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Digital TV Foreshadows Erosion of Net Rights
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Tom Yager offers insight on how digital TV is rapidly heading toward the kind of lockdown that entertainment and broadcast lobbies desire for the Internet. Standards such as HDMI and HDCP are acting in concert to strip your equipment of its functionality, displaying 'incompatibility' messages when plugged into older HDMI-enabled devices, shutting down analog outputs when active, and requiring balky handshake credentials that force many consumers to reboot their TVs to recover permission to watch them. Even broadcast flagging, which has been overturned by the Court of Appeals, is still on the de-facto table, as the entertainment lobby retains the power to bully technology companies into baking broadcast flagging into their wares. Sure, digital TV has far fewer points of origin than the Internet and is therefore easier to control, but, as Yager writes, 'Internet rights restrictions come through your telecommunications equipment' — and it is likely through that equipment that the entertainment and broadcast lobbies will chip away at your rights on the Web."
How exactly can one foreshadow something that's already happening?
Looks like things such as Apple TV are set for a boost then. Sure, you have the same DRM, but at least "it just works". No need to reboot devices to re-establish authentication... Customers like hassle-free, especially in the living-room. Cable/Satellite companies ought to be careful, or Apple (or someone else who does it better) will be eating their lunch.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
No problem ...
... free alternatives
... people will just not bother
MS tried to lock down Windows and Office.
result
The Movie industry is loosing viewers in droves to the internet. If the experiance is substandard to Internet
New tech is able to prevent you doing this.
Analogy alert: Before door locks were invented, you didn't have the right to enter another's house. locks just allowed home owners to secure their homes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That scary "lockdown" that you are alarming about is not what those "entertainment and broadcast lobbies" desire for the Internet. This is what they desire for their TV on the Internet, for crying out loud. This is a subtle yet important difference because contrary to what you are implying here the Internet as we know it is not going to change. So don't worry, you'll still be able to waste time on Slashdot all day long. That having been said, I personally consider the television itself to be an utter waste of time (or a "lockdown" if you will) but do I post messages on Slashdot about it? No. I just don't watch it. Viola. Problem solved. You should try it sometimes and you'll see that there is no need to scare people that they will be somehow "locked down" by having a choice to watch the TV on some additional medium.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
before it is gone. Among other things, GNU Radio is a software implementation of a digital television receiver.
and the insane part about it all, is that it's not stopping piracy. it NEVER will. whole seasons are still on bittorrent in HD.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Try turning it off.
I'm not kidding, nor am I trolling. Until and unless watching television becomes mandatory, if you're not participating in the system, THE SYSTEM CANNOT CONTROL YOU.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
If the mainstream media are going to lock down the internet they'll have to get rid of all the useless fucks they currently employ and produce something compelling^w worthwhile. Even if they lobby for legislation, how are they going to prevent us from modifying our hardware so that it's usable?
That is why digital TV is being forced down our throats. Cant have that pesky hard to manage analog signal running about out there.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The US Supreme Court disagreed with you when it decided in the Betamax ruling that
TV Broadcasters have convinced ISPs to "shape" the traffic. That would be the SYSTEM, as you call it, reaching out to screw a competitor that had little and nothing to do with them. Check broadcast's plunging ratings some time, they are fighting for their lives. It's not because their second rate shows are "pirated", it's because people have a choice.
I've pointed out the pincer movement to kill the internet before. Really, it's about eliminating competition and manufacturing public consent.
And you know what? It all doesn't matter. The broadcasters can try to lock down television all they want, but it cannot prevent all people on the planet from ripping and uploading it somewhere. And at the same time, the more inconvenient a lock down regime becomes, the more it will drive people away to other sources of television programs. Currently it is more convenient to turn on the telly than to use Bittorrent or Gnutella, but only slightly so. Tip the balance and people will switch.
So...if I buy a certain type of digital TV, it turns out it might not record Firefly reruns if the broadcaster signals that he doesn't want it to, for whatever evil nefarious reason.
And this infringes what "right," exactly? My right to have products available that do exactly what I want, at exactly the price I want to pay? Sounds like my "right" to a free lunch.
