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The Challenges and Rewards of 'Place-Shifting'
Grooves writes "Ars Technica has an insightful look at the challenges facing place-shifting. The article talks about new European legislation that could require broadcast licensing for all place-shifting devices, and they review some of the fair use problems in the US and how they could hurt innovation." From the article: "A few cables here, a few networking adjustments there, and you can use a product like the Slingbox or the software-based Orb to watch your TV (or TiVo, or DVD player) from just about anywhere you can get a network connection, be it your office, your hotel room, or the other side of the planet. Yet what makes place-shifting devices so powerful also makes them appear very dangerous to established entertainment and media companies."
The term is *SPACE* shifting, not "place" shifting. Cripes.
Has anyone seen a law review article on this?
If I pay royalties, can I see it here?
...place shifting survives the storm.
In my opinion, my slingbox is the easiest way to watch the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica because my Mom has the only cable connection in the house, and its up there on the main floor.
Never mind that. I'm moving out soon. I just hope my sweet new invention isn't outlawed. A self-loading and self-ejecting VCR that prints mailing labels then calls a courier to get all new episodes to me anywhere in the world. Now just where am I going to find a huge cache of blank betamax tapes.
Simple solution.
Stop watching television. It works fine for me. I have no stake, whatsoever, in the outcome of issues like this. If you don't like the way something is, stop supporting it, directly or indirectly. (ala Walmart, McDonalds, Cable companies that still pipe advertising after you already pay, etc.)
Why care?
From TFA:
"When companies who don't exactly charge "minor fees" for high-speed mobile bandwidth start locking out high-bandwidth applications just so they can sell their own limited video entertainment options, something is seriously wrong."
Amen to that. These same clowns want a tiered Internet, too. Is it any wonder?
Video online is already proving to be the next big thing (think about the sitcom that was reborn via YouTube). I shudder at what idiocy the MPAA has in mind for the future.
I love how their obvious solution is to buy monopoly protection through legislation, instead of altering their business models to adapt to changing markets.
There's plenty of blank betamax tapes out there
Popcorn, peanuts, betamax tapes
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
The cable and satellite companies will almost certainly throw a fit about products like the Slingbox. Now, they are able to ensure not only that each house can its own paid-for cable connection, but also levy per-TV fees for cable/satellite box rentals. The slingbox and its ilk attach to the cable box outputs so you could use a single cable box to broadcast video to all computers in your house. Furthermore, if you disable your router's firewall and use port forwarding, you (and your friends) could get cable stations outside your home. Unlike the PVRs, which only pissed off networks that were losing ad revenue, the space-shifting devices will anger all providers of video delivery services, from Comcast to Verizon to DishTV. The service will simply have too many enemies to exist without regulation in the long term.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
This problem has been around for years and is now just taking higher profile forms. Since cable TV has been around all you need is a splitter and a friendly neighbor willing to split the bill with you to get cheaper service. Now that the technology is available to do essentially the same thing over network connections it has grabbed the attention of all the copyright organizations that have been fighting file sharing issues for years.
It seems to me that the concern here should be with the potential for people to store the data streams that are being broadcast (like a tivo located on your LAN) rather than the "place-shifting". Seriously, what is the difference between me watching a show in my bedroom v. living room and between my house and my laptop when working from a hotel with a broadband connection. If I am paying for the service I should be able to enjoy it where it is convenient and comfortable for me to do so.
thank god we have a bunch of different governments still that can't agree how to keep tabs everything
the idea that when *I* chose to privately send information to myself in a different place requires the PERMISSION of the state is completely absurd, to me. This is not what the state should be doing at all. I don't harm anyone, I pay for the service myself, and it's no one else's business what I do with information I already have (at least in my own idealistic view of the world). It seems clear actions like licensing these activities is a transparent attempt to prevent new methods of information exchange to maintain profits with outdated models.
the battle over information [access/ownership/control] will continue to get worse and worse and undermine "traditional" models of business and governments - and all of society. thinking about these issues far enough brings directly into focus questions of what 'property' and 'ownership' really mean and if humans are going to maintain the current conventions of property for very long. but that is a much longer discussion - but I'll seed with this...
we're already in a world where information is much more valuable than physical goods. the really amazing thing about information is that when we share it, we don't lose it - if fact the only way to maintain information over really long periods of time (eons) is to KEEP using it. So if all the most valuable things in the world can be copied and distributed nearly free, why do we need to own things? The answers are completely incompatible with capitalism and the current health level of most people -- but it's where we will eventually come to realize long-term stability and peace in the human race.
