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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?"
Yup, sneaking DRM in the back door a tiny little bit at a time is the only way to get stuff like this implemented.
Sadly, for the majority of uninformed consumers out there, it will work.
Here's waiting for a "Max Headroom" styled future with big networks that control your TV to the point where you can't even turn them off (or face fines/prison time for interfering with a broadcast).
Who knows, maybe the CRTC will make a good decision for once, and refuse to follow the lead of the FCC and will not mandate that Canadian sets will require the digital restrictions chips be implemented - or will allow them to be turned-off if desired.
It never ceases to amaze me how "suits don't get it". There is a HUGE trade on the net in old "classic" TV shows (depending on your point of view), everything from "Greatest American Hero", to "A-Team", to (as mentioned before) "Max Headroom". Regardless if you happen to like these particular series, people ARE downloading and watching them. If the companies involved were to make a subscription service available to watch old shows (complete with episode synopsis, cast/crew lists, etc), people would pay...
But of course it's a change from the "old fashioned way of doing things", and that scares the hell out of them.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
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
Actually this will probably blow up in the studios faces as it is very in your face DRM. Once you tell someone they can't tape sex in the city or their other favorite popular program with their new ultra expensive HDTV setup they will be ROYALLY pissed. Free use rights as upheld by the supreme court should not simply be ruled away by a board elected by no one.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
Indeed, but this is the inherent problem when you're in the bloody rope business, isn't it?
Ya think maybe it's time to change product lines or something? The ability to do so freely is one of the benefits of the capitalist system, free adaptation to the changing economic and trade enviroment.
When pet rocks are hot you sell 'em pet rocks. When people suddenly realize that rocks are free you sell 'em "Designer" clothing.
When a corporation mentally locks itself to a single product or business model it simply defines its own extinction (assuming free trade).
It's "Adapt or die," not "Extort and bludgeon your customers until they'd rather be dead than do business with you or die."
I think this is the part that they "don't get." They're too busy thinking "My God, we're going to die!"
Well, don't sell us the rope. Sell us something we can't hang your business model with instead.
At the very least sell us rocks packaged entertainingly at a low enough cost that we'd rather buy them from you than pick them up off the ground.
Maybe we won't even use them to stone you.
KFG