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TiVo Has to Fund Your Local Stadium
Strudelkugel writes "The Washington Post has a truly Kafka-esque article regarding TiVo, the broadcast flag, the NFL and limited file sharing. "TiVo, the company that makes the digital-video-recorder boxes that inspire such strange idolatry among their users, is in a weird spot. It's asking the Federal Communications Commission for permission to add a new feature -- the option for a TiVo user to send recorded digital TV programs via the Internet to nine other people." Just wait until your read the rest of the story..." This one is actually really worth a read to see just how bizarrely corrupt this all is. Enjoy.
...than taxpayers having to fund a local stadium?
This article really highlights just how out-of-control the broadcast flag has become. As an owner of the HR10-250, the high definition Directivo, I wonder if this $1000 box will become worthless next July?
My favorite part of the article is the bit about going to Congress to get ligislation enacted to get rid of or disable analog outputs. That single line pretty much sums up (in my view) just how out of control this broadcast flag has gotten.
Understand that TiVo itself is no hero. Its proposed system is thoroughly hobbled. The people to whom you'd send recordings online would need you to add them to a "secure viewing group" by ordering special security keys for their Windows computers, associated with your TiVo bill. Each viewer would need to plug one such key into a PC to receive, watch or edit your recordings.
Makes me wonder if they will ask for the contact info of the receiver/viewer friend also?
Why do we keep subsidizing broken businesses? The NFL isn't like the airlines or Amtrak, our country could still function normally if some of the less profitable teams folded.
How did the cat get so fat?!?!
BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times). http://extensions.roachfiend.com/index.html#bugmen ot
In many ways, we're seeing examples of how people want dumber technology. Hands up the number of people who hang on to outdated CD-ROM drives because they ignore the corrupted crap that infests so many of today's alleged CDs? (recently, I didn't realise I'd bought an unrippable CD until after I'd ripped it). When the pernicious broadcast flag becomes endemic, people are once again going to look for older tech to overcome it. Tivo will find itself out-featured by older models, ones that ignore such crap.
To my mind, this is a sure sign that things are going wrong (as if more signs were needed); the broadcast flag and other silliness are anti-technology (and anti-business) because they'll discourage people from upgrading. Of course, they'll be banking on the fact that relatively few people will stick to such technologies, but it only takes one person with a linux-based PVR and a copy of gtk-gnutella to totally screw the pooch.
One thing about the article, though; it implies that the NFL are wasting their time because bandwidth limitations mean it'll never be practical. This assumes that super-duper ultra-high-speed connections will never be available (or at least commonplace); this is a specious argument, I reckon. Not that I'm arguing for it; I just dislike arguments that can be easily overcome.
It's a ridiculously tiny jump from freedom of speech to freedom of information. The only reason it seems like a big jump to having no copyrights is that, although we're far better off than some parts of the world, we don't REALLY have free speech.
The US constitution, while protecting speech, explicitly authorized (even mandates) the protection of innovation by granting monopolies on copying.
In the case of literature and the like this is intended to keep publishers from printing copies without paying the authors, for a limited time.
In the case of inventions to encourage invention by protecting against reverse-engineered copies for a limited time in return for publication of complete descriptions of how to "practice the invention" after the time expires.
Over two centuries of legal hacking have worked around the original intent of the provision. But the provision is still there. And the Constitution is the SOLE authorizing document for the government - the "kernel code", so to speak.
If you want to make such a change, you need to amend the consititution. That's a really tough road to hoe.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...funding their local "education" establishment and huge amounts of those monies going to subsidise the NFL and NBA "farm teams" in the schools? since when is getting children addicted to professional sports part of an "education"? Aren't there other athletic and fun pursuits that might cost less available? Why not make those businesses fund them instead? Why should people on pensions-more or less pretty fixed incomes, be asked to support professional sports leagues to perpetuate the societal addiction to team sports? If these profitable businesses have enough to pay salaries in the millions per year to "sports stars",it seems like they can fund local schools "teams" then, don't ask the tax payers to do it.
When it comes to technology our own government leaders are out of touch. GB does not even use email and if that's a example of how smart our USPTO,Congress, and others are then were in big trouble.
