MPAA Wants Copy-Controlled PCs 773
phil reed writes: "According to our favorite media mogul, Jack Valenti (as stated in this letter in the Washington Post, all PCs need to have strong copy protection built in. 'Computer and video-device companies need to sit at the table with the movie industry. Together, in good-faith talks, they must agree on the ingredients for creating strong protection for copyrighted films and then swiftly implement that agreement to make it an Internet reality.' Way to go, guy."
Copy-protected PC's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the people at the MPAA really so stupid as to think that they can actually allow us to listen/watch stuff, but not copy it? It has to get decrypted somewhere..
Mr. Valenti gets framed... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm entertained by Jack Valenti's assertion in his Feb 25th letter that
"According to the Boston-based consulting firm Viant, some 350,000-plus films
are being downloaded illegally every day."
If this is actually the case, then 350 000 * 6 Gbytes per movie (compressed
DivX at about 400x300 pixels) = 2 100 000 000 000 000 bytes per day.
That is 16 800 000 000 000 000 bits per day (8 bits per byte) or 16 800 Terra bits per day.
According to CyberAtlas (please see link below) the entire bandwidth of the
US internet is only 20 000 Terra bits per day.
So Mr. Valenti is using figures to advance his argument which imply that
(world) 'netizens downloading pirate movies would utilize 84% of *all* US
internet bandwidth. There must be a very 'fat pipe' to River-City.
Yours,
Bobzibub
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/hard
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everyone cares about the movie/audio industry and they need to figure that out.
Re:Why are PC's being blamed? (Score:4, Insightful)
They did. They lost. They fight on.
Jack Valenti is a fool (Score:5, Insightful)
What Mr. Valenti fails to understand, and what Bruce Schneier explains so eloquently in Secrets and Lies, is that it's impossible to create a protection technology that cannot be circumvented when the device used for playback is not physically secure from prying, hacking or reverse-engineering. In other words, if you put the equipment and/or software necessary to decrypt the material into the hands of end-users, the protection scheme will eventually be successfully broken.
Valenti's real enemy isn't the high-school kid who's downloading The Matrix or the college kid who's downloading Star Wars Episode I. It's the guys in Shanghai or Saigon who're pressing thousands of copies of Hollywood movies and selling them for mere pittances. Nothing Valenti has suggested will put a dent in the business conducted by those guys. Until the media companies figure out that their customers are not their enemies, we'll get more of this kind of nonsense.
Like that'll ever happen... (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyway, Valenti seems to be saying that copy-protection needs to be built into the hardware. I think it's fairly safe to say that if such a thing were to happen, we'd all need umbrellas to protect ourselves from falling pig droppings. Number one, you'd have to have legislation to do it, and such legislation wouldn't be very popular. Number two, can you imagine the outcry from the public? And number three, the technical details for implementing such a scheme are not trivial. I may be a hopeless optimist, but I really don't see this happening any time soon.
Big Brother is in your computer (Score:5, Insightful)
the RIAA wants to bug your computer to make sure you don't copy sound recordings, Microsoft wants to bug your computer to make sure you're not running copies of their software (and that you've paid your license fees for this week), and the FBI wants to bug your computer to make sure you're not threatening national security or communicating with terrorists. (And the ISPs want to tell you exactly how you can communicate with others)
If all of these organizations have their way, there won't be any general-purpose programmable computers anymore - just appliances that can do what Microsoft/MPAA/RIAA and the government think you can be trusted to do without taking away some potential money or power from them.
Ummm... licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The DVD players are "licensed" already. That did not stop this?
The DVDs are already encrypted (if they wish to be protected) and that didn't stop this?
There are already laws "preventing" "illegal" copying and that didn't stop this?
What the hell is up with Jackie V? His only solutions are to make things more complicated and more expensive!
Here is a clue: prosecute movie pirates instead of magazines owners and DeCSS programmers!!! Get the cops to arrest people selling pirated movies RIGHT IN FRONT OF MPAA HEADQUARTERS for starters!
Ingenious!
Yes, I do expect a royalty if the above idea is actually ever used.
