MPAA Pushes Once Again To Close the Analog Hole

Tyler Too writes "The MPAA is once again trying to badger the FCC into approving Selectable Output Control, which would plug the 'analog hole' during broadcasts of some prerelease HD movies. MPAA bigshots met with seven staffers from the FCC Media Bureau last week, calling the petition a 'pro-consumer' (!) move designed to 'enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content.' At least the studios are now acknowledging that SOC would break the functionality of some HDTVs, an admission they were previously unwilling to make: 'What's interesting about the group's latest filing, however, is that it effectively concedes that the output changes it wants could, in fact, hobble some home video systems. "The vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content contemplated by MPAA's" request, the group assures the FCC.'"

Comments

Like any partially treated wart

[AnalPerfume]

They will always be back.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[commodore64_love]

How do you deal with that problem?

Cut off the head.

(aims sniper rifle)

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[commodore64_love]

A less-messy solution is to amend the People's Constitution:

Amendment __ : "Strike the phase 'exclusive Right'. Replace with 'temporary privilege'."

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[tepples]

A less-messy solution is to amend the People's Constitution:

Amendment __ : "Strike the phase 'exclusive Right'. Replace with 'temporary privilege'."

The law already says "for limited Times" which ostensibly means temporary, but the Supreme Court turned that into toilet paper by upholding serial term extensions in Eldred v. Ashcroft. An amendment to outlaw perpetual copyright on the installment plan would have to explicitly outlaw legislative extensions of the term of a subsisting copyright.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[reebmmm]

So what does temporary mean, "forever less a day?" The constitution already provides for a "limited" time, and the forever less a day is effectively the argument that has won to date.

Really the best strategy regarding copyright duration is something like this:
a) an author receives an initial copyright for a period of 10 years. No formalities required.
b) between years 10-15 (term + 5 year grace period), and author with sufficient interest in maintaining the copyright should have to i) register the copyright, and ii) pay some less than nominal fee. The copyright will continue for an additional 30 years (a total of 40 years).
c) thereafter, the author pays an increasing amount for each additional 30 year period.
d) the copyright automatically expires on the 100th year.

This has lots of benefits: 1. everyone gets a copyright in their works without any formalities. 2. If it is economically viable after 10 years, they can pay a nominal amount and register it (no more orphan works). 3. It will last for most every author's lifetime and then some. 4. It puts works that an author no longer considers valuable into the public domain in relatively short order.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Jurily]

(aims sniper rifle)

That's not the head, that's a puppet. Money is controlling this abomination.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[mmeister]

Please do no present your rational and reasonable ideas on copyright. Clearly we have all moved beyond rational thought.

Think about who lobbies Congress on this issue, mega-Corporations that have everything to lose if they don't have perpetual copyrights. It's easily worth a few million to buy off Congressmen and Senators to guarantee unending copyrights that could generate billions over the years.

Corporations have taken over America.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Anonymous Coward]

The law already says "for limited Times" which ostensibly means temporary, but the Supreme Court turned that into toilet paper by upholding serial term extensions in Eldred v. Ashcroft.

This was a no-win situation for the court. If they read it strictly, they turn the Copyright Clause "into toilet paper". If they strike down a statute that has an explicitly limited extension, they're guilty of judicial activism. The possibility of future repeated extensions is a red-herring.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[SteveFoerster]

Regardless of what the auth^H^H^H^Hcorporation who owns the copyright does, allowing copyright for a century is insane. Statistically speaking, that's longer than my school-age children will live. Which part of "temporary" is so confusing?

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Darkness404]

No, what really needs to happen is: A) You have a 5 year period of no formalities, however it is very limited in what you can peruse legal damages for. B) You can register your copyright and get it for 10 years plus less limited legal damages if you sue because now everyone can know that it is under copyright, C) You can renew your copyright for a maximum of 30 years, or until the author's death, whichever comes first.

b) between years 10-15 (term + 5 year grace period), and author with sufficient interest in maintaining the copyright should have to i) register the copyright, and ii) pay some less than nominal fee. The copyright will continue for an additional 30 years (a total of 40 years).

This "less than nominal fee" will be the next version of the RIAA/MPAA, here, waive all your rights to it and we will keep renewing your copyright because you can't afford it! Plus 30 years is too long, especially in the age of digital copies, lets see here, 30 years ago was 1979, assuming your hardware still works, most data will need to be painstakingly recovered using hard-to-find/expensive equipment, the data will then need to be read and then most certainly will need to have an emulator written in order to run the programs.

c) thereafter, the author pays an increasing amount for each additional 30 year period.

Again, it leads to new forms of the RIAA/MPAA in the future in order to pay for these.

1. everyone gets a copyright in their works without any formalities.

This is not necessarily a good thing. This leads to traps where someone might have came up with something, put it on the internet, you never read it but you make something similar and they accuse you of plagiarism.

2. If it is economically viable after 10 years, they can pay a nominal amount and register it (no more orphan works).

The same thing will happen, just with a large publisher with a huge sum of cash. The copyright never falls into the public domain, the artists get screwed and orphan works (as in works that are never released but still have copyright on them) still happen.

3. It will last for most every author's lifetime and then some.

Again, how is this a benefit? Look at Shakespeare's works, most of them were adapted from works that would still be under copyright if your system had been in place when he was alive. It is a natural part of art to borrow and adapt.

4. It puts works that an author no longer considers valuable into the public domain in relatively short order.

Which in general it won't. While the every day chatter of the internet would go into the public domain, if an artist doesn't think something is worthwhile they won't publish it. If it isn't published it isn't copyrighted, even after their deaths if someone takes it and publishes it they still have the copyright from when they publish it.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[tepples]

If they strike down a statute that has an explicitly limited extension, they're guilty of judicial activism.

Would a reading as "copyrights have the term that they had when the work was first published" have been too activist?

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[reebmmm]

This is not necessarily a good thing. This leads to traps where someone might have came up with something, put it on the internet, you never read it but you make something similar and they accuse you of plagiarism.

So what? There is no legal liability attached to plagiarism; copyright infringement is the only legal issue. Plagiarism is merely a moral, ethical issue that share elements of copyright infringement. And to your example, copyright infringement has a defense of independent creation. Among other things, the author would have to show access to the "infringed" work.

The same thing will happen, just with a large publisher with a huge sum of cash. The copyright never falls into the public domain, the artists get screwed and orphan works (as in works that are never released but still have copyright on them) still happen.

Of all the works in the world, works owned by a "large publisher with a huge sum of cash" is likely the minority of all copyrights.

Besides, the point of the above plan is not to deprive people of their copyrights. It's a plan to balance to trade-offs: continued protection for those that see a continued economic value and release to the public so that others can exploit them.

Again, how is this a benefit? Look at Shakespeare's works, most of them were adapted from works that would still be under copyright if your system had been in place when he was alive. It is a natural part of art to borrow and adapt.

Copyrights don't protect the ideas of stories. They protect the actual physical work themselves. Ultimately, this comes back around to conflating plagiarism with copyright infringement.

Nevertheless, I'm not about to argue the merits of applying modern copyright law to a different era.

if an artist doesn't think something is worthwhile they won't publish it.

You don't know many artists, do you?

Also, there is a great deal of copyrighted work that gets published once and is essentially abandoned. Look at the software companies whose assets essentially go abandoned, or whose products and solutions have no current use because of hardware and platform changes.

If it isn't published it isn't copyrighted, even after their deaths if someone takes it and publishes it they still have the copyright from when they publish it.

So? I fail to see your point. If it isn't published no one gets the benefit of it anyway and if it is ultimately published then the same rules would apply, no harm no foul. The only questions might be over ownership of the copyright.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[reebmmm]

I believe that under a system like described above, most, but not all, works would not be copyrighted after either the first or second renewals. In fact, in an era when a formal registration was required, most works did not get copyrighted.

People and companies don't like paying for things. They also forget.

The same thing happens in the patent world. Lots of the penultimate maintenance fees are not paid on patents because, by that time, most people have decided whether they're going to make money.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Anonymous Coward]

C) You can renew your copyright for a maximum of 30 years, or until the author's death, whichever comes first.

Eric Blair wrote 1984, published in '49 and he died in '50. I think it's reasonable to expect his family to get some of the proceeds of his efforts. Why should scum like disney get access to stuff as soon as an author dies? How many people will drop dead if certain corps know they can get a free run with the death of creators?

Here's the problem. The way forward is to make creators employees of companies, same with bands. They do their job, they get paid, they go home - like the rest of the world!

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Darkness404]

Renew is not the same as keep. I was meaning that you could not keep renewing after the artist's death. So in your case, they would still have copyright for however long a renewal lasts then it passes into the public domain. Considering that the sales of most things are highest in the first few years (though sometimes it does take a book a bit longer, but it depends on the situation) I don't see how his family would be negativity effected if they could keep copyright for a few years.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[natehoy]

>>>The same thing will happen, just with a large publisher with a huge sum of cash. The copyright never falls into the public domain, the artists get screwed and orphan works (as in works that are never released but still have copyright on them) still happen.

Why, pray tell, would a publisher pay good money to extend a copyright if they have no intention of releasing the works in some form of per-profit publication? The only reason I could see is to maintain an artificial rarity, which is a valid gripe, but maybe a copyright could be automatically terminated early if the product is not available for sale (orphan works are automatically considered "abandoned property" and become public domain after a year or two of non-publication, for example?).

I pretty much agree with the rest of your points, but the proposal is at least a significant improvement over our current system, which has utterly no provision to release orphaned works and no requirement for anyone to take action to protect a copyright that lasts longer than most people will live. As it stands, pretty much any work released during the course of my lifetime is something I will never be able to freely use to create a derivative or adaptive work.

We have Jimi Hendrix's family suing "Huey Lewis and the News" for stealing a 4-note riff from Purple Haze for "I want a new drug", when even the Huey Lewis song realistically should be public domain by now. And in Australia, where laws are similar, they have "Men at Work" being sued for "Do you come from a land down under" because the tune is somewhat reminiscent of the children's song "Kukaburra".

I'm all for protecting an artist's work for a reasonable time so they can make a profit, but "reasonable time" went away a long time ago, and the artist needs to come back to the table and demonstrate that they (or their agents) are still interested in making a profit on the work.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[geekoid]

Eventually they won't be able to get people to do it if everyone before them has been killed.

Money is a tool, it doesn't control anything, people do.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Darkness404]

Why, pray tell, would a publisher pay good money to extend a copyright if they have no intention of releasing the works in some form of per-profit publication? The only reason I could see is to maintain an artificial rarity, which is a valid gripe, but maybe a copyright could be automatically terminated early if the product is not available for sale (orphan works are automatically considered "abandoned property" and become public domain after a year or two of non-publication, for example?).

So no one else can use them or for legal purposes. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fantastic_Four_(film)) Others are simply not sold in one country but may be widely distributed in other countries (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_south#Releases_and_availability). Look at video games for other examples, even though the game itself wasn't distributed at the time, they would sit on the copyright to release it on other times. For example, the original NES version of The Legend of Zelda was only re-released in 2003 after being unavailable for many years (due to the discontinuation of the NES).

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[westlake]

The law already says "for limited Times" which ostensibly means temporary

In practical terms, it means "definable," always has.

The framers of the constitution refused to make policy decisions binding on future legislators or the executive.

That is why the document is short, focuses on the structure of the federal government - the balance of powers - and is only rarely amended.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Jason Levine]

Why, pray tell, would a publisher pay good money to extend a copyright if they have no intention of releasing the works in some form of per-profit publication?

For a good example of a publisher wanting to keep copyrights when they have no intention of releasing the works, simply look to the one company often blamed for the insane copyright terms: Disney. They have their "vault" out of which they will release DVDs "for a limited time only." Once the time period is over, the movie goes back into the vault until Disney decides to release the Ultra-Cool-Incredibly-Wonderful-Extra-Special-Edition. Like you said, they keep an artificial scarcity so people will snatch up the DVDs when they are released instead of waiting. After all, if you wait, you might miss your chance to own the DVD before it gets locked back up. They're experts at gaming the system.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[natehoy]

Right, that was the "artificial scarcity" I mentioned. Disney is the epitome of that.

Hence the need for an "orphaned work" provision. If you lock the work up for a couple of years and don't demonstrate any effort to profit from it, then you lose your right to prevent others from profiting from it.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Jurily]

Money is a tool, it doesn't control anything, people do.

Except some of those people are bound by law to make profit for the shareholders. Yeah, I know, laws are just tools too. But the current climate is heavily tilted towards making money vs. everything else, including human life, culture and morality.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Jason Levine]

Forgot to make one additional point: Although Disney will lock up their movies, they'll still sell merchandising items based off of the movies. So perhaps Lilo and Stitch is in the vault, but Stitch figures might still be on store shelves.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[natehoy]

Hmm. Interesting wrinkle.

Personally, I think it's a bad example because I think the collective IQ of America would go up considerably if "Lilo and Stitch" WERE to be vaulted away, say, forever. I'll vote for Disney to have a perpetual copyright on it as long as they promise never to sell it again. But I digress...

