Anti-Copying TV Technology Creeps Forward 369
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."
Bah.. (Score:0, Insightful)
Because as we all know ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sheesh. The VCR was the best thing that ever happened to Hollywood. Recording and sharing _increases_ interest in the entertainment industry's products. Why can't they see that?
Re:OK, you *made* me do it (Score:1, Insightful)
--jeff
Maybe it's not so bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, I guess the next step would be to copy protect books. Maybe they'll burst into flames if they detect a sufficiently bright light, such as used in copy machines.
F-bacher
This will help me write more software! (Score:2, Insightful)
Think of all of the social benefits that would come if people just stopped watching TV!
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bah.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Watch what you say. There's plenty of episodes of Junkyard Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer on television. These are my favorite two shows and also the only shows that watch. (actually, I'm being serious)
Just opening the door for independents... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible with today's consumer technology for people to make movies and broadcast them on the internet. Video cameras are cheap, people are willing to act (although there's need for improvement heh), and TV quality visual effects are within the reach of people with a modest income.
Until the day Hollywood consistantly creates stories that are worth paying for, they can't make these kinds of demands. Take a look at Final Fantasy. The people who are fans of that series are mostly interested in the story. They have their Playstation 2's, they have the $50 to buy the game, and they have the 40 hours to beat it. There isn't a TV show out there that can make that many people reschedule their lives around when the show is aired. Even though a show is half an hour to an hour long, nearly all of them aren't worth making sure you are home for that time.
So go ahead Hollywood, spend your energy trying to protect your 'precious content', you're not going to squeeze more money out of people.
Re:That will be it. (Score:5, Insightful)
What would one read in a newspaper today, yesterday's news? Opinions of illiterate or unqualified journalists? Ads? Same happened with radio; rare a song now is played from start to end because radio people just love to mix and match the bait^Wsong with ads and useless chat that is not even worth the battery to tune to. TV is not far behind; ads drip from every little pause in content, and the content itself is of very low value, targeting lowest common denominator in the society.
Is there something better than TV? Sure, and it is already here. One can have his movies on tapes, VCDs, DVDs or just in big .avi files, just click of a mouse to order at online shop (or Usenet). The one-way pipe (from fools on that end to fools on this end) is now being replaced with tons of chat/messaging software, from rocket-scientist's IRC to uncle Joe's Yahoo boards, where people can actually *talk* to each other, instead of being fed with corporate propaganda.
The TV is losing its appeal, especially (for now) among people who know how to get better information from Internet. Joe Sixpack still uses TV; however he does so not because he loves it but because it is there. He loves beer much more, and if he can get his football elsewhere, he will. If he can't tape his play he would be mad, and the TV would be useless to him.
In any case, there is no free market in broadcasting, and as such the monopoly (made out of several sister TV companies) is free to abuse the viewer in any way it wants. The only remedy is to stop using their services. They are not worth much anyway, and if a movie is good you can always buy it, free from ads, squishing, logos and other fluff.
Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:TV show trading (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course the networks would not be getting any advertising money anyway even if the commercials were copied with the shows.
There is just no way a network could call up Budweiser or Toyota and say "we have just played your ad in 120,000 more times than expected due to pirate recordings, so you owe us $50,000 more."
Re:That will be it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OK, you *made* me do it (Score:2, Insightful)
<irony>I do have lapses tho, which usually result in Slashdot posts such as this one. ;-)</irony>
Devil's Advocate (Score:1, Insightful)
What makes you think that you have the right to do whatever you want with someone else's artistic material? If it brings them higer advertising dollars to restrict the presentation to force you to watch it during broadcast only then so what? Would you as an advertiser pay as much knowing that most of the audience can and will fast forward through the commercials?
If you don't like it, tough - watch other shows. The consumer votes approval or diapproval with his wallet - if no one watches then no one will advertise - the bar will be set at whether the show is good enough to watch only as it's first aired with commercials, nothing more, nothing less. Seems fair to me. Of course there will allways be those who are above the law and find ways to violate copy restrictions (and speed limits and steal software and music etc..) but I sure don't care what their opinion is (hang them all as far as I'm concerned, they contribute nothing to society).
Re:hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't about preventing "piracy", it's about finding a new way to steal a few more dollars from the consumer.
Personally I would have less issue with a pay-per-view approach provided that:
All in all, I don't have an issue with protecting the content from wanton copying and redistribution. I'm rather shocked at the number of people I know who already see first-run theatre movies captured by DV cameras and transcoded to crippled-bitrate MPEG4; I can understand the content provider's concern over the issue as bandwidth increases.
As to the advertising revenue, do these morons really think I buy anything because I saw it on TV? I select purchases based on rational evaluations and independent 'net reviews, not based on some glitzy TV advertising or the biased sound-bite reviews provided by print media or ZDNet and it's affiliates.
