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New Consortium to Push UDI and Include DRM
MarsGov writes "Intel, Apple, Samsung, LG, Nat Semi and Silicon Image formed a consortium to promote Unified Display Interface (UDI) as the new standard to connect computers to monitors and TVs. UDI will be HDMI and HDCP "anti-piracy" compatible. "
So much of the computer industry today is based on preventing competition. Software patents, DRM, DMCA lawsuits for interoperating with others' software... (Though reverse-engineering for interoperability was supposed to be allowed, just look at Blizzard and bnetd to see how this turned out in practice.)
Does anyone really think hardware manufacturers are promoting DRM to fight "piracy"? Kind-hearted, generous manufacturers just looking out for the poor little media industry? No, they are racing to be the first with a de-facto DRM system everyone has to use, so that they can license their DRM and be the toll-collectors for all digital communication. Nothing more, nothing less.
Whether a sufficient majority of corporations ends up accepting one of the DRM systems, or Congress ends up enacting one of them as law, it has virtually nothing to do with stopping "piracy" and everything to do with eliminating competitors, both in the hardware and media industries.
It's a felony for me to hook a real monitor up to one of these things, right?
Those familiar with my anti-copyright stance will see in this example how terrible copyright legislation is for content creation. The intent of copyright (to give authors a certain time-limited protection over what they create) has been destroyed, and is now controlled solely by a few massive corporations that control almost every form of media.
UDI is the final step in allowing them to control the old media formats (TV and radio generally). It WILL happen, as Congress and those who control the old formats fail to see that they're outdated and no one cares.
The Internet blew up, in my opinion, based entirely on people's ability to be heard and to hear others. You're seeing millions of bloggers who write freely in order to be heard, not in order to sell their thoughts by coercing others not to copy them. You see people quoted (not always being referenced either), you see people copying and re-posting, and you're seeing massive "piracy" of every copywritten work. Copyright not only failed, but ignoring it created the biggest form of media in literally years. The Internet is at least two orders of magnitude bigger than all the old-media productions in all of history, combined.
What is the next step? Major media companies will continue to restrict content, and billions of small content creates will get together in tiny groups and capture that market. Podcasting is replacing the radio for a small percentage today, but in 10 years where will radio be? It will be an overregulated monopoly that no one listens to because it attempts to target too broad a market.
TV and cable will be another forgotten phenomenon, at least in the way we watch it today. Hundreds of channels of regulated media can not compete with millions of vidcasts, especially as production qualities go up.
Look, folks, DRM doesn't matter. Communists wanted everyone equal, libertarians wanted everyone free. The Internet offers both side a solution that could never come from law or regulation or mandates -- people able to meet one another's needs, disregarding borders and laws and restrictions that we faced for hundreds of years.
DRM? Go for it, big producers. I'm finding new forms of entertainment every day, and it doesn't come in a pretty package and it isn't advertised by beautiful people.
Dongles anyone? Interposed between computer and device that override the repsonses to answer back as an *APPROVED* device for the non approved one.
DUH
Next idea please.
Here's one - track down those that traffic in the pirated goods, and arrest them.
Quit treating customers as criminals.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
How can the DRM software tell the difference between legitimate free software or a pirated work?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
From Channel Register:The UDI initiative is being led by Intel and its new best friend, Apple, along with Samsung, LG, Nat Semi and Silicon Image. The likes of Nvidia, Foxconn, JAE Electronics, THine Electronics and FCI are also contributing to the spec.
However, they've got competition. The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has already begun work on DisplayPort, its answer to DVI's successor standard. DisplayPort is set to support both internal and external monitor connections, and can be used with multimedia kit.
So, once more we have two groups vying to make their technology a "standard", which then leads to a protracted battle over whose "standard" should be adopted. And in the midst, some technology will likely come along to make the new "standard(s)" obsolescent.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
we already have HDMI. It supports digital video transfer, has loads of bandwidth and even supports the transport of audio along the same cable. It supports HDCP and it is the standard for High Definition TV. my TV has 2 HDMI ports already.
