Hollywood wants to infect all next-gen video with DRM
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann sez, "The LA Times' Jon Healey does a brilliant job explaining why the MPAA's petition at the FCC to enable SOC ('selectable output control,' i.e. turning off your cable box analog video connections, leaving you with only DRM-restricted digital connections) is really a trojan horse aimed at DRMing the future of all next-gen video."
So if Hollywood restricts high-def releases of movies to the new early-release window, Blu-ray discs and downloadable files, it could make SOC the rule, not the exception -- at least until the films reach HBO and broadcast TV.Link (Thanks, Fred!)
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This doesn't worry me. Seriously.
If people find that their cable provider isn't giving them what they want, if the system becomes so 'secure' that it's unusable, they will move to other sources.
Eventually, any artist who agrees to allow his work to be locked down by DRM will fade into obscurity.
but what about all those ground up in the mill before we get there?
The sad part is that there are models that lock down the content without completely screwing the consumer **cough*Steam*cough**, but media providers can't stand the idea of not forcing the consumers into a new media format every 5 to 15 years. Nope, instead the addiction has gotten worse, they want to jump into selling a new copy of every thing with each new device. Fine, they can play an everything or nothing game. No one likes playing with that kid anyway.
look on the bright side: a brilliant renaissance of new independent artists will bloom. We MUST have our art and music and drama, if the greedy think only they can provide it - we'll see.
Scary, but is it unexpected?
Then again there's no copy protection in the world that's safe from a bunch of teens with free time and caffeinated soda.
My God, if this proposal actually happens, movies could be locked up tight with DRM for two, maybe three weeks!
These moves are exercises in futility, and I wonder how much real, actual money has been wasted so far on lawyers, technology, and lobbyists in order to put a stop to an imagined projection of lost revenue. I'm sure they "pass the savings on to you," so you soon find the price of authorized copies prohibitive and download them instead in an elegant illustration of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I still rent and buy DVDs even though they
are easy to copy.
Create too much inconvenience for me, make content
hard for me to view the way I want to view it,
and that will piss me off and make me not want
to buy it.
The studios have lashed themselves to the boat anchor of DRM and will ride it all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Maybe we should wave?
Much like musicians have pushed against the old model for music, I know that a lot of film makers will fight this too.
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-users-refuse-to-pay-copyright-fines-080615/
Shall we start the stopwatch till some enterprising hacker finds out a way to bypass it? Then when the cable companies react by updating "security" we can see if the hackers can beat their previous time. It reminds me of the Bob the Angry Flower strip where he keeps smashing his hand with a hammer, hoping that a problem will be solved eventually.
@5 (Jack) : There may have been lots of breaks of badly implemented DRM schemes which use broken crypto systems, but that does not mean that "secure" (from the "users") DRM is impossible. Indeed, every break of a new system brings the properly designed culture-killing end game system a bit closer.
From #12: Indeed, every break of a new system brings the properly designed culture-killing end game system a bit closer.
That is the fantasy the studios share; sometime soon they'll get it right and DRM will be unbreakable. That is only a fantasy. The law of the land is that "a rigid imposition of order leads to an escalation of chaos."
So either DRM will become so onerous as to inhibit unfettered use by authorized users, driving them away (fail!), or every new innovation will just keep getting broken by the legions of programmers who love a challenge (fail!).
Let's not forget, nobody is truly physically addicted to movies and music. We can live without digital entertainment and live music is better anyway. I'm ambivalent about live theater though.
@12: You can't seriously believe that, can you? What are you VP of distribution at Paramount? At worst the committed movie pirate will screen cap an entire movie. Maybe with something lowtech as a hand-held camera. Oh, wait they already do that, and there's no way to stop it.
The next assault in the MPAA's war on unauthorized distribution will be laws mandating DRM chips installed below the CCD sensor on all consumer camcorders, preventing screencaps. Similar to the EURion protection currently used for currency
Additionally, all cameras will watermark recordings with the camera's serial # and the owner's identity.
Possession of a video capture device which does not detect embedded DRM and blank all outputs will be a criminal offense.
Police will still have access to non-DRM cameras to prevent a crime wave by celebrities sporting EURion tattoos.
@ #4: BINGO!
Aren't we tired yet of the MPAA and RIAA members' shitty policies and products?
We, as consumers, have the power: stop seeing movies and listening to artists that are members of the RIAA/MPAA. Hell, most of that drivel is utter crap anyhow.
@11: Yep, crackers crack systems with incredbile speed these days! Thank god for them sometimes.
#15: Heh, there are many things that are illegal, and are not enforced. Piracy is still illegal and yet there are hundreds of thousands of downloads a year that go unpunished. I would expect the same with the camcorder charade.
If it can be played, it can be recorded, this is why DRM ultimately fails.
Seriously, Rule One in the music and film industry should be: Make it easier for your customers to give you money than not. It's easy to make digital copies; that won't change. But if you give someone an easy way to legally buy a high-quality copy that works on all their devices, that will keep on working even if they buy a new computer or switch their OS -- and you make the price right -- most people will be happy to give you their money.
Piracy takes at least some effort. Even if you don't personally do the cracking, you have to figure out where to go to get the crack, you have to figure out what to download to make it work, and what you get might be crap quality anyway. DRM just makes it worth the effort, because dealing with the DRM is actually more of a pain.
Simply do not care. I don't watch movies, don't watch tv, don't buy cd's. Instead I find other sources of entertainment (books for instance).
Not because I don't like movies or wouldn't want to buy a cd to support a favorite artist, but because it is so incredibly blindingly obvious that they are in the hands of money grubbing a-holes that I simply don't want to send my money their way.
So to me this is nothing new. Just more of the same.
#21
Well then, it's a good job that large puplishing houses aren't in the hands of money grubbing a-holes then.
/sarcasm
#22 Who said I buy books?