. There was a proposal to do such a thing, but the approach suggested would have screwed up the audio somewhat. They claimed the public wouldn't notice the little notch filter at 60 hz, but audiofiles fought back and won, and ever since, a percentage of blank tape sales have gone to reimburse the music industry for presumed piracy.
Personally I think this is exactly the right approach to take in the future, also.
I've had an avocational interest in these subjects since before CDs were invented, but I'm not actually an expert...if you have a reference to prove me wrong, please cite it.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
What he meant doof, was that it will cost extra for manufacturers to include this extra "flag" and DRM technology into hardware. (Which in turn means higher cost appliances for consumers)
That it's ok for companies to push for draconian laws and regulations, but as long as they toss you some table scrap in the form of "accidentally leaked" maintenance backdoors, you are ok with it?
With these laws, at a whim the companies can bust you for whatever the hell they felt like - say if you posted some bad reviews on their service department and they can put you in jail for 8 years because you circumvented their whatever bullshit on the DVD players you bought half a decade ago. Hey, it can happen.
Besides, what happens when a company doesn't even throw you the scraps that is so important for your esoteric idea of balance? I still can't watch my US DVDs on my Japanese playstation. On the other hand, if I bought my DVDs (pirated copies) from, say, HongKong or China, they would be completely region free - give me one good reason why I should have to put up with bullshit like paying 10-20x the price for the lovely inconvenience of region coding? - I mean, fsck, I would be breaking the law either way right?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Just as in gun-free Britian, they have no crime !
I hardly watch TV anymore myself, but the death of TV would be a big shift - I'm not saying I'd miss it much either. On the other hand, it does seem a useful medium to get news out to people so I don't know what would take it's place really. Not everyone can afford cable or internet, but anyone can afford a TV if they really want one.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wonder if this will stimulate Digital TV sales.
If people realize that the flag will go in in 2005, will people rush out to buy devices now that ignore it?
This sounds like the Don't copy bit on the old Mac OS. No one paid attention to it, no one coded for it. No one remembers it today, hence it is now the bogus bit.
3) Unprotected analog output is also allowed.
All signals are analog. "digital" is just an encoding system that is commonly applied to analog systems for error detection and correction.
If the system allows copying to a limit of 3 machines, like the Apple iTunes DRM, that wouldn't be unreasonable.
Yup, and 640k should be enough for anybody.
The problem with this flag is that it is basically undefined at this point in time. If you look at the actual spec of the Redistribution Control Descriptor ( Spec is here ) you will find that it can be up to 257 bytes in length including header. The header in effect is just a flag and the length of the descriptor in bytes. SO basically they could implement any type of DRM they want in this without ANY oversight until someone takes them to court and challanges the application of the descriptor in real life.
Um, content providers?
Releasing a 1970-era TV experience (pre-VCR!) into the 2005 market is not exactly the best way to make a buck.
--Dan
Jeez dude, it's a damn web browser. What's to learn??
Our government was good when it was conceived. What it has evolved into is pure evil. Its function now is the transfer of income from those who make it to those who don't (or won't). Why don't you read Atlas Shrugged sometime?
Corporations have the right to make a profit. The public in a capitalist society determines whether or not a corporation is evil. No sales can put a corporation down in a heartbeat. All gov't would do is fine them and let them continue their evil ways.
I didn't say TOO much when they censored broadcasts. I didn't get TOO upset when they changed the rules regarding station ownership, but this goes way too fucking far.
The FCC should come down IN FLAMES. It has proven time and again that it cares not for the consumer. It cares not for civil rights. It is quite simply the embodiment of fascism right in the US government (along with several other things).
Michael Powell, in particular, has proven that he is one of the most evil human being on the face of the Earth.
What can we do to rid our country of this cancer on our country known as the FCC? What can we do to make sure that Powell is expelled from the country?
This is a difficult problem. The FCC is not susceptible to public pressure, and it has proven that it doesn't actually care about the American people. There must be solution, though, to this terrible problem. If we all put our heads together, I'm sure we'll find it.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
I do this every other week albeit on community radio, not television. I host a show called Digital Citizen on WEFT 90.1 FM every other Wednesday night from 8-10p. If you happen to be in the Champaign, IL area I invite you to tune in. When I get the means, I plan to record the show and make it available somewhere online for download, streaming, and sharing.
Digital Citizen
This wasn't one of the talking heads from Fox News, was it? Sure seems like something that the "Fair and Balanced" (TM) Network would come up with.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
1) Abolish copyrights.
2) Do not require restrictions.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Don't forget, though...from the perspective of most users, IE is more free than, say, Mozilla: both cost nothing (again, the average user views IE as being "free" with the OS), but Mozilla requires a download and an install, also known as your time.
So, IE "costs nothing" and so does Mozilla. But Mozilla takes up time, and time is money. Therefore, IE is more free than Mozilla.
This is not flamebait, just a view from the world of your average user.
Shame on Google.
or at least part of it. Send Michael Powell to fight in Iraq and replace him with somebody who knows something.
Take a look at Apple's iTunes Music Store. It utilizes DRM that node locks your music to 3 computers and your iPod (you can change the computers licensed though). However, you can burn to a CD from your AAC files, and rip the MP3 songs right off again, without even ejecting the CD-R. But publishers have a means to distribute electronically with a *to them* fair measure of security, so they do. Online music sales are a big new outlet for the music industry now.
Now comes high definition digital video to replace our old, low-res, NTSC or PAL video. Do you see the analog between CD's and vinyl? With this new medium, of course publishers want their reasonable assurances *to them* of protecting their IP, and that is what this is.
The majority of people out there will not care about defeating the flag -- how many people do you know with an illegal cable box decoder, even though you can find ads for them in the back of gun magazines?
There will always be people who know how to break a protection scheme, and the publishers are saying they don't even want to try to fight a copy protection war that they won't win.
They are even slick enough to have convinced the government to tell someone else to do this basic work for them and not get paid for it. They may not be techies, but they sure know business and politics.