I know HDMI has a couple of issues, it currently doesn't hass 6 channel high definition audio along the cable, ie SACD and DVDA, but I believe that's due with v1.2 or 1.3, it's on the schedule anyway. The other issue I think is that it only supports video resolutions, ie 720p and 1080i/p. but I'm sure this could be easily revised in the next version to support other resolutions too.
make sure it has backwards compatibility and what's the problem? why do we need yet another connector when we have, and are already using a good one.
is there any other reason to introduce UDI?
dave
I don't think hardware manufacturers were bullied. If DRM is mandated, e.g., to watch HD on a computer you need a certain videocard and a certain monitor, then users will have to upgrade. If they upgrade, they'll have to buy all new stuff. This is a huge boon to manufacturers and software companies.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The people-as-batteries scenario in The Matrix was just an accurate metaphor for what the "content industry" would like us all to become. Plugged up with inputs they alone control, we provide only the juice to keep the diabolical system going.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
These companies try to develop the best DRM technology because they know that the media companies are heavily, heavily lobbying on making DRM required in everything you see, hear, or experience. If their system becomes the one legislatively mandated, well then, you've got yourself a government-supported monopoly there, and a steady income from the licensing of the DRM technology, for which you can charge whatever you want.
Of course, if DRM becomes law, I'll be among the first to break it.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Hmmm, your post seems to have gotten scrambled during transmission. I'll fix it up for you.
There used to be. It was called copyright law. Then a bunch of corporations decided that the law wasn't good enough and we didn't really need a public domain. You can't really blame consumers for fighting back (though you can certainly challenge their methods).
There, much better.
This space intentionally left blank.
Yeah, it surely was bad when industry decided they were above the law of the land and got Congress to create unconstitutional copyright laws that created eternal monopolies on content to people who weren't the creators of that content. Once citizens saw that copyright was about greed rather than about allowing artists to make a living off their work, it ceased to be effective.
Oh! I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. When you said "above the law" I naturally thought you meant the bastards who have shredded the law of the land in order to maximize their profits, not the guy who wants to make a mix CD for his girlfriend. Yeah, we really have to fight that guy.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
"Then large numbers of selfish people decided they were above the law"
You're exactly right. And those people were mostly Disney, and the Gershwin heirs. They decided that the words that were in the Constitution regarding copyright and public domain works weren't good enough. So they bribed Mary Bono and some others in Washington into changing the rules, thereby freezing the date at which works enter the public domain.
So hey. You wanna play rough? That's cool. But it's fucking ON now.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
the content is now unprotected for all time
Sort of. This is an excellent, clever way to copy the content. However, consider that the copy you have captured may still be watermarked or otherwise uniquely identifiable.
From the perspectives of piracy-detection and legal-prosecution, you may still be on dangerous ground: copies made as you suggest may be tracable and still cause grief for you or anyone posessing them, depending on how the courts interpret "fair-use" that week. I hope using the technique you suggest for personal backup purposes would be legitimate, but you've clearly circumvented a digital rights mechanism (and possibly left evidence in the copy) and I am not a lawyer.
......If they upgrade, they'll have to buy all new stuff......
That's a big IF! Current video, just like today's average stereo and even buggy, virus prone Windows, is plenty good enough quality for millions of current users. Any HD TV upgrading incentive is nowhere nearly as compelling as the transition from VCR to DVD or from vinyl LPs to audio CD were about 20 years ago. Both vinyls and VCR tapes, for example were subject to wear and reduced quality, each time they were played. There was nothing even the most careful handling would help to elimiate this problem. The optical technologies removed this large disadvantage. In the case of VCR vs DVD the fact that DVDs don't need to be rewound and are random access also was a very compelling reason for users to upgrade. By millions of users upgrading, the media companies made gobs of money from re-selling the contents of their vaults back again to consumers of the new playback devices.
The only advantage I can see the new, expensive HD format has over the current DVD, is higher resolution. None of the previous very compelling reasons to upgrade apply. A conventional DVD played back on a big screen TV is plenty good enough for most consumers. This is also true of the present broadcast TV progrmming. HD TV does not reduce in any way the frequency nor obnoxiousness of the innumerable commercials on most channels nor improve on the content itself. For a long time, manufacturers of large screen monitors will have to provide connectivity to existing signal sources. Not many consumers have a desire to replace their DVD collection just for a clearer picture alone.
All theory is gray
My problem is that if a minority of selfish people hadn't abused the system on a massive scale, then we'd probably have viable, reasonably-priced on-line distribution today, and that would have been a benefit to everyone. Instead, the lawbreakers are driving all the paranoid media industry bigwigs away from that model, and towards DRM-restricted crap that makes it hard and/or illegal for the rest of us to do otherwise reasonable things like we used to. People like you have started a shooting war with the media industry lawyers, which no-one will win in the long run, and which is catching the majority of people who just want to enjoy decent content at a fair price in the cross-fire.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You're assuming that you can still legally own a CRT based display in 20 years, and that unique per disc watermarking won't allow them to track down who performed this feat.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
...the lawbreakers are driving all the paranoid media industry bigwigs away from that model
If they are really lawbreakers then they will held responsible to the law. If the law is wrong, then they aren't lawbreakers, and they won't. Without this basis to evaluate the law, laws make no sense. This is the reason prohibition was revoked.
