(1) The lack of high quality digital content continues to hinder consumer adoption of broadband Internet service and digital television products.
Broadband Internet service is by no means required or an inalienable right. I do not feel it is my government's responsibility to meddle in the business affairs of broadband providers insofar as adoption of the technology is concerned. I also believe that there are many reasons why adoption of broadband has not occurred as rapidly as some would have hoped, the lack of high quality digital content being dubious at best.
(4) Current agreements reached in the marketplace to include security technologies in certain digital media devices fail to provide a secure digital environment because those agreements do not prevent the continued use and manufacture of digital media devices that fail to incorporate such security technologies.
If such technologies exist (and I do not believe that they do) to create a digital environment that allows all possibilities of fair use and at the same time prevent unauthorized use, adoption of the technology can be assisted by the parties that benefit from the technology by subsidizing the purchase price. A $200 rebate on computers with this technology would be much less subversive (and offensive) than mandating that all computers must utilize the technology.
(5) Other existing digital rights management schemes represent proprietary, partial solutions that limit, rather than promote, consumers' access to the greatest variety of digital content possible.
Huh?
(6) Technological solutions can be developed to protect digital content on digital broadcast television and over the Internet.
True, but I do not believe technological solutions can be developed that allow for fair use of digital content at the same time that the content is protected against unauthorized use.
(7) Competing business interests have frustrated agreement on the deployment of existing technology in digital media devices to protect digital content on the Internet or on digital broadcast television.
There must be a reason why there are competing business interests surrounding deployment of this technology. Further research should be done to understand the competing position rather than simply passing this bill to undermine it.
(8) The secure protection of digital content is a necessary precondition to the dissemination, and on-line availability, of high quality digital content, which will benefit consumers and lead to the rapid growth of broadband networks.
My response to this is the same as my response to Item (1).
(9) The secure protection of digital content is a necessary precondition to facilitating and hastening the transition to high-definition television, which will benefit consumers.
Several companies (CBS, HBO, etc.) are already broadcasting content via HDTV. If these companies are unconcerned about the lack of security afforded their content via the transmission protocol, I fail to see why a change to a secure transmission protocol is predicated. It is my belief that the reason there are so few HDTV broadcasts is because there are so few TVs capable of playing HDTV content. As HDTV becomes more common, so will HDTV broadcasts. It's also difficult for me to understand why HDTV benefits comsumers. If HDTV truly does benefit consumers, they would buy HDTV sets. The fact that consumers opt for lesser expensive TV sets leads me to believe that the average consumer is satisfied with the quality of their broadcasts. Change may be good, but change for the sake of change isn't.
(10) Today, cable and satellite have a competitive advantage over digital television because the closed nature of cable and satellite systems permit encryption, which provides some protection for digital content.
This is completely false. Encryption can be built into any transmission protocol be it via radio waves, Internet connections, cable, or satellite, regardless of an open or closed nature. The competitive advantage of cable and satellite providers is in the advent of new technology since the standard became common. In order to enable old technology devices (televisions) to use the new technology, additional hardware (set top boxes) is required. The same could be done by traditional signal broadcasts if companies chose to develop such technology. There's a reason they haven't developed the technology; no one believes the benefit of the technology outweighs the cost to develop it. If ABC believed that the benefits outweighed the costs and started broadcasting their signal in an encrypted format that could only be decrypted by purchasing one of their set top boxes, they would have done so by now.
(11) Over-the-air broadcasts of digital television are not encrypted for public policy reasons and thus lack those protections afforded to programming delivered via cable or satellite.
So if cable and satellite networks already have encryption technologies and over-the-air broadcasts do not (by choice), why must the decision to encrypt or not be forced onto the Internet?
(12) A solution to this problem is technologically feasible but will require government action, including a mandate to ensure its swift and ubiquitous adoption.
I don't think a solution is technologically feasible in order to ensure fair use. If the technology could be developed, I still don't think government intervention would be necessary to ensure adoption. Adoption could be gained simply by having desirable content made available only in an encrypted format. If, rather than subscribing to NetFlix, I could watch the latest videos on a pay-per-service basis, but only if I purchased special hardware that enabled me to view the videos, I would buy the hardware if doing so was cost-effective and to my benefit. If it's not cost-effective or to my benefit, there's no need for the technology to be developed, much less forced by the government.
(13) Consumers receive content such as video or programming in analog form.
In most cases, content originates in analog form.
(14) When protected digital content is converted to analog for consumers, it is no longer protected and is subject to conversion into unprotected digital form that can in turn be copied or redistributed illegally.
Content will always be converted to analog in the "last mile" between the viewing device and my eyeballs. Though the quality would be dubious, there is no way short of creating a fascist technological state to prevent me from using a digital video camera aimed at my viewing device to capture "protected" content and converting it into a format most convenient for my own use. Certainly, keeping the content encrypted up to the point of being displayed on the viewing device may make unauthorized use more difficult, but it will also make fair use more difficult (or impossible). Considering this, I think it is in the consumer's best interest to not pursue this technology.
(15) A solution to this problem is technologically feasible but will require government action, including a mandate to ensure its swift and ubiquitous adoption.
See (12).
(16) Unprotected digital content on the Internet is subject to significant piracy, through illegal file sharing, downloading, and redistribution over the Internet.
