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Digital Content Security Act
bdwoolman writes "Congress is leaving a special gift under the tree for Hollywood's film industry. Just before closing for the holidays, legislators introduced a new proposal designed to curb redistribution of movies.The Digital Transition Content Security Act would embed anticopying technology into the next generation of digital video products. If it makes its way from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office and becomes law, the measure will outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital video signals, effective one year from its enactment. PC-based tuners and digital video recorders are listed among the devices."
USA only gets control over USA, and you always have a choice where to live.
Wow, and won't all this conversion to DRM'd digital machines obsolete the old ones? Of course, which is probably the real goal here. They aren't merely plugging a hole in their Digital Rights Massacreing, they're forcing everyone to go out and buy new stuff! WOOT, keep the economy fueled and the profits where they belong: in the hands of those who don't need them.
Land of the free? heh
Reality has a liberal bias
So now I can't record my guitar to my computer? No more computer karaoke? How broad of a "analogue" device definition are we talking?
That's a lot of stuff. For a start, my father-in-law loves his digital camcorder. As a journalist I'm sure he'll be thrilled with this new "freedom of choice".
Geez.. all digital still and video cameras, my old Hauppage WinTV-PCI card... Let's see, all HDTV and LCD monitors...
Somehow I don't see this one going through without a fight from hardware manufacturers. And since they have more money than Hollywood, they'll probably win. I hope.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Why does this require legislation? Forgive me if that sounded stupid, but I honestly don't understand why there needs to be LAWS in place for this sort of thing.
is this the third incarnation of the cbdtpa / sssca?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
... please understand that their vision of the future of computing and the information age is very different from our vision of the future of computing and the information age. When they arrested those people for illegal copying and DMCA mod chip violations - hard prision time for simple copying is the rule of the game.
.... this is where it leads ... for everyone.
9 258
While I like video games as much as the next guy, I think it is very imporant for people to understand that online freedoms are more important than entertainment. And hard time is for people like mudders and thiefs who steal real property, not for those who make coppies of pretend properties such as "copyrights".
IMHO, people should really question the copyright system. If they take it to it's logical conclusion
essay: Straight Talk About Copyrights http://technocrat.net/article.pl?sid=05/11/25/132
If they're broadcasting their data through my head, I have every right to digitize it.
That is all.
The other side wants stuff for free and has nothing constructive to add that might offer an alternative for the people depending on this production and distribution for their income today.
Wrong. Here's an alternative: if your job is to perform a service, expect to get paid like someone who performs a service.
You don't see mechanics fixing a car and then trying to collect money every time the owner starts it up. You don't see barbers cutting hair and suing their customers when they show their new haircut to others. You don't see physicists lobbying for laws that would make it illegal to use, say, the theory of relativity without paying hefty fees.
So why should a musician, an author, or a movie producer expect to be treated differently? There are two kinds of jobs in this world: manufacturing jobs and service jobs. If you produce a physical object, you can sell it and forego any claim of ownership over it once it's sold. If you apply a skill, you can get paid for your time instead. Nothing else is sustainable.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
I'm serious. Who else can lobby to get an ENTIRE FAMILY of computer hardware made illegal? It's not a matter of "how people are going to get around the law" but more "why were they able to make that law"? If you're a content owner, you have an absolute right to defend your own proprety. YOU do. The government has no responsibility to come along behind you and clean up and protect it for you, that's insane. It's alreay illegal to duplicate copyrighted works without permission from the owner, so honestly, how is this benefical? If anyone was still in need of a wakeup call, this is the one you were waiting for.
This issue seems more and more like it should fall into the "if you can't beat them, join them" category. You've known for YEARS that people were copying movie content via VCR's and music via tape decks. There wasn't a mad cram for legislation to codemn "analog to analog devices" that would make duplication of content any easier. This just reeks of technophobia - they aren't sure how they're going to make money with shows floating on the web. (remember Spaceballs? "Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising. Spacballs the flamethrower!")
Maybe it's time to start focusing some of that lobby money and MPAA kickbacks into either finding a way to preserve your own digital rights, or maybe finding a better way to pay for your content distribution on the internet so you can reap some rewards for owning that bit of cinema / software / music. It sounds like a better plan to me.
hi mom!
He's doing well in some areas but -- obviously -- not so well, to put it mildly in others. That's the problem with high-tech censorship; there's no identifiable voting bloc in Congress that's opposed to it. You can pretty much count on the liberals to stand up against press censorship, and the conservatives to stand up against religious censorship, and assorted ad hoc coalitions of left and right to stand up against political censorship; but when it comes to That Weird Geeky Stuff, there are no good guys. Left and right are equally in the *AA's pocket. There are a couple of individual politicians who do seem to have some spine on this issue, but there aren't enough of them to make a difference when the votes are counted.
