MPAA Asks Again For Control Of TV Analog Ports 466
suraj.sun passes along this excerpt from the Consumerist:
"The Motion Picture Association of American wants to rent movies to TV viewers earlier in the release window, but they don't want anyone potentially streaming that video out to other appliances. That's why last week they went back to the FCC to once again ask for the power to disable analog ports on consumer television sets. This capability is called selectable output control or SOC, and the FCC banned it back in 2003. SOC would allow 'service operators, such as cable companies, to turn off analog outputs on consumer electronics devices, only allowing digital plugs' such as HDMI. The MPAA is arguing that if they could directly turn those plugs on and off, they could offer more goods to consumers."
I wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)
Cartel (Score:5, Interesting)
When is the MPAA and RIAA going to be broken up as a cartel? They all price match each other, control pricing, and even sue as a group.
It's a perfect cartel. I wonder if they like OPEC? Probably.
Easy solution (Score:1, Interesting)
We don't want those products...
keep em...
The work around is almost perfect. (Score:2, Interesting)
Sense a great deal of modern television sets are practicly embeded computers, this move will hopefully be the push to launch homebrew TV bios.
I would love to flash a HTC to enable cool video overlays or to allow simultaneous stream dumping.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with that is, *all* sets will be of that type, or people who buy new devices would complain that their device is supposed to be new, yet they're still locked out of whatever. A few years later, they won't release any content without the anti-analog flag. At which point old TV sets won't work, (again,) and grandma won't have access to important information about hurricanes and stuff.
If the anti-analog flag is there, many people will want to use it on everything because they won't consider the negative effects. It's just human nature.
Re:Delusional? Let's hope so. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, not everyone. I tried using HDMI for everything and discovered that I was getting lots of audio dropouts. So I ended up switched back to the lovely component video which works just fine, TYVM.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Shouldn't this be a decision that consumers make? I buy a certain TYPE of set that enables this and I can see there dumb ass content a week earlier.. if not, then we get normal release times.
What a perfectly reasonable solution! However, you're falsely assuming that the MPAA or the FCC have any care whatsoever about the consumer. Its never been about the consumer, its about controlling and maintaining the status quo and the lifestyles of Hollywood royalty.
Re:Pirates (Score:3, Interesting)
World without content pirates gives you access to X life enriching pieces of content.
World without content producers gives you access to X life enriching pieces of content.
Choose the world where X is greater.
For the pirated content consumer, the obvious ideal is a world where the number of pirates and producers are both maximized. For the person who chooses not to consume pirated content, the ideal is a world where producers are maximized, and pirates exist only to make producers greatful for paying customers and provide incentive toward price moderation. Obviously, both these ideas are presented independent of any moral position or obligations.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can we just disown Grandma and leave her to fend for herself already? She's holding back technological progress!
Re:They've totally lost the plot (Score:3, Interesting)
It's now easier to click-and-leech digital copies...
If you know of any ways to capture Hulu streams (either via webpage or their desktop app), I'd love to know. Even if it means the commercials are embedded, I've got no problem with that. The ability to download a show NOW to watch LATER (say, someplace where I don't have 'net access) would be awesome.
For the record, I've done my share of Googling and trying different capture apps that haven't worked as advertised. Maybe you know something I don't (I'm hoping).
Re:MPAA control (Score:2, Interesting)
The MPAA is arguing that if they could directly control consumers' neural input pathways, they could offer more goods to consumers.
Where's the +1 Prescient mod when you need it?
Re:Cartel (Score:3, Interesting)
It's only a cartel when it doesn't involve American corporations.
Re:Delusional? Let's hope so. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pirates (Score:4, Interesting)
Choice three: No corporate content producers, music art and drama are produced by everyone "in the small". No blockbusters. Everyone enjoys gathering around telling stories, playing music, singing. Particularly creative people make videos, movies, write plays, books, lyrics. Shakespeare wasn't signed by a label.
The way "content" is owned controlled and restricted now most people only "consume" entertainment. In my grandparent's time everyone produced entertainment. Sure, it wasn't as polished or grand as the professionally produced entertainment we are fed today. But is passive consumption of entertainment really that entertaining compared to interacting?
It is about cable, PPV to be specific (Score:3, Interesting)
This can only ever be relevant for "cable only" TV content.
It's about pay-per-view. Lately, the pay-per-view window has been moved up to match the DVD release date to compete with Netflix, Redbox, and Blockbuster, and the studios in MPAA want stronger guarantees about analog outputs so that it can move the PPV window even earlier to overlap theatrical release.