If you don't like the way Toshiba makes digital TVs, and feel they have sold out to the Devil by following "broadcast flags" sent down the pipe by the provider of content, you have a straightforward solution: get off the damn couch, rustle up some capital, hire some engineers and build your own digital TV. If the great mass of people agree that indeed the broadcast flag is evil, your marvelous new TV will sell like hotcakes and you'll (A) get your TV shows free of restrictions, (B) get rich, and (C) drive Toshiba out of business. A threefer!
No, this isn't particularly easy, certainly not for the average TV watcher. But on the other hand, it's not rocket science either. We're talking about building TVs, not curing cancer or traveling to Mars and back safely. I don't doubt if there were piles of money to be made making digital TVs that ignore broadcasts flags then some bright entrepreneur and a VC group looking for a 500% rate of return would jump on it. And since there's nothing legally standing in their way, there are no "rights" being threatened here, aside from some whiner "right" to get what you want without working for it.
I don't watch their content but they are messing with me. If broadcasters have their way, they will still be the only game in town 50 years from now despite their complete technical obsolescence.
Allocated spectrum is a crime. That link was supposed to be in the above, but I pushed the wrong button.
"fair use" does not mean you have the -right- to make a copy. Having the -right- to make a copy would imply that whoever hands you the original would be disallowed from doing anything that would prevent you from making that copy. That's simply not the case. They're perfectly allowed to make it as difficult as possible for you to make a copy as they want. It's just that once you -do- manage to make a copy, they can't scream bloody copyright infringement, as it's considered fair use. .. at least, if you made that copy for one of the various purposes that are covered by fair use.
We should have to explicitly sign a license agreement before we buy music, video, or books, subscribe to cable, buy a radio or TV antenna, or other such things, just how we have click-through license agreements for software.
Lobby your Congress critters for this. DO IT.
(The scary thing is that I'm half-serious about this.)
But, as it happens, I posted about this on Slashdot almost eight years ago, sounding the warning that all this bullshit was coming down the pike, unless you -- yes, you, Mr. VLSI Designer and Mr. Software Designer -- did something to stop it.
Result: HDCP is now a marketing bullet point instead of a product defect, and the word "security" has been perverted Orwell-style to refer to copy protection and not to system integrity.
Grow a pair, people. DO NOT WORK ON OR FACILITATE THIS GARBAGE.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Recording a TV show so it can be watched at a different time is OK, right? Even if it was shown a decade ago, and I am just now downloading the torrent? What if my torrent is for an episode that will be aired in a few months, once the new season starts?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You say the general population doesn't have a right to listen to proprietary music. I'll agree for the sake of argument. But does the general population have a right to not listen to proprietary music? How should I go buy groceries without hearing Muzak or other proprietary background music?
I don't know of any cable/broadband company that requires you to buy cable to get cable internet, but my only experience is with Charter and Time Warner.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
I'm gonna make my own! With hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget the Internet! Eh, screw the whole thing.
You may relate to this talk given by Clay Shirky:
http://blip.tv/file/855937
...they could admit reality that the net is international, that they have content that is universally admired and sought after, and just use the technology that allows the best dispersal of content with the most shared bandwith, bit torrent. Heck, it would probably cost them *less* money if they offered torrents. It would also help with net neutrality, hard to argue with a lot of customers who want to receive some content that comes from the BBC. Shoot, stick it up on goobtoob, cost them zero then.
In other words, there are immediate and practical work arounds for the "cost" excuse. It costs the people who pay the tax in the UK the same money if one person views the content inside their own nation, or 999,999 others around the world with near free digital copies, as long as they don't have to tote the note on all the bandwith for the other copies.
...by encrypting, they made it as difficult as possible for you to make that copy. You can still make a copy; not a 1:1 copy, you may get degradation of quality, but that wasn't a particularly huge issue for most of us back in the day of copying VHS videos either. yea olde 'analog' hole. It is not cracking -or- 'bypassing' any time of encryption/etc. By the time the 'analog' device records the output, that output is no longer encrypted. Nor is it copyright infringement because it falls back to fair use.
..now if only I'd get (non-boilerplate) replies.)
I'm certainly not saying the laws, as written, are just; far from it. But we also shouldn't be confusing "fair use" with a "right".. they are fundamentally different things. If we want to have a "right" to make copies of media for a particular purpose, we'll have to get that written into law. Good luck with that (and I do mean that; I've written letters.. who else here has?
I wonder how far things would have to go before we start seeing acts of sabotage or even violence against the creators and perpetrators of DRM.