I dont believe that what Tivo is doing is such a bad thing. What I do believe that the cable companies who are trying to knock Tivo off it's seat are probably the cause of the problems in the first place. All they had to do is put a bug in the ears of the RIAA,MPAA, and the NFL the latter which probably knows the least about the device. Then those groups go arguing to the FCC where they might have a slight idea of what MPEG2 consists of but I'm sure the group arguing against Tivo conviently forgot to mention the slow speeds of our current broadband services.
Now 3 years down the road this will be a changed world in the US as the FTTP rollouts will be in full steam and will have probably crossed the 2million mark or even more and it would be a standard thing to have a 10/10 connection to the internet. It's even faster between neigborhoods with testing in Keller TX, on multi gig transferrs taking a few seconds. So I would expect that people could then easily send videos to others. Hell with a little work Tivo could turn your box into a Napster for tv shows, and other recordings using the combined networked Tivo's as local servers.
Back to my point. These groups want to shut Tivo down so they can profit on their own distribution methods and limit choices to the consumer so they can inflate prices as they please. And it's true that NFL teams tend to milk whatever city they reside in through taxes. Now they want to milk the consumer even more through limited choice and high prices. If they wanted to do otherwise they would work with Tivo to come up with a acceptable solution and restrictions. However since they're not I have to stick with my original theory.
Why do we keep subsidizing broken businesses? The NFL isn't like the airlines or Amtrak, our country could still function normally if some of the less profitable teams folded.
... particularly the current administration.
Sports is the mechanism by which the powers that be keep the American people dumbed down, sedate, and easily controlled. More so than religion (although that is certainly also a potent tool in undermining a person's ability to think critically), more so than a shoddy educational system.
Sports is the true opiate of the poeple. Baseball fans who can't balance their checkbook routinely excersize college level statistical analysis on their favorite player's batting averages and team's performance. Clearly these people aren't stupid per se, or necessarilly ignorant, but their creative and intellectual capacity has been stupified and hijacked toward ends that present no competition or threat to those who rule. The message is quite clear and effective: "think as much as you like, as long as it isn't about something important."
The last thing they are ever going to do is allow a key component of the Bread and Circuses America is spoonfed to fall, regardless of how much of the rest of the economy subsidizing their existence will harm. Just as the Romans would routinely choose to ship expensive sand for the Colesium, rather than much needed food for the people, so to will our government choose to prop up Hollywood and the NFL, at any expense.
To do otherwise risks the very real possibility that the sleeping, fooled and distracted masses of America might actually arise from the couch and get involved politically, and that is something none of the current politicans want
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's refreshing to see the NFL has been rather open about the whole purpose of FCC-recognized corporate welfare. When asked why the NFL was demanding governmental heavy-handedness and intervention in the free market, the NFL suit answered:
"It's a question of pure ability to sell tickets," said Frank Hawkins, the NFL's senior vice president for business affairs.
Exactly. Hawkins goes on to explain that "they'll never sell out those December games if they are unable to enforce the blackout rule" (meaning manipulate, coerce and destroy consumer choice). The honest answer, however, is that the value of a northern market outdoor stadium seat significantly diminishes as it gets damn cold in December. And this is the consumer's problem how?
Has the NFL ever studied popsicle sales, especially looking at them in, say, January in Detroit? (Clue: The local Good Humor man doesn't drive down neighborhood streets when the outside temperature is lower than that of his product!) What about the hot soup sales at Disney World in July? If you've hit Disney's parks at different times of the year, you'll learn that they're well in tune to the weather and consumer behavior (ever notice the umbrellas that amazingly pop up all over at the stands just as the drops are starting to fall?)
If these businesses were run like the NFL, we'd have the government shutting down grocery stores in Orlando and limiting the only food choice to Campbell's Cream of Brocalli in order to protect the Disney soup racket.
Just as the RIAA doesn't understand (nor care about) the consumers of its industry's products, the NFL has lost it on fans. A Cleveland Browns seat may be worth $125 in September, but certainly not in December. Their inability to understand this is not grounds for absurd government intervention, and any bureaucrat that supports this nonsense is probably on someone's payola (hey Junior Powell - get your Redskins season tickets yet?).
Peter: Ooooh, tape this for me
Brian: Oooooooooh sorry, the VCR hasn't worked since you tried to tape Monday Night Football
(flashback, Peter puts tape in VCR and presses record, then security guards bust in)
Security Guard: Do you have the expressed written cocent of ABC and the National Football League?
