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Television Media

Digital TV Restrictions Coming Soon 255

Posted by michael from the waking-the-sheep dept.
Kagato writes: "CNN reports here that Sony and WB have come to an agreements for Digital Content Control via cable. Even worse, Fox and Disney are making the rounds to get Content Control into over-the-air broadcasts. "...a controversial notion, since over-the-air is, by its literal definition, free and clear." It should be noted 80% of US households use cable/DBS." So when AOL/Time-Warner says you can record a show, you can. I'm sure we can all be happy with that much freedom.
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Digital TV Restrictions Coming Soon More

Digital TV Restrictions Coming Soon

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  • The next one will be ??? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... sponsored by Nike.

  • Re:What a disaster (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...but someone at PBS (or the Govment that contols PBS) will realize that they can end the subscription telecasts and get money from their secured content. Many PBS subscribers (not viewers...) will be for this as it keeps the subscription stuff off the air. Legislative types who think that the Govment should only promote boring grey McCulture will ensure that PBS go to this to reduce their government funding (in other words, Joe Blow Republican, wanting to score some anti-Liberal points back home, will ensure this by saying the above, while getting the Appropriations Committee to begin whittling PBS' govment allotment), to make it more "self-supporting".

  • Wow! (Score:2)

    by Have Blue ( 616 )
    Access restrictions are great! Now I'll never have to accidentally see their shit during the five seconds between turning on the TV and hitting play on the VCR. Thanks, MPAA!

  • So I'll stop watching movies and TV. No big loss there.

  • I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record.

    Remember, they care diddlysquat whether you actually watch a show; it's your eyeballs on the commercials they actually care about. If you're using TiVo, then you probably aren't watching too many.
  • It's happened. All Sky Digiboxes have to have Macrovision capable outputs, and macrovision is enabled over the air for certain programs. It's even in the contracts that they won't supply certain programmes if your digibox can't do macrovision. The only way you can watch Sky Digital is with a Sky approved digibox, which must run Sky approved software, and come supplied with the Sky remote control (so that they can say "press the red button").

    Digital input TVs are now appearing in the UK, that take the satellite signal directly - so the decrypted programming doesn't appear outside the TV. I expect these to grow in popularity, and have TiVo like functionality soon.

    As for handshaking with the broadcaster (mentioned elsewhere), if you don't have your Digibox connected to a telephone line, you have to pay upwards of £300 ($420) for the box. If you connect it, the box is free. So, in the UK, almost all of the boxes are connected to a phone line - and they phone home at intervals.
  • It isn't encrypted with CSS. It's based on a elliptic curve type algorithm, considerably more difficult to "crack" than CSS.
  • Once they think they can get away with one aspect of the whole mess, expect that they'll try to run the other. Micropayments with ads and all- they're all trying to maximize profits, what's to stop them doing the next step?
  • Napster screwed everything up. It made companies afraid of technology that they're willing to sacrifice features (e.g. TiVo) for fear of lawsits from other companies. And this "Intellectual Property" they banter on about is so etherical anyway.

    Let the big corps lock up their precious "content". This will force more people to go out and find stuff that is free and provided by people who are happy to have an audience and are willing to share their music/writing/pictures....

    Just wait. The best is yet to come.

    ...richie

  • His article just happened to be one of the first few results of the Google [google.com] search on the keywords "HDTV bandwidth 6MHz [google.com]"

  • The bandwidth is the same (Score:5)

    by SpiceWare ( 3438 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:36AM (#78920) Homepage
    NTSC uses 6MHz of bandwidth per channel, as does the US implementation of HDTV.

    The stations don't have more bandwidth, we're just using compression to utilize the bandwidth more efficiently.

    See Cringley's PBS article, Bandwidth Squeeze [pbs.org], for more info - such as how Japanese's HDTV standard uses 20MHz of bandwidth because the signal is not compressed(at least as of 98, when the article was written)

  • Because:
    1) Their work is not honest. When Stephen King writes a book, he's making use of plots, idioms, words and characters that other people developed and which he isn't compensating them for. (provided they'll even permit him to use them)

    2) A world in which this was all carefully accounted would be so encumbered that it would probably collapse under its own weight

    3) It would also conflict significantly with humanity's natural (copyrights are not natural, remember) freedom of speech, and on the whole most people would likely prefer the latter.

    Remember, kiddo - the people permit there to be copyrights, which are entirely optional, because they find it convenient. Make them too inconvenient for the public at large, and they'll have Congress shut the whole system down or reform it significantly. Provided that the government fundementally still works, and it's a _seriously_ bad thing if it doesn't.
  • This is true. Libraries have indeed traditionally been private in one way or another (e.g. you had to be associated with the monestary or school, or library somehow in order to have access) and the books considered to be so valuable, often b/c they were hand-written, that they couldn't be left unattended or unchained.

    *But* books and libraries are not the entire scope of content.

    If you went to a bar and performed, oh, I dunno, "Twist and Shout," even if from memory, you'll be committing copyright infringement. If you performed "Greensleeves" five hundred years ago in the same bar (there are some surprisingly old bars in this world) you'd be A-OK.

    Even in a preliterate society, all content was free. Specific works, then as now, might have cost a small fortune to obtain, but could nevertheless be copied all you pleased.

    There are wonderful stories told about the famous Library of Alexandria, which embraced this roughly 2200 years ago. Any ship or caravan entering the city was searched by customs officials for interesting scrolls and written materials. If there were any, they were copied by the Library staff, then returned. One of the Ptolemaic kings once convinced the Athenian government to let the Library borrow and copy the original scrolls onto which Sophocles had written his plays, giving them a large ransom as a deposit. Of course, they weren't above valuing the originals too, and kept them, losing their ransom. (but sending the Athenians copies at least ;)
  • Sure they can - but the basis for their deal, the existance of a copyright, and its nature as property (quite distinct from the nature of the content as not property) has nothing to do with freedom.

    The government, acting on the behalf of the people, who formally recognize the usefulness in the development of the arts and sciences in the law of the land, grants copyrights. Conditionally, and with strings attached.

    And copyrights are entirely contrary to the notion of freedom. Just look at them:

    Let's say that Alice creates a work, Foo. She does not copyright Foo, and everyone in the world is free to (should they legally obtain a copy - breaking into her house is illegal regardless of what's taken) make copies of the work, and disseminate them at will. Perhaps Alice didn't want a copyright, perhaps in Alice's country there are no such things as copyrights, or perhaps the Copyright Office didn't find her work worthy of a copyright for some reason. At any rate, this is the natural state of things - everyone may exercise their freedom of speech at will, even to speak that which others have already spoken.

    If Bob creates a work Bar, and copyrights it, the Copyright Office is incapable of granting him rights, although it's convenient to say so as a sort of shorthand. What they actually grant him could be considered a token which indicates that Bob retains his natural rights. The token may be shared or transferred, in whole or in part. Meanhwile, the Copyright Office infringes on everyone else's rights (with permission, as it's a democratic government, or else it all falls apart) barring them from freely making use of their natural rights. Only Bob, and other token holders may continue to do so.

    Although the system is voluntary, to the extent that any legitimate government recieves its power to govern directly from the people it governs, it is all about infringing on the rights of the many for the benefit of the few. (in the short term - it's required that in the long run, the many will have their rights restored to them, and that it'll be worth it)

    If you have a nation of pirates, then it seriously behoves the Congress to legalize that piracy, or face the danger of not representing their constituents. We're probably not there yet, but the copyright holders seem to be going down that road - grasping so hard that the object of their desire slips through their fingers.

    So please don't go around making that sort of claim....
  • I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record. I'm certainly in that group. If I can't record it, I'm not watching it. The networks need to stop the "fast forward" button more than anything.

