US Copyright Office Sides With Cable Companies Against FCC's Set Top Rules (arstechnica.com) 137
An anonymous reader writes: The United States Copyright Office has sided with cable companies in their fight against a Federal Communications Commission plan to boost competition in the TV set-top box market. The FCC proposal would force pay-TV providers to make channels and on-demand content available to third parties, who could then build their own devices and apps that could replace rented set-top boxes. Comcast and other cable companies complain that this will open the door to copyright violations, and US Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante agrees with them. The Copyright Office provided advice to the FCC at the FCC's request, and Pallante yesterday detailed the concerns her office raised in a letter to members of Congress who asked her to weigh in. "In its most basic form, the rule contemplated by the FCC would seem to take a valuable good -- bundled video programming created through private effort and agreement under the protections of the Copyright Act -- and deliver it to third parties who are not in privity with the copyright owners, but who may nevertheless exploit the content for profit," Pallante wrote. "Under the Proposed Rule, this would be accomplished without compensation to the creators or licensees of the copyrighted programming, and without requiring the third party to adhere to agreed-upon license terms." There are already "third-party set-top box devices, mainly produced overseas, that are used to view pirated content delivered over the Internet," and the FCC's plan could expand the market to include devices "designed to exploit the more readily available [cable TV] programming streams without adhering to the prescribed security measures," Pallante wrote. Cable companies are willing to pledge industry-wide commitment, but have expressed no desires of leaving control over the UI.
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This is the fight happening in Canada right now. The Cable Co's want these Kodi boxes banned because they are facilitating piracy.
KEY POINT: WE HAVE A MORE LOCKED-IN SYSTEM IN CANADA, NO CABLECARDS BUT IDENTICAL TO THE US IN EVERY WAY.
As much as I have sympathy for the Copyright Cartel, this is one case where they are full of it. HDMI devices are supposed to transmit the "do not copy this floppy" flag, and the fact that there are known work-arounds to this (break the DRM on the Blueray, use a HDMI splitter
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and I went into a dream
she, laughing and weeping at once
"take me away"
That was just a Calgon commercial you left playing on your old VHS recording of Murder She Wrote.
Users side with pirating content for free (Score:2, Informative)
It's so easy to pirate, so keep restricting paid services, go right ahead! You'll surely get me to switch back to paying!
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I don't understand the reasoning behind this:
Under the Proposed Rule, this would be accomplished without compensation to the creators or licensees of the copyrighted programming
Wouldn't end users would still pay for the programming?
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In other news (Score:5, Funny)
The head of the copyright office has resigned and has taken a new job on the board of directors for Comcast.
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Here's a thought (Score:3)
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I don't think this qualifies as competing.
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The head of the copyright office has resigned and has taken a new job on the board of directors for Comcast.
He may be a moron, but now he will be a rich moron.
What about the ISP's that force you to rent gatewa (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the ISP's that force you to rent gateways and then change you to rent them with no way to buy them?
just an opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
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I suppose you're not 100% wrong, in the sense that when, say, the President says to Iran "we will not pay a ransom" it's just one person's opinion. Of course, it happens to be that the person is the head of state, the top executive officer, etc., so it pretty much is the position of the United States.
Much like when the Register of Copyrights speaks, she speaks for the Office.
How's this different from telephone deregulation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Before 1982, EVERY phone was leased from the phone company and you had no third party options. Deregulation proved to be good thing for everybody.
Re:How's this different from telephone deregulatio (Score:5, Informative)
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It was briefly bad for AT&T, but they recovered nicely. By which I mean they're doing just fine, we're suffering under their thumb again.
Re:How's this different from telephone deregulatio (Score:5, Informative)
If by "they're doing just fine", you mean that they lost so much money and were on the verge of going out of business and sold everything [slashdot.org], even their name, then you have a point.
The former AT&T is a now a small subsidiary of the former Southern Bell Corporation (SBC). The company you now see calling itself AT&T is really SBC who gobbled up AT&T and a bunch of other baby bells.
The federal government split AT&T into long distance and several local phone companies (baby bells). The Feds first deregulated the long distance business allowing for competition which led to price drops and then to declining profits. The plan was that a few years after long distance was deregulated, the local baby bells would be deregulated and their local monopolies would be broken up and opened to competition. This second step never happened. The local providers kept their monopolies, consolidated to become a few very large local monopolies, and even bought out the failing AT&T.