It's been said before... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to bitch,
bitch [senate.gov] productively! [house.gov]
If you put the same effort you do here, into legit politics (wow. now *THATS* an oxymoron), the least that's going to happen is you're voice will be heard. The most? The sky's the limit.
Just do yourself a favor. When writing your congressperson or representative:
1) Don't troll
2) Don't flame
3) Don't mention your
4) Don't start with "I didn't vote..", or, especially, "I didn't vote for you, but..."
5) Above all, write intelligently. [amazon.com]
P.S. Inconspicuously hinting that your wealthy father could make a sizable donation to the rep's campaign wouldn't hurt.
Re:Because as we all know ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where would Windows be today if tens of thousands of future MSCE's hadn't pirated the crap out of Windows 3.1 and MS Office? At least PART of Microsoft's success is due to the rampant piracy - especially with MS Office, where WordPerfect employed goofy copy protection, Microsoft did not, and people flocked AWAY from WordPerfect. When people went from home-hobbyist to legit, they bought licenses.
Where would Adobe be today without the rampant piracy of Photoshop by tens of thousands of graphic art students (don't tell me this is not happening).
They'd be the publisher of software that is so hard to use, an artist's costs are DOUBLED *JUST* to begin learning about how to use Photoshop. Photoshop has a HUGE learning-curve to do anything but the most basic operations. Their marketshare would be comparatively microscopic. But since people have pirated it, they can mess around with it, learn it, evaluate it's worth (find out that, hey, $600 really IS justified for this gem!).
And it's been said MANY times, (it's like a broken record - no pun intended) that music sales have INCREASED due to Napster - because Napster tended to act as a free-promotion mechanism, and people may have kept a lot of MP3's they never intended to buy, but they also purchased a lot more CDs that they wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to.
In a society of law and order, we can bitch and moan all we want about whether or not these companies have a RIGHT to protect their own IP in the face of provisions like Fair Use. That's all academic. But it's certainly not in most company's best interests to do so. It's so blatantly obvious - and yet time and again, we see companies who are competing, don't often CARE if their software is pirated. It's a convenient way to gain marketshare - it's dumping, without actually dumping.
But as soon as they achieve any kind of dominance (read: monopoly power!!!) they clamp down the screws. I think this is what bothers everyone deep down in the bottom of their hearts - people know right from wrong, they sense it, and it's easy to justify "stealing" IP from a monopolist who's abusing their position. The monopolists want their cake, and they want to eat it too, and us consumers along with it.
If they weren't monopolies, I would join the "libertarian" crowd and say: hey, just let the free-market punish these assholes for their crappy business practices.
But that would be the same as saying - gee, I hate the way my electric company raises my rates and I still get outages. Fuck it all, I'm going to move to another state.
Re:Fair Use and the courts? (Score:2, Insightful)
Very well said. And copyright itself is a privelege not a right! The government (ie what should be us in a republic) grants via law a limited time ownership of original works. Its sole purpose in doing this is to foster the sharing of more original works which it is hoped will help the society advance. After this time, everyone in the society is allowed to freely use those ideas. That's what the public domain is.
This has gotten completely out of hand with our current government giving away copyright for periods far longer than they should, mostly to protect the income of large corporations.
check out Limiting Copyright [limitingcopyright.com] for some interesting articles on this.
Mike
Reality Check (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's Captain Obvious with Clues for the Clueful!
You're ALREADY at the mercy of the network. Who cares about what you can record? You only *watch*, in the first place, the programs they *want* you to watch. (insert Twilight Zone theme here). You seem to be operating under the misconception that TV viewers were ever offered any choice of any variety, which they were not. So please, lose the outraged squawking, it's just plain silly. Either watch TV and accept the crud they shovel at you, or DON'T WATCH TV. This is known, among adults, as a Decision.
End clue session, exit's to your left...
-Kasreyn
Re:OK, you *made* me do it (Score:1, Insightful)
Important issues to realize. (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly, almost anything worth watching can be obtained in an illegal way. I can download any popular TV show off the internet from SOMEWHERE, although these methods most certainly violate copyright. And while quite a few people partcipate in these activities, the greater majority doesn't and won't because its more trouble than its worth.
However, if people are suddenly unable to do what they've been used to doing for many many years, then some of these other methods might start appealing to them. TV shows will still get copied, just as DVD's are converted to DivX's. The underground scene will not be affected by this, at leat not in the long run. But the average consumer will find it annoying, and they will be driven to seek out other ways to obtain their media content.
And when they download an episode of "Friends" off the internet, they realize that they can watch it whenever they want. Not only that, but there are no commercials. And they can obtain ANY episode of "Friends" from the first season on, and all they have to do is be patient. If they're going to go to the trouble to do this once, they might realize its not that much trouble after all and might use this method to obtain other TV shows.
