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Death By DMCA
Dino writes "There's a good article in the IEEE Spectrum, titled 'Death by DMCA', which talks about how whole classes of devices were eliminated, and how others won't even see the light of day as a result of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One example is ReplayTV's TiVo-like devices which featured sharing capabilities, along with automatic ad skipping; the company was sued to bankruptcy, and the reincarnated device supported neither sharing nor ad skipping."
This is cool, I don't have to change my "subject" lines for posts any more... it's all about the entertainment industry's state of mental health.
From the article: "These new capabilities did not please Hollywood. Jamie Kellner, then CEO of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., called skipping commercials "theft" and, along with 28 entertainment companies including major movie studios and television networks--such as Disney, Paramount, Time Warner, Fox, Columbia, ABC, NBC, and CBS--sued ReplayTV for contributing to copyright infringement."
WTF? Skipping commercials is theft? FUCK YOU Jamie Kellner.... FUCK YOU TBS, FUCK YOU Disney, Paramount, Time Warner, Fox, Columbia, ABC, NBC and CBS! So, for those not using some sort of tivo-like device, if they should step out to relieve themselves, is THAT theft?
It galls that devices are being driven away from the marketplace because they're too good. And it equally galls that layer upon layer of obfuscation continues to be heaped on existing technology, to the point that when something works, my heart palpitates: is it the signal?, is it the unit?, or is the FUCKING DRM that I somehow forgot to set correctly?
Also from the article (referring to the ability to create "unencumbered digital tuners": "The entertainment companies do not like the flexibility of these home-built machines--or, more significant to them, the flexibility of the machines that consumer electronics manufacturers could offer under the current copyright law and its Betamax rule." WTF?, again?
They don't like the flexibility of these machines? I'm willing to bet somewhere in their ad campaigns they're bragging on some feature they're offering as flexible, etc. Gawd, I hate the industry.
So, technology continues to improve in quantum leaps, but the governor that is the RIAA/MPAA consortium does everything in their power to ensure technology is crippled to their whims, to enhance their power and profit.
Has anyone read Player Piano by Vonnegut? Great book... pretty good story about technology and designed obsolescence, and the collapse therein of a society... I won't give away the ending, it's worth reading.
</vent> Thanks, I feel better now.
is to actually involve yourself politically. If you just sit there and do nothing, the government/industry/lawyers will continue to infringe on your rights. Stop complaining in forums when stuff like this happens; VOTE or WRITE LETTERS or ORGANIZE A PROTEST *before* it happens and help ensure laws like this don't get passed.
Otherwise, this article reads just like any other rant on the DMCA. Honestly, why can't anyone think beyond "all your stuff should be free!" mentality. It won't work. Music is a bussiness. It will always be a bussiness. Same with movies. And software. Stop bitching when idustry chooses to fight technology rather than embrace it. Organize, make contacts in industry, lobby, tell everyone you know, VOTE! And remember:
Flaming != helping.
Flaming == counter-productive. Always.
I forget the exact quote - and the author - but someone once said that for every law that is passed there is a new business opportunity created in the black market. Fortunately, I'm close to Mexico. Place your orders here.
but they can never stop people building their own, nor can they stop people from 'loaning' their CD/DVD/Whatever to their friends. The 'sneakernet P2P' service.
All the *AA will ever manage to do is drive the sharing and fair use into a dark underground where they can never be able to find it without spending all of the money they do make. At that point, they will have to blame the loss of sales on their own crappy content, and their insane business practice of financially murdering any company that stood even half a chance of helping them find the 21st century.
Yep, so by all means, lets all work together to help the *AA find the real world, and do all our sharing underground, off the net, so they have only themselves to blame. Who knows, it might work..... NOT
Can't we just shoot them now?
Seriously, this is just one more reason to have them outlawed for monopolistic and draconian business practices. I personally don't see anything wrong with making *AA groups illegal... If enough of us vote, well, you never know...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
This is yet more evidence that we are not a democracy. These bans and discouragements are almost entirely the result of lobbying backed by big inc's with deep pockets. No citizen majority voted for these. "Silly company, voting is only for humans".
Table-ized A.I.
Here's what needs to happen: put your money where your mouth is. Set up a PAC (Political Action Committee); fund it liberally so it has a lot of clout; and let it loose after the politicians who sponsor legislations which hurt consumers. In the end, it's all a matter of money. If you people are willing to put your money where your (loud) mouths are, then you can expect change for the better. Otherwise, just bend over and take it quietly from the *AA.
EFF has its place; but it's not a PAC. You need a Consumer's PAC, with at least $10M+/year of budget, to have a serious impact.
