Slashdot Mirror
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 hope Microsoft take over Macrovision, then we can have Microsoft and Macrosoft. Microsoft can deal with insecure software and Macrosoft can deal with securing copyrights, what a world it will be then!
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!
I'm sorry but that song you can't get out of your head is in violation of copyright laws. We are going to install a little chip now to ensure we are compensated.
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.
What is this television thing anyway? Does it involve moving away from my computer?
from TFA:
"An Internet-delivered movie, downloaded to a PC, can now be protected on analog video playback out of a PC"
They're actually concerned with someone outputting a digital format (MPG, DIVX, WMV, etc.) to an Analog source like a VCR? C'mon
I thought the purpose of ripping the media was to have a perfect (or near perfect) digital copy
The master of the eye-killer blinking videotapes gets in bed with my unfair lady of blue screens of death.
If there have any offsprings, shoot'em.
Instead of the XBox and a PC in a home, I think they're on the way to the XBoxPC. It would make sense. The XBox plays games at a great speed with great graphics, so what's to stop MS from making their operating system run out of the XBox ONLY? They could drop licenses with other companies and force everyone to beg and pay more if they want a non-XBox version of Windows. Scary thought, but I think they might be taking a hint from apple and I think they're going to try this "digital lifestyle" thing with making proprietary hardware for Windows. Time to move to Linux I guess. *shrug*
Ubuntu, the way linux should be.
Try Ubuntu FREE! --
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.
This would be the best move ever ... for open source that is. The minute my friends can no longer rip their CD's to mp3's, they'll ditch Windows and move on to something else. I'm serious. None of my friends are techies. They use their systems to browse the web, write email and the occasional word processing document and to manage their music and photo collections. If Microsoft ever were to cripple their OS in such a manner, they'd jump ship in a heartbeat. Especially if the alternative OS and supporting software is free and can be installed on their current systems.
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.
I mean heck! At one point you have to disseminate an analogue signal to which we are able to listen to.
Methinks that the only feasible technology is to pour tar into the ears of every citizen on earth.
And that really seems a bit intrusive.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
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?
I would like to weigh in with a comment on these assholes.
Macrovision has been touting their "Secure" tech for a number of years.
It has been broken time and time again.
I have a hard time believing that Microstupid is dumb enough to buy into this.
After the early efforts to get a halfway good anti-spyware package together via the buying of Giant. They have to sink down to the low-lifes like Macrovision.
This is why I keep refusing the DRM "upgrades" to my media player 7.
Firefox just kicks IE up one side and down the other IMHO.
Put it this way, in the big trade shows. Macrovision employs a very humble booth.
I had such high hopes for the Bill Gates security speech.
Oh, well.
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
You know, I just realized why, in TNG, they never listened to anything but classical music and never watched anything other than plays.
Copyrights and analog locks trapped all modern culture in outdated media that ended up being lost to the ages.
And people say that series lacked foresight.
All I needed to know about digital rights, I learned from Star Trek.
The whole reason they're doing this isn't so Windows can do DRM. Both SBC and Verizon are going ot be using MS software on their set top boxes to deliver IPTV. I guess they need some kind of DRM in the box.
This is no different from encryption on HDMI signals from the current crop of HDTV boxes. As far as I know, nobody has turned on the encryption, but the option is there.
Some people in this subject are talking about how the cirrent distribution methods are quickly becoming obsolite. I say they have been obsolite for a good 10 years now. I myself have not owned a TV set sence sometime around 1988 or 1999 prefering to just use a PC with a capture card becose of the freedom it provided me.
I much prefer to watch TV on my time rather then there time and I think just about everyone but the media industry feels this way. The idea of a 500 channel universe is totaly obsolite and a single channel universe with on demand content (for a fair monthly fee of course) is the way things want to go. But again the media industry is afraid of chaing. therew afraid of loosing there power over us so they refuse to allow it to happen.
Why is the RIAA so pissed about P2P networks and cd recording technology? It's not becose there loosing money to piracy of there current artists but rather cuz they see the threat it has on them gaining future artists. Today any gaurage band can have a CD totaly bypasing the large record lables that would just fuck them in the ass on a reguler basis.
