MPAA Pushes Once Again To Close the Analog Hole 275
Tyler Too writes "The MPAA is once again trying to badger the FCC into approving Selectable Output Control, which would plug the 'analog hole' during broadcasts of some prerelease HD movies. MPAA bigshots met with seven staffers from the FCC Media Bureau last week, calling the petition a 'pro-consumer' (!) move designed to 'enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content.' At least the studios are now acknowledging that SOC would break the functionality of some HDTVs, an admission they were previously unwilling to make: 'What's interesting about the group's latest filing, however, is that it effectively concedes that the output changes it wants could, in fact, hobble some home video systems. "The vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content contemplated by MPAA's" request, the group assures the FCC.'"
I still have my Super VHS camcorder (Score:5, Interesting)
No it isn't "HD" but it does provide a nice clear DVD quality image (640x480) which is good enough for most people. Heck even blurry 320x240 ipod downloads are good enough, since most of what Hollywood makes is crap anyway. It might as well look as bad as it plays.
Re:Who is the customer? (Score:4, Interesting)
The current state of consumer ignorance about technology allows this type of corporate abuse. At least part of the solution is education. Tough because you have a populace that for the most part doesn't care until they get burnt with a DRM restriction.
The second part of the double whammy though is government and big media in bed with the corporate approved POV on this.
Still... someday the DRM crap will be pushed so far as to cause a critical mass and there will suddenly be "outraged" people on CNN talking about it... but we're going to be deep in the crap pile by then.
Re:Like any partially treated wart (Score:4, Interesting)
So what does temporary mean, "forever less a day?" The constitution already provides for a "limited" time, and the forever less a day is effectively the argument that has won to date.
Really the best strategy regarding copyright duration is something like this:
a) an author receives an initial copyright for a period of 10 years. No formalities required.
b) between years 10-15 (term + 5 year grace period), and author with sufficient interest in maintaining the copyright should have to i) register the copyright, and ii) pay some less than nominal fee. The copyright will continue for an additional 30 years (a total of 40 years).
c) thereafter, the author pays an increasing amount for each additional 30 year period.
d) the copyright automatically expires on the 100th year.
This has lots of benefits: 1. everyone gets a copyright in their works without any formalities. 2. If it is economically viable after 10 years, they can pay a nominal amount and register it (no more orphan works). 3. It will last for most every author's lifetime and then some. 4. It puts works that an author no longer considers valuable into the public domain in relatively short order.
Re:Like any partially treated wart (Score:3, Interesting)
Eventually they won't be able to get people to do it if everyone before them has been killed.
Money is a tool, it doesn't control anything, people do.
Re:Like any partially treated wart (Score:3, Interesting)
Right, that was the "artificial scarcity" I mentioned. Disney is the epitome of that.
Hence the need for an "orphaned work" provision. If you lock the work up for a couple of years and don't demonstrate any effort to profit from it, then you lose your right to prevent others from profiting from it.
Re:Future Post (Score:3, Interesting)
Normally, I don't respond to AC. This time, you're insulting Alton Brown.
Pray tell me how one is going to learn a technique that has never been seen? Reading and pictures are all fun and good. But if you really want to learn it, you watch someone else do it then you try it.
No no...You don't know jack shit about Good Eats or the reason Alton Brown started it, do you?
I can honestly say I never really enjoyed making food until I watched Good Eats. Now, I make meals that are delicious because I learned something from watching his show.
OK, so MPAA gets a big plug up its analog hole. (Score:4, Interesting)
EVERYTHING is encrypted until the electrons hit the phosphor or the current hits the transistors in the LCD.
Six months (hell, six weeks!) after China starts churning out the compliant TV sets/monitors, the grey market will have TVs/monitors with some manner of video/audio out ports, either blatantly obvious or as solder pads on the PC inside the display.
The quality of the display will be excellent, as will the quality of the unencrypted A/V output.
China does not care a fat rat's ass about what the MPAA wants. It is, and will always be about the money. Running a third shift once or twice a week and sourcing cabinets without the LG/Samsung/Sony/fill in the blank logo on them will be something very familiar to most Chinese electronic manufacturing firms.
Show of hands, how many here already have a "grey market" DVD player that's both region free, plays NTSC/PAL DVDs, and will also play .avi, DivX, Xvid, mks, etc?
Yeah, I thought so.
And if nothing else, someone will figure out how to fool that encrypted signal into thinking it's displaying on a TV/monitor, while it's actually just sending that signal to an MPEG encoder and thence to a hard drive.
One more reason to build a Linux box, I guess.
What a joke (Score:2, Interesting)