Theoretical problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, from a theoretical computer science point of view, he wants a Turing machine that will recognize all Turing machines that compute a fixed function f. That sounds remarkably like a problem that is equivalent (by reduction) to the halting problem for Turing machines... Oh, did we mention that the halting problem is unsolvable??
But hey, if *Mr. Valenti* says so, it *must* be possible. After all, everyone knows that you can simply legislate away fundamental laws of mathematics...
Whats next? Valenti proposing that we set Pi equal to 3.0 to simplify calculations?
Re:Also, we'll need... (Score:1, Insightful)
Microphones that won't record copyrighted soundwaves,
Could be done.
Speakers that won't vibrate to reproduce copyrighted current patterns,
Could be done.
Film that won't change when exposed to copyrighted rays of light,
Could be done if film = CCD chip.
Re:freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
A: They're the king-makers. They're the rule-breakers. They're the ones who buy and sell the souls of Congress and the Senate. They're the ones who have the power.
Q: Who the fuck are you?
A: You're no one. You're to keep quiet, go to work, and spend as much money as possible on immediate material gratification. Shut up, sit down, be good, give them the money, do what they say, and you better damn well like it.
Re:isn't this like... (Score:1, Insightful)
They didn't give a monkey's about VHS tapes as the quality downgraded somewhat, but digital is different - it could really screw them.
The irony of it is - so what? They chose digital as a format - it's selling point is that it has better image quality, not that you can copy it. We didn't ask for DVD's and CD's, we got them because they were sold to us on a "digital is better" premise.
Now after all these years being sold digital medium at a premium price over tapes (because it lasts longer, sounds better), they suddenly turn round and want to change everything because one characteristic of the digital medium works to their disadvantage...
If that isn't an abuse of market position I don't know what is...
Laughable (Score:2, Insightful)
He manages to say in the same breath that while consumers are evil, we'll go ahead and latch on to the idea that less functionality is good, and moreso, that customers will eat the cost for such a machine. Oh how soon we forget the trials and tribulations that IBM went through merely trying to get a CPRM hard drive to market, and how they eventually backed down [kuro5hin.org], i'm curious how Mr. valenti proposes an entire system would be willing to go the distance just to placate the film industry.
Here's a likely scenario: The MPAA has these supersecret talks with the major computer manufactuers (HP, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, Sony, etc.) and they hash out a preliminary. Word gets out to the rest of the copyright community -- Record labels, content producers -- hell even artists wanting to perfect a way for their pictures to be copy-proof on the websites -- and soon, the manufactuers are tweaking and tuning, and reconfiguring and modifying their parts in such a way that the box is nary more than a glorified television, streaming the content of -their- choice, at their discretion.
If such a system comes to be, I"ll become a luddite.
Rebuttal/Light Flamage (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting. It's nonsense that producers wouldn't want to be online...yet they're not online? Explain that one to me...oh yes, because we don't legislation forcing all computer and manufacturers to the whim of Jack Valenti. Your arguument is spurious. You fail to address the fact that movie companies are keeping their movies offline. Guilty as charged.
As time moves forward, information will be replicated into infinity. Deal with it.
Poppycock. I'm sure your "we're losing 3.5 billion dollars to VHS piracy!!!" rests on the SPA assumption that everytime sone one pirates, they would have paid for it. As far as digital copies remaining the same, apparently no one has told Jack that DIVX is a far, far, far cry from MPEG2 DVD (they only way I copy & store my DVDs).
Boo hoo hoo, it's all Congress and the PC industry fault! Nothing to see here, move along. Can't blame the movie industry, nope. Not their fault movies aren't online. Uh-huh. Sure.
Silly strar-man arguement. I'm sure that when scientists claim the movie industry is holding back inovation, they were ONLY talking about cracking codes. Perhaps they were talking about the movie industries harrassing of competing P2P, distribution, pay-per-view, compression and related "digital movie" technologies, all of which Jack and co have no interest in because they can't controll it 100%. And they'll sue you over it too. Jerk.
Since when is restricting fair-use, first-sale doctrine and free-speech "consumer friendly." I think you meant "consumer limiting." The rest of this paragraph is you and your pipe dream.
What's on USENET TV these days?