Re:Maximizing copyright != maximizing producers (Score:5, Interesting)
For the person who chooses not to consume pirated content, the ideal is a world where producers are maximized
However, the way to maximize producers isn't necessarily a broader scope of copyright. Without a meaningful right and ability to make fair use and other unregulated uses of a copyrighted work, a lot of producers can't produce due to copyright restrictions on derivative works.
At the point when "content providers" (I really fucking hate political incorrectness...) reach into my home, and disable features on a device which I own; I feel compelled to wish someone would kill them until they are dead.
Really, the FCC has no business interfering with my usage of my communications technology until that usage interferes with some medium they regulate.
Universal Studios, Sony Pictures, etc, can kiss my fucking ass if they ever get the power to do this, I will stop buying DVD/Blu-Ray releases, cancel my subscription to DirectTV and Comcast, smash my HDTV on the doorstep of the local BestBuy and take a shit on it. I will then use multiple computers/servers spread around the globe to pirate every fucking thing I can get my grubby ex-consumer neo-pirate hands on, even if it means going to jail.
Some causes require martyrdom to see the goals come to fruition.
Re:Pirates (Score:1, Interesting)
Pirates exist because they can get the content for free. Even if content producers agreed on reasonable terms, people would still take the content for free. It's not a social statement. That it is a social statement is an argument made to justify the actions taken, not the other way around.
That doesn't mean that content distributors aren't also to blame. If they had their way, your computer wouldn't be computer. It would be a kiosk for vending their goods. In fact, it wouldn't even be that. It would just have a card swipe on the front, and you'd mindlessly swipe your card. Notice I said distributors, since they're really the ones driving this show. The actual producers have little to do with it.
That's also not to say that they charge fairly, or that they distribute in a desirable fashion. That said, they don't really have any motivation to do so.
Re:Pirates (Score:4, Interesting)
Sort of. MPAA members are like the corporations to whom workers owe their souls from 9 to 5. Pirates are like the unions. They prevent the MPAA from having so much control that they start to abuse consumers.
I'll explain. The MPAA members, like any corporation, have no real incentive to do any more than is necessary for the consumer. Their natural tendency is to charge the highest price they can, offer as little as they can get away with, and maximize profits by forcing people to repeatedly purchase the same content. If they could, they would use an all-rental model as the DIVX debacle demonstrated, and nobody would ever own anything. Consumers rejected that because they had DVDs as an alternative, but there's nothing preventing the industry in all its near-suicidal goodness from moving steadily toward that model.
The existence of pirates makes such goals impossible. Pirates find ways around DRM that limits rentals to being rentals. The analog hole is the last guaranteed trivial way to achieve this, and as such, it is the last resort of those who feel we should be allowed to own content. Similarly, it provides limits on how high the price of media can get because if it gets too expensive, people will just pirate it.
The real problem here is the cost of making movies. We live in an era where the technical costs of making a movie are rapidly dropping, but the cost of hiring big name stars remains insanely high, and a significant number of people think that these big names are important when choosing what movie to watch because they are a sign that the movie has the full support of a major studio and is thus less likely to suck. While there is some truth to this, that means that it is nearly impossible to significantly increase competition due to scarcity of that resource. So no matter how abusive the MPAA member companies become, there's no reason to believe that new competition will come in to fix things---no reason to believe that the free market will correct the gouging. Add to this the nature of the relationships between studios and the movie theaters, and you have a very, very difficult market to enter without tying yourself somehow to one of the major studios (e.g. the Disney/Pixar relationship before Disney bought them).
In the absence of a free market, something has to provide controls over the operation of the monopoly or oligopoly. Piracy provide those controls. In the absence of piracy, it would necessary for the government to provide those controls to protect consumers from the industry, and I'm not convinced that our politicians have the intestinal fortitude to take on the MPAA members and limit them....
Im not saying that piracy is good---it isn't. I'm merely saying I'm certain that a lack of piracy would lead to an industry that is so abusive that it would make the current industry seem like Mother Teresa.
you missed something really, REALLY important (Score:1, Interesting)
At the other extreme, you have consumers not wanting to pay at all. Some of these consumers are not able to pay anything, so they can be discounted from the discussion: No matter how you set the price or what conditions you impose, they will not pay.
There is no such group (outside of religous sects like the Amish). The folks you're thinking of would accurately be labeled as "consumers who are not able to pay any direct cost." They will pay an indirect cost such as being the target of an advertisement (think: Reeses ad embedded in E.T.). If those folks are unable to view films which do not have wrapper ads or embedded ads they will consume shows which *do* have wrapper or embedded advertising. Unlike viewing by pirates a content producer can charge advertisers for delivering their message to those consumers when they consume such shows. So content producers really do lose money when consumers who are unwilling to pay direct fees go ahead and steal it.
