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Japanese Digital TV Viewers Complain About DRM Restrictions
Riktov writes "The Japan Times reports that that viewers of digital broadcast TV, which started this past April, are complaining to national broadcaster NHK about restrictions on recording. Many of the complaints seem to arise from viewers who are confused as to why they can't copy rather than angry that they can't copy, but in the end all viewers are learning the hard way about content restrictions."
It's not long before some kid from Norway writes another version of DeCSS or DeDRM. All he has to do is move to Japan for a month or two...
:)
Anyone live in Japan and want to host him? Anyone know the guys email address?
I bet the "confusion" is due to famous cultural differences. Where Japanese customer would politely note that "I am confused on how this feature work. Perhaps it's just me, but I can't record the show from tv", US one would spray phone with saliva and salty words, demanding to know "who's that @ssh0le who put this piece of s..t into production"
Hopefully something good comes out of it, and industry would get its nose rubbed into real life customer experience...
Hyperom.com
The US implementation is going to do away with such a cumbersome step. It will simply require a blood sample to identify your DNA to confirm you are an authorized viewer. Of course, it will also have special retina burning devices to ensure that only the authorized individual can view the product. Visual piracy immediately punished. No appeals!
I think right now an easier solution would be to just get a hdtv card in a htpc and use that to record shows.
(emphasis mine)
The duplication controls have been adopted to protect broadcast copyrights, an NHK official said, adding, "Easy violation of copyright would make movie and music copyright holders reluctant to provide their works and prompt actors and singers to refuse to appear on TV."
Really? You mean they're not going to act or sing anymore? How are they going to get paid?
This guy is a total fuddite.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Comes with the culture. Japanese hardly get angry - being confused is already quite a strong word in their culture. In addition, the article does not mention confusion, but rather the customers being upset and complaining. Sorry, if the slashdot blurb makes such a big point of this confusion vs anger thing, I had to set this straight, before the readers get confused themselves.
is that fact that the consumer holds no rights over anything anymore. we have the right to buy the product and that's pretty much it. when you buy a new car, there is a black box in it that records what you do and it's built into the cars computer systems and cannot be removed. to remove it not only voids your warranty, it renders the car useless. cd's and dvd's are being made only to play on industry approved machines. thanks to backwards lawmaking...industry tells the consumer what to do with their product much in the same way a home-owners association can tell you what you can and cannot do with your home. the only way to fix it is to remove the whole of congress with new elected officials and that's not likely to happen. so i reckon that we should get used to it.
Is it 5:30 yet?
we don't have any explaining to do. we've got TV modding to do! enter a new mod-chip industry. i'm thinking you stick a little doo-dad in between the signal decoder and the output to the screen.
if i'm thinkin' it, then chances are there's an enterprising korean kid somewhere who can actually do it with little more than some chop sticks and a little chicken wire.
The "Sony Betamax" Supreme Court decision that allowed the VCR to come into existance really may come up for a challenge when Hollywood tries to push a system like this stateside.
See, the Betamax ruling gave us the right to time-shift programming that comes down from TV stations, but that time-shifting implies that we're not going to keep our copies forever. It's impossible to keep an analog VCR tape forever because it will age and degrade over time, and analog copies are always lossy as well. However, a digital copy that you can recopy to avoid media-aging issues can in fact be kept forever.
There's no such thing at this moment as a law that enumerates all of our "fair use" rights when it comes to media that we have legally obtained. "Fair use" is just the result of things that Hollywood wishes we couldn't do but they can't take us to court over them because they're not (yet) against the law.
Right now, there's really nothing at all that prevents American broadcasters for using encryption on their HDTV broadcasts, and leaving only a low-quality MPEG stream available for those who don't want to play along with their scheme. Some stations in Utah are in the process of proving that with the current cable-over-DTV scheme, where they use their DTV channel to relay only an SD copy of their analog content, and then instead of ever going HD they use the remaining bandwidth to relay pay-to-watch cable channels.
Yes, but remember the DirectTV lawsuits? I'm thinking some similar DMCA charges could be brought against anyone trying to use a mod-chip or "little doo-dad" to remove broadcast flags.
