43 Comments
- LANjackal, on 12/31/2008, -2/+68The FCC actually did something for consumers? Amazing.
- Aerynvala, on 12/31/2008, -1/+54If there was even a chance of the MPAA consortium not abusing the selectable output blocking, then I wouldn't object so hard. But the mafiAAs have a long and well-documented history of abusing customers while shorting actual creators. Therefore, I feel this decision is the best one.
- TheHayze, on 01/01/2009, -1/+28I'm beginning to have high hopes for the Chairman of the FCC. He has shown that not everyone on the FCC chair can bend over backwards for the corporations, and help screw over consumers. This so called "Selectable Output Control" just sounds like another name for Digital Rights Management.
Yes content should be protected... from those who wish to control every aspect of presentation. The argument should not be "But piracy prevents media from being presented to the audience.. for a price." rather it should always have been by the artists them selves, and being "How can I distribute my work to the people who enjoy it the most, and make a reasonable living off it?" The MPAA/RIAA took advantage of young artists, and made a business model that was flawed to begin with. Now we're seeing the ramifications of that flawed model in today's market. Technology is not a burden, but rather it should be used to expedite the flow of information and mass-media. Not as a crutch for the greedy, and those who would rather manipulate not only those who created it in the first place, but also those who enjoy it.
But I want to see more consumer-friendly decisions by our chairman of the FCC. - vat0r, on 01/01/2009, -0/+26What I find is amusing is they never learn that no matter how hard they try to "protect" their content they'll never stop people from ripping it. Sure they may occasionally find their technology ahead of the curve but inevitably people find a way around it. It's just the way of the world. If one person can build it, another can pick it apart piece by piece and manipulate it to their intentions.
- SniperGX1, on 01/01/2009, -2/+21Thanks to technology the consumer has ultimate power over content. The tyranny of content overlords has ended forever. Even if the FCC granted the MPAA this power it would be moot. Once technological knowledge is in the hands of the consumer freedom will be maintained much to the chagrin of the original content creator/provider. Their best hope is to establish and maintain relationships with the consumer so the consumer feels a bond with the artist and wishes to help them out. Like people who donate to podcast creators for instance.
- jordanlgta, on 01/01/2009, -1/+16Ah yes, I knew that the selectable output control under the MPAA bid would be nixed by the FCC chair.
/sarcasm
/confused - fyngyrz, on 01/01/2009, -1/+15Look. First, I own a literary agency, a good sized one that's been involved in both movies and television. I also come from a family of writers. So you can safely assume I'm more than a little in favor of profits earned from the arts.
The problem with DRM is it assumes that the purchaser -- that same person who just PAID you for your work -- is a criminal, and penalizes them right out of the gate. This is almost certain to inconvenience the purchaser; so the transaction is: I create, you buy, I inconvenience AND insult you.
In the meantime, the community of people who wish to take the work without paying for it will, very first thing, REMOVE the DRM. There is no, repeat no, zero, nada, way to (cough) "protect" media from being transcoded into a non-protected version. It might take a decent hacker to do it, but the thing is, it only takes ONE of them; thereafter, the entire "takes for free" community now has a non-DRM version of the work.
Now the transaction is:
I create, you buy, I inconvenience AND insult you, the "takes for free" community is NOT inconvenienced (they're not even insulted.)
The only rational, reasonable approach to DRM is to not use it. People who really appreciate your work will support you. Some will get to use it for free, and some of these might be people who could not have otherwise afforded to - not such a bad thing, actually. In the meantime, the legitimate purchaser has the work, can play it on any device that can understand it, can record clips from it for their phone (presuming your phone hasn't been crippled... stares at Alltel LG Scoop which won't take my own mp3s), and so on.
DRM is entirely the wrong solution to a problem, frankly, that doesn't appear to be all that bad anyway. I don't see Hollywood going out of business, nor do I worry too much when film stars receive millions of dollars for a year or two's work. - nbluth, on 01/01/2009, -0/+12wow thats actually a really good point. The sound could be plugged directly into a recording device like a laptop and an HD camera on a tripod could also get the exact resolution of the movie too.
Guys....I think we just cracked this.....its not even out yet... ***** the MPAA - tolerant, on 01/01/2009, -0/+10This has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with control. When you watch the content and your ability to control it (e.g. skip commercials) is the paramount issue.