I guess that would depend on copyright versus trademark. The work itself is not being pursued for profit, therefore the movie could potentially become public domain. However, no doubt the artwork remains a trademark of Disney Co.

Well, I guess there's a vaguely happy medium to be had there. The character art remains trademarked, but the movie (other than the characters) becomes public domain. So I could write a movie called "Lehi and Scratch" using many of the behaviors and plot elements, should I be stupid enough to do so, but I can't use a .. umm .. well, what the hell IS "Stitch"? Anyway, I can't use whatever it is as my "Scratch" character.

Of course, should such a thing come to pass, Disney would probably simply get rid of their silly "vault" nonsense and exercise their copyright actively until it runs out. And there'd be a hell of a lot of lawmakers who'd owe them significant refunds of bribe money, so you know it's never gonna happen anyway.

But a man can dream...

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[aztracker1]

They can only be bound by law under contract, within what is permitted under said law... anything beyond that is illegal.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[jimicus]

Would a reading as "copyrights have the term that they had when the work was first published" have been too activist?

Probably, given that most copyright extension laws have been drafted and bought by companies that want to extend copyright to their existing catalogue.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Tir-Gwaith]

C) You can renew your copyright for a maximum of 30 years, or until the author's death, whichever comes first.

And that by itself creates another motive for murder (or manslaughter if the person was emotionally distraught, but you get the picture).

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Draek]

There's plenty of problems with your argument, but let's start with the most obvious one: it puts Windows 3.1 in the Public Domain in the year 2092, five years *LATER* than when we'd get it under the current copyright regime. It's already outdated and practically useless today, just imagine how its gonna be in 80 years.

No, the ideal copyright system is the one that's been proven by independant studies to be optimal: 15 years, no extensions, no exceptions. It lacks the "incentive for murder" of life-depending terms, it doesn't put large companies at an advantage over individuals, it's long enough that it won't damage book profits too greatly, yet short enough that software will become free before being relegated to a museum piece.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[auLucifer]

So what? There is no legal liability attached to plagiarism; copyright infringement is the only legal issue. Plagiarism is merely a moral, ethical issue that share elements of copyright infringement. And to your example, copyright infringement has a defense of independent creation. Among other things, the author would have to show access to the "infringed" work.

But isn't plagiarism the proof of copyright infringement? You have duplicated the works of the artist without express permission so you have infringed on their copyright so even if they only share elements the act of plagiarising is an act of copyright infringement. Ignoring fair use which isn't plagiarism or infringement

Of all the works in the world, works owned by a "large publisher with a huge sum of cash" is likely the minority of all copyrights.

Even though they might be the minority there would be a good chance that it's of a much higher quality so the world at large would have more to gain from these works. People whose livelihoods are at stake will more likely produce better work in as much as their life depends on it. I think we could learn more from these people then from Joe Bloggs who thought it a good idea to post his own LOLcat picture.

Besides, the point of the above plan is not to deprive people of their copyrights. It's a plan to balance to trade-offs: continued protection for those that see a continued economic value and release to the public so that others can exploit them.

And seeing the continued economic value to their work 95 years on is reasonable? Well after the person has likely died unless by some freak coincidence they produced quality work in their first year of life AND live well past national averages? So the persons family or company should then get a free ride (if it has continued economic value it will pay to renew itself) on this persons work? Give it to the community at large so that more work can be produced, so that people can evolve and adapt what has been done into something that is more suitable for modern times

Copyrights don't protect the ideas of stories. They protect the actual physical work themselves. Ultimately, this comes back around to conflating plagiarism with copyright infringement.

Copyrights do protect the ideas of stories. If it leaves the person head in a recorded way, be it printed/pressed/written in blood they still have copyright on it. If a musician releases an amazing sequence of riffs that is beyond just a sample, which they planned to make a great song with but never did, then my understanding is they still have copyright on it. Back on topic though a company might see it, buy it from the artist and then licence it out for the next 100 years as it continues to pay for itself. How does this protect the original artist? They got their pitance and the big company can afford to pay renew fees forever from it, likely more then the artist got in each renewal. If it was released into public realm then a lot more musicians could put their spin on it and release something worthy

You don't know many artists, do you?

I do. Good artists release what they deem quality work. Why would they release anything less? Their life relies on image which is created by the release of quality work so there is a lot of stuff that they don't publish or release for others to see.

So? I fail to see your point. If it isn't published no one gets the benefit of it anyway and if it is ultimately published then the same rules would apply, no harm no foul. The only questions might be over ownership of the copyright.

That's right, no-one gets the benefit from it. Until someone discovers a missing Shakespeare play and publishes that. They then get the full rights to his work for the next 100 years. Something like that would definitely be better for the world at large

To me your approach is onl

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[dlthomas]

They aren't bound by law to take the job in the first place. If they feel their duty to the shareholders in their position is requiring them to act unethically, they should quit. Their duty to the shareholders cannot require them to act illegally (although they may be replaced if they don't, in a lax regulatory climate).

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[dlthomas]

IMHO, a better strategy is a short, definite length (say, 14 years - the original maximum term?).

My reasoning is that we can therefore look at something that says "(C) 1994" and know that it's out of copyright, and something that says "(C) 1996" and know it's not (unless the author's placed it in the public domain earlier).

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds almost how the patent office works. You pay a little the first year, say $500, then it darn near doubles every year after till year X when it becomes public domain. Excuse numbers being off, it's the near exponential growth that shocked me when I looked into getting my own patent.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations have taken over America.

Indeed they have. Decades ago. Welcome to the present, everyone.

(Not directed at the parent, who is quite obviously well aware of this.)

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[AigariusDebian]

Actually their proposal is equivalent to going to the highway and shooting down all SUVs that drive by with RPGs and selling that effort to the police as a 'move to provide people with a better fuel economy'.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[JockTroll]

"Indeed they have. Decades ago."

Wrong, loserboy nerd. I did it 35 minutes ago.

Re:Like any partially treated wart

[ukyoCE]

The whole point of the judiciary is to not care about nonsense like "judicial activism", but instead to do their jobs correctly. The people who throw about meaningless insults like that, will find something to insult regardless. Upholding serial term extension for copyright violated any reasonable reading of the law and the phrase "for limited times".

You just can't change...

[Pig Hogger]

People just can't change. Once a pigopolist, always a pigopolist.

Re:You just can't change...

[NeverVotedBush]

I think I finally figured out which analog hole they really want to close... (and with what...)

Do they mean..

[Pouic]

...human ears?

Re:Do they mean..

[purpledinoz]

Hollywood already started encrypting the story lines of movies. I watched Quantum of Solace, and the story made no sense, it was completely scrambled. I'm waiting for the brain-implant chip that will unscramble the story.

Re:Do they mean..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, simple encryption was already quite visible in the 2000 film Memento (the plot played backwards), but later dropped for the more secure, random key plot you mention.

Re:Do they mean..

[omnichad]

.noitpyrcne LTR dellac s'ti - thgiarts stcaf ruoy teG

Re:Do they mean..

[maxwell demon]

No, it wasn't encrypted. It just was, as the title promised, a quantum story. Since you cannot observe the complete quantum state, quantum things usually don't seem to make sense to the classical mind.

Re:Do they mean..

[rickb928]

Precisely. Viewing it changed the state.

In fact, if you watch it again and again, you come to different conclusions. Unless you're not really watching it, in which case you're not really observing the state, and so while it doesn't change, you wouldn't know that.

You do know that Physics is intended to make sense out of nothing. And it seems to work well for that.

Re:Do they mean..

[SBrach]

"Imagine finding out you got rejected from community college, then finding out that your alcoholic father got arrested for domestic abuse, you lost all your life savings in a Ponzi scheme, and all of this happens to you while you're on the space shuttle Challenger. Then you wake up and it's all a bad dream, except you realize that you're at work without clothes on, and work is NASA and you're really on the space shuttle Challenger. That's what this movie is like, only infinitely worse. Everything about this movie pissed me off, save for the lesbian finger bang scene. Except even that sucked because it wasn't in the movie."

QoS Review

Re:Do they mean..

[squidfood]

Well, I've got some output for them from my analog hole if they want it.

Re:Do they mean..

[dotancohen]

.noitpyrcne LTR dellac s'ti - thgiarts stcaf ruoy teG

My native language is Hebrew, you insensitive clod!

Oxymoron

[Anonymous Coward]

"High-value content ?!"

MPAA, listen closely: when it comes to TV, there is no such thing.

Re:Oxymoron

[oracle_of_power]

"High-value content ?!"

MPAA, listen closely: when it comes to TV, there is no such thing.

I think you have made the mistake of assuming that they "listen".

Re:Oxymoron

[Ollabelle]

No, it's high-value all right. To them; and once they monopolize the output stream, then it'll become ever more high-value, i.e. expensive.

Re:Oxymoron

[TheHawke]

Please define high value content. Is it the value the ack-ack's place upon what they consider to be high value, or is the the value the artists place on their works?

Re:Oxymoron

[mwvdlee]

If you equal "cost" or "price" to "value", then yes.

In the view of the MPAA, "high-value" probably means "content that will generate lots of money". Not anything related to artistic merit.

Re:Oxymoron

[Runaway1956]

Why buy it? I don't.

Disclaimer: I've never been a "consumer", so I can't understand why people who appear to be normal accept being referred to as "consumers", or why they run out and purchase every moronic bit of shit they see in a commercial.

Re:Oxymoron

[JasterBobaMereel]

If it was worth watching I would have watched in the the Cinema .....since it is on TV it is either old hat, or is about to go straight to DVD ... neither is High Value ...

I live in the UK so if this ever comes here they will discover that besides a flat fee TV licence, most people do not pay for TV at all ....and it is generally good quality

There is very little "high value" content that people can be bothered to pay for ... except for live broadcasts ....

Re:Oxymoron

[Znork]

Price rarely equates to value and with monopoly protected products far less so. The whole point monopoly rights lies in the ability to control price without competition, and avoiding market discovery of the equilibrium point of value, when the price of non-scarce goods like the MPAA products would otherwise fall towards zero. The value to individual buyers on the other hand may lie anywhere above the sale price for the deals that do happen and anyway below the sale price for the deals that are foregone.

Of course, with an artificially scarce good, that means the value the good would hold for everyone who refrains from purchasing (due to price being higher than value) will be lost to the economy (as the marginal cost per reproduction approaches zero).

Either way the MPAA would be more accurate saying 'high price' content.

Re:Oxymoron

[mmeister]

As an American, I wish that I could pay for a UK license (last I checked, I can't) and receive the shows you get. It's definitely better quality than MOST of the stuff that airs here.

We have 500 channels, 480 of which are probably showing some damn infomercial at this moment.

Re:Oxymoron

[nitehawk214]

"High-value content ?!"

MPAA, listen closely: when it comes to TV, there is no such thing.

I think you have made the mistake of assuming that they "listen".

And they make the mistake of thinking that we must watch.

Re:Oxymoron

[Darinbob]

"High-value" is literal. It means content they can charge a lot for.

Personally I don't care. I am physically and mentally capable of waiting for a movie to show up on Pay Per View or DVD or even broadcast. While there is indeed a "must see now!" market segment, I don't see how this is so large as to warrant the costs of these changes. Hollywood is not going to be raking in the bucks from those that they described the technology was for (those who can't make it to the theatres, such the elderly and those who can't find babysitters). So the upshot seems to be that they want this as a foot in the door. They won't make money off of SOC right away, but it grants the ability to disallow time shifting altogether if they want to later on.

On the bright side, there isn't anything coming out of the Hollywood pipeline worth watching anymore, so this move will just make it easier to wean ourselves all off of TV and Movies altogether. You increase bus fare, and people remember how to walk.

Re:Oxymoron

[AmiMoJo]

In addition, now they have to compete with the internet for people's time you would think that they would want to make their stuff as easy to access as possible. Instead they make it as shitty as possible, with no way to skip the ads at the start of a DVD, no official way to rip it and now apparently no way to record it off the TV for later viewing.

Re:Oxymoron

[Hurricane78]

I'd say that the Top Gear specials are extremely worth watching. And you're right, UK TV actually is quite nice for the number of people in the country.
Unfortunately (or rather fortunately, when I see the totalitarian tendencies) I don't live in the UK, so I get them via Torrent or something similar. :)

Re:Oxymoron

[JasterBobaMereel]

Do you have a single ID number that everyone demands to see to identify yourself

Do you have photo ID that everyone has that is used to identify yourself

Do your passports have biometrics ...which one of use lives in a country with totalitarian tendencies

I still have my Super VHS camcorder

[commodore64_love]

No it isn't "HD" but it does provide a nice clear DVD quality image (640x480) which is good enough for most people. Heck even blurry 320x240 ipod downloads are good enough, since most of what Hollywood makes is crap anyway. It might as well look as bad as it plays.

Re:I still have my Super VHS camcorder

[Kjella]

Not to mention that they'll need to patch the digital hole. Before the big breakthroughs on AACS/BD+ there were HDCP breakers and HDMI capture cards to make pure digital copies, even though it had to be transcoded since it was already decoded. AACS/BD+ isn't totally broken in that AnyDVD must release new versions of the decrypting tool but HDCP is, just like CSS is for DVDs. There's no fixing that without replacing every HDMI and DVI/HDCP connection out there.

