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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:
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
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.)
So you're telling me they will switch all broadcast even if there is only - say - 10% of the end-users equipped?
;-)
Dude, everybody knows that's not going to happen unless the market follows! And for the market to follow, they need the user's support, not some NAZI EVIL FLAG!
Write boring code, not shiny code!
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.
The flip side is the experience with DAT. DAT has a no-copy bit that is honored by most "consumer" DAT devices. And nobody uses it.
Frankly, I'm happy to have this result with DTV too. Fuck 'em.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
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
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
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.
If you're a cow, however, you don't consider yourself just meat. And if you're a human being, you shouldn't consider yourself just a "consumer".
Consider what the word consumer means - one who consumes, ie one who swallows what the producers shovel. To consume, one merely needs products to buy; anything that works in favour of products to buy is "good for the consumer".
Me, I think of myself as a citizen or just a plain human being.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
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.
remember that the fcc is ultimately run by people that are *elected*. if in 2005 poeple are bitching about not wanting to lose old-analog, it's not going anywhere.
if you want this fixed, the best way is grassroots so that people will complain to their elected officials.
there may not be very many tech savy people out there, but there are *lots* of people that have VCRs.
let me also make the following point: tv land is hurting. 10% drop in male viewers 18-24 (or such). it doesn't take a lot of lost viewership before lost revenue hurts. why am i saying this? because if a sizable portion of the viewing populations gets fed up (poor quality or punted into new tech), it costs them money.
two years until this happens or doesn't happen. i would say that it's still way up in the air.
eric
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 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
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.
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
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
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!
no, they just won't lisence the technology to manufactures that make devices that ignore it.
it's nice that your equipment you own right now won't be a bother, but what about other peoplee? what about culture and public domain? what about the world of the future? what if your stuff breaks?
perhaps you should do something now?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The problem of course is, who do we get to represent us? Eric Raymond? RMS? Oh please Ghod no.
Let me tell you a brief story about a guy named Vladimir Posner. For years he was one of the more familiar voices on Radio Moscow's North American service. He was as Russian as they come, but he lived with his parents in New York City during his growing-up years, so he talked like an American, in perfectly idiomatic English . . . but he job was to put across the party line. And you know what? Just the fact that the looked and sounded American made his positions sound almost sensible. You (or at least I) couldn't dismiss him like the anonymous announcers on some of the other English language Radio Moscow services who fanned the fires of anti-Americanism.
Put simply, we need a speaker-to-suits. Someone who can speak Suit, who looks good in a suit, and someone who comes across to average Americans as a reasonable person with a reasonable point of view, not a commie nutjob who's out to steal money from that nice man at the RIAA.
Unfortunately I have no idea who that would be. Linus would be good, but he also wouldn't be interested. I don't have any good candidates in mind, unfortunately.
This points up the free software movement's greatest weakness, which is paradoxically its greatest strength. It is an unorganized coalition of like-minded individuals with an amorphous idea that Software Should Be Free As In Speech. Other than that, there is no "us." "We" can't write a check to hire someone. "We" can't come up with a single united response to SCO, or Microsoft, or even to Szulik's statement that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. Of course it also means that "we" can't be bought out or eliminated, which is wonderful, and one of the things keeping "us" alive.
End of rant. I don't know what the solution is, but I hope "we" can come up with one.
Someone you trust is one of us.
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.
"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."
This has started to happen with books that popular in the first half of the 20th century. They're just gone. The Mickey Mouse protection copyright extensions make it illegal to republish (even for archives) popular books published after the mid-1920s without the direct authorization of the copyright owner. Yet for most of this stuff no one knows what the copyright status is. No one kept track of these seemingly meaningless details because it was all supposed to go into public domain in the last quarter of the 20th century. Now, no one will touch it lest they get hit with a piracy lawsuit out of nowhere.
When the books wear out, the libraries just take them off the shelves and burn them. There may be one copy of most titles deep in the warehouse storage of the Library of Congress, but that's it for most of the popular literature published in the US between 1925 and 1955. There are maybe a dozen titles per decade that get remembered and saved as 'classics of the era' but all the rest has mostly disappeared. Gone.
It's a shame because these books reflect how people lived and thought in that period. They should be at least perserved by automated OCR scanning and stored as compressed text on CD-R. Hundreds of thousands of pages can be stored on a 20 cent CD-R.
It's odd that the Japanese are more interested in perserving ordinary American culture from the 20th century than the Americans are. In a hundred years the Americans might have to pay a huge price to buy back the artifacts of their culture when it was at its peak; back when they actually passed laws making it illegal to copy and preserve the television, movies, and popular music that defined their place in history.
There's also the fact that they're going to let broadband-over-powerlines through with no questions, despite the VERY vocal complaints from amateur radio enthusiasts and several other groups. (I think even NASA was one of them.)
The FCC are a joke who will give the regulations to the highest bidder. I would like someone to take the bastards to court, and CBS, so they can show how consumers rights have been pushed forward.
I'm a big motor racing fan. Formula One airs at 6am for the European races where I live. I tape them now. In a few years time, it looks like I'm going to have to get up and watch since I guarantee stations, desperate to protect ad revenue, will fuck ALL their programs with this monstrosity.
Quite how this is going to stop piracy, I'd really like to know. Hell, rips of shows sent out to network affiliates are routinely on the net before they've even aired. The people who release them rip them off the raw feed sent to the affiliate. Quite how these idiotic rules are going to stop that I'd like to know...
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.
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.
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.
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).