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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.'"
"High-value content ?!"
MPAA, listen closely: when it comes to TV, there is no such thing.
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!
My work here is dung.
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 $20 disc I legitimately *bought*.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Companies who lose sight of who the real customer is often die - a slow, lingering demise, but terminal nonetheless.
Methinks the great failing of Vista (and M$'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.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
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?
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.
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.
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.
Good people go to bed earlier.
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.
Where in reality, even 50 year old B/W cowboy films are region coded and copy protected when they are re-released on DVD.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
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.
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.