Anti-Copying TV Technology Creeps Forward

An anonymous reader writes: " After CDs, then comes TV? Although the technologies being spoken about are supposedly to prevent online sharing of television content as digital network television is born, the extents of the control being spoken of is alarming. When I purchase my next television recording device, will I be able to chose to record my favorite show while I am away from home? Will I be able to record one show while watching another? Or will I be at the mercy of the network ... only allowed to record should they *want* me to record. It could be possible to prevent the recording of first-run shows, forcing either-or choices (and affecting ratings and advertising rates,) rather than allowing us to watch one, record another."

But

[Raul654]

The networks are still bound by FCC regulations that through the airwaves transmissions be in the clear - that means that the big players, if they want to keep broadcasting through the airwaves, would be unable to prevent copying of those signals. Is there any way they could prevent people from taping in-the-clear signals?

Re:Current law...details

[Random Feature]

In recent years:

The Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that consumers could "time shift" TV programs on VCRs to view later.

Making cassette tapes or copies of CDs for personal use has been affirmed by court rulings, while a 1992 law allowed consumers to make limited digital copies of music, with royalties to be included in the price of blank tapes and discs.

In 1999, a court ruled that portable digital music players could be sold and gave owners the right to move their music from PCs to the devices.

The precedences are astounding, so what (other than money) are the "big boys" going to do to overturn these rulings?

TV show trading

[DanThe1Man]

For thouse of you that don't know it, there is already TV show trading on the internet, mostly on IRC and on a few web sites [episodesearch.com]. The problem for the TV networks is that people take out the commerials when they encode the show, so the networks don't get any advertiing dollars.

Already a Done Deal

[BurritoWarrior]

I signed up for a trial of digital cable TV where I live, and after purchasing a video on demand, I went to record the last part as I was getting tired and wanted to sleep and watch the rest the next day. Lo and behold the picture faded in and out, same as if you try and record a DVD.

I know there are signal boosters/correctors that can overcome this...the question is, why should normal, law abiding citizens have to resort to this?

Ahhhh goats!

[Graymalkin]

It's too bad there isn't a slashbox to filter out these whiny fucking threads. Think about it for a second, way back when there were three television broadcasters! You didn't get to pick shit that was on television. You were damn lucky if the TV had anything for your lazy ass to watch or you just watched what was cool. Then came cable and satellite. You had even more choices of what to plop your lazy ass in front of as long as you were willing to pay for it. VCRs also came about which allowed you to record stuff to watch later (held up by court statute known as time shifting). The you could program your VCR to record shit even if you weren't around to press buttons. Broadcasters even worked with the VCRPlus folks to give channel guides codes that would let people even more easily program their VCRs to record shit they weren't around to watch. Now in the transition to digital broadcasters want to break all of this because people can make exact copies of what was broadcast.

The problem lies in the fact that they make money from the potential eyes of viewers. Ratings allow broadcasters to charge more money for the time they sell to advertisers. They make their money in this fashion. However if they are broadcasting digital information rather than analog exact digital copies would be made. Big deal you say but it IS a big deal. It requires a bit of effort to filter commercials out of analog signals on a VCR (they look for a fade to black and stop recording until the video fades back in). The percentage of VCRs and people who take the time to do this is small so broadcasters don't bitch much about it. With a digital signal it is fairly trivial to scan a datastream for a pattern or flag denoting the transition to a commercial and since this is trivial a PVR or equivilent can easily nix the commercial from the recorded video. Since the only difference between a PVR and digital signal decoder is a storage device to record the video stream this had broadcasters a bit worried. If a majority of people with digital receivers can both time shift and remove commercials from video feeds the broadcasters can't make didly squat. Their traditional metrics become useless and advertisers can't be assured their advertisements will even be seen.

Broadcasters don't care about the small fraction of people who would go to all the trouble to trade copies of video over the internet. Most people won't bother even if they have the bandwidth. It's scores easier to flip on your TV at a certain time of tell a PVR or VCR to record something than it is to first find it and then second download it to your computer. Broadcasters will however be taken to court if they break compliance with statutes saying people have the right to record video for personal use. To keep from getting legally fucked in the ass this way you're going to see non-linear break commercials. Characters will drink a Pepsi and wear Reeboks and chase a bad guy through the Gap end will hang out at a Starbucks. Advertising will be like it was depicted in The Truman show where they broadcast constantly. Everyday items would be product placement and actors would be spokespeople during the shows they performed on. The crap acting you see in commercials now is going to take place inside your favourite drama or sci-fi adventure. Also expect more of those fucking tickers at the bottom, top, and sides of your screen.

They already HAVE this technology

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Macrovision, and CGMSA. Any NTSC decoder worth its salt can detect these signals. ReplayTV, for example, has chosen NOT to allow users to share Macrovision-encoded signals with other Replay owners. This seems pretty fair, I suppose (sharing a pay-per-view movie is pushing the limits of fair use, methinks). CGMSA goes further than Macrovision, allowing for more complex rights management (copy once, etc).

I hate all that crap, but I'm puzzled as to why a NEW rights management scheme needs to be put in place. I mean, yes, you can strip out Macrovision with a special device (or some firmware knowledge), but the average user isn't going to be able to defeat these technologies (especially with the obnoxious DMCA to help companies go after Macrovision-strippers, etc).

FCC has mandated digital tv by 2006

[yerricde]

The only way that they can prevent copying is if they were to replace every TV in the world with TVs that can decode an encrypted signal *after* it enters the TV.

The Federal Communications Commission (US analog to Canada's CRTC) has mandated that TV stations go digital by January 1, 2006 [fcc.gov], when the FCC will terminate television stations' analog spectrum licenses.

Updated!

Deliberate

[RatFink100]

Read the original story again - this is a story that could have been posted any time in the last few, or even next few weeks. Nothing happened yesterday to trigger this story - other than the anniversary of that landmark case - probably deliberate.

Copy protection will never work

[sklib]

I think that any mode of copy protection is rather flawed. Take audio: Let's say you can no longer rip music straight off of a CD. Well, you can always play the CD and just record the sound that comes out with your sound card. Certainly this is somewhat slower and degrades the quality a little, but it's hard to notice unless you're an audiophile, in which case you won't be using mp3 anyway.

When it comes to capturing TV for example, if you get a TV card, the process of viewing and the process of capturing (it seems to me) are identical no matter what you do. Even if the software that comes with the tv card won't let you record, something will. Even if you have to read from the frame buffer of your video card to get the picture and plug your sound card into itself to get the sound, both of these are still options.

Since I live in a dorm room, my only TV is in fact my computer, and I've been recording shows into divx'd avi's for quite a while now, and I can't complain about the quality at all.

So basically even though it may be more inconvenient to record some signals, it will always be possible, so I don't think there's a reason to make a big fuss about it...