But if the technology exists to prevent piracy, couldn't this significant piracy be prevented by the owners of the digital content choosing to protect their assets? Is my government responsible for covering the asses of entertainment companies because entertainment companies do not wish to protect their assets without preventing fair use? I don't believe so.
(17) Millions of Americans are currently downloading television programs, movies, and music on the Internet and by using ``file-sharing'' technology. Much of this activity is illegal, but demonstrates consumers' desire to access digital content.
Millions of Americans drive faster than the speed limit every day. The demonstrates drivers' desire to go fast. Would the appropriate solution be to mandate that all cars must have a device that disallows going faster than the spped limit, or would the appropriate solution be to increase the speed limit? My answer to this is: neither. In the case of both speeding and protecting digital assets, no government action is necessary. If the entertainment industry desires protected digital content, they should protect their content. No government mandate need be required.
(18) This piracy poses a substantial economic threat to America's content industries.
There are economic threats to the consumer if this bill is passed, including the necessity of purchasing new computer hardware in order to view content they otherwise have a legal right to. America's content industries have the resources to fend for themselves with regards to protecting their own content.
(19) A solution to this problem is technologically feasible but will require government action, including a mandate to ensure its swift and ubiquitous adoption.
See (12).
(20) Providing a secure, protected environment for digital content should be accompanied by a preservation of legitimate consumer expectations regarding use of digital content in the home.
I'd like to see legitimate consumer "expectations" spelled out, and I would like to see law make it a punishable offense to prevent any of these consumer "expectations" from being allowed. With "fair use" explicit and an inalienable right, moving forward on protecting digital assets is reasonable.
(21) Secure technological protections should enable content owners to disseminate digital content over the Internet without frustrating consumers' legitimate expectations to use that content in a legal manner.
See (20).
(22) Technologies used to protect digital content should facilitate legitimate home use of digital content.
See (20).
(23) Technologies used to protect digital content should facilitate individuals' ability to engage in legitimate use of digital content for educational or research purposes.
And most importantly, I can't reiterate this enough, legitimate use of digital content should be mandated.
SEC. 3. ADOPTION OF SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS AND ENCODING RULES.
(a) PRIVATE SECTOR EFFORTS.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--The Federal Communications Commission, in consultation with the Register of Copyrights, shall make a determination, not more than 12 months after the date of enactment of this Act, as to whether--
(A) representatives of digital media device manufacturers, consumer groups, and copyright owners have reached agreement on security system standards for use in digital media devices and encoding rules; and
(B) the standards and encoding rules conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e).
(2) Report to the Commerce and Judiciary Committees.--Within 6 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Commission shall report to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, and the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary as to whether--
(A) substantial progress has been made toward the development of security system standards and encoding rules that will conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e);
(B) private sector negotiations are continuing in good faith;
(C) there is a reasonable expectation that final agreement will be reached within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act; and
(D) if it is unlikely that such a final agreement will be reached by the end of that year, the deadline should be extended.
(b) AFFIRMATIVE DETERMINATION.--If the Commission makes a determination under subsection (a)(1) that an agreement on security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e) has been reached, then the Commission shall--
(1) initiate a rulemaking, within 30 days after the date on which the determination is made, to adopt those standards and encoding rules; and
(2) publish a final rule pursuant to that rulemaking, not later than 180 days after initiating the rulemaking, that will take effect 1 year after its publication.
(c) NEGATIVE DETERMINATION.--If the Commission makes a determination under subsection (a)(1) that an agreement on security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e) has not been reached, then the Commission--
(1) in consultation with representatives described in subsection (a)(1)(A) and the Register of Copyrights, shall initiate a rulemaking, within 30 days after the date on which the determination is made, to adopt security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e); and
(2) shall publish a final rule pursuant to that rulemaking, not later than 1 year after initiating the rulemaking, that will take effect 1 year after its publication. So if the industry can't determine what is best for their consumers, the government will. Because the government is an expert with regards to what is best for consumers. It takes gall to think that the government could provide swifter and more equitable results than industry negotiations.
(d) SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS.--In achieving the goals of setting open security system standards that will provide effective security for copyrighted works, the security system standards shall ensure, to the extent practicable, that--
(1) the standard security technologies are--
(A) reliable;
(B) renewable;
(C) resistant to attack;
(D) readily implemented;
(E) modular;
(F) applicable to multiple technology platforms;
(G) extensible;
(H) upgradable;
(I) not cost prohibitive; and
(2) any software portion of such standards is based on open source code.
Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of encoding the content in the first place? Or would it force all security to be performed entirely by hardware? And somehow, requiring "fair use" of content was left out of this section... go figure.
(e) ENCODING RULES.--
(1) LIMITATIONS ON THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.--In achieving the goal of promoting as many lawful uses of copyrighted works as possible, while preventing as much infringement as possible, the encoding rules shall take into account the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, including the fair use doctrine.
(2) PERSONAL USE COPIES.--No person may apply a security measure that uses a standard security technology to prevent a lawful recipient from making a personal copy for lawful use in the home of programming at the time it is lawfully performed, on an over-the-air broadcast, premium or non-premium cable channel, or premium or non-premium satellite channel, by a television broadcast station (as defined in section 122(j)(5)(A) of title 17, United States Code), a cable system (as defined in section 111(f) of such title), or a satellite carrier (as defined in section 119(d)(6) of such title).
There it is in black and white. Fair use must be protected. Now if only fair uses were specific and itemized.