Re:I still have my Super VHS camcorder

[Seakip18]

Heck, like many other problems, you can just throw a little less money than they are extorting out of you to solve the problem.

For $180, you can begin get a HDMI to Component converter. It's not as cheap as those other solutions but it's still cheaper than running out to get your MPAA approved device.

Re:I still have my Super VHS camcorder

[jhol13]

Sorry, those are only for un-encrypted content.

Re:I still have my Super VHS camcorder

[Anonymous Coward]

What I see as a possibility of happening is that there will be a HDCP2 standard, or a HDCP+year standard. Then every several years, you have to buy a new TV with the latest DRM upgrades, or else you get locked out of watching movies, or perhaps locked out from receiving any and all channels at all. This would be worse than the move from analog to digital OTA reception because older sets would not be able to be retrofitted to the new shackles. The reason I can see this happening is that it would churn TV sets, benefiting one market segment, and allow newer, more restrictive forms of DRM, which makes another market segment happy. Of course, the losers will be the customers/subscribers.

This happened when the first row of buyers bought HD sets and then realized that their Blu-Ray movies had issues playing.

Re:I still have my Super VHS camcorder

[Seakip18]

I'd figured that pending the charlie foxtrot that'd come from turning it on they'd scrapped it for use on all signals.

I remember reading somewhere if you're using 1080i, most devices do not use HDCP to black out since there are still a ton of analog tubes with 1080i(me included).

Then again, I could be wrong since I looked into it a year ago. Also, when has an impending CF ever stopped MPAA from making everyone suffer?

Re:I still have my Super VHS camcorder

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the HDFury it claims HDCP support so should handle the encrypted content.

Future Post

[eldavojohn]

Subject: New Setup

posted by eldavojohn (898314) * on 2060.09.04 9:05

So, being an old man, I thought I would go legit and get all of my path transmitters MPAA approved. I already had the Z-Ray player that has a 128 core processor to handle all the Z Discs and decrypt the DRM but I spent the extra $50 on the MPAA approved cord from that to my MPAA approved TV (which already has a 256 core processor to hand the encryption). Once all that was in place, I made the big purchase. It was only $100 to have an MPAA approved zoning specialist come in and stake off and area of my living approved by the MPAA for me and my family to view their copyrighted material in. Once that was complete, I got triplicate signoff on a form that allowed me to pay $500 to install two units on either side of the room that emit some sort of crazy field so that the photons leaving my MPAA TV unit can be seen normally within the MPAA designated zone in my living room. It's really neat to stand outside it and see static and then step inside and see it perfectly. You also have to put on headphones (only one set) to hear the sound because they haven't found a similar technology for it yet. Whatever it is that those things generate sure is strong. If the dog gets too close to one of them, it shits itself and walks in circles for about an hour. Also, you can't have metal things on you otherwise they heat up and burn you.

But a couple thousand later and I can finally sit back and not worry about being prosecuted. You guys are all chumps for not enjoying this sort of MPAA certified technology!

Re:Future Post

[e-scetic]

I actually think folks who watch TV and movies ARE chumps. I stopped ages ago, you should too. What will it take to get the majority of people to stop? Sometimes I think people will take ANYTHING up the ass and say thank you too.

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

"It was only $100 to have an MPAA approved zoning specialist come in and stake off and area of my living approved by the MPAA for me and my family to view their copyrighted material in."

But what if you need to cover more people than your immediate family, or, heaven forbid, you have another child? You'll have to renegotiate your viewing contract. You should have gone for the "unlimited" option for $100 more that would cover future family members without having to resurvey the entertainment room. It also covers friends that might visit (as long as the total number of viewers is within your license), whereas with your current arrangement they have to remember to bring and plug in their own MPAA viewing cards to your equipment so that their viewing account can be automatically deducted. You'll regret it when one of your friends walks into the field, the viewbox turns to static, and the police show up a few minutes later at your door asking about attempted copyright violation.

Always pay the extra fees to upgrade to the "ultimate" versions! Didn't they teach you that in school?

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true. You're paying for television service only to deal with ads? Just pony up the $9 a month and get Netflix (and your normal cost for internet connection - watch the price on this go up). Seeing no ads on something you're paying for is great, along with being able to watch it when you please (through browser or xBox 360).

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

moooooooon RIVER

Re:Future Post

[Seakip18]

Ages ago? Man. You've missed some rather interesting shows that might appeal to your nerdier side.

I'll just say "Good Eats" and leave it at that.

Re:Future Post

[Kjella]

Won't happen. It'd be as stupid as to say everyone that is listening to music are chumps, that they should all play instruments themselves or find something else worthwhile to do. Or those that read books instead of writing them. Being told a good story is fun - that you don't see it is your loss, not mine. Of course there's crap series, crap movies too but I don't have a problem sorting out the lemons.

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people torrent that stuff, you know. And with the legit thing getting more and more clamped down and therefore glitchy, I'm sure that overtime this will be a more and more attractive option.

Re:Future Post

[Attila the Bun]

If you had been taking movies up the ass, then I can see why you were keen to stop.

Re:Future Post

[elrous0]

As a self-righteous vegan, I too am superior to everyone else. And, like you, I don't hesitate to let everyone within earshot know it whenever possible. Thanks for enlightening us filthy, TV-watching heathen. Your wisdom is like a beacon, guiding us down the path to our salvation.

Re:Future Post

[twmcneil]

Bummer, my mod points expired yesterday. Dude, that was seriously funny!

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

How I spend my cable money these days. I buy a season at a time of whatever.

DVD...

http://www.amazon.com/24-Pack-Network-EPISODES-Breakfast-Veggie/dp/B0018KVL5O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1252075676&sr=8-1

I miss nothing... I have a decent set of DVDs no commercials. Also in high quality not the compressed and recompressed and then recompressed again cable version. With a bit of work I do not even have to get off my couch to watch them.

Re:Future Post

[arielCo]

Oblig, the first thing that came to my non-MPAA-approved mind

Re:Future Post

[Thaelon]

I wouldn't worry about it too much.

There will always be hackers cracking this stuff so we can enjoy the content however we please. And there will always be copyright infringers willing to share more user friendly copies.

Sooner or later they'll realize that forcing a more unpleasant experience on their legal users is not a good business model. Probably about the same time they go out of business completely.

Re:Future Post

[Culture20]

Subject: Re:New Setup

posted by noodlesoupeaternoodlesoupeater (1093892093) * on 2060.09.04 9:10

Splarg! u kinna spella wut-is 128 core processor? We use powers o 10 in CS, Mr anchent. roundup maths. u men 130 cor cpu! Splarg ina half! ROFLOLMAOWTFBBQSTWKKA!!1!!

Re:Future Post

[Sir_Dill]

As a self-righteous vegan, I too am superior to everyone else. And, like you, I don't hesitate to let everyone within earshot know it whenever possible. Thanks for enlightening us filthy, TV-watching heathen. Your wisdom is like bacon, guiding us down the path to our salvation.

There....fixed that for you.

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to sit and watch someone pretending to do something, when I can get off my ass and actually do something myself?

Re:Future Post

[natehoy]

You forgot having all of your neighbors chipped so if one of them happens to stop by and wants to watch a few minutes of the game, the system can shut itself down to protect you from infringement.

That'll be one standard RIAA settlement for content sharing, please. $200,000 for each neighbor within 1/4 mile (potential person you shared your content with) multiplied by the number of shows that have aired on all 1500 channels you get since you put the system in (potential content you shared).

Re:Future Post

[geekoid]

And people that don't watch TV are social misfits.

Get off your high horse.

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all. I know lots of people who don't watch television, and I met them by going out and socializing in public places. You can't watch television if you're trying to meet new people and have a fun time socializing. That is quite the opposite of your cliqueish milieu, isn't it? I hated working with programmers. All they would talk about is the shit they watched last night. I wasn't interested in watching it last night, so why do you think I want to hear about it now? Then again, it was okay to geek out with we did share common interests -- me and a co-worker used to read Naruto and One Piece during lunch on Fridays.

Re:Future Post

[shutdown -p now]

You've missed some rather interesting shows that might appeal to your nerdier side.

The more appealing a TV show is to someone's nerdier side, the faster it appears on TPB.

Re:Future Post

[Seakip18]

Normally, I don't respond to AC. This time, you're insulting Alton Brown.

Pray tell me how one is going to learn a technique that has never been seen? Reading and pictures are all fun and good. But if you really want to learn it, you watch someone else do it then you try it.

No no...You don't know jack shit about Good Eats or the reason Alton Brown started it, do you?

I can honestly say I never really enjoyed making food until I watched Good Eats. Now, I make meals that are delicious because I learned something from watching his show.

Re:Future Post

[Seakip18]

Why bother downloading it at all when my media center can simply record it, compress it and keep track of where my watch points are?

Don't get me wrong. There are torrent trackers that do download files as new episodes appear. I just have a different approach to acquiring content when it comes to Good Eats.

Re:Future Post

[lee1026]

Considering inflation, they are doing all of this really cool tech for really cheap. Maybe there is a good side for this DRM craze.

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

I do agree Alton Brown is lots of fun (though I'm not sure I like him in Iron Chef), but this part confuses me:

"I can honestly say I never really enjoyed making food until I watched Good Eats. Now, I make meals that are delicious because I learned something from watching his show."

I watch his show frequently, and although it's fascinating because he goes into the why and how of food, but when it comes to the actual cooking, I've found him to be about as instructional as all the other cooks on Food Network, minus Rachael Ray. Then again, it's possible that's the only cooking show you watch on Food Network in which case feel free to ignore this post.

~~ another anon

Re:Future Post

[Anonymous Coward]

>You can't watch television if you're trying to meet new people and have a fun time socializing.


Actually, with Sprint TV (R), I can do both. I can catch up on my favourite mind-numbing comedies while half-paying attention to those around me.

Re:Future Post

[bughunter]

Pray tell me how one is going to learn a technique that has never been seen?

Aye. Now, I don't have any illusions that AB invented Avocado Ice Cream, but I would have never encountered the concept if it weren't for his show. And yes, it's as awesome as it is odd. (The ice cream, too.)

More heavy-handed every day

[elrous0]

Just once I would like to know what it was like to have a government that represented me, and told the MPAA/RIAA to shut *its* hole. Unfortunately, with the Democrats beholden to Hollywood, and the Republicans beholden to big business, it's likely that the MPAA/RIAA will get whatever they ask for in the end.

If their DRM only effected pirates, it would be one thing. But at this point, the DRM is becoming so oppressive that it's having a negative effect on those of us who *try* to be honest. When I have to crack my player just to be able to skip 10 minutes of mandatory commercials at the beginning of a DVD/blu-ray, that's a sad day. I have already refused to pay for any more movie tickets because of this--I'll be damned if I'm paying $10 to sit through a bunch of TV commercials at the beginning of a movie (anyone remember when the beginning of a movie had a cartoon and a couple of trailers, and *NO* soda or car commercials?). Now the DMCA has turned me into a criminal just because I insist on controlling the $20 disc I legitimately *bought*.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

Well see, this post contains the problem "if their DRM only effected pirates" ought to be "if their DRM effected pirates". The reality of DRM is that it takes another hour to strip the DRM before posting the torrent, with the end result that pirates have to wait another hour and customers have to deal with the DRM. I mean, look at games. Several companies have recently decided to stop forcing people to use CD's to play, but pirates have had that option for ages - they just stuck the no-cd crack in the torrent file. I've pirated games I own to get rid of some of the more egregious DRM...

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[MickyTheIdiot]

Just to add to your point, FYI, according the MPAA you haven't bought anything.

Next they will try to figure out a system where you pay more if more than one person is in the room viewing the disk.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's supposed to be AFFECTED, not effected, duh!

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[maugle]

If their DRM only effected pirates...

Ah, but their onerous DRM does effect piracy: It creates new pirates where there weren't any previously!

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

An apropos grammar error! It should be "if their DRM *affected* pirates". But, strangely, effecting pirates is also right, since their DRM does cause piracy.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[snspdaarf]

You didn't read the slashdot post of the set top box with the IR sensor, or camera, or whatever?

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

Duct tape.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[NeverVotedBush]

So very true!

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[mttlg]

>If their DRM only effected pirates,

DRM has nothing to do with pirates. The goal of DRM is to give the content providers full control of the distribution system, right up until the point where the light hits your eyeballs (and I doubt they'll stop once they get that far). Ideally, they would want every viewer to pay every time their content is heard or viewed, but for now they'll settle for ensuring that every view is through an approved path that they have been directly compensated for. This ensures that people aren't using content in any non-approved manner, regardless of whether such non-approved use is legal. The pirates may be inconvenienced, but they will continue to operate. The real payoff is in convincing the public that following the **AA's mandates is perfectly acceptable, thus allowing them to do as they please with home entertainment, without regard for individual rights.

This is a dangerous path to go down, but we're already a fair way along and there seems to be no way back. HDMI and Firewire are already locked down, so it's not surprising that they want to turn off component. Regardless of their "pre-DVD release" example cited in the article, it is clear that if this is allowed, it would be applied to all HD content across the board by default, except where otherwise required by law (e.g., DTCP). From there, it's only a small step to disabling SD video altogether (after all, everyone has an approved HD viewing device now, right?).