Re:Freedom and Guns... (Score:1, Insightful)
I've never owned a gun before, but if anyone fucks with my freedom or free use of my computer all in the name of an obsolete distribution industry like the MPAA and RIAA... then I'll go to their house and mess them up.
With them being such bullies, I understand where you're comeing from, but it is always important to renember - they are the ones who are bullies, not us; they are the ones who are inclined to violence, not us. The simple truth is that we can win this war without taking one drop of blood, all we half to do is act in defiance and civil disobedience of copyrights and eventually they will run out of steam. Not that your response would be unwaranted because when all is said and done they are threatening fundamental freedoms, but we will be far better served if we force their hands and let them initiate the violence so as to show the world who they really are and proove to us who we really are.
Re:....not to mention China (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, now that those MBs are in violation of the DMCA (they could be considered content protection circumvention devices) they will no longer be allowed inside the US. The shipments of them will be stopped by customs.
Re:freedom? (Score:2, Insightful)
if you are an american writing the above, get over yourself. 'I was just having a discussion w/someone last night about how unfree we are.' compared to what? owning your own island in the pacific? the democratic republic of the congo?
i went through the 'america is imperialistic and big brotherly' in high school too. now i am mature enough to realize that, despite the horrible influence of money on politics, america is as free as you get. can it be freer? sure. anything could be. but bitching and moaning about how you aren't free because you can't copy copyrighted movies is callous and ignorant.
move to china, liberate it, and then post to slashdot. i'll be more receptive.
</offtopic>
Don't defend just attack (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheap, Greedy and Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem for the MPAA is that they cannot understand that as far as the economy goes they are not all that important. The computer industry is an order of magnitude larger. The not very hard to spot plan here is to bribe enough congressmen to push through their scheme. that is a pretty hopeless approach if the computer industry has more money.
I have done the DRM bit. I have even gone to an SDMI conference. My conclusion is that the MPAA and RIAA are Cheap, Greedy and Stupid.
First off, as every vendor that has attempted to get into the DRM space knows, the content owners want all the work done for free, or as near to it as makes no difference. One leading content provider had the idea that a complete DRM system should cost no more than $0.50 per device with the option of buying it out for $100K, this for a bespoke product that would cost several million to develop and would save the customer several hundred million a year.
Secondly the content 'owners' are greedy. Look at the little scheme they had in the DMCA (now repealed) to steal the 'returned rights' of artists by retrospectively designating them 'works for hire'. The scheme that is planned for insertion into the Hollings bill at the last minute will redefine publication through the Web to be a 'mechanical right' and not a 'Performance right'. This will allow them to steal the copyrights currently controlled by the composers.
Thirdly the content owners are stupid. They seize upon every piece of cryptographic snakeoil that comes to the market. The demands that the computer industry save their ass for them sound remarkably like the demands made by the likes of Louis Freeh over key escrow 'we do not believe that it cannot be done, your denial clearly means you must be lying'.
what we need to do is make congress aware of the abuses these people are already engaged in. The DVD zone system has one purpose, to allow the price of DVDs to be set by the amount individual markets will bear. This is illegal under EU law and they will get their just deserts in the end. But why should people like this have the benefit of niche laws to protect their interests if they don't obey the law themselves?
MS Digital Rights Management OS patent (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) OS patent [cryptome.org]? If Congress were to enact legislation requiring this kind of copy protection at the OS level, then I imagine MS would be quite intent on making sure everyone pays them royalties, whether they're actually due or not. And that's assuming they'd place "nice" and even "allow" other OS's to contain copy protection. A few years ago, I would have thought the feds wouldn't let them get away without freely sharing a legislated key technology like this, but now I'm not so sure... . Not to sound too pessimist, but royalties like this could be a big pain in the arse for struggling Linux vendors.
Course, if it did happen, I could just start using a European-based Linux distribution, since they don't treat software patents the same. For now, anyway...
this has been another episode of pure speculation and meaningless FUD...
Time out from the rhetoric for a sec... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ability for millions of Internet users to zap perfect copies of movies around the Net destroys the current business model of the movie industry. And I find very little reason to deny that claim.