I switched, from Windows to Linux and OS X, because MS wants to treat it's users like criminals. That's what Activation is all about. It's one thing to require a product key to use software the first tyme but it's totally different to then require the user to allow the software to contact the mothership or to call the company to have it activated as well as require all the spyware crap.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I have searched and haven't found anyone making a HDMI interface for analyzing the raw data stream. Is cracking the crypto for a show you just want to record for your own use illegal? I have an older tivo, looked into building a media PC but nobody makes a 1080P HDMI interface card so I can record shows to my hard drive. there is a 1080i solution that gets around the hdmi interface by using the analog component video ports but that is not what I am looking for.
the word is *voila*, not `viola' or `walla'...
I hate rebooting my tv. What a pain in the ass.
No one ever denied that an incentive exists. There is also an incentive to rape an unwilling woman when you're horny. Doesn't make it right.
The DRM scare bores the piss out of me, it's meaningless. If I don't like the terms of a DRM product, I don't buy it. Problem solved. I've never had any of these make-believe "TV reboots" with my 60" 2 year old HDTV, or problems playing HD-DVD or BluRay (thank you AnyDVD) or anything of the like. It's just a non issue that gets dweebs all riled up for no good reason.
What straw will break the camel's back? When will the public revolt over this? What will it take?
The suggestion that artistic and entertainment creations would continue to be made in the same volume or quality with the creators being given nothing in return is utterly ridiculous.
I used write and want to work as a photographer and thought the same way. However I'm starting to think copyrights aren't needed. Open source software has shown money can still be made, though admittedly not as much as Microsoft makes, by sharing. The Grateful Dead made money yet allowed, heck encouraged, concert goers to record the performances and share them. Those who like writers, some at least, will be willing to pay a writer for what they like to read. A few years ago someone gave me this suggestion when I said copyrights were needed, have a pdf of a book people can download to read. Then if they like it, some people will buy a signed and printed edition of the book from the writer. As for my photos, one thing I'm planning to do is to have low resolution pics online then allow those who want to buy one to pay for a high resolution digital file and or professionally printed large print. I could even print large format books for people, that's getting to be a pretty big money earner for wedding photogs. Bride and Groom, and friends and relatives can order books with the photos they want.
Professional photographers have to go through a lot of this, but they can still make money and pay the bills.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Proposed rule / law: Whenever a digital device is refusing to do something it technically could because of a DRM or other copy-protection concern, it must prominently make this clear to the user. Rather than "Incompatibility between display and device", the error message must be more along the lines of "This content will not be displayed because somebody figured out how to use your display chipset to rip Blu-Ray discs, so we're not showing new content on it."
the 1986 betamax decision, the repeated quotes by politicians, and the 2 decades of vhs under which everyone developed this as a legal, everyday activity make it a right.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
But we also shouldn't be confusing "fair use" with a "right".. they are fundamentally different things. If we want to have a "right" to make copies of media for a particular purpose, we'll have to get that written into law.
You also don't have the right of a copyright. Copyrights are granted as privileges of monopoly to encourage creators.
FalconShould there be a Law?
they are trampling a right that copyright gives copyright holders
I agree with your general point but copyrights aren't a right either, copyrights are a privilege granted by the government.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Well, there you at least have the choice to choose a willing woman instead. You might have to pay, though, I don't know about your sex life, and frankly, I don't want to know, but you have that option.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
if you're not participating in the system, THE SYSTEM CANNOT CONTROL YOU.
Sure it can, indirectly. When it controls those around you it effects you as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
With a properly configured PC/network/xbox or other receiver you can stream HD media no problem...I use torrents for HD movies that I download and stream to my xbox at high qualtiy.
Mentioning restrictions through your telecom devices, what's the current standing of the trusted computing group..?
If you don't like digital TV, for f-s sake don't use it. It's not mandatory.
Sort of.
I just got off the phone with Verizon a few hours ago, trying to resolve problems with my new FiOS line (it works Ok for light browsing, but SSH, youtube, VPN etc. choke it). I suspect it's just a bad box (other people in the area are using it heavily with no problems that I've heard of). But one thing in the tech support call really annoyed me.