Property is a relationship that naturally arises between human beings and material things. Property and enforceable property rights make possible economic calculation, a wider and more productive division of labor, and therefore increasing levels of prosperity. Civilization is inconceivable in the absence of private property. Any encroachment on property results in loss of freedom and prosperity.
Therefore, if there is loss of freedom and prosperity, it follows that property has been infringed upon. The only question that matters is whose property it actually is.
Material is defined as follows:
1. The tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object
2. Information (data or ideas or observations) that can be used or reworked into a finished form
First, you are making an unwarranted assumption that DRM is targeted at preventing just the infringment of the time extended copyright, and not targeted at curtailing what you would consider "fair use".
Second, you're ignoring the material that would be public domain under the reasonable copyright, but is locked up in vaults, so isn't making it into the P2P channels.
You are also ignoring the fact that something has to make up for the lack of derivative works of the copyrighted materials that would be in the public domain.
Lastly, you're ignoring the fact that the penalty for infringing on new copyrights is the same as old copyrights, and that newly copyrighted material is on copy-consistent digital media, and that old content is on degrading, copy-degradtion, media. I'm not asking you to condone the efforts of the P2P networks, just to abandon your current, flawed stance. There's plenty of smoke and mirrors on all sides here, but your stance is one of clarity on the users of the DMCA's side.
I found that a rather good read, very nice. For me, the grain of sand in this pearl is here.
"Unlike goods and services however, ideas and entertainment will get produced whether they are paid for or not"
May I add my own observation as a practicing free content producer. When I posted recently on Slashdot about the difficulties in simply giving away content I was accused by some rabid voices of having "a sense of entitlement". The sentiment was quite fierce, apparently "all artists think the world owes them a living". That really made me think and take a good look at my motivations. Are all artists, scientists and thinkers fundamentally driven by narcissism? What exactly is 'recognition' and what possible hope can anybody have of achieving it in a world of 6 billion people? (I hope you can take it as read that I don't work on art for the money and that my work is actually rather good). Then I thought back to history classes, to primitive art, which was practiced regardless of recognition in an age long before instant TV idols. Through most of history artists and scientists never enjoyed so much as a whisper of praise within their own lifetimes, let alone financial reward. Now, I hate any argument that starts "There are two kinds of people in the world....", but this is one case where I think the black and white version is useful. On reflection I realised that actually I couldn't give a damn whether my ideas propagate and prosper, if they don't the loss is not mine. Basically I am just doing what I would be doing anyway as a free man. It is a spiritual pursuit between me and my God (harder for me as an Athiest). But there are some people who only recognise money as currency. Anything to which they cannot attach a monetary value is by definition valueless. Since nobody is there to tell them which ideas are good and which are bad then ideas have no value. They basically cannot discriminate for themselves, someone needs to tell them that Pop Idol A is brilliant and worth paying 15 bucks a CD for. The main psychological motivation of the 'consumer' is the opposite to the 'producer'. The producer is individual, free, uninhibited, but the consumer wants safety in the crowd, conformity, acceptance and he is willing to pay a high price for this assurance. At least thats how I see it in terms of American culture. The reason why capitalism and communism are both equally flawed is that neither accounts for both kinds of people. The disparity is, as you rightly point out, producers will produce anyway, it is in their psychological nature, but consumers are screwed without producers. Anyway, I've lost track of where this ill formed babble is going, but I think you are so very on the nail about Chinas two stream system. Capitalism for those whos only currency is money, socialism for those whos motivation is humanist is a winner, and the border along which to make that partition is obviously IP, splitting the tangible and intrinsicly valuable from the intangible and INVALUABLE.
Your analysis is quite right: you will not be able to create open content without paying for patent licenses and keys (directly or indirectly).
Additionally, however, one should be aware that this is likely no accident: the RIAA and MPAA members are probably more concerned about new competitors entering the market and the distribution of open content than about piracy. So, while the ostensible goal of DRM is to curb privacy, it is ultimately more about creating barriers to entry.
Overhauling Intellectual Property Laws --or-- Balancing Capitalism and Communism
Your paper would get a slightly warmer reception in the US political arena if you change the title to:
"Overhauling Intellectual Property Laws --or-- Balancing Capitalism and Kiddy Porn".
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.