Slashdot Mirror
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.
...when is somebody going to call the RIAA and MPAA out on RICO charges?
Either that, or disband them by force - let them be first against the wall when the revolution comes!
For the moment, DRM and all of its related ridiculousness is the concern of geeks. We're the ones who are informed about the problems with DRM and the slippery slope that it's sent us down.
If things continue to get worse (and there's no reason to believe they won't), it will get to the point where the general public will no longer line XYZ Company's pockets. And when you hit the bottom line, you suddenly start speaking that company's language.
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.
It was never about piracy. Domestic/consumer level piracy is so minor as to not make a difference in their bottom line. The real media pirates are the overseas DVD pressing plants that press legal DVDs by day and bootleg DVDs by night.
This is about controlling what you watch and how you watch it. It's about protecting their advertising revenue. It' about making you buy a new copy of your favorite content every time they change formats.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The most tell-tale part:
In 2003, 321 Studios, of St. Charles, Mo., launched a software product called DVD X Copy for these more typical DVD owners. The company built in aggressive measures to prevent piracy, including an antipiracy splash screen that appeared when viewing any copy and watermarks that would enable copies to be traced back to those who made them. The management at 321 Studios hoped that these cooperative measures would stave off Hollywood's wrath.
The company was wrong. Before the DMCA, 321 Studios would have been on relatively safe legal ground. From the time of the Betamax case, U.S. courts had made it clear that copying devices were legal so long as they had any substantial lawful use. But the DMCA changed the rules. When the movie studios sued 321 Studios, the Hollywood contingent did not argue that any of their movies had been unlawfully copied. Instead, it said that the product circumvented a "technical protection measure," which in this case was the Content Scramble System (CSS) on DVDs.
The CSS is the scheme Hollywood uses to encrypt movies on DVDs. Decryption requires a key, which manufacturers of DVD players obtain by signing a license with the DVD Copy Control Association, a consortium of movie studios, including Fox and Warner, and technology providers, such as Intel and Toshiba. This license, in turn, forbids licensed devices from making digital copies of DVD content or from offering playback modes that the studios disapprove of. (DVD recorders can copy only unencrypted digital material, such as home movies.) The licensing rules and DMCA put companies like 321 Studios in a quandary. If they signed the license in order to obtain the CSS decryption keys, the document prohibited them from using those keys in software capable of copying a DVD. If they didn't sign the license and forged ahead anyway, deriving the CSS keys on their own, they risked prosecution or a civil suit under the DMCA for circumventing the CSS. After consideration, 321 Studios opted to go forward without a license. The DMCA quickly washed away DVD X Copy. After the movie studios prevailed in court in 2004, manufacturers pulled DVD X Copy and similar ripping tools off the U.S. market.
By eliminating free trade.
... well, what exactly? In Communism, The Party decided what's good for you. What do you call a market where the producer, and him alone, dictates what you can and may buy?
Given the choice, the customer would buy the "better" product. The "better" product, for the customer, would of course be the one that offers him more liberty.
Now, devices that do that will vanish from the market because their companies are sued into oblivion. Result: Only crap can survive.
The customer is left out of the loop, as the deciding mechanism which items should survive on the market, which is actually his responsibility and role in a free market.
Free trade is dead. Welcome to the world of
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
I keep saying we need to form GeekPAC, a so-called Political Action Committee (AKA "trade organization") to help counter the big lobbying from deep-pocket companies. Geekpac would also promote open source, reduce software patents, and make companies scientifically justify "shortage" before importing more H-1B's. If we don't protect our political ass, nobody will.
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!Olson was puzzled why economic growth was faster in the South, after it lost the civil war, and also why France in the 19c after having had three or four revolutions and two catastrophic war time defeats had grown faster than Britain under stable rule. He concluded and showed that long periods of stability allow vested interests to accumulate anti competitive practices which enrich them at the expense of the whole.
We are looking at a classic example of this. Consider those who profit from the DMCA. Olson's insight was that it is in their interests to impose costs on society as a whole which are many times, maybe 100s of times, greater than what they themselves receive, as long as what they receive is more than they otherwise would.
Let interest groups carry on behaving like this for year after year, and gradually the costs imposed on society become so great that economic growth slows or stops totally.
Then, only a dramatic structural change, abolition of the accretions, will help. The good news is, it helps dramatically.
In an ideal world, the various Federal Agencies would counterbalance such interests, because they, being nominated by people elected on a broader basis, will have it in their interests to represent the country as a whole. However, special interests are ingenious and find ways through, and this only works by fits and starts.
It can be done. Thatcher did it in the UK. Democracies can do it, when they see the need. This is the good news, the bad news is, it has to get pretty bad first!
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)
Nope, it's called more properly Corporatism.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Really,
Microsoft still is evil, and I know that they happily jumped into the DRM wagon too. But when I compare today's news with the past I get a chill. Our rights are being ripped in a astonishing fast pace, and hollywood is suceeding in making things that even Microsoft never dreamed off.
The sad part is that they are likely to succeed; The average people don't understand the ramifications of those laws, and when they question their representatives, they are easily convinced by some crappy explanation in the line that this kind of laws helps to prevent terrorism, or save americans jobs or something like that.
