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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?"
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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
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.
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.
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
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."
"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.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
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.
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
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?
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
The problem with your second point is addressed in the article. The writer explains that the new devices that take advantage of this HDTV flag will not play anything recorded on current-generation devices. It seems that, in the absense of the flag setting, the recorder simply does not play the content.
I wonder how far this goes - if it extends past home recordings and the like. Does this mean that i'm going to have to buy new HDTV enabled DVD's if I ever get one of these heinous devices? If this is true, it's not that far off than what the record labels did when CD's were released - force everybody to buy CD versions of casettes they already owned.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.