    If you continue paying for the monthly cable/dish subscription, I don't see why they'd _care_ if you actually watch or not. I don't think having a TiVo even enters their minds.

  • Next revolution sponsored by Nike? Good one. :-)

    Perhaps Gil-Scott Heron was mistaken and the revolution will be televised, but it'll be heavily encrypted pay-per-view.

  • It doesn't even need to be old. Just buy any VCR with a manual input gain control (a.k.a recording level control), and Macrovision can't touch it. Macrovision works by fucking with the automatic gain controls in VCR with huge intensity bursts. Manual gain controls aren't fooled this way.
  • they are planning on encrypting the signal b/c they feel that even "amatuers" are going to be able to intercept the digital transmissions and get great copies of *whatever*.

    so they are going to spend $ on development, driving the cost of the already pricy equipment up.

    I honestly hate cable right now. The fuzzy crap (from too many splices and the low signal strength to discourage this type of thing), the poor channel options, and pricy service for nothing.

    Are movies distributed over the cable far superior to the ones I can rent for $2.95/day on DVD? I watch like a movie a week. That's less than $15/mo. Why the hell should I be paying $40+/mo for that?

    I guess I am rambling...
  • Time Warner Cable, Bowling Green, OH.
    Adelphia Cable, Clarks Summit, PA.

    both have poor signal strength and fuzzy picture.

  • DVDs have shown us the way (Score:5)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:46AM (#78932) Homepage
    At least here in sweden, one selling point has become that the player is region-free, i.e. that it it ignores the region coding, or can be set to whatever region you please. At first players needed to be modded, but today all but a few name brand players usually come region-free out of the box.

    With consumers becoming used to the idea of buying copyright-avoiding technology, and manufacturers seeing there is a very large market for it, I'd expect tv-sets and VCRs that ignore this as well.

    Remember, most manufacturers are not content providers, and has little incentive not to do this, especially with competitors taking market share with their products.

    /Janne

  • ... You still have another foot left.

    First you provide what I would call ``oxymoronic'' programming -- content-free content -- that insults everyone who's got more than a half dozen brain cells. Then you want to restrict when we can see it. Next, you'll expect us to pay for it, too.

    I've noticed my (and many friends', as well) TV viewing dropping precipitously in recent years. We had cable access for nearly ten years but turned it off in '91 and haven't missed it at all. I would like to buy a new set but there's so little worth watching that I cannot justify the cost. My rented videotapes and DVDs amount to 80%-90% of the use of our current set. Broadcast TV? I'd say that most of the time I'm only watching the Sunday morning political talk shows. What else is being offered that is worth my time?

    So, keep it up guys! It won't be long before one point in the Nielsen ratings will correspond to 1000 homes. Of course, you'll find some means of explaining away the drop in corporate revenues.



    --

  • Problems:

    1. Copy protection is impossible

    But you can make it illegal by using nothing more complicated than XOR.

    2. It opens the market for no-aligned TV channels to jump into to offer royalty free non-copy protected programing. This may be twarted by having congress pass laws that to force everyone to join the alliance or protect alliance members from "foreign" competition.

    Heck, who needs Congress to get off their duffs about this. Bring in the WTO.

    3. People aren't stupid.

    But the Department of Education is working hard on this one.

    4. Some kid from Europe/Asia/Africa/wherever will crack this "protection" in a matter of hours and post a program that will let you take the DVI and/or Firewire signal, pipe it into your computer and recored shows all day long.

    Ditto my above comment on the WTO. You think the MPAA and RIAA will not try to have this fall under the jurisdiction of some trade agreement rather than the courts? Hell, juries sometimes find the defendant innocent. (Can you believe it?)

    If we are to beleive MS about WinXP. It's copy protection is only there to stop "casual" infrigment (two copies on your two home computers). It does NOTHING to stop the "billions" of dollars lost to pirates who sell software in Asia on a CD for $2.

    This was already brought up in the DeCSS court proceedings. Did you forget already? :-)


    --

  • BattleBots

    I think that's on late Sunday night around here. I catch it sometimes. Mildly interesting.

    Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

    If you mean Jerry Springer... I don't waste my time. Most of the people on stage remind me too much of my former neighbors when I was in grad school (S.E. Ohio).

    National Geographic Channel (it's about time!)

    Maybe, just maybe, you have something there. But I still find it more enjoyable to read the magazine in a comfy chair and a scotch.

    History Channel

    Saw some of it one night while on vacation. Better than most programming but, if memory serves, a little hung up on British royalty. But then PBS occasionally goes on those binges, too.

    Discovery Channel (when they aren't the Cop Show Channel or the Shark Attack Channel)

    Also OK. Neither this or the HC make me want to shell out $30/month for cable.

    Nature (PBS)

    OK. But too many reruns.

    Nova (PBS)

    I'd watch it more if they'd quit moving it around. Tuesdays at 8:00 PM is the time slot God intended it to be shown. Friday nights are stupid. Current theory around the household is that Friday night is the only night they didn't find people watching Antiques Roadshow. So little old ladies with an interest in antiques have a life but folks interested in science stay in on Friday nights? Also has too many reruns.

    Louis Rukeyser (PBS)

    Overpaid financial analysts spouting content-free financial advice (I suppose to stay out of trouble with the SEC). The first third is about the only part I find interesting. I normally turn it off when the quant lady ushers in the guests. And when is Rukeyser going to figure out that we laugh at him every time they come in for that close shot with the wide angle lense? It makes him look like your watching him through the security peephole in your front door.

    Los Angeles Fox 11 News, because they said "fuck it, we're ratings whores after all" and now feature nothing but news chicks taunting the middle-aged anchor with bare belly buttons and tube tops for half an hour while showing the occasional footage of car chases and carrying on about celebrity gossip

    I find that tuning in the game shows on the local Spanish language stations provides similar entertainment.

    I haven't watched TV in nearly a week and haven't missed it. Weekends are about the only time I have time for it and if they offer up three golf tournaments shown at the same time again (like they did a week or so ago), I might give up on weekends as well.
    --

  • Frankly, consumers won't move to HDTV if they lost their ability to casually tape shows for later viewing. This extreme aversion to allowing rights recognized by the SCOTUS will kill the market for this stuff.

    Sure, I want to watch wide screen movies at home, but I won't buy any of the crippled products being offered today including DVDs until the stupid restrictions are lifted.

    DAT died and so will these.
  • Well, I want wide screen movies. I'll even pay a pretty penny for a higher quality, wide-screen picture. But I won't pay for broken and crippled technology that reduces the amount of control over what I watch with my TiVo. And I don't think that the average consumer will either.

    Free box? But I can't tape my favorite shows? No thanks!

  • new technology, old VCR (Score:3)

    by option8 ( 16509 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:38AM (#78946) Homepage
    so, how are they going to prevent me from taping new "protected" shows on my old (very old) VCR? i can understand if they're targeting people with Tivos and whatnot, but if there's some way for them to prevent some shows from being recorded by joe average with a 3 year out-of-date VCR, then it'll work about as well as, say, macrovision on my DVD player, and do little more than tick off those of us that can't be home when DragonBall Z is on during the week, so we tape all the episodes and watch them saturday afternoon...

    what was my point? damn. i keep forgetting to include one of those...

  • People don't buy crippled hardware. (Score:3)

    by glen ( 19095 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:05AM (#78949)
    We saw it with DivX. People aren't going to spend good money on hardware that comes with artificial limitations.

    When this technology starts appearing on store shelves and people find out that you may or may not be able to watch and or record certain shows, hopefully they will stick with their current status quo NTSC arrangement and wait until they can get what they want without the unfeatures.

    Let the marketplace decide. And let's hope the marketplace makes the right decision.

