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Microsoft Licenses Analog Anti-rip Technology
photojournaliste writes "CD copy-protection specialist Macrovision is to work with Microsoft to ensure their respective DRM and anti-rip technologies are interoperable, the two companies said this week. Sounds straightforward enough, but the deal runs deeper. Microsoft agreed to license a number of Macrovision's patents, in particular those relating to analogue copy protection technology and more recent extensions to that system that cover video-on-demand, pay-per-view content and support for the US 'broadcast flag', which determines whether consumers will be able to record digital TV broadcasts."
People hack their Tivo's to go "Broadcast flag - very nice - I'll ignore that and record it anyway"..
Same for Myth TV etc
TheLogster
I like the broadcast flag. If we couldn't record stuff off the television, perhaps the nation would find better things to do with their time that watching endless television programs. Like extra exercise, or socialising. We'd all be a whole lot better for it...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Since when was interoperability a goal for access protection systems? Surely they mean inoperable!
Imagine Provider A sells music and other media content without restrictive technology. Provider B has strong restrictions. Artists who publish with B will not benefit from "bootleg cassettes" to gain popularity (think of Metallica...)... Artists who publish with A become popular, Provider A ends up selling the most popular artists....who makes the money?
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Lars after he sues everyone else.
HDTV equipment manufactured or bought before July 1 without respect for the broadcast flag will be grandfathered in.
If you ever thought you wanted a hdtv pvr, buy a card now or you will not be legal.
http://www.pchdtv.com/
I just got mine, and I am working through the mythtv setup...
I assume they have to allow for future tivo / pvrs for HDTV that will respect the broadcast flag. But what kind of respect does that entail? Some programs cannot be time-shifted at all? I really dont' know what is to come.
So, how will this work outside US? Or will they just assume the laws are the same in every country? And if it only applies to US, how do one determine properly if the computer in question IS in the US? I guess they simply implement it for everyone and won't care about laws in different countries.
I find it amusing to see these companies invest millions in technology and licensing to fight a battle they know they are not going to be able to win.
All it takes is one person to circumvent the protection (we all know how good macrovision has been in the past...) or to have access to source material to distribute it to millions using P2P.
They need to change their business model, give us what we want (DRM free mp3 or similar) for a reasonable price or eventually suffer the inevitable... (which could be a good thing too, the music industry reborn)
Regular users don't really contribute that much to piracy. Lets ignore the people downloading things for a moment and concentrate on the uploaders (the real problem). The people distributing most of the content are "hard core" pirates. They are the one's who will be paying lots of money for ways to get around copyprotection (or manually doing it themselves). I should imagine that as soon as a method of getting around the broadcast flag is published every single one of the main rippers nd distributers will be using it widely and carrying like they are right now. Sure, home users wont be able to record off of the TV/Radio until startups start offering the hacks for a small fee, which wouldn't take too long.
"DRM never has been about absolute control. It has, from its inception, been about making piracy enough of an inconvenience that regular user don't bother to do it."
And they usually don't. They just get the material they want off of somebody else who does bother.
DRM schemes ONLY stop regular users (and even then, only until someone writes up an easy to use program/utility that the public can use) while they are a mild inconvenience to the professionals.
It only takes one unscrupulous person to make one DRM-less copy of something (be it actual material or a box that ignores DRM) and distribute it and then everybody can have a copy.
I'm tired of the industry trying to use technology to solve a social problem.
Silly rabbit
They're focusing on how to prevent consumers from accessing material when they should be focusing on making it easier for consumers to pay for material. In the days of Napster's popularity, if the record companies decided to integrate a payment subscription system with high-speed downloading servers, then they wouldn't have to worry about piracy. People would pay to be able to download MP3s with no proper tags and no errors at the maximum speed their connections could handle rather than unreliable and unstable P2P sources. They could have worked on producing software for ISPs to use for automating the billing process. They could have bought into Napster during it's popularity and turned it into a subscription service, and even if other P2P applications were around, Napster had brand-name recognition that people would go for. But instead on focusing on how to use the technology's potential, they sent in the lawyers to block it. Brand name has more pull for consumers than cost-effectiveness. Just look at sneakers- people don't try to buy the cheapest ones around but go with expensive brand names instead.
If it's perceivable, it's copyable. They never seem to learn.
I think you miss the point as well.
The point of the broadcast flag is that the user says, "Hey I'll record the Pay per view X on the DVR so I can watch it later or so I can watch it with my wife" The DRM prevents him from doing this.
He instead just goes out and rents the DVD.
The DRM and the ways to circumvent it are not convenient enough to get him to commit the act of piracy. (and playing movies from a computer to a TV is not really that common in the mainstream)
Thus it add a layer of inconvenience to committing the act thus dissuading people from doing it.
There will always be pirates. That is a given. The inherit law of DRM is that it will be broken, eventually. That is why what I said above is insightful DRM has never been about complete control because even the movie studios know that is impossible. DRM has and will continue to be about making the piracy enough of an inconvenience that the mainstream will not do it.
As an aside,
By the way it is the convenience of P2P and bittorrent that bugs them, not the fact they exist. If P2P and BT were tiny do you really think they would be so up in arms. It is the fact that anyone can click next on a windows box to get through a default install and then have access to huge amounts of pirated data.
Wait until Ms. Soccer Mom finds out that she can't tape American Idol or survivor and Joe Sixpack cant tape the game while he works the late shift.