They can legislate all they want, but enforcing is a different issue. Just as there is no evil bit to stop terrorists, there is no bit that can be easily detected to see if someone is broadcasting media. True something could be created to detect if mpg files or other standard video files are being played, but that takes a lot of work and can be easily encrypted.
The devices they legislate could easily be identified if it comes as a box (Slingbox). The software versions will be impossible to legislate without the software creators cooperation, and without it they will have to turn to computer hardware vendors. They will need to legislate computers with capture devices and a network interface. This could be simplified by legistaling all capture devices, like how HD tv capture cards have to have the broadcast bit. The capture cards would have to encrypt it to something only a licensed software product could read (and of course the encryption would eventually be broken). This encrypting could be worked around with a video/audio capture program because you have to play it somewhere for a capture device to be useful, but this would be a huge deterrent.
My two cents: Accept the reality that it is. Crack down on pirates (unlicensed distributers of copyrighted materials), but let people who just want to watch something they've legally recorded anywhere they want.
Sure, I don't watch TV either -- I watch DVDs of TV shows I want to see. None the less, letting the media companies rape and pillage the TV watching public sets a bad precedent for preserving the other fair use provisions that you might be interested in.
When I encounter a television, I make haste to shift my place. And I carry a can of insect repellant for in case I meet an American. It's a challenging world out there, and to survive one must be well prepared.
Seriously, with a fast LAN or WAN, I can remote desktop to my main computer and watch TV channels using its onboard TV tuner (it works decently with a reasonably sized window, i.e. not TOO big, on my LAN). This is a slippery slope, do they want to legislate remote desktop or VNC as well as 'place-shifters'?
Under fair use, you cannot tell me that I can not view something that I have paid for. In the same way it is not illegal to back up your CDs and store them on your computer in MP3 format. (Even if sony tries to make it difficult) The problem is the sharing.
Only one connection allowed solves this problem.
Its simple when the problem is just you sending *you* your own stuff... but in this case, you could be sending out a signal for *others* using the same equipment, which cuts profits and gets peoples panties in a bundle. And if the security on your network is lax like most of the wireless routers in the US, *you* could be giving *me* free TV and not even know it.
That is all Big Brother is worried about... that and screwing the common citizen out of a few more bucks, but that's another rant altogether.
Your argument is naive.
Consider the analogous case of DVD pirating. Sure, it is not possible to prevent all DVD pirating but there is a big different to the level of DVD piracy that occurs in the U.S. compared with what happens in the 3rd world (e.g. Russian, China).
The point of legislating slingbox out of existence is that many fewer people will be doing space shifting than would if the slingbox appliance was available to the purchasing public at large.
If outlawing activity X reduces the occurence of activity X by 50% and the media companies don't have to bear much of the cost of enforcing the law then this is a win for them even if 10 million people are still doing activity X.
By your reasoning there is no point in existing laws making murder illegal since these laws have not reduced the incidence of murder to 0 occurences a year.
Space or Place Shifting is chaning the viewing location compared to the location that it is being received. Slingbox and others allow you to watch content over IP, regardless if your source is downstairs on your main TV or if it is a pal overseas who gets BBC.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
It is funny how corporations which are in bed with state prance about singing free trade, hang out at the WTO, so long as it is free trade for their supplies and inputs.
When it comes down to consumers getting rid of articficial territories, eg region coding dvd - these were only done so they could price discriminate, place shifting etc they run back from free trade into the arms of the state for regulations.
You will never get consistency when the state is concerned.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
Anyone else read that as "Place Sniffing"? I need a vacation.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Seems like most of the modded up posts are political; I'm surprised that no one has commented on the fact that WindowsCE is required for the SlingPlayer mobile (which, IMHO, would be the easiest setup for a non-technical person like myself)...