AT&T is dead. SBC, thanks to its government backed monopoly on local phone service, is doing "just fine."
Re:How's this different from telephone deregulatio (Score:4, Informative)
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SBC was AT&T. That's like claiming you're left hand isn't a part of your body.
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"AT&T can trace its origin back to the original Bell Telephone Company founded by Alexander Graham Bell after his invention of the telephone. One of that company's subsidiaries was American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), established in 1885, which acquired the B
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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Licensing is not an end user concern at least it should not be. They are not party to the negotiations etc etc. It was and should forever be legal to make a copy for personal use of things you legally had the right to watch. Aka time shifting.
We took some steps back with the conversion to HD that needs to be corrected.
It's got nothing to do with pirating, pirates will get the content. I can buy HDMI with HDCP to SDI converters and rip any digital stream off any box it's allowed since SDI is a professiona
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I don't argue your point per se, but I will add that I agree with the person from the Copyright office. Here's my rub on it though. There's those third parties that play nice and we love them, but then there's the others and what-not that are trying to build a company and make massive money with other people's copyright.
I totally agree with the idea of making a backup copy, I disagree with some dude making millions on exploiting that idea to the fullest extent. If third party boxes became a thing, I just
Re:How's this different from telephone deregulatio (Score:4, Insightful)
The fear of Comcast and TWC etc are not about piracy. This is a straight up control mechanism. They have already had years to open up cable cards to do similar and have dragged their feet at every attempt. the reason the FCC is attempting this is because the prior non forced attempts have been responded to not in good faith by the ISP's. So the options here are to: Hold them legally accountable for their failure top open up cable cards until they solve their probably internally, or to move ahead without the the ISP's approval.
Re:How's this different from telephone deregulatio (Score:4, Informative)
100% correct.
I am a Time Warner subscriber. Because of their abuse of the CCI "CopyOnce" flag that they put on every single show that they legally can, it reduces my options for a decoder box to the following, due to the CableLabs certification for decrypting the content:
1. Rented box from Time Warner that is horrible, and they charge obscene amounts of monthly fees for;
2. Tivo;
3. Windows Media Center, which is now EOL and doesn't exist in Microsoft's current operating system.
No other cable company abuses the CCI flag this way. Not Charter. Not Cox. Not Comcast. Clearly there are not contractual obligations with the content providers, or the other cable operators would have to do the same thing. Time Warner does this specifically to limit customer choice, and lock subscribers into option #1, which is a cash cow for them.
If they turned off that bullshit and used the CCI flag properly (e.g. for premium content where there actually are contractual obligations), then I would have half a dozen other options available to me including open-source MythTV.
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I had tivo for more than a decade first directivo to get pure digitial copies of direct tv and then tivo with cable cards. Tivo is like apple now they keep locking things down more, it took forever to steam from one tivo to another in the home. A major issue with these heavily locked down systems if they slow progress. Tivo ends up being a rent seeker selling you hardware and then charging outrageous fee's to keep them working.
At the end of the day everybody needs to realize none of this should have ever
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I've been watching the HDHomeRun DVR software with some interest, but it means buying a different tuner (one made by SiliconDust) and it still isn't shipping. Their "beta" does everything but encrypted streams, so it's useless to me at this time.
My whole point is that I shouldn't have to throw away perfectly working hardware because Time Warner is run by fucking assholes.
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silicon dust has been saying that for at least 6 years now. I have one of their first HDHomeRuns and they said CableCard support was "soon". Now they don't even support my HDHR anymore and instead want me to buy a brand new one to get the latest firmware.
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At best those third party boxes will push the cable companies to open up theirs. If it's free with services vs pay for them 99% is going to use whatever the cable co gives them.
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I don't agree with the person from the Copyright office.
There are valid legal uses for being able to use third-party cable boxes. Therefore, the fact that they make a certain form of illegal activity easier isn't good enough reason to ban them. There have been lots of proposals to ban things that make breaking the law easier that were stopped because the things had good legal uses.
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I can buy HDMI to whatever converters that support HDCP. The $15 HDMI splitters for example pretend to be a HDCP compliant Samsung TV and then copy the digital signal without HDCP onto the outputs AND it works.
The problem being off course they don't accurately copy EDID and thus they don't work for anything but "TV" resolutions but a "good" splitter will correctly support EDID and by extension HDCP and then you get snow on the second display when HDCP content is displayed (or when a Windows machine is conne
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Your use case is needing to strip off HDCP from a PC output and record it? Seems like a lot of effort vs recoding it from the frame buffer.