The biggest threat to this industry isn't the pirates, it's a population that believes that how they view content should be up to them and not dictated by a higher power. This is the mentality that allows people to justify turning to piracy when the legal route is too difficult. Rather than making the legal route easier (as the music industry seems to have figured out in only a decade or so), the MPAA is committed to creating a world where they are an altruistic god showering the people with "high-value content," asking only for our money and obedience in return. The scariest part is the thought that some of the people in control might actually believe that what they are doing is for the public good.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

There used to be a time before TV and movies, best bet probably would be if everyone stopped watching it, then those guys could go back selling bibles and screwing farmers instead.

Not that I would mind seing the media conglomerates going the way of the dodo.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

I have already refused to pay for any more movie tickets because of this--I'll be damned if I'm paying $10 to sit through a bunch of TV commercials at the beginning of a movie

Simple solution, enter the screening area 10 minute later. You won't miss anything, and unless you're watching a blockbuster near release date, you'll have no problems getting decent seats. Of course, if you want the best seats you have to get in early enough, just like any other venue.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

affected

Just throwing that out there...

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about stopping piracy. DRM has always been about control. They know that no matter what kind of DRM they use, it's going to end up on the net. What they want is control. They'd also like to sell you a dozen copies of the same content. You need one for your TV, your computer, your iPhone, etc, etc...

DRM only effects those who actually pay for the content.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Sfing_ter]

Wait - You're saying the Demopublicans and the Republocrats provide the same outcome? Shit. Perhaps we give them a paper cut with the Constitution.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[mmeister]

Actually, the RIAA and MPAA did pretty well under Republicans as well.

Truth is, corporations own most of the politicians. Since they never know which side is in power, they buy both sides. Problem solved --- for them.

Meanwhile, our society begins to decay more and more.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[L4t3r4lu5]

Buy your movie ticket, turn up at the start of the film, then get your snacks.

Get your snacks from the shop down the road; It'll be cheaper, and you have 20 minutes to kill. You could just get Cola, or a couple of beers. Who will tell?

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[RavenChild]

I read this first and thought he used the wrong form of effect/affect.

Ah, but their onerous DRM does affect piracy: It creates new pirates where there weren't any previously!

This might be what (s)he meant; yet, when considering the original post, effect (as in build/create/generate/etc) works equally as well.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[sqlrob]

Simpler solution:

Don't go to theaters that do that. I've only gone to an independent chain after there was 33 (so much for your 10) minutes of ads before the feature, not counting previews. The only ads ad this chain are for events that the chain has.
They also serve food and toss out people that talk.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

According to me, the MPAA owes me $2.3 billion. "By selling me this disc you agree...."

captch: mutinies

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's likely that the MPAA/RIAA will get whatever they ask for in the end. "

Nah, they'd enjoy that too much.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[PitaBred]

The music industry? You're kidding, right? They still overcharge for CD's relative to the value people perceive, and they've done all kinds of things to try to protect music. They're worse than the MPAA... they're wasting the resources of the judicial system on witch hunts and "making an example" of people.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be damned if I'm paying $10 to sit through a bunch of TV commercials at the beginning of a movie (anyone remember when the beginning of a movie had a cartoon and a couple of trailers, and *NO* soda or car commercials?). Now the DMCA has turned me into a criminal just because I insist on controlling the $20 disc I legitimately *bought*.

The MPAA would want us all prosecuted if we went to the movie late intentionally to avoid those commercials.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Phisbut]

Just to add to your point, FYI, according the MPAA you haven't bought anything.

According to their marketing material though, I did buy the disc and the movie. Ever see a big "Own it now on DVD" when watching an ad? That implies that by buying the DVD, I actually own it. If that isn't the case, then it's blatant false advertising.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[IBitOBear]

No, in that use it's "effect" as in to result from a cause. (you missed the pun 8-) [i.e. DRM => cause, Piracy => effect]

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I have already refused to pay for any more movie tickets because of this--I'll be damned if I'm paying $10 to sit through a bunch of TV commercials at the beginning of a movie (anyone remember when the beginning of a movie had a cartoon and a couple of trailers, and *NO* soda or car commercials?). Now the DMCA has turned me into a criminal just because I insist on controlling the $20 disc I legitimately *bought*.

I fortunately live in an area that has a theatre chain that doesn't hate its customers. I generally only see 4-5 movies a year in theatres, but I've learned to stick with the good ones. Last time I went outside my usual chain, I sat through 15 minutes of product commercials before the movie previews even started. I am already aware of the existence of Pepsi, thank you very much, and the only mention of cell phones I want is a warning that anyone talking on one during the movie will be beaten and tossed into the dumpster.

The Warren Theatres in Wichita, KS. Frankly, I can't imagine how the business model hasn't caught on better. Build a nicer theatre than the others in town, keep the place clean, don't annoy people with commercials before the previews, (Most people don't mind a few movie previews - we are here for a movie after all,) and charge fifty cents more per ticket. Going to see a movie is a small luxury that nearly anyone can afford, and most people are even willing to pay a small premium for a better experience.

They don't even play the MPAA's "Don't download movies" propaganda - Apparently *somebody* finally figured out that moviegoers pay for their entertainment. They did used to play a Looney Tunes cartoon before the movie started, but they quit doing that a few years ago. I realize I probably sound like a paid shill, but what would be the point of that? Anyone in south-central Kansas already knows about the biggest theater chain in the area. Maybe my only point is to provoke jealousy in the rest of the country.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[khchung]

Ideally, they would want every viewer to pay every time their content is heard or viewed ...

No, ideally, they would want every viewer to pay regardless of whether the content was viewed or not.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[webheaded]

Some of us have to try and hack this stuff just to use it AT ALL. I got a Blu-ray drive for my media center PC (it runs Vista even). Everything is plugged in all nice and neat. I tested one movie and it worked okay. I put in American Gangster...every single player I try to use to play this movie immediately crashes and will not play. I tried installing AnyDVD HD and basically used every single hack I could conceive to try to get this damn thing to play.

After about an hour or 2 of cursing and making my wife irritated over how mad I was getting, I turned off my computer, ripped out the blu ray drive, shoved it back into a box, and shipped it right back to Newegg and even got them to comp the restocking fee. Know what I bought to replace it? A hard drive. I can download my blurays compressed at about 9 gigs a pop and I have no issues playing them at all. This is what they made a potentially paying customer into. I generally will pay for things when they deserve it, but I won't buy nearly as much now because they pissed me off.

I'm a hypocrite because I still buy some Blurays (I have a PS3), but I will not buy nearly as many as I would have. Just the movies I really really like. I'm kind of afraid of using my PS3 drive too much for anything other than games...I had a PS2 and I know all about Sony's optical drives.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[sjames]

Actually, what they REALLY want is the ability to copyright the visual stream from your eyes as it happens so you have to pay them the eyeball tax or be blind. If you want to actually remember any of it that's extra. Rumor has it they offer a license if you'd like to talk about anything relating to the visual, but nobody can actually afford it.

Re:More heavy-handed every day

[Anonymous Coward]

No, DRM does not affect piracy, but it does effect it.

Living on your knees

[Migraineman]

So lemme get this straight. The MPAA and their handlers want the general population to live on their knees, justified by the possible "benefit" to consumers (god I hate that word) like "parents who can't afford a babysitter." If they can't afford a babysitter, why would they be paying good money to watch pre-release movies? Shouldn't that money go toward food and rent? (yeah, I know, that's a completely different rant.)

The MPAA and their ilk would love the consumer population to live on their knees and just fork over money on command. But they've got a plan! Pursuant to implementation of CRAHP (Content Repositioning to Appropriate Height Placement,) all video rental stores will be required to install media shelving no taller than 3ft/1m tall. Think of how much more convenient that will be for people in wheelchairs!

Video standards are there to promote interoperability, not to guarantee a revenue model.

Of course it is a pro-consumer!

[ThePhilips]

calling the petition a 'pro-consumer' (!)

Of course it pro-consumer. It will ensure that only role you can play is being obedient couch potato.

Also that might help finally solve the problem with the pesky indie studios by making it even more expensive to air anything anywhere.

Golden Rule

[lalder]

It's the Golden Rule, he who has the gold makes the rules!!!! It's the finest law money can BUY!!!

Close the digital hole first.

[purpledinoz]

That sounds like too much effort. They should just close the digital hole first. Encrypt the content using a 8192bit key and then throw it away. It fixes all the piracy issues. It would be decades before any pirate could recover the key, and since no player could play it, there would be no way for the pirates to steal the analog signal. It kills 2 birds with 1 stone. If the MPAA wants to buy the patent from me, that'll be $1M please.

Re:Close the digital hole first.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always thought that the audio "analog hole" was the ear canal... if you add video, then you've got a couple of analog cornea->retinas in the system too.

I suppose they're going to outlaw analog recording/playback equipment next.

Re:Close the digital hole first.

[Maximum Prophet]

You jest, but when the **AA starts to encode content specifically to each user, they'll stop copyright infringement. They'll encode so that only you can decode, and if you give the content to someone else they'll be able to use their master key to track it back to you and you'll be banned from watching movies for life. (or bankrupted by the lawsuit)

Re:Close the digital hole first.

[Anonymous Coward]

The MPAA already has a patent on things that don't work.

Re:Close the digital hole first.

[Jason Levine]

To do this, the content would need to be digital (and uneditable) the whole way through. One analog hole (just the thing they're worried about) and their digital watermark/encoding/whatever could be destroyed keeping them from identifying who pirated it. This really worries them as they tend to be control freaks of the highest order and want to know what people are doing with their content, when, and with who. Sometimes I wonder why they don't just take the master tapes, lock them in a "TV & Film Fort Knox" and keep everyone away with armed guards. It would stop piracy and would cost them (and us) a whole lot less.

Re:Close the digital hole first.

[spitzak]

No, what they want is a form of PK encryption on the devices. Even though there is an analog version of the content, you will be unable to convert this to a form that will play back on anybody's device, even your own, because you don't have the encryption key, only the decryption key. Devices that playback unencrypted content will be illegal because "pirates use them".

"home movies" may be playable, but only by keeping the recording device connected to the internet. It will negotiate a one-time key with the playback device on the other end.

Their goal is to make it impossible to create and distribute content without going through them. They will use "piracy" as the excuse to get this.

I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

This will 'enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content.' So what's preventing them from doing that now?

I'd like to leave my car parked with the doors open to make it easier for me to put the shopping in when I get back to the car park. There's nothing stopping me but I don't because I don't want it stolen. If they think someone will "steal" the content then just don't offer it. If they want people to see it then offer it.

Who is the customer?

[dazedNconfuzed]

Companies who lose sight of who the real customer is often die - a slow, lingering demise, but terminal nonetheless.

Methinks the great failing of Vista (and M$'s overall strategy flaw) was that M$ decided the customer is Dell (and other huge-volume buyers), IT departments, and DRM-lusting IP/content owners - forgetting that the real customer is each user clicking their way around the screen. Result: some 50% of Apple users are new to the product line, happy to put up with Jobs as a benevolent dictator who cares about their experience, happy to escape being treated as a mere marketing resource of eyeballs and wallets.

So long as we still have some technological liberties, someone will realize who the customer really is, serve them, and be rewarded - and drive **AA & government control out.

Re:Who is the customer?

[MickyTheIdiot]

The current state of consumer ignorance about technology allows this type of corporate abuse. At least part of the solution is education. Tough because you have a populace that for the most part doesn't care until they get burnt with a DRM restriction.

The second part of the double whammy though is government and big media in bed with the corporate approved POV on this.

Still... someday the DRM crap will be pushed so far as to cause a critical mass and there will suddenly be "outraged" people on CNN talking about it... but we're going to be deep in the crap pile by then.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Maximum Prophet]

Kudos to Jobs and his crew, but if your real customer is Dell and the *IAA, then you have a better hand. You can eventually cut the price of your product to zero, or lower, and still make money.

Apple has an uphill battle, but it is winnable. Just look at the bottled water industry to find out how to sell a product that most people can get free or nearly free.

Re:Who is the customer?

[blackest_k]

It is worse than that when the DRM kicks in most people assume they have done something wrong and it is their fault it doesn't work.

To be honest I just don't bother now, I have plenty of things to do that don't involve sitting watching a box.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Shagg]

To be honest I just don't bother now, I have plenty of things to do that don't involve sitting watching a box.

Like going online and sitting watching a monitor.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Anonymous Coward]

...if your real customer is Dell and the *IAA, then you have a better hand. You can eventually cut the price of your product to zero, or lower, and still make money.

Pfft, like Microsoft is going to do THAT.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Darkness404]

I think the problems are twofold, on one hand you have things being simpler, that is to use a computer almost anyone with a few hours to kill can pick up a keyboard and mouse and at least sorta figure it out. 30 years ago though, you needed to attend a class or read a book to figure out how to use a computer. On the other hand you have tech support being nationally done with large retailers (such as Geek Squad in Best Buy) this leads to the people who people "trust" giving them answers that please them and their company's bottom line. For example ask them why you can't do something with DRM and they would say it simply isn't possible, however, they might be willing to sell you some "authorized" equipment to do the job. So when the only information they are seeing is the "its not possible" from "tech support" and the "its not possible" when they ignore them and try to do it themselves with little knowledge, they assume that its just a feature not added in rather than a feature intentionally removed and that the system is truly defective by design.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Anonymous Coward]

great failing of Vista?