But the truth is that RIAA are a threat to capitalism and free market. They are blocking inovation, subverting the law, and turning law-abiding citizens into criminals without they even knowing that.
We have to stop them. Know! Maybe it's time for another Boston Tea's party.
Your ad could be here!
As a consumer I prefer flexibility. The more options I have for using a purchase the more likely I am to buy it. In what other industry exists the mentality that the more restrictions that are placed on products the better off the industry will be? Imagine if you could only buy a particular brand and style of shoes to go with a particular brand and style of suit or a particular brand and size of nails to use with a particular make of hammer.
Everything that the entertainment industry is suggesting is causing me to think more and more about what my options will be for circumventing restrictions so that I may "enjoy" music and video in the manner I desire. It scares me when I stop to think that I am trying to devise ways to break the law.
Be that as it may I have no doubt that as greater restrictions are placed on what I legally acquire in both media and electronics I will buy fewer legitimate products and put my resources elsewhere.
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.
http://www.ipaction.org/
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Now I can sleep well in the evening knowing that after a day full of downloading copyrighted music and movies, not paying a cent for them and still making copies of what turns out not to be junk to give to my friends ... I'm doing my role to make this world a better place to live.
Next thing you know, they're going to make microwaves illegal so I can't get up and make popcorn during the commercials.
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!!
And those are illegal in the United States.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Funding lobby organisations (i.e. to buy lobby politicians)? Voting differently? Sending letters, phoning them? Rioting?
Forget it. It doesn't work. One thing works: stop buying and suffocate them. They are nothing without money. Money gave them power, no money, no power.
There's a mountain of evidence anyone could easily understand about how MPAA and RIAA make our life worse and are detrimental to our society.
We need people with marketing experience to help us pick out the major pain points MPAA/RIAA have created in the last years and bring them to the society in an easy to understand manner.
We need to spread the information to the casual folks so they know, and stop funding MPAA/RIAA, by not buying their products. We have to clearly point out the companies behind MPAA/RIAA, they should not be left anonymous.
I'm willing to participate if someone can organise a campaign with web dev/graphics & print design. Yup, I'm actually willing to do something. Anyone else?
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."
Never read anything by Vonnegut, but I'll look that one up...
Anyway, I have no confidence in PAC's, lobbyist, or letter writing campaigns. They (MPAA members) need to feel some pain.
If you buy a CD, DVD, or go to a movie you are supporting these bastards. Just stop, and tell everyone you know that you've done so.
For myself, until BOTH the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension are repealed, they'll not get a dime from me; I will cost them money at every opportunity. I'm not interested in giving money to PAC's or lobbyist. I'm interested in seeing a real backlash against Hollywood for BRIBING my elected representatives into passing these laws in the first place. Success can be claimed only when Hollywood "itself" cries mercy and asks Congress to repeal these laws.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
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.
I don't think SonicBlue actually went into bankruptcy, and its ReplayTV product was purchased by Digital Networks North America Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of D&M Holdings U.S., Inc. They own things like the Denon, Marantz, and Boston Acoustics brands as well as Rio and ReplayTV.
SonicBlue 5000-series models supported internet and local program sharing and both manual (Show/Nav) and automatic commercial skipping as well as a 30-second FF button (QuickSkip). The commercial skipping features navigate between marks which are created at the start and end of commercial advertising blocks that the unit detects and marks at show recording time (it isn't just a simple time skip). Those units still perform as they did when initially purchased.
Current 5500-series models still mark commercial blockss while recording and still fully support both Show/Nav (manual movement between block markers) and QuickSkip, so manual commercial skipping and the 30-second FF is still present, but the automatic commercial skip has been removed. Also, the internet sharing capabilities were removed.
I believe a 5500-series ReplayTV can be made to temporarily regain both automatic commercial skipping and internet sharing capabilities if the disk is reimaged with a 5000-series formatted disk, but I can't personally vouch for that (I own a 5000-series box myself).
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
How to translate this into the US system? Well, let's start with PBS, as that is the only public broadcasting service the US has. To be on-par, PBS would need to eliminate the sponsorship system, eliminate the adverts, get better backing from Government, broaden the content, improve the quality of productions to modern cinematic standards (documentaries shouldn't have the 1930s Pathe Newsreel feel to them), and carry out independent work (history should not be read from a textbook, and news should not be read from AP bulletins).
Next come the existing openly subscriber channels and pay-per-view. These should, really, be reaping the full cost of everything (plus profit) from the material they sell. If they don't, then the material is either grossly undervalued or grossly inferior. People are generally happy to pay for things that are worth the cost to them, so either the pricing is incorrect or the material is. Or both.
Finally, the "free" advert-laden channels. In the end, adverts cost the producers of the advertised material money. This money will end up being added to the cost of goods. Since the cost of material doesn't depend on who is paying for it, this will work out to be comparable to any of the subscriber channel costs. Only, you're paying for it whether you watch those channels or not! It's a tax on goods, going through the corporations rather than through Government, but it's still a tax. Since it is a tax, why not have it collected by the people collecting taxes anyway? It won't change how much you end up paying for your cost of living, but it will add about 15-20 minutes of material to every show, increasing the value of watching them.