Having read the rest of the bill, there's nothing that I find particularly problematical. Devices controlling digital assets will be mandated and it will be illegal to transport devices that don't have the digital rights control across state lines. It will also be illegal to modify the security system. Those are the least of my concerns if the above material isn't ironed out and addressed.
Do you have any idea how "fair use" is defined? Is there a specific list of actions and uses that are covered under fair use, so we have a checklist to compare the text of S.2048 against?
Even deeper: if CBDTPA had in it that the digital rights technology developed must allow {itemized list of uses and action covered under "fair use"} and that all other digital rights technologies must not impinge on those fair uses, would it be as offensive?
I agree with you: digital rights and fair use are mutually exclusive as far as the technology is concerned, but if it's worded into the bill/law that preventing fair use is illegal isn't that a good thing?
::Colz Grigor// I'm not trying to play Devil's Advocate; I'm trying to thoroughly understand the complexity of these issues.
I've been reading as much as I can about this bill because it appears to be encroaching on the rights and freedoms I presently enjoy.
I have found the text of S.2048's introduction in the Congressional Record. For those of you who'd like to read it as well, I can't provide a static URL, so here's the method: Go here, scroll down a little and click on the "Page: S2269" link. (If that doesn't work because of the way thomas.loc.gov is organized, I'll follow-up to this post with a more thorough method.)
The following passage is of particular interest:
"I want to stress, however, in the strongest terms possible, that the standards agreed to by industry would not be permitted to thwart legitimate consumer copying of programming in the home, for time shifting purposes, for example. Similarly, the technologies and encoding rules would be required to take into account the need to preserve fair use of otherwise protected content, for educational and research purposes for example. Specifically, our bill requires that encoding rules ``take into account limitations on exclusive rights of copyright holders, including the fair use doctrine.'' In addition, the legislation specifies that no copy protection technology may prevent consumers from ``making a personal copy for lawful use in the home'' of non pay-per-view television programming. I want to be clear on this point, no legislation can or should pass Congress in this area that does not seek to protect legitimate consumer copying and fair use practices."
So I'd like to pose this question: if a technology that has thorough and unbreakable digital rights management technology is created but the same technology allows for every possible means of fair use for all of my digital media, how are my freedoms and rights being abridged? Sure, I can't break the law anymore, but what's so wrong with that? Is it that right now the paradigm is that we have the choice to break the law if we choose to and with the CBDTPA we no longer have that choice, or is there something else completely different?
I've been through the small claims court process before. As it was explained to me, lawyers aren't allowed except as representatives of corporations. If you name the CEO of the corporation on a small claims suit, the CEO has to appear or the court automatically finds in your favor (assuming your side of the case makes sense and the judge determines you're claiming reasonable restitution).
This often works in your favor because many people would much rather pay their lawyers to show up in court for them.
Any e-mail sent through Yahoo's SMTP gateway gets a little ad slapped onto the bottom of the message. The ad is usually for a Yahoo service, but it's an ad anyway you slice it.
Even if you're using POP3, someone still gets to view an ad.
Do you think this will change once I fork over $19.99 a month? Likely story.
I think my passwords are usually pretty difficult to figure out...
I pick some lyrics to a song that I know: "Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes." (I usually pick more obscure songs, but this is an example...)
I then (sometimes) swap two words... "Penny Ears is in my lane and in my eyes."
Then I convert it to a lower-case acronym... "peiimlaime"
Convert every other character to 'leet (sometimes starting with the first, sometimes starting with the second)... "p3i!m1a!m3"
This password is too repetitive... it's got two !s, two ms, and two 3s. I unconvert some of the 'leet to help out... "p3iim1a!m3"
Now I convert some of the letters to upper-case... "p3iIm1A!m3"
Looking at that password and not knowing how it was derived, you might think it's pretty random. But if you were a big Beatles fan, it'd be pretty easy for you to remember this one.
One big problem with lyrical passwords, though: Don't hum the tune while you're typing in the password!!!
PayPal is far more like the Travellers Cheques division of American Express.
Of course, I don't like American Express, either.
::Colz Grigor
Re:Right. Animal Cruelty is a Laugh a Minute.
on
Rubber Band Machine Gun
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Actually I did shoot a BB gun at a cat once, I still laugh when I think about it. Shot the cat in the butt with my BB gun pumped once. That damn cat jumped 4 feet in the air and took off like a lightning bolt. Then he fell asleep on my bed that night, cat's dont hold grudges.
Yeah, but you shot your cat with a BB gun.
You know, there are some battered wives that still love their husbands, that doesn't mean the abuse is any less horrible.
I agree. The thought of using one of these toys to enjoy the reactions of a cat is funny. Buy you... you've crossed the line. Just because you haven't molested your children doesn't make you any less demented. The fact that you think your action was okay is even worse...
The really good news about all of this (for/. readers): Married people have less time to go out and see movies, so we can expect fewer horrible movie reviews here.
::Colz Grigor// I'm just trying to be funny... Best wishes to Taco and Ms. Fent.
Google will also likely break their technology into three components:
spidering and indexing
searching
caching
Each of the financial analysts for the business groups responsible for each asepct of Google's technology may calculate the value of DRAM vs. HD differently. For searching, latency is extremely critical, but it's not so critical for caching, and there may be some physical problems with solely using DRAM for indexing.