More like failing of Linux to take advantage and seize the market, after all the articles claiming Vista was a failure and the imminent doom of the company combined with the economy.
Funny how most of the arguments lost credibility once the hardware market caught up like predicted and the first SP patch cleaned up performance, what was the beef? DRM didn't have shit to do with it, Apple is very successful with all the DRM in their products IPOD,IPhone, Itunes and the Operating System.

Apple seized some of the market with a good product but I think all Linux did was gain 3% and lose it immediately. We did what all temporary Linux users do; install it to look at the new eye candy and than quickly realize you need to do massive amount of work to get everything where it should be and to get it *working*.

Windows 7 is the solution, everything you talk about in it is perfected. If XP was good enough for everybody and Vista was crap, well than Windows 7 should set the standard.

Well if the real users are 'forgetting that the real customer is each user clicking their way around the screen.'; than what the hell is Dell with those hundreds of thousands of college/high school students with their laptops? You know, the future workforce and that they will be using MS Office on their Snow Leopard OS or on Windows 7.

Re:Who is the customer?

[nurb432]

So long as we still have some technological liberties, .

Don't worry, that is being worked on too and should be eliminated here shortly.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Culture20]

...if your real customer is Dell and the *IAA, then you have a better hand. You can eventually cut the price of your product to zero, or lower, and still make money.

Pfft, like Microsoft is going to do THAT.

They do it in China. That's right, I went there.

Re:Who is the customer?

[blackest_k]

I guess it can be similar but you are making the decisions as to what you view and absorb from the Internet.

Television has a schedule to feed you what the TV companies have decided will entertain you and is a relatively passive experience. Funny thing is the Internet is the biggest library ever and it used to be going to the library was a good use of your time.

Youtube for example can be used for Monty python clips or learning a new skill its up to the user what positive things they get from the Internet.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the reason the major political parties are in support of draconian copyright is because it's good for America. No, hear me out.

America exports a huge amount of content. One of the biggest benefits of such is that it offsets the truly gigantic trade deficit. America is becoming hugely indebted to China -- a very difficult situation politically[1] -- and anything that reduces such debt definitely has a positive side.

Of course, the less tangible benefit is that with all this American culture being exported, the rest of the world becomes more like America. Copyrights won't help there, apart from helping fund more content production.

[1] Perhaps wars are fought using economics in the 21st Century? Physical combat is more risky now that everyone has nukes.

Re:Who is the customer?

[khchung]

Companies who lose sight of who the real customer is ...

While I have no love for the **AA, I think you are mistaken in this case.

They have a very clear sight of who their customers are - the advertisement sponsors.

People "clicking their way around the screen" are the product which they sold to the ad sponsors. As calling people "product" is not a good idea, they used another very precise term - "consumers".

Like a livestock eating away at ("consuming") the feed, it doesn't matter what junk they use for the feed as long as the customer is ok with it. Have you ever cared what was used to feed the cow when you bought a pack of beef as long as it won't poison you? Ad sponsors won't care what's in the show as long as it won't reflect badly on their brand.

Re:Who is the customer?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Result: some 50% of Apple users are new to the product line, happy to put up with Jobs as a benevolent dictator

Which, given the reverse merger of pixar into disney is quite ironic, since Jobs now effectively controls the largest DRM-luvin media conglomerate in the US.

What about this one?

[iCantSpell]

This is why I have absolutely no problem with downloading anything and everything I want.

They claim their losing money because I download content for free... Something interesting here.

1. I wasn't going to buy the movie anyway.
2. You can't lose money you didn't have.
3. The movie sucked anyway.
4. It's not my fault you think $50 million dollar special effects makes a good movie.
5. You want me to pay you to tell me how to use my property?
6. You didn't know as long as I can see it I can copy it?

Re:What about this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also 7. You aren't distributing it anyway, so you didn't exactly sell it.

Re:What about this one?

[Archangel Michael]

4.

I would agree with this point. Transformers (1 & 2) weren't all that great, but I would pay $10 just to see Megan Fox. Any movie with her ( and a select few other actors ) is worth $10 to watch, regardless of plot or effects.

Re:What about this one?

[Hel Toupee]

I hate them so much that I download my movies twice. By their math, that costs them twice as much money. If all us pirates would just band together and download all of our pirated movies twice, we'll soon cost them so much that we'll put them out of business.

Re:What about this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

7. I am your typical lazy ass who is dragging down this country and want everything served to me with a silver spoon.

Listen bro, go make and produce your own movie if you think your business model is so much superior. I think you would end up bankrupt and your foot in your mouth.

These are Warez groups and specialize in this area to serve you up the movie/game/app.
Now I wish I could run a Warez group thats business model specializes in leeching off Hollywood and serving it up to the lazy ass internet base.

Where's my medal for being so courageous?
Here's an idea, be courageous by not downloading.

Re:What about this one?

[geekoid]

3 is irrelevant. Sorry, but it is

Also, how bad could it suck if you bothered to download it?

Re:What about this one?

[natehoy]

Then don't download it.

1. If purchasing it is not a value proposition to you, then ignore the work. "I wasn't going to buy the movie" means the movie is worth less than they charge. Fair enough. But they own the rights to the work, and they set the price. If you disagree with the price, call them and tell them that lowering it means you'll buy it. If everyone who pirated called the movie companies and said, "you know, I'd buy Matrix 12 if it was $2 less", someone in marketing might figure out that they've set their sweet spot a couple of bucks high.

2. Someone put work into that product, and if you don't intend to give them money for it, you don't get to take it.

3. Why would you want to risk a massive RIAA/MPAA settlement for a movie that sucked?

4. It's not their fault you think it doesn't, and if it's not a good movie by your standards, see #3.

5. Don't pay. Don't accept the terms. Don't buy the work within their terms, and don't take it outside their terms. Ignore the work. Problem solved.

6. Because piracy simply justifies DRM and stupid effing laws. The controls, though useless, get more and more complex and harder for paying customers to deal with.

If you demonstrate to the studios that their work has no value (or not enough value to justify their prices), they'll have to think about how to make their work have value or lower their prices. The only way to show that the work is valueless (or of lower value than their prices justify) that is to stop buying *and stop downloading* the work. Also state loudly your reasons for ignoring it, preferably to the studios who, after all, just want to sell movies.

If no one is accepting the present value of their work, then the studios can start realizing that they need to add more value or charge less. They might decide that, say, actually writing a good script is cheaper and makes a better product than millions of dollars in special effects. But right now, they are making what they think people value, because that means people are going to want it.

By downloading it, you are acknowledging that the work has value to you (which may be less than what they want to charge, but it obviously has value), but that you choose not to pay that value. You are assigning a value to it, because otherwise you wouldn't be going to the effort to download it and risking a multimillion-dollar settlement (at a very low chance of happening) to get it.

A side effect of piracy is that the RIAA/MPAA can then turn to our venerable Congresscritters and have new silly laws passed that eat away at legitimate user's rights and pay for stupid ads like "piracy = supporting terrorism". But the primary effect is to communicate that their works have value that people are willfully choosing not to pay.

I'm not saying the studios are right. By my standards, they charge too much for their work. But it's THEIR work to sell on their terms.

Generally I rent movies. If I don't like a movie, I don't buy it. I also don't download it illegally, because I don't like it. If I like a movie a whole lot and think I'll watch it again and again, I'll buy it, because the potential risk of having my life utterly ruined ain't worth saving $20 on a movie. Plus I don't want to feed the MPAA trolls.

If everyone who pirated a movie stopped, and instead approached the studio and said "gee, that movie really blew steaming monkey chunks, but it had some mild entertainment value, could you sell it to me as a download for $(name what you'd pay here) and save yourself the packaging and distribution costs?", the studios might just react by coming out with a reasonable download option. Then again, they might not, but at least they couldn't justify draconian new DRM schemes to "prevent piracy" - they'd see that their dropping sales really WERE a matter of their content sucking or being too expensive, and not because a bunch of freeloaders would rather take the content than pay for it.

Re:What about this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too long; didn't read.

Re:What about this one?

[ajlisows]

If the movie sucked anyway, why are you downloading it? Obviously it was worth something to you as you took the time to seek it out and then to watch it....likely 2-3 hours of your life. There are options other than shelling out $20 for a DVD to see content.

This isn't just an issue of you not paying some faceless Movie Studio execs/lawyers, and Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt....there are thousands of working class individuals in the industry that need to get paid too. If profits are down, guess who is out of a job first? A lot of people depend on that money people shell out to see movies and not all of them are super wealthy or complete bastards.

I myself just use the Netflix thing. For $15 a month I get to cycle through 3 DVD's at a time and watch the streaming content they put up. If I really really like one of the movies I do go purchase it, although this is very rare. For the cost of 12 movies a year I can watch as many as I want. Not a bad deal.

waste of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to leave my tv on when I play with PS3. If I turn my tv on, a drm system will get confused, and I will only see a colorful noise video. So, if I take a three hour break from a PS3 game where I cannot save right now, I will not only leave my PS3 on, but also the 200 W flat panel... Pro-consumer perhaps, but against the polar bears...

Re:waste of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats HDCP snow your most likely seeing, sounds like its probably your tv in need of a firmware upgrade since its not properly representing a hotplug on power up

Re:waste of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, thats defective by design. There was no need for HDCP.

increased value? really?

[nimbius]

your television was not designed to offer you value. your television is an illuminated advertising engine designed to make sure you continue to perpetuate the myth that consumerism is a healthy and natural part of your life.

the MPAA wants the analog hole closed because its business model of closed services mandates it.

the MPAA will get what it wants not because of democrats or republicans, but because the MPAA is a very powerful lobbying force in american and international politics capable of influencing most governments at a rather fundamental level. "art" or "artists" have nothing to do with anything the MPAA stand for.

so how do you defeat it? most americans cant. by opting into the present model of television and entertainment a collective "boiled frog" response has been given. by ignoring fundamental principles of television broadcast and accepting as a norm things like inline advertisement and product placement most americans are inclined to believe this system of MPAA enforced content is acceptable. the news segments on most television channels, once designed to fulfill a federal content requirement to give back to communities, have all but dissolved into reactionary sensationalized content mills designed to keep you reacting and hooked long enough to sell you more things you likely never needed.

the saddest part of these "news" programs is that most do more to divide us as a people and a nation than they do to "give back" in any form, crafted to entertain and hold the interests of a select group by hard left or hard right opinions and stories.

its all a bit off-topic, i know, but for any of us to wring our hands, shake our heads, and wonder what ever will be done to stop this evil empire while we all shuffle off to the theaters for the next installment of Transformers is paradoxic. We have all done so much to make sure this "interest group" continues to dominate.

Oh noez!

[AtomicDevice]

My mythtv box will no longer be able to play ripped dvd's to my massive 40" gateway destination CRT (that's right, I've got one). Err. wait, this digital cable mumbo jumbo is a total racket anyways. The more the make it an expensive pain in the ass to watch tv, the more people will just watch stuff on hulu (with fraps running in the background). And besides, even in you need to be the biggest super nerd with expensive equipment to crack their ridiculous encryption, if one person in the whole world can do it, they'll put it on the internet, and we'll all have it for free on our own time the way we want it. Perhaps the should consider a convenient, inexpensive, and value-additive method of selling me their content.

Re:Oh noez!

[PitaBred]

Digital cable is a more efficient use of limited resources. I agree wholeheartedly with the switch to digital. It's the addition of encryption and protection on top of the digital that pisses me off.

Millions of SDTVs still in use

[tepples]

From the article:

"The side effect," warns the consumer group Public Knowledge in an educational video it has put out on this question, "is that SOC would break all eleven million HDTVs in the US that don't have digital input.

Not only that, but blocking all analog outputs would break 80 million standard-definition televisions. True, SDTV is the past and HDTV is the future, but the present has always been a mix of the past and the future. So I don't see how "The vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content" when it isn't yet true that "[t]he vast majority of consumers" already own an HDTV.

Re:Millions of SDTVs still in use

[sponga]

Well SDTV are starting to really get the short end of the stick.

The HDTV haters might not see it, but more and more of the picture on the screen is starting to be cut off. I notice it more and more with cropped movies and newscastj, text being cut off on the bottom of the screen.

Re:Millions of SDTVs still in use

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cool, though; everyone will just trot out and buy a new HDTV.

Re:Millions of SDTVs still in use

[SparkleMotion88]

Not necessarily. I could see a scenario in which a cable box (or similar) would happily output an analog signal in 480i, but the HD signal would only be output in digital (with the appropriate copy protection). That way they can at least protect the high-resolution version of the content. I hear that cable companies are starting to ship HD cable boxes without functioning HD component outputs, but the HDMI outputs and analog SD outputs still work just fine. I think content producers/distributors realize that blocking analog SD output is a losing battle because it would anger too many people. But HD is still new enough that they can still fiddle with it to try to protect high quality video streams. And they want to fiddle with HD content now before large numbers of people become accustomed to it working in a specific way.