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No, my use case is accurately splitting a High Definition 4:3 resolution from a computer to two outputs without HDCP interfering. I actually have a common use case that's prevented by HDCP and thus requires an "illegal stripper". I could use SDI (one of the outputs supports it) or other professional non-HDCP crippled HD "legally" if I want to invest another $10k or so in "professional and licensed" gear but I did it for ~$100.
End-to-end HDCP protection within the OS doesn't allow you to copy the framebuffer
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It seems like the goal should be that no one is forced to buy or rent specific hardware to view content. The cable companies need to open the protocol so that anyone can manufacture equipment sufficient to allow a legitimate cable subscriber to view content provided by the cable operator. This wan't an issue when cable was analog - my TV had the capability to view content and I did not require the use of cable equipment. Now I have to have the cable company set top to view content - I shouldn't be forced
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Yeah, except that the encryption scheme / DRM is half assed, so in order to get certification to decode it, you must submit your solution to testing by Cable Labs, so as to make sure that you are playing by their rules. Otherwise they won't let you play in their sandbox.
And Cable Labs certification is incredibly expensive, so only TiVo does it. Microsoft used to, but killed WMC and no longer does.
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Not for green Bakelite phone manufacturers.
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VCRs.
We've already been down this road with VCRs. The cable companies and their (presumably) paid shill can fuck right off.
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It's just part of the turf war. Nothing offtopic about it.
so ban pc's as that is kind of what the 3rd party (Score:2)
so ban pc's as that is kind of what the 3rd party boxes are. They are just getting stuff from the internet and not QAM / satellite transponder.
Do you want comcast to rent your pc so they can lock it down and up change you off the wall? Are you are game then you will like our $30 /mo + $5 /mo outlet fee pro gamer system with steam*.
*games not included / display not included / internet not included.
Want to game 4K or higher at full speed then you can get a our system super system for only $50 /mo with SLI.
hav
Is it really too much to ask... (Score:1)
What about the boxes from Canada they are the same (Score:2)
What about the boxes from Canada they are the same ones as in the us most of them even have cable cards in the card slot. They just have a different software loads but they should be able to hunt and download the local software from the local cable head end.
Content owners are forcing the rules (Score:1)
This may be unpopular to say, but I believe she has a point.
The cable and satellite companies often have no choice on the DRM and other bundling restrictions, since those are the terms for having the content in the first place. Most people don't care about most of Disney's channels, but they do want ESPN. So Disney pretty much dictates that you take all the channels or none of them.
3rd part boxes would be bound by the same agreements, and thus would become just as locked down as the current boxes. And I'm f
they want the HDCP lock on content (Score:2)
they want the HDCP lock on content
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Which has so far proved 100% successful at preventing any high def content from being pirated... oh wait...
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Hush! Don't spoil it.
Gee, you must be that guy that tells kids that there is no Santa. They're so adorable as long as they believe in miracles.
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Stunting the growth of the mind is criminal, yet the state supports it because minds stunted as such are easily-manipulated by NAMBLA and underground pedophile rings and so must be kept safe.
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Sure, it's not that $50/mo glorified Roku sitting under the screen... But I'd think it could work similarly. An ESPN 'app' that lists assorted chann
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As much of a non-apple-fanboi as I am, I'm actually starting to like the AppleTV approach. Apps for CBS, NBC, HBO, Showtime, etc... and browse for the shows you want to watch. Sure, the navigation can get pretty cumbersome... but if the content distributors are okay with Apple's take, why wouldn't they be okay with another third party doing something similar? Sure, it's not that $50/mo glorified Roku sitting under the screen... But I'd think it could work similarly. An ESPN 'app' that lists assorted channels (ESPN 8, The Ocho!), various Disney cartoon channels, CBS and whatever. With the extent of PPV offerings today, I'm sure Comcast would be more than willing to bill the viewers for wandering into paid TV territory.
Apple pays an assload in licensing fees for this content. A startup wouldn't be able to afford this even if they tried.
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Ridiculous Argument (Score:4, Interesting)
Comcast and other cable companies complain that this will open the door to copyright violations, and US Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante agrees with them.