    It's supply and demand economics. And I don't see a great demand for crippled hardware.
  • I'd say that the reason companies are screwing with consumers is:

    1. companies are legal persons-- the people running them are somewhat immune from the penalties of their actions

    2. public companies are run in the interests of their shareholders

    3. There are huge penalties for company leaders who act against the interests of their shareholders.

    4. In other words, it is much safer to obey objectionable shareholder demands than to disobey.

    5. Shareholders care about money and profits, but are otherwise removed from the affairs of the companies in which they hold shares.

    6. Shareholders themselves are often part of part of larger organizations. Pension funds and mutual funds are run by stewards on behalf of others even further removed from the companies in which they invest.

    As a result, shareholders demand that company leaders maximize profits, regardless of taste or morality (and sometimes legality), and the leaders obey.
  • Between you and me if 'over the air' meant literaly free and clear that would cause a lot of trouble everywhere. Just think about wireless network, they would have to be free and clear, wouldn't they??
    That doesn't stop the idea to be silly. Anyway, who cares about TV now? Is there any TV set left in the US?
  • They won't give us an Emmy nomination? Well, they can go screw themselves. Let's prevent them from taping Buffy!!

    (We don't have that anymore, sir)

    Well... Shit.

  • How long till people like me start using our second amendment rights to prevent corporations and the government from exploiting us?

    I'd love to have a list of all the lobbyists behind the DMCA, any lawyers they had working for them, and especially the legislators that drew up the bill. Then I'd like to line them all up out in a field in some remote location, give them all shovels, and force them to dig their own graves before blowing all their brains out.

    I would not do that of course, because it would be utterly counterproductive and only give license to those who would seek to take away our guns, but that doesn't mean that the idea of it doesn't make me smile.

  • Re:What's the household penetration? (Score:4)

    by jmauro ( 32523 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:44AM (#78961)
    Analog stations will stop broadcasting in a few years. Their signals are being taken away and replaced with HDTV signals. All othse with analog signals will need to get a converter, which can handle the conversion. It really, sucks. The TV stations get 4-6 times the amount of bandwidth (for free no less, those signals could easily raise a couple billion) and all they've been able to figure out with what to do with them is broadcast 4 channels instead of one. No interaction, no HDTV, just 4 channels instead of one. Really great. But anyway, everyone will be force to upgrade to digitial whether they want to or not. Digitial Cable, Digitial Signal Receivers for Analog TVs, and Digitial TVs. There is now way around it, since the FCC has said to make it so. Analog TVs are on the way out, really really fast, before anyone gets any silly ideas like they really aren't all that bad after all.
  • The record companies were already doing lots of testing back then, but they couldn't get the nerve to trust any system with their content. Napster just gave a name to their fears.

    The major fear of all the existing publishing companies (of whatever media) is that a change in technology will render both their business and business model completly obsolete.
  • companies are legal persons-- the people running them are somewhat immune from the penalties of their actions

    Except that they are not always legal persons. Effectivly (in the US) they have most of the rights real people have, but none of the responsibility. This is most notable when they break the law.
  • By the bye, the books that are released on computer media haven't been reduced in cost.

    If the newer media is actually cheaper it simply means more publisher profit. More likely the double whammy of cheaper media sold at a higher price (e.g. DVD vs VHS.)

    My biggest irk in the whole deal is that the people that scream the loudest about IP theft are the least creative. They are the distribution channel, the printers, and the conglomerate.

    They always have done, best example would be movies, the very first name you see on the screen is that of a film company...
  • The problem is that it's not the authors or artists who are enforcing ip for their own benefit. It's media corps. that enforce ip for the benefit of the media corp. Copyright SHOULD reserve certain rights to the author - most of these rights should NOT be transferrable to other parties, and should always revert back to the author after one 'printing' as in the book world, not remain in the hands of a corporation that's never written lyric one, as in the music industry.

    THen you have the problem of changing the status quo so as to make "publishing" something licenced by the author.
    The publishing corps are considerably more powerful than the average author, musician, singer, director, actor, etc. So if he or she wants their work to be published then they have to do it of the corporation's terms.
    Also if someone gets to the point of being in a position powerful enough they probably don't have much incentive to change the system anyway.
  • Yep. I work in the cable business and I keep trying to tell them, "this is a technology fight that you cannot win." If it's an analog signal, it can be digitized, compressed and recorded. If it's a digital signal depending on a handshake, it can be spoofed. If it's a digital signal and it's encrypted, it can be broken.

    You can be sure that encryption will be broken. All encryption does is make it harder to get at something within a certain timescale.

    The studios (that are driving this) are doomed by the fact that they are dependent on mass-market consumer electronics. They have to choose a set of algorithms, then implement them in silicon to get the costs down, then stick with them for 10+ years

    Also the information is still valuable for nearly a century.
    The kind of data encryption is useful for sensitive commercial and military communications tend to only require keeping secret for a lot less time.

  • Re:What's the household penetration? (Score:3)

    by gorilla ( 36491 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @11:15AM (#78968)
    Except that everyone is lagging behind the FCC's timetable. The original timeline was that by 1 May 1999, the top 10 markets would by ready for digital, and the top 30 by November 1999, and all commercial by 2002, and PBS by 2003. Needless to say, this is not happening. In 2000, there were 24.2 million analog sets sold, against 648,429 DTV sets. Even the FCC is now saying that it's original 2006 date is unrealistic.

    In the UK, 625 line TV was introduced in 1964, and 405 line broadcasting was offically obsolete in 1969. Yet it took until 1985 until it was finally switched off. This was with the upgrade being to colour, more channels, sets being valve based, and consequently with shorter lifespans, and the increasing uptake of TV.

    If it takes 31 years for 405 line TV to disappear, it won't take 8 years for NTSC TV to go.

    Links: http://www.videosystems.com/2001/03_mar/features/n umbers/numbers.htm

    http://www.gvmag.com/issues/2001/0301/editor/0301. shtml

    http://www.pembers.freeserve.co.uk/405-Lines/

  • Why the hell should I be paying $40+/mo for that?

    Assuming you haven't already, you could just do what I did. Cancel cable. It's funny when you call. They assume you're moving.

  • What a disaster (Score:4)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:37AM (#78976) Homepage


    Copy protecting TV broadcasts is like putting defecation in a safe. I just hope they don't touch PBS.

    LS
  • Actually last I heard TiVo had over 200k users. Still not much, but it's growing quite fast and probably expotentially.
  • so, how are they going to prevent me from taping new "protected" shows on my old (very old) VCR?

    Macrovision.
  • Yep. I work in the cable business and I keep trying to tell them, "this is a technology fight that you cannot win." If it's an analog signal, it can be digitized, compressed and recorded. If it's a digital signal depending on a handshake, it can be spoofed. If it's a digital signal and it's encrypted, it can be broken.

    The studios (that are driving this) are doomed by the fact that they are dependent on mass-market consumer electronics. They have to choose a set of algorithms, then implement them in silicon to get the costs down, then stick with them for 10+ years because they can't get away with saying "I'm sorry, but you have to replace your TV, your DVD player, your cable box every three years." Ten years is more than six Moore's Law generations and in that much time, GP hardware and software will catch up and the algorithms will be reverse-engineered.

  • Good point.

    Okay, saying "if it's encrypted it can be broken" is an overstatement. I absolutely agree that the encryption used in modern digital cable systems is quite good, and breaking it would be very difficult. However, as long as GP computers are allowed to receive and display digital video on the output side of the cable box, there is some point along the chain from box to display screen where the signal is "accessible" to someone willing to go to enough trouble. Common sense suggests that you attack where the defenses are weak.

    Personally, I think the economic risks of such piracy are being greatly overstated. How many people are going to drop HBO because they get a pirated copy of "The Sopranos" from their brother? Will the availability of quarter-frame versions of "The Matrix" on CDR really cut into the DVD sales? Has anyone ever seen a sixth-generation digital copy, or do they die out after one or two generations, just from inertia?

