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What Critics of the Critics of the FCC Rule Miss
Asprin writes "Businessweek has an editorial up which argues that the FCC's HDTV broadcast flag rule is a good thing, and that everyone is just overreacting. What the author is overlooking is that this rule gives exclusive control over production to the studios that are in "the club", essentially denying private citizens the right to make their own HDTV format video. To wit: "The problem comes when a program taped on an old VCR can't be replayed on a next-generation VCR. So consumers may experience some compatibility problems between machines as they upgrade." Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!) The problem is the word "consumers", which doesn't describe us anymore. There's nothing like being locked out of your own old family videos when your current VCR dies, eh?"
Pissed off masses is the surest way to overturn the stupid rule.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There's nothing like being locked out of your own old family videos when your current VCR dies, eh?
No problem. Every law-abiding citizen will simply pay the licensing costs to obtain a broadcast flag of their own. Obviously.
Put a frog (alive) into a pot of cold water. Put the pot on low heat. If you heat the water slowly enough, the frog will not jump out, even when it eventually boils to death.
This is what is happening.
--
om Shanti
Use two VCR's to transfer tape. Connect the output of an old VCR to the input of a HD VCR.
Just reencode their VHS tapes to DVD (mpeg 2). Problem solved. Or for the slashdotters, get a HTPC running open source linux using xvid divx codec. Everything is open source so no more worries about the FCC.
Dunno, but you missed FCC... not FOC, you subtle piece of shit.
The Captain's log.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
Yes but what about the critics of the critics of the critics? Three cheers for article titles that turn your brain inside out!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Thank you for this informed and balanced analysis
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
This being something I sincerely doubt will ever happen. I'm am dead certain that they intend one set of rules for themselves, and a different one for the rest of us.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Honestly now, how long will it be before someone cracks the encryption key and figures out how to record the HDTV films as easily as before?
All this is doing is hurt the honest consumer - by forcing them to upgrade their equipment when their old stuff dies. And in upgrading, they'll lose access to all of their previously owned movies on VHS - does anyone else see this as stepping on the rights of the consumer to continue to use their 'license' to view their shows they've bought?
critics of the critics of the critics of the critics of the critics of the critics of the critics of the critics of the critics of the critics....
KERNEL PANIC: OUT OF MEMORY!
--
Sometimes, you just have to do something in order to do it.
When companies like Apex, simply ignored the Region coding stuff, they sold like hotcakes... So I plan on doing the same thing, simply ignoring the flags (or whatever they end up being), manufacturing my units in some country the US can't touch (say China), and making a fortune...
What part did I mess up? I must have missed something... This seriously is too good to be true... I'm gonna be rich!!!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The point is that corporate america does *get it,* and they are trying to avoid selling said rope. Failing, but trying.
sulli
RTFJ.
"What Critics of the Critics of the FCC Rule Miss"
What? Their target?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I already have problems with playing a vhs tape not recorded on a "high fidelity" on a hifi vhs player. How lovely.
The moment I got as far as rampant copying in the beginning of the original article, I knew the whole thing was garbage. It is that (incorrect) attitude that needs to be fixed in the governmental mind.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's all about easy to use front ends. Right now DIY HTPCs on linux have two problems. Linux is a pain to configure for media apps and the front ends are very rudimentary right now. I have yet to find a way to get Linux running at 1280x720 on my HDTV but it's a snap with Windows XP. Remember that this broadcast flag is here to stay. We have a nice fat slow target to work around. The last piece of the puzzle is open source hardware. We need a better look at that video driver code to create crash free Linux HTPC apps. Go here to check out what's new in the Linux HTPC world.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
There's no encryption key. The broadcast flag is just that - a flag with instructions on what to allow recording of. GNU Radio, current pre-broadcast flag hardware, and future non-compliant tools (call it "Capture The Flag?") will happily ignore it. Just like the current no-copy bit on CDs, which is universally ignored.
sulli
RTFJ.
When will corperate america *get it*?
I find this question particularly funny given that you yourself have said:
i don't particularly care for finance
which is to say, you don't get corporate America.
What's more, you miss what most GNU advocates miss, which is the irony of their position: the GPL strongly depends on intellectual property protection! The BSD license is much less restrictive, yet it is much less popular than the GPL.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Alright alright....one more for you guys! What did Neo find in the Toilet?
Number one I order you to take a number two!
It's not like they're broadcasting anything worth recording anymore anyway. What, *Enterprise*? Please.
What in the world is this person (posting the story) talking about? Why wouldn't you be able to play non-encrypted data on a machine? If it doesn't have a broadcast flag, so what? It won't require encryption and won't be subject to any special rules. I could be wrong... isn't it true that not having a broadcase flag means it's simply not flagged? I agree that the broadcast flag is a load of crap, but man, this story is weak.
News at 11.
Really.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Malthus beat you to that line, and he's been waiting something like 150 years.
Any system that rewards the most innate human instinct (survival and greed) will always be the most efficient. If that ain't capitalism, I don't know what is.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I don't particularly care for the ruling, but I think the above statement is wrong. From my understanding the broadcast flag tech is only required to be functional in the equipement. I don't think it is required to exist in the content...
Here's the recipe for consumer freedom:
Buy yourself an old ATI AIW, or better yet a DTV card, and build a Linux based HTPC now or soon (before the cards start "featuring" the broadcast flag restriction). Make double or triple backups of your HD. Now you are set for a decade or more.
TV sucks anyway.
Don't buy a friggin tv. If you don't like the terms, don't use the service. Wean yourself from your electronic nipple.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
So this is all that is stopping them now. HDTV will only happen when the Internet is locked down. Once upon a time producers wanted people to see their shows. It's not like these are pay-per-views that go out over our airwaves.
If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web.
You know, maybe I don't want my HDTV that badly. Present TV is good enough for the fare they serve up on it. Of course, regular TV is now also distributed on the Internet. Are they next going to threaten us with no TV at all?
One can only hope.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Various governments and courts have stepped in time and time again and saved IP-oriented businesses from themselves; Piano rolls, TV, VCRs. Each time the estabilshed industry was deathly afraid of a new technology and tried to ignore or squash it. Each time they were stopped. Each time the new technology lead to more opportunities and a stronger industry.
This time though it appears that the industry is too strong and has enough congress critters in its pocket to strangle the new technology. Hopefully this will lead to a collapse of the existing industry and a whole new one will have the chance to replace it. I know I'm not intending to buy an HDTV, or anything that supports the braodcast flag. I'll just get stuff repaired and buy secondhand things for as long as the foolishness prevails.
I'd mod this a Sarcasm +3, if Slashdot was only willing to provide that code.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"All in all, the FCC has taken a reasonable first step. If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web. Shelter from pirates will help broadcasters venture into the digital era. And that will benefit everyone except the pirates."
Arrr, shiver me timbers. You won't find much shelter on da high sea. Shes a harsh mistres.
"
NBC, for example, owns decades of older programs that they either re-run themselves or sell into syndication. Most of this library was not shot in HDTV. NBC believes that viewers of new HDTV programs will not want to watch the older, lower-resolution shows.
None of the networks want to upset the syndication applecart by switching entirely to HDTV. See here for a cable honcho's take.
Google for "mark cuban hdtv" for more.
Nope, no sig
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I've been looking at the cyber culture for a while and I've noticed something...
Few people could argue that the internet subculture has been evolving and changing MUCH more quickly than the real world culture. Look at the OSS movement (Quick subnote... Microsoft was right when they said that this movement was 'pro-communist' or whatever their exact wording was... but who cares, I'll be getting to this soon): linux, *bsd, as well as all of the software that runs EXCLUSIVLY on these systems...
What I'm getting at here is that as the internet subculture keeps evolving, one can easily see that it is mimicing the real world... only MUCH more quickly. Here's a brief chronological 'internet timeline'... Fill in anything I missed where it might be appropriate.
1) The internet and computers started out as systems to improve of the government. They were owned and operated by the government. (Imagine early man first discovering trade... those that traded, in this case the government, were MUCH better off than those that didn't... which leads us to the next point)
2) They quickly moved to the elite in the real world. These systems are now controlled by the elite... this isn't going to change for a while...(Imagine early dictatorships, where only those from higher families could hope for a wonderful, work free, life.)