I hate DVDs for many reasons, but the main reason is similar to this "broadcast flag". That is, there is a "feature" of DVDs that allows the creator to designate a portion that cannot be skipped.
This is so they can show you the "FBI Warning", that lies and says you would be committing a criminal act by copying the disc, and so on. Only lately they are abusing this to show previews that you cannot skip.
It's rediculous. There exists no technical reason my DVD player can't skip those previews, and likewise there's no technical reasons a tuner has to obey the "broadcast flag". Unfortunately things are headed in this direction, and there will be many, many other things that don't let us copy -- whether because of actual encryption (at least this is respectable) or some "flag", "region code", or non-standard hack (like CD copy protections schemes).
The sad thing is that, at least on a large scale: it will work. Joe Average won't know where to find DeCSS (or that it even exists), nor will he find the hacked driver (yet to be made) for newer DTV tuner cards; likewise, no manufacturer would mass-produce such devices for sale in the US. Thus, the scheme, no matter how stupid, will be effective, with the law behind it.
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
I encourage you to read the statments by Copps and Adelstein. While both of these individuals voted for the measure, the spent a considerable amount of time framing three general areas of dissent:
public domain: the flag should be limited to use only for materials which are copyrightable. For instance, government meetings should not be locked behind the flag
fair use: the flag does not provide a mechanism for educational use of the material where fair use of copyright would be permitted
privacy: improper use of this technology could be used in such a way that people lose privacy; the comments don't say it, but in the hearings it was voiced, "what good is first amendment protection if the government and/or political groups know who is listening to you"
Since this is a Republican administration they are doing this to "protect business" if it was a Democrat they would be doing it to pay off their friends in Hollywood. Right or Left both would be doing it and it is brain dead. 1 If it really succeeded technically no one would bother with DTV. 2 It does not taka a real genious to reverse engineer the technology and have a software fix. 3. Software fixes available would get chased off US based web servers but continue to be available from web servers in foreign countries. The MPAA will do an RIAA BW&M about how this will cause the fall of Western Civilization.
mod me troll...for get me...not coming back
Read my post and the one above it again. It was about people not caring about having the code. You're supporting my point.
. Then you'll spread the word of wisdom: Don't buy this sh*t!
While at my friend's apartment I said "Hey. check out my new CD of songs I recorded! See if you can come up wtih some Lyrics!"
And he said- "Sorry, charlie. This here is a Sony DCD/CD system. It doesn't play home-made CD's!" some DRM "feature"...
So last weekend when I decided I needed a new system, I completely by-passed Sony.
I'm sure this trend will continue until either manufacturers put in "backdoors" to turn it off or they just don't put it in to begin with.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
To protect your rights, we limit them.
'The broadcast flag protects consumers' use and enjoyment of broadcast video programming.
Sure am glad that I don't watch TV anymore. Looks like I won't be watching movies now.
I went into Bust Buy the other day looking at a HDTV setup, with fairly good sound, a nice picture, a recorder.... all that stuff. It ran over $6,000.00 for everything.
HELLO? Like just *what* friggin' show is worth SIX FREAKIN' KILOBUCKS to watch?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Ok then, wait until next year when the books have EULAs on their envelopes, you can only use them for 20 days without making another payment, can't sell them, can't give them to anyone else, can't rent them out to others, and it's enforced by the DRM chip in the binder (digital leash for pennies apiece!).
Yah, I'm using my imagination, but you know it will come if they can pull it off. And they'll try. They'll keep trying because there's tons of money in it. If they don't get it right the first 25 times they'll keep coming back, someone will, until they buy the right person or push the right button.
As others have said above, only 2 things (done together) will stop it:
1. Don't buy it.
2. Work to pass laws that both protect your freedom and make it very very hard to overturn them, because people will work very very hard to overturn them if there's tons of money in it.
I looked in the new American dictionary.
choice(chois) slang
-The words spoken by government officials meaning, "no freedom"
This is all so that no one can ever tape "Pump Up The Volume" again ... (yes, this is on-topic if you don't get the joke, go rent the film for some amusing remarks about FCC employees).
Does this DRM info == slashdot's apr 1's evil bit?
I pray this is a hoax and these people didn't take that idea seriously.
-s
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
Television programs are copyrighted. If you believe that the copyright holder of software that is distributed under a GNU-like license has the choice to put restrictions on how their software is used, then you must accept that producers of television programs have the same right. They could, of course, just not broadcast it - or not create it - at all.
paintball
HA ! I guess its gonna be tough to stop people from doing screeners in their living room. Broadcast flag indeed.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
The ability to filter out a single bit/flag is relatively easy. I see this as just an inconvenience and nothing more.
One more:
3. Work to create and distribute cheap (as in free) enabling technology that facilitates access and proliferates communities and peer networks (lessee, did I get all the buzzwords in?).
I think you are not freed from IE because it dont have anti-popup installed. *hum* that why i am using mozilla or Firebird because it has it. I know that I am too lazy to download google toolbar or whatever for IE.
Obviously it's bad because government imposed DRM is pretty much pure evil, but the fact that it is a standard with NO ENCRYPTION which will be pretty much set in stone for the rest of our lives is great. If there ever is an IP-rights revolution, it can be purely legal since there won't be any technological roadblock to overcome.
It still sucks though. I work with this stuff for a living and DRM and the IP industry make some of my days very frustrating.
First off, I can't begin to describe how shocked and appalled not by the board's decision, but the "reasoning" Chairman Powell claims is behind the decision. At any rate...
"Today's decision strikes a careful balance between content protection and technology innovation in order to promote consumer interests."
How exactly does content protection figure into consumer interests? It seems on its face that content protection is against consumer interests in that it limits what the consumer can do with the content. The only way content protection could be seen as being in the consumers' interests is if the provider takes the stance of "you'll have my product my way or no way at all," and even then having the product only on the provider's terms is only considered to be "in the consumers' interest" is if the product in question is some sort of narcotic, where the "consumer" needs the product in question at some level.
Considering that, even in the Twenty-First Century more people own a radio than own a television, are we really at the point where the American public needs television, so much so that the seller's desires must be catered to? After all, recent actions by the Commission works to ensure that content on television and on the radio come from the same providers.
