What Critics of the Critics of the FCC Rule Miss

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?"

Re:That's why I'll make a killing.

[puppet10]

Except I don't believe the Region coding was regulated and mandated by the FCC (though I could be mistaken). Thus there wouldn't really be a problem importing the devices into the country, except possibly civil actions by the studios who are members of the DVD-CCA.

Re:Is the frog boiling yet?

[Nogami_Saeko]

Yup, sneaking DRM in the back door a tiny little bit at a time is the only way to get stuff like this implemented.

Sadly, for the majority of uninformed consumers out there, it will work.

Here's waiting for a "Max Headroom" styled future with big networks that control your TV to the point where you can't even turn them off (or face fines/prison time for interfering with a broadcast).

Who knows, maybe the CRTC will make a good decision for once, and refuse to follow the lead of the FCC and will not mandate that Canadian sets will require the digital restrictions chips be implemented - or will allow them to be turned-off if desired.

It never ceases to amaze me how "suits don't get it". There is a HUGE trade on the net in old "classic" TV shows (depending on your point of view), everything from "Greatest American Hero", to "A-Team", to (as mentioned before) "Max Headroom". Regardless if you happen to like these particular series, people ARE downloading and watching them. If the companies involved were to make a subscription service available to watch old shows (complete with episode synopsis, cast/crew lists, etc), people would pay...

But of course it's a change from the "old fashioned way of doing things", and that scares the hell out of them.

N.

Too late

[siskbc]

Capatilism will destroy itself, it can only saturate so far before boom. Thats the day I cannot wait for :D

Malthus beat you to that line, and he's been waiting something like 150 years.

Any system that rewards the most innate human instinct (survival and greed) will always be the most efficient. If that ain't capitalism, I don't know what is.

Re:Is the frog boiling yet?

[afidel]

Actually this will probably blow up in the studios faces as it is very in your face DRM. Once you tell someone they can't tape sex in the city or their other favorite popular program with their new ultra expensive HDTV setup they will be ROYALLY pissed. Free use rights as upheld by the supreme court should not simply be ruled away by a board elected by no one.

Macrovision problems today

[buckhead_buddy]

I had a problem similar to this hit me. Back in the early eighties I made a beta recording of a community theatre production of A Midsummers Nights Dream because my sister was on the stage.

In the mid nineties, the beta tape player could no longer play this tape. I paid a fair amount of money for someone to copy this tape over to VHS for me. Maybe they did it because they thought my work was so professional (yeah, right) Maybe they did it just out of the habit on all of their transfers (more likely) Maybe they just thought better safe than sorry. Whatever the reason I believe that in this transfer they added an undesired Macrovision syncing protection to my transferred tape. Of course I didn't discover this addition until 2001 well after my original beta tape is gone as well as the company that did the transfer.

It's not like I can go to Best Buy and get the Athens Georgia 1983 spring production on DVD, but if I try to go to Best Buy to get something to copy my tape for my sister or preserve it for later years I'm treated like a criminal. "No Sir. It's illegal to sell Macrovision breaking products in this country." I know that's bullcrud but what should I expect from Best Buy.

Based on my experiences with trying to circumvent copy protection most people consider "trivial" I don't look forward to higher end crap like these flags.

Btw, if anyone knows of a good product to use to circumvent Macrovision that even an idiot like me could use, I'd very much appreciate a recommendation.

Re:Lenin

[kfg]

Indeed, but this is the inherent problem when you're in the bloody rope business, isn't it?

Ya think maybe it's time to change product lines or something? The ability to do so freely is one of the benefits of the capitalist system, free adaptation to the changing economic and trade enviroment.

When pet rocks are hot you sell 'em pet rocks. When people suddenly realize that rocks are free you sell 'em "Designer" clothing.

When a corporation mentally locks itself to a single product or business model it simply defines its own extinction (assuming free trade).

It's "Adapt or die," not "Extort and bludgeon your customers until they'd rather be dead than do business with you or die."

I think this is the part that they "don't get." They're too busy thinking "My God, we're going to die!"

Well, don't sell us the rope. Sell us something we can't hang your business model with instead.

At the very least sell us rocks packaged entertainingly at a low enough cost that we'd rather buy them from you than pick them up off the ground.

Maybe we won't even use them to stone you.

KFG

Awww, he's got a superiority complex!

[version5]

I'm sure the submitter feels vastly superior to the author of the article, but is it really necessary to add smug and possibly sexist comments such as, "Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!)" I think that's uncalled for.

Re:Force change, not reform.

[Anonymous Coward]

"GNU Radio, current pre-broadcast flag hardware, and future non-compliant tools (call it "Capture The Flag?") will happily ignore it. Just like the current no-copy bit on CDs, which is universally ignored"

I find it hypocritical that GNU expects you to obey their GPL copyright rules, but ignores other people's copyright request to not copy certain material.

Two problems with these arguments.

[JayBlalock]

Number one, the automatic assumption that unless piracy goes away, people will stop producing media. This is a MYTH, pure and simple. IP piracy has existed since the invention of the idea of copyrights, and the ability of people to pirate has always more or less kept pace with the ability of content holders to put out more and more content.

The argument that the digital age alters this is simply nonsensical. What it boils down to is that the content providers have decided that it's quicker and easier to legislate change in their favor rather than adjusting their business plan to fit a changing market. Had the RIAA legitimately embraced the potential of Napster-style P2P products, as any halfway smart business-person would've, then we wouldn't have the whole music piracy war going on. Instead they ignored the next logical step in musical distribution, until it had gotten so corrupted that it was beyond their ability to really capitalize on.

Same goes for movie producers. They all stuck their heads in the ground and hoped the digital revolution would go away if they pretended it was going on. That is pretty much the definition of a business model which deserves to fail. Adjust your plan to suit the times, or die. They allowed themselves to fall disasterously behind the curve, I see no reason our government should bail them out.

And, number two, how long has HDTV been around? How long has it NOT made many inroads into the consumer market? Sad to say, people have spoken very clearly with their wallets and made it abundantly clear they don't care about HDTV *that* much. But then the government got this idea into their head that they should force everyone to upgrade. It's the FCC mandate for HDTV transition itself we should be debating, not silly moves like this whole "flagging" business.

So, let's see... Consumers don't want the products because they're so expensive. The studios can't really afford to convert all of their archives to the new format. The stockholders don't want to gamble their investment dollars on a technology that's been around for about a decade now and no one has really bought into.

So the government steps in and mandates that everyone must upgrade whether they like it or not.

Does this not make sense to anyone else? I'm far from a pure laissez-faire Capitalist, but if everyone involved (besides the hardware OEMs) has pretty clearly said they don't want to mess with it, why in the world is the government forcing it on us?

So, in short, this whole broadcast flag nonsense is a red herring. It's a symptom of a couple far larger wounds - ones that will just keep festering as long as we think we can get away with slapping band-aids on them.