They don't support linux, which I can understand, but they won't even open a ticket if the person making the call is using anything but MS Windows. Even though I had all the information they wanted, I had to go reproduce the problems on my kid's game machine because linux "isn't trustworthy" according to Verizon (yes, that's right, a five plus year old XP install is more trustworthy in their eyes than a current Kubuntu machine). At the end of the call the tech told me "Next time, just don't mention that you're running linux."
Grrrr...
-- MarkusQ
Stop confusing bandwidth with throughput.
Your connection is sold to you with a "bandwidth". Say an cable connection with 6 Mbps speed. That is a cap. And not even guaranteed. With US providers you'll probably get somewhere between 4.5 and 5.5 Mbps, depending how many others are on the wire with you and how many and how clean the connections between you and the ISP.
Your connection may or may not have a throughput limit. Unlimited throughput means the number of bytes you can download is not limited. In some places, there are limitations. Typically the ISP's that limit throughput also offer the possiblilty to purchase more.
TANSTAAFL GIGO Acronyms to live by!
They don't support linux, which I can understand, but they won't even open a ticket if the person making the call is using anything but MS Windows.
I don't think that's an unusual issue or problem. I have cable access through a third party, but the cable company does the support. A few months back I was having trouble with my connection and called support. The first question I was asked, after going through who I was and where I lived, was what my OS was. I told the tech OS X and he said they didn't support it, they only support Windows. However if I wanted to pay extra, $100 if I recall right, he said they'd send someone out. He wouldn't even check to see if it was my computer or the connection. This pissed me off, when I first signed up with my ISP it was for dialup and they supported Macs and Unix as well as Windows. However I moved and they offered cable through the cable co so I switched over, maybe I should have seen if I could have gotten DSL instead but the price was right, and I don't know that they support OS X with DSL service.
FalconShould there be a Law?
... or is the phrase "reboot the TV" just a sad state of affairs? Seriously, folks: TVs have - with the exception of older models which needed to warm up the tubes - always been "instant-on" devices, and I, for one, have become accustomed to that.
The idea of having a start up time for a TV while some micro-kernel boots inside its guts is repulsive, and having the signal shunted around within that morass of silicon to implement fucking permissions is a vile, horrible thought.
I pay the bastards enough for the satellite service, and they certainly make enough on the five minutes of advertisements they air every tenth minute... Why should I be forced to watch the scant programming they do offer on their terms?
</rant>
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
These ISP's have basically thrown in the towel on the users. They simply don't care if everyone gets dumped down to 1gb per day or 40gb per month, they say use another usenet provider, "child porn"! has wiped out everything else, just to satisfy some guy in NY and a bunch of super ultra paranoid liberal democrats that think free speech means what people say on the TV and everything else has been banned. They would burn books if given the chance, in fact they grab people and throw them in jail in Europe and now Canada for writing subversive literature, as if the words are the same as an act? These people are mentally ill, they will destroy free speech, once that goes war, murder, plauges, bombs and bloodshed will surely follow. Say goodbye to western civilization all in the name of protecting the children...I mean .005 percent of the children that are victims. Now 100% of anything else gets wiped out, Usenet has been around for 20 plus years and now they pull the plug so Hate groups can practice brainwashing on the face of the Internet? Actually, that maybe just an excuse, now they will roll out the dollar per mile pricing scheme, that will surely slow us down, of course it will crash the economy as well, not very smart these people at the ISP's. Just what we need LESS use of the internet, LESS purchases until we can turn it into kindergarten for grownups. People are so paranoid about sex in general and just mention in the news over and over that the children are being abused and people go into a moral frenzy and behave absolutely like wackos.
Forget about freedom, the northeast liberal establishment wants to throw this country into civil war and are hell bent on censoring everything they don't like, at least the right had a little smarts, these people on the left simply use fear and violence to intimidate people into not talking.
Soon, you will be paying your state to drive $1 per mile through the insurance, your internet provider $1 per gigabyte while there are terabyte plus drives for only pennies per gigabyte, these people want to go backwards to dial up days. And of course they will also charge you for each item you want to download, then the internet will become a ghost town and they can implement the restructuring of the net into a cable tv style neutered and spayed corporate playground, of course they will have porn just like they have on cable and satellite today, except none of us will have a spot at the table for our videos or our music or thoughts. No activity equals no checks and balances, no balance of powers, just free reign for the people that want a fascist techno serfdom, and just a few years ago people would have laughed at the idea, now we see the actions as fact, not much else left to do but completely storm the gates of the barricade if these insane costs and increases shut out alternative media and voices.