If the consumer interest is so important to Mr. Powell, why doens't he take a more capitalistic approach and let the market itself decide exactly what kind of balance is required between consumer use and content control? I fail to see how an artificial, legislated "balance" mechanism such as this can ever be considered a true balance.
"In working through the difficult technical and policy questions in this area, I am very pleased that we have once again crafted digital TV policy in a bipartisan manner."
Bipartisanship is this important? Is it not possible for both Republicans and Democrats to be wrong at the same time?
"First, the broadcast flag decision is an important step toward preserving the viability of free over-the-air television."
This depends entirely what exactly "free over-the-air television" means. Does "free" in this context simply mean "received at no direct cost to the consumer," or does it mean "free to do with in your home as you please?" These are two very different and not always complimentary concepts.
"Because broadcast TV is transmitted "in the clear," it is more susceptible than encrypted cable or satellite programming to being captured and retransmitted via the Internet."
This analogy doens't hold water because, to my knowledge, nothing like this broadcast bit mechanism exists in private content networks such as cable and satellite. In fact, many of these private networks promote copying, archiving and time-shifting of their programs (consider the numerous set-top boxes that have built-in digital recording capabilities), all activities that the broadcast bit is essentially intended to stop. In this respect, these private networks are far more free than the "free, in-the-clear" broadcast market the FCC is now creating. And don't forget that most channels on these private networks rely on advertising revenue just as broadcast networks do.
"The widespread redistribution of broadcast TV content on the Internet would unnecessarily drive high value programming to more secure delivery platforms. The losers would be the 40 million Americans who rely exclusively on free over-the-air TV."
Except that those 40 million Americans you mention are the last people that would adopt digital television technology. Without the greater volume of content that private providers offer, digital television only appeals to die-hard technophiles. Even the FCC knows such people are few and far between; the new broadcast bit rule is an admission by the FCC that content is far more important than picture resolution.
But even if each and every one of those 40 million people did manage to scrape
This said it all
Cox is starting to give away some DVR type capabilities with their digital cable service. What I see in the future is a fight between the media companies and the cable/satellite companies, where the cable/satellite companies skirt the DMCA for us.
Interesting thought occurred to me - why should we be able to record creations other people have done if they don't want us to? I mean, if some TV channel creates a series, pays the actors and does the scripts, isn't it their decision whether to distribute it or not, and if choose to distribute, to choose whether we allowed to copy it or not?
Here on Slashdot people keep insisting that GPL is in harmony with copyright law, basically saying that you should be able to dictate how people are allowed to redistribute your works.
And the next day, same people line up on barricades to stop unnecessary copying/distribution restrictions imposed by the creators of digital broadcast content!
I perfectly understand the worrying of corporate world that if you distribute your shows digitally, the pirates don't even have to bother with DVD Decrypter to spread the movies illegally. Everything interesting on digital television would be all over the net the next day.
What we would need is content producers who _choose_ to distribute their creations without the restricting flag, and people voting with their wallet if the broadcast companies get too draconian with their DRM. Sadly many times what is accepted by the masses isn't enough for the more technologically (anarchistically?-) oriented, but then again, many of those content producers aren't doing their shows for common good anyway.
Personally I think that it's stupid that you're not allowed to record something that is stored inside your brain anyway, but I see that some restrictions would need to be placed so that producing content stays economically reasonable.
http://codeandlife.com
Face it, laissez-faire capitalism works no better in the real world than communism did.
I seem to remember years ago the broadcasters were trying to push broadcast tags, but at that time it wasn't to protect content, rather to prevent people from recording certain kinds of programming and to prevent skipping of commercials in the recorded programming that was allowed. Does this new ruling prevent this sort of thing?
Why don't you read Atlas Shrugged sometime?
I tried, but around the third page my intestines jumped up through my windpipe and throttled my brain into unconsiousness. Best thing I can say about the writing is that she managed to avoid naming all her characters Stiff T. Penisman or Steel E. Libido like that "Left Behind" guy. I read the Cliff's notes though, and I liked the part where they find that Dalek factory in Wisconsin and enslave them to power their little subterranian Abbadon.
I have "digital TV" now via local cable. One thing that is nice about it is that I can change my channel selection (30 channels for 30 bucks/mo, with CanCon restrictions - SpikeTV's WWE offerings are replaced with Joe Schmoe because Canada's TSN apparently owns the rights up here; which is worse?) - almost immediately via the internet. For example, replace SpikeTV with BBCNews within about 20 minutes. I haven't tried to videotape anything off the signal, so I can't speak to scrambling.
However, there is no doubt that the cable company is recording everything I watch into some great database. And sometimes the signal quality sucks on some channels (blocky images degrading into unwatchable signal). After speaking with a tech, I discovered that he knows what I'm watching.
Also to consider is that a lot of the "digital" channels are owned by the same company, so many shows/movies are recycled between channels and announced as being "new".
About 15 years ago Videoway (Montreal) and maybe a couple other similar experimentations in the US were done.
From fcc.gov:
The FCC is directed by five Commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms, except when filling an unexpired term. The President designates one of the Commissioners to serve as Chairperson. Only three Commissioners may be members of the same political party. None of them can have a financial interest in any Commission-related business
I don't see what's unreasonable about this. If the system allows copying to a limit of 3 machines [snip] that wouldn't be unreasonable.
You own two machines, one for the living room and one for your bedroom. Of course you want to play your recordings both places, so there's 2 of your three copies. One day your home is burglarized and your machines stolen; you never had a chance to check-out the recordings played thereon. You buy two new machines. You have one playback left, so where would you like to watch all your existing tapes forever more, living room or bedroom? Choose wisely. If that machine breaks or you are robbed again, your entire archive is now useless. As soon as you tie the recordings to a limited set of playback devices, all recordings become temporary and are effectively timed out when those devices wear out, break, are stolen or destroyed.