    BTW, I am in favor of throwing the book at people doing wholesale copying and distribution. Copyright is a social compact, where the producers get some protection (but not absolute), and the consumers have some rights (but not a right to do everything).

  • Sigh.

    a) I'm not upset that I can't record Cagney and Lacey reruns. However, I'm sure Cagney and Lacey fans would be upset. Me, I'd be upset over different shows. Deliberately using an outdated show as an example isn't particularly effective or clever if you are interested in actually discrediting my justification in being upset.

    b) I'm not American. I'm Canadian. And I'm civil war constitutes people versus their own government. Perhaps the one nice offshoot of globalization is that the eventual backlash will be globalized as well. Neato.

    c) People are probably more shallow than anyone else thinks, although I realize this is subjective. Note I'm not putting myself above this group .. there are things that mean a crap-load to me, and nothing to the next man. But when everyone is forced to play by someone elses rules-for-unearned-profit, I don't think you have to be shallow to want to fight back. Almost the opposite .. I think that those that are shallow just assume everything will be hunky-dory until their coffin lid is closed.

    d) Civil wars are foregone conclusions. The question isn't if, but when. A glance at history will indicate that no (or very very few) societies have endured long-term political/economic/social stability. So I think my question is valid, in so far as pondering when issues like these may finally push people to action outside of the democratic and judicial process. Indeed, we can see this happen from time to time already, in the form of protests, violence, and terrorism.

    I'm not referring to this only. I'm referring to ALL efforts to protect 100% of IP and copyrights. Eventually the populace will feel like they can't even walk up the street without first making sure they arn't infringing on copyrights or patents. Since the government has long-since resigned itself to pandering to their financial backers (otherwise you dont have the money to hammer your name into the heads of the increasingly disinterested members of a democracy), no one will step in to provide the neccessary 'balances' against companies 'checks' (pun intended). This is why I don't think it's such a crazy idea to suggest that we're only a century or so away from some kind of uprising. Yes, obviously, the scope of my jabbering probably isn't deserved in this thread, but I can come to slashdot everyday and read about 5 more companies attempting to go from super-rich to unaccountably-rich by making sure that 95% of all fair-use activity that doesn't result in a loss of profitability is squashed for the 5% that does cause a chip in their bottom line.

  • How long will it take ... (Score:4)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:48AM (#78985) Homepage
    I really wonder how long it will take before we collectively (and by this, I mean, including the technophobe business types) admit that fair-use and lack of nazi-like-restrictions were probably responsible for at least SOME of the stability and complatency of the public at large during the 20th century? How much longer till people say 'the hell with it' and starting throwing around flaming beer bottles like in some other countries that contain regular, average people who are sick of their government-imposed disposition?

    Honestly, if this keeps up, I really dont see how the western world can survive under its own canabilistic economically-driven laws and policies. Time/Warner, you're rich enough. Stop paying the drug addicts and bimbos millions of dollars to ply on the ignorance of mass media consumers so you can start affording your own business without having to chase pervasive fair-use-infringing legislation (oh wait, too late.)


  • Broadcasters are slated to go all-digital by 2006, or when 85 percent of American homes have a digital TV, whichever comes first.

    Realistically, will the switch over to 100% digital ever happen? And if so, does anybody think it will be done before 2006?

    On a recent trip to Best Buy looking at TVs, there were only about a dozen HD TVs amungst 6 or 7 dozen models, and most (all?) of the HD tvs were 36 inch or larger costing significantly more then an identical model (w/o the HD features). I don't want a 36 inch TV in my bed room. I don't have room for that size, let alone the need for a super sharp picture to fall asleep to at night. Until the cost drops big time soon and smaller TVs appear on the market, I honestly don't think that the average consumer will tollerate being forced to shell out a grand or two just to watch Friends and E.R.

    Just give me a 19 inch television for $150 and then we can talk about switching over.

  • Hrm. I don't think we'd make a blip in ratings. What kind of people do they use for ratings anyway? I'm sure they'll find some way of automatically finding compliant viewers as their subjects.


    ---
  • Not just Tivo users, but I am sure a lot of people will not want to switch when they realise they will lose the ability to record when they want, what they want, how often they want, and watch it how ever many times they want. I refuse to switch to digital tv until at least two things happen.
    One, the equipment has to be good and cheap. I can't afford to, nor would I, spend $2000.00+ on a digital tv! Not to mention the fact that I will not be able to record the shows in digital. There is not a lot I watch in real time anymore !
    I want the ability to record when I want, what I want, how often I want, and watch it how ever many times I want. At this point, it doesn't look like I will have the ability to do this.
    I am sticking to my VCR until at a minimum these things get solved! If it happens that I can't watch TV because they upgrade to digital tv without me, then so be it. I know I won't be the only one.
  • Sinmple, if I am not watching TV because I am not provided with the services I want, then that's one less viewer that see the comercials and other proganda the push. I may fast forward through commercials on my vcr, but if there is something I might like I watch some if not all of the commercial. Content providers are in the business of providing a service, in this case content, and you won't be in this for long if you do not give your customers what they want. My brother doesn't even watch tv anymore. The reason they should provide me with the capability is simple--if they don't I will look elsewhere for my entertainment.
  • Ask that to all the DirectTV hackers that can't use there DirectTV reciever anymore...

    Sure, go ahead and ask those hackers. Perhaps they'll answer you in between the free porn and PPV movies they're watching. The DirecTV anti-hacker hack was the biggest marketing FUD I've seen in quite awhile.

  • They don't care about lo-fi grainy analog copying. This stuff is about preventing both exact digital copies and hi-fi analog copies like you could theoretically make if you had a recorder for the high-resolution analog CrCbY and RGB signals that you get out of progressive DVD players and HDTV reciver boxes today.

  • I don't get it. (Score:3)

    by anacron ( 85469 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:35AM (#78996)
    They won't let us copy over-the-air, "high value" programming, but how many of you will watch a movie when it comes on TV even though you already own it in several formats? How many of you have started buying DVDs of your favorite VHS movies?

    When did this whole "us vs them" attitude start where these companies are putting so many restrictions on new technology because they feel like there is POTENTIAL for their IP to be lost. Well, bullocks to that. Anything they do will be broken anyway. Why not just forget the whole thing and move on. Hell, they're so damn scared they MIGHT lose IP they will spend millions to prevent it.

    And all of you will say Napster was a Good Thing, but I say Napster brought the end of the Good Thing. The free ride is over my friends. Copy protection on CDs, TV you can't even watch. Digital Rights Management on downloaded things. What's next? A car that gets 10MPG less unless you pay a yearly fee to the company that sold it to you? A keyboard that disables the letter 'e' unless you pay .001 cents per keystroke?

    Napster screwed everything up. It made companies afraid of technology that they're willing to sacrifice features (e.g. TiVo) for fear of lawsits from other companies. And this "Intellectual Property" they banter on about is so etherical anyway.

    Oh? So you can only make 3 billion dollars next year instead of 5. Oh, so record sales have doubled in the past year after lagging for 5 years yet you'll still put a business out of business.

    Capitalism sucks when the people with the power aren't the ones with the money. I'm not sure when it happened, but it'll be the downfall of everything we currently hold sacred. Our paradigm shift will be watching all the things we used to enjoy going away. Our children will not think twice about paying to breathe, and we'll hate the fact we pay for it.

    You just wait. The worst is yet to come.

    .anacron

  • Re:I don't get it. (Score:3)

    by anacron ( 85469 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:15AM (#78997)
    Ummm, is that a misprint? The problem is that the people with the power are the people with the money, and only the people with the money. I'll just assume you mistyped.