Side note - I loved the part where the MPAA is all misty-eyed for less fortunate people, the disabled and those of limited means. - dustinwashere, on 12/31/2008, -5/+14Watch "This Film Is Not Yet Rated", it's a eye opener on how they rate movies.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/ - Azriel7, on 01/01/2009, -1/+10Not really, Kevin is about to get kicked out and he does not want to deal with the backlash going out.
- logandurand, on 01/01/2009, -0/+8It's not about stopping "piracy", but sucking money out of the legit customers. DRM makes it much harder for, say, an iPod owner to switch to a non-Apple player, or for an HD-DVD owner to convert his titles to Blu-Ray. No technically inclined or resourceful person is being stopped by DRM, it's only there to prop up companies and business models that people otherwise would not have chosen.
- SniperGX1, on 01/01/2009, -1/+9I think Display Port (No apple didn't invent it) is better. It doesn't require any licensing fees like HDMI and it allows for two way communication so future technologies like touch displays, holograms, or all the cool ***** u dream of can work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_port
- BotaXero, on 01/01/2009, -0/+8HDMI is a better technology and cheaper anyway, theres no reason to use analog cables. The MPAA is just trying to force use of HDCP though.
- Bartboy919, on 01/01/2009, -1/+8Im sure it was an accident.
- miloez, on 01/01/2009, -0/+7They do the sound thing now sometimes because some movie theaters have headphone like ports for people hard of hearing.
Oh and people wouldn't need to cam, I'm pretty sure HDCP can be/is broken. - JackSchittt, on 01/01/2009, -1/+8Even if the MPAA were to actually pull this off, it wouldn't stop piracy. In fact, camming would be easier than ever before. You'd no longer have to sit in a movie theater, worrying about crowd noise, ushers catching you, and being able to set up properly.
You'd have all the time in the world to get the best possible setup for your camcorder, no background noise, and no ushers interrupting. Not that cams are the best quality in the first place, but they're very common ways of seeing new movies these days. And the quality of these cams would be better than they are now, due to the lack of interference. And since you (hopefully) would have a 24 hour rental of your on-demand content, you have multiple chances to get it right if you screw up the first time. - CaptOblivious, on 01/01/2009, -1/+7Backwards2,
You seem like you are either confused or a shill for the industry.
Going on the theory you are possibly a reasoning being, allow me to attempt to explain a few points.
#1 Treating your paying customers like criminals makes them HATE you. The MANDATORY can't be fast forwarded, can't be skipped FBI warning on all my purchased DVDs that I have to watch EVERY TIME I VIEW MY LEGALLY PURCHASED CONTENT makes me want to find an mpaa exec and violate a few laws on his ass.
2# All it takes is for ONE person to break your DRM and upload it to the net and suddenly all it is good for is annoying your paying customers, ALL of the file sharers have your movie and guess what, they aren't even subject to #1.
#3 There are NO TECHNICAL MEANS THAT CAN PREVENT YOUR CONTENT FROM BEING FREED FROM DRM. PERIOD. IT CAN'T BE DONE. PERIOD.
Anyone who tells you different is LYING to you to steal money from you and piss off your paying customers.
Think about it for a moment. If I have a player that can display the content, the content can be freed from that player, one way or another.
The ONLY way you can lock up your content and prevent it from ever being freed from DRM is to not distribute it in any way. Ever. Put it in a safe & keep it to yourself.
#4 if you make a quality product you will make good money IN SPITE of the file sharers and often will make MORE money DUE TO the file sharers talking up your product to their friends and wanting the big screen experience.
The Dark Night was released to torrents at least a WEEK before it was possible to see it in theaters.
Because it was a good movie it grossed $158 MILLION it's first weekend and $997 million world wide.
It didn't matter that the file sharers had it first, they still went to see it in droves, because it was worth it.
I saw it at a friend's house 3 days before opening day, I was in line on opening evening to see it on the big screen and have also bought the DVD. Why? Because it's a great movie.
You need to face the fact that there are some people that will enjoy your content without paying you no matter what it is that you do. You could correct every problem, drop all the DRM, eliminate all the annoyances and make it available on every platform in the world for a dollar and while that would allow you to sell it to everyone in the world and make so much money that you would still be stupid rich, it would still not prevent that 1% of people from sharing it just to get over on you.