... but I'm not optimistic.
Outside the government, it's pretty much the same story. The EFF fights the good fight, but they're small potatoes. The really big, influential civil rights groups which should be up in arms -- the ACLU and NRA both come to mind -- apparently don't have any understanding of how technological issues affect their core missions, and so the EFF is left pretty much on its own.
I'd like to believe that one of these days the *AA will just push a little too far, and Joe Sixpack will rise up in revolt
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Why not outlaw camcorders as well? Although there's a negligible loss of quality, they can effectively convert analogue signals eminating from my monitor into a slightly imperfect digital replica... For that matter, why not outlaw the human eye and its corresponding visual cortex? How about the limbic system of the brain, so that we can't store memorable images from movies? Seriously though, I think a far more effective way to restrict the capture of analogue signals is to implement a protection scheme WITHIN the capturing device's circuitry. If a certain waveform (yes, a fuzzy match would be allowed) is present in the signal, the capture device refuses to run. All capture card makers would have to abide to this rule or face sanctions.
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
RMS for President!
( I
First off, all that means is we get something new to hack. Those that will be pirates will continue to pirate. All this is going to do is really pi$$ people off when the go to watch their movie and the stupid thing won't play. I've already stopped buying music because of the RIAA.
I urge all of you to join in boycotting the RIAA and MPAA.
RIAA Radar is here - http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ This site will tell you if a band is a member.
I'm unable to find a site that lists the MPAA members, however, there is a partial list on the MPAA's own site that includes Buena Vista Pictures Distribution (A Disney Company), Sony (big surprise there), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or MGM, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers.
I'd like to suggest that for the companies that have other products that you boycott the entire product line. For example, don't buy that Sony Televison set. Don't go the Universal Studios theme park. You get the idea...
If they do the same kind of ridiculous copy protection with movies, I'll be boycotting them too. Frankly, I'd urge all of you to hit them where it hurts the worst. STOP BUYING THEIR STUPID PRODUCTS!!! If their crap quit selling, perhaps they'd get the message. You cannot continually pi$$ on your customer base and expect to remain profitable. Best Case - it works and they go out of business and all their music becomes public domain. Worst Case - it works and they remove their heads from their butts.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
This has little to do with piracy and everything to do with making consumers pay multiple times for the same product.
That's why movies are released first to film and then to DVD. It's not because it takes time to produce the DVD. Though it does take a little effort to slap together some menus and cut scenes but that's not why. In fact the piracy scene has been able to get several "DVD screeners" while the movie is in theaters. These big budget movies are hoping for an Oscar so they send letter-box DVD versions to the academy for consideration and in the process some pirates get their hands on them. So it's obviously possible to release on DVD and film concurrently. It'll just never happen because they want people to see it in theaters and buy the DVD. Not one or the other.
This is just one example...it's not why they want to protect digital media though..for that you've got to delve into the mind of the typical MPAA though process..
"Oh your DVD got scratched? Well you better buy a new copy. What? You want to make back ups?! PIRATE!!!"
Do you honestly think embedding protection into digital media is going to stop pirates? No, it's going to stop John Q. Public from protecting his investment. Pirates could care less because if they can't copy it freely they'll bypass the protection, if they can't get a digital copy, they'll film it with a camera. All this analog hole and DRM non-sense is just corporate double speak for "we want more money!".
The MPAA needs to stop using piracy as an excuse to screw over the paying customers. Of course that will never happen because then everyone might actually figure out what's what.
Really! Freaking WOW! Banning -all- devices that can encode video? Say goodbye to editing your home movies on anything other than off a firewire or USB camcorder. I'm trying to imagine the kind of world a movie studio or record industry exec dreams of... The banning of -all- computers except for corporate use, and the public would only be permitted to own terminals that dealt with only static images and text - no audio. WiFi covering the world, faithfully reporting every show you watch and song you hear on any device you are allowed to own, automatically debiting your bank account for each track or show. Charge extra if you want to watch stuff without ads. I never would have imagined such an assault on every aspect of a persons freedoms in regards to entertainment. Personally I don't really think it's about lost revenues in the industries - that's just the excuse they wave around, filesharers stealing the food out of the mouths of the poor execs children. It's as if there is an undercurrent of wanting to excercise absolute control over every aspect of what you're allowed to watch and hear, and only if you pay your dues would you be permitted to partake in the privelege of anything other than sound clips and infomercials. They might as well go for broke. Ban all storage media. You can pay to have some archive store your personal files.