Re:Millions of SDTVs still in use

[Culture20]

Especially considering they just shelled out $5-$20 (after government coupon) for a receiver that the government told them would be free (after government coupon). Another 5-8 years will have to pass before people are willing to even think of being forced to upgrade.

More DRM...

[Coren22]

I think the *AA really believe that they are losing money to pirates, millions of dollars per pirated movie. They don't realize that they are losing money to the lack of actually good content being put out. What ever happened to the day when you would go to the theater and have to choose which movie to go to because many of them looked like they would be good to watch? They also seem to have forgotten the rights of "consumers" to consume their content any way they please. I would like to be able to copy movies to my laptop hard drive, or the SSD I have stuck in the ExpressCard slot so that I can watch them on flights, or let the kids watch them on car rides, but that option was taken away long ago to protect their rights to not have people see the movies for the crap they are before deciding whether to buy the movie, or pay to watch it in the theater. I have been recently heartened by some things I have seen recently with movies; you can now buy movies with the rights to download them to your computer. Unfortunately, even this is encumbered by massive DRM. I am not allowed to move the movies between computers in my home, I am not allowed to back up the movie in any way, and when I rebuild my computer, the movie is gone. I guess when they claim you are renting the movie when you pay 20$, they really mean it. What ever happened to the cheap movies and music we were told would come about when we moved off of magnetic media (cassette and VHS)?

Re:More DRM...

[Coren22]

What happened to all my pretty formatting? I guess I have to learn how to post in HTML...

Re:More DRM...

[quercus.aeternam]

Go to options and change the comment post mode.

Re:More DRM...

[quercus.aeternam]

(It shows up when you click 'Reply to This')

Re:More DRM...

[magus_melchior]

I think we all realize that the only reason the industry associations pin the lion's share of losses to "piracy" is because:

1. They don't want to take any responsibility for crummy content,
2. It's easier to blame the customer when you're pandering to shareholders, and
3. For that matter, this helps them turn producers and artists against the audience when the real thing hurting creativity and sales is the industry's lock-down on the entire production process (You want these professional crew members? Pay the Man. You want this nifty studio? Pay the Man).

Prof. Lessig did a talk on TED some years ago, where he says that this generation and subsequent generations will be the content creators en masse. That means (finally) control in the long run will not be in the hands of the aforementioned cartels, unless they lobby/legislate the ability to create and re-create content on the computer out of existence.

Re:More DRM...

[The_Quinn]

They also seem to have forgotten the rights of "consumers" to consume their content any way they please.

There are no special "consumer" rights, there are only individual rights, the purpose of which is to protect you from force from others.

There cannot be a so-called "right" to force someone else to give you what you want. (Like your digital heart's desires)

To protect pre-release HD movies ?

[AftanGustur]

Those are the same people that promised that the DVD region coding and CSS system was only to protect new films from being watched in countries where they hadn't been released yet.

Where in reality, even 50 year old B/W cowboy films are region coded and copy protected when they are re-released on DVD.

Re:To protect pre-release HD movies ?

[MemoryDragon]

Those are the same people that promised that the DVD region coding and CSS system was only to protect new films from being watched in countries where they hadn't been released yet.

Where in reality, even 50 year old B/W cowboy films are region coded and copy protected when they are re-released on DVD.

You did trust them, didnÂt you. I didnt believe their bull**** from day zero. I would have been positively surprised though if they hadnÂt been lying. The media industry is like that give them a knife and they will stab you if they see they can get money out of you. Ah and yes before that they will buy a law which makes backstabbing in certain cases legal.

Re:To protect pre-release HD movies ?

[SparkleMotion88]

Trust me, you don't want people in other countries to see old American western films. If they do, they'll all start acting like us, and the world already has enough cowboys. So in this case, I think the region coding is a good thing.

Don't worry... they cannot stop "us" now

[CodePwned]

You cannot control the flow of information. Corney sounding I know... but it's true. People will always find a way to view things the way they want. Eventually the law catches up with that. You hear the people preaching that "It's futile what the RIAA/MPAA is doing... blah blah" or "Their business model is outdated..." and frankly i get tired of hearing the same of drivel repeated by people who don't truly understand business or accept that most people don't WANT to "hack" their stuff. They just want it to work. They have a death grip on things. With Copyrights, Patents and Trademarks at an all time profit high their business is nowhere close to being destroyed. People want to be entertained and they will buy what entertains them. Most people don't give a rats ass about region coding, encryption etc... they just know it works. However... lately... to my bewildered amusement people are becoming more intelligent about these issues. Politicians and those usually uncaring are suddenly forced to recognize the problems as they are starting to affect them. The biggest being the completely unnecessary transition to Digital TV. It affects their pocket books. People start to realize just how strong of a grapple hold the industry has and have start to voice their concerns. Politicians have begun to realize they can gain support from their constituents by championing against the RIAA and MPAA. What was once a huge profit source for BOTH republicans and democrats has now become the target of ire from their customer base... AND those they supposedly protect (the artists). The genius of it all is that normal everyday people... are starting to think again. They aren't fanning over Paris "no brain" Hilton. Watch the news... it's slowly (painfully) changing from covering Britney Spears latest escapades... to now covering useful news like the economy, our lives, jobs, family etc. We are being encouraged on every front to promote Transparency. That movement... makes what the RIAA and MPAA do seem wrong to the normal joe and right now... Normal Joe is afraid of losing his job... angry at the decisions made by the previous administration... and looking for a source of anger. People touching his money... really piss him off. Enjoy these thoughts.

Re:Don't worry... they cannot stop "us" now

[geekoid]

really? how much information flow into the citizens in N.Korea?

In fact you can control the information, it just takes a lot of effort.

Re:Don't worry... they cannot stop "us" now

[Anonymous Coward]

May I introduce you to something called "linebreak" , or, in newspeak, "
"?
Yu might find it useful... even addictive...

Re:Don't worry... they cannot stop "us" now

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous Administration?

Re:Don't worry... they cannot stop "us" now

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the people that "don't want to "hack" their stuff" likely know someone like me, that does like to hack their stuff. And might be willing to hack YOUR stuff for a small fee.

People that visit my house instantly ask "what is that" when I turn on my entertainment system. MythTV with about 2TB of recorded, ripped, and downloaded shows from iPod to HD 1080p quality. They think it's expensive, till I point out that I no longer pay $100/mo+ to the cable/satellite companies. Let's see... I can build a nice Myth box for about $500........

I'd like to...

[PhilHibbs]

tear them a new a-hole

Sometimes I wish they would...

[Benzido]

Sometimes I wish the MPAA would go the whole hog and just block everyone from viewing any of their content outside of a cinema. I don't think we'd all die of grief. TV stations would have nothing to just broadcast but news and youtube clips. Then the whole recorded-images industry would collapse and die. But I suspect we might come up with something really great to replace its cultural role.

what the fuck?

[Lord Bitman]

Isn't it their job to know that this wouldn't help anything?
They already have the option of offering Americans "in-home access to high-value, high definition video content"
This is evident because: Americans already HAVE "in-home access to high-value, high definition video content"

It sounds so dirty

[drkich]

I don't know about you, but the title, "Close the Analog Hole" sounds like something you would hear on a pr0n site.

Re:It sounds so dirty

[geekoid]

That sound like the opposite of what you would hear on a porn site.

Re:It sounds so dirty

[amplt1337]

Obligatory goatse link denied because I'd like to keep my job...

Re:It sounds so dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

That sound like the opposite of what you would hear on a porn site.

Close the digital hole?

Re:It sounds so dirty

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but the title, "Close the Analog Hole" sounds like something you would hear on a pr0n site.

I thought it sounded dirtier when people started talking about making it digital interface instead

Obligatory Admiral Akbar

[Drakkenmensch]

It's a trap!!!

I'm just going to read books for now on.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're much cheaper and the stories aren't ruined by screenplay writers.

No, OPEN some holes...

[TheDarkMaster]

... on the MPAA executive board. And bonus points to headshots!

Books

[Anonymous Coward]

are the future ... unless they all become digital. Then we'll all just sit around eating paste.

Bionic ear and eye upgrades needed

[Wowsers]

I wanted to help the RIAA/MPAA close the analogue hole, but the closest I could come up with is to use my thumbs to plug my ears, and the rest of my fingers to cover my eyes. Maybe that's what they think of modern content they produce which is accounting for falling sales, so crap you should not watch or listen to it. Your fingers are "digital" encryption!

to turn off the analog hole

[circletimessquare]

you have to get rid of that pesky thing called THE HUMAN EAR

otherwise, if people are still listening WITH THEIR FUCKING EARS, the signal has to go analog at some point, and there you can intercept a signal

fucking morons

Re:to turn off the analog hole

[Anonymous Coward]

you have to get rid of that pesky thing called THE HUMAN EAR

Don't go giving them any ideas. Actually, they're probably working on that problem right now. As soon as there's a content protection compliant artificial ear, analog audio will be a thing of the past.

Re:increased value? really?

[Sp4c3 C4d3t]

Mod this up.

renders my tv useless

[lophophore]

My HDTV has no digital inputs. Yes. It is old. It only has analog component video. It *is* 1080i, though, and I don't feel like I should have to replace it because the MPAA is worried I will try to copy their crappy content through analog video cables. It also renders my friend's fancy video projector obsolete for the same reason. This move is totally anti-consumer.

There is a seriously large digital hole. Its called making a 1 for 1 copy of a DVD. Yes, I know that does not affect broadcast programs, but it is most likely the biggest piracy issue the movie studios face. Saving broadcast television through the "analog hole" will suffer loss of resolution due to noise and non-linearity of the analog path, not to mention the loss when the content is re-encoded to MPEG or whatever. It's not like a digital (read "lossless") copy at all.

There is little or nothing the studios can do to block wholesale piracy & bootlegging, which is their biggest exposure. Recording of broadcast television for one's personal, private use is completely reasonable and definitely should be allowed, just the same as we have been able to record and timeshift television programming with VCR and DVR technology for the last 30 years.

Re:renders my tv useless

[adnd74]

This move is totally anti-consumer.

Except for the fact that it forces consumers to spend more... how can you get more consumer than spending more :P ...

I agree with the parent. My TV is only a few years old and it doesn't have a digital in (or out), there is no legitimate reason to deem a few hundred dollar purchase worthless. I didn't expect to purchase another TV for another 10 years.

This is a fine example of why a consumer society doesn't work.

Re:renders my tv useless

[geekoid]

FYI analog can do 1080p.

Maybe not your set, but many can using component inputs.

Actually wholes sale bootlegging and piracy they can do something about, and it would be more effective then that. People doing in that scale leave a large trail becasue they are making money.

Re:renders my tv useless

[h4rr4r]

Buy an HDCP ripper/stripper. This will take 1080i HDCP protected content and give you component output.

Most units are around $200.

Re:increased value? really?

[MemoryDragon]

We first have to ask which analog hole they want to close.
Well depends on the analog hole, but I think given their anal affection with politics the probably want to plug the rear end.

How the conversation should have gone

[Pulse_Instance]

MPAA Guy 1: We want to rape consumers
FCC Guy 1, 2, 3: Hahahahahahaha
FCC Guy 1: Next time you come in here to waste our time we are going to bill you $2000 per hour

How it probably went
MPAA Guy 1: We want to rape consumers
FCC Guy 1, 2, 3:>/b> Hahahahahaha
FCC Guy 1: Hand over the sacks of money and the legislation.

Re:How the conversation should have gone

[Pulse_Instance]

Don't worry I see where I went wrong the > should have been a <

The final straw

[JustNiz]

If they do anything that stops me using my mythbox to record tv I will totally cancel cable.
I'm too busy and my time is too valuable to me to only watch live broadcast at their start times, mostly because of all the commercial breaks, but also usually I'm just too busy to be around a a set time.
A normal 90 minute movie on cable takes like 3 hours even though they have cut the movie down 'for content' which is a PC way of saying 'removed good content to make more space for advertising breaks'.
Cable is already too expensive and has so terrible programming quality that I need mythbox to filter out all the commercials and shitty shows so I get anything worth watching at all. If they break my ability to use mythbox I'm seriously gone from TV. Netflix, Hulu etc here I come.
Good job there MPAA on killing the cash cow.

Re:The final straw

[psm321]

Comcast is already eliminating analog in most places, and now the FCC went and stupidly gave them a separable security waiver so they don't have to keep the digital unencrypted for their DTAs either anymore. Since I refuse to pay for cable without using my mythbox, that means I'll be canceling Comcast come October (when they're shutting off analog) unless something changes.

Re:The final straw

[geekoid]

If they do anything that stops me using my mythbox to record tv I will totally cancel cable.

that doesn't help.

Going to another source won't help either becasue they will use the same logic to break that.

Contact your congress person and the FCC

Re:The final straw

[Jason Levine]

I did an analysis of how much I'd save if I canceled cable. I recently won a Roku box so I figured we could use that with Netflix and Amazon VOD and could add in some DVD purchases. Toss is Hulu/YouTube/etc and you could easily replace cable's content. The only problem was the savings: only $15 per month.