Rishi Chopra
www.rishichopra.org
Just like I can invite my neighbor upstairs to mosey on down and watch my cable TV, I can also invite him to SSH in and stream whatever I can capture live with my devices. There's no way to prevent that unless you allow the government to come in and regulate what I can and cannot do on my own LAN in my own home. I can thwart this easily with encryption. The only thing that will stop me from sharing my data is if I cannot buy hardware that will let me do what I want. At that point, I quit buying altogether. The media and distribution cartels would love to control the hardware, but guess what? If you make it so I can't keep a copy of what I watch on TV, I'lll quit subscribing to your service. Anyone who wants to control how culture and media spread between individuals can go fuck themselves. I don't need their content and I won't pay for it. And I won't buy hardware that constrains my fair use.
The media cartels can have the sheeple and their money. There will always be a significant chunk of people who don't mind missing out on the garbage they distribute. Bring it on, the broadcast flag, the HDMI ports, the DRM, all of it. There's nothing really compelling on TV anymore anyway.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Time for some fun kids....
use vlc (www.videolan.org) to watch AND at the same time stream a TV channel from your TV card equipped computer (winderz or linux) to your IP address. Then tell your best friends to also download vlc and have them "Open Network Stream" pointing to your IP address where they can then watch the TV channel stream AND at the same time stream it out to their IP address where THEIR best friends download vlc to watch the stream and forward....
keep going until everyone in the world downloads vlc, watches and "forwards" the TV stream.
vlc kicks ass!!!
slingbox sucks cuz you need a special proprietary program/codecs to view the stream. vlc uses industry standards. And it's Open Source. Runs on a lot of platforms.
The article claims that "despite the fact that their recent firmware significantly improved their product's performance."
... NO.
Err
I, and others, have clearly seen that with the newest beta - the one with encryption - the image quality is in fact worse. Previous beta did allow faster, and thus better, streaming on the LAN, but, that is not the case with the most recent firmware.
Also, I ca no longer record MY security camera streams. How is this helping me, as the content producer, copyright holder?
I know an actual hippie who lives "off grid" with a bizarre assortment of solar, wind, marine batteries, inverters, and 12v appliances. He also has an electric guitar that runs on his hippie-power.
Man, you really need that seminar!
If we ban hurricanes, only criminals will have them.
"...a cable subscriber in San Francisco who watches a Giants baseball game from his or her laptop during a visit to Chicago is stealing from the Chicago cable operator who paid to transmit MLB games in that city."
I really don't get the MLB guy's argument that I'm stealing from the guy in Chicago. Does he expect me to pay some cable operator in Chicago to watch one game while I'm visiting? If the game is playing in a bar I could just watch it free, and my watching it doesn't add to their revenues.
The only way this makes sense is if they can sell me the rights to watch the game while I'm travelling over the web or PPV. But I've already bought the right to watch the game in SF... I paid for access to the *content*. THats where the difference in thinking is - Buisness wants me to pay for the content on a particular delivery system or a different media. Wouldn't it be just wonderful if they could charge you $5 for content on your iPod and $10 if you want your game streamed over the web to your laptop in your Chicago hotel room, $15 if you want a DVD of it.
But the whole point is irrespective of what the content I paid for is its still just data and if you put data and a computer and a network together then you are simply not going to be able to keep control over it...unless you can control what users can do with their computers and what what networks can do. Out of curiostiy whats happening with network neutrality and does anyone remember that Trusted computing/TCPA/Palladium thing...
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Simple solution.
Stop watching television. It works fine for me.
Heh. What a stupid idea. It's like saying that if you don't like the way your government works or the choice of candidates then stop voting. RIDICULOUS. That is letting the inmates run the asylum.
I rarely watch TV myself...I HAVE a TV but I tend to watch either rented DVDs or the news channels. As such I have little stake in the debate either. Thing is, there is a larger issue at stake here. By taking your apathetic stance you are giving tacit approval to the industry for its immoral behaviour. The entertainment industry is trying to create an artificial industry that relies on a contrived set of legislation so they can be lazy and keep doing business like they have for a century.