3) The 'working man' finally gets to use computers and the internet. The only problem is that 99.9% of the technology is owned and controlled by the elites. (Imagine capitalism as we know it... anyone is free to market anything they want... but Billy G can still do whatever the fuck he wants...)
4) *COMMING ATTRACTION* The 'working man' finally controls the computers and the internet. (Hrm... I'm somehow reminded of Marx... For those of you who haven't researched socialism/capitalsim: THEY DO WORK! Marx would have told the world in a second that the USSR would have failed, that N. Korea wouldn't have been a communist paradise, that Cuba wouldn't have been a wonderful place to live. It's easy to see because they went STRAIGHT to communism. It doesn't work that way. Marx said that capitalism was NESSISARY for a true communist state to start. This is because the working man needs to be pissed off enough to start a revolution and stab those rich fuckers with a pitchfork... well, maybe not so violently, but still... you get the idea)
The funny thing about this is that Marx never said "it'd be nice if this would happen." He looked at history and concluded that it WOULD happen.
As an ardent socialist, I'm really hoping that the cyberworld will be the first 'testing ground' for a true communist state.
Not Free(as in beer). Free(as in "I'm free to beat you over the head for being a dumbass")
What did Neo find in the Toilet?
A spoon?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
So what exactly does "some compatibility problems" mean? Sounds like a nice way of saying it isn't going to work at all.
I'm sure glad you spent an entire paragraph in the article submission to explain why the article you linked to was wrong! I wouldn't have known what to think without such massive amounts of editorializing.
Thanks again!
Forget the whales - save the babies.
My take on the issue is that flags are worthless for preventing pirates from putting TV shows online. To qoute a BMG rep. mentioned in a previous slashdot story "All copy-protections can be hacked.." True, that was in reference to music, but it can be applied to video as well. What the flags will do is make it more difficult for "Joe Blow" to watch his recorded shows wherever he wants. It will deter your average family from *Gasp* being pirates, but it won't seriously hamper the real pirates who already share shows online...it will just eat up a few more computer cycles.
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
GNU Radio's days are numbered. It's fine to ignore it now but it is mandated that it must comply with it in the future and it must prevent users from tampering with it with basic household tools. Since there is no way to do that in a modifiable program they must cease working on and distributing the software.
Am I wrong?
When will corperate america *get it*?
GODDAMNIT! It is the government forcing this shit down our throats! THE GOVERNMENT!
Do you think this shit would sell left to the free market?!? DO YOU?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
is that like "If consumers want their New Coke" or "If consumers want their DIVX?"
Honestly, I don't agree with either setup, since there are some times when I want to watch a show but am physically unable to sit in front of the TV, and the broadcast flag will lock the ability to record said shows out of OSS/free projects like mythtv. But shouldn't we at least know what we're complaining about?
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
The article thinks that the only content is that provided by the big studios. I don't know about you, but most of my home video library is composed of home movies, short films I have created myself, and some classic material that you can't get on tape.
This ruling eliminates any kind of non-authorized content, weither that is indie films, home movies, pirate TV stations, or illegal downloads. It doesn't matter to the machine, it's all unplayable. The FCC has done its job here, with regulating commercial playback, but it has overstepped its bounds in forbidding non-commercial use of non-broadcast signals.
Shoot, there is no guarantee that I can record my local township's cable channel anymore with this. It will force these no-budget public access stations to pay who knows how much or else their programming is no longer viewable by their constituants.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
So, how does the broadcast flag, which devices must then not allow you to make unlimited copies of, cause you to be unable to make unlimited copies of non-flagged materials (your home videos)?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
It's an intended bit of irony though. It leverages IP law to keep things as "free" as possible within that regime. In the absence of IP, everything would be in the public domain (although trade secret might still apply to some software?) and the viral nature of the GPL would become irrelevant.
Hmmmmmm.... in fact, the GPL doesn't depend on IP at all, not in any way that matters. Without IP law, the GPL itself would become irrelevant, to wit:
That "nothing else" clause pretty much goes away if copyright goes away. And the goals of the GPL (at least as far as RMS is concerned) are thus achieved.
...I got LAID!
If you believe that it would be universally ignored, why do you need it?
What do you think will happen once they have the mandetory flag? Step 2: Flag not effective. Must provide mandetory encryption. And then they'll claim it's not something new, it's just enforcement of an already existing and accepted IP protection.
It's about making you swallow a camel (is that even an US expression? anyway), they were just so generous to cut it in two for you.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No, we realise that the GPL depends on copyright laws. Its called playing the system. WHat BSD advocates miss is that our problem usually isn't that companies could use our code in proprietary systems (although thats part of it) but that they can then use copyright law to prevent me from using/copying that program, which has my work in it. In other words, it lets the corporations have their cake (my work, for free) and eat it too (I can't use their work, which is really my work, without paying). The GPL says they can have the cake, or they can eat it. One or the other- much more fair.
For myself, I'd be happier just ditching copyright altogether. But since that won't happen any time soon, in the meantime I'll play the system and make it the closest to no copyrights that I can. Thats the GPL- forcing my work to remain open to all, and not giving anyone the option of closing it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I've skimmed through the FCC's PDF report and read a few other sources but this is the first thing I've seen that says that new VCRs won't play old tapes. Is there something in the rule that says all content must have a flag? Is flag-less content presumed to be pirated?
Neo found "a Core Dump" in the Toilet! :) lol......
Number one I order you to take a number two!
... with file-sharing.
I will never understand why they won't let us peacefully share our family videos.
Because that's what all of us do: sharing family videos.
Isn't it, ghey folks?
This will accepted by the vast majority of consumers. Why?
I'll use my wife as an example. When we realised that we were getting deeper into debt, she refused completely to ditch the TV and it's attendant 50+ dollar a month fees. She views TV as a neccessity, not as a luxury.
So does everyone else, and they don't care one little bit about anything other than when the next episode of Friends is on*.
* my wife doesn't actually watch Friends - she tivos Changing Rooms, Good Eats and Daily Show episodes.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Why would home videos be incompatible with new VCRs? Is the author saying that all recordings must have a flag or they won't be played on next generation machines?
I see VCR's at yard sales for a buck. Brand new they're $30 at Winn-Dixie for crying out loud, 4 head, stereo!
stop whining, if you got old 8-tracks you can still buy the players.
Vote Quimby!
I will miss you, Anonymous Coward.
I have always enjoyed your insightful comments straight from the heart of the gay community.
Thank you!
the damn FCC
will not let me act freely
so they can blow me
... at the Broadcast Flag.
Copy protection schemes either don't work (Region coding) or they kill the technology (DAT) -- sometimes both (DAT). I'm not "1337" enough to crack these things myself, but I know others are -- and will.
Media companies in general are still working from an outdated business model. Their day has passed, and they're looking for laws to preserve themselves. What they should be doing is producing products that obviate internet distribution. Provide something that is desirable but not downloadable. Cassettes didn't kill radio, VHS didn't kill analog TV. MP3s won't kill CDs, and MPG/AVI/OGMs won't kill DVDs. Like all technologies, CDs and DVDs will be done in by obsolescence.
The movie and music industries will be with us always. Individual companies may come and go, depending on their ability to provide a product the public wants.
If light beer is as good as regular beer, why do they still make regular beer? If CDs and DVDs are allowing rampant piracy and causing the entertainment companies to go broke, why are they still selling CDs and DVDs? If digital TV is going to kill DVD sales then don't put your best shows on DTV -- that's all.
The thing is, DTV won't kill DVD sales either. And "protected" DTV will not deter those who want to copy it, it will only piss off Joe Consumer.
But even if it is found illegal, so what? It will be a very long time before there are no countries in the world willing to distribute something like this. And if it becomes a standard part of common Linux distributions (for example), it will be damn hard to shut down.
sulli
RTFJ.
catherine_yang@businessweek.com
:)
Send something nice...