That being said, I would expect Google to use HDs for spidering and indexing, DRAM for searching, and HDs for caching. Mr. Schmidt was probably only discussing technology on the most visable component of Google's technologies: searching.
Many of you are comparing DRAM to HDs solely on an overall price scheme (DRAM are $150/gB and HDs are $3/gB). Some of you have taken this a step further and compared things based on cost (DRAM may be 50x more expensive, but they require 1/10th the power, so over a period of time, the DRAM will wind up costing less). Ultimately, anyone with a good sense of business will look at the perceived value or return on investment (ROI) of the proposed solution over a period of time considering the time-value of money. This is called a net present value (NPV).
In order to acheive the lowest possible NPV, a high-tech financier will break their disparate technologies into a common measure and place a value on the item utilizing that measure. In other words, they'll compare DRAM and hard drives on a price per performance basis.
At Google, I'm positive they're far more interested in latency (gotta get the fastest hit times, right?), so the calculation they use to compare disparate technologies will likely be price per gigabyte cross latency. Since the latency on DRAM is much less than the latency on HDs, the 150x price suddenly flips, and we find that DRAM is 6x more valuable than HDs.
But they've still got to put that into a spreadsheet and add up all the associated costs for each solution (including maintenance, power, expected failure rates and costs associated with the failure (including costs associated to the loss of information stored on volatile memory), etc.) over a period of time.
It's an extremely complex calculation, from a business perspective, so I doubt that Mr. Schmidt has his head up his ass.
For Google's purposes and given Google's attitudes toward generating a ROI, DRAM costs less than HDs. This does not mean that the same would be true for Akamai or NetworkAppliance or you.
It is its own slashbox, listed as "I, Cringely" in your user options. What I don't understand is why slashboxes don't have associated discussions, so Cringely's article needn't be submitted as a story each and every week.
Yes, I've filed a feature request for this on SourceForge. We'll see what happens.
All OSes are evolving towards the same ultimate endpoint: An embedded control system for TVs.
Somehow, I am disappointed. I had thought that computers had more potential than that.
First off, this comment was moderated as "Funny". I don't think it's funny nearly as much as it's poignant and interesting.
And I'd like to make a counter-statement. I won't discredit Waffle Iron's opinion; it's a valid one that many people share. But my vision of the future of computing is different.
Nowadays, most of the family units with disposable income have a TV and entertainment center in their living room, family room, or den, and a TV in their bedroom. They also have a spare bedroom, office, or a nook in the same room as their TV that has a desk with a computer on/under it. Often, older children still living in the household will have their own TV in their room and a computer under their own desk. Most of the time, the home computer will be used primarily for entertainment, much as the TV is used.
That's a heck of a lot of devices devoted to entertainment in each household. In many of these rooms it would make sense to combine the units, but there are some primary issues that we, as consumers, can't decide on.
The question that needs to be answered is whether we would prefer to have the TV move to the computer, or the computer move to the TV. This is the same as asking whether we want to sit in a desk chair and watch our scheduled content and videos from three feet in front of a 17" screen at 1200x800 resolution or whether we want to sit back on our couch in order to type our e-mail on a 540 scan line CRT.
Time and technology changes all things. Over the next decade, most of these people will replace their TVs for a new one with 1080 or 1200 scan lines. That's adequate resolution for computing. And User Interfaces are much more accessable from the couch nowadays. But I can't ever imagine wanting to watch all of my entertainment from a desk chair three feet from a 17" screen.
In the end, there will be computers and TVs, separate, for purchase by consumers like Waffle Iron, because he represents a market that would buy such products. I represent the market that would buy a unified product, and I believe that my perspective will become more ubiquitous as time and technology advances, so eventually we will see all of our computing technology being built (modularly) into our TVs. I don't find this the least bit disappointing, I see it as an inevitable reality.
Okay, so Lucas has removed N*Sync's cameo. This doesn't change the fact that Lucas "sold out" by his willingness to include them in the first place.
Combine that with the disappointment of SW:TPM and the result is that Lucas' reputation, in my eyes, is shot. He no longer intends to produce a movie that is geared toward my age/intelligence bracket. So I'll be returning the favor by not going to see SW:AotC in the theatres. Maybe I'll just have to wait until it bubbles up on my NetFlix queue... In fact, you're all invited to my place when it does so you don't have to waste your money seeing it in the theatre.
Maybe you should just moderate this as redundant, since I've posted it in several other Cringely-based stories on/.:
You can add the I, Cringely slashbox to your/. start page by editing your user preferences.
And slashboxes ought to have comments/discussions associated with them by default, so Anonymous Cowards don't have to submit every darn Cringely article as a story.
Attach a long magnetic launcher to the ISS. This would allow us to take a satellite to orbit via the shuttle, attach it to the magnetic launcher, and then we wouldn't have to wait years to send probes to other planets. And when we're ready to visit Mars by the year 2020, we can use the ISS railgun and get there in one month instead of six...
It's been said in bits and pieces, but to sum up and state my full opinion:
Take the time to go back to school. If you've been making an average salary increase of 50% each year, you should have had the sense to save a good portion of it. Use that savings to go back and get a degree.
The degree is for two things. First and foremost, it's for rounding. You know CS, but can you write a decent memo? Maybe a few lit classes will help there. And what about product life cycles? Some marketing classes will help. Consulting with a multinational firm, you'll make better decisions with forex knowledge and maybe picking up a second language (non CS) will help, too.
