Pact Not to Use Image Constraint Token Until 2010?

Devlin C. writes "Ars Technica reports that many major movie studios and several consumer electronics companies have an unofficial pact not to use the controversial Image Constraint Token in movies until at least 2010, presumably in an effort to spur early adoption. As the article at Ars notes, this would explain why both the low-end PS3 and the Xbox360 lack HDMI. The companies think it's not necessary to have right now, and they would rather shave costs than sell future-proof hardware."

Comments

There's a point to be made

[elronxenu]

This is why it's important to not buy DRM-crippled hardware NOW, even if there is presently a workaround available.

Re:There's a point to be made

[droopycom]

Please go educate the masses of "average consumer".

I'll bet 90% of people of buy DVDs dont know what DRM is or what it does to them.

Consumers are just that: they consume. They buy. If the first gen DVD doesnt work anymore because HDMI, they'll just buy another one...

In a country where people pay $100 a month for premium cable, and where the main reason people buy HDTVs is Live Sporting Event, I dont think DRM will matter.

As long as Marketing is good - and the Americans are freaking good at Marketing - they'll just pay, thats just the way it works. Good luck changing that.

This will get people hooked

[badfish99]

Classic tactics. Get people hooked on a product they like, then the price goes up in 2010.

That's how the drug dealers round here work, and they're making good money. Should work for the movie industry too.

They'll be hoping that, by 2010, there won't be any of the old non-DRM hardware still in use.

Re:The other thing is..

[cgenman]

I remember back during the DVD John DeCess trial the lawyers were having a field day describing to the press the amount of damage he may have done. They bandied about numbers in the ten figures and above. And how this facilitates organized crime.

However, bootleg DVD's were on sale on the streets of NY long before the encryption was cracked. How? Simple. They just made a bitwise copy. They copied everything, copyprotection included, so it ran perfectly fine.

If nothing else, DeCss was just there to ensure that device manufacturers paid their fees. I assume HDMI is there for a similar reason.

Business as usual

[Aceticon]

The main objectives for movie companies with the new digital distribution formats and HDMI are:
1) Get consumers to re-buy their whole movie collection again in a new format
2) Move all or at least the vast majority of their movie sales for home use to a beter protected format so as to defend themselfs from what they currently percieve as their main competition - sharing of movies via the Internet.
3) Monitize or increase their profits in existing markets (for example: video/DVD rentals) and open new markets (internet distribution) while maintaining or extending their ability to control prices.
4) Increase their share of movie publishing.

DRM is the chosen mechanism by which movie publishers aim to remotelly control, enforce and even change (if an internet connection is available) any rules of their choice on the allowed uses of the movies contained on the media that consumers aquire.

Businesses being businesses, they will naturally use those remote control abilities (pun not intended) to maximize their profits - given their behaviour up to now, this will most likelly include maximizing the amount that consumers pay, up to and including pay-per-single-view.

At the same time, the bigguest part of the movie industry (as measured by sales and also, quite likelly, by lobbying power) consists of old-style, long existing, entrenched businesses - they are aiming to remain dominant beyond the next 5 years and certainly have long term strategies in place to ensure that it will be so.

It is clear to all that, before they can achieve their objectives, massive user adoption of DRM supporting hardware is necessary. Assuming that the main players in the movie industry are indeed engaged in a plan which is only expected to give fruit in a medium to long (5+ years) term, it's hardly surprising that they will start by visibly refraining from exercising the remote control that the newest DRM hardware allows them, if they believe that this will accelerate the transition from the current generation of hardware to the new (strong DRM enabled) generation of hardware.

It should also be pretty obvious, that since they haven't actually signed any contract with any consumers by which they [movie publishers] are obliged to not enable their DRM, this announcement of theirs still leaves open to them the possibility to, at any time and with no penalty to them, change their minds if they believe that the market penetration of the newest DRM enable hardware has passed the point beyond which said hardware has become the de facto standard.

In other words, their promises are as worthless as the paper they are written in.

Re:Console wars are silly

[interiot]

The $500 PS3 looks reasonable if you want a Blu-ray drive . It still doesn't look reasonable next to the $350-400 Xbox 360 (which also promises to be a "complete media center", in case that's what people buy consoles for these days), and it doesn't look reasonable next to the $300 PS2 (which also shipped with Linux).

But yes, regardless of the details, if Sony had been more plain-spoken and not appeared to be arrogant, they probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much ill-will as they did.

They've planned for this already.

[Kadin2048]

I think you woefully overestimate the intelligence and market sway of the average consumer.

What the whole ICT issue is going to do is create an extra upgrade cycle: everybody will get on the HD bandwagon now, and in a few years they'll roll out HDCP, and in order to watch new content, people will get new televisions.

This works well for the electronics manufacturers, because they get another shot at replacing a good chunk of the public's equipment in a few years, and although it slows the studios getting total content control by a few years, they'll still get what they want in the end.

Particularly because I don't expect the MPAA et al. to be idle in the meantime before the ICT rollout. On the contrary: I suspect they'll be watching the non-HDCP HD rollout very closely, and tallying up ridiculous numbers of dollars lost to "piracy" and "home copying", so that when HDCP comes, it won't just come from the studios, it'll have the full weight of Congress behind it.