Actually, it's you who miss the irony. Most GNU advocates are well aware that the GPL depends on strong intellectual property. True FSF believers (as opposed to Open Source believers) would generally have no problem with intellectual property restrictions on software being completely abolished. All software would then be free for anyone to use for any purpose. There would be no need for the GPL because it would become impossible to take someone else's code and use it in a proprietary product. Whatever you coded and distributed could be freely distributed without your permission. All software would be free, whether the distributer wanted it to be or not. The FSF position is that if you're going to put limits on how I can use your software, I'm going to use your laws to create a culture that uses software the way I believe it should work. The irony isn't that the GPL depends on strong intellectual property protection; the irony is that the GPL uses strong intellectual property protection to promote free (as in speech) software.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
That "nothing else" clause pretty much goes away if copyright goes away
But the "nothing else" clause is critical! In other words, the only way to share the software is to release it under GPL, and its descendents to the Nth generation.
A point anti-IP advocates miss is that there is nothing forcing anyone from sharing information. This is especially important in a field like programming, which includes two distinct pieces of IP: the source code, which contains the idea, and the binary, obtained from the source code, which is purely functional. Individuals and businesses who don't want their ideas stolen are not obliged to release their source code, and I have yet to hear a rational argument as to why they would want to give it away without the protection of the GPL.
I suspect in an economy free of IP laws, there would be much less free trading of ideas, because once an idea is in the public domain it would be gone from your control forever. The GPL gives the author an additional measure of control.
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And what Critics of the Critics of the Critics of of the Critics of the Critics the FCC Rule Miss (I think there are two of them), is that the Critics of the Critics are talking a bunch of gibberish.
In the mid nineties, the beta tape player could no longer play this tape. I paid a fair amount of money for someone to copy this tape over to VHS for me. Maybe they did it because they thought my work was so professional (yeah, right) Maybe they did it just out of the habit on all of their transfers (more likely) Maybe they just thought better safe than sorry. Whatever the reason I believe that in this transfer they added an undesired Macrovision syncing protection to my transferred tape. Of course I didn't discover this addition until 2001 well after my original beta tape is gone as well as the company that did the transfer.
It's not like I can go to Best Buy and get the Athens Georgia 1983 spring production on DVD, but if I try to go to Best Buy to get something to copy my tape for my sister or preserve it for later years I'm treated like a criminal. "No Sir. It's illegal to sell Macrovision breaking products in this country." I know that's bullcrud but what should I expect from Best Buy.
Based on my experiences with trying to circumvent copy protection most people consider "trivial" I don't look forward to higher end crap like these flags.
Btw, if anyone knows of a good product to use to circumvent Macrovision that even an idiot like me could use, I'd very much appreciate a recommendation.
I don't know, but it did this to him[1].
[1] which looks actually better than the face of Trinity
Then it's a good thing we don't have a free market in this country!
You fools^H^H^H^H^Hconsumers will buy anything we tell you to. If that means you can't skip commercials, watch your old tapes, or time-shift programming, we'll just sell you neutered technology to do part of what you used to get for free at an inflated price.
This seems to be the frame of mind of the people who came up with this incipient CF - an arrogant assumption that people will accept what the networks give them, and will forget anything that they want people to forget. The problem is, people have the money that the networks want, and they aren't likely to forget the fact that they used to watch their shows when they wanted without commercials and now they can't. People have short memories, but changes such as this are precisely what people are likely to remember. Unless they can write laws forcing people to buy HDTV and keep them on, they can't make people buy their neutering of content. If the TV networks stop nondigital broadcast in 2006, then people may find out they can live without TV, thus guaranteeing the networks a fast, painful death. If they don't then the broadcast flag is irrelevant. Either way, they lose.
HDTV will never be mainstream in the US...
as for this comment:
"When companies like Apex, simply ignored the Region coding stuff, they sold like hotcakes... So I plan on doing the same thing, simply ignoring the flags (or whatever they end up being), manufacturing my units in some country the US can't touch (say China), and making a fortune..."
I still have and use my original Apex DVD player with the secret menu that allows turning off regions and Macrovision. My 8 year old appreciates it very much that I can record DVDs to tape so he can watch them on his VCR.
First of all - I don't agree with this ruling.
That out of the way, the commentary in the header is completely untrue. The flag is not required in order for a tape to be read. It is required that it can be read by the player, not that it HAS to exist. Old VCR tapes will work fine. New VCR tapes will work fine, as long as you don't try to play something that has a flag that says "don't play". That's it. Any questions?
Well now, if the networks just put copies of their shows up on the internet to download, people wouldn't pirate them. How is watching a show on TV, different than if you watch it on the computer? I mean, it's like sharing a tape on a larger scale. Remember when we used to pause while recording a show to get rid of the commercials? Shouldn't the networks be happy we are watching their stuff?
Seriously, low key product placement to replace commercials would satisify the costs. And if they could estimate the millions of extra watchers that have downloaded the show, they could even charge more! What's up?
Explain how this sentence:
because it would become impossible to take someone else's code and use it in a proprietary product
can logically be followed by this sentence:
Whatever yohatever you coded and distributed could be freely distributed without your permission.
If you write code, there is nothing preventing me from using it in a proprietary product. This is important since I could, for example, use it in a proprietary hardware application and keep my source closed. So the application would be worthless to you unless you bought my hardware -- and you can't use my ideas because I'm keeping my source closed, and there is nothing you can do about that.
Why, in a world without IP protection, would anyone give away their source code? That part is poorly explained in FSF philosophy.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
To the RIAA/MPAA/TV-studios/Entertainment Industry:
Fuck off, we dont give a shit about your bull. You either accept our terms and conditions as the customer or you fuck off and we do it ourselves. We don't need your cheap pushed remixed re-covered music, your formula action movies, your pathetic remakes and your hyped up crap because every year the technological divide between having a state of the art film/tv/music studio gets smaller and computing power gets cheaper. Millions of people around the world have ideas that they want to create and share and the technology for them to do it and for anyone to become a producer is closing in and theres nothing that you can do about it. we are really getting pissed off at you and your crack sniffing and your pretentious billion dollar demanding actors and singers. Don't fuck with our technology and don't tell us what we can and cant do.
PS
Please make more X-Files, we want Anderson and Duchovny
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Forgive me if someone has clarified this, and its just not been modded up.
From what I understand The broadcast flag is just a flag (true or false) associated with a HDTV data stream that says whether or not a show may be recorded.
First off, its HDTV-only. So none of your current media has it or should have it. The flag would only be checked for in HDTV hardware.
Secondly, Its set to prevent recording. If you have family videos that have already been recorded and assuming your HDTV device will even read current formats, you could still WATCH your current home movies.
Thirdly, Its SET to prevent recording. Any home movies currently or recorded with new recording devices would have that bit NOT set, so that you could copy videos of Fido running around all you want to.
And lastly, It won't work, since it will just one guy that makes a homebrew linux box recorder to ignore (and clear) the broadcast bit, and a bittorrent tracker to put it out to the masses. What it will do is put Tivo and ReplayTV out of business since HDTV versions of those devices won't work because they would be "rouge" devices if they wouldn't. Yes they are screwing consumers, and screwing us mightly well.
So, am I off my rocker here? Jabs, Flames, Comments, Death Threats?
Its pretty much a non issue these days, but once long ago far away just about every piece of software was copyprotected. Oddly enough the practice went away for some reason. Would you like to invest in broadcasters that copyprotect their shows so you can't watch them when you want to ? Take a look at the current network lineups, copshow vs copshow, scifi vs scifi, gameshow vs gameshow. The networks that don't use the flag will prosper, those that do will die.
My big problem is that we have to go through the process again, and again and again. We have history and a culture to short circuit this phenomena, it truly pisses me off to see our leaders unable to benefit from either.