(If you're going to pay $X extra because of an invisible sales tax created by advertising, it makes no difference to you in your overall costs if - instead - those same goods were $X cheaper and you had an $X flat tax to cover broadcasting in that area. $X - $X = 0.)
Actually, that's not totally correct. Those in adverts get paid royalties for every time the advert is shown. This costs the advertisers more, which they'll defray by making you pay for it by more expensive goods. This will not be exactly the same as the increase in production costs by making shows 15 minutes longer. In some cases, the cost of the adverts will be more. In other cases, the cost of the shows will be more. You would need to quantify this, to prove conclusively that the BBC model of the license fee would work in these cases. My suspicion is that you'll find that the license fee is indeed the superior model, but in either case, the difference has to be insignificant as none of the other costs for those channels is going to vary.
(You asked for an alternative model. You didn't ask for one Americans would stomach. I know perfectly well that even if every household in America saved hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year from a license model, and even if it meant program quality skyrocketted far beyond the wildest imaginings of anyone alive today, you'd be risking an armed uprising before Americans would consider a new overt tax from Government, no matter how covertly they were being taxed by corporations already.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
He got rid of a bunch of very obnoxious yes-men in a very satisfying way.
You seem to remember that Canute commanded the tides to stop and have taken that as an example of a ruler out of touch with reality. The folks who think it is their job to stifle technological progress in order to preserve their employer's profits may be disconnected from reality. (However there is more than one reality - I cite the leadership of North Korea, Iran, and Cuba as examples)
But back to the misremembered monarch. In a nutshell, Canute had a bunch of fawning sycophants that irritated the hell out of him. He manuvered them into asserting that he was such a powerful King that he could command the tides to stop and the tides wouild obey him. In the time it takes you to say "Beach Blanket Bondage", he had those little twits staked out on the beach at low tide. He commanded the tides to stop. I do not recall if he sent condolences to the surviving family members or not. More likely he would have had them removed from the gene pool as well - it would be the only prudent thing to do.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
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!"
You can boycott the companies that are promoting those luddite acts or vote against Reps and Senators, that are on their payroll:
"In an attempt to put an end to all that, Hollywood has drafted the Digital Transition Content Security Act, introduced as H.R. 4569 in December 2005 by Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). This legislation, better known as the Analog Hole Bill, would impose a design mandate on any "analog video input device that converts into digital form an analog video signal.""
The RIAA is urging the FCC and Congress to impose design restrictions on any future HD Radio recorders to stave off a successful new mutation: a digital hard disk recorder that allows easy and flexible archiving of radio broadcasts. As similar devices have appeared for satellite radio, the recording industry has also begun pushing for legislation to restrict them, such as S. 2644, the Platform Equity and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act of 2006, introduced by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.).
Hollywood lobbyists actually convinced the FCC to impose broadcast flag regulations in 2003, but a U.S. Court of Appeals found that the Commission lacked the authority to regulate the internal workings of televisions. Hollywood is now asking Congress to give the FCC that legal authority by passing the Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006, sponsored by Rep. Michael Ferguson (R-N.J.)."
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
if you go to thepiratebay, you'll see that the title says "The Police Bay", and the front image has the hollywood letters being attacked by the pirate ship's cannon, YARRRRRrrrr :)
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.
Ahh you just need to keep in mind that the whole goal of the DMCA is to enrichen the.. oh wait that's not it.
encourage innovation. Ya that's it. Help make new technologies flourish, like um.. this one they're crushing now.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Wikileaks, no DNS
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?
You don't want your future to be full of crippleware and DRM implants that doesn't let you blink durng comercials then don't buy into those products.
People are nuts for ipods, but for a few bucks less they can buy a very nice PDA that does everything an ipod does and a whole lot more, include not getting easily scratched.
Stop buying crippleware that locks you out of 90% of what the technology is capable of. Don't buy Sony or Disney DVD's since both have figured out how to defeat DVD ripping software.
Don't buy online music from the majors unless it is DRM free.
Certainly don't buy into the happy horse shit that is HD-DVD and Blue-ray and send a message that the consumers don't want to be jerked around along with the bastard children that CDR and DVDR media turned out to be. How many formats are there now and how often do you have compatability problems with various players and recorders.
Do rent movies instead of buying them. Quit giving them the extra $16, or aleast trade them around to others. How many times are you really going to watch most movies.
Do buy extra harddrives and rip all your DVD's to them with all the command locked comercials, legal threats, extras (crap) removed
Do insist on companies releasing acurate game demos before you buy and non-restrictive/invasive online activation schemes
Do insist that your hardware belong to you and be general so it can be used to do about anything.
So, turning off your TV set during the ads is theft as well?
What about closing your eyes and covering your ears during the ads? Can I be called a thief for that?
And isn't theft (agains us this time) to put ads in 50% of cable TV time, which we are already paying for?!?!?
Thanks for the audience. I'll be here all the week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
So say we all