Second, part of university for me was learning to deal with bureaucrats in the most expeditious way. You could probably get that by long-term consulting for a development contractor, though.
You may never be a better programmer, but you're not saying you want to. People who want to program all their lives do not need to go to university. You want to advance beyond programming into management and decision-making. To do that best, you need the breadth that a real university will give you. And you can ace all the CS classes to boost your GPA, while you're at it.
I thought the Yahoo! bulk mail filter was a good thing too, until I checked what it was filtering and realized that it had filtered out some of the non-spam mail that I wanted to receive.
Way off topic, but can anyone provide me a pointer to where suppositions on 7-9 storylines are. I'd at least be interested in ideas about where Lucas might have gone with the story after "Revenge of the Jedi".
Cringely's new article comes out every Thursday at the I, Cringely website.
You can add an automatic link to the newest article from your Slashdot Homepage Preferences. Scroll down to the Customize Slashboxes tab and add I, Cringely.
My proposal is this: rather than having to submit a story about Cringely's latest article (as is done every week) in order for the article to receive acceptance by a Slashdot editor in order for it to become a story and receive a Slashdot forum, why not just have an automatic forum placed at the bottom of the I, Cringely slashbox? Every Thursday, a new forum is created for the new article, and there's no need to submit the story to the editors and wait until Sunday to post our comments. Kind of like the way the Slashdot Poll is handled.
It won't be much longer before they start slapping a small color LCD on there and instead of mp3s, we'll either be watching tons of music videos or, even worse (for the MPAA), bootleg feature-length videos.
Let's not limit ourselves by thinking all we need is audio. With hardware getting this powerful and inexpensive, the possibilities are endless.
Slashdot Mirror
Broadband Internet service is by no means required or an inalienable right. I do not feel it is my government's responsibility to meddle in the business affairs of broadband providers insofar as adoption of the technology is concerned. I also believe that there are many reasons why adoption of broadband has not occurred as rapidly as some would have hoped, the lack of high quality digital content being dubious at best.
If such technologies exist (and I do not believe that they do) to create a digital environment that allows all possibilities of fair use and at the same time prevent unauthorized use, adoption of the technology can be assisted by the parties that benefit from the technology by subsidizing the purchase price. A $200 rebate on computers with this technology would be much less subversive (and offensive) than mandating that all computers must utilize the technology.
Huh?
True, but I do not believe technological solutions can be developed that allow for fair use of digital content at the same time that the content is protected against unauthorized use.
There must be a reason why there are competing business interests surrounding deployment of this technology. Further research should be done to understand the competing position rather than simply passing this bill to undermine it.
My response to this is the same as my response to Item (1).
Several companies (CBS, HBO, etc.) are already broadcasting content via HDTV. If these companies are unconcerned about the lack of security afforded their content via the transmission protocol, I fail to see why a change to a secure transmission protocol is predicated. It is my belief that the reason there are so few HDTV broadcasts is because there are so few TVs capable of playing HDTV content. As HDTV becomes more common, so will HDTV broadcasts.
It's also difficult for me to understand why HDTV benefits comsumers. If HDTV truly does benefit consumers, they would buy HDTV sets. The fact that consumers opt for lesser expensive TV sets leads me to believe that the average consumer is satisfied with the quality of their broadcasts. Change may be good, but change for the sake of change isn't.
This is completely false. Encryption can be built into any transmission protocol be it via radio waves, Internet connections, cable, or satellite, regardless of an open or closed nature. The competitive advantage of cable and satellite providers is in the advent of new technology since the standard became common. In order to enable old technology devices (televisions) to use the new technology, additional hardware (set top boxes) is required. The same could be done by traditional signal broadcasts if companies chose to develop such technology. There's a reason they haven't developed the technology; no one believes the benefit of the technology outweighs the cost to develop it. If ABC believed that the benefits outweighed the costs and started broadcasting their signal in an encrypted format that could only be decrypted by purchasing one of their set top boxes, they would have done so by now.
So if cable and satellite networks already have encryption technologies and over-the-air broadcasts do not (by choice), why must the decision to encrypt or not be forced onto the Internet?
I don't think a solution is technologically feasible in order to ensure fair use. If the technology could be developed, I still don't think government intervention would be necessary to ensure adoption. Adoption could be gained simply by having desirable content made available only in an encrypted format. If, rather than subscribing to NetFlix, I could watch the latest videos on a pay-per-service basis, but only if I purchased special hardware that enabled me to view the videos, I would buy the hardware if doing so was cost-effective and to my benefit. If it's not cost-effective or to my benefit, there's no need for the technology to be developed, much less forced by the government.
In most cases, content originates in analog form.
Content will always be converted to analog in the "last mile" between the viewing device and my eyeballs. Though the quality would be dubious, there is no way short of creating a fascist technological state to prevent me from using a digital video camera aimed at my viewing device to capture "protected" content and converting it into a format most convenient for my own use. Certainly, keeping the content encrypted up to the point of being displayed on the viewing device may make unauthorized use more difficult, but it will also make fair use more difficult (or impossible). Considering this, I think it is in the consumer's best interest to not pursue this technology.
See (12).
But if the technology exists to prevent piracy, couldn't this significant piracy be prevented by the owners of the digital content choosing to protect their assets? Is my government responsible for covering the asses of entertainment companies because entertainment companies do not wish to protect their assets without preventing fair use? I don't believe so.