That leaves the movie industry with two options (logically). Either prevent millions of Internet users from being able to zap perfect copies of movies around the Net, or change the business model of the industry. Both are fraught with problems.
Let's take on the topic of copy prevention. Essentially, it's not possible, as long as the PC in its current incarnation persists. You can encrypt media to the gills, but somewhere, somehow, in a PC, that media needs to be converted to a cleartext stream in order to be played. And anyone with a bit of technical know-how can capture that cleartext stream. The only way to prevent such copying is to embed copy prevention into the very lowest levels of hardware. Which will render the PC useless for doing anything useful. Besides, it precludes fair-use.
Next option: transmission prevention. Slightly more feasible. And with more of the broadband "biomass" being rounded up by a small number of media companies and telcos, this is probably the first avenue the MPAA is going to take in this battle. In six months to a year, most Morpheus users (for instance) will be forced by their ISPs to shut down their clients or lose their accounts. It's probably happening already. Sure, there will be a few maverick ISPs that don't play by the rules, but P2P filesharing systems become useless without a critical mass of users. Now, the MPAA will win the battle on this front, but at the cost of killing the biggest "killer app" to hit the Net since the browser. And at the cost of depriving Internet users from sharing perfectly legit files: stifling what could prove to be a huge revolution in human communication. Oh, well.
Of course, the other logical option would be for the movie industry to change its business model to something like TV: free and advert-driven. I don't know if this is possible, because I don't know much about business. But, I'll tell you this: destroying the PC or destroying the free exchange of ideas in a new an exciting medium, so that a few companies can keep their bottom line, is wrong.
Yes we have seen this before, but in another way! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes we have seen this before, and yes it failed with the HD manufactures, but we have seen this even a 150 years before that.
In the 1830's there were those who thought that the entire purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gyn to extend the size of their plantations for unlimited profit. Today we have a similar problem in the information age - people who think that the only usefull purpose of information technology and the internet is to extend the use of their intellectual property rights for unlimited controll. Today as back then, they couldn't be more wrong, couldn't be more delusional, and couldn't be a bigger threat to individual freedoms.
The only real solution is cut the vine off at the root and attack copyrights directly with defiance and civil disobedience till (like then) they run out of steam and quit trying to take away our freedoms.
Re:Copy-protected PC's? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with your theory is that many movie companies are owned by larger companies- companies like Time-Warner (Warner Brothers, New Line), Viacom (I think they own Fox, but I could be wrong) and, yes, Sony does own movie studios(Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures and I believe Revolution pictures), so it's unlikely they'd be a part of your plan. There is also Disney (who own Disney Pictures, Buena Vista, Miramax and maybe others), who may be partnered with another large company as well, I forget.
I find it unlikely any company could mount a hostile takeover of any of these studios. And if they did, they wouldn't be giving away any free movies- they'd be squeezing consumers for profits to offset the huge aquisition costs.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's why.
MPAA will come out with some new format or copy protection on existing formats. Call it Format X
Now, they license drives to read Format X. It's hardware, not just sotware. But they will only license it to vendors who've implemented the copy protection they are demanding.
So, if Dell licenses Format X and Gateway doesn't, Dell has a very strong advertising bullet: "We're the only ones who can sell you a system that can play Format X!" If Format X becomes important, gateway will suck wind until they license the technology also.
You'll see vendors beeting a path to the MPAA.
Do better! :-) (Score:5, Insightful)
In December of 2001, MSFT was awarded a patent for an operating system that incorporates strong Digital Rights Management (do your own darn google search). This means that anyone and everyone that has any device that uses an "operating system" and enforces copy prevention technology needed to eliminate the potential for copyright infringement will be paying licensing fees to Microsoft unitil at least 2018. Naturally the license fee will just happen to exceed the retail price of the corresponding MSFT operating system by ten per cent. Just like the currenty MSFT tax, it won't matter if you recompile your own kernal to exclude the technology, you will still have to write that check to MSFT. If you do not license from them, well yes it really will be illegal. But you have to explain these little details. Just spewing anti-MSFT sentiment du jour is simply unacceptable laziness.
Combine this with the earlier story about howMSFT has determined that HTTPis "obsolete" and you will soon find yourself unable to network with other computers without paying Microsoft for the privilege of using MS-HTTP.