Electronic Frontier Foundation, The Digital Speech Project and Public Knowledge (to which I found a link on GNU website recently) are certainly worth visiting, not to mention our good friend Google. The problem is that while we all know that the so called "HDTV broadcast flag" [eff.org] makes exactly as much sense as the Security Flag from RFC 3514, this is not always the case with the average drunk Joe "General Public" Sixpack, who ironically is in fact the most important target we all should make sure those papers are carefully read and understood by, because he represents the target audience of Businessweek, not Slashdot.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I hope that DVR devices reach some kind of high level of availability and affordablity before all of this comes to pass so that people really see what it is they are going to be denied by this trend. If I were ever forced to give up Tivo like capabilities to watch television I don't think I'd even bother with television anymore, I'm way too spoiled by now. They would push their DRM enabled on-demand alternatives that'll either be forced commericial watching or pay-per-view, or just as likely, both.
It is kind of scary though, I heard from a comcast employee that they have plans to wire significant amounts of residential areas in the bay area with fibre to the home in a few years. If they can amass a large enough pool of content and started off really cheap for a couple years they could really get people hooked. Any show, any episode, any time, all only allowed by copyright holders given very strict DRM requirements....
No, we realise that the GPL depends on copyright laws. Its called playing the system.
Actually I think the greatest contribution of the GPL is to show how versatile and powerful copyright law really is.
In other words, it lets the corporations have their cake (my work, for free) and eat it too (I can't use their work, which is really my work, without paying). The GPL says they can have the cake, or they can eat it. One or the other- much more fair.
I agree. But how is this improved if IP laws are abolished? Now a company can take your source code and produce a binary, which you can copy freely, but they have no obligation to release their source. And a freely copyable binary might be useless, since it might only be usable on proprietary, closed hardware.
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By "shut down" do you mean that Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake, or SuSE would stop distributing the program? If so, then completely disagree. It will be very easy to shut them down and I would expect that to happen.
If you mean "it can be found on random websites hosted in non-WIPO countries" then I agree but that isn't exactly victory.
Why, in a world without IP protection, would anyone give away their source code? That part is poorly explained in FSF philosophy
In a world without IP protection, we wouldn't have to protect all the GPL software since it would no longer be possible to "hijack it".
I think it's not explained because it's obvious.
It can always be reverse engineered, to figure out how to do feature xyz.
But yes, it wouldn't be as good as GPL for software. But I think copyright in general is such a detrimental thing to society that its better just to get rid of it entirely.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I'm sure the submitter feels vastly superior to the author of the article, but is it really necessary to add smug and possibly sexist comments such as, "Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!)" I think that's uncalled for.
"It's Dot Com!"
Apart from the government stipulating what hardware manufacturers MUST have in their hardware, I see no problem with this.
If they use 10% of the FCC's collective brain power (which is approximately at the level of Homer Simpson at this point), they'll figure out that the easiest way to get this done is to allow new VCR's/DVD's/DVR's/PVR's to play non-flagged content as well as flagged.
RULE 1: If there's a flag, do what it says.
RULE 2: If there's no flag, play the damn thing.
That makes everyone happy. The FCC and MPAA can mandate their stupid flags as much as they want to and it will do what it's supposed to, but I can still play my home videos and all the pirated videos I'll be able to get once someone cracks the flag (and you know it's inevitable).
-- This sig for rent.
OK, perhaps I am missing something here but how would the lack of a broadcast flag screw up the home video? Wouldn't the lack of a flag just indicate that you can make as many copies of Uncle Milt tripping over fluffy as you want?
The only problem I see is when your son is shown on the local news winning the state chess match, you won't be able to make extra copies, as that might be broadcast with the bit on.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Yea I know, I said dongle
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Err, why would you lose your home movies? Your current videos aren't even HD, so they wouldn't be regulated. And both personal camcorders and recordings from analog should default to having the flag off, so you can copy them in the clear. The whole point of having a 'flag' is that not all HD data will be restricted, just the crap that comes from the media giants.
...aah, whatever ;)
(Hmm, I guess I must be critic's critic's
If you're going to criticize the critics of the critics of the Broadcast Flag, you have to be willing to accept some criticism yourself...
You say that the FCC order will put HDTV production in the hands of the studios. That's not true! There is nothing in the order that says anything about that.
All it says is that video equipment, if it sees a Broadcast Flag, must restrict how it outputs the data. Video without the BF can be handled any way it ways. It is expected that broadcasters will probably choose to make at least some content unprotected, like public affairs programs, so video equipment must be able to handle both BF and non-BF video.
Nothing in the FCC order says anything about who can and can't put a BF into their video. All it talks about is how the video players have to respond to the BF. The order has no effect whatsoever on the ability of consumers to create HDTV video.
But isn't that the point -- judging by sales, consumers don't want their HDTV. Why is this allegedly pro-capitalism administration, usually so gung-ho to invoke the market to address societal needs, apparently so willing to overlook the overwhelming verdict of the market: People just aren't itching to get HDTV.
Why is government intervention and the "picking of winners" OK here but not, say, in national health insurance?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Put a frog (alive) into a pot of cold water. Put the pot on low heat. If you heat the water slowly enough, the frog will not jump out, even when it eventually boils to death.
My friend's mom inadvertently tried this experiment with a crab. You're supposed to drop the crab in a pot of boiling water to cook it, but she put it in lukewarm water and set the stove to high heat. We left the kitchen, and came back to find an empty pot, and a crab hiding under the kitchen cabinets!
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
by the broadcast flag? Is she willing to change her schedule around and sit through commercials to watch these shows? If so, then the BF will work for her, but I think a lot of people will be less than willing to going back to living on broadcast time once they have been able to do otherwise. This is a choice the the broadcast flag appears to mandate, and I think that it's a much harder choice than others consumers are/will be faced with, such as (for example) either getting music from KaZaa or from a DRMd (but convenient) music service.
You can't unring a bell, and you can't will yourself to unlearn knowledge. Forgetting that they didn't have to sit through commercials or schedule their lives around TV shows is something that a lot of people will find hard to do - and the people who will likely find it hardest to do are people with the money to choose other entertainment, the people that TV wants desperately not to do so. Nothing like alienating a large portion of the target audience, particularly a lot of those with the money to buy the products advertised on the networks, to send yourself into bankruptcy.
Why, in a world without IP protection, would anyone give away their source code? That part is poorly explained in FSF philosophy.
Because without an artificial monopoly, you need every competitive edge you can get. If the company that designed the Super RISC chip keeps the physical implementation a trade secret, companies will go for the Hyper RISC chip, which does give out its physical implementation, since they can always call up a custom chip company to make some Hyper RISC chips should the original supplier go out of business.
If you make a Linux distro but only distribute binary, your company will have to shoulder all the costs of development, and your customers would require a lot more calls to your help desk because they can't figure out the solution/workaround from the source, and you can't raise your prices or rates for service because you have to keep the total cost of ownership competitive.
This still leaves a few gaps, like with the source code to voting systems, but that problem is political in origin, as nothing stopped the government from demanding open source as part of the contract.
And if all else fails, there's reverse engineering. Even monstrosities like MS Windows have been at least partially reverse engineered. A positive legal climate for reverse engineering might well usher in a new era of reverse engineering that will make WINE look like a warmup.
..and expect people to forward it on. I think i see where the technology is going here they who are almighty and are in the business of content production purely because they are the best (proven by all the wonderful and original and totally not remade/remixed/sequel films, music and tv shows out there) will broadcast data through the airwaves to anyone in range, but demand that we do with it what they say. If you dont like what happens when you transmit stuff to millions of people then dont do it, see how much we care.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
How is it obvious? I use your code in my application, and only sell the binary to some particular groups of people. How have I not hijacked your code? You are not allowed to use it without paying, and nobody who paid for it is damn well going to just give you a copy.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
You know I don't think that Mr. Eisner is trying to pull copies of Disney movies off of Kazza. As such I bet he's jsut fine with the restrictions.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why would new vcrs not play old tapes. A lack of a broadcast flag means no restrictions. Why would the poster focus on this one point, when the article clearly shows how anri-broadcast flag groups are alarmists with no facts to support their paranoid notions.
"GNU Radio, current pre-broadcast flag hardware, and future non-compliant tools (call it "Capture The Flag?") will happily ignore it. Just like the current no-copy bit on CDs, which is universally ignored"
I find it hypocritical that GNU expects you to obey their GPL copyright rules, but ignores other people's copyright request to not copy certain material.