    No, that wasn't a misprint. Capitalism relies on the relationship between supply and demand. In this case, let's assume that only companies have the supply and consumers create demand. We have the money. The companies want it. Yet we have no power.

    Simplified model aside, companies do have money. And they do have power. But it wasn't supposed to be that way. Capitalism works because the money the supplier wants starts in the hands of the buyer. There's an inherent check and balance system at work.

    Somehow over the past 10 years that system has flipped and the buyer also has money. This puts them in a superior position of power because of it, and the people with the buyers are left with nothing.

    Quality used to stand for something. Now it's not quality but quantity. How much can we make? How many can we produce? How many features can we build? All of these drive current capitalism. It's not "We had better make this quality because then no one will buy it"

    The real bummer is that competition is the root cause of the flip. It was supposed to be a Good Thing, but Thomas Paine couldn't have predicted what would have happened if the companies
    1. Didn't care about consumers
    2. Had too much money
    3. Had IP to protect

    It almost feels the same to me as the beginning of the industrial revolution. Or the huge Carnagie steel conglomerate around the turn of the century. Money and power in the hands of a corporation can't be a good thing. Look what happened last time (hint, it starts with a D and ends in epression). When the companies with money and power lose all their money they lose all their power too.. and the rest crumbles like a stepped-on sand castle.

    .anacron

  • That's been the hold up so far (Score:3)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:47AM (#78998) Homepage Journal
    I was working for a crappy company trying to build a tivo-like Linux device and one of the major hold-ups (Apart from Management changing their minds about our requirements every 3 days, that is) was that the content providers didn't want to talk to us unless we could assure them that customers wouldn't rip the hard drive out of the box, steal the mpegs and post those episodes of "Dharma and Greg" on the internet. I'm under the distinct impression that the reason digital TV hasn't caught on in the US is because the content providers are holding out for ways to keep their shows from being copied.

    Nevermind the potential for timeshifting and convienence features that the Tivo users have already experienced. The content producers would rather shit on the food after eating their fill rather than allow anyone else to have a bite. Doesn't matter to me though. When my room mate moves out, so will the TV and I have no plans on getting another one. I'd just as soon avoid their table altogether.

  • A link was here on /. about how to extract the video files from a TiVo. In the past, adding ethernet to the tivo has been posted.

  • Ratings (Score:5)

    by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:30AM (#79004) Homepage
    I wonder how they'll feel about stopping recording of shows when the growing block of TiVo viewers simply refuses to watch anything they can't record. I'm certainly in that group. If I can't record it, I'm not watching it. The networks need to stop the "fast forward" button more than anything.

  • Carry it out one more step.

    One way to propagate those kinds of belief systems is to ingrain them into a religion.

    For all practical purposes, Materialism is the new religion. Instead of writing down precepts on scrolls, however, its tenets are promulgated on television. Other religions must be envious of the way Materialism can get its adherents to watch TV for many hours per day while they have to goad their parishioners endlessly to get them to come to church for an hour a week.


    Just wait. One day people will get tried directly by the corporations, and the gov't will enforce it.

    It's beyond that!

    People will get indoctrinated

    • to feel comfortable about behaving in ways that benefit corporations;
    • to feel guilty about behaving in ways that do not benefit corporations.

    The government and its piddly laws are irrelevant to you if you have a chunk of people's minds working on your behalf.

  • 2) A world in which this was all carefully accounted would be so encumbered that it would probably collapse under its own weight
    But not everyone has the imagination to foresee such a world. Maybe someone needs to write a dystopian story. I don't think much of Stallman's 'right to read' - it creaks under its ponderous moralizing. Maybe our 'generation' will produce a sci-fi writer who articulates the world of IP gone mad.
    For those who don't see it yet, the fact that we are able to live as civilized beings in relative leisure, safety and health is due to countless incremental advances in human arts and sciences over millenia. I couldn't be typing this now without language, the alphabet, boolean math and logic, oil exploration and drilling, organic chemistry, mining and smelting of copper, Jewish concepts of the permance and importance of the written word, Christian concepts of the importance of the individual soul, idealistic Americans who advocated universal education, and countless other innovators.
    Compared to the magnitude of their contribution, mine must necessarily be tiny. How arrogant, then to claim special rights in the 'content' I produce. Can I afford to pay the heirs of all these creators who benefit me? Can I even afford the accounting involved in figuring my debt?
  • There was a time when such extremes of action were reserved for such things as colonialism, religious persecution and racism.
    And all those who stood up to evil systems were ridiculed by people like you. Is it really worth going to jail to sit in the front of the bus? Today a man is in jail in Las Vegas for telling the truth about Adobe's software. How many people have to go to jail before you realize that control of information is serious? The Drug War is absurd, but also very serious to those imprisoned and killed.
    The civil rights movement is accepted and enobled in retrospect by the same institutions that ridiculed and undermined it. But control of information is the current arena in which individual rights are up against institutional power.
  • That's baloney. All you need to record something is a visual output signal. Regardless of what crap they incorporate into it, there will always, *always* be a hack just one step ahead.
  • Hollywood's top lobbyist, Motion Picture Assn. of America president Jack Valenti, has said digital TV produces such a perfect picture that even amateurs could successfully pirate the content.

    No joke. AOL/Time/Warner/Megacorp/Whatever can bet that anything they put on the air will be on the internet within half an hour.

    Broadcasters say they will be crippled if over-the-air programming isn't protected. A content provider will turn exclusively to cablers, leaving broadcasters out of the mix.

    Help! Protect us! We're been left behind because of our outdated technology and poor content!

    In the early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that consumers have the right to record TV programs for home viewing. Consumer advocates say that decision means over-the-air broadcasts can't be copy-protected -- period.

    Amen, Amen, and Amen.

  • Every time this topic is discussed, I think the same thing. This will introduce handshake authentication between your DBS/Cable box and your Digital TV (or TiVo). There is no way that there are enough people using Digital televisions that this should be a problem. As long as there are still analog sets, they can't implement this technology across the board. How upset would the consumers be if they wake up one morning and they have an AOL symbol on their $2,500 RPTV. "We're sorry, this cable service is no longer compatible with this television/device. Please upgrade to a Digital Television to experience this service." Spare me.

    I've said it before, and I'lls ay it again. Stay the hell out of my living room.
  • The difference between cable and broadcast signals though is that if you get cable, you sign a contract saying "I agree not to crack this thing and try and get stuff I've not paid for"

    If you just design something that pulls stuff that is being beamed into your home without you having asked for it straight out of the air and does some wierd stuff to it before piping it to your TV, where's the harm in that?

    No contract, no foul.

    K.
  • 30% of American households still have black and white TV.

    Can you provide a citation for that statistic?
  • As far as how many times a "high value" program can be copied is pretty much moot to me. I don't typically make copies of copies.

    Now I will be pissed if the scheme is implemented where I can't pass a copy of my recording to a friend to watch. Or if I can't go back and watch the same episode of a show more than xx number of times.

    So what you are saying is that you don't mind your rights being taken away until they infringe on your lifestyle?
  • Why not make the TVs so that they can't play anything digital that isn't a secure stream. Then they can force everyone to pay them.
  • Linux hackers getting sued and arrested won't annoy the public much.

    People trying to record the Simpsons (and the helpful neighbor with the "Record enabler" (circumvention device) getting sued and arrested for it WILL annoy the average person.

  • The children (will be reeducated) (Score:3)

    by Frank T. Lofaro Jr. ( 142215 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:03AM (#79031) Homepage
    Speaking of the children, there are plans to indoctrinate kids into believing anything a content provider does not like is wrong. It was mentioned back in the days of the IITF white paper/green paper and I believe has been mentioned in the UK now.

    They'll think recording a show off TV is as morally wrong as copying CDs or as wrong as stealing cars.