Instead of the cult of the amature as some book tried to scare the net with the real threat would be that writer and the "cult of the oligarch fascists". A blogger would not be to be feared, the tyrant and person that wants to put a dollar sign on everything on this planet .
Capitalism, "Open" (as in FREEDOM) market competition, sound economic policy and laws....
Damn fools, that shit died years ago, get over it and start supporting our New American Ways of "Corporate-Welfare" socialism, Institutional Privatization of Personal Intellectual Property (IP-PIP), Government Bailout Protection (GBP) and Special Tax Incentives (STI) to support amoral Corporatist, Politician, and Clergy executive pay and privileges.
There is a new and better class of US Citizens representing their mantra "Separate, but equal" as the New America promise.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Each time I go to our local appliance stores (Chicago) and look at the HDTVs I despair. The picture is awful. Theses are HD transmissions not just lousy digital transmissions (tx) of 4:5 pictures which can be even worse.
I really want to buy an HDTV but the number of visible artifacts in the tx makes the image unwatchable for me. This goes the same for my RCN supplied digital converter box. Watching a movie can look like watching a downloaded VCD. The MPEG artifacts can be huge. You could tell that trying to en(de)code the pouring rain scene in Red October just confused the hell out of everything.
How can we have reached this state of affairs?
Is Europe/Japan any better or are they in the same state?
I bought a couple of those since I don't want cable or satelite tv and discovered to my dismay that they are full of DRM! Anything I try to record with my VCR or PC from them gets scrambled heavily. We need to stop this push for DTV! Heck, when you buy one of those converter boxes, the store locks the serial number to your name and most places that sell them won't let you return them either. Its a total scam by several corporations and the US government.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
You could be entirely right, but the public will try to get what they want. They (the public) will find or develop protocols that will enable them to do what they feel is their due.(right or wrong according to current copyright laws) The average 'consumer'
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
you are correct of course, and it outlines the absurdity of even inventing modern tech when it gets restricted so much. Society and business will have to evolve better to to come to terms with tech making artificial scarcity a thing of the past. I don't have an easy solution or answer, but these opening salvos with the political war on on star trek replicator technology does not bode well for the future when 3-d tangible objects will be able to be "printed on demand", along those lines. One can hope that this generation now growing up realizing that some things have gotten to be "too cheap to meter" will result in radical restructuring of copyright laws and patents, etc.
FWIW. I am in ag, and encourage people to use open source styled replicator tech and sharing to acquire their own content, ie, "open pollinated" seeds, grow your own gardens, have backyard flocks and breed your own replacements, share growing knowledge, share surplus food, etc. If it ever results in me needing a new "job", so be it, I'll do something else.
The more industry tries to lock down TV broadcasts and equipment, the more moms and dads and grandparents they confuse when they can't watch their programs. That in turn drives the young'uns, who get the calls from the confused parents, to just burn them restriction-free copies from BitTorrent. Or, neither party bothers and they stop watching TV altogether and go hang out with friends instead--nothing worth watching anyway.
The MSM are getting desperate, folks, because they can see this writing on the wall. Though the Internet freight train has been coming at them for a while, most of them ignored it hoping it would go away or that some technical lock would magically save them. They refused to learn how to adapt. So now they're pulling stuff like this and like what the AP is doing (trying to lock down their content through the courts by declaring it illegal to link to their content or quote them at all).
Bonfire of the Vanities...
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I bought a new Yamaha 'Home Theatre' receiver a few weeks ago. Took it home and plugged it in and it wouldn't do this and it wouldn't do that so I returned it. Told the customer service folks at the store that it didn't do what I wanted and that I wanted my money back.
The electronics manufacturers and retailers won't be pleased about an avalanche of returns due to restrictive DRM forced on them by the content industry. I'd like to see retailers post disclaimers along the lines of, "This equipment will not..." to reduce returns (and sales).
In cases where the electronics and content industries overlap (Sony) it's probably less effective.
-
Systems Administrators: We read the manual so you don't have to.
This all reminds me of Jack "the Ripper" Valenti's attitudes about consumer videotape devices, except this time it's even worse.