The bottom line is that you cannot mistreat your loyal customers in order to try (and fail ) to prevent that 1% from cheating without turning your loyal customers into cheaters.
Personally, I do own a purchased copy of EVERY movie I have, However I ALSO download them from the torrents because I cannot abide being called a thief every time I watch a movie, I also store them on my home media server so I can watch them easily and not worry about scratches/wear or finding and putting away the media.
That was more like $2 than 2ยข but it's the truth. - TheHayze, on 01/01/2009, -0/+5Point remains regardless of who made it. It failed to protect the media.
- exspasticcomics, on 01/01/2009, -0/+5you know- I was just thinking about how useless the MPAA, FCC & the RIAA are when I came across this article.
- Ratteler, on 01/01/2009, -1/+6Backwards2, you sure have the right name.
You are, as you so ***** put it, a "reuse" artist. Every Artist ever in all the history of mankind is a "reuse artist". Unless you were left in the woods on a deserted island as a baby, and never had contact with a single human being, or object created by a human being, EVERYTHING you create is based on the prior art of all humanity, with a certain bias toward whatever national culture your from.
What you are supporting is the economic censorship of ideas by dissolution of Fair Use rights.
YOU NEVER OWNED YOUR CREATIONS! We The People... OWN IT!
We LOANED you the right to make a profit from it FOR A LIMITED TIME, to get you to create and KEEP creating! Not to squat on a concept for a 100 years after your death and pass on your moment of inspiration to your heirs so they can do NOTHING to enrich society themselves.
If you want absolute control over your "work", DON'T SELL IT!!! DON'T SHOW IT!!!!
When you do SELL your work, you are selling your right to control it to the personal sphere of your customer.
If you don't like those rules... ***** OFF!!! We don't need YOUR "contributions" to society.
I really with you would identify what media you're specifically attached too so that I NEVER PAY ONE PENNY to anything you "create". - valkyries, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4http://digg.com/users/TechnicalTalk
1) May be on Mondays I will not accept any shouts, just to process all your previous missed shouts and Digg your topics. 2) Feel free to add me in your messenger. 3) I love to Digg and I will keep Digging what ever is shouted at me.
like digging every story? no matter what ***** people post these days? - AvangionQ, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4This smacks of more pointless regulation for a format that's already been hacked, and is currently in widespread distribution -- all these stringent measures prove to do is further annoy legitimate users ... I'm glad that the FCC is preventing the MPAA from forcing their customers from using a particular digital technology, as competition and consumer choice should not be curtailed ...
- TheHayze, on 01/01/2009, -1/+5Technology isn't, as you put it, ",black-and-white". Technology is colorless, and is absolutely dependent on it's maker/programmer. We have been shown both the bad, and good of content management. The methods used by the MPAA/RIAA is not only restrictive to legal purchasers of content, but it has been shown, time and time again, that it does not prevent piracy in the least. So it's fair to assume that those methods are counter-productive, and a waste of not only time, but money as well. Money better suited to figure out a way to provide content to those who want to see/use/enjoy, without being restrictive, and still provides enough pork for all those involved.
Lets take by example, rather then academic in this matter. Sony Corp's HDCP, we all know how it works, and what it does. But it was recently cracked wide open by those daring enough to try. Thus that brand new monitor, and bluray player, with all the cables, and computer to play it on has become irrelevant. That new TV with HDCP support was a waste in the long run. While those who dare to spend half of what you did enjoy the same freedom to watch bluray media. Is this fair to you, the consumer? Is this fair to those created the media in the first place? No. It's not.
Lets take another example, this time it will be Stardock's ideology. They have repeated stated that no matter what they do, there will always be someone who steals/pirates the things they distribute. So, lets not try to stop them. Let us, instead, deny them automatic updates to software, let us deny them all the small things that our legit customers enjoy. So, lets take a look at how Stardock's games/software fair, shall we? Galactic Civ 2, and assorted expansions remain some of the best selling games in recent history. In fact the new expansion, Twilight of Anor, won game of the year from IGN, and Game Spy. Funny being that it beat out comparative titles by EA games.
Those are only two examples, and if you do your research, you will find repeated events in history where DRM/SOC gets beaten out by a better system of providing content. The tyranny, as you so eloquently put it, is not with the common man. But rather who wish to profit, and manipulate every aspect of our day-to-day lives. - JosephShell, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4WOAH!