    The content owners will have the government issue propaganda in their name. The Department of Justice is biased against DeCSS, yet they are getting sued in the Federal Courts. Conflict of interest bigtime. When the judicial system in which you are being tried issues a brief in favor of the plaintiff, there is no chance at anything even approaching impartiality or a fair trial.

    Just wait. One day people will get tried directly by the corporations, and the gov't will enforce it.
  • Umm Judge Kaplan's DeCSS decision DID eliminate fair use.

    You only have "fair use" if the content owner and their "protection" racket (pun intended) allow you to have it.

    That does defeat the purpose of fair use...

    We need to get the DeCSS decision reversed, or else fair use WILL have been legislated and judicially ordered to be illegal.
  • Is it me, or am I turning into a nut? Does it seem that more and more people are being arrested because of IP owners wishes, or not?

    FAIR [fair.org].

  • Up until quite recently (the last few hundred years) libraries were pay-to-use entities.

    They still are, and are supported by property taxes in most states. In Texas, it's part of the county and city tax. I think that's a fine idea.

    Listen, no one here says that all IP should be free; don't be an ass. What I am saying is that copyright in this country is limited. First sale means the IP owner can't dictate terms of sale (or use) of the IP after the first purchaser. (For instance, the IP owner can't demand you only use Brand X light bulbs to read the work), Fair use means all sorts of things, like you can make a copy for archive as long as you own the original, you can media shift (copy a book from bound to xerographic copy, for instance, or use VHS to record a laser disk), you can quote it, you can make a joke of it, you can cretique it, use small portions in your own work. The home recording act means you can record programs and *give* them away (not sell), and many other things.

    Traditionally, IP owners were not able to collect a fee after the first sale, EG, you didn't have to pay for each time you read the book, only for the purchase of it.

    Times change. What needs to be determined is how access to IP is going to change, what's going to be free after first sale, and what isn't.

    There is a move on to change text books from paper to DVD/CD-ROM. Fine and dandy. However, the IP owners are using encrypted text and time limited software. I still have many of my electronics engineering books from the 80's and 90's. If I took a course now, and my books were on DVD or CD, I couldn't use them past the year I purchased them. Not only does that kill my use of them after school, but others now cannot sell used books. Some of the books I needed were US$ 600 new. I don't know about you, but I couldn't have purchased them new, and didn't. By the bye, the books that are released on computer media haven't been reduced in cost.

    Contrast that with www.baen.com, who sells 4 or 5 electronic book versions for $10.00. Purchased seperately, they would cost abount US$25.00 - $30.00 for paper back, over US$100.00 in hardbound. Yet everyone is happy! Why? Because the publisher and author make a ton more money on the electronic version vs. the paper version. (It's on the web site somewhere, but I'm too lazy to go find it.)

    My biggest irk in the whole deal is that the people that scream the loudest about IP theft are the least creative. They are the distribution channel, the printers, and the conglomerate. They didn't create the work, frequently don't pay for it (Yep, they don't f'en PAY the guy that created the work in the first place.), and they don't even respect those that buy it, even as only a customer if nothing else.

    Don't bother to flame my spelling, I don't give a rats ass anyway.

  • -- In a landmark deal that could provide crucial momentum to the nation's foundering digital TV transition,

    Foundering? HA! How about Withholding? As in, "In a landmark deal that will provide Sony, etc with the incentive to stop withholding the digital TV transition from America until they can damn well lock it down and control it...".

    Another priceless one: Hollywood's top lobbyist, Motion Picture Assn. of America president Jack Valenti, has said digital TV produces such a perfect picture that even amateurs could successfully pirate the content.

    Who exactly are we going to pirate it to? Does Jolly Jack think the nation as a whole has collectively agreed to have 1 person subscribe to digital cable, then throw it up on the Internet for the other 249 Million of us?
  • Ask that to all the DirectTV hackers that can't use there DirectTV reciever anymore...

    Everyone I know who scams DirectTV now either uses an emulator, or pays the minimum fee. They get their free DirecTV fine. With an emulator, every once and awhile it stops working and they hit reset. But if you pay the cheapest fee, then hack your card to get all the channels, they apparently won't wipe your card (or so I'm told). I don't scam DirecTV myself, because I think it's a bit lame plus I don't really watch much TV. I watch Conan sometimes, but I can get that with my rabbit ears.

    Josh Sisk
  • Another point that doesn't get brought up enough is that in the days of Thomas Paine most people were self-reliant farmers and money was a luxury, not a necessity. Even 60 years ago during the Depression a lot of families(mine included) were able to live off of what they could grow.

    I think there is a lot to be said about that self-reliant attitude that tipped power in the hands of the individual. Today, we have lost that, and thus are more and more dependent on the rich and powerful not only to provide us with goods, but also with the money to buy them.

    I can't speak for anyone else, but one of my main goals in life is to get back some of that self-reliance my ancestors had. Things like owning a piece of farmland and maybe a solar/wind powered house.

    Trading freedom for technological convenience has proven to be a bad bargain. I want freedom.


  • There aren't very many TiVo/ReplayTV owners... each company has something like 30-50k users. A drop in the bucket compared to the network audiences.

  • The Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, does not say that you have the RIGHT to record over the air programs. Instead it says that such recording is legal for home use. This does not mean that content providers can not put in copy protection, just that if they broadcast in the "free and clear" they can't sue you because you recorded it. It also states that you can't hack the copy protection. Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 [cornell.edu]
  • Maybe in HIS day, but now? I have exactly one choice for cable.

    In his day there were exactly zero choices for cable.

    Besides, you have choices. You can:
    Get cable
    Use an antenna, and watch whatever is free in your town.
    Buy a dish.
    Go outside.

    I have two choices for telco, but one is the aforementioned cable monstrosity and the other blows goats.

    Your father didn't even have a choice for long distance phone service provider. He must find your whining endlessly amusing.

    I have a couple of choices for DBS, but I can't afford what it would take to get it into three rooms with a decent channel selection.

    See, you made a choice. You chose not to buy it. If they want your money, they will have to offer something with a better value. Ta-Da! The system in action. Wasn't that easy?

    I hate that if I want a decent movie or CD, I have to pay into the evil that is MPAA/RIAA.

    If you really cared that much, you would simply not buy them.

    I also believe well-organized civil disobedience has a place here.

    There was a time when such extremes of action were reserved for such things as colonialism, religious persecution and racism. Are you seriously advocating open defiance of law and order over the fact that Disney fucked up your DVD of "The Emporer's New Groove" in order to make it harder to rip with your Linux box?

    I think you need to listen to your dad a little more. He might still be able to teach you to get a sense of perspective.

  • Whew... too many points for me to have the energy to respond to right now. To put it simply, you (the consumer) still have all the power. If you don't like the cable service, don't buy it. If you think the price of a CD is too high, don't buy it. (Personally, I buy most of my CD's from used album stores. I picked up one of Miles Davis's better albums for seven bucks a few weeks ago.)

    Oh yea, and yes I have heard indie music lately. From two different sources: 1. Net Radio - Apple's free MP3 software (iTunes) ships with Internet Radio links which include a lot of "indie only" stations. 2. Live Performances - For a midwestern town, the Minneapolis nightclub scene kicks ass. Everything from punk to jazz, and all points in between... if you just know where to look.

  • Let's start our own network. Not just one that can be gotten via the usual methods, but through various other transports. Let's give cable and DBS the boot and make up our own system!
    We don't want to watch what you think we want to watch any more!
  • There is no way that there are enough people using Digital televisions that this should be a problem.

    Actually they've found a way around this. Newer cable subscriptions from the company that I'm with (Cegeco, owned by Rogers, owned by - I believe - AOL/Time Warner) come with a "Digital Cable Box" that hooks up to your TV, giving you digital cable.