Saying yes to DRM, even a little bit, is saying good-bye to ever really owning anything. These rules are really designed to circumvent ownership under the first-sale doctrine, and effectively convert your entire collection of video and audio media to rentals without directly saying so, and fair-use be damned. All in the name of stopping piracy. Bear in mind, we've only seen allegations that domestic home-copying is what's hurting the content industries, we've never seen it proven. And they've given this exact same gloom-and-doom sky-is-falling speech, practically word-for-word, about reel-to-reel tape decks, cassette recorders, and VCRs - and were wrong each time.
The real mass-scale piracy that actually costs the *AA real sales is in Asia and Eastern Europe, where the counterfeiters will be completely unaffected by this and every other copy-protection idea, not in American living rooms, where Mom will always be worried that if the VCR-alike breaks or is stolen, she'll never be able to play back the recording of the time she was interviewed on the local news again.
The only people who won't be harmed are the pirates, as it seems rather trivial to mask out the flags in the process of running a criminal copying enterprise anyway. Add a small grey-market cottage industry for enterprising geeks to break the flags for acquaintances so they don't lose their collections when they buy new equipment, or they forgot to check-in their recording and the power went out or something, and so on.
All this, just to avoid producing content people would want to pay for. Reasonable, it's decidedly not.
Seriously. The entire /. crowd has a phobia of getting in a position to make a change. If a lawyer is qualified, why aren't you? If a car salesman is qualified, why aren't you? 99% of the issues a politician has to deal with they have never had any formal experience with.
/.'ers took it upon themselves to try for something as simple as city councillor, we can expect at least a few clueful people would make it to the lofty chairs in Congress.
We complain about the voting system, we complain about copyright laws, we complain about the war - someone bloody get in the position to *do* something.
It's a long climb up the political ladder, but if one in a hundred
Last post!
I know i can't be the only one that did this, but just in case:
FCC Contacts
I sent a small "I can't believe you made this decision" email to each of the listed contacts. I also have requsted information from TIVO and COMCAST as to their opinions on the matter, after noting that i will NOT pay any type of monthly fee for programing i cannot record according to my own free will.
You want to hurt these people, do it where it really counts:
Threaten their bottom line.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
It's doesn't matter, the tv shows and movies that I see passed around are so compressed or so low res that it's silly. I guess protection protects against super pirates who sell pirate dvd's, but they'll pirate anyway.
You will FOREVER be able to download Malcom in the Middle the day after it's on TV.
I can't take the output from my digital camcorder and make a DTV signal from it. No sending vidios of the kids to the grandparrents in the new standard. They won't be able to play your home movies because they become encrypted like it or not when imported into the new format. That's a great way to close the analog hole and 3rd party video content creation. Long live NTSC, AVI and VCD's.
The truth shall set you free!
The broadcasters really don't want it. They had it rammed down their throats. They'd much rather it went away. The cable and satellite people don't want it. It requires them to give away more channels. Their cables and transponders can only carry so many signals. The consumers don't want it. Just wait until the day AFTER their 700 dollar two year old analog TV isn't working...and they find out that they have to either spend another 500 dollars for an 'adapter' or throw their TV in the dumpster and pay over a grand for a new one. The only ones who want DTV is the TV set manufacturers (who stand to make $$ by forcing consumers to upgrade), the content providers(who want to control everything) and the Govt. (who have been paid off by the above two groups). Ain't America grand??
It looks like they are having a major case of the dog guarding the haystack. It doesn't matter when the huge field of fresh green grass awaits outside.
Translation;
The difficult to use and therefore unwatched TV (dry stale & well guarded hay) is replaced by internet (fresh new material not from tv). The internet does not need to run TV shows. They have their own better content.
TV can have lots of great padlocks all over it, but it won't matter. Few will pay for the locks and keys (DTV receivers) to watch heavly DRM'ed low quality content.
The truth shall set you free!
I think a few will buy it, but due to the high costs for low quality over the air programming, I think the Internet will make an end run past TV as a primary source of news and entertainment. Heck even without DRM DTV, it's already happened for me. I spend less than 2 hours a week watching broadcast TV. It has been replaced. The TV is pretty much a monitor for the VCR and DVD. DRM and it's high cost for a receiver will kill off the last 2 hours easly when NTSC over the air goes dark.
The truth shall set you free!
I thought that the FCC was trying to obfuscate the issue and put this forth as an anti-piracy feature while downplaying the anti-consumer nature of it. But after reading the first 10 pages of their report, I'm not so sure. These guys either 1) do not know how the hell the system will work, or 2) can't explain it anyone.
I've read 5-6 articles on the subject, and not one discusses the mechanics of how this could possibly work. It will allow consumers to make unlimited copies, but won't allow us to distribute it over the internet? How the heck will any devide know whether it's being copied over the internet or over my local network? Obviously it restricts my ability to copy the programs I record, otherwise it couldn't do anything else.
Either the FCC commissioners are the most self-deluded bureaucrats outside of the Pentagon, or they think they can tell us bald-faced lies in order to advance their agenda. C'mon, it will restrict copying by consumers, how can they lie like that and not get called for it? Please, News.com, Wired, WSJ, NY Times, please call these guys out for their blatant lies. It's not spin, it's not a viewpoint, they are straight lies. Will the press ever get its act together?
"...to them is now required to check for the presence of the flag and apply DRM restrictions to its outputs."
What do you mean it's not going to be used to prevent recording or copying.
Does this mean my video card must have intergrated DRM to use HTML because those dickwads decide to offer some content through the internet. What a bunch of thieving con-artists.
The break down is cookies for the television you watch. Privacy is something to spit at. How can these people get away with this kind of stuff? The only presure to apply is internation. Representing a security trust infringement with other goverments
American traded their president for a king, I wonder if any know what that means.
Dude, it's not going "off the air." It's going digital. Unless I'm missing something, it seems you're wrong. Network TV broadcasting will still exist. It will just be digital, so people will have to get a new TV. No, it won't be as seamless as the black/white to color switch, but it doesn't have to be apocolyptic.
If I'm missing something let me know; I just thought I'd say this.
