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?"

Comments

Only thieves would oppose this.

[GaelenBurns]

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.

Re:Only thieves would oppose this.

[jeffkjo1]

It's already this bad. My sister is in a high school marching band, and there is almost always an official event videographer who tapes the entire event.
The tape is (typically) a single camera shoot with a fixed camera at a point where the entire event can be seen with miced sound pumped in.
This tape is available for sale immediately following the event.
This all seems wonderful, but the tapes almost always contain macrovision.
Now, there are good reasons for this, so that one parent doesn't buy the tape and make copies for all the rest (although I question that there are parents with this much free time), but there is a significant detremental effect, compliation tapes.
Now I can't use short clips of the tape in compliation tapes because the macrovision interferes with copying.

Is the frog boiling yet?

[KingReuben]

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.

Re:Is the frog boiling yet?

[Nogami_Saeko]

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.

Re:Is the frog boiling yet?

[Txiasaeia]

OT, I know, but this is an urban legend. Check here to verify.

Re:Is the frog boiling yet?

[afidel]

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.

Re:Is the frog boiling yet?

[pavon]

Exactly. The most telling quotes are the attitude that the author took on the subject:

The agency's move to allow encryption-like protection for digital shows takes away one more excuse from the broadcasters to delay the rollout of high-definition TV ... If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web.

At what point did move from
"companies competing to win the business of their customers"
to
"you consumers better fall in line with the wishes of the companies or no goods for you"
?

Oh, that's right, when the government decided (as it has in the past) that competition isn't necisarry in capitalism and started looking out for the good of large (illegal) monopolies and trade groups, instead of the good of the market.

\begin{rant}
If this continues indefinately we will end up approaching a system simular to Soviet Russia but from the opposite direction. There the government and corporations were merged by the government taking control of the corporations. Here they are being merged by the corporations merging and then asserting control of the government. Either way there is no democracy, but rather all economic, political, and military power are centralized into a very small number of hands who have no reason to act in the interest of the population.
\end{rant}

That's why I'll make a killing.

[Quasar1999]

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!!!

Lenin

[sulli]

Lenin once said: "The capitalist will sell you the very rope you intend to hang him with." ... When will corperate [sic] america *get it*?

The point is that corporate america does *get it,* and they are trying to avoid selling said rope. Failing, but trying.

Re:Lenin

[kfg]

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

Re:Force change, not reform.

[sulli]

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.

Too late

[siskbc]

Capatilism will destroy itself, it can only saturate so far before boom. Thats the day I cannot wait for :D

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.

It's All Our Fault!!!

[Nom du Keyboard]

When the next West Wing won't be ripped off Napster-style, producers will likely air more HDTV programs.

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.

Typical business mindset

[downix]

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.

Macrovision problems today

[buckhead_buddy]

I had a problem similar to this hit me. Back in the early eighties I made a beta recording of a community theatre production of A Midsummers Nights Dream because my sister was on the stage.

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.

Re:Macrovision problems today

[tsangc]

Get a Timebase Corrector (TBC). A used DPS Personal TBC 1 should cost you about $100 on EBay. Many VideoToaster systems used to have them.

Another possibility is to run it through a consumer SEG which has framesynchronizers or TBCs onboard (ie, Panasonic WJ-MX series, Videonics MX-series)

Digitizing it into a PC via videocapture or editing card should also work.

The solution is simple.

[Temsi]

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).

What critics of the critics of the critics miss

[SiliconEntity]

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.

AH, but here's the crux

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the editorial:

If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web. (emphasis added)

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?