    You can watch TV without the box but there's a ton of stations that you don't get. For example I'm in Ontario Canada and we get the WB and UPN stations from L.A and NY on channels 209+ and 5 movie channels starting on channel 201. We don't get any of these stations without the box. So there's very little insentive to _not_ use the box.

    --
    Garett

  • I have no plans to go to digital TV. None whatsoever. There is zero value in it for me. I bet there are millions out there with the same attitude! Spectrum return dates notwithstanding, if nobody has switched, analog TV won't go away. The networks just won't give up their audience like that.

  • Re:How soon will the switch really happen? (Score:3)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:58AM (#79076) Journal
    85%? I say never. Mark my words.

    Do you really think they'll change over in 2006 when less than 10% of users have digital sets? No fscking way.

  • How difficult can it be?

    Well, if you take a simplistic approach, equating IP to real property and fair use to theft, then things are very simple.

    This approach would also lead to a world that's both awful and quite unlike anything we've ever seen in human history, however.

    --Mike

  • a future of enforced ad viewing (Score:4)

    by mkcmkc ( 197982 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @11:16AM (#79083)
    [A]nything that stops me from having to sit through paid commercials must be prevented. Someday it'll be a law that I can't leave my chair once I've sat down, or I'll be violating a license agreement.

    You just think you're kidding:

    • Dave: (returning to chair with popcorn) Okay, play the show, Hal.
    • Hal: I can't do that, Dave. My sensors indicate that you weren't in the room when I played the required sponsor messages.
    • Dave: (muttering) Okay, play the bleeping messages, Hal.
    • (Hal plays them.)
    • Dave: Okay, now play the show, Hal.
    • Hal: I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave. My sensors indicate that you weren't watching the screen when I played the required sponsor messages.
    • Dave: (staring at screen) Okay, Hal, play the bleeping messages again.
    • (Hal plays them.)
    • Dave: Okay, now play the show, Hal.
    • Hal: I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave. My sensors indicate that you weren't listening to the required sponsor messages with a warm and loving attitude, Dave.
    • Dave: Here's a little warmth and love for you, Hal! ("zaps" Hal with his one megawatt laser remote)

    I'm just tired of it all. There's not enough good content out there on the channels for me to pay their ever-increasing prices anyways, so I settle for local antenna-based TV and a DVD collection of my favorites with no commercials. As long as it costs me as much time and trouble as this to get something for free, I'll continue to just pay up front and keep it simple.

    I'm tired too, but if we keep giving them our money for content we can't fairly use, you can bet they'll keep selling it that way.

    --Mike

  • Re:DVDs have shown us the way (Score:5)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @10:54AM (#79084)

    Unfortunately, capitalism in the US isn't as free as we'd all like it to be. It's no big secret that corporate interests are integral to the lawmaking process here, thanks to corporate-sponsored lobbying in Congress and the high costs of running for re-election (not to mention some plain-old corruption here and there).

    That, combined with general apathy on the part of the citizenry, is how things like the DCMA get passed in the first place. It's the reason we have Macrovision on all our VCRs and region encoding on all our DVD players. Companies demand protection for their media, so the technology manufacturers are left with no choice but to comply. Stopping piracy (theft from media owners) is more important than the freedoms of the individual (inconvenience for the voters), and while intellectual theft is and should be a crime, it gets taken to such insane extremes sometimes.

    Take digital television, for instance. All broadcasters must carry it by 2006, but are consumers really demanding this sort of "advanced" picture capacity yet? No, but the TV makers demanded it be enforced in law because there was a Catch-22: why buy the digital TV if there's no broadcasts, and why make the broadcasts if there's no TVs? Better features will sell products regardless -- DVDs have caught on mainly because of the added features and conveniences, not because any law requires them to be produced.

    Now the companies are demanding enforced copy protection along with enforced broadcast technology, and they'll probably get it. There will be hacks, but they won't be widespread, because they'll still be illegal. Never mind that I would rather have an enhanced DVD from the producer than a digital "videotape" of the show anyhow; anything that stops me from having to sit through paid commercials must be prevented. Someday it'll be a law that I can't leave my chair once I've sat down, or I'll be violating a license agreement.

    I'm just tired of it all. There's not enough good content out there on the channels for me to pay their ever-increasing prices anyways, so I settle for local antenna-based TV and a DVD collection of my favorites with no commercials. As long as it costs me as much time and trouble as this to get something for free, I'll continue to just pay up front and keep it simple.

  • Has anyone looked at digital satellite receivers on eBay lately? Notice that the old receivers are more expensive than the new ones. Why? Because the old ones can be easily hacked to get any channel.

    The point? When all you can buy is controlled recording devices, the old analog recording devices will be more valuable than they are today. Quality not as good as a straight digital copy? So what. You can bear to watch that analog stuff today; you can watch it tomorrow. And yes, there is always a way to make an analog recording.


    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
  • To all those who think people won't buy Digital TV to replace their existing sets, I have something to say...

    This is not going to happen over night. It will come in stages.

    1. Start moving people to Digital Cable or Satellite.

    2. Offer a compelling reason to upgrade your TV to those who have a digital channels (HDTV over the air, nice wide screen movies at hi res)

    3. Once you have a threshhold of people, being moving the shows in #2 to a copy protected broadcast...(pay/view, HBO specials). This is a crucial step. If it fails, they will have to rethink things...

    4. Slowly move all if not most show to copy protected status.

    Problems:

    1. Copy protection is impossible

    2. It opens the market for no-aligned TV channels to jump into to offer royalty free non-copy protected programing. This may be twarted by having congress pass laws that to force everyone to join the alliance or protect alliance members from "foreign" competition.

    3. People aren't stupid.

    4. Some kid from Europe/Asia/Africa/wherever will crack this "protection" in a matter of hours and post a program that will let you take the DVI and/or Firewire signal, pipe it into your computer and recored shows all day long.

    If we are to beleive MS about WinXP. It's copy protection is only there to stop "casual" infrigment (two copies on your two home computers). It does NOTHING to stop the "billions" of dollars lost to pirates who sell software in Asia on a CD for $2. The same can be said about Digital TV copy protection. Its only intenet is to make the home user keep paying for pay/view and other such stuff. It has nothing to do with stopping pirates...

  • Capitalism sucks when the people with the power aren't the ones with the money.

    Ummm, is that a misprint? The problem is that the people with the power are the people with the money, and only the people with the money.

    Actually the above is NOT a problem with capitalism, it IS capitalism. And if people really don't like the way things are sold/distributed, the best way to change things is by buying from companies that sell/distribute in some other way or make some other product. You are not entitled to buy the latest Metallica CD, and just because you don't like the way they choose to distribute their music does not give you the right to violate copyrights. If it's really important to you, in this case a conscientious consumer would buy his music from some other band/label, or just would not buy it at all.

    GPL-defenders here constantly advise that if someone does not like the GPL or finds it unduly restrictive, then that person should not use the GPL'ed program - noone is forcing anyone to use GPL'ed software, after all. But why do so many of the same people find it justifiable that people rip and trade CDs just because they don't happen to like the licensing terms record companies and artists offer them ? Noone is forcing anyone to buy music, either. Why would these people be up-in-arms when people decide to violate the GPL (presumably because the violators don't like the licensing terms offered them) ??

  • Even if it is feasible to do so technically, what about the rights of people to record shows for home use (per the home recording act). Of course, we can expect to see them hide behind the DMCA. The encryption scheme will probably be rediculously short, and so runtime attacks will be easy, so the DMCA will be the only tool they will have to enforce it.

    OTOH, this may be a blessing in disguise. It shows what is really happening with the DMCA and gives a better chance to have it overturned or repealed.