You're kidding right? We have people that can hack highly encrypted digital satellite signals and a broadcast bit is suppose to prevent that? :p Mann that's as bad as leaving an expensive car in a bad neighbourhood and putting a "do not steal me!" bumper sticker on it.
Yes! You are so, so right, I have said this for ages.
At the moment, when there's an environmental issue, we have Young Corporate Representative in a Nice Suit vs. Filthy Matted-Haired Hippy with Dope Leaf Symbol T-Shirt...
When there's a trade/WTO issue we have Sensible and Mature Trade Negotiator vs. Angry and Psychotic Looking Teenager Wearing Anarchy T-Shirt and Ski Mask...
When there's a civil liberties issue we have Reassuring Government Spokesperson Who Just Wants to Protect Us vs. Nutcase Professor of Liberal Arts from Wacky College Campus...
Whenever there's a human rights issue we have Police/Army Representative Doing their Best in a Difficult Job vs. Washed Up Dumpy Looking People Complaining Hysterically.
People who care about such things (which is hopefully most people here) really, REALLY need to learn the difference between adopting an appearance that is appealing to ordinary people and 'selling out.' Imagine how much more impact an environmental/trade/human rights protests would have if they were attended by people with good haircuts, wearing nice clothes and even *gasp* suits, shirts, and ties. And imagine how much more impact it would have on the average TV viewer to see a smartly dressed person in their late 20s/early 30s talking clearly and compellingly about these issues instead of a nervous looking doped up hippy/drooling nerd/fringe dwelling libertarian.
We live in a democracy. As such, we need to appeal to the majority or at least a solid minority of people to get anything to change. This will not happen while people are too principled to realise that one of the basic rules of PR is to come across as (a) the same as your audience or (b) a charismatic authority figure who can be trusted.
Every time there is an issue I care about on TV they do an interview with some braindead first year university student or junior high school student with bright red dyed hair and a nose ring who says something to the effect of "big companies fucking suck" or "I hate how stupid ordinary people are," and I just shudder to think of Mr. and Mrs. John Q Voter at home listening to it and deciding to vote for the Nazi party because at least they have neat uniforms and are well spoken.
Read Pynchon.
that in Australia it is against the law supply equipment with which can modify your *own property* to bypass encryption/copy protection. It's basically unenforceable and only gets used against guys who make mod chips and the like, but the legal framework is actually geared towards limiting your rights to use your own property in certain ways. Copyright standards are increasingly global, so I imagine you have similar laws in the US (?).
Of course, you must also realise that you don't actually have the right to "do whatever the hell you want to your property" because you can't use your property in ways that affect others in an adverse manner, for instance. So, just as you can buy a gun but you can't use it to hurt people, it is arguable that you can buy a digital TV but you can't use it to illegally copy TV programs and movies which you haven't paid for.
Not my opinion, but one of the moral/legal points that needs to be worked out before this issue can really be tackled.
Read Pynchon.
In the UK one production company who's prime time soap has been cancelled are looking at the possibility of continuing production and selling the program on DVD directly to the public.
DVDs: can't copy them, can't fast-forward through ads
public reaction: "great picture quality"
You can't copy them? Check your mailbox; I'm sure someone just sent you a message on how to "BAKUP YOUR DVD TO CD! AFJAF". And people aren't placid about ads either; I think the consumer backlash over ads is and will reduce the number of DVDs that come with ads.
You forgot WMD.
I have a feeling this won't last very long.
Basically, people are already getting used to technologies like Tivo and other DVRs. This is one of those cases where common people that don't normally pay attention to these sorts of things will take notice, but it will be as soon as they suddenly can't access their favorite sitcoms or their sports events anymore. The MPAA is doing too little, too late in its lobbying efforts.
The technology is already rooting itself in society enough I think that people will complain when they suddenly try to limit it. I'm sure the MPAA will continue to find ways to limit other technologies, but I don't think they'll be able to stop the recording of tv broadcasts anymore. Also, just wait another year when this is supposed to take effect and we'll see what sorts of recorders are out then.
As many have said already, you can copy DVD's. That is not what I was going to ask however. I do have about 20 DVD's. Blockbuster movies, classic movies, some anime and some European films. On none of these DVD's there are advertisements that you can't skip. It's even better: there are no advertisements at all. The only thing I can think of are the included trailers of other movies, but you have to decide to view them by browing the menu.
The only thing I had so far that is not skippable are the movie studio logo's and the copyright notice. You *could* consider them as advertisements, but I don't really do.
All my DVD's are zone 2... Never bothered to buy a Zone 1. I can be patient...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I must also point out, as a content generator (I make games), that you have no right to free content, nor to record it. Some of you feel that the licensing of radio spectrum should include the right to copy as well as cash, but if so you should get involved in government and make sure the contracts are so amended next time they come up. This is all business, and complaining about it, and more importantly, not comprehending it, will get you nowhere.
DVDs: can't copy them, can't fast-forward through ads
/decent/ DVD player, and all is happy.
Huh? Region coding... hmm, I heard about that once.
I hire Region 1 DVDs quite frequently, despite being in Australia - and often only notice after watching it. A quick RPC-1 patch to the DVD-ROM's firmware, plus a
The point is that as the lockdown gets more offensive, more people will just ignore it. These schemes will always be broken, and eventually broken in ways that can't be fixed while retaining backward compatability. It's irritating, and many people don't/can't ignore the restrictions, but it's not the end of the world.
I still think it's revolting, counterproductive, annoying, and generally offensive though.
between the internet and a good book there really isn't much need for television.
I wish people had the balls to stand up to this shit.
Ever since the internet came to pass, the television industry has been in trouble. This might speed it up a bit.
The FCC's media consolidation rules where overturned by Congress because of public outcry. That was strike 1.
The 9th curcuit court overruled the FCC's decision that cable providers where not internet service providers. That was strike 2.
Educate your congressman and senators about how this will delay Congress's mandate that TV be all digital by 2006, how it will restrict free speech (broadcast flag on presidential debates anyone?), and how it will most affect those with lesss financial resources.
