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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.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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?