The entire entertainment industry is perverting intellectual property law. Patents and copyrights were meant to protect and promote innovation, and now they all seem to think such law is meant to protect the status quo and STOP innovation. This is ridiculous. Imagine if typewriter companies managed to make word processing software illegal, book publishers managed to make the photocopier illegal, RIAA or MPAA succeeded in outlawing the Record button on cassette or VCR decks illegal.
The whole reason the entertainment industry could work with its now-antiquated business model was becasue technology didn't exist to broadcast peer-to-peer or on-demand or across the globe, so big central distributors were essential. We first got communications sattelites, then videotape, fibre-optics, digital encoding/decoding, high-bandwidth global networks and now peer-to-peer technology, and all along they stuck to the crusty old business model and remarkably managed to get away with getting into government's pockets--and with their help they set up artificial, contrived business models and markets in order to maintain their obscene profits.
Don't you think in this day and age it is stupid to release a movie in the US first, then Canada a few days later, then the UK and Australia a few weeks later, all in theatres, then on DVD months after that in the same staggered fashion, when NOTHING technically prevents simultaneous release? (I mean they are all English speaking markets so even language isn't even a barrier!). The whole thing runs on protectionist laws, exclusivity contracts, captive markets, etc. to the point of absurdity.
That would be tolerable to a degree if it was limited to the Hollywood industry, but it isn't. Other lobbyists are seeing their success and are starting to try to emulate it. Witness unscrupulous "submarine patent" companies that are abusing patent law the way Disney abused "mickey mouse law" copyright--lobbying to extend the law to protect monopolies and abusing the system as it already exists. Now tech companies are even getting into copyright games themselves. The thought that a printer company could use DMCA COPYRIGHT law to even try to legislate a captive market for its printer consumables is absurd--if they succeeded it would be tragic.
So you can't just stop watching TV becasue, firstly, too many people couldn't bear to lead such a bland life as one without TV AND music AND movies AND professional sporting events etc. so it'll always be worth the effort for Hollywood to stifle innovation. Secondly it is false that you do not have a stake in this EVERYBODY has a stake in this because Hollywood is setting the stage to turn the economy into a bunch of coddled, corporate welfare cases without regard to the quality of life of society in general.
I started with a 1.33GHz Athlon, and:
- bought a $110 Hauppauge PVR-350 card from Amazon,
- threw in 512Mb ram, and an 80Gb hdd I had laying around,
- downloaded and burnt the open-source software to CD,
- set up a free schedule-downloading account at Zap2it,
- plugged in the cable, rebooted...
...and 30 minutes later I was recording shows! I've since upgraded to twin 320Gb drives, added a 2nd PVR-350 hardware capture card, plus a 40Gb boot drive.I'll never go back to a VCR. Well, actually there are some old educational videos...;-)
I, for one, am in favour of place-shifting. I learned that trick a couple of years ago - it was tough, and the classes at the teleportation school cost me a pretty penny, but it sure beats the morning commute!
Another area where this is also getting interesting is with space-shifting and ringtones. Companies like http://www.tonethis.com/, allow you take music you own and convert it into a ringtone - sounds a lot like Betamax to me. EFF predicted this would be an area that may blow-up this yr or the next.
He wants you to pay a fee to watch that one game in Chicago. Now if you're watching it on Chicago cable, you're not watching it on SF cable. In aggergate, services provided cancel out the services forgone and it's a wash.
Perhaps the SF cable company should provide a discount, or forward part of your cable payment to the Chicago company in proportion to how much TV you watched in each place. Or hey, why not set up something like the phone system where every system that processes the content you watched gets a cut.
All of these set-ups show the extreme idiocy property systems can produce if allowed to go to far - like the apartment doors in Philip K. Dick's Ubik that charge users a nickle to open them. Transaction costs go through the roof. Incumbents, however, are protected because the high infrastructure costs discourage competition.
Think of the slingbox as a coax extension. If I run coax to my kitchen and leave the cable receiver where it is, is that a "copyright violation?" (you mean infringement, you boob! a network exec ought to know better. Copy protection and DMCA are copyright violations because a copyright is a temporary monopoly and there are fair use exceptions to copyright law) No? Good answer.
Now, what if I extend that coax a little further out into a garage, or the back yard? is that a "copyright violation?" No? Good answer.