Make this strike 3. It is time for Congress to slap down hard on the FCC whose first responsibility is to the citizens, not to the "content providers".
Not copyrighted music or movies. That would be copyright infringment and play right into the enemies hands.
Serve public domain information. Serve your own copyrighted information. Mirror Project Gutenberg. If you can't mirror the entire project, choose some appropriate selections:
- The Federalist Papers
- The Declaration of Independence
- The Constitution
- Poor Richard's Almanac
Crap, write a cron job to pull the latest copy of the Federal Register and serve that.Make a significant body of non-infringing file-sharing content and it will then be impossible for any court to enforce an anti-P2P law. Serve content that is undeniably public and so patriotic that Congress will have an uphill battle to outlaw it.
Imagine the headline: Congress bans publishing the Constitution. What citizen^Hvoter would not respond with "You did What?!?!?".
You cannot be free when you're watching television. Television is not now nor has it ever been about freedom. Blow it up, stop watching the foul thing, do something useful. Digital or analog, crap is still crap, and a gilded turd is still a turd. Your eyes cannot tell if something stinks. Follow your nose. Read Mander's "Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television". Grow up, think for yourself. You need absolutely nothing from the MPAA or the RIAA.
What we have these days is a new type of security that i would like to call "legislative token security". How this works is simple: the actual security is virtually non-existant but still manages to be irritating. If you try and break the security in your own home or even talk about breaking it then you get arrested slapped with a law-suit and jail time while muggers still run the streets.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Let's wave the Broadcast Flag - with PROUD!
It will lead us to new victories!
While you can receive anything that hits your yard with out issue, the US congress in its infinite wisdom has made decryption of digital signals a crime.. Thus why the FCC is mandating abolishing of analog transmission..
So you can watch snow all day long....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article says that all PCs, not just TVs, etc. will be required to include DRM which enforces these restrictions.
If the DRM software uses licensed tech which costs money, and every copy of Linux is required to have this, doesn't that have a destructive effect on the whole free software model?
Alright! Now it's time to stock up on all of the good feature rich tuner cards to sell on ebay after 2005!! Profit!
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
A simple flag system sounds like it will be *much* easier to get around than the more complex systems; as my multi-region DVD player (to get around the preposterous DVD flag system) can attest.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
For the networks, the customers are the advertisers, not the viewers.
Admittedly, viewership is important to the advertisers, but a well targeted audience and programming which cannot be considered truely offensive, controversial or hurtful to the customers is more important to the networks.
Fear of losing customers (i.e. the advertisers) will make the decisions about what is truely offensive, controversial or hurtful more extreme.
So what if the viewership halves but the advertisers find out that people can't skip commercials, even when recorded? This new T.V. may be an overwhelming success, and of course competing mediums will be stifled because of the revenues it generates for big business.
Of course all of this is just idle pesimisitc reasoning without a stitch of research or data, and absolutely no experience.
Except
I'm not sure that distributing hacks to disable the flag would qualify as a DMCA violation
I sure hope it is.
Others have mentioned that it probably is.
Why am I so happy about this? Because this is a very simple clear-cut case of substantial non-infringing use.
I'm not saying the EFF just needs to file a brief with the court saying, "Betamax.," but such a case would very clearly and simply demonstrate the unconstitutionality of the DMCA.
From there we can move forward.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The actual code of the flag is the sourcecode for DeCSS. That way, figuring out a way around it and you face the DMCA^2!
Here is the zeroth law of politics and power grabbing:
You can take people's rights away.
You can tax them out the wazoo.
You can tell them what to do, where to do it, when to do it, and how to do it.
But DO NOT DARE fuck with their TV.
When this goes through (or if), the digital cable/satellite providers who are now advertising digital control of their media via TiVo and similar digital management schemes will be hurting. Why do I want to pay each month for digital cable and a set-top box when I can't time-shift or save programming, or skip commercials, while broadcast TV has the same resolution? The answer would be that I don't, and I would assume for most people as well. Get this across to the companies making their money from this and they might complain to Congress/the FCC with some effect.
Of course, if worse comes to worse, I could always be glad that broadcast TV is shooting itself in the head - once people have to sit through commercials and programming at the network's convenience, those networks will die. The people with short attention spans that TV desperately wants will go elsewhere, and the people who might tolerate the new restrictions are pushed out by the requirement for new equipment. The long arm of Darwin is a beautiful thing...
Now I'm gonna have to spend the extra cash to buy my HDTV from China and have it shipped here. Good thing they're cheaper overseas anyways.
Economics 101: Supply and Demand.
If a demand for something (sex, drugs, unencrypted video streams) exists, a supply will appear to serve that demand. By outlawing that supply, demand will rise, along with price, and profit for the "black market" supplier.
foot.self->shoot();
Except
1. Almost certainly, it's not the individuals who are gaining, but the corporations.
2. That's not the purpose of copyright & patents according to the consitution. The purpose is to promote the progress of science and useful arts, which copyright & patents are now going against.
Sort of.
1. This isn't actually clear. Corporations like Disney are the most visible beneficiaries of modern IP law, but I've never seen research looking at what the share of individual IP rights holders is in comparison. Pretty sizable, I'd bet.
More importantly, though, it doesn't matter. Why? First, because the law doesn't care if the rights holders are "natural people" or corporations - the rights are still valid in the eyes of the law.
2. You're right about the Constitutional purpose of IP law, but again, it doesn't really apply here. You have to ask how the Constitution expects IP to promote the progress of science and useful arts (and that's just the patent standard anyway, if I remember correctly) - it's through incentives. People make money off of their IP, so they make more. It's the ostensible justification behind the current ridiculously long copyright term - people will make more art if they know their children will benefit from it.
This also doesn't necessarily rule out corporate rights holders. Congress and the courts have no problem with the (probably correct) argument that there are tons of potentially profitable works that individuals just can't leverage to the maximum. So those IP creators benefit by selling the rights, and extending the term (as in the case of the recent extensions) or strengthening the back-end protection (as in this case) increases the value of those rights to corporate buyers, benefitting the creators through higher prices.