Here are 2 good examples of the binifits of watching TV on ones own pace rather then a set schedual. Fox had 2 shows (Family Guy and Futurama) and these shows did extreamly poor on there network run. Mostly becose of missmanagemt and other typical TV poltics. Now these shows get released in whole on DVD for a fair price and all of a sudden 2 bombs become 2 of the best selling DVDs ever. One would expect fox and the rest of the industry to notice this fact but they dont. They continue with there old ways of fucking people in the ass. Fox could totaly release straight to DVD seasions of futurama (12 episodes ever 8 months or so) and people would eat it up. I know I would. But ofcourse they dont...
Anyway lets get back to being more on topic. PVR flags and analog protections. My current HTPC setup is only analog as I havent yet seen the need to upgrade it to HDTV but yes I have macrovision disabled on all analog inputs and outputs (though I havent used the TV_Out in a long time). My DVD drive is RPC and region free as well with a firmware hack and I use AnyDVD to remove CSS protection just becose I want to even tohugh I dont acctualy bother to rip my DVDs. I just feel it shoudlent be there in the first place.
I bet there loosing far more money to develope futile protection schemes then they are to the acctual piracy itself. The quest to stop piracy is just a waste of time and money and in the long run i think the general public will wise up to what there doing and just stop buying DVD and music and do something other then watch TV. The media industry would rather shoot themsewlves in the foot then change with the rest of the world and give the public what they ask for.
Ok so these things called the PC were created and over time consumers really started to dig the FREE, or mostly FREE things they could do with them...
Eventually this PC thing found a way to communicate with other PC things and then something wonderful happened... they all got connected and the internet was (re)born...
Some new things were a little too close to breaking the law but were mostly tolerated because the big players... Microsoft especially were making and continue to make insanely gross amounts of money...
This internet thing really started to catch on and consumers found LOTS of really cool uses for it. Email, games and sharing. Sharing jokes and greeting cards eventually became photos and music... in the meantime lots of folks realized that they didn't need big guys like Microsoft and they unleashed alternatives and Open Source software was (re)born... its mascot quickly became Linux.
Back to the big guys... Most big guys missed the many opportunities the internet could offer their business models and instead turned to the "wise" politicians to see if this "sharing" thing could be stopped... The politicians thought long and hard and after a significant amount of cash-for-thought was spread around the DMCA was born.
Ah the DMCA... pure genius... this gem makes tinkering, copying, sharing and most fair uses illegal... its pretty broad in scope and isn't well defined in intent but the big boys loved it because now they now had the perfect club to start smacking down any innovation that even appears to be threatening their empires.
Well... all the money in Washington was just a bump in the road for free use, sharing and innovation so now the big boys have decided that everything must be locked down from start to finish... back to Washington for more spreading of the cash-for-thought and voila... the broadcast flag is born!
This things is even more genius then most of the other road blocks to innovation any of the big boys could have thought of. The flag (required by ALL recording devices) will be controlled by whomever has the rights at the time... movie guys, software guys, distributors... hell even the cable guys can turn off recording access. Of course the cash spreaders assure this is NOT going to be the case but history proves otherwise. The flag will eventually bring us to the era of pay-per-recording at home... now how fuckin' sick is this concept. Oops... hope the charma cops were blinking!
In the end what the legislators and big boys don't seem to realize is that without free and FAIR use and yes sharing, the internet would not have grow to its ginormous size and influence, without free and FAIR use and sharing the big boys like INTEL, Microsoft, game companies and even the movie boys would not have grow to such seemingly unstoppable empires... so if they take away the free and FAIR use of these technologies consumers will either find or create free and FAIR alterntives despite what laws these robber barons of the 21st century buy from those hopelessly corrupt legislators in Washington.
There just doesn't seem logical that business is going to continue to grow by locking consumers out their right to fair use and by restricting access.
In my country, copying and sharing for personal use is very much LEGAL and we still have BILLIONS made from the consumers herds. Yes, unfortunately there is still and large majority of the herd that doesn't realize the feed is free. Oh well... MOO!
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