Flame me, I don't care... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Copy-protected PC's? (Score:2, Insightful)
Mr. Jack needs to get serious and look at the real world, not just the insular United States of Hollywood.
this stuff scares the sh** out of me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Terrifying.
Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Now go out and spend some money to help get us out of our recession. It's your duty as an American.
My, but I hate getting cynical.
(Yes, this comment is obviously not meant for the sizeable number of non-American Slashdot readers... but don't worry, our government doesn't have a problem passing laws it thinks applies to you anyway.)
Re:This is from the guy (Score:5, Insightful)
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand
Re:Copy-protected PC's? (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed. But I'm assuming the copy protection will be incorporated most successfully in some new media format (say, a drive that plays holographic movies, just as a flight of fancy) - and this new technology will only work with compliant PCs. You can buy/build as many non-compliant PCs as you want, but you won't be able to use the cool new hardware on them.
Too many people are obsessing on today's technology, and how they can't protect it, and I agree, the genie is out of those bottles. But I think this proposal by the MPAA is them thinking ahead to tomorrow's technology.
Anyone else notice... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, somehow, my PC has got to distinguish between video that I shot myself of something that I'm "allowed" to shoot and a film in the cinema that I'm not allowed to shoot (to make a screener to distribute)?? Not gonna happen. What's more likely is that the MPAA will push to throttle all media creation on a consumer-grade machine without express permission from them. Or, at least cripple any such media creation as to make it worthless (ripping MP3's with the stock WMP springs to mind).
Of course, there's quite a few comments here that claim that Linux is the solution to our woes, but I wonder... what is the Linux equivelent of iMovie? or iPhoto? But even more than that, is Linux even legal if the PC's are meant to incorporate these controls at the hardware level? How many minutes would it take for the MPAA to declare Linux a circumvention mechanism under the DMCA and wipe it off the face of the earth (or at least the US market)?
My heart is filled with dread at the thought of what happens when the interests of the MPAA in controlling their content is at odds with my interest in making my own films/music with a modern (content-control-enabled) PC.
Suppose they showed a movie and nobody came? (Score:1, Insightful)
Is it really that big of a problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess the big quesiton is, how much of the entire consumer base is downloading and not buying. Yeah, we all know somebody who is uber-1337, and likes to brag about how he doesn't pay for anything. This person is usually very immature and just generally annoying. But take me for example. Here at work I have access to all the bandwith I can handle, a cd burner and an Internet full of illegal movies. But do I horde them, laughing the whole time because I am getting away with something? No, I don't even bother because it is not worth my time.
Also, I hear about how digial copies are so pure, and just as good as the original. Heh, I hate to break it to everyone, but a divx movie that I might download from any of the many sources on the internet, is nowhere *near* what I would consider DVD quality. Hell, it's barely watchable quality. Not to mention the fact that I will have to view said movie while sitting at my computer desk. Well you don't *have* to watch it on the computer, but they alternatives aren't much better.
I can make a crappy vcd out of the file I downloaded. But it will take god knows how long to convert the movie into vcd format, plus the fact that it will be generally pretty crappy. Oh I guess I could hook up a computer with a tv-out to my tv. An easy thing to do, but I'm just too damned lazy.
Basically, the movie industry is going through the same thing that every industry does when it becomes painfully evident that their revenue stream is in jeapordy.
Also... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony's market cap = ~$42 billion
AOL Time Warner's market cap = ~$100 billion
Microsoft's market cap = ~$319 billion
IBM's market cap = ~$169 billion
I know market cap is not the only or even the best measure of a company's size, but it's a decent measure of the leverage a company can wield. To put things in perspective, the total value of all Sony's floated stock (i.e. market cap) is a bit more than the amount of *real, liquid cash* that Microsoft has on hand (~$36 billion as of their last filing).
Media giants like AOLTW are small fry compared to the giants of tech or many other industries. They just have disproportionate influence with politicians and the public. Why? For one, they have a long, long, long history of brutally effective lobbying and tight political connections. Jack Valenti was riding in the car behind JFK in Dallas, and was the first advisor to LBJ to be sworn in. The main reason, though, is that they have enormous influence over the public. Politicians don't get elected without the media. Elections are won and lost by media coverage. Popular entertainment media like movies and TV can shape public opinion.