My Comcast box comes with a FireWire (IEEE 1394) port on the back. What's stopping someone from just downloading the files from the DVR onto a computer? I've done some experimenting with my MacBook Pro, mounted the DVR drive as a Firewire drive, and was able to view files using VLC, so they don't seem to be encrypted.
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The greatly depends on who your local service provider is. The Washington state and Oregon providers seem to be more relaxed on the encryption than anyone else. The type of encryption is called 5C and basically your local provider is the one who turns it on or off by show, channel, time slot, etc..
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The CCI information [wikipedia.org] likely was set to copy freely for the content you recorded. It's up to the cable company to correctly set the flag based on their whim and/or what their retransmission license is from the upstream provider dictates.
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Doh. CCI Information...like PIN Number and ATM Machine. Meant to say CCI flag
Re:Ridiculous Argument (Score:4, Insightful)
And some cable providers (read: all but Time Warner) are actually not asshats when it comes to CCI flagging, and don't CopyOnce every single god damn show they legally can.
Time Warner can eat a dumpster full of dicks for that.
re: firewire on back of cable box (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I don't think you're talking about something equivalent, even though I know what you're saying. (I have Comcast too, and my set top box also has a FireWire port on the back of it.)
The thing is though? In order to download the files on your DVR to your computer, you'd still have to do all of that via the hardware Comcast provided you -- meaning you'd also presumably only have access to content that you were paying your monthly subscription for in the first place. (I remember when people first discovered that ability to connect some of the digital set-top boxes to computers via FireWire, the whole "piracy" thing was a hot topic. But it quickly settled back down when people realized it was just a digital version of exactly what you could always do with a VCR or DVDR connected through a different set of connectors.)
I think what the cable providers don't like with the current FCC proposal is the idea that they lose direct control over what the set-top boxes do that decode their programming. For example... What if someone designed a digital set top box that worked the way the Plex media server works on a computer, where you can share your content with other users? One person could pay for a Showtime or HBO subscription, record a bunch of shows to a DVR built into such a box, and then allow any of their "friends" to stream the content to their own box of the same make/model, regardless of what their personal cable package contained in it.
re: 1394 on STBs and encryption (Score:2)
The encryption flags can be set 3 ways, actually:
Copy-Freely = unencrypted. This can be recorded directly to a PC or Mac or D-VHS unit. You could also play back a D-VHS tape which contains material flagged as Copy-Freely and use the 1394 port to send it to a Mac or PC (or even another D-VHS unit). If your recording were flagged as Copy-Freely then, yes, you would be able to transfer that to your computer via the 1394 port.
Copy-Once = encrypted. This can only be recorded once and no duplications\transfers ar
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Why should I have to rent a box to access the content I'm paying for?
This initiative is SOLELY about opening up the box market to prevent the consumer gouging that Comcast and the other providers are engaged in. The FCC had a good plan with Cablecard but the problem was to implement it they allowed the cable companies to put a "certification laboratory" approval in front of anyone trying to sell compatible devices. On top of that they then started charging monthly fees for a cable card. These two things sun
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It probably has a USB and Ethernet slot also, I can guarantee you they are disabled by the firmware. Almost all of Comcast's boxes are made by 3rd party companies so they have extra capabilities that are not used. A few of the boxes will allow you to plug an external HD but its driver support is very specific to certain model numbers.
I'm so happy (Score:5, Insightful)
that I don't have cable TV anymore. Screw them all and drive their 20th century panacea into the sea faster.
But ... (Score:2)
Most of the good content is available elsewhere on the Net. The feed is just a commodity whereas the UI defines the user experience and perceived value. And logically that's how their pricing should break down as well. But it doesn't, so I'm off to shop in a better market.
Oh please, gimme a break (Score:4, Funny)
That has to be the most threadbare "because piracy" excuse ever. As if anything broadcast on cable wasn't already available in any format you might wish as a torrent.
Seriously, that's like saying let's not play the top 30 on the radio 'cause someone could record them.
What is cable? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this "Cable TV"? I vaguely remember it being some old fashioned improvement over "rabbit ears", but I didn't realize people still used it today.
The cable companies may win a Pyrrhic victory on this one. I finally got rid of my cable box and went completely to Netflix + over the air TV (which looks fantastic thanks to digital broadcasting -- the over-the-air channels look a *lot* better than they did on cable (even when I was paying extra for "HD") because the cable company uses some aggressive compression that leaves very visible compression artifacts).
