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DRM and the Myth of the Analog Hole
Art Grimm writes "Movie studios want to punish legitimate customers for legally purchasing content, while the real pirates go right on stealing. ZDNet's George Ou writes: "There seems to be a persistent myth floating around the board rooms of the movie companies and Congress that analog content is the boogie man of music and video piracy. In fact, they're so paranoid about it that they're considering a mechanism called ICT (Image Constraint Token) that punishes law-abiding customers for content that they legally purchased. But ironically, the real content pirates who make millions of bootleg movies have no intention of ever taking advantage of the so called "analog hole" because that is the slowest and lowest quality method of stealing content.""
Oh my god! Is it geek porno night already?!
The whole analog hole (and DRM in general) really isn't about piracy. The studios and labels know they won't be stopping anyone who wants to rip the off on a larger scale.
...
Instead, it's about us not format shifting, basically. The idea that you can take music or movies you bought and play wherever you are, at full quality, is anathema to them. They want us to pay for the CD. Then pay for the mobile phone version. And the portable player. And the car. And
A lot of the movie and music sales - and an even larger part of the profits - the past fifteen years have been people rebuying stuff they own in a new format. Beloved LP recordings and worn out VHS tapes were bought again as CD:s and DVD:s. But now, with fully digitalized content, there is little reason to ever do that again. Copies don't degrade, and the quality is already high enough (especially for music) that a new format just isn't very tempting.
But if you stop people from moving their data from evice to device, people will have to re-buy their content whenever they get a new device. It's an eternal upgrade revenue stream, like the shift from recordings to CD, but without any improvement in the viewer experience;without even having to pay for remastering or repackaging, in fact. And the more fine-grained you make the mesh of walls, the more often we have to pay again. Studios probably love that online services aren't standardized or compatible with each other; it means another resale every time someone switches from one service to another.
In fact, if I were a studio executive, and of a manipulative frame of mind, I'd back one service to the hilt - for, say, three or four years. Then I'd switch allegiance to a new (but incompatible) service, nudging everybody to switch, and pay again. If I'd be _really_ manipulative, I'd look at what my fellow executives in other studios are doing and try to coordinate the shift with them (no need to actually make a shady deal; just follow the group). I wonder a little, in fact, just how much time iTunes has left as the current king of the hill.
A steady stream of income without ever even having to produce any content. Who would not love that business model?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Yeah, a digitally shot, digitally editted, digitally mastered and digitally distributed movie definitely looks better analog.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I've seen few summaries so bad. First of all, it's so dripping with bias that it's hard to understand what is even being said. The write-up should include details, not opinion! Also, it fails to make the basic distinction between copyright infringement and theft.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
...and what's more, it IMNSHO can never be entirely plugged.
So long as content has to be displayed, it has to be converted to analog signals in the process. And while it may take a large amount of effort to "uncover" the hole - such as, disassembling an LCD panel and tapping into the driver circuitry - it only takes one person to redigitize the open content and distribute it, and all of a sudden it's everywhere again.
There *IS* one strategy that might work; it involves adding a system for embedding a digital watermark to the decryption mechanism, which could help content owners track stolen content back to the one who did the stealing (assuming that person or group had no way to cover their tracks). But if the content owners implemented such a strategy, there'd no longer be a reason to cover the hole!
All I can say is, if I do purchase a HD-disc and then discover it won't play at full resolution on my hardware, I'll simply download a free-market copy. I'm sure they'll still be available.
RIAA: *compairing DRMs with the MPAA... "I see that your schwartz is as big as mine! Let's see how well you handle it."
The real analog hole that the studios are trying to eliminate is the massive amount of legal content already in people's homes that the studios think is stopping people from buying new content.
Pirates are just a useful scapegoat.
I was recently looking for a DVD player/recorder for my parents. They wanted the player for two reasons, one to record shows they like, and two to send some home videos off to my sister in England. When I went to a few stores to check out the models they had, I asked one of the sales staff if the recorders could encode region free DVDs (so my sister could pay them on her TV). He looked at me like I was some kind of crook and actually said: "here in Canada we obey international copyright law".
Sure I could have reencoded the DVDs after they were recorded, but that is beside the point. My parents own the copyright to their home videos and should be able to do whatever they want with them. This is just another case of the industry hurting the consumers.
We didn't buy.
...because it requires the co-operation of hardware manufacturers. Sure, your Big Names are going to fall in line - Sony, Philips, Pansonic etc. But there will still be a host of Chinese/Korean/Singaporean manufacturers who will simply disregard the DRM restrictions. I have a DVD player imported from Korea - plays MPEG-2/MPEG-4, PAL/NSTC, completely disregards region encoding and Macrovision 'quality control', and lets me skip any part of the disc that I want (none of this 'cant use the remote on this piece of video' crap). Plus, is has Component Video Out, DVI/HDMI OUT, VGA Out - pretty much any connector you can think of, it has it. Cost less than $150 (minus shipping).
The studios are fooling themselves if they think all hardware shops are going to fall in line. Right now, less than 5% of containers arriving at our ports are screened for radioactive materials - do you really think that some know-nothing Customs Agent is going to care about a harmless DVD player?