Thanks for your interesting letter. Unfortunately, we view you in a somewhat different light than you view yourself. You think that you are a consumer, and that your opinions matter.
Allow me to be blunt -- you are meat.
We buy you and sell you by the pound. We create "content" to engage your brain, but only in the way we want it to be engaged. We do this so that you'll do two things:
If, by some strange chance, you manage to see through this and start making up your own mind, we don't really care -- there's a line of mindless zombies behind you.
HTH, HAND
--
wrong. Stallman specifically designed GPL so that he could get access to all source code. Even without any IP rights, a company can still lock away the source code where no one can see it, which is not what Stallman wants. GPL is about control, not freedom.
He did not find the Klingon's, they were still on Uranus.
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Competitive edge works against source sharing, not in favor of it. In your example, you assume that every chip-making company is likely to go out of business in the near term. But on the contrary, if you buy your chip from a big player like IBM, Motorola, or Toshiba, this is extremely unlikely.
So it is only the small players who would have an incentive to release their schematic. Yet the competitive advantage of a small company is usually some new architecture or other idea, which are not quickly adopted by larger players. So releasing their schematic would doom them, in that if they are successful, their schematic would be copied by every major player and they would be out of business.
Even reverse engineering argues in favor of closing the source. Reverse engineering takes time and effort, in which time the original manufacturer has already established itself in the market and has made improvements -- a lead that would be eliminated if they opened their schematics.
In a world without IP protection, I see the unintended consequence of severe fragmentation of ideas, and far less sharing than before. Nobody would share with anybody, for fear of having an idea stolen. This is the power of the GPL: I share my idea with you, and I force you to share back.
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You are not allowed to use it without paying, and nobody who paid for it is damn well going to just give you a copy.
Do you really believe that? When, right now, you can find copies of everything from Microsoft Office to Mathematica to AutoCAD on warez boards? A corporation which purchases a product might not care to distribute it, but is everyone who works there and has access to the product of a similar mind? After all, it didn't cost THEM anything.
And what's to stop me from forming a software club where a thousand people pay one dollar each, we buy one copy of your thousand dollar program and giver everyone a copy?
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
The argument that the digital age alters this is simply nonsensical. What it boils down to is that the content providers have decided that it's quicker and easier to legislate change in their favor rather than adjusting their business plan to fit a changing market. Had the RIAA legitimately embraced the potential of Napster-style P2P products, as any halfway smart business-person would've, then we wouldn't have the whole music piracy war going on. Instead they ignored the next logical step in musical distribution, until it had gotten so corrupted that it was beyond their ability to really capitalize on.
Same goes for movie producers. They all stuck their heads in the ground and hoped the digital revolution would go away if they pretended it was going on. That is pretty much the definition of a business model which deserves to fail. Adjust your plan to suit the times, or die. They allowed themselves to fall disasterously behind the curve, I see no reason our government should bail them out.
And, number two, how long has HDTV been around? How long has it NOT made many inroads into the consumer market? Sad to say, people have spoken very clearly with their wallets and made it abundantly clear they don't care about HDTV *that* much. But then the government got this idea into their head that they should force everyone to upgrade. It's the FCC mandate for HDTV transition itself we should be debating, not silly moves like this whole "flagging" business.
So, let's see... Consumers don't want the products because they're so expensive. The studios can't really afford to convert all of their archives to the new format. The stockholders don't want to gamble their investment dollars on a technology that's been around for about a decade now and no one has really bought into.
So the government steps in and mandates that everyone must upgrade whether they like it or not.
Does this not make sense to anyone else? I'm far from a pure laissez-faire Capitalist, but if everyone involved (besides the hardware OEMs) has pretty clearly said they don't want to mess with it, why in the world is the government forcing it on us?
So, in short, this whole broadcast flag nonsense is a red herring. It's a symptom of a couple far larger wounds - ones that will just keep festering as long as we think we can get away with slapping band-aids on them.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, right?
-----
If the truth scares you, cease asking scary questions
I've heard if you put two crabs in a bucket, neither one can get out as they will constantly pull the other one down in an effort to climb over.
Also, the best crab I ever had was broiled alive in an oven. You knew they were done when you heard them stop moving around in the oven! They were so good and juicy! An old egyptian woman cooked them for us. She said boiling them is stupid because you boil out all the flavor.
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I Hate \.
RTFA. Broadcast flags don't prevent making personal copies or time shifting.
I'm going to Google now, to avoid the flames telling me to Google for it myself.
Many older shows were shot on 35mm film. They can be converted to HD by rescanning the original print.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I live in the UK, and our TV is higher definition than that in the US (I've tried googling for the specs, but you just get pages of marketing crap - if someone can find them, please reply) - we have more lines on the screen than you get on US TVs. The quality difference is obvious; you can easily spot shows that have been converted from US to UK standards. Hell, I quite like it sometimes - it has a Cheers-like feeling to it.
But the US still uses their standard, because it's _good enough_. I don't need to see every pimple on Joey's chin whilst watching Friends (might change my mind if that's Dawson's creek tho
If I want quality and immersion, I'll go to the cinema. TV's just not important enough to pay the extra cash for.
<Entirely offtopic>
</Entirely offtopic>
Warning: May contain nuts
Admittedly the western world uses a ton of resources, but it also uses them as cleanly as possible on a per Joule basis. Check out coal fired plants in China sometime. The air pollution in cities like Beijing and Mexico City makes LA look like a dream. And recall what the Soviet system did to East Berlin compared to west, not even considering what it did to the Ukraine.
I would say the "capitalist with controls" western nations are ecologically lighter than the third world in every way except the total amount of greenhouse gas produced.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Is there something in the rule that says all content must have a flag? Is flag-less content presumed to be pirated?
New devices will look for a flag. If they find a flag, they get to decide if it can be copied. All new devices will look for flags. There is a specific known incompatibility with home burned DVDs (quickly putting people like Red Vs. Blue out of business) that are made with new equipment, as it won't play on the old.
Flags are added at the producers discretion, they are mandated on the hardware. There is a number of bits that can be flipped to delineate various levels of control.
As the 'regime' (their word) becomes integrated, it will slowly become the prevailing opinion that anything without a flag is suspect. My guess would be that eventually it would be mandated that all content have an 'officially legal tag' before it can be played.
Reading through that FCC decision makes it seem like the FCC is the red-headed stepchild and the MPAA and 'media industry' is the drunken truck-driver father. The way they kow-tow to this industry is sad, if not downright servile.
'Oh, no. They might hold back their content! I'm so scared'
Right, they'd hold back their content for about a day. There is a high-level poker game going on, and the people represeting 'us' are playing with their cards face-up on the table, never raising, and always calling.
+&x
Cry me a river. You can live without television.
I recently moved out of a shared house where my flatmate owned the television. I've been in my own flat for about two months now, and I haven't missed it at all. I spend more time surfing, true, but I've really noticed that there's _absolutely nothing_ that I miss from TV.
I might be tempted to get one for watching DVDs - pulling up chairs round a desk to watch them on a monitor isn't quite the same (can't snuggle with the lady on a desk chair), and I might get one when Gran Turismo 4 comes out in December, but I wouldn't get one to watch television.
I guess what I'm saying is that TV, at least here in the UK, is sooooooooo not worth watching, you wouldn't believe it if you didn't stop.
GT4 tho...
Warning: May contain nuts
March March Squeek Squeek!
The problem comes when a program taped on an old VCR can't be replayed on a next-generation VCR.
You mean like when someone upgrades from VHS to DVD or tapes to CD, or floppy disks to cd-r, or...?, or...?, or...?
Seriously, move on people, there's nothing to see here.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
importation and distribution.
you can make ecstasy in foreign countries, but can ya sell it here?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Truth is they're going to have to fight like hell to take away common user rights that have been granted to us or the last 30 years. First on the chopping block will be CBS and their comments about not willing to go HDTV, unless the viewers ability to record and watch at his/her discretion is controlled, limited or taken away. The many viewer won't like it and scapegoats will be a dime a dozen. It may be a nice fringe to not have CBS on my cable bill if/when I'm given the choice.