Millions of Americans drive faster than the speed limit every day. The demonstrates drivers' desire to go fast. Would the appropriate solution be to mandate that all cars must have a device that disallows going faster than the spped limit, or would the appropriate solution be to increase the speed limit? My answer to this is: neither. In the case of both speeding and protecting digital assets, no government action is necessary. If the entertainment industry desires protected digital content, they should protect their content. No government mandate need be required.
There are economic threats to the consumer if this bill is passed, including the necessity of purchasing new computer hardware in order to view content they otherwise have a legal right to.
America's content industries have the resources to fend for themselves with regards to protecting their own content.
See (12).
I'd like to see legitimate consumer "expectations" spelled out, and I would like to see law make it a punishable offense to prevent any of these consumer "expectations" from being allowed. With "fair use" explicit and an inalienable right, moving forward on protecting digital assets is reasonable.
See (20).
See (20).
And most importantly, I can't reiterate this enough, legitimate use of digital content should be mandated.
SEC. 3. ADOPTION OF SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS AND ENCODING RULES.
(a) PRIVATE SECTOR EFFORTS.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--The Federal Communications Commission, in consultation with the Register of Copyrights, shall make a determination, not more than 12 months after the date of enactment of this Act, as to whether--
(A) representatives of digital media device manufacturers, consumer groups, and copyright owners have reached agreement on security system standards for use in digital media devices and encoding rules; and
(B) the standards and encoding rules conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e).
(2) Report to the Commerce and Judiciary Committees.--Within 6 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Commission shall report to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, and the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary as to whether--
(A) substantial progress has been made toward the development of security system standards and encoding rules that will conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e);
(B) private sector negotiations are continuing in good faith;
(C) there is a reasonable expectation that final agreement will be reached within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act; and
(D) if it is unlikely that such a final agreement will be reached by the end of that year, the deadline should be extended.
(b) AFFIRMATIVE DETERMINATION.--If the Commission makes a determination under subsection (a)(1) that an agreement on security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e) has been reached, then the Commission shall--
(1) initiate a rulemaking, within 30 days after the date on which the determination is made, to adopt those standards and encoding rules; and
(2) publish a final rule pursuant to that rulemaking, not later than 180 days after initiating the rulemaking, that will take effect 1 year after its publication.
(c) NEGATIVE DETERMINATION.--If the Commission makes a determination under subsection (a)(1) that an agreement on security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e) has not been reached, then the Commission--
(1) in consultation with representatives described in subsection (a)(1)(A) and the Register of Copyrights, shall initiate a rulemaking, within 30 days after the date on which the determination is made, to adopt security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e); and
(2) shall publish a final rule pursuant to that rulemaking, not later than 1 year after initiating the rulemaking, that will take effect 1 year after its publication.
So if the industry can't determine what is best for their consumers, the government will. Because the government is an expert with regards to what is best for consumers. It takes gall to think that the government could provide swifter and more equitable results than industry negotiations.
Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of encoding the content in the first place? Or would it force all security to be performed entirely by hardware?
And somehow, requiring "fair use" of content was left out of this section... go figure.
There it is in black and white. Fair use must be protected. Now if only fair uses were specific and itemized.
Having read the rest of the bill, there's nothing that I find particularly problematical. Devices controlling digital assets will be mandated and it will be illegal to transport devices that don't have the digital rights control across state lines. It will also be illegal to modify the security system. Those are the least of my concerns if the above material isn't ironed out and addressed.
Do you have any idea how "fair use" is defined? Is there a specific list of actions and uses that are covered under fair use, so we have a checklist to compare the text of S.2048 against?
::Colz Grigor // I'm not trying to play Devil's Advocate; I'm trying to thoroughly understand the complexity of these issues.
Even deeper: if CBDTPA had in it that the digital rights technology developed must allow {itemized list of uses and action covered under "fair use"} and that all other digital rights technologies must not impinge on those fair uses, would it be as offensive?
I agree with you: digital rights and fair use are mutually exclusive as far as the technology is concerned, but if it's worded into the bill/law that preventing fair use is illegal isn't that a good thing?
I have found the text of S.2048's introduction in the Congressional Record. For those of you who'd like to read it as well, I can't provide a static URL, so here's the method: Go here, scroll down a little and click on the "Page: S2269" link. (If that doesn't work because of the way thomas.loc.gov is organized, I'll follow-up to this post with a more thorough method.)
The following passage is of particular interest:
So I'd like to pose this question: if a technology that has thorough and unbreakable digital rights management technology is created but the same technology allows for every possible means of fair use for all of my digital media, how are my freedoms and rights being abridged? Sure, I can't break the law anymore, but what's so wrong with that? Is it that right now the paradigm is that we have the choice to break the law if we choose to and with the CBDTPA we no longer have that choice, or is there something else completely different?
I've been through the small claims court process before. As it was explained to me, lawyers aren't allowed except as representatives of corporations. If you name the CEO of the corporation on a small claims suit, the CEO has to appear or the court automatically finds in your favor (assuming your side of the case makes sense and the judge determines you're claiming reasonable restitution).
::Colz Grigor
This often works in your favor because many people would much rather pay their lawyers to show up in court for them.
Any e-mail sent through Yahoo's SMTP gateway gets a little ad slapped onto the bottom of the message. The ad is usually for a Yahoo service, but it's an ad anyway you slice it.