So saying "it's all for the benefit of corporations" is (A) fun (B) exciting and (C) maybe correct, but (D) doesn't make a damned bit of difference. And saying, "Hey, this isn't the original purpose of IP law!" isn't much more useful. The answer will pretty much always be, "Well, it is the purpose now, and besides, it's how we reach the original purpose."
Colin
The best part is when I buy dvd's that are PAL encoded. I have friends who have all region players but nobody I know has a PAL decoder (my dvd player has one built in) so I never have to loan those movies out.
About not being able to record broadcast shows... I never do anyway. I have a huge collection of movies and I hardly watch cable at all... I sometimes turn on MTV2 when I'm cleaning or cooking or doing something else where I dont' want to stop to grab a cd or listen to mp3's. It's nice to hear new stuff every once in a while too... I guess if I had TIVO I would watch more tv... but then again I kind of like not watching so much tv... I used to watch it all the time and I felt kinda chained to it. It's like a good book that you don't want to put down except with a book you set the rules. With tv (pre-TIVO) you had to play but their rules. They tell you when you can watch, and how much you get to see... so it may take 10 years for a series to play from beginning to end... but a series of books would be much quicker, and more fulfilling.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Do you know what the problem with all of this is? Between the FCC, DCMA, RIAA, etc. The problem is no one has any BALLS in this country and allows the government to rape them in the rear. Maybe when "humans" learn to be smart they will get together and protest against the government's actions. Who agrees?
The one you fear is fear itself.
need I say more?
I kinda expected this from the FCC....to go forward, you take about 5 steps back. Maybe some of the third world nations will be more advanced by the time DTV is out.
Flag compliance really is a waste of resources.
Gah. Did you explain to this sap that P2P is copyright infringment, not theft?
Yes, in my follow-up message I did point out the distinction and tried to use this to prove my point about the widespread confusion regarding these types of issues. I don't know if my pointing his error out pissed him off so much that he didn't bother to respond or whether he just passed me off as a nutjob. In any case, that was the end of our very brief interchange.
GMD
watch this
"In today's news, the Federal Paper-use Reduction Act IV was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses. The act, intended to preserve important protected forests from an ever-increasing paper demand, mandates that all books, newspapers, and periodicals be published on re-usable "Electronic Paper". The recent settlement of several major DRM-related lawsuits between major publishers and technology industries has been cited as the main reason for the sudden, rapid passage of the bill. Manufacturers of Electronic Paper point out its various advantages, such as; the ability to update and correct erroneous content on-the fly, the ability to locate lost or stolen devices through the embedded RFID-2.2 smart-chips and the now widely-distributed emergency-locator system, and the fact that it eliminates the need for the use of a scarce natural resource. This is CNN."
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
It was something like the 10th on-topic post (out of about 400, mind you) and should definitely be modded as Score:5, Funny. The only problem was the subtleness of the humor, for which let me apologize.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
God, I don't read /. much but i don't think i have ever seen this much anger in one place. Anyway, as Guppy06 (410832) brought up:
"The widespread redistribution of broadcast TV content on the Internet would unnecessarily drive high value programming to more secure delivery platforms. The losers would be the 40 million Americans who rely exclusively on free over-the-air TV."
Except that those 40 million Americans you mention are the last people that would adopt digital television technology.
But even if each and every one of those 40 million people did manage to scrape together enough money
There are still people in this country on party lines for the telephone. For those of you who don't know what a party line is, it is one phone line for multiple houses. Each house has it's own ring combination that they know to pick up on. any way, people still have that, there is no way in hell they are getting cable tv, and here they want them to go out and spend HOW MANY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS for a new tv when their old one works perfectly well as long as the TV stations dont screw them over? Something tells me in two years some of the representatives will be taking a second look at this.
All you anti-TV people are all the same. You all love to go on about how great the world is without TV. Wow, yay, that's great. I'm happy for you, but the smug self-congratulation is wearing thin. Now, wouldja shut up and go do all those things you talk about doing now that you don't have TV, and leave the rest of us alone?
One implementation is to use a MAC number of Unique ID obtained or stored on the computer.
Programs recorded that has the copy control flag would used the MAC number or Unique ID to encrypt control information or properties information, or header information of the HDTV data stream.
This way, the program may be recorded and replayed on the same device, but cannot be redistributed to a different device.
is there some magical threshhold of adoption when the FCC finally says "okay, pull the plug...we have 88% adoption".
That's correct. FCC has set the end of analog broadcast TV at either the end of 2006 or at 85 percent adoption of digital TV sets, whatever comes last. Details
Will I retire or break 10K?
and w/o the license, there would absolutely be ownership of copies, no argument
The rights preserved for the user under 17 USC 117 apply only to the owner of a copy. Should a major mass-market proprietary software publisher lose a case over section 117 and the enforceability of EULAs, such publishers probably will change their EULAs and packaging to state clearly that what is being sold at Best Buy is NOT A COPY OF THE PROGRAM but rather a ten-year (or so) RENTAL of a copy of the program. (Caps because that's the easiest way under packaging law to make a warning "conspicuous".)
Will I retire or break 10K?
have not used the Apple iTMS service, but I wonder--can you back up your hard drive offsite and restore it to your replacement computer? Alternately, can you use their site to revoke permissions on the other computer?
The user can telephone Apple Computer in the case of equipment theft or catastrophic failure to get a computer deauthorized, probably provided that the computer has not accessed apple.com in the past x months.
You had one--and only one--good copy of the disc. Now you're getting three
Some users insist that AAC encoding introduces annoying smearing artifacts and is equivalent to zero "good" copies.
you can still go out and buy a physical CD.
So why do some physical CDs cost 32 USD?
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's probably around $1800 now.
When will HDTV sets fall below $500, to where low to middle America would consider buying one?
Will I retire or break 10K?
If a lawyer is qualified, why aren't you?
I have a concrete answer to this, straight from the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 3: "No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years."
Do you have the pocket money to finance a campaign?