I don't watch TV anymore cause the commercials are usually disconnected, obnoxious, and there's far too many. There are no alternatives to seek now maybe someday there will be. (too bad their nelson rating mean jack squat anymore because things might have been quite different). The only thing really successful any more is the commercial target of children/teenagers but they too are getting jaded at a younger age every day.
This could be the result of an popularlized idex driven commercial industry and the constant quest/need of high performing numbers and stock price. Result and not methodology only show in the numbers and many methodologies devalue a company excess. Which leads today where certain companies looking for new income generation because growth is stagnated (and if one works in exposure and population growth, one might see a decline unlike anything seen before in american history).
IMO, viewers recording and watching programming in the home should be beyond the reach of broadcasters and that principle should never be compromised. And I'll avoid giving money to companies wishing to take that away.
In the absence of IP, everything would be in the public domain
In the absence of IP, everything would be distributed as compiled binary objects. Sure, you could copy, disassemble, etc. any of it, but since the money would be in obfuscation, obfuscation would be the order of the day.
If copyright were declared invalid you'd be able to pass around binaries as much as you wanted, but businesses would see to it that their software was keyed to a particular piece of hardware. The capabilities of modern cryptography guarantees that would be the case. Case hardened dongles with challange keys to make ANYTHING of value run on your system, anybody?
But this is such a hypothetical, never-gonna-happen proposition that it's stupid to even waste time pondering it.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Ummm ... having the software is not breaking the law, just like having a shotgun is not breaking the law. If you *choose* to use that software to illegally copy a broadcast or use that rifle to shoot someone, then YOU are the one breaking the law, it's not GNU or Winchester that are at fault. There's NO hypocracy there.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I'll be the one in all the forums, chat lines and so on reminding people who said what. It is a big deal and the FCC decision can only be called corrupt.
Since you're not running it on the system that it was keyed to be run on before it was distributed, your copy has the hammer-death trojan feature that kicks in after it's been run a random period of time between 4 and 11 hours. Hope there wasn't anything important on your server...
Remember, closed source means never really knowing what's going on in there.
A Good Intro to NetBS
The crime is in the billions of dollars it took for congress to make such a law/act. That is just one in a long line of laws enacted against the citizenship on behalf of a privilged few in order to maintain that lifestyle. Capitalism is the cure, but it's not going to happen here.
There is a real problem that does show it's ugly face from time to time.
Mr Eisner is not listening. Why would Mr. Eisner listen? The guy is clearly the worst thing to happen to Disney since Walt died and he's still making so much money he could build his own castle out of bundles of 50s.
Would it not be possible to place an "apmlifier" in between cable feed and the the tuner and toggle the flag?
I haven't read the broadcast specs yet, but it seems like a simple enough transformation...
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
Squeak, squeak, NARF!!
The same thing we do every night...
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Current high def equipment will basically ignore the broadcase flag. Noone will care.
Soon to be released equipment will cripple copying high def based on the flag. If the flag is set; when you copy you only get low def analog and no digital output. A minor inconvenience.
A bit farther in the future, additionally; anything that is missing flags can be completely prevented from copying, having digital output or viewing -- forcing upgrades, preventing old tapes from playing. eg: If you have unmarked non-broadcast content, it must have been pirated and/or no longer worth watching.
So like I went to this party and we were going to watch the TV but like I forgot my TV-PASS so like when they called everbody to pony up and plug in their passes I had to leave. The people tracker knew there were 25 people in the house.
Thing was, after I left, they coudn't watch it anyway because there were 24 people in the house but the host hadn't rented a TV-Party hub so he only had ten slots on the built in hub.
So like the pary went indoor/outdoor. They got the lead curtins out and hung them on the windows so that the people-tracker wouldn't see the people outside and it was totally a drag because everytime someone went in the house to pee the TV cut out.
Finally the police showed up. The people tracker called them when it noticed the counts tripping up repeatedly. The TV control board totally garnished the guys house because one of the other guys didn't have his pass with him at all and nobody could prove he han't been watching because people weren't trading up their keys every time they traded places. The lead curtins were illegal too.
So like, its a good thing I left, because everybody at the party got fined $150,000 for piracy and the guy throwing the party caught two years in jail.
That's the last time I party with Fred's group... I won't be able to get into Penn State if I like totally have a record for piracy...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
If this continues indefinately we will end up approaching a system simular to Soviet Russia but from the opposite direction.
In Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, published 50 years ago, he presented a future United States where Soviet-style centralized planning was adopted -- because it turned out to be more profitable for the capitalists.
Just ground pin 5 on the HDTV flag detection ASIC in your cheap, kludged to compliance, DVR.
I have yet to hear a rational argument as to why they would want to give it away without the protection of the GPL.
I think its just up to the individual (or business). I have written software (mainly small stuff) that I give away, but I have yet to put the GPL on anything. For me its more along the lines of "I don't care what people do with this software", in which case the GPL is more restrictive than necessary.
But I'm starting to come around.
blog
The idea that consumers are clamoring for HDTV seems fallacious. I've seen it, and agree that it's a better picture, etc. I've heard symphony orchestras in great concert halls, and they sound better than any recording possibly could. You know what, though? I still enjoy listening to classical music in the car with the windows rolled down on the stock speakers in my car. It would never occur to me not to listen to the music in an acceptable format just because I know that somewhere, someone was having a higher fidelity experience. I'd get much more pleasure out of season symphony tickets for my wife and myself than spending the same amount on my home stereo or television.
Why is it necessary to mandate a format change? (I'm going to make up a term here, so credit me if you use it.) It's "push-through" economics. The basic premise is, "The invisible hand must be wrong since it's not leading the people where I want them to go. I must cut that hand off at the wrist, and strong arm the people back on the path I prefer."
I don't find it hypocritical at all. The broadcast flag by itself does not make it illegal to record the 'protected' material. It only advises the recieving hardware not to record the stream. The fact that a GPLed piece of software is capable of ignoring the flag doesn't make itself responsible for the user violating copyright by distributing copyrighted material recorded with that tool.
And how many people do you know who skip the opportunity to watch their favorite program on free TV, and wait until they can d/l it over the Internet?
Is it greater than, say, zero?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The flag is not mandatory. The processing and obay of it is. One cannot sell a device capable of ignoring the flag according to the FCC rules. Sure, GNU Radio can ignore it, but is that legal? Will they be sued? Hmm?
"Any system that rewards the most innate human instinct (survival and greed) will always be the most efficient."
Most efficient in what respect? Most efficient at consuming resources? That, I would agree with. Most efficient in terms of advancing civilization? I hardly think that greed could be the basis for a truly advanced civilization. Compassion is the only way for humanity to truly advance in any meaningful way.
If American capitalism fails, and it certainly looks like a reasonable possibility at this point, it will be due to corruption. Much is the same of all failed societies. Enron and Worldcom were warning signs. Corruption continues, and if it is unchecked, the U.S. empire will fall down on it's knees before cheaper, more *efficient* overseas competition.
Lastly, it is disturbing that you claim that greed is the basis of capitalism, and think that this is a good thing.
I'm no frog expert, but I think that possibly if it can't jump out of the pot, the frog will stay in it?
The old-fashioned Newtek Video Toaster strips Macrovision nicely. Of course, it costs you a generation, but there you have it.
I've found that buiness week ought to stick to buisness... their technology articles are usually similarly shortsighted. as an example you could look back to their portable video player review which said converting a dvd to divx was "illegal" when its not (covered under "fair use" provisions of the dmca)
Why is it so bad if one parent buys the tape and makes copies for all the rest?
I, for one, will only buy equipment that ignores, or can be made to ignore, the broadcast flag.
Who's with me?
If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
The word in the DVD recoder forums I frequent is that it will strip all forms analog copy protection, including CGMS/A, which is inserted in the vertical blanking interval and can still be detected after MPEG encoding.
Although I must say it seems odd that *any* video duplicator would add Macrovision by default or without charging extra. The original Macrovision mangled the signal used for automatic gain control and the newer colorstriping are arguably an introduced defect in the video signal.
And they probably WOULD charge extra; Macrovision is heavily licensed by Macrovision, Inc. and there's probably a charge for each unit of media encoded with a Macrovision system.