Consider this - though the (analog) VCR was invented by Ampex, a USA corporation (now defunct I believe), not a SINGLE VCR was ever built in this country! I don't believe that there is a single motherboard or other computer part that can claim to be 100% USA made either.
We are a country of takers and users and Congress leads the pack in taking! WHEN (not if) our style of living falls flat on its face, we'll have no one but ourselves to blame!First, it hurts the end user or consumer by imposing government restrictions on how we use things that we "own". Or more to the point, we no longer own things that we buy.
It also hurts us that we don't see competition. This means higher prices, collusion, price gouging, and all the other nasties that come along with pseudo-monopolies.
We are further harmed by the lack of new jobs and opportunities. Real growth for our country is not in the 1000+ employee multinational corporations, but in the small companies employing 25 or less employees. The DMCA seriously harms innovation and prohibits companies that are more truly American companies from growing, making money, paying taxes, and employing more workers.
And we get the short end of the stick when these companies no longer need to innovate from the unnatural monopoly caused by the DMCA protects them from newer, more competent competitors. Not only do we not see the innovative, improved, products from fresher companies, we also see outdated technology from the companies that have lost the need to improve in a free market system.
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
It's called Fascism.
My question is, if this is such a big deal, what are you doing about it? If every person who was pissed off about this gave $100 to a lobby to fight it, we'd have it overturned by next week. Imagine the political power that could be brought against the MPAA/RIAA if we took our DVD/CD money and spent it on lobbyists...
(voting and writing to representatives is for wimps)
Whenever I use a VCR to record something, I really enjoy the fast forward to skip ads. In fact, I usually prefer using the VCR than watching the thing live for that very reason...
So I wonder. Does Tivo prevent you to make a fast-forward? Otherwise, wtf about this ad skipping capability... no one is gonna watch ads if they have the ability to skip them by pressing a button. No? Am wrong?
I'm not an economics major, but all the capitalists I've ever talked to seem to love the whole idea of "the market will solve". It's sort of their silver bullet to any arguement. So why don't we let the market solve? Capitalism is supposed to be dynamic. Companies have to accept changing roles and adapt to them, not fight them. Big companies have to be forced to accept that sometimes they "have to roll the hard 6" and take risks. There should be no corporate entitlement. No company is guaranteed to make money. That's what pisses me off about the RIAA and MPAA. They refuse to consider changing themselves to the world, they'd rather change the world to suit themselves. Granted, that might mean the end to $300 million production value blockbusters or fewer 1 hit wonders and more solid bands, but the world will cope, and the market can decide which model they like better.
First of all, this was a damn good article, one of the most thoughtful and thorough ones I've read in a long, long time.
Second of all, non-U.S. citizens aren't safe. The RIAA and MPAA are pushing our government to force other countries to sign their digital freedoms away in trade agreements and treaties. The article specifically deals with this issue.
Remember, the guy who released deCSS was arrested for breaking no Norweigian law. The Pirate Bay guys have had their equipment seized for breaking no Swedish law. The point is that just as the U.S. flexes its military muscles in places like Iraq, it flexes its corporate muscles in countries such as the one that you call home, wherever that may be. And as weird and hard as it may be to believe, I'm 100% sure that the government in your country is just as capable of doing the same really boneheaded stupid things that the U.S. government has done given the right (*ahem*) incentives.
So no, this is not a problem unique to the United States. Yes, the U.S. may be the worst of the lot, and yes, a lot of this foolishness has arisen primarily because of corrupt greedy U.S. organizations who don't give a flip about consumers there or anywhere else, but if you believe nothing else, believe this: This idiocy will reach you in your supposedly safe and comfortable home country unless you are vigilant and active about stopping it.
except it's not.
the point of copyright is to insure compensation, not control. Copyright does not equal property, it is only a right to be the exclusive seller. Just because you monopolize a market does not give you the right to start regulating others because you've reached the limit of what you can squeeze from your market.
if they are worried only about revenue streams, then they should be requesting levvies. they are not, theyre demanding control, and a technologically illiterate congress is giving it to them and stifling huge sectors of the free market.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Is it just me or do I hear this revolution tone more and more often ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Then I saw this story I could nearly hear Robert Heinlein saying this: There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped ,or turned back, for their private benefit.
OTA Television is not encrypted, so there is no reason to avoid television because of DMCA, yet.
Like you'd need another reason to avoid television.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The US has strong armed most trading partners into adopting similar legislation.
It's usually not quite as brass as the original.
For example, over in the UK and here in Holland it's quite common to find large advertisements for 'Region Free' DVD players. Cable and digital broadcasters sell TIVO like recorders and advertise all these things that are so useful and forbidden in the US.