But then, as I explored Amazon VOD a bit more I realized I was giving it far too much credit. Why would I pay $3.99 to rent a movie for 24 hours on Amazon VOD when I could "take out" that same movie from Netflix in my $8.99 plan (either the actual DVD or via Roku)? Once I excluded paying for Amazon VOD, I wound up calculating a $41 a month savings. I could literally use the first year's savings to buy all the hardware I needed (including media streamers to play content from my desktop PC on my TVs) and have cash to spare.

Re:The final straw

[snadrus]

You know mythtv works great for hdtv over air?

The cost of getting rid of cable justified buying the box & a pcHDTV tuner, and it paid for itself in 10 months. Shows worth watching over are are usually 11pm-5am.

Best of all, the people getting your money are then hardware guys.

Re:The final straw

[JustNiz]

Yeah I already use a pcHDTV card. If I got rid of cable and went OTA I'd also have figure out what to do about my internet. I'd have to go DSL (yuk) or something.

Re:The final straw

[SparkleMotion88]

Hi! I'm your local TimeCox representative and I'm posting to let you know that your MiphTV box is not compatible with TimeCox cable. But don't worry, for a small monthly fee, you can have a TimeCox DVR that can be used to record all your shows. The TimeCox DVR allows you to record any show (except for pay per view, live sporting events, and anything on premium channels, The Disney Channel, or The Food Network) and watch it at a time that is convenient to you (as long as you view the show within 14 days of recording it, and as long as you don't play it back within same week as a live broadcast of the same show, and as long as you don't play it back on the Sabbath). The TimeCox DVR allows you to record up to 40 hours of programming (or 5 hours in HD) and it has a user interface that many customers can tolerate.

So really, I don't know why you would want to fiddle around with your home-made DVR when you can get all these great features with the support you've come to expect from TimeCox.

Re:The final straw

[ajlisows]

Don't just about all cable packages come with a DVR? I understand you'd probably rather use your Mythbox but if they give you a way to achieve the same result (Watching shows when you want...with the ability to skip commercials) why wouldn't you just do that?

That's an actual question. I have not paid for cable in about a decade so I truly don't know.

Re:The final straw

[JustNiz]

Cable company DVRs come with an exrta rental charge. Also they dont skip adverts. That functionality is explicitly disabled. Also my mythbox is the core of a whole home entertainment system that has way more features than any cable company dvr.

Re:The final straw

[Anonymous Coward]

For years I had cable internet but no cable tv. That worked out well. You also may have the fiber-optic option.

Though now I use DSL because it's inexpensive and I don't need much if I get all my TV OTA.

Have you noticed...

[mea37]

...that when the EFF does it, it's a heroic effort to educate the ignorant government regulators, but when the **AA do it, it's badgering?

Was the submitter afraid we wouldn't know whether this was good or bad without the slanted language? Just curious...

Definition of "pro-consumer"

[swordgeek]

If you don't want to play by my rules, I'm leaving, and taking my marbles with me!

That's it in a nutshell. They own the marbles (aka content). They figure that it's friendlier on the consumer to be able to watch under restricted guidelines than not at all.

In reality, the consumer doesn't care much about "high-value HD content," pre-releases, etc. Most TV viewing is on stupid series, and more often than not, reality shows. Far more people will plunk down and watch the latest rampant overpopulating family weekly than will make a point of watching a first-run movie on broadcast TV.

Of course, this is the fault of pirates. Somehow.

Re:Definition of "pro-consumer"

[psm321]

But they also claimed that nobody would broadcast anything without the broadcast flag. See how that turned out? They _will_ provide the content even we don't allow them to encrypt because they want viewers.

Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there is.

Who wouldn't pay big money to see Big Brother or the Jerry Springer show in high definition 3D surround sound with extensive commentary on every second of the show?

The key problem right now is that the MPAA can't close it's A***** Hole, so you're getting crap quality. If the MPAA were able to convince the FCC to close the MPAA's A***** Hole, there would be a lot of fresh new talent out there.

Plugging Holes?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only hole that MPAA needs to plug is the "ASS" kind on their posterior

Pro chinese electronics manufacturers

[hibiki_r]

In the end, the ones that would win here are the electronics manufacturers that then would sell us ways to bypass the protection, just like all that region locking DVDs did was to make sure that Europeans would buy off brand players that can play anything anyway.

ya right

[brownca2231]

Ha, since when has the mpaa ever done anything 'pro-consumer'

It won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

If multiple independent viewers record the video/sound from the screen of their HDTV using different TV brands and different brands of digital video recorder, then upload all these versions to a server, the server operator can combine all of the videos and remove noise and imperfections introduced by the environment where the recordings took place.

The end result, is that you will still see good quality copies of this premium HDTV content being made available on the P2P networks within a day of the broadcast.

There is really nothing that the studios or broadcasters can do about this.

Re:increased value? really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried plugging your television in?

When will we reach the pain threshhold?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Any legitimate claims they have about preventing piracy is pretty much becoming meaningless.

When will we reach the point where the rights of the consumer, out weighs the rights of the manufacture to treat all their customers like criminals?

MPIAA/RIAA is pretty much digging their own grave. Any chance copyright holders have in preserving their rights to market their work without fear of poaching, is quickly diminishing through draconian measures the MPIAA and RIAA are taking.

Once you lose the will of the general populace to protect your interests, you pretty much lost the battle...

I'm all for enforcing the current laws by going after blatant copyright violators who sell pirated CDs or DVDs on the streets. I'm even for them going after the people who distribute copyrighted material through p2p networks without the consent of the copyright holder. However when they start making it difficult for you to actually use what you paid for, then we have no choice but to seek out the street vendor or the p2p network. I'm not buying more equipment just so they can impose more restrictions on me.

Re:When will we reach the pain threshhold?

[cpghost]

Once you lose the will of the general populace to protect your interests, you pretty much lost the battle...

Except that it won't happen. The populace has been conditioned to side with the copyright lobby in believing the "copying is stealing" lie: cf. the outrageous verdicts against Tenenbaum and Thomas-Rassett made by their peers. The frog is in boiling water already, but it won't jump out, because the heat took up gradually.

Re:When will we reach the pain threshhold?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The populace has been conditioned to side with the copyright lobby in believing the "copying is stealing" lie:

Copying IS stealing.

My point is that if the populace loses the ability to time-shift television, transfer a song they purchased on a CD to an MP3 player, or anything else we take for granted today simply because the industry believes that we all are sharing our files on the internet, then the populace will become less sympathetic to their cause and just stop caring about the fact that it is stealing.

Re:When will we reach the pain threshhold?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Let me clarify my previous post.

Copying for your own personal use is NOT stealing. Distributing copies is stealing.

I think we need to close ...

[Tikkun]

... the parody hole first. All the people watching bad movies and making fun of them is costing the industry trillions!

Re:increased value? really?

[Anonymous Coward]

ding ding ding, give nimbius a prize for detecting the absurdity of our "arts".

+1 Accidentally Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

You made a mistake in the first sentence of the second paragraph by using the word "effect" instead of "affect." But if you go by the definition of the mistaken word, it reveals something interesting. This would almost be a great slogan for the anti-DRM movement:

DRM effects pirates!

Effect, used as a verb, means to cause to exist or be viable; to create.

I'll admit, I've pirated music and games. I used to feel guilty about it, and if things had remained how they are, I probably would have had a crisis of conscience and stopped doing it. But the heavy-handed lobbying by the content industries, the draconian DRM, and the weight of law behind it from the DMCA have all completely changed my attitude. I now feel guilty about paying for content, because it's putting money in the hands of a sociopathic, tyrannical, monopolistic organization whose very existence is contrary to the purpose that copyright was invented for. I now feel it's more ethical to pirate something than to buy it.

In short, DRM has effected at least one pirate: me! And I doubt I'm alone.

Please contact your congress person

[geekoid]

and the FCC and tell them why you don't want this.

Fair Use Aside...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be interesting if they backed up their claims of "The vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content contemplated by MPAA's" by offering to 100% foot the bill for anyone who needs to upgrade.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

'enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content.'

Absolutely. I would like to propose the legalization of assault. It would enable me to offer millions of Americans access to innovative loan products, while increasing competition in the payday and subprime lending market.

T. Soprano

You can't close the analog hole, stupid **AA

[Khyber]

That's like trying to tell the stars in the universe to e ligmitht in the form of encrypted ones and zeroes instead of photons - it just isn't fucking happening because the majority of the universe, physics and all, works on analog, not digital.

If I can see this content, I can record it, period. There's not one fucking thing you can do to stop it.

Re:You can't close the analog hole, stupid **AA

[Khyber]

e ligmitht = emit light.

Also, since these guys are apparently trying to beat the laws of the universe, can't we just have these guys labeled as insane by some professional psychologist?

Not as bad as I feared

[rssrss]

When I saw the head line about plugging the analog hole, I thought they were going to gouge our eyes out.

Re:Not as bad as I feared

[freedom_india]

They will.
Gettting a law passed for taking out the eyes of someone who viewed a pirated movie as a "lesser" punishment will be sponsored by Orrin Hatch and passed.

Re:increased value? really?

[amplt1337]

Overall I agree with your rant here, but you're nuts if you think you've seen anything like a "hard left" opinion story on American television. "Hard left" would be talking about taking the heads of major corporations out to the wall to be shot, and having the assets of the Fortune 500 redistributed to manufacturing workers or something. I don't recall anybody ever proposing something of that sort on my television.

Report to your local controller for reprogramming

[FreeUser]

I'm just going to read books for now on. They're much cheaper and the stories aren't ruined by screenplay writers.

Dateline 2020, United Corproate States of America(tm)

It has come to the attention of your(tm) media(tm) elite(tm) that books do not offer a sufficient rate of return per consumer-hour to justify permitting their continued use. As is well known, consumer time is a precious commodity underpinning much of our(tm) service(tm) industry(tm), the squandering of which does untold(tm) economic(tm) damage(tm) and is thus punishable by ecomonic incentive(tm) (read: life-crippling fines), betterment through education(tm) (prison), or both.

Consider: The current cost for watching a 2 hour reality TV episode consisting of 12 minutes RIAA approved and licensed music, 42 minutes inane chatter from the judges (inclusive 54 minutes of subliminal product placement), and 66 minutes of formally viewed commercials is $399,999.99 (EUR 39.95, £399.00) per consumer-viewer per download. That equates to approximately $200,000 (EUR 20, £200) of revinue generation per viewer per hour supporting Your(tm) Industry(tm).

In contrast, the average book costs less than a meal out, a scant $99,950.00 (EUR 9.99, £99.95) on average. BUT, the average reader takes approximately 10 hours to read an average length book, resulting in a revinue stream of only $9,999.50 per hour (that's less than EUR 0.99, or about £10, per consumer-hour). Clearly, allowing consumers to entertain themselves for so little per hour is unacceptable. Worse, they can lend books to one another, or re-read them, reducing Your(tm) Industry(tm)'s rate of return per consumer-hour even further.

Clearly this cannot be permitted. You have three days to your local X-Factor(tm) or Earth's Got Talent(tm) screening centre with every copy of every book that is thieving your eyes from Our Content(tm), to be presented for immediate destruction, or face prosecution under the Microsoft(tm) Disney(tm) Time-Warner(tm) Media(tm) Act(tm) (copyright (c) 2010 US Government, all reproduction forbidden) for unlawful squandering consumer-hours (doing what you want instead of watching what we require).

And while you're visiting your local screening centre, be sure to take advantage of our newest offer to humiliate you publicly, at no cost to ourselves, as you try pathetically to have your image replicated on millions of our DRM protected, authorized and officially sanctioned media outlets.

This Public Service Announcement(tm) paid for by you, brought to you by Your(tm) Media(tm) Industry(tm). Live, Serve, and Watch.

I hope you're not using an e-reader

[Lead Butthead]

Since sales of e-books on Amazon's Kindle can be retroactively rescind.
In 21st century, you have no rights; your corporate overlords owns you.

MPAA bigshots

[kdemetter]

MPAA bigshots

Am i the only one who misread that as MPAA biggots ?

Re:MPAA bigshots

[Skapare]

Who says that's a MISread?

The hypocrite

[westlake]

MPAA, listen closely: when it comes to TV, there is no such thing.

If the geek truly believed this, why is he so obsessed with downloading the latest in music, movies and videos?

Re:The hypocrite

[Zencyde]

I don't know any geeks like that. Maybe you're different?

Re:The hypocrite

[cbiltcliffe]

Music doesn't come from TV, so it's irrelevant to this conversation.

As for TV, how many geeks do you know that have all the episodes of Big Brother on burned DVDs?
Or Simple Life?
Or Wipeout? (which actually would be worth getting in hi def, so you could see the pained expressions of everybody who faceplants on the big balls....)

I don't know too many geeks who watch a lot of TV, and even movies are too stupid for the most part. There are a few good ones, but the majority is crap.

Maybe geeks in my area have different tastes than US geeks or something.....

It's not really plugging the hole...