The content producers have an opportunity to make money here, and they're opposing it. Resisting the VCR merely prevented them from cashing in for a while -- it damaged their stockholders' interests, but only temporarily. Their potential customers didn't have any alternative to flock to, so when the business finally decided they wanted the money, the customer base was waiting for them.
This time, that might not happen. HDMI's massive, crippling interoperability problems have made it unviable for consumers, e.g. until the DRM gets cracked, MythTV simply can't be made to work, and it's not the MythTV developers' fault. The content creators (through their cable company middlemen) aren't offering a working system, and waving money in their faces doesn't change their attitude.
But a working system is still possible to create, through either pirating their content, or from alternative media companies that are more interested in revenue than .. uh .. whatever it is that the mainstream companies are trying to do. If I download the content with the DRM already removed (or never present in the first place), then everything is going to be hunky-dory; everything will interoperate and work. Unlike the situation before consumer videotape machines; customers have somewhere to go.
When the content companies' stockholders start to notice the slipping revenue, and bitch at management to stop turning away customers -- when they finally do decide to maximize profits -- will the consumer base still be there? Why should people wait for the content producers to start up their business, when an alternative already exists? Once I have put some effort into getting my recordind/playback system working and have established some habits, what are the content and cable companies going to offer, that will encourage me to switch back?
I don't think DRM's harm is going to be as short-term as resisting the VCR was. They are hurting themselves much worse this time. If they want a future, then getting back into the selling-content business needs to become top priority. For example, they need to immediately:
- call the cable TV companies and tell 'em to make all their content available by unencrypted QAM
- stop using BD+ and CSS on their movie disks
- Openly (i.e. no license agreements) publish specs and formerly-private keys, so that legacy equipment and media can be used (so that customers who already have HDMI devices can get handshakes to work, so that already-manufacturered DVD and Blu-Ray discs can be played, etc)
- then have a huge press release to make sure everyone knows that they're open for business: a working product is finally available.
They are quickly running out of time. For me, a MythTV/LinuxMCE system is likely happening this year. If they don't offer me content that I can play, I'm going to come up with some other way, and it will be a long time before I go shopping again.As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is just a progression of the screwed up state of affairs our intellectual property laws are in. When anyone can patent anything with or without prior art and the media companies can sue 70 year old women who don't own a computer. And now politicians are trying to add more legislation like the ACTA.
Than again all our politicians such but we are too stupid to do anything about it. Whatever happened to the 70s when we would all get up and protest any time the government did anything retarded. It's like we gave up.
They are running through a series of human readable scripts.
They just don't have the OS X script or the Linux script because it would cost them money to buy it.
The trained monkey, uh customer rep, is just going through a script and whatever its spouting in the screen is what he's gonna ask.
I have done work for call centers on and off since the late 80s and they are all using staff to just run through human readable scripts.
It keep their personnel hiring and training costs down to a minimum while ensuring some minimum SLAs.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
That's it right there. They're saying that they won't test and fix their problems because of your operating system. It's nothing more than an excuse to renege on their support obligations. What next? "I'm sorry sir, you've admitted that you're drinking coffee and we don't support coffee drinkers"?
--MarkusQ
I know people in my area who did not own a telivision set but still had cable because though they did not have to, the price of TV + broadband was greater than the price of broadband only (due to disounts for getting both from the same company). I am not 100% sure, but I believe that they had Charter.
Why not build your own set top box using video capture cards that *do not* respect the broadcast flag? Ala http://www.pchdtv.com/ Outputting from your set top box via dvi/hdmi cable would not be an issue. Granted, my mother would not be able to build her own set top box and install mythtv, but I think the majority of the readers here could.
Don't mix entertainment with rights, their very purpose to exist is to be seen or heard ie to entertain, the more people they reach the more successful they are said to be. They have no purpose beyond that, without the audience there is no entertainment. You don't create entertainment to lock it up.
Now defining the terms under which they can be seen is an altogether different matter, that's legalese, control and DRM.
First you are making something in the hope that people watch it and like it, then you want to narrowly define how people can consume it, so some people may like to watch it but because of your controls they may get put off and not bother in which case your cause to entertain has failed because of your own terms and you may need to review your business model. At the moment the entertainment industry basically has a free pass to not confront failure and attribute it to piracy which they are then using liberally to strengthen drm.
