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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?
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
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)
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.
For your reading pleasure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.
So, as it turns out, we really did have the right to record TV shows to watch them later, until legislation and technology began acting together to snuff out those rights.
Your point is partly true; but the part that isn't true is important.
It is the case that a fair few of the things that HDCP and friends are designed to prevent were never legal to begin with. Not all, however, are. If nothing else, building DRM that understands fair use exceptions is going to have to wait for the introduction of AI competent enough to interpret case law on the fly. Depending on the DRM and the country in question, various sorts of timeshifting and format shifting are also likely to be legal but blocked.
The problem with these DRM systems is that they, in effect, allow the companies that control them to make law just by setting a few DRM flags(under the DMCA and similar, DRM basically has force of law because you can't legally break it, and in other instances, joe user will de facto be bound by it). That is the really disturbing bit. If DRM were simply technology catching up with law, that would be one thing(still not a good thing, I would argue; but that is outside the scope of this particular argument); but DRM is something much, much, more than that. It is the expansion of technology to eclipse, and to write, law without even the pretense of legislative process.
How so? Sure, some content will always be created for free just because people want to. But how could something like Battlestar Galactica (just an example) be created, have all that money spent on it, without being pretty darn sure they're going to be paid for their efforts.
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.
The current spate of HDCP and other copy prevention mechanisms are not the way at all, they just make life more painful for everyone, including those who have every right to watch what they are trying to, but to go to the other extreme and suggest that everything should be free is just wrong.
> To suggest that everyone should make content for you to consume for no money
I have no real problem with this. I'll pay for my programming. After all, paying is what makes producers want to continue producing.
What I do have a problem with, though, is programmed obsolescence; when they change something apparently for the purpose of making you buy a new device to get what you had with the old device. Especially when there is no perceived benefit to the user.
When your TV is implemented in firmware and they change the software - it requires new hardware. Solution? Hook a computer up to the "Monitor" and use it as a TV. Software changes... download the newest codec, decryption modules and certificates.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
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
Old technology just did not prevent you from recording/copying shows, music etc. That did not mean that you were allowed to do it, but many turned a blind eye to infringements.
Except we DO have those rights, both through constitutional interpretation and through law. See Sony v Universal and the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA)
The AHRA contains one positive provision for the consumer electronics industry and consumers, section 1008, a "Prohibition on certain infringement actions:"
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."[17]
According to the Senate, this provision was intended to conclusively resolve the debate over audio home taping, and "[create] an atmosphere of certainty to pave the way for the development and availability of new digital recording technologies and new musical recordings."[18] They were partially successful: this provision made the sale of DAT and Minidisc possible in the United States, by protecting device manufacturers, importers and distributors from infringement suits like Cahn v. Sony.
Private, noncommercial copies by consumers using "digital audio recording devices" are explicitly protected by 1008. The Senate report defines noncommercial as "not for direct or indirect commercial advantage", offering examples such as making copies for a family member, or copies for use in a car or portable tape player
wikipedia
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Treating your customer as your enemy and assuming by definition that everyone buying your movie will try to create copies to spread them is also not really right in my books.
The main reason why there is a "market" at all for those copies is simply that, unless you happen to sit right in the country where the movie is shown first, you are forced to wait. Allow me to give you an example. I like Dr. House. I watch it religiously. In my country, we're now in the middle of season 3. Now, that's about 2 seasons behind. I enjoy the show, and I wouldn't mind at all to watch it in English. Actually, I'd prefer it. But I neither get the option to see it in English, nor do I get the chance to see the latest episodes. I can't even go and buy the DVDs for seasons 1-3, and I won't be able to buy season 4 when it comes out in August, because no local distributor has been chosen yet, and of course, our networks showing it here have contracts that prevent such things from happening.
Can you see why the incentive to fire up some P2P client and simply download the other two seasons is pretty high?
And it's the same for pretty much everything else. For the US, it works in reverse with Anime, which also suffer (interesting enough) from insanely crappy translations when done by some studio, yet fansubs happen to be nearly flawless and true to the original.
It's not that people wouldn't want to pay artists for their work. The problem is that you often don't even get the choice to do just that!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Okay, so they encrypt their stream.
I break it - not "bloody copyright infringement" yet.
On the other hand, what I just did violates a completely separate bought-and-paid-for law.
If you take away the special effects, BSG is just a story. People have been writing stories for centuries. It takes exactly one person, some paper, and a pen. That's not expensive, and many people write good stories for free.
If the market prefers cheaper or free entertainment, it is up to the entertainment industry to improve their quality, reduce volume, or go out of business. It is not up to the customers to pay more than they want to, when they are already happy with alternatives. Horse buggies went out of business when cars became popular. Once again I agree, yet point out the reverse: to suggest that good content doesn't get produced if people don't expect to be paid is just wrong.After locks were invented, someone invented lockpicks.
But the existence of that technology does not excuse its use.
Sure it does, actually the invention of the lock necessitated the need for lockpicks. I don't know if it's happened to you but I ran into a number of people who got locked out of their car or home. Years ago I shared a home with others. I smoke but I go outside to smoke at home and even though I was sitting on a bench in front of the door with a window next to it from where a person could clearly see me, one of the others living there was paranoid about an unlocked door and he kept locking it on me. Now what if I didn't have my keys, I started carrying them with me just because of him, and he locked the door then left? Or what about a car, about the same tyme I was locked out I had a lady ask me if she could use my cellphone to call the police, she had left the keys in the ignition with the engine running and left a baby in the vehicle but locked the door.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Well, that and it's a superior delivery mechanism on pretty much every front. But the conspiracy factor makes much more sense to me.
Again, the way for them to get people to pay for their products isn't for them to create these draconian tech stops that do nothing but make everything more complicated, but content makers do deserve to be paid.
And in the US, at least, content makers have an obligation to provide their content into the public domain in order to enrich society, for which they're granted the limited privilege of copyright. For many, many years, those same content makers have shown absolutely no indication that they intend to honor that bargain, and have even shown that they will take any necessary steps to avoid fulfilling their end of the agreement. *THAT* is stealing (per the actual meaning of the word) on a grand scale, far more so than any case of copyright infringement that's shown up in any courthouse.
Perhaps when the content providers show a bit more respect to the society that gives them the money and freedom to create, and some degree of respect for the fact that the exclusive opportunity to make money from their creations for a limited time is a *gift* from that same society, I'll be a bit more concerned about their financial well-being.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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?
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?