That's why politicians get on their knees for media companies - nobody who cares about reelection wants to piss off the owners of CNN (AOL Time Warner), FoxNews (NewsCorp), ABC (Disney), CBS (Viacom), etc.
-Isaac
He doesn't say anything about streaming... (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember this is the same guy that said that the VCR is to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler was to women, in testimony before congress, and lived in the White House as an aide to President Johnson.
Re:Copy-protected PC's? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuckin A. This kind of argument really pisses me off. They claim their have to be controls in place to guarantee that they rake in more money, because what they do is really expensive, and only 2 out of 10 of their products turn a profit.
Guess what?
NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM. Not the consumer's problem. Supply and demand, bubba. It makes the world turn. If movies aren't making as much money as it costs to produce them, then make them cheaper, or go find another line of work. Less ambitious projects, pay the stars less, work more efficiently, cut corners, whatever. The Constitution makes no guarantee that you will be able to continue profitting as you always have, otherwise scribes would have a monopoly on book producing, and printing presses (not to mention laser printers) would be illegal. If you gamble by spending 9 digit sums making a movie, YOU'RE GAMBLING. Don't come crying to us when you can't get people to pay you hundreds of millions of dollars to expose themselves to some nicely arranged photons and sound waves. I can't either.
It's the same old spiel with the recording industry... "well most music albums don't turn a profit, which is why we have to pass that cost-of-failure price onto you, the consumer". What a load of monopolistic doubleplusgoodspeak.
"in order to transport movies as agreed to by the consumer on a rent, buy or pay-per-view basis with heightened security"
Mr. Valenti, please define a public library, and explain how making everything rental or pay per use will benefit the general public.
"what the critics mean by "innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes, without which there is no protection"
Copyright law already protects these works. You're not talking about protection, you're talking about corporate mandated enforcement.
The future is independent content producers, who use the internet as their distribution medium, instead of short sighted, money grubbing, creatively vacant middlemen. The trick will be figuring out how to ensure creators get paid adequately.
This Needs to Happen -- sortof (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardware security, if it happens, will be draconian and will limit any kind of open development platform. And it's what Media industry biggies will push for -- are pushing for -- because they can't see a succesful software alternative.
Of course, there can't be a totally secure software solution. There can't be totally secure solution of any kind. But assuming we stopped fighting soft security -- or at least didn't distribute tools for doing it -- we'd soon see media biggies start to release their holdings. Slowly. Expensively. And a total rip off. And 90% of folks would be herded through the DRM scheme.
And I think, over time, in that market, it would fail. Eventually, someone would release suffeciently compelling media at a competetive price and they'd win.
I think the media biggies know this, and so they're pushing for a platform that not only allows copy protection but also utter control. They do it under the auspices of copy protection. If we give them copy protection, they lose their weapon.
Simple Solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
People are pissed about stifling innovation not because you don't want them to pirate movies, but because Alen Cox and others won't give lectures in the US because they are afraid of being arrested for violating the DMCA, the worst piece of corporate interest legislation in recent history.
The people that don't want the government to influence business are the same ones trying to use business to influence government.
psxndc
Re:This is from the guy (Score:1, Insightful)
Music
Was eventually made
Illegal.
-- Frank Zappa, Joe's Garage
Dear Jack, (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a few comments...
They're satisfied with 56Kbps because that's all they can get. BTW, who did this survey and where were the results published?
Way to go. When I get my DSL line will my name be enshrined in a manilla folder at the MPAA as a potential copyright infringer?
Two solutions, in my mind: Don't make the other eight if they're money losers. Or, perhaps, make decent movies without all the multi-million dollar special effects. If you're looking for reasons why noone's going to the movies, it's because most of them assume that their audience has the intelligence of a cabbage. We're looking for a good plot, believable characters, and other things that, frankly, you'll never be able to get by adding more and more expensive CGI. Not everyone is distracted by the fancy computer generated effects to the point that they can't tell that the movie, as a whole, stinks.