The issue here is we are not demanding any particular entertainment, they are being created in the hope we like it so there is no guarantee of their success and none should be presumed, and the terms to consume it are also being defined. We not only have a right to choose what entertainment we like but also under what terms we would consume it, and these rights are being systematically stripped away under the guise of drm.
As a consumer that leaves us with only one choice, rejection, but we are not an organized group of people who can protect our rights so this rejection cannot be expressed with any degree of effectiveness.
This is where government and the systems step in but they have been severely compromised by corporate interests which means democracy and capitalism as we understand it is not really working. The argument is not for free content, nobody expects things for free, though some people will always pirate content, but this minority cannot be used to frame the rules. In the same way no creator of content should expect reward just for creating content, that depends on whether the audience accepts it and the conditions you wish to show it under. At the moment this set of rights are taking precedence at the cost of consumer rights. Our right to reject is being undermined because there is no effective way to express it and in the meantime layers and layers of drm are being put in place which become difficult to reverse and place greater control on our rights to define or accept how we consume content. We need to have a say in defining these rights.
I sympathize.
:-) that they're still running an IPv4 network over (totally unnecessary afaIct) and some of the modems went dead after the switch because they couldn't auto restart.
:-(
.exe ...
ComCast had a problem a wile back with their modems (IPv6 devices
Mine was a model without even a manual switch so I was really screwed.
I had to go without cable modem for three days because their offices were closed (and I discovered that local office isn't ADA compliant either
At least it was free. I took the bastard thing home, set it up and just about "plotzed" because it came with a windows installation disk. I don't do
I ended up up with a un-"trained monkey" tech-support person on the line and I had to walk HER through the process. (Talk about useless and ignorant...)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
But you can't ! That's the whole point. I cannot use HDMI without HDCP. The licensing agreements of HDMI forbid it. To make a set which won't recognize the DRM garbage or work around it would violation DMCA, as well as place you in violation of the license to make HDMI connectors and use that standard. The evil bastards are brilliant if nothing else. They all agree to analog sunset. They all agree to HDMI and the evil succubus, HDCP. (the reason HDMI is crap is because it's cheap to make. Professional Video folks don't go near it, using coax cables like they always have, and should have for the HDMI standard). Features like turning off analog outputs and intentionally destroying resolution (Token) are installed, but NOT USED until the market gets a critical mass. Unless a TV station "by accident" turns on a Broadcast Flag (and do you really believe it was an accident, or was it a "let us see what happens if" situation ?) You want to set up your own TV company ? Sure, but it won't play the Blu-Ray disc. Ask the Linux user about this. No, the evil bastards saw one golden opportunity to "put right" the problems of the internet, digitalization of content, and the cracking of CSS. Revocable devices for HD Disc players, HDMI, analog sunset. Brilliant ! And with DMCA to back up anyone who challenges the "new status quo". TV and computers had to stay apart, per the mindset of the old media barons. While they miss the olden days of having the only high speed pipe to the home, with zero user input, they did see far enough to try to build a wall. Now, realistically, we are probably ten years out from easily busting HDCP. Recall that the CD was let out unencrypted becasue no one ever thought that you could make them at home. de-CSS required computers that didn't really exist when the DVD standard was written. This regime too will fall, but the industry probably thinks that it's 15 years of safety against the geek and permanent for the non geek, or the other 99.98%. You know, the guy who buys a new computer when the old one becomes inoperable due to too much malware. I have a sony HDD-250, probably the only off air HDTV recorder with no "contract" or "mother ship" to dial home to. They stopped making them, and no one, interestingly, has jumped into the fore. It would appear that no one wants you to have the ability to record on a device you own, even if, as the sony, the drive is encrypted and the disc drives are somehow matched to the mother board, unlike a TivO, and you cannot change drives yourself or expand them. The only thing which the media barons can't control is the fact that most kids spend more time on youtube and IM than TV. Most kids would rather lose TV than the computer........
and make it so everyone is making the same amount of money, threaten to kill our family members if we defect, put a wall up around us so we can't get out, censor the whole internet, kill any dissidents, put up so many cameras we can be tracked everywhere we go, and take our guns away from us. But biggest of all, don't call us communists... please.
And that's the sad fact.
Otherwise there are some DOS 6.x that would never have had to change.
They did what they did (handle FAXes between Kansas City and Tokio,) and they didn't need to do anything else.
In fact, they did it years longer than anybody thought they would.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.