::Colz Grigor
Even if you're using POP3, someone still gets to view an ad.
Do you think this will change once I fork over $19.99 a month? Likely story.
I think my passwords are usually pretty difficult to figure out...
::Colz Grigor
I pick some lyrics to a song that I know:
"Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes."
(I usually pick more obscure songs, but this is an example...)
I then (sometimes) swap two words...
"Penny Ears is in my lane and in my eyes."
Then I convert it to a lower-case acronym...
"peiimlaime"
Convert every other character to 'leet (sometimes starting with the first, sometimes starting with the second)...
"p3i!m1a!m3"
This password is too repetitive... it's got two !s, two ms, and two 3s. I unconvert some of the 'leet to help out...
"p3iim1a!m3"
Now I convert some of the letters to upper-case...
"p3iIm1A!m3"
Looking at that password and not knowing how it was derived, you might think it's pretty random. But if you were a big Beatles fan, it'd be pretty easy for you to remember this one.
One big problem with lyrical passwords, though:
Don't hum the tune while you're typing in the password!!!
Good point.
::Colz Grigor
PayPal is far more like the Travellers Cheques division of American Express.
Of course, I don't like American Express, either.
Actually I did shoot a BB gun at a cat once, I still laugh when I think about it. Shot the cat in the butt with my BB gun pumped once. That damn cat jumped 4 feet in the air and took off like a lightning bolt. Then he fell asleep on my bed that night, cat's dont hold grudges.
::Colz Grigor
Yeah, but you shot your cat with a BB gun.
You know, there are some battered wives that still love their husbands, that doesn't mean the abuse is any less horrible.
I agree. The thought of using one of these toys to enjoy the reactions of a cat is funny. Buy you... you've crossed the line. Just because you haven't molested your children doesn't make you any less demented. The fact that you think your action was okay is even worse...
The Reuters article on this subject stated that Sun filed this suit primarily because Windows XP doesn't ship with any support for Java.
::Colz Grigor
I'm curious, though. What legal rationale could Sun claim would require Microsoft to ship with support for their product?
If I developed my own virtual machine, could I sue Microsoft for not including support for it?
I'm not so inclined to say "Down with Microsoft" without the legal framework for it... someone enlighten me!
The really good news about all of this (for /. readers): Married people have less time to go out and see movies, so we can expect fewer horrible movie reviews here.
::Colz Grigor // I'm just trying to be funny... Best wishes to Taco and Ms. Fent.
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Google will also likely break their technology into three components:
spidering and indexing
searching
caching
::Colz Grigor
Each of the financial analysts for the business groups responsible for each asepct of Google's technology may calculate the value of DRAM vs. HD differently. For searching, latency is extremely critical, but it's not so critical for caching, and there may be some physical problems with solely using DRAM for indexing.
That being said, I would expect Google to use HDs for spidering and indexing, DRAM for searching, and HDs for caching. Mr. Schmidt was probably only discussing technology on the most visable component of Google's technologies: searching.
Many of you are comparing DRAM to HDs solely on an overall price scheme (DRAM are $150/gB and HDs are $3/gB). Some of you have taken this a step further and compared things based on cost (DRAM may be 50x more expensive, but they require 1/10th the power, so over a period of time, the DRAM will wind up costing less). Ultimately, anyone with a good sense of business will look at the perceived value or return on investment (ROI) of the proposed solution over a period of time considering the time-value of money. This is called a net present value (NPV).
::Colz Grigor
In order to acheive the lowest possible NPV, a high-tech financier will break their disparate technologies into a common measure and place a value on the item utilizing that measure. In other words, they'll compare DRAM and hard drives on a price per performance basis.
At Google, I'm positive they're far more interested in latency (gotta get the fastest hit times, right?), so the calculation they use to compare disparate technologies will likely be price per gigabyte cross latency. Since the latency on DRAM is much less than the latency on HDs, the 150x price suddenly flips, and we find that DRAM is 6x more valuable than HDs.
But they've still got to put that into a spreadsheet and add up all the associated costs for each solution (including maintenance, power, expected failure rates and costs associated with the failure (including costs associated to the loss of information stored on volatile memory), etc.) over a period of time.
It's an extremely complex calculation, from a business perspective, so I doubt that Mr. Schmidt has his head up his ass.
For Google's purposes and given Google's attitudes toward generating a ROI, DRAM costs less than HDs. This does not mean that the same would be true for Akamai or NetworkAppliance or you.
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It is its own slashbox, listed as "I, Cringely" in your user options. What I don't understand is why slashboxes don't have associated discussions, so Cringely's article needn't be submitted as a story each and every week.
::Colz Grigor
Yes, I've filed a feature request for this on SourceForge. We'll see what happens.
Give me a show starring Robert Patrick and Lance Henriksen and I'll probably watch it religiously.
::Colz Grigor
Interesting that both actors have been cast in Chris Carter TV shows and James Cameron's Terminator series.
Maybe I can look forward to them together in T3?
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All OSes are evolving towards the same ultimate endpoint: An embedded control system for TVs.
Somehow, I am disappointed. I had thought that computers had more potential than that.
First off, this comment was moderated as "Funny". I don't think it's funny nearly as much as it's poignant and interesting.
And I'd like to make a counter-statement. I won't discredit Waffle Iron's opinion; it's a valid one that many people share. But my vision of the future of computing is different.
