DRM and the Myth of the Analog Hole 314
Art Grimm writes "Movie studios want to punish legitimate customers for legally purchasing content, while the real pirates go right on stealing. ZDNet's George Ou writes: "There seems to be a persistent myth floating around the board rooms of the movie companies and Congress that analog content is the boogie man of music and video piracy. In fact, they're so paranoid about it that they're considering a mechanism called ICT (Image Constraint Token) that punishes law-abiding customers for content that they legally purchased. But ironically, the real content pirates who make millions of bootleg movies have no intention of ever taking advantage of the so called "analog hole" because that is the slowest and lowest quality method of stealing content.""
Bootlegs often aren't bit-by-bit (Score:5, Informative)
The ones that hit the street before even the US release of the DVD are either from a video camera in the theater or from copying a screener. Often you can see the screener warnings while watching the movie.
Additionally, to serve an Asian market, many have had additional Asian subtitles added and then were recompressed, causing quality to diminish.
Bit-by-bit copies are fine and good in theory, but that's for discs already in release, serving the languages for which the discs already have subtitles or alternative soundtracks. But by then, there's already been a brisk trade in bootlegs those films.
Yes, the analog hole is inefficient and not the best way to copy something. It's merely an example of how a determined pirate can still get around most DRM. It's like protecting graphics on the web. You can disable right clicking, do odd things with MIME types, etc. But in the end, all someone needs to do is capture the screen and crop out the image.
Long and short, DRM and copy protection stops casual copiers. But dedicated copiers, if left with no other alternative, still have the analog hole as a last resort. And once one dedicated copier puts something on the file sharing nets...
Re:Analog over digital any day for me... (Score:4, Informative)
But it's important to keep in mind... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Repeat after me: (Score:3, Informative)
The original mp3.com had 2 services: one where small content producers were able to make their songs available to the public for free (or at least at low cost); and one where people were able to register their purchase of regular CDs, and stream it over the internet. Unsurprisingly, the recording industry went after the second service, and did not care about the distribution of independent content.
Bit-torrent is used to distribute linux ISOs, independent games, independently produced movies and independent "TV" shows. Torrent sites focusing on the legal distribution of these are not sued or prosecuted while sites that solely distribute "pirate" material are targeted.
Re:Bootlegs often aren't bit-by-bit (Score:2, Informative)
Any non-complying application will be unable to be started.
Booting an alternative system will be unable to access the content you even have in your IEs cache because it's heavily encrypted.
That's what "Trusted" [againsttcpa.com] means.
Systems not "trusted" will not be able to fetch that "content" anymore, naturally.
You need to stop furthering their myths yourself (Score:1, Informative)
Um, no. Under fair use it has always been legal to copy even if you just borrowed it, or rented it, or whatever - you do NOT have to OWN the original.
[Fair use is a Constitutional right (the same as copyright is - in other words, they are on the same legal footing). Fair use rights have been recognized by some courts in court decisions, including all the way up to the US Supreme Court in the Betamax decision. And, Congress wrote a few of the relevant factors down in statute (although the statute by no means encompasses the whole field). I don't recall anything in the Betamax case, or anywhere else, where the US Constitution was definitively interpreted to allow the copying only of stuff you OWN].
When I hear RIAA/MPAA myths like yours spreading, I fear those organizations are actually winning. Maybe they are losing the technological battle, but they sure as hell are winning the propaganda battle, if even their antagonists are spreading their own lies for them.
Re:Analog hole unnecessary (Score:3, Informative)
"Analog" piracy: It's not a myth (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know any real content pirates, but I am one of their regular customers. Perhaps the ones George Ou knows do things differently.
I'm American, but I live in a "relatively modern third-world country" (Malaysia) and I can tell you that over 80% of all DVD and VCDs sold here are pirated from an analog source ... Not just 80% of pirated copies, 80% of all sold.
All of the three shopping malls here (KK) are loaded with video stores. Only one of them (Speedy video) doesn't sell pirated DVDs/VCDs at all.
Pirates don't care about the quality. Sometimes it's barely watchable. They just want to get as many copies of their pirated movies on the shelves as possible. Usually, it's from some guy sitting in a movie theater with a video camera.
DRM and any other acronym they throw in there is just a waste of time and money for everyone. It will only make things more difficult for the paying customers. If people can watch it or listen to it, they can make a copy of it. With just a little bit of effort, people can make excellent copies of any original, regardless of the copy-protection.
-- Ghodmode
Re:Bootlegs often aren't bit-by-bit (Score:4, Informative)