But you'll probably push for a prohibition of the consumer's ability to store this purchased movie onto anything more permanent than a hard disk. When that dies then I'll have to buy another copy won't I? Ah... I see the plan for the studios' future revenue stream.
I, personally, suspect that it's difficult to explain briefly because it'll take a new 200-page law which will trample the rights of most every computer user. And you don't really want the general public actually knowing what's being planned until it's too late anyway.
Nice try. Lessig doesn't (in anything that I've read anyway; I'm still reading his latest book) say that ``copyrighted movies are destroying digital innovation''. It's the new copyright extensions that you and the rest of the MPAA have lobbied for and gotten enacted into law that threaten to kill off innovation. Particularly when they're being applied to things other than your precious movies.
Just my opinion, mind you, but anything that obsoletes existing computer equipment will never be considered ``consumer-friendly''.
Here's a clue (free of charge): The internet does not exist to provide the movie industry with a convenient conduit to pipe their crummy movies to the public. And, since the vast majority of the people using the Internet seem to be happy with slow, slow, 56Kbps connections (your assertion), they're not going to be lining up to replace their modems with DSL routers any time soon. Besides, if you haven't noticed, most of the U.S. cannot even get broadband. Consider those who have cable access: why haven't more signed up in large numbers to receive pay-per-view movies? It's a dud. If it were popular, wouldn't you think more people would have demanded that their cable providers include it (or more of it)? BTW, most of the people that I have heard of even having a PPV service cancel it after a short time. Are you and your cohorts banking on the public paying for movies that they'll watch at home because it'll be more convenient to see a bad movie at home as opposed to having to get in the car and drive to see the same bad movie? I'm pretty sure that the movie-going public isn't that gullible.
You need to get over this fantasy that we're all clamoring for Hollywood's product and that the MPAA members are performing some sort of noble service by churning out the drek that passes for a Hollywood movie.
Have a nice day!
Re:The GNU PC (Score:2, Insightful)
The building of and trafficking in which will be illegal [stoppoliceware.org] if Jack Valenti, his minions, and his purchased legislators get their way.
Re:Copy-protected PC's? (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright law already protects these works. You're not talking about protection, you're talking about corporate mandated enforcement.
You are absolutely right. What is really busting their collective humps is that all these nifty new individually empowering technologies (PCs, Internet, Digital Recorders, etc.) make it impossible to ABSOLUTELY control distribution. That control is the core of their past and current revenue streams. They can't use conventional Copyright control (e.g. legal carpet bombing) on the new "threat". Even though record companies and movie studios are making record sales and profits and show all signs of INCREASING, they FEEL they are being cheated by a stinging swarm of evil copyright pirates.
A big component of this obsessive control freak paranoia is a variant of Lottery Dreamer Syndrom: "If we could get all those dirty rotten pirates to buy AND we could charge everybody per use on all our properties, THEN we would REALLY see some mula!!! Muahhahaha!!!"
Couple all of the above with the sheer boom-town greed that all these guys feel about the prospect of a Brand New Distribution Frontier (the Internet) and the frustration of not being able to control it, they then turn to the only means they have left to control the situation: lawmaking. Hence, we have the WTO, DMCA, and so on, and more to follow. They have money, which gives them influence. That lawmaking influence is the only weapon they have against we rapacious pirates, er loyal customers.
I agree with you that their loud complaints about guarenteeing their traditional revenue falls on very deaf ears with me. What kind of unmitigated sleezy amoral GALL do they have to sweepingly call their customers thieves and lobby governments to force us to buy their product?
Do these media moguls have a point? Yes. Are they accepting that we who are many, but have faint voices, have a point? No. New technology, as it always does, is disturbing and changing the commercial and rights balance in the world. They are simultaneously panicing and power-grabbing. In fairness, many individuals are pirating and immorally profiting off of the work of others too.
The bottom line is that all this brouhaha will settle out eventually. However, unless individuals fight for their Fair Use rights and for a fair, open, and TRULY competative market then we consumers are going to find ourselves with unreasonble and unnecessary restrictions and unwanted mandates about how we live our lives.
I.V.