  • Look, this isnt gonna happen. The point is when DMCA stopped Linux users from viewing DVD's via DeCSS, the common man didnt care. The problem is, Joe Sixpack has grown used to being able to record whatever, then being able to fast through the ad crap.

    Now, try telling the common person that s/he can no longer timeshift because of 'digital content piracy'. Let's face it, they can mount all the propaganda campaigns they want, however at the end of the day people are going to get PISSED. Slashdotters may yell how unfair it is that DMCA is squashing their right to view DVD's or something, but I doubt several million americans are going to give up their right to record programs without a fight.

    Or you could move to the UK ;) at least its still SOMEWHAT sane... business culture over here is too conservative: "World domination? I dunno, that sounds a bit risky..."

  • Because, if they did that, there would be restraint-of-trade issues that even the Justice Department couldn't ignore. It's one thing for the big content producers and electronics makers to get together to protect content the producers own, but it's quite another for them to try to lock out unencrypted content that they don't own. They'd almost be asking for an independent producer to sue them. There are other issues, such as if a particular electronics maker doesn't want to play ball. What if some company made a camcorder that recorded content that was perfectly in line with national DTV standards but that wasn't encrypted, then the TVs wouldn't play it? Aside from restraint-of-trade issues, there's also the standards the FCC has set for digital TV. The set makers would probably be able to get away with making sets that played both the regular, unencrypted DTV signal and an encrypted stream, but not allowing the unencrypted stream would theoretically violate those standards. What happens if the rogue electronics maker sued, claiming that the electronics makers have built sets that don't conform to federally-set standards and that these companies have conspired to shut out both independent hardware vendors and program producers? It'd be akin to Microsoft, Adobe, and Lotus/IBM getting together with all the big hard drive makers and deciding that the manufacturers would only make drives that will work only with these companies' software to the exclusion of everyone else's products. It'd take about 30 seconds before someone filed a lawsuit on that one.

    I'm not saying the big electronics and media companies won't try, but it'll be a tricky road for them to navigate.

  • It's about the boxes (Score:4)

    by dachshund ( 300733 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @09:45AM (#79118)
    Essentially, I see this as a way for cable/content providers to force their will on the set-top box manufacturers, in much the same way as they did to the DVD makers. Beginning next year (I believe), set-top boxes will be sold at stores like Best Buy, as an attempt to prevent cable companies from having complete control over this segment of the market. Unfortunately, if set-top box manufacturers are forced to license technology equivalent to DeCSS, they may lose some autonomy right back to the cable companies. This is where I see these tactics going in the short run.

    In the longer run, I think their aim is primarily towards the HDTV and high-quality digital markets. HDTV is still a few years from being practical for more than a few channels, especially over standard cable networks. But perhaps offering higher quality via the digital connection may be a selling point for the cable companies, if they could get away with it. In any case, with DVDs taking over from videotapes, and services like Tivo going into the cable headend, most consumers may choose not to own analog recording technology in a few years.

  • It's hard to imagine that the next revolution will come at all, and this particular topic exemplifies that fact.

    Mass media becomes more and more pervasive with every passing year, to where people cannot even imagine life without it. The massive media machines that wield this power are telling people what to think, what to buy, how to behave. They are slowly but surely gaining control over all information, to disseminate and distort as they see fit, which mostly likely means in whatever way will keep you in line, buying their products and not questioning their ideals. And all the while, they continue to slowly eradicate any rights that you may have as an individual, in case you might one day decide to (gasp) think differently.

    But do you honestly think People care? People, as in the millions upon millions of drones whose sole intellectual input comes from mass media, simply do not understand, and never will. They've been told what to think for so long that they do not know how to think for themselves.

    If a revolution against this system ever formed, these same people would simply be informed that Nazi Fascist Renegades were trying to take their God Given Right to Television away, and that would be the end of that. There simply aren't enough people in the know to overcome the masses of drones out there, and that ratio is only going to get smaller with time. Buckle up for the Brave New World heading our way.

  • The last revolution was flower power and peace. The next one will be ???

    IP laywers on the left side of the gallows, media corp execs on the right.

    We'll need a more scalable solution for the mindless masses who let it happen.

  • At issue however is precisely this point. With the DMCA, even if you can do it, it is not legal to do it.

    Additionally, with VCR's being a common device in well over 50% of USian homes, I don't think that the US public will agree that things don't have to be easy.

  • If it's a digital signal and it's encrypted, it can be broken.

    But it hasn't been (yet). The cable box manufacturers learned from the DSS hacks and used better security. Even though the Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta boxes (used by AT&T Broadband, Time-Warner Cable, Charter, Videotron, Cogeco and just about every other US & Canadian cableco) have smartcard slots, they don't use them.

    They do use some obscurity, but they don't rely on it- there's some real thought here (not just XORs!).

    Think about it- if there weren't any PC DVD decryptors would we have DeCSS and other "unauthorized" decryptors today? *Maybe* if the key were in the clear (but it would be in ROM rather than in a DLL/EXE), but what if the key were embedded in a chip and that takes an encoded stream in and gives a clear one out. There is technology to scrape off the top of a chip and read its design or contents using an electron microscope, but there's also technology which uses a bunch of layers of metallization piled on top of the sensitive stuff (probably developed for Clipper ;-).

    Here's something on Mot's box (formerly GI):

    "The fundamental elements of GI's approach include: (i) a secure, non-reusable, single die VLSI custom decoder chip; (ii) a cryptographically secure mating verification scheme between the buried secure processor and the renewable element (if and when renewable elements are installed); (iii) battery backed-up volatile memory for secure storage in both the fixed and renewable security elements; (iv) working key (control word) which changes several times per second; (v) use of proven and strong cryptographic algorithms (e.g., DES and DES variants); and (vi) renewable security"

    And here's something on S-A's:

    "Scientific-Atlanta's PowerKEY System is the broadband industry's first CA system to support both public key and secret key cryptography. PowerKEY's use of public key (RSA) cryptography allows it to address the issues discussed above in a unique way that traditional secret key-only CA systems cannot match."

    "The PowerKEY CA system employs a multi-level key hierarchy. Control words are fast-changing keys used to encrypt the services (video, audio, data). Mid-level keys called multi-session keys are used to protect the control words so that they can not be discovered in transmission, except by authorized units. The multi-session keys are sent to individual decoders using messages (EMMs) that are encrypted with the RSA public key algorithm. These EMMs are also digitally signed by an Entitlement Authority. "

    (the original URLs are broken now, but look around for DigiCipher and PowerKEY if yer innerested)

    The work on the connection between cable boxes and digital TV sets/decoders and on retail (Circuit City) cable boxes is mostly going on under the banner of OpenCable, run by Cable Labs. You'll buy a TV or cable box or D-VCR with a PCMCIA-like slot into which you'll plug a Point-of-Deployment (POD) module rented from the cable provider.

    The generic box doesn't know DigiCipher or PowerKEY, but they don't want the POD to output a clear stream so it's re-encrypted using a generic system- 5c. The digital connection between a cable box and HDTV decoder might also be 5c-encrypted MPEG over firewire, but it also might be decompressed DVI with some other nasty "generic" (less proprietary than DigiCihper- more like CSS) encryption applied.
  • I don't see why companies should be allowed to broadcast copy-protected data over the airwaves. After all, we own the airwaves, we can have a say about what they do or don't get used for. I don't see how it's in the public interest at all to allow such use of public property.
  • It goes back even further - it was William Shakespear who said:
    But for no country I say this, for every nation must revolt once in the lifetime of every one of its subjects
    What made the comment particularly ironic, given the circumstances, is that Shakespear was refering to the extent of official support that those ripping off his works had. Exasperation turned to anger and polemic as knock offs rolled off the presses within hours of his plays opening. The words, while exaggerated, have been quoted ever since.
    --

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