A different matter is that US customs would confiscate anything that would not comply with local laws, would the importer/ retailer still try he'd be liable. The exeption is software, as it's very difficult to stop it at the border you will find US citisen using software that's only free outside of the USofA.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The point is to remove fair use loopholes. With CSS, any unencrypted copy of a DVD is prima facie evidence of the crime of circumventing a protection mechanism (created by the DMCA).
CSS is there to make MPAA thuggery legally easier as much as to prevent any copying.
Besides moaning on Slashdot about this topic, I gave $100 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2000. They're a lobby, of a sort. Our lobby. I suppose not "every person who was pissed off about this gave $100," as another poster put it, because by now, we're still wallowing in the fallout from the DCMA.
Last year, I wrote to Senator Dianne Feinstein (apparently the best California lawmaker money can buy, given that she's the progenitor, all or in part, of so much of the anti-consumer legislation we're seeing) and voiced my concerns. I got a boilerplate reply implying my concerns were without merit, and that the preservation of movies and television and recordings were of utmost importance.
So, I'm taking matters into my own hands, inasmuch as I cannot form them into more than tiny fists against the RI- and MPAA hegemonies. I am canceling my digital and premium cable services, reverting back to basic. When a commercial comes on, I already turn down the volume and go to the can. Or go for a snack. I'll be sure to buy my CDs second-hand, and I'm not buying from the iTMS any longer. (For the love of Pete, people, don't rent your music!) I have no plans to buy new video equipment; my 1989 Sony 21" Trinitron will be my last video monitor when it breaks down, because what will I be able to buy other than a DRM-hobbled flatscreen? If I buy HD-DVD or Blu-Ray equipment, it'll only be for computer storage, that is, if the rights I currently enjoy with my computer still exist. If I go to the movies, it'll be at a Century or Camera cinema instead of one belonging to AMC, because AMC sees nothing wrong with foisting commercials on my girlfriend and I after I've paid twenty bucks for us to see a film. And when the fall quarter comes along at my local community college this year, I'm digging my saxophones out of the closet and signing up for concert band. Or perhaps the local non-profit production company's pit orchestra. I probably didn't touch on everything one could do, but, you get the idea.
If enough people did all that, perhaps those such as Jamie Kellner (he of the infamous not-watching-commercials-is-stealing quote) or Thomas Hesse ("Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?") would have no alternative but to rent themselves out as urinals.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
I later heard that the charge to Comcast went to a dollar per month per subscribing home.
Is it enough money to fund an entire network without 'commercial break' advertising? Probably not, unless all those people take cuts in pay (or their operation gets outsourced).
Which to me, is an entirely viable solution. The pay scales in the TV and movie industries tend to be pretty high....
As far as OTA distribution goes, I think that is a dinosaur marketing scheme that deserves to become extinct. If technology hastens this extinction - great. I certainly object to Congress passing laws to guarantee these bozos their rents.
The business model of television is based on blind advertising - interrupting as many people as possible, with the hope that *some* are not annoyed, but instead buy. Please let me illustrate by analogy.
Imagine a freeway, where every ten minutes, you go through a toll booth, where they stop you, tell you you smell bad or have ring-around-the-collar, and ask: "would you like to buy some deodorant? Soap? Your teeth are yellow too. We have whiteners."
For some strange reason, this is drives people away from the freeway, and toward private airplanes.
At the heart of the RIAA and MPAA lobbying is the demand by the toll-booth industry that private airplanes be forced to land every ten minutes and go through the toll-booth. Those toll booths made good money, and the tool-booth industry has a right to it.
From their point of view, people should have no right to bypass the toll booth, to bypass the insults to their cleanliness or beauty, to bypass the 'opportunity' to shell out some cash.
It seems to me there are three business models working here: OTA (charging advertisers 100%), Cable / Satellite TV (charging customers 25%, charging advertisers 75%), and subscription services (Pay-per-view, iTunes, XM Radio) (charging customers 100%).
For streaming media, only subscription services make long term financial sense to me.
"Broadcast" means not knowing your audience. Anything that shifts the cost to advertisers to subsidize consumers to choose broadcasts has made the fundamental mistake of disconnecting the money paid (to advertise) from the results.
It may work today, but (barring Congressional action) in twenty years it will appear as ignorant as junk faxes.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
Agreed...I'm one of them. I'm this close --> -- to canceling my cable TV subscription because (a) I don't watch it enough to make it worthwhile and (b) I pay for erxtra channels, and yet they have commercials. Wasn't the idea behind paid content (like cable) that you paid for the channels thus no commericals? Now I'm paying for commercials. Am I missing something or has cable TV slowly evolved into a type of commercial TV that gets revenue from ads AND paid subscriptions?
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?