What Critics of the Critics of the FCC Rule Miss 375
Asprin writes "Businessweek has an editorial up which argues that the FCC's HDTV broadcast flag rule is a good thing, and that everyone is just overreacting. What the author is overlooking is that this rule gives exclusive control over production to the studios that are in "the club", essentially denying private citizens the right to make their own HDTV format video. To wit: "The problem comes when a program taped on an old VCR can't be replayed on a next-generation VCR. So consumers may experience some compatibility problems between machines as they upgrade." Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!) The problem is the word "consumers", which doesn't describe us anymore. There's nothing like being locked out of your own old family videos when your current VCR dies, eh?"
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Is the frog boiling yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what is happening.
That's why I'll make a killing. (Score:5, Insightful)
What part did I mess up? I must have missed something... This seriously is too good to be true... I'm gonna be rich!!!
Lenin (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that corporate america does *get it,* and they are trying to avoid selling said rope. Failing, but trying.
It's All Our Fault!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
So this is all that is stopping them now. HDTV will only happen when the Internet is locked down. Once upon a time producers wanted people to see their shows. It's not like these are pay-per-views that go out over our airwaves.
If consumers want their HDTV, they have to accept limits on the ability to redistribute TV shows on the Web.
You know, maybe I don't want my HDTV that badly. Present TV is good enough for the fare they serve up on it. Of course, regular TV is now also distributed on the Internet. Are they next going to threaten us with no TV at all?
One can only hope.
The American addiction to 'entertainment'... (Score:4, Insightful)
Typical business mindset (Score:5, Insightful)
This ruling eliminates any kind of non-authorized content, weither that is indie films, home movies, pirate TV stations, or illegal downloads. It doesn't matter to the machine, it's all unplayable. The FCC has done its job here, with regulating commercial playback, but it has overstepped its bounds in forbidding non-commercial use of non-broadcast signals.
Shoot, there is no guarantee that I can record my local township's cable channel anymore with this. It will force these no-budget public access stations to pay who knows how much or else their programming is no longer viewable by their constituants.
Which begs the question... (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you think will happen once they have the mandetory flag? Step 2: Flag not effective. Must provide mandetory encryption. And then they'll claim it's not something new, it's just enforcement of an already existing and accepted IP protection.
It's about making you swallow a camel (is that even an US expression? anyway), they were just so generous to cut it in two for you.
Kjella
Can someone please provide background information? (Score:2, Insightful)
Business Week's real take on the broadcast flag (Score:2, Insightful)
This seems to be the frame of mind of the people who came up with this incipient CF - an arrogant assumption that people will accept what the networks give them, and will forget anything that they want people to forget. The problem is, people have the money that the networks want, and they aren't likely to forget the fact that they used to watch their shows when they wanted without commercials and now they can't. People have short memories, but changes such as this are precisely what people are likely to remember. Unless they can write laws forcing people to buy HDTV and keep them on, they can't make people buy their neutering of content. If the TV networks stop nondigital broadcast in 2006, then people may find out they can live without TV, thus guaranteeing the networks a fast, painful death. If they don't then the broadcast flag is irrelevant. Either way, they lose.
Re:Is the frog boiling yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
The agency's move to allow encryption-like protection for digital shows takes away one more excuse from the broadcasters to delay the rollout of high-definition TV
At what point did move from
"companies competing to win the business of their customers"
to
"you consumers better fall in line with the wishes of the companies or no goods for you"
?
Oh, that's right, when the government decided (as it has in the past) that competition isn't necisarry in capitalism and started looking out for the good of large (illegal) monopolies and trade groups, instead of the good of the market.
\begin{rant}
If this continues indefinately we will end up approaching a system simular to Soviet Russia but from the opposite direction. There the government and corporations were merged by the government taking control of the corporations. Here they are being merged by the corporations merging and then asserting control of the government. Either way there is no democracy, but rather all economic, political, and military power are centralized into a very small number of hands who have no reason to act in the interest of the population.
\end{rant}
The solution is simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they use 10% of the FCC's collective brain power (which is approximately at the level of Homer Simpson at this point), they'll figure out that the easiest way to get this done is to allow new VCR's/DVD's/DVR's/PVR's to play non-flagged content as well as flagged.
RULE 1: If there's a flag, do what it says.
RULE 2: If there's no flag, play the damn thing.
That makes everyone happy. The FCC and MPAA can mandate their stupid flags as much as they want to and it will do what it's supposed to, but I can still play my home videos and all the pirated videos I'll be able to get once someone cracks the flag (and you know it's inevitable).