The laggy UI is what made me decide to get rid of the box -- taking nearly a second for each page of the program guide, plus at least a second to change channels. I can't help thinking that a third party could make a much better cable box that's both faster and more usable.
And all it took was a $20 antenna for my TV hanging on the wall behind the TV, saved me around $480/year in cable fees. Granted I don't have nearly as many channels as I used to, but 100 channels of crap TV wasn't worth the money.
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Its this weird service where you pay to have advertisements piped into your home.
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What about live sports? :P
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What about live sports? :P
The only time I watch American live sports is when I'm literally in the stadium. I do watch some international sports, but can usually find a live stream online.
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Well...
The 49ers have left San Francisco and are therefore dead to me. Baseball is boring as hell on television, but tickets at AT&T Park are very reasonably priced and it's easy to go with a group to see the Giants in person. The Warriors are still Oakland's team, not mine; granted though that is scheduled to change soon. Tennis is boring on television. Golf is not just boring on television, but boring in every sense of the word. No soccer team, no hockey team...
So yeah... Live sports on televisi
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What about when the local team broadcasts are not available on the basic plan? My fiber internet came with a TV plan which we canceled. About $100/month and didn't even carry Twins games.
Set Top Boxes? (Score:2)
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This is about doing away with cable cards all together and going with a software solution. Cable companies would provide the content feeds, 3rd parties provide the menus, interface, etc to play the feeds.
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The Ceton tuner is just a tuner - it grabs the QAM stream from the RF channel on the coax and sends it up the stack to the software decoder. The software layer above it is doing the PlayReady decryption if present. E.g. Windows Media Center.
This fight is about opening up that software layer above so that you aren't stuck with the 3 whole options available today for encrypted content.
As long as its compatible with our system (Score:2)
You can buy you're own with our company. I've seen many junk set top boxes that will not work with hits. In fact those foreign set top boxes are usually trash and don't work well, especially with our higher bit rate HD. Higher than direct or dish I might add.
Having Analogy Trouble (Score:2)
If I were the FCC I would make a ruling thus (Score:2)
The cable companies have a choice:
1) Open up their stuff, letting other people sell cable boxes.
2) Do the following:
a) Stop charging for cable boxes entirely. Not a single penny for them - you want no competition? Then give it away for free. Whether you get one box or a hundred boxes. You can charge people to replace a broken one - but only if they break it more often than once a year.
b) Remove ALL advertisements from the channel guides ( no more adverts for VOD)
c) Allow anyone that wants to
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no outlet / dvr / tuner fees as well.
Maybe I'm looking at it wrong (Score:2)
But if we can do Blu-Ray on both hardware and software player variants, then I fail to see why we can't do the same with Cable Boxes.
Comcast just doesn't want to give up their free money generator via forcing folks to rent their hardware.
If they don't pull their heads out of the sand and soon, they won't have enough subscribers left for anyone to care.
Only old people care about copyright (Score:1)
China and other countries rip us off every day and nothing happens to them, so why should we care?
Smoke Screen (Score:2)
The thing is we can already infringe the hell out of their copyrights the way things are right now. There is no shortage of websites available to stream or download anything we want for free. The only thing the FCC ruling would change is make things better for legitimate consumers and cut the cable companies out of their precious set-top box rental fees.
"Set-top" box (Score:1)
Yeah, I know, there still are a few people (like me) who have an old CRT TV that could, in fact, accommodate a "set-top" box.
third party playback (Score:2)
Sure.. (Score:1)
Sure sure... give us more reasons to cord cut already.
Also laughable that they'd argue this would have any effect on piracy... the discussion regarding relevant content from cable networks and piracy is already over. You can get ALL the pirated content you want regardless if FCC's set top rules get implemented or not.
With pirated series' episodes and whatnot getting released almost instantly through multiple channels, I can't imagine what set top boxes would be able to do to make piracy easier.
At the very l
Tired of paying twice (Score:1)
So my cable company requires a STB to get... anything.
They sell me a "package",X many channels,.... oh,you need this box to watch them, and you get to rent it, forever.
And, you can't buy one, or another device to replace it. Talk about a "captive audience"?
they advertise 2 bazillion channels, but its a Switched Digital Video system, They have all the channels, but they only serve up one channel at a time to your box,
so if you are like me, watching 6 channels a once... the lag of tearing down a session,start
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It's bitztream, the autism-hating Slashdot troll!