I can't have simply a satellite receiver, oh no, I need to have a CrapTV receiver and if for some reason I'd like to switch or buy some "other" programming, well receiver goes to the trash. What is the goddamned deal here? Same with the cell phones, cable tv, sat radio and few other things. I really cannot fathom how can equipment manufacturers even go for this crap? It is almost unimaginable that we have somehow managed to build a universally accessible Internet. Someone must have had a brain fart and forgot to grease our public servants.
Back in the day I truly enjoyed my first TiVo. Awesome product and what a concept. Add a dash of DirecTV and one ends up with TiShit. The thing changes channels on its own to record infomercials, convininently and regularly reorganinzes my channel list to include removed by me shopping channels, bitches constantly about not being able to call home and a host of other annoying things. AND to top it all off we're being charged $5 or so a month for a DVR SERVICE. What fucking service!? I bought the damn thing for top dollars, it's a computer with a hard drive and all it does is record what I tell it to. What service!? That whole DRM shit is really no surprise and will likely go the same way. We enjoyed having pricey but no less standardized CD's and DVD's for a long while but the end is near. We'll end up with yet another "service". Wanna listen at home? Here you go. Wanna listen in your car? Sure, you'll need to pay more for this additional, exciting "service". Wanna listen to some other record label? Well you'll need a whole new equipment for that. Actually it's already here in the form of sat radio. It's not about piracy at all. Frankly those who'd even consider watching a video-recorded movie are pathetic losers who have no appreciacion for film, any film and will not spend real money on it anyway. Pirates will do whatever they do and no crappy DRM will stop them just like all the software activations and cable/sat scrambling haven't done a thing but to annoy and limit an already and duly paying customer. Actually it may as well increase the demand for pirated media not because it's cheaper or free, but because you'll be actually able to listen to it, watch it or use it. It is not about providing customers with content, it's about controlling what you do and selling sub-content. Commercials on TV don't work cause everyone hates them so they need to sell shit some other way. They'd be glad to precede every song on a CD with an "information from our sponsor" and to ensure sponsor's happy, it'd be neat if they could guarrantee that the customer will definitely listen to the promo - cause he's got no say in the matter. Yea, he paid for the CD, who gives a shit, we can make more money this way. It also be cool if we somehow made it a law prohibiting turning down the volume for the promo's duration. Many DVD's already have that great feature and one must sit thru several minutes of stupid - ehem pardon me, "exciting" previews before they get to watch a movie that they paid for. They're so exciting they have to make us watch it, to watch it. Some media
It's not about power, it's about money. No matter what the media moguls do, the one thing they cannot do is force us to buy their products. We have the power of choice, they do not.
There's something of a series of responses I'd like to make here.
Firstly, there's no question that you're right that this is about money. You seem to have missed the basic reality that in the West, and indeed most places, money == power, up to the point of full-scale nuclear military engagement. Without money, you can't run a war: why do you think the US national debt is so much higher now than it was in 2000? You can work from there right down the scale to the two guys on the street who see a hot dog stand and are both hungry. The one who has $5 has the power to become fed, the one who does not lacks this power. But you're right: it's about the money.
Your comment about the power of choice, unfortunately, is theoretically fine but practically irrelevant. The US consumer really doesn't have the power of choice, and most consumers in the Western world lack it as well; those in some corners of Europe like Scandanavia and the Czech Republic have more than most. This is because any given consumer has the power of choice, but consumers en masse do exactly what they're told. Marketing works. Targetted and co-ordinated marketing works (take a look at how we got into Operation Cobra II in the first place). The only arenas in which Western consumers have actual choice are those in which there are competing products made by companies who have to compete on quality and price: arenas like, for example, high grade sports equipment or food. Lots of choices there. The current area of discussion, however, is a cartel-based industry. There is no competition on price (prices are standard). There is no competition based on quality, because while the cartel may display the occasional interneicine rivalry, everyone in the club knows that they aren't competing against each other: all they have to do is keep making less movies at more money per movie every year, and because they are the only game in town, the general public will keep watching their movies. In case you doubt that comment, apply google to the problem and take a look at the number of movies made per year and how that indicates a trend over the time period from 1920 to the present day. Cross-reference with average price per movie.
Now we get to the meat of the issue. Just as with the produced-band, hip-hop canned pap industry (otherwise known as the Recording Industry of America Association) the cartel which rules movies has seen a very worrying trend. People aren't spending as much money on movies as they used to. They're still buying the merchandise, which helps: they're still buying movies and going to see them in the cinema, but they're doing so less often. The obvious conclusion from this is they don't like the movies, or consider them (or their media) to be overpriced for the quality. This, however, is not something a cartel can admit. The cartel in question are looking for any way to maintain their profit margins: that's their job. Their profit margins are not based on quality or competition: they are the only game in town. What are their profit margins traditionally based on?
Leverage of a monopoly status. The term 'gatekeepers' is a useful one: see Jim Baen for a more developed version of this argument from the point of view of a print literature publisher. Publication of entertainment, be it books, films or music, was once an industry with a staggeringly high cost of entry. You had to be One of Us (tm) already to be able to afford to enter the industry, and if you got into it and weren't already one of us, you'd soon have enough cash that you were acceptable to the club. This high cost of entry meant that a cartel-based industry could develop without problems. Back in the day, the cartels *did* compete, but the losers got bought by the winners until pretty much all movies distributed by Hollywood today are owned