FC: Hollywood wants to plug "analog hole," regulate A-D
Graham Lally
scribe at exmosis.net
Mon Jun 3 08:26:40 PDT 2002
Mike Rosing wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Dave Emery wrote:
>
>> And telling the public that they face serious jail time if they
>>don't turn in that Creative Soundblaster from the old PC in the attic
>>closet isn't going to fly. The sheeple may be sheep but even they
>>aren't going to accept that kind of nonsense from Hollywood or any
>>corrupt congress.
>>
>> I'd even venture to say that if this issue breaks out into
>>the big time and the public really is faced with crippled devices
>>that don't work and mandatory obselescence of existing expensive
>>computer and entertainment systems with potential jail time for
>>use of old equipment that the backlash will be so intense that
>>raw public votes will control over Hollywood money.
>
>
> I think that's what boils down to the "bottom line". Because there are
> so many units in place that can do the bypass, there will be enough time
> to create a backlash. There's already a backlash on "protected" CD's,
> mostly by consumers who can't play them on older CD players. It's just
And/or indeed, on newer players. In the UK at least
(http://uk.eurorights.org/issues/cd/docs/celdion.shtml) the new
generation of anti-theft CDs have been reported to be useless on modern
DVD players/car stereos, by design. Some older players either lack the
"feature" or are less sensitive, I assume, so can be ok. It's just a
case of matching a technology with the right player...
So not content with limiting public demand for new hardware (a minor
issue), the extra precautions actively encourage consumers to not buy
legal content. Woo. Better to get illegal content that you can do what
you want with.
With regards to the analog[ue]/digital stop-gapping, r o f l m a o. This
would be just as effective as, ooh, copy-protecting CDs? Oh, humm...
Chasing down peer-to-peer outfits? Uhh... Trying to ban videos? Oh, wait...
Firstly, in order to prevent widespread ripping of analog signals
through disabling mass consumer device, there needs to /be/ mass
consumer ripping. How many people do you know who actually go to the
trouble of transferring their taped episodes/films onto their PC? It's
not as simple as grabbing mp3s. As with other such "distribution" in its
relevant infancy, the hard work's carried out by a much smaller number
of people - millions of films may be downloaded every month, but there's
generally only 2 or 3 versions of each film, from different sources,
max. Believing that crippling the populace will fill this tiny leak
is... well, amusing.
Secondly, how much work is going to go into protecting a fading
technology? This is from both the MPAA's and the consumers' points of
view. For the former, analog avoidance is only of any use if the content
is not readily available in digital format already. Most of the analog
content that I guess the MPAA want to stop conversion of is either
people in cinemas with cameras, or people with tapes of episodes at
home. The former is hard to stop through watermarking (I'm unsure of the
technicalities, but I'd have thought preserving it between screen and
camera would be tricky? Even without people geting uo and walking past
the view...), and even then it's only one source of films. The latter
is, I suspect, more the target of the MPAA's volley. If this doesn't
move towards digital origins, i.e. through PVRs or cable-streams
obtained via PC (which are subject to a different smother), then the
abundance of existing technology, and probable (anonymous) circumvention
of new ones anyway renders all actions proposed useless. The question
then is how much investment do you want to throw away?
Outside the US, I suspect that the circumvention may go the same way as
DVD region "control". Looking at players recently, it was quite hard
(after checking around, as most people would) to actually _avoid_
region-locked DVD players. The only real factor that really keeps
regions in place is their localised supply to meatspace shops, or the
boundaries of international postage & packing.
Foolishness, foolishness, and yet more foolishness. Perhaps if we just
ignore them, then they'll go away eventually :)
.g
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