And eventually, they might start realizing they simply don't NEED their cable/satellite/whatever anymore because its become less convienent than obtaining it from the internet, not to mention there's no additional cost as long as they already have broadband.
Except for the few that still only recieve the broadcast stations, people pay money monthly to watch their programs. They do actually expect something in return, and one of those things is the ability to do so as they wish. In the blind rage of the media corporations to prevent the evil "pirates" from stealing their precious programming and distributing it for free to the less than 1% of the audience who bothers to make use of it, they will alienate the remaining 99%.
Way to go guys!
Way to go.
-Restil
Re:Because as we all know ... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a clear case of editors abusing their power. Someone archive this, since we know it isn't going into the
What We Can Do About It (Score:3, Insightful)
Choice number 1 will defiantly be preferable as it will get more public attention, however, choice number 2 is something we as geeks can defiantly do.
I'll second that (Score:4, Insightful)
A side note to anyone at Andover.net/OSDN/VA who happens to read this. Remind yourself that when Slashdot became corporate, the userbase became your customers, and indirectly your source of revenue through advertising. Piss us off too much, and watch your revenue stream trickle off...
Typical /. whining (Score:1, Insightful)
Grow up.
Re:hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Because as we all know ... correction (Score:4, Insightful)
WordPerfect started losing market share when some suit-encumbered moron decided to restrict tech support to registered users (this was really the key point, not WPCorp's slowness in adapting to Windows). Previously, totally free toll-free tech support was available to ALL WordPerfect users, including for pirated copies, as WPCorp recognised that the best way to lock in a customer base is to get them using your product in the first place. And it worked -- people pirated one version, but bought the next (well, I bought 16 "nexts" and counting). That deliberate winking at borroware, along with near-total printer support, made WP the market leader.
Re:We're talking *broadcast* for God's sake! (Score:2, Insightful)
They broadcast ADS because they want to.
If we record the shows, edit the ads, and repost the show - their profit model breaks down - in theory.
It gets worse for TV broadcast of movies and mini-series of course, but there is a pathological fear here when TV broadcasters of series and news worry so much.
Home taping has never been a threat. It wasn't to TV, it wasn't to Hollywood and it never really was to the RIAA either. VCR's always had a fast forward feature and some of them are damned good at filtering out ads. We all have VCR's - we don't systemically use them for this, by and large.
Why? We have better things to do with our time than waste EFFORT on filtering out ads.
Being able to make a perfect digital copy (a non-inferior good) and being able to choose it on demand from a pirated source scares the hell out of these companies.
As well it should at first blush I suppose, but is TV in THAT much of a problem position?
TV has less to fear from this technology than any other media. TV is too easy and too "free" to make ppl go out and chase it down to DL on a concerted basis.
Mp3's are traded for convenience and to avoid paying for them. Movies are traded for convenience and to avoid paying for them.
TV will be traded for convenience - as it is now to a limted degree. But as price is not an issue, the consumer does not perceive a substantial benefit to trade them on a concerted systemic basis.
If the only profit model they are really protecting is the ability to sell as many copies as they can of Season Two of The Sopranos on DVD, these guys need to chill out a little.
Okay - your market to sell Band of Broathers shrank a little. Other than that, so what?
TiVO is worth worrying about, but the net does not really add to the problem of TiVO to any appreciable degree.
The networks would be better off spending less effort on video on demand and more time on customized ad targeting.
We choose the show - our personal tastes determine the type of ads they stream to us. We don't waste the effort to filter them out or avoid them, because we don't mind watching them.
The worst case scenario in all of this is that TV simply has to broadcast ads that people choose to watch.
This happens in Europe and Japan already. The sun still rises and sets.
*slow down and take a breather for a moment will ya guys?
I'll sacrifice my karma to second this post! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know whether this suppression of ideas is political, financial, or otherwise or whether it is carried out by the editors of Slashdot at the behest of advertisers or simply by holier-than-thou moderators who are 14 years old and have points to burn.
The point is that now, to get at the cream of the crop, I often have to read at -1 and suffer through the "real" trolls as well, while only the non-controversial posts seem to stay visible to to 0+ readers.
This post will no-doubt be moderated to -1, offtopic within five or six minutes, but I notice that there is no acceptable meta-forum anywhere at Slashdot for discussing the mechanisms of Slashdot itself. That such a forum does not exist in spite of the "free" ongoing ad dollars it would no doubt generate seems to indicate that at least some of this suppression is indeed carried out by the editorial staff or by corporate.
It's nice to see this issue get some attention.
By all means, please read the thread discussed in the parent comment to this one, it's really quite enlightening.