Nowadays, most of the family units with disposable income have a TV and entertainment center in their living room, family room, or den, and a TV in their bedroom. They also have a spare bedroom, office, or a nook in the same room as their TV that has a desk with a computer on/under it. Often, older children still living in the household will have their own TV in their room and a computer under their own desk. Most of the time, the home computer will be used primarily for entertainment, much as the TV is used.
That's a heck of a lot of devices devoted to entertainment in each household. In many of these rooms it would make sense to combine the units, but there are some primary issues that we, as consumers, can't decide on.
The question that needs to be answered is whether we would prefer to have the TV move to the computer, or the computer move to the TV. This is the same as asking whether we want to sit in a desk chair and watch our scheduled content and videos from three feet in front of a 17" screen at 1200x800 resolution or whether we want to sit back on our couch in order to type our e-mail on a 540 scan line CRT.
Time and technology changes all things. Over the next decade, most of these people will replace their TVs for a new one with 1080 or 1200 scan lines. That's adequate resolution for computing. And User Interfaces are much more accessable from the couch nowadays. But I can't ever imagine wanting to watch all of my entertainment from a desk chair three feet from a 17" screen.
In the end, there will be computers and TVs, separate, for purchase by consumers like Waffle Iron, because he represents a market that would buy such products. I represent the market that would buy a unified product, and I believe that my perspective will become more ubiquitous as time and technology advances, so eventually we will see all of our computing technology being built (modularly) into our TVs. I don't find this the least bit disappointing, I see it as an inevitable reality.
Okay, so Lucas has removed N*Sync's cameo. This doesn't change the fact that Lucas "sold out" by his willingness to include them in the first place.
::Colz Grigor
Combine that with the disappointment of SW:TPM and the result is that Lucas' reputation, in my eyes, is shot. He no longer intends to produce a movie that is geared toward my age/intelligence bracket. So I'll be returning the favor by not going to see SW:AotC in the theatres. Maybe I'll just have to wait until it bubbles up on my NetFlix queue... In fact, you're all invited to my place when it does so you don't have to waste your money seeing it in the theatre.
The R.S.V.P. list begins today...
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Maybe you should just moderate this as redundant, since I've posted it in several other Cringely-based stories on /.:
/. start page by editing your user preferences.
::Colz Grigor
You can add the I, Cringely slashbox to your
And slashboxes ought to have comments/discussions associated with them by default, so Anonymous Cowards don't have to submit every darn Cringely article as a story.
Why doesn't NASA take this one step further...
::Colz Grigor
Attach a long magnetic launcher to the ISS. This would allow us to take a satellite to orbit via the shuttle, attach it to the magnetic launcher, and then we wouldn't have to wait years to send probes to other planets. And when we're ready to visit Mars by the year 2020, we can use the ISS railgun and get there in one month instead of six...
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It's been said in bits and pieces, but to sum up and state my full opinion:
::Colz Grigor
Take the time to go back to school. If you've been making an average salary increase of 50% each year, you should have had the sense to save a good portion of it. Use that savings to go back and get a degree.
The degree is for two things. First and foremost, it's for rounding. You know CS, but can you write a decent memo? Maybe a few lit classes will help there. And what about product life cycles? Some marketing classes will help. Consulting with a multinational firm, you'll make better decisions with forex knowledge and maybe picking up a second language (non CS) will help, too.
Second, part of university for me was learning to deal with bureaucrats in the most expeditious way. You could probably get that by long-term consulting for a development contractor, though.
You may never be a better programmer, but you're not saying you want to. People who want to program all their lives do not need to go to university. You want to advance beyond programming into management and decision-making. To do that best, you need the breadth that a real university will give you. And you can ace all the CS classes to boost your GPA, while you're at it.
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Adcritic's content was served up via Akamai.
::Colz Grigor
Maybe Akamai's service is too expensive? I'd recommend that any Akamai stockholders think twice about their investment.
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I thought the Yahoo! bulk mail filter was a good thing too, until I checked what it was filtering and realized that it had filtered out some of the non-spam mail that I wanted to receive.
::Colz Grigor
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Way off topic, but can anyone provide me a pointer to where suppositions on 7-9 storylines are. I'd at least be interested in ideas about where Lucas might have gone with the story after "Revenge of the Jedi".
::Colz Grigor
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Cringely's new article comes out every Thursday at the I, Cringely website.
::Colz Grigor
You can add an automatic link to the newest article from your Slashdot Homepage Preferences. Scroll down to the Customize Slashboxes tab and add I, Cringely.
My proposal is this: rather than having to submit a story about Cringely's latest article (as is done every week) in order for the article to receive acceptance by a Slashdot editor in order for it to become a story and receive a Slashdot forum, why not just have an automatic forum placed at the bottom of the I, Cringely slashbox? Every Thursday, a new forum is created for the new article, and there's no need to submit the story to the editors and wait until Sunday to post our comments. Kind of like the way the Slashdot Poll is handled.
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Virtual mod +1, poignant. Since I'm not a moderator today.
::Colz Grigor
"Hubble" just shouldn't be verbized. *wink*
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It won't be much longer before they start slapping a small color LCD on there and instead of mp3s, we'll either be watching tons of music videos or, even worse (for the MPAA), bootleg feature-length videos.
::Colz Grigor
Let's not limit ourselves by thinking all we need is audio. With hardware getting this powerful and inexpensive, the possibilities are endless.
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