The unofficial
I hope this gets the electronics manufactures to lobby the FCC to lighten up - it will affect their bottom line if people do not want to upgrade their TVs and VCRs/DVRs because of consumer unfriendly restrictions.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
More and more people will now just download what they want to watch / edit / et al - this will push more and more people underground. The RIAA hasn't had much success with stopping such a thing, (ooh, 500 people served every month?) so I wonder how much success the networks etc will have with it.
Right now, you can download damn near dvd (read tivo compressed with xvid) quality rips of virtually every tv show off the internet - and usually very quickly (assuming you have broadband and that you are trying to get something that was aired in the last month). These rips have no commericals and look even better than what I get through the cable tv.
I really can't see why people would want to actually sit in front of a TV and suffer through 20 minutes of commericals, especially given the fact that you can watch it when you want and not have to worry about setting the damn vcr or any of these bullshit copy restrictions.
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I couldn't pay for it if I tried! I love the show, so you're saying I shouldn't download it? I should just forget the show even existed? Not my fault people edited out the commercials.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
But I always had a second copy. The first copy would degrade (it was VHS, so repeated watchings would do that), or get lost, or get jammed in the machine and become worthless. By having a second copy I'm still safe.
So now my 2 year old scratches the disk and it's ruined. Now what? My second copy wasn't part of a piriting scam. It was just backup. Legal, didn't hurt anyone or devalue the property. It was just for me. Now I won't be able to do that. I've lost a perfectly fair right to use something I own in a valid way.
Bricks can be used for evil (many people use them every year to bash someone's skull or break windows) but bricks aren't outlawed. People run over other people in cars PURPOSLY, but cars are still legal.
If you take away everything that can be used illegally, you'll have nothing. You'll be naked and cold. But you could still use your arms to puch someone or strangle someone so...
It's a slippery slope. The above paragraph is hyperboly, but you can't ban something because a few people use it wrong. When 70% of people use it for illegal stuff, then you can talk about banning it. But when 1-5% do (I would bet lower than that in many circumstances) you shouldn't ban it.
PS: Every time something is copied, put a unique identifier into the video that tells what machine duplicated/edited it. That way you can trace the pirated copies to where they came from and shut 'em down. I wouldn't mind that. I keep my rights, and the studio can shut down the pirates.
But as a consumer I would win in that situation so I guess it's not a option, huh.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Don't buy the TV's, don't watch the shows.
Is your life really incomplete if you don't find out what happened on Enterprise or the Sopranos? TV isn't a given. Its relevance is likely to be transient. Transition it along faster by refusing to watch DRM encumbered broadcasts.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
It isn't the fact that corporations want to see a profit from their products that bothers me. Corporations are around to make money. That is what they are around to do. Producing music, television, movies, etc is just a byproduct. Don't kid yourselves. What bothers me is that are now starting to have expectations about how much they should be making (and that their profits should be constantly increasing) and have started to view all of their customers as criminals. As mentioned, advertisements are a crucial part of any "free" media. Internet and television are prime examples but the advertisers don't seem to know the bounds. Commercials have been taking more and more air time. Pop-ups were just the beginning and I have now seen some websites with an add directly on top of the page that prevents me from reading it. Because of the views and actions of these corporations and the inability for them to cooperate with a changing marketplace they will ensure their doom. Unfortunately most people don't notice the heavy hand that has come down on them, and when they do they are confused. Most people (outside /.) don't understand the implications of DRM or why they are coming about.
Regardless of any DRM imposed the determined (some are righteous, some are criminals) will find a way around these.
If only the errors could be seen, but greed can effect sight in many ways.
Burn Bright or Fade Away
When 70% of people use it for illegal stuff, then you can talk about banning it.
:)
OR, you could examine the law that is making it illegal, and wonder if maybe it's time to change the law, since it doesn't seem to be in concert with "the will of the people" anymore...
When a large section of the population does something that's against the law, the solution is not to ban it, it's to update/change/revoke the law to more match the current climate.
But hey, banning something worked so well for marijuana, it will probably work just as well here, right?
Place sig here.
(AD 2004)
Viewer: "Main screen turn on"
Screen: "All Your Bits Are Belong to Us!"
"You have no chance to record, make
your time!"
Viewer: "What you say?"
[Insert pithy quote here]