Do you have enough of a knowledge of political science to know what you're doing once in? And can you convey that to the voters?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Either works are primarily available to the general public for sale at reasonable prices given all the circumstances (the determination will involve judges and juries, surely, but norms will likely emerge), or they are not protected by copyright.
I agree with such "copy-responsibility" and "intellectual property tax" principles, but if a nation were to institute something like that in its copyright law, it would violate the Berne Convention, which is an essential part of the WTO treaties. How do you propose to right the copywrongs without severely jeopardizing a nation's trade status?
Will I retire or break 10K?
OK, here in NZ we get shows like "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under" free to air (and as far as I know uncut).
So what happens in the future when the show is broadcast in the US with the evil 'you cant copy this' flag set. I presume I can (or somebody else from a country that is actually free), still record the show at full quality and upload it to the net?
In the USA, consumers seem to be screwed over by corporates, but thats not the same in every country (yet). The FCC and studios might want their digital TV standard pushed around the world but given a choice, users in other countries might not bite. Remember that with GSM vs CDMA or PAL vs NTSC etc, many countries did not go with US standards - and these days Japan is _the_ key player in home ent standards, (I have never seen a US made TV, VHS or DVD player - all mine are Korean or Japanese).
I have thought and thought and thought about this, and I am sick not only of the assertion that file sharing == "piracy", but even that it == copyright infringement. Somebody answer this question for me - What is a Library? What if your local library discovered that it could suddenly expand its patron base to the whole world at little cost... and then discovered it could purchase a work for its collection, and then make infinite # of copies to share simultaneously with all of its patrons... and then could say, nah, don't even bother about returning it, we've got plenty more where that came from.
From the perspective of a library, this is nirvana, correct? From the perspective of those who founded libraries, built them up, and support them now, this would be wonderful.
So why is our government saying "no" to better libraries? It's not "piracy". It's library-ing. "File sharing" is a nice term, but we need to call a spade a spade. What the government is cracking down on is not piracy, but libraries.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a system which limits its libraries' opportunities to optimally function. And technology has the potential to make each one of us a library.
Please slashdotters, stop talking about piracy, about copyright infringement, etc etc. The current laws are wrong, completely bankrupt morally. The government is interfering with my right to be a library. Why? There is no one amongst you who can possibly argue that this is proper.
You all seem a it uptight about the DTV change. And that's all about the broadcast flag ofcourse. So you're bitching about all aspects of the DTV change to be certain you're bitching enough.
So I'm all against broadcastflags just as much as you guys, but would you guys really be bitching about the end of analog transmission if the digital ones weren't being locked down?
I kinda doubt that. So please focus on the real evil (*cough*broadcastflag*cough*), for the sake of debate, huh?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
So what you're saying is that the public domain was a fab and nothing more?
A good idea, really, but as fast as technology alloved the public domain to truly be a public domain, it had to be shut down for safety reasons?
Sarcasm flag not signaled. I hope it's not necassery.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
So, when are we going to see Mod Chips for TV's?
would you guys really be bitching about the end of analog transmission if the digital ones weren't being locked down?
Yes. Even if there were no broadcast flag, the ATSC standard seems to require patented methods.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"Fair use does not guarantee pristine fidelity." That's definitely one way to interpret it.
It's also the way the Second Circuit has interpreted it. You're going to need a lot of money to bring cases in other circuits to get the Universal v. Reimerdes precedent ultimately reversed in the Supreme Court, and there's no way to guarantee that the Supremes will see things the way you do.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Know what? I don't miss it at all. In fact, I take a little perverse pleasure during the water-cooler chats when someone mentions some series or other and asks if I saw last night's. "Eh? Never seen it. I don't watch TV." Those looks can be priceless.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
It was something like the 10th on-topic post (out of about 400, mind you) and should definitely be modded as Score:5, Funny. The only problem was the subtleness of the humor, for which let me apologize.
I got this fabulous Slashdot Message:
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Now you're actually trolling?
public reaction: "great picture quality"
People are confusing the Term Quality... Digital Video is not Better Quality... Its for the most part Better Clarity...
Analog signals are succeptable to Analog interferance and will quickly show degradation of Video Clarity...
Digital Video Clarity is fixed due to digitization. analog interferance into the digital signal will not degrade Clairity of the Picture Quality... Being in a digital format (data)... only a highly affected signal will have data loss which will result is corruption of the picture(small blovk appear oin the screen).. Which the methods used to transport the data are highly resilliant to analog interferance.
Meanwhile... The Video compression used has Dropped Tonnes of Quality of the Video... Instead of colors ranging in the millions its cut down to mere thousands if not less.. Portions of Video Frames are dropped as well to reach high levels of compression. If you look at the background (not the foreground) you will notice a Jumping in the background a lack of detail... Is this Higher Quality? No it is not...This is a Compromise made for everyone... Loss of detail for increased Clarity. and We are Told its better Quality.. when they should be telling us Clairty.
I get a laugh about these new HDTV's touting they are capable of displaying billions of colors.. when in reality color palettes have been drastically reduced... Not to mention the human eye can't distinguish that many colors aswell... There is just a certain feldelity that we percive about seeing that many colours.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
So couldn't the president theoretically appoint 3 republicans and three libertarians, for example? Not that republicans are very libertarian over-all, but they certainly are when it comes to regulation.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
For one thing, cable companies can keep pumping out analog signals if they want (which I doubt), for another, by 2k6 you'll probably be able to buy a DAC for like 20 bucks or something.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I say, if we didn't have an FCC in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem.
Yeah, all we would have is static. Do you really think people would be able to freely share a frequency 'commons' without any regulation?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You're right-- we would have gone to internet broadcast of TV a good 20 years ago! Of course, there would also be two-three cable companies serving your house, and you'd have about 5 thousand channels to choose from.... but they would be much higher quality than you're getting now.
The idea that without government, there would be no progress is absurd. Government is an impediment to progress. Crowded airwaves would have spured earlier development of cable TV. And businesses share resources all the time.
There is no frequency "commons"... its just another example of the government nationalizing a resource (As all socialist governments do) for the "benefit of the people" and then using it to benefit the politburo exclusively.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23