"Ya know, Norton, I've been watching you. And I know you've been watching me... I know you wanna fuck me, Norton. And you know that I know, that you know that I know that you wanna fuck me!"
(with apologies to Eddie Murphy and especially the late Art Carney)
The broadcast flag is not just a bit flag that can be 1 or 0. The broadcast flag is a set of expensive rules with (maybe) the force of law that says all future devices will have to be made to inspect and honor this flag. And all those devices will have to be expensively crafted in a tamper proof and approved fashion so that no one can change them to ignore this flag. Obviously that is impossible but it will cause a lot of grief.
I'm sure there are others just a good. Personally I plan on recording from TV to my computer then burning those movies to DVD. Sure go ahead. Broadcast flag all you want.
If it can go on a cable TV then I can grab it and burn baby burn. The supreme court already decided years ago that if it's not encrypted then I can record it. The broadcast flag doesn't qualify under their ruling as encryption.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
That's very insigtful. Copy protection and encryption crap has always been a pain in the ass to legitimate users of technology, but not even a bump in the road to "pirates." Only since Billy Boy Gates and EULAs have people been talking about a "license" to use their personal property. What a crock. The author of tat Businessweek article was smoking crack!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
I don't know why I still hang out here, I must seriously be a glutton for repetitiveness and a fan of broken records.
Are you _seriously_ complaining that you won't be able to watch your old VHS tapes? What idiocy. I can't listen to my old 8-track tapes on my CD player, what kind of an idiot would I be to complain about it? Oh, the precious memories I recorded on an 8-track, the industry owes it to me to maintain compatibility!
This isn't a big deal, you're all just bored because there hasn't been any SCO news for a while.
Isn't one of the big fears that non-compliant hardware and software will be illegal to possess in the U.S., as may hardware or software which is compliant but not tamper-resistant? Because while GNU Radio could be made compliant -- i.e. it could respect the flag -- it could not be made tamper-resistant without becoming a closed-source project. So, if tamper-resistance becomes part of the law, GNU Radio essentially becomes illegal in the United States under its current licensing scheme (the GPL). No free software project for software defined radio (including digital TV and digital HDTV projects, such as GNU Radio) could possibly be legal if tamper-resistance is required by law.
I sent this to the reporter. I hope it make sense.
The problem with the copy protection flag is how it requires massive intrusion into all the video chain, not just recorders. You must look at how it fits in with the requirements forced upon you by the owners of the HDTV patents.
If you are familiar with DVDs, then you will know that no DVD player can be connected to a TV through a coax cable. That is because coax cannot handle the macrovision copy protection, so all DVD players must only have RCA jacks. Too bad if your TV doesn't have any. Even if it just has one, you cannot use both a VCR and DVD on that TV. The Hollywood Cartel dictates how you can use your own equipment and even which equipment you must buy.
Have you used a Digital camcorder? Have you noticed that you cannot make digital copies of your own videos? It only makes analog copies. The Hollywood Cartel dictates that so that if one digital copy of a movie is made without copy protection, noone can mass reproduce it.
The copy protection flag is simply one required step to total control of you video equipment. It is the only step that requires government approval, the rest can be forced upon the equipment manufactuerers just like they did for digital camcorders.
Go look at the interface specification for connecting a digital HDTV receiver to a HDTV display. The signal MUST be encrypted one-to-one communications. The connector is simple Firewire, so you should be able to hook one HDTV receiver and send the signal to all HDTV display in your house, just like you can do with TV now. You cannot do this with HDTV because the HDTV group dictated that any device licensed to decode the HDTV must keep encryption on until the display device.
It has to work this way because once decrypted, the signal can be hijacked and the copy flag turned off. Once the flag is turned off, then you can copy it forever. SO you only need ONE device on the planet (say in China) to break the copy proctection.
You must look at the entire chain of video equipment. See what the owners of the HDTV patents require of the equipment manufacterers. Hollywood is very accomplished in doing this. They got JVC (owners of the VHS patents) to require all VHS recorders to have and use macrovision. They got the DVD players to always down convert 96KHz sound to 48KHz before playing it, so the audio (both analog and digital) cannot be copied at the higher resolution. So you buy expensive DVD-audio disks because they say it has high-resolution sound, and yet you get no benefit because the DVD player is required to sabotage the sound. This is the real reason there are only commercial DVD players on computers.
Hollywood must gain control over computers as it is the only hole left. Since the HDTV signal is encrypted, it is illegal to for anyone to write a program that decodes or manipulates HDTV images (without Hollywood approval) because of the DCMA. If you want to lift an image from ET and replace elliot with your son, you must use a windows program that runs only on the Windows Longhorn version. Otherwise you could run a screen capture program and grab the digital image from the graphics card. See the Microsoft Palladium project for details on how far this must go for the scheme to work. There will never be a Tivo for HDTV since Tivo uses Linux and you can hack it. Tivo will have to switch to a proprietary OS and CPU, otherwise it will never get a license for HDTV decoding.
Welcome to the future even Orwell didn't predict.
I personally think that the people know, and frankly to ensure their position, they are perfectly happy to screw everyone else over.
You think that capitalism as described by Adam Smith is how it works? (Copyright, Patents, etc prevent the system from working.) You think that communism or free market capitalism have ever existed? (the answer is no)
bastard.
VHS! My old family videos are on super 8!
What I wouldn't give to have all my old family
videos on VHS!
This ruling eliminates any kind of non-authorized content, weither that is indie films, home movies, pirate TV stations, or illegal downloads.
Sure it will be playable by most everyone. The Internet just got a big jump past television by this. It just means that television just bacame a closed propritary format just like the Circuit City DIVIX. Now the good stuff is on the Internet. TV will have to do something drastic to get the eyeballs back like tax internet access to death.
The truth shall set you free!
FYI, Pinacle systems is not the one to use for this. My dad got one and it won't accept macrovision. Video Machine will however.
Check before you buy.
The truth shall set you free!
Am I missing something. DTV and HDTV are related. Not all Digital TV broadcasts have to be High Definition. In non HDTV format DTV can have 4 seprate programs on one channel. The evening news doesn't have to be HDTV. However I think the broadcast flag applies to DTV as well to HDTV content.
The truth shall set you free!
No, it's your work *plus* their work. You remain free to use *your work* however you please.
The GPL says they can have the cake, or they can eat it. One or the other- much more fair.
The GPL has the potential to be spectacularly *unfair* when the amount of contribution via GPLed code is dwarfed by the rest of the code.
But since that won't happen any time soon, in the meantime I'll play the system and make it the closest to no copyrights that I can. Thats the GPL- forcing my work to remain open to all, and not giving anyone the option of closing it.
If you release your work under the BSDL, to the public domain or some other less restrictive license than the GPL, then *your work* will always remain open to all. Someone else's *modifications* to your work may not, but who are you to tell someone else what they should do with *their work* ?
The BSDL is vastly closer to "no copyrights" (ie: no restrictions) than the GPL will ever be.
Most popular, definitely. Most efficient? a system IMO isn't efficient when the subparts don't work towards common goals.
I think it's not explained because it's obvious.
It's not obvious at all. A world without IP protection will give GPL code *less* protection than it has now.
Suppose that HDTV headers look like this:
TITLE,DATE,BCAST, try this
int main()
{ string HDTV = broadcast.getHeader();
HDTV = HDTV & 11111111110;
cout outputDev HDTV;
return 0; }
Now, I'm going to put on my tinfoil fat so the DMCA police can't find me.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Consumers are capable.. The problem is the companies will take the easy way out.. The easy way is, more methods to protect from piracy that are only limiting to the consumer.. Why not consider just increasing the bandwidth of the material and the multitude of information impossible to distribute over the Internet and pointless to send anyhow because of the full experience is attained with the original and not through dinky video/audio captures.. Like getting a U2 album with all the tracks and stereo 3D placement as well as reverb configurations so you can mix your own collection.. Sure your can redistribute a different version, but that's not the point, the point is you get a different and reproduceable experience on a medium that is not reproduceable.. No need to encrypt it or make it impossible to copy.. But another side to this conversation, what ever happened to the concept of uniquely tagging the content so when its distributed it is trackable? You could id everything on the disk according to some random number generator, and then make it impossible to untag.. Then at least you could track the piracy.. If not from the original abuser, down to the distribution channel and origins.. What are we fighting here, piracy or consumers? I would like to make backup copies of my owned material, I don't want material that can decide about my ownership or have to purchase from companies with policies that compromise consumer ownership in the interest of raising fourth quarter profits in the eyes of investors with no real sense of what they have invested in, all to be compared to that of Microsoft and CocaCola.. This idea should go back there with disposable DVD's and the other bad ideas Hollywood thinks up to protect their media and investment forecasts.. Look piracy is bad, but leveraging the consumer is even worse, do you want to tarnish your brand beyond belief?