Re:It's All Our Fault!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're missing a few steps.
Producers want to make money. They do this by selling their shows to the networks (I mean that loosely, not just ABC/NBC/CBS/etc.). The networks buy the shows because they want to make money. They do this by selling advertising. The more people that they can say watch their advertising spots, the more money they can get for them. How do they get people to watch their advertising spots? By putting them in the middle of content. So this is why the networks buy the shows from the producers. The more people who watch the show, the more money the network can get for the advertising during the show, hence the more money the network is willing to pay to the producer for the show.
So if you follow that logic, the producers may want more people to watch their shows, but it only really matters if they're watching them on a network. A million people could watch the rips off the Internet, and the producers are not going to care at all, because they're not making any money from it, and it doesn't drive up the advertising revenues. But if a million people watching on the Internet means that even a fraction of them are now not watching it on a network, the producers will care, because it's taking money out of their pockets.
Now, the model is slightly different for premium networks, since they don't have advertising spots, but the same logic applies. The premium network makes money by people paying for a subscription. So the premium network pays the producer more money for shows that draw more viewers. If viewers are getting rips off the Internet instead of subscribing, the same problem exists.
This isn't to say that this is good for the TV watchers. It's merely how it is. Yes, I don't want to have to license TV shows for every TV that I want to watch them on. If I record on one TV in my house, I'd like to be able to watch a show on another. The ideal solution would be to "license" the show to a user. For example, I buy HBO, so I should be able to watch HBO shows whereever and whenever I want to. The problem is that there isn't presently a good way for the networks to do that. The only solution they have currently is to license shows to hardware devices. That's where most of the problems come from.
Maybe the solution is for someone to come up with some sort of universal key, like a USB storage device, that I could load with subscriptions for various networks, and would then connect to any device I wanted to view it on. It would have to be open enough to allow it to be adapted to any type of system (so, for example, we could view our media on Linux or any other free system), but secure enough where it couldn't be (easily) compromised. And of course you'd then have the hassle of having to keep track of this hardware key, and move it around with you. But perhaps something like that would satisfy the needs of both the networks/producers (who want to get paid for viewers) and TV watchers, who want to be able to watch the shows when they want to, and where they want to.
-Todd
Re:The American addiction to 'entertainment'... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's really warped is that, at a time when really important freedoms like due process of law, attorney-client privilege, and the right to trial by jury are being threatened by the current regime, people have the time and energy left over to piss and moan about how their VCRs work.
AH, but here's the crux (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't that the point -- judging by sales, consumers don't want their HDTV. Why is this allegedly pro-capitalism administration, usually so gung-ho to invoke the market to address societal needs, apparently so willing to overlook the overwhelming verdict of the market: People just aren't itching to get HDTV.
Why is government intervention and the "picking of winners" OK here but not, say, in national health insurance?
Re:Which begs the question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the US expression is simular: It is "The camel has got his nose in the tent," which implies that if you don't do something about it, pretty soon the entire camel will be inside the tent!
Re:Only thieves would oppose this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah the Macrovision is annoying. But a little competition would probably put this guy out of business.
Re:The American addiction to 'entertainment'... (Score:3, Insightful)
I aggree with this. The deal is they get the *privillage* of broadcasting in *my* air because I want them to, not because they have some god given right to.
They *give* me the signal. I should be able to do with it what I wish. If I choose to watch their content with no ads, bad luck.
So the deal is not "we make content in return for you watching the ads," it's "we make content in return for the privilage of being able to broadcast it into your home."
Read Vonnegut's "Player Piano" (Score:4, Insightful)
In Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, published 50 years ago, he presented a future United States where Soviet-style centralized planning was adopted -- because it turned out to be more profitable for the capitalists.
Re:Force change, not reform. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't find it hypocritical at all. The broadcast flag by itself does not make it illegal to record the 'protected' material. It only advises the recieving hardware not to record the stream. The fact that a GPLed piece of software is capable of ignoring the flag doesn't make itself responsible for the user violating copyright by distributing copyrighted material recorded with that tool.
Re:It's All Our Fault!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
What, it doens't work that way? But I paid for the subscription! Never take the card out? It can't be transferred at all? Then why bother making it removable? Why not just a SN in the box itself? Oh, you got sold on useless technology, sorry.
(you can just mod this as offtopic, but I've always wanted to complain about smartcards, and this seemed at least tangetially related)