You mean you can get media content without paying for it!!!!!!!!!!! - maz2331, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4The attempt is to try to create a pay-per-view model of content as much as possible, or implement various lock-ins to force people to pay and pay again to repurchase titles.
- TheHayze, on 01/01/2009, -0/+4What's more damning is that older HDCP certified electronics are not always backward capable. For example, "handshaking" can sometimes cause issues with older HDCP certified electronics. Read the wiki article of it, it's rather interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP. Is this fair? I don't think it is; people who spend thousends then are being screwed because they planned ahead.
- Mthrsuperior, on 01/01/2009, -0/+3Die dinosaur die!
- Darkaged, on 01/01/2009, -1/+4I also enjoy being shouted at and using horrible grammar.
- Ratteler, on 01/01/2009, -1/+4"I create, you buy, I inconvenience AND insult you, the "takes for free" community is NOT inconvenienced (they're not even insulted.)"
You're wrong about that. The "takes for free" community IS insulted. It's what makes a small offense into a ***** crusade!!!
I have paid for a LOT of stuff, that I first got "for free", because I enjoyed it and I WANTED to support the people who made it.
Conversely, I sold my Metallica CD's and DELETED every MP3 of their music from my life when they helped destroyed Napster.
The DRM and Legal Terror campaigns against "for free" consumers do nothing but unite them against you. They turn us from guilty people who aren't supporting our artists, into crusaders against you're corporate terror campaign to force us to BUY BUY BUY!!! You absolve us of any guilt by being worse than we are. - kanoyams, on 01/01/2009, -0/+3Kevin Martin (the current FCC chair) has shown himself to be among the best of Bush's appointed positions. He has shown both sound judgment and a positive bias toward fairness and open standards. His rulings include: implementing two of Google's four openness standards in the 700Mhz auction, backing the commercialization of "white space" bandwidth and pushing for for a nation-wide WiFi network (sans pornography).
Reasonable decision making has been in short supply these last eight years. Martin's predecessor, Michael Powell, was little more than a political crony who accomplished nothing of merit and focused the FCC's attention on "wardrobe malfunctions" and potty language on the radio. - DeFex, on 01/01/2009, -0/+3MPAA must have been a bit short on their "donation" this year.
- Barackalypse, on 01/01/2009, -0/+3Do whatever you want to analog, DVD and Blu-ray are already cracked so I don't need to bother with anything but DVI or HDMI connections anymore, plus the only content I get these days comes from the library, Netflix, or Bittorrent.
- nbluth, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2Well i figure this new scheme that their talking about in the article would be something new, and I guess it would take maybe a couple hours to crack and you know how much pirates like to wait :/
- SniperGX1, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2woah dude. There is quite a big error there. "Sony Corp's HDCP". HDCP was NOT made by Sony. I think you meant Digital Content Protection, LLC a subsidiary of Intel's HDCP
- SniperGX1, on 01/01/2009, -0/+2This is true, it does strike me as odd that Intel was behind it. If all this content is locked behind HDCP and you need an Intel chip to use it, isn't that a slight bit anti-competitive?
- Atertract, on 01/01/2009, -1/+2Come on, man, the MPAA feels genuine empathy for parents who have to find a babysitter when they want to go out to the movies. Can't you feel the genuineness, the humanity, the concern?
***** the MPAA up the ass with a babysitter. - bjornski, on 01/01/2009, -1/+1Would have dugg you up if you weren't being a piece-of-***** spammer.
- inactive, on 12/31/2008, -19/+12Thanks for sharing :)
- inactive, on 01/01/2009, -10/+3Another thing for Obama to fix. /S
- Backwards2, on 12/31/2008, -27/+3Well, you can either protect the rights of the person who creates (and licenses) the work through technical means, or you can protect the rights of the person who wants to make use of the creator's work in an unlimited manner, regardless of how it helps or harms the creator, through the lack of technical means. Copyright law tries to find the balance. Technology, so far, can only deal in black-and-white. Artists and the people who license their work for distribution have been denied the right to specify selectable output controls in their contracts with cable companies. So once again, the original artist is screwed for the benefit of the "reuse" artist and consumer. I can't wait for the revolutionary backlash once people see how much money and good will they are robbing from the original artist. F@cK the tyranny of the commons!



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