Just say no to license servers!!
A good point. I would like to add another: What happens when some bright spark comes up with a way/device to add the flag to 'content'. After that, every time you download from the net you'll just be checking (like we check for DIVX/XVID now): "The Simpons - S1 - 01 - The Family (XVID/FLAG)" vs "The Simpons - S1 - 01 - The Family (XVID/NOFLAG)". DeCSS anyone?
None.
However, living in the UK I know a lot of people who skip the opportunity to watch their favourite programs on free TV, 'cos they've already seen them off the Internet 2 years ago (without all the cuts we inevitably get), and seen the version a mate recorded off Cable one year ago (with on the cable-level cuts).
If something's popular, like Buffy, they'll always show ti at an earlier timeslot than it was meant to be shown Stateside. As a result, cuts happen.
Hell, one episode of something finally came on in the UK, and I stopped watching halfway through. Sure, it was higher quality than the RealVideo encode I had from the US showing, but they'd cut out a major action scene. Shortly after I imported the R1 DVD.
Am I babbling on about nothing? Probably.
TiggsBut the average viewer doesn't care about advertising revenues, they want to be entertained. And any kind of content protection/restriction is destined for failure.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
This is in *Business Week* not *Consumer Week*.
TV has never been free. I pay for it, you pay for it, and everyone else pays for it indirectly when you buy a product that advertises on TV. Of course, a portion of the money you pay goes into advertising, and that advertising on TV pays for the TV station to function.
You are taxed on your income, and you are taxed on the products you buy.
So. TV is payed for with your dollars, is already taxed (and then some for all the licenses TV stations have to carry). Now you may no longer record these broadcasts that you've already paid because.... why?
Anyone here remember the last time they borrowed a VCR tape from their neighbor rather than just renting the movie? I don't think anyone's online trading 5 megabyte "movies" they recorded from TV. I don't think anyone's recording with their PVR, burning to DVD, and making billions.... and if they are they'll get around this restriction anyway....
So... what does this do? It prevents LAW ABIDING citizens from recording and watching programs that they've PAID for already! It takes the one subset of folks who FOLLOW the laws, and restricts their use. Does it restrict tech-savvy folks, the ones who MIGHT copy and distribute these on an extremely limited basis? Nope. It'll be hacked (and the fix available for download) in a week. Does it restrict the large scale copy-houses that turn out millions of forgeries? Um... NO... because they'll go buy a DVD and copy it over... and over... and over....
The ONLY thing this supports is view-on-demand, in which you end up paying for your currently free TV service. There's nothing good about this folks. You're being screwed. Again.
First there were like 18 standards on connecting devices to an HDTV.
Then came the DVI-D encrypted ports.
Now this horse-shit.
Why on earth would any consumer with half a brain purchase into HDTV right now? If I were a legislative power, I would start issuing fines to industry players if they so much as said a peep about changing or protecting things any further than has already been done.
I am sorry, I don't see the problem here. With the exception of the WM9 HD demos on M$'s website, I have never seen material ripped in 720p or 1080i on the Internet.
The day of bullet-proof DRM is far from here. Instead of worrying about the speed of Internet pipes in 10 years, feel comfort in knowing it'll be a few years before piracy of material is remotely worth the time and effort. Think back to a 14.4k modem, 40MB HDD, and ripping WAV files of music and sending them to friends.
That's assuming WM9 HD media can be reliably squished down to 8 gigs for a >2 hour movie without too much quality loss. Not a whole lot of folks will download something that size.
The thing they need to focus on is chinese copy shops. It doesn't matter what DRM you are going to smack-down the American public with, we aren't the ones doing any direct damage. Focus on the criminals overseas who are mass-reproducing your materials.
I beg to differ on one point:
Coax CAN handle the Macrovision crap. DVDs just look like crap with RF Modulation
Heh, I purchased one of those nice DVD recorders this summer (Phillips), and while I'm overall pretty pleased with it... there is one nagging little problem with Ye Olde Macrovision.
Namely, the recorder won't record anything that has macrovision in the input stream. Obviously, this was intended to try and keep people from pirating rentals... but it also nicely prevents me from migrating some of my store-purchased video tapes onto DVD.
Soooo, the MPAA has helped create a nice little industry in macrovision removal tools, since the only way I can do this is to violate the DMCA by building my own capture device, or spend $50 to buy an inline macrovision stripper.
Just remember, the industry doesn't want you to BUY anything, they want you to LEASE the right to watch/listen-to things. If they had more influence with congress, it would be a "multimedia tax" that you'd pay for the right to watch/listen-to anything, even if you don't.
I personally think that the people know, and frankly to ensure their position, they are perfectly happy to screw everyone else over.
However, they seem to be blinded by their greed, because the more they attempt to lock things down people will most certainly vote with their money and go somewhere else. What the government is doing is making it such that people, essentially, no longer have this "right to vote" in the marketplace.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
> exclusive control over production
marx made his hay on the basic reality of early industrial technology: it was inherently capital-intensive.
the microprocessor & consumer electronics boom has essentially democratized production, so now the legacy producers are trying to restrict production by law, now that technology has passed them by.
a similar situation fortunately didn't transpire in the early 18th century in transportation: geo. washington invested in the potowmack canal, the predecessor to the c&o canal, which finally reached cumberland,md, after the r.r. did.
thankfully, g.w. didn't try to get the gummint to interfere w/ tech.advances. the reason british cities were still lit by gas well into the 20th cent. was that the muni.gas authorities threw legal roadblocks against electric lighting (ref: guns, germs & steel).
same shit, different century:-(
Hey, I very much agree with you, but from a capitalist perspective. I view the patent, copyright, etc. laws as an artificial grant of monopoly by the state. Since I don't believe in the government granting monopolies for any reason, I don't believe they should do this. The stated purpose for these monopolies in the Constitution is to promote progress, but I believe progress occurs better when the government butts out and the market selects what progresses are worthwhile.
The way you said it was "force change," but the way I would say it is, "don't abuse laws to entrench the current state and preventing change." The number one reason I oppose laws like this is because I think we entrench the current system and prevent innovation. I think we need to "think outside the box," but propping up current systems with these laws provides an unfair advantage to those who just want the same-old-same-old. New ideas can't compete. (Well, they can in some planes; free software seems to be competing very well against proprietary software despite the competitive legal advantage the proprietary software companies have.) We have no idea what spectacular innovations in business models and technology could occur if we eliminated these special monopolies and let the market take its course.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I know I have been trolled but I can't stop myself.
The no-copy bit has nothing to do with "copyright rules". The US constitution and copyright law says consumers own the content they buy and have the right to make backup copies of that content. It doesn't matter if that content is from GNU or a big media corporation.
It took a real world war to end the airplane's patent wars. - Fâché Rouge -
blah blah blah blah Nazi blah blah Hitler blah blah blah.
I've played the Nazi card. Now this blasted GPL vs. BSDL thread can stop. This bloody debate never bloody ends.
Besides, everybody knows it's the Artistic License that's the best....
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Computer Geek by day, religious Icon by night.
I'm not disputing what you say, just asking the question. All I know about the issue is what I've read from Mark Cuban, in the article I quoted, and a few other cable execs who agreed with the characterization.
Is Cuban just wrong? Or is he perhaps strategically unaware of the reality? He seems to be in a position to know the answers to this. And what he said seems to fit the observed behavior.
Nope, no sig