We may finally get the public outcry we need to get rid of the broadcast flag and it's ilk.
And why should the consumer not have the ability to record the Pay Per View X on the DVR? It seems the business model of Pay Per View is inherently flawed in that it requires the mandatory adoption of a technology that prevents the consumer from seeking the most convenient use of technology. Since the Betamax decision, consumers have had the legal "right" to record shows for their own enjoyment later. Now, because a business model shows up that depends on the customer not being able to do that, the entertainment industry should have its way and treat all customers as potential criminals?
More and more people are moving over to HD sets. While some lucky people might live in an area where they can get a half dozen OTA channels, people who get satellite or cable can't use those products.
Cable companies are already moving to simulcast all analog channels in digital form. At some point to reclaim bandwidth they'll drop all but the 2-13 channels from their analog service anyway, and people will have to use CableCard-compatible sets or digital cable boxes.
MythTV will never support those, as the likelihood is that there will never be a cablecard adapter for a PC, precisely because its intended to prevent interception of the digital content. Who knows if Tivo will survive long enough to come out with a CableCard unit, and who knows if the broadcast flag won't be implemented in hardware.
The provider with a strong backlist and the most wanted artists and titles.
Provider A is not Pixar or Warner Brothers, which means that it won't be shipping The Incredibles or the next Harry Potter.
Looks like they didn't listen well enough to Cary Doctorow explaining them the basics of cryptography. Cryptography is used to protect secrets exchanged by Bob and Alice and protect them from Carol's prying eyes. When the recipient of the message, Bob, is also the pirate, Carol, it means the pirate gets the cypher, the cypher text, and the key. As Doctorow explains, better than me, this simply cannot work, end of story.
blah
The real problem with the broadcast flag is that no distributor is ever going to err on the side of openness. What modern company would? Look at the EULAs and contracts and so forth that companies pad themselves with in order to avoid frivolous lawsuits and issues with IP and ownership!
Do you really think that there are going to be lots of broadcasts conducted where the operators go, "Ya know, we probably don't need to prevent someone from recording this. Let it go."
No, we're screwed. Every program has at least something that the producer or the distributor will consider "theirs" and will therefore decide to limit it. Even something as simple as a logo overlay (a-la SciFi Channel, USA, et al) might be considered a "branding" and therefore something that would prevent redistribution. Probably the ONLY thing that would even come close to being open would be things like the State of the Union broadcast -- but even that would be considered proprietary, because it was a *particular* broadcast by a *particular* station with their *particular* boneheaded reporters struggling to come up with something intelligent to comment about.
I dunno. I just think the broadcast flag is a false sense of fairness when it'll turn out to be nothing but solid DRM that everyone will get screwed with.
Blog,Twitter
Its not pay per view that I'm worried about. Pay per view is crap, I won't do pay per view. As noted before, you can just rent the DVD and then you don't have to watch the show at "their" time.
My worry is that eventually the networks will get into the act and throw the copy bit on for a major network show. They'll do this to "defend" their coveted timeslot for one of their best shows. What happens next is that you will have millions of very, very pissed off people who will not be able to record their favorite program later.
The network will of course say "tough" and demand its viewers on its terms at its time. It is their dream TV back to the, watch it only when its on way from before VCRs. They'll finally be able to kill off recording like they so desperately want to. They will be happier then hell.
Until....
What I believe will happen next is that millions of people will put so much pressure on Congress. Yes, I'm serious about this. It will become one of the most important issues in the country. The media will try to poo poo it, but some will cover the controversy and word of mouth will be rampant for this.
Congress will be forced to do something to restore our fair use rights. I don't see any congressperson who doesn't restore our rights gettting reelected. Screw social security, if I can't record CSI, there will be hell to pay. It sounds silly but its true.
Its also more serious than that. If they stop the recording of TV, they will be emboldened. We will copmletely lose control of our TVs, our music, and , worst of all our PCs. We will lose control of all our devices, constantly asking (paying for) permission to do what they allow. Its utterly evil. You would think that an industry that turned its worst nightmare into a multi-billion dollar business 20 years ago would realize that they have exactly the same chance today, but they're trying the same thing today they did then. If they suceed this time, they will finally earn their reward they didn't get last time which is the death of their industry.
If it can be viewed/heard, it can be ripped. These people are idiots.
However, the bullying may backfire. Like when the UN forced the US to change the laws on steel tariffs. This was basically done by the European Union. Spain may have only one vote to the United States one vote. But Spain backed by the EU has 26 votes. We've also seen the EU do things to Microsoft that no single country could.
We may see this as other regions with similar socio-economic cultures decide to get together for their common benefit. My near term predictions are a Latin-American Union and an Asia-Pacific Union.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Do HD analog signals contain Macrovision? I doubt it, there aren't even any component-input recording devices available on the market, likely due to intense pressure from the media companies.
The GPL is not a EULA. Nothing in it says that you are required to agree to the GPL to USE the software (EULA = End USER Licence Agreement). You only have to agree to the GPL to legaly DISTRIBUTE the software. So as long as you don't give the software to anybody else, you need not agree to the GPL.
Note that under copyright, and specifically the doctrie of first-sale, the user can do whatever he wants with the copyrighted item, EXCEPT copy/duplicate/recreate/extend it. Even then there are fair use exceptions, but they are very limited and widly abused by many here.
The GPL is what allows one to copy/duplicate/recreate/extend the copyrighted work. Outside of that, the GPL doesn't apply.