Now, say I am housesitting for a neighbor my neighbor does not have cable, but I want to watch cable TV I pay for. I add 50' more to that cable, keeping it attached to my own television, When I leave that cable is disconnected. Is that a "copyright violation?" No? Good answer.
Now, say I connect the cable receiver to an appliance which acts as a virtual coax cable (let's say it's made of pixie dust). This virtual coax cable allows only ONE connection at any given moment, and since I pay for the cable, I want to watch it and not get bumped out by some freeloader, so I keep the credentials to access it to myself. Now, I'm in my backyard connected to that virtual cable by the virtue of WiFi. Is that a "copyright violation?" No? Very good.
Now, what if I take that "virtual coax" to my office, and use my work PC as the television. Is that a "copyright violation?" No? Very good.
You now agree that the slingbox is NOT a tool copyright infringement. By the way, even if it were a tool which could facilitate copyright infringement, too farking bad because legitimate stated uses indicate it is primarily designed for non-infringing uses, and it is single-user (as designed anyhow).
I am so fucking sick of media companies screaming "OMFG the sky is falling!! The sky is falling!!" every fucking time new technology comes out, all the while posting record revenues. Assholes. I'm almost mad enough to cancel my HBO subscription.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yet what makes place-shifting devices so powerful also makes them appear very dangerous to established entertainment and media companies.
So who cares. I wouldn't shed a tear if the whole corrupt entertainment "industry" vanished from the face of the Earth. Sure, they have some value, but that value is not worth the sacrifices they wish us to accept in order to guarantee their cash flow. The truth of the matter is that all incumbent industries, large and small, face threats from change, from the new. They just do, and nothing will change that unless these corrupt, greed-ridden fools manage to halt progress entirely.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Record it on Tivo, then play it back on a portable player wherever you like.
Then you have both space and time shifting (spacetime shifting).
"Dude, you're comparing technology licensing issues to genocide?"
You must be new here.
To enforce their well paid for rights and privileges, without upsetting folks, I suggest they send a young actress, say Scarlett Johansenn, to stick around like glue and make sure I don't copy anything.
I need to add to this; I've quitted my cable subscription as Belgian more than 5years ago. My Internet connection is through the company which means I don't need the artificial limited cablemodem subscription either. This saves me a lot of money; but; the reason I did this is because:
(Goatse sometimes looks sexy compared to them).
(Been there; done that; tried it with my ex and we've been nowhere than 90 euro burning in our pockets...)
I've found another way to bridge "my need". I need to work at night; I sit with the laptop on my bed or sofa and while I check out some things I can start a movie when I want; I put in the DVD disk and it just works. I've also got a Mediaplayer 35"; which I put all my good DVD's on.
I didn't feel very restricted by then; I cancelled cable; I've got richer. I've bought DVD's; mostly I wait till they are cheap (don't need the extras if they are worth crap); I got poorer; but it was more or less in balance. Now; still; DVD's are being artificially kept high in price and some even low in quality. This balance is going to break more-or-less if Blueray or any other implementation with more restrictive DRM will be adopted worldwide by customers. I am getting even more restricted by law to rip my DVD's to be used to my own Mediaplayer 35" which protects my investment of DVD's. What's up with that? Add to this; some DVD's are LOADED with 5 to 7 commercials before hand you NEED TO SEE over and over (sigh)...
it doesn't only end with limiting the customer in what he can do with it; but also what gets offered....
irl example: I've bought a DVD player (Hoher) at FNAC; local book/electronics/media store here in Antwerpen; it was broken after 7 months. I've never received the invoice by mail, didn't check either especially for the 70 euro; I could use it to test the DVDs of my customers with and I could view movies on it. That player broke; I brought it back; the store is being unfair that I bought it in another affiliate of them (which is total crap; I still know where I buy my stuff not?!?) and they are unable to repair without invoice. short end: Customer f*cked.
This trend; cheaper electronics, cheaper dvd's also has it's own pros and cons. The con is; the customer will always be more screwed instead of the supplier. Combine this with the super-restrictions these media companies are putting on us; putting all customers again in a sandbox to only play with the toys available IN THAT BOX and the future doesn't look very bright; or maybe very blonde?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..