His response is fair, and seems to indicate that he simply doesn't understand the technology involved. In particular, he fails to understand the financial magnitude of the change he's requesting (huge), the degree to which it would impose on ordinary citizens and small businesses in the process of their own content creation and hobbies (large), and the degree to which it or any technological measure would actually curb piracy (small to zero--DRM has a terrible track record in this respect, and there are a large number of A-D coverters in existence). He may also be overlooking the ulterior motives of those asking for this protection, who may simply wish to keep the cabal of content gatekeepers as small as possible.
Perhaps, rather than berating him, we can assist the Congressman to better understand the technical problems with his proposal.
...the content lobby has more money than you. Details at 11:00.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
"You can pretty much count on the liberals to stand up against press censorship, and the conservatives to stand up against religious censorship"
Really? When have the conservatives stood up against religious censorship, when the religion in question was anything but Christian?
God is real unless declared integer
All it takes is for someone to attach it to an omnibus funding bill, as happened this week with the bill to open the Arctic Wildlife Reserve to the oil companies by sticking it into an arms appropriation bill at the last second. Someone basically said "the military uses imported oil, so drilling in the arctic could be considered a military neccessity!" In this case, of course the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of allowing big business to polute the arctic in search of what is estimated to be about a 16-month supply of oil.
I don't know why you guys (Americans) don't make this kind of legislative foolishness illegal. It's usually used for pork-barreling by attaching an obvious waste of money (in the form of directed bids for expensive purchases) to a bill that, oh, maybe funds school lunches or something. If the politicians don't vote in favour of the pork-barrel then they get a big "he voted against school lunches" attack in the next election. I'm sure it will happen one way or another with this "analog hole" proposal. Someone will find a way to roll it into a bigger block of regulations that nobody will have the guts to vote down....
First off, where did you find this entry? I don't see a title containing the words Digital or Content anywhere here...
Second:
"I have said repeatedly that any legislation affecting the ability of consumers to use content must be carefully balanced to respect consumer expectations and rights and, of course, fair use."
Does he really know what he's talking about? How can he not realize that if you outlaw devices except those that follow instructions from content owners, you've effectively eliminated any use except those they decide to give you -- fair or not?
Has he really though through the implications for independent journalism? If you can put an analog signal in a broadcast, speech, performance, that dictates its disposition/distribution, you've effectively ended independent journalism that uses direct A/V sources. Bush messes up in a speech? Sorry, you *can't* rebroadcast it -- hell, you might not be allowed to record it. The only version that will exist and be distributed will be the official version.
"many - many - artists have come directly to me saying that piracy is threatening their ability to make a living. "
Who? How many? Can we really trust decisions in a matter of policy like this to secondhand anecdotal estimates? Make your case, but do it openly and preferably with some references to some analyses that looks harder than that. As the Representative himself stated, there are also many, many artists who don't feel like piracy is a particularly big problem. I'd be interested to know why he's choosing to listen to those who do feel threatened by piracy.
Giving content providers ultimate control is the wrong place to fight this for anyone who can think through the issue and genuinely cares about liberties. If the Representative can't see this, he'll have a hard time convincing me he's not deficient in at least one of the two areas. I'd love to be able to see his responses, thoough.
Tweet, tweet.
Fool! In America, Christianity = Religion.
He makes the usual mistake of believing it is all about music and video.
The industry can put all kinds of control in their products as long as I can just choose not to buy them.
But when they try to regulate the equipment I use to make holiday movies it is an entirely different matter.
I too would like good artists to make a decent living. But bills like this is essentially saying that artists (and their record companies) are first class citizens and that I am a second class citizen.
(If I lived in the US that is but if they succeed in the US, Europe will be next).
Considering it seems so unlikely on the surface, it makes me concerned that getting the bill passed isn't the actual point.
After all, it wouldn't be the first time that members of an industry have proposed something "ludicrously ridiculous" so that law-makers might be convinced that it's entirely rational and reasonable to meet half way... at either "ludicrous" or "ridiculous".
Look, if he doesn't want people to think he was bought he should turn down the donations from people he has supposedly spent his whole political career opposing.
Personally I think the whole idea of corporations or organizations donating in any way to politicians is wholly corrupt. It should be a criminal offense for doner and recipient.
The only people who should be allowed to donate to political candidates are registered individual voters, and those only of a very limited amount of money or a somewhat less limited amount of time and expertise.
And how do they get their message across without millions in advertising? Did they ever think that if they couldn't get it across without all that advertising, then maybe it wasn't worth getting across? Anyway, with everyone in the same boat, less money is needed.