Peter: (holding up contract) Just ABC
(Peter jumps out of the way just as they begin shooting at the VCR)
1992 US Presidential Election: Yes, I smoked pot, but I didn't inhale.
2024 US Presidential Election: Yes, I downloaded on Napster, but I didn't share.
This is not about the broadcast flag and only vaguely about fair use and your rights as a consumer. This is about TiVo establishing their right to redistribute content ths same way your local cable provider redistributes you local broadcast station. CATV tested these limits in the midwest in the fifties with tall towers and local coax. Ted Turner broke the mold with TBS and CNN making Atlanta a global distribution hub. TiVo is taking this to the Internet, as a new means of redistributing content. They just push the cable headend out to your TiVo box and let you serve your friends and your common programming interests. Thus the requirement for subscriber ID's. TiVo needs to know who, anonymously aggregated, is watching what--because, like all television networks, they will rise or fall as a business by proving market demographics, both to advertizers and to content vendors who will want to get on their network--to distribuet movies. Don't be confused by the appeal to the FCC--this is part of TiVo's on again-off again struggle to find a business model they can defend.
To keep this in perspective, let's remember that the whole copy-protection issue is an accident of history. Publishers, broadcasters and record companies have been able to flourish all these years because the general public simply didn't have the capability to widely distribute copies of things. If distributing copies had been as trivially simple as it is now, at the time sound and video recordings were invented, there would be no media companies because there would have been no market for records and tapes. People who wanted to make money in that area would have had to do it in a different way, or not at all. We would not have it ingrained in our minds that the world can't function properly unless someone owns or controls the distribution of every image and sound they produce. It's not a moral imperative, it's just an idea we are used to. If we want to, we can get used to other ideas just as well.
How about we pass a law that says only U.S. citizens can contribute or financially support a candidate? No PAC funding. No "soft" party funding. No corporate funding. No foriegn funding. If any of those want to help a candidate financially, they have to get out and get citizens to open their wallets for their chosen cattle-herder.
And how does this help? The PACs, corporations, and foreign interest will just run "issue ads", and fund "action groups" with no ties (direct or indirect) to the campaign in question. It's what they're doing now on behalf of the Democrats, in order to get around the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, because they don't have the same kind of direct-donor money machine the Republicans do.
Face it. The problem isn't the money machines that the major parties use. It's US. We should be able to distinguish fact from fiction, do our own research, and discount the MTV/PepsiSmash-ized media circus that passes for news and commentary today. There should be unbiased sources for news, accurate and in-depth debate, clear discussions of party planks with the general public, and a reasoned and insightful choice come voting day.
Instead, we have lies delivered as truth. Emotion and hyperbole delivered as matter-of-fact. Sound bites and media campaigns designed to influence public opinion. Bread and circuses to corral votes and keep incumbents in power. AND WE (as in the American people) ACCEPT IT.
Do you honestly think that we can restrict their money, and keep them to the spirit of the law, when we can't even keep them in check now? We need to take the foxes out of the henhouse before we staple the wire netting in place. Otherwise, we're just ensconing the foxes right where they want to be.
Personally, I think two things would help to change the political landscape in this country, money or no:
1. Move election day to the first Tuesday after Tax Day. Let's see the politicians try and raise their salaries for themselves and justify it when people see how much money the government is taking.
2. Regularize redistricting, and get rid of the winner-take all system. Right now, gerrymandering continues across the country with the consent of both parties, in an effort to create districts that are bulletproof for the incumbent party. We should regularize districts on a grid basis by population, and combine the elections for multiple districts in order to prevent the 50%+1 system from ensuring that only major party candidates can secure representation.
Number one isn't going to happen, not with the current politicos in power. Number two might happen on a local basis, assuming you have a voter initiative system in place, and someone with enough guts and money to ram it through. But you're going to need to break the legislative stranglehold on things - one reason why I like governor Schwartzenegger's proposed plan to cut the California legislature to part-time status.
In the meantime, what can WE (as in the Slashdot crowd) do? Well, first thing is to get that GeekPAC running (geekpac.org, supposedly - and it's down, for who knows how long.) The second is to break up the media empires that politicians cater to for positive spin and information control. The third is to encourage competition on all fronts, in order to churn up the layers of sediment, and get proper representation going. Lastly, is to educate the populace (not an easy task) and get them to treat the vote with more respect than they treat the rest of government.
There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.