Re:Maximizing copyright != maximizing producers (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, the FCC has no business interfering with my usage of my communications technology until that usage interferes with some medium they regulate.
Without the FCC's interference, "content providers" would already be able to use the communications technology that you willfully purchased that supports their disabling the analog out on your devices at the providers' whim.
It's the FCC saving you from the providers. You already surrendered to them.
Re:Maximizing copyright != maximizing producers (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, the FCC has no business interfering with my usage of my communications technology until that usage interferes with some medium they regulate.
Without the FCC's interference, "content providers" would already be able to use the communications technology that you willfully purchased that supports their disabling the analog out on your devices at the providers' whim.
It's the FCC saving you from the providers. You already surrendered to them.
Really? I would have to investigate further, my HDTV is a Sony Bravia XBR6. There is nothing on the box or the in-box literature denoting "Now including built-in kill-switch from Universal Studios/Sony Pictures/Fox." I do not believe I willfully purchased any kill-switch enabled device in my entire lifetime, as I am adamantly opposed to such things.
Also, I am fairly certain it runs on Linux. Perhaps someone can tell me a) if my XBR6 *does* have this kill-switch, and b) if it really is running linux, can I modify the source, recompile, and kill the kill-switch?
Re:Pirates (Score:3, Interesting)
I appreciate the conservative view point you are trying to put across, but there is one human factor that conservatives frequently fail to recognize. That factor is greed. Greed leads those in control of whatever product or factor of production to abuse the public at every opportunity. Prices are never low because of the goodness of anyone's hearts. They are low when they are required to be by law, when there is sufficient free, fair and unrestricted competition and when other forces, such as "pirates" make alternatives available for free.
Like it or not, copyright infringers are not the enemy of the public but are indeed the enemy of the content publishers. Content publishers seek to control and limit content at every opportunity and copyright infringers seek to free content at every opportunity. In a world without copyright infringers, we would be extremely limited and unhappy people. If content publishers had their way, they would overcharge for everything and no content would ever be portable between forms of media.
We, the public, benefit from the copyright infringers either directly or indirectly. Their existence serves to balance out or prevent the abuse we would all suffer at the hands of greedy content publishers.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
The FCC approved the broadcast flag. It was defeated in court as beyond the FCCs authority. The tuner cards I use are perfectly happy to "respect" the broadcast flag. They pass it in the MPEG stream, to MythTV... which then faithfully records it. Bad MythTV, bad :-)
Re:Maximizing copyright != maximizing producers (Score:3, Interesting)
They would only do this, if you allow them. If you wish to watch a movie, that they produced, they get to set the rules. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as the relationship is voluntary: "By pressing 'Continue' you allow us to disable the analog outputs of your electronics for the duration of the feature presentation. Press 'Cancel' to return to the menu."
And that really will be, where you'll belong, because while refusing a deal you don't like is perfectly just, piracy really is illegal and ought to remain so. You feel so strongly about content-makers messing up with your equipment (even if with your own permission), but don't mind robbing them of their profits (against their will)...
I can think of some better causes for martyrdom, than entertainment...
Re:Pirates (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, you are completely ignoring the fact that copyright is a state-enforced monopoly that solely exists to encourage artists to publish. It is not some kind of natural right, it is something that we (society) agree to enforce in exchange for certain privileges, such as access to the art on a limited basis for a fixed term (in theory) and then unlimited access to it in perpetuity. I say this as a writer who makes a living from the existence of copyright; it is not carte blanche to exercise unlimited control over your work, it is a privilege to encourage you to produce it.
To the rest of your rambling: Here is a concrete example; The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I'd quite like to watch it, but the DVDs won't be available to rent until next week in the UK, over a year after it first broadcast. I've added it to my rental queue, so I actually will rent it, but there are lots of other shows that, by the time they even appear on pre-order I've completely forgotten that I was interested in. I am here, willing and able to pay for these shows. If they made them available for DRM-free download at a reasonable price then I would pay in advance for an entire season - for some shows even before they've made it. Instead, they eventually deign to let me watch it a year after it first aired (often two years after they've made it) and get a small cut of the money I pay monthly for a rental subscription. They could be saving the DVD production costs and getting the money up-front, rather than having to borrow money to produce it and pay interest on it until it's sold enough to make their money back. Instead, they complain that piracy is killing their business.
They like to claim that piracy is akin to stealing. It's not a great analogy, but here's one that goes with it. They are like store keepers who only open from 2am to 6am, strip-search potential customers, get late deliveries and are often out of stock of things the people who do manage to get inside want to buy - and then they complain that shoplifting is hurting their profits.