Who Controls Your Television?

Nurgled writes "The EFF, reportedly the only consumer rights organization to be granted membership of the Digital Video Broadcasting consortium, reports that TV and movie industry representatives have been pushing for DRM in the DVB technologies. This in itself is not entirely unexpected, but these talks have been going on in closed meetings. The EFF itself has been blocked from reporting on this until now as a condition of being allowed to attend. The proposed technologies allow rights-holders and broadcasters to severely hamper your ability to make use of broadcast television content, including the ability to retroactively blacklist any devices that consumers may already own that act in ways undesirable to the rights-holder or broadcaster. The EFF concludes that public interest and consumer rights advocates must fight back."

Comments

They may try and control the content, but...

[the_rajah]

I control the "OFF" switch. TV is less and less important to me with each passing day.

Re:They may try and control the content, but...

[cyberscan]

I can always get my conte3nt through DSL. I see more entertainment on You Tube and other video sites in one hour than I do all week on cartel TV. If the cartels get their technical standard shoved down our throats, it won't affect me. I will cancel my basic satellite subscription, and get other do do the same. Our votes at the polls on election days matter very little. However, our votes with our dollars matter greatly. I used to buy plenty of CD's and DVD's before the **AA's started their lawsuits. Since then, I have bought very little and even cancelled all of the "premium" channels offer by my satellite provider.

Is this something that has to be fought?

[NDPTAL85]

Why not let the market take care of it? If these overly restrictive DRM terms turn off enough people then the market itself will force these companies to open up their systems more. Why is this something we need to fight? If these DRM terms do NOT lead to lower sales then it reflects the people don't really care about their media being free in the first place.

Is this a case of "fair use" activists trying to genuinely protect our rights or perhaps thinking they speak for everyone when they really don't?

Which is it?

Re:retroactive

[voice_of_all_reason]

Um, it's even worse than you think.

They mean to blacklist devices that do not support DRM. Eventually your cable company would have to turn off your signal under penalty of law and tell you that they are not allowed to serve a customer that is using a device which allows recording.

Not only would the act be illegal, but allowing the act to be possible would also be

Don't complain - just do

[registrations_suck]

Complaints about this kind of stuff are ridiculous. It's like the complaints about Walmart. Sure, people complain before it comes to down, but then they shop there anyway. You know, if no one shops there, they will not be there for very long. Same thing with content. If the terms of use are so bad, then do not use it. If enough people do not use it, then the content will either go away (generally not a bad thing considering that almost all of it sucks anyway), or the terms of use will become more favourable. The "problem" is that most people do not have the willpower or self control to just turn it off. They can't get by without their 24, Alias, Friends, or whatever other trash they are addicted to. JUST TURN IT OFF!!! The terms of use problem will then go away, one way or another.

Collusion

[weston]

Markets only work when there are choices and there's no collusion between those you can choose between. The consortium reported on here is all about colluding to avoid market forces.

I think it's possible that new content providers and models will provide competition, and there's all kinds of completely different media now capturing attention share that television used to command, and so I suspect that if net neutrality isn't destroyed that there will be enough alternatives to keep markets working, if slowly while the dinosaurs struggle to change. But it's not going to be a sure thing, certainly nothing to get complacent about.

Re:Piracy Always Wins

[compro01]

It is a cat-and-mouse game.

and the mice have the cats massively outnumbered, though the cats have more money, so that might level the field.

Lo-Tech to Defeat Hi-Tech

[Stanislav_J]

You know, there are many folks out there (myself included) who, for example, don't need to "see every blade of grass and every drop of sweat" (as the ESPN-HD promo goes) -- I just need to follow the ball and see the damn score. Good old analog TV is good enough for me, and even a 2nd or 3rd generation VHS dub of a program I very much want to see is fine with me.

So, for those who don't need digital quality, and just want to watch the damn show, there is a simple way to make a copy for future viewing that circumvents any "flags" anyone puts on the shit [sarcasm ON](read carefully -- it's quite technical)[sarcasm OFF]:

Get a good quality flat-screen monitor -- place decent-quality camcorder (even an old Hi-8 unit will do well) on tripod -- center screen image in viewfinder -- place microphone in front of speaker -- hit "record." Of course, you'll want to experiment with the best settings of contrast, ambient lighting, etc., but you can do that on some worthless piece of video (like, say, a Bush news conference).

Will it be perfect or even great quality? Nope -- but it will be watchable. I know, cos I've already experimented with this for future reference. I wouldn't recommend this for, say, an opera broadcast, but for the vast majority of televised pap, it will do just fine. Think of it as a "21st century kinescope."

And the best thing is -- there's not a damn thing the guvmint, the broadcasters, or the equipment manufacturers can do to thwart it.

Who needs HD anyway? Most TV programming doesn't benefit -- making the picture sharper doesn't improve the plotlines or the acting. And I don't need to see every pore on Bill O'Reilley's face to hate his pretentious guts just the same.