[tubeguy]

...if it stops the signal just before reaching the speakers. There's no way to stop anyone from grabbing the analog signal once it's out there. TFA didn't say where the signal was going to be stopped in the chain. If there's a switch right at the jack it's a simple matter to tap it. Depends on how you look at it. This DRM implemented in hardware at the digital level would be a Bad Thing, but the presence of an actual analog line level hidden signal would be merely an inconvenience. I'm just sayin. Good luck with that, RIAA.

It's actually pretty obvious

[cnvandev]

Look at the name, they called it exactly what it was. Digital Rights Management: a system by which the rights of a user to in any way use a digital signal are managed. Whether that signal's passing from DVD player to screen, torrent file to hard drive, .avi on a CD to your college roommate, or NAS in the basement to the laptop propped up on your knees in bed; the RIAA has made it very clear that they want to (and, to a degree, have been able to) control the way the set of bits representing a work of art, that they feel they own, is used. DRM has never been about stopping pirates because that would be too limiting of a concept. Why put all this effort into stopping pirates when they can stop other small nuisances that *IAAs have probably never quite liked - things like lending DVDs to neighbours,

The biggest threat to this industry isn't the pirates, it's a population that believes that how they view content should be up to them and not dictated by a higher power. This is the mentality that allows people to justify turning to piracy when the legal route is too difficult. Rather than making the legal route easier (as the music industry seems to have figured out in only a decade or so), the MPAA is committed to creating a world where they are an altruistic god showering the people with "high-value content," asking only for our money and obedience in return. The scariest part is the thought that some of the people in control might actually believe that what they are doing is for the public good.

This hit the nail right on the head. Users feel they have the right to do what they want with what they consider "their property," whether it's that DVD they shelled out 30 bucks for, or the .avi of a free, independant movie they legally torrented from an animation studio. For some reason, organizations representing the industry (not the artists them selves) feel that in the digital age, our concept of property has to change in order for art to continue to be produced. Any rational person would beg to differ.

The worst part is that this doesn't even "close the analog hole" in any way. Sure, it stops one portion of it - recording/viewing media through component cable - but that's putting a band-aid on a chest wound. The real analog hole is the fact that, in the end, the screen is being displayed visually - it's just photons. We happen to have a method of captuing photons spread across a period of time, the video camera. Sure, it'll look crappy at first, but people will get better at normalizing the colours or finding different capture methods, and, as has been seen before, users will adapt to the worse quality format because it's the one that's not fleecing them.

Personally, I'm keeping my older equipment until stores eventually realize that trying to redefine the legel definition of property outisde of the court system turns more customers away than pirates it keeps at bay - which, last time I checked, was virtually nil.

Re:It's actually pretty obvious

[zyzko]

The worst part is that this doesn't even "close the analog hole" in any way. Sure, it stops one portion of it - recording/viewing media through component cable - but that's putting a band-aid on a chest wound. The real analog hole is the fact that, in the end, the screen is being displayed visually - it's just photons. We happen to have a method of captuing photons spread across a period of time, the video camera. Sure, it'll look crappy at first, but people will get better at normalizing the colours or finding different capture methods, and, as has been seen before, users will adapt to the worse quality format because it's the one that's not fleecing them.

The next step will be of course to criminalize video cameras that don't have a special "copyright-detection chip" which blacks out (and replaces it with a FBI WARNING!) any video/audio material that has a special watermark in it detected during recording (and all new material which is playable only playable through digital approved equipment must include this watermark). Photons can include quite much information and when you are in control of the information and in control of the lawmakers / enforcement about what can be done with that information...every "content producers" wet dream.

And yes I'm putting that in quotes because I understand that not every content producer wants their earnings to be secured by police state and banning technology, but it sure seems to be the dream of the big lobby organizations.

If They Close My Analog Hole...

[AbsoluteXyro]

How will I poop?

Re:If They Close My Analog Hole...

[kdemetter]

Trough the Selectable Output Control ?

Re:If They Close My Analog Hole...

[JazzLad]

Interestingly, I would compare this to the medical supply industry getting legislation requiring all urination be via catheters. Makes about as much sense, after all, they have a business model to sustain too.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh . . .

Only on Slashdot does a fucking whiney crybaby like this get modded insightful.

1. Rent it
2. Lost sales
3. I guess you don't pay for meals you don't like either?
4. You were stupid enough to still want to see the movie knowing it was all special effects and no plot.
5. It's not your property, since you infringed on the copyright.
6. That's because you are a cheap son of a bitch.

P.S. - Checkmate!!

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

cliffski, is that you? If not, you should contact cliffski. You appear to be perfect material for cliffski's marketing and customer relations efforts.

Seriously, though: While I agree that the post you responded to was a tad childish, I do agree with the gist of it. I boils down to: Some companies have absolutely no moral, nor ethical, quibbles about messing things up for just about everyone. They just don't give a flying fuck about anything except themselves. Then, why the fuck should I give a flying fuck about them? Seriously? They reap what they saw.

It's not that hard to understand.

Respect me as a potential customer, and I'll return the favor.

Disrespect me, and I'll return that favor too.

It's really not that hard to understand, and I'm sick and tired of the fucking whining on behalf of these companies, organizations and their sock-puppets, not to mention apologists.

Guess I started to rant too. Sorry about that. No, scratch that, I'm not sorry. They can just go fuck themselves to death for all I care.

Bah.

Re:increased value? really?

[blind biker]

Yours is one of the most valuable, best written posts I have ever read on Slashdot. I send you a manly (virtual, obviously) hug. Continue doing whatever it is that you are doing.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I LOL'd at your "angry at the decisions made by the previous administration" because the unemployment rate didn't go up until the stimulus bill passed by the current administration, or the threats of penalizing small businesses for not providing health care to their employees. A lot of small businesses are dropping employees left and right in anticipation of having to pay 8% of their salary as a penalty for not buying them health care plans. It's simple logic. My families business is planning on firing 2 of our 4 employees if this becomes true. Slightly larger businesses might have already swung the hammer as they need to legitimize their reasons for employee dismissal.

Use the digital hole instead

[Skapare]

A few LCD TV models can be tapped inside. The decoded digital video stream coming in becomes analog as it passes to the LCD module. Although that video isn't linear, it is interestingly usable. For example, instead of being perfectly linear, the video actually comes across in 256 or 1024 stair-step values. By specifically decoding this, a perfect video copy can be made.

What does the MPAA fear most? A few techno geeks with engineering background that know how to do this, leaking it onto the internet? A millions of home viewers time shifting it so they don't have to skip work to watch it, or can make a copy for Aunt Margie who doesn't have cable? Obviously they want to charge premium for it. They should just to it over the internet where they can encrypt anything they want and don't have to answer to the FCC about it, and can rape, pillage, and plunder the consumers at will, just like so many other internet scams do.

WTF ?

[smoker2]

"The MPAA is once again trying to badger the FCC into approving Selectable Output Control, which would plug the 'analog hole' during broadcasts of some prerelease HD movies. "

Which prerelease HD movies are those ? They never release to the TV networks before the cinema release, so there is no hole to plug. Unless they are using some obscure meaning of the word "broadcast" which nobody else uses. If they are talking about the release of disks then why not release the disks first. Oh, but then they wouldn't be able to screw the TV stations for payment.

OK, so MPAA gets a big plug up its analog hole.

[Chris Tucker]

EVERYTHING is encrypted until the electrons hit the phosphor or the current hits the transistors in the LCD.

Six months (hell, six weeks!) after China starts churning out the compliant TV sets/monitors, the grey market will have TVs/monitors with some manner of video/audio out ports, either blatantly obvious or as solder pads on the PC inside the display.

The quality of the display will be excellent, as will the quality of the unencrypted A/V output.

China does not care a fat rat's ass about what the MPAA wants. It is, and will always be about the money. Running a third shift once or twice a week and sourcing cabinets without the LG/Samsung/Sony/fill in the blank logo on them will be something very familiar to most Chinese electronic manufacturing firms.

Show of hands, how many here already have a "grey market" DVD player that's both region free, plays NTSC/PAL DVDs, and will also play .avi, DivX, Xvid, mks, etc?

Yeah, I thought so.

And if nothing else, someone will figure out how to fool that encrypted signal into thinking it's displaying on a TV/monitor, while it's actually just sending that signal to an MPEG encoder and thence to a hard drive.

One more reason to build a Linux box, I guess.

Re:OK, so MPAA gets a big plug up its analog hole.

[/dev/trash]

China'll care alright. See canada and beef imports.

Re:OK, so MPAA gets a big plug up its analog hole.

[alexo]

China does not care a fat rat's ass about what the MPAA wants.

It is a sad day when US citizenry turns to China to protect their freedoms.

Re:OK, so MPAA gets a big plug up its analog hole.

[Chris Tucker]

Alexo, I would SO mod you up for that comment, if I could!

Regulation

[omb]

You, in America, should have learned by now that your your regulatory systems, and courts, do not work well. The SEC and Fed showed this clearly during the 2008 Finance Industry meltdown. The USPO is a running sore. This is because quasi-independent bodies have become hopelessly politicized and pandering to congresscritters.

You need the transparency you trumpet to the rest of the world, or dont expect the EU and GATT to play along. The rest of the world has had enough of corruption in the the USA.

Corporations never die...

[rnturn]

... so a century isn't that long a period.

Yeah, yeah, I know, corporations exist according to state law that grants their charter and, in theory, a corporate charter could be revoked. Examples of this actually happening are welcomed. I've sure as hell never heard of one being yanked. (And I don't mean some little mom-n-pop outfit that decided to incorporate. I mean one that's publicly traded and that someone's actually heard of.)

What a joke

[tengeta]

"The vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content contemplated by MPAA" Of course, we promise that the majority won't have to buy new equipment, absolutely EVERYbody will have to!

New procedure at birth

[Anonymous Coward]

Pop the ear drums and implant a digital hearing device.

The Analog Hole Is Uncloseable

[amusingmuses]

When will people learn that this is impossible? How is the broadcast going to play if there is no "analog" output? Sure, they can disable the line-out jack or whatever, but given the mere fact that the broadcast is audible we can deduce that:

1. A transducer is converting electrical energy into acoustic energy (almost certainly by driving a speaker cone)
2. Said acoustic energy (Sound) is an "analog" phenomenon. The compressions and rarefactions in the air that carry sound are continuous phenomena, there are no jump discontinuities in sound pressure, all sound is analog both in theory, and for all the sounds that we use to communicate or make music etc, in practice.
3. Thus, said transducer is being fed an analog electrical signal somehow (digital to analog conversion is beyond the scope of a transducer, they expect an analog voltage input, typically provided by a DAC somewhere in the hardware path between the CPU and the speaker)

4. Therefore, no matter what type of software bullshit protections there are, if I can hear it, I can record it in HIGH FIDELITY by simply ripping my speaker cone off, and connecting the former speaker input +/- to the line-in jack of my laptop or whatever.

I take for granted that most of you already know how obviously easy it is to obtain a recording in low fidelity: use another transducer, i.e. put a microphone in front of your speaker.

So what's the deal with the MPAA? The government? And any other group of morons who keep trying to defy physics by making media that can be played multiple times but not recorded? There is no such thing as DRM short of installing chips in everyone's brain.

I got yer' analog hole right here buddy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Plug the analog hole?
Camera on tripod in front of TV.
They need to plug the hole in their heads - nitwits.

So how's that been working for the U.S.?

[smchris]

Criminalizing knowledge and technological aptitude, I mean?

Thanks again MPAA

[rcolbert]

How much more convoluted do we have to make things? We've got all this great technology, and then we hobble it to make it safe for the MPAA.

I purchase my Blu-Ray discs, and if I'm not sure I want to own it, I'll rent HD via Amazon downloads. Nothing illegitimate there. Half of the discs these days have a digital copy, which is great for downloading to the iPod. The other half, well let's just say there's nothing in my Blu Ray collection that couldn't potentially end up on my iPod.

Having said that, I'll also say that I never had nor ever will participate in file sharing in any form. The balance between free and illicit material versus trusting the content provided by people who gravitate towards free and illicit is a no-brainer to me. I'll remain a regular, paying customer who simply has a very correct and righteous view of fair use.

Now lately I bought a new Sony TV and decided to take the opportunity to simplify the wiring between the devices (Tivo, BD, PS3) and the TV. Since there are plenty of HDMI ports, I decided to take out an intermediate HDMI switch, and run audio through HDMI to the TV, and then back out to the sound system via optical. Pretty neat arrangement. Never need to switch inputs on the receiver, and only four cables. Right? Wrong! Everything works great *unless* you try to play a BD in the BD player. (Works fine with a DVD by the way) Due to HDCP the TV won't output the digital audio that came in over HDMI. The solution, a separate optical cable from the BD player to the receiver, and the additional programming of the remote to switch inputs on both. Why? What possible purpose is there for forcing this HDMI-bypass surgery? And this is for the normal use-case. This is a TV, a Blu Ray player, and an audio receiver.

The more *holes* the MPAA tries to plug, the more holes I'm convinces there are ... in their heads.

The RIAA did this in 2006

[Anonymous Coward]

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:RIAA_CEO_discusses_the_analog_hole

The MPAA seems to be behind the times.