Proposed digital copy protection legislation (MANY USEFUL LINKS) (2 Viewers)

[Steve Owen]

Here's another story that should put fear into anyone that does any sort of programming...
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~twm/embed/dmca.html
This is way out of control.
-Steve

 

[Ryan Wright]

It becomes ever-easier, cheaper, faster and more perfect.

I'll give you cheaper, faster, and more perfect, but not easier. If anything, it's more difficult, as copying CDs requires a computer. (Yes, you can copy CDs with standalone recorders, but this does not - or rather should not - impact the industry. Every CD sold for these recoders carries a penalty tax that the recording industry pockets. As such, they're being paid to offset piracy onto non-computer based recording media.) Sure, it's easy if you understand computers, but it's not as easy as hitting "high speed dub" on a tape deck.

 

[Rachael B]

I'm confident file sharing has only helped the industry. I'm confident that internet radio has only helped the industry. The more music people hear, the more likely they'll hear something that strikes their fancy and then they'll buy it. It's well known that the more you broadcast music, the more people will buy it, no matter how poor in quality it might be. The latest "girl" and "boy" bands are certainly proof of this old theorum.

Before CD arrived they knew how to market vinyl to the target market, young people primarily, at a price they could afford. Now they haven't a clue or act as if they don't. Their products are massively over-priced, despite the fact that the CD has cut their distribution costs immensely. They won't pay the artists fairly. They often sit on wanted content and refuse to sell it. They've had their copyright time extended, by legeslation, repeatedly. For some strange reason the law has quit pursuing them for their time honoured custom of providing payola, draw your own conclusion about why? I think it's pretty obvious!

The recording industry is an insatiable junkie whore. A digital war is coming. The DMCA and the "Hollins-Disney" bill are nothing but price suppourt mechanisms. The real market value of a song on prerecorded media has gone down. The industry simply refuses to accept this. Their answer to everything is to raise prices. If they can't sell as many units as they wish they could sell, their answer is to just add another dollar to the unit price to try to maintain the desired amount of gross revenue. This can't go on indefinitely!

I think it's obvious that the record companies are top-heavy gargantuans. They view us, the customers, as little more than milk cows. There's a recession and they can't get the milk they desire. How awful for them! Their moguls might have to cut back on caviar or keep their Mercedes for two whole years. How very awful for them!

R U a milk cow? or are U/we not men, thanks Devo (!)? The digital war will be fought over TV, DVD, CD, books, anything publishable. What we're seeing now are just the initial scirmishes. TV will proably end up being the biggest battleground, but the same companies control TV that have their iron fists on the music industry. IMO, it's all the same.

 

[Thomas Newton]

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

The goal of Constitutional copyright is not to provide unlimited reward to creators (or to publishers - who aren't mentioned in Article I, Section 8).

It's simply to provide the public with the most works possible and the fewest restrictions possible.

 

[Thomas Newton]

Their products are massively over-priced, despite the fact that the CD has cut their distribution costs immensely. They won't pay the artists fairly. They often sit on wanted content and refuse to sell it. They've had their copyright time extended, by legeslation, repeatedly.

The real market value of a song on prerecorded media has gone down. The industry simply refuses to accept this. Their answer to everything is to raise prices. If they can't sell as many units as they wish they could sell, their answer is to just add another dollar to the unit price to try to maintain the desired amount of gross revenue. This can't go on indefinitely!

This is a classic example of an industry focusing on the wrong metric (unit price/margin vs. total sales/margin).

In this case, the music industry has grabbed up a lot of copyrights (artificial monopolies), so they focus on exploiting monopoly control to the exclusion of anything else. High unit prices - that MUST be the way to go, especially when no competition is allowed!

The point of a real free market is to maximize the use of scarce resources in a distributed fashion. Scarce resources in the music market include a musician's time (to record a new song or album), a fan's time (to listen to music), and a fan's money (to buy songs).

Copies of songs are not particularly scarce resources, and so logically speaking, a business model that starts from the premise that all copies must be both prepaid and expensive is seriously flawed.

What it boils down to is that record companies should be making music a lot cheaper, and at the same time, encouraging us to buy a lot more of it.

 

[Bob_J_M]

I said

I'll give you cheaper, faster, and more perfect, but not easier. If anything, it's more difficult, as copying CDs requires a computer. ... Sure, it's easy if you understand computers, but it's not as easy as hitting "high speed dub" on a tape deck.

One key point I tried to make is that computers have become ubiquitous. People (especially students) need them for other reasons, so there isn't any incremental cost involved. Most computer owners understand how to operate them, so all they need to do is figure out how to use the specific CD burning software. A good piece of software should make the process as easy as it was with your dual cassette deck.

Our personal experiences are different - maybe partly because I'm much more picky about quality. Tapes - even prerecorded tapes - always sounded horrible to me, even on my Nakamichi. I used to do a lot of taping - making compilation tapes, mostly. Now that I've gone digital, I can copy more in one day than I used to copy in weeks of taping - and that was when I had free time.

Anyhoo, you feel that, despite the cheaper, faster and more perfect copying capabilities, a similar amount of copying is being done by a similar demographic. I, on the other hand, would expect the demographic group to expand as barriers are lowered. You'd have to admit that home taping spread to more and more people as the tape deck was invented and then as the cassette tape was invented and then as the recording devices became cheaper and easier to use. If you think this process has stopped, you must believe that the desire to record music has reached its saturation point.

 

[Ryan Wright]

A good piece of software should make the process as easy as it was with your dual cassette deck.

You would think so, but there are still plenty of people who can't figure it out. And tape decks don't give cryptic (to most folks) error messages, crash, exhibit buffer underruns, etc. I have no studies or data to cite, but from personal experience, I'm nearly positive there are less people copying CDs now than there were people copying tapes years ago. Why? Because, everyone can operate a tape deck. I come across dozens of people every day who couldn't login to a computer if their life depending on it, much less figure out how to fire up Easy CD Creator and copy a CD.
At any rate, I came here quickly this afternoon to post this bit of information:
The broadcast industry is now describing people who skip over commercials as thieves! (http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=1113)
Taken from the link:

Jamie Kellner is the chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, which encompasses everything from CNN to TNT and is a part of AOL Time Warner. On Monday, an interview with Kellner appeared in CableWorld.
In response to a question on why personal video recorders (PVR's) were bad for the industry, Kellner responded: "Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."

So, I suppose if I get up to use the restroom during a commercial, I'm a thief. Or if I use my VCR to fast-forward through commercials. Or if I talk with friends, mute the TV, play fetch with my dog or channel surf during commercials, I'm also a thief.
To hell with the industry! This just proves that all they want is control over what we see, and large sums of money for our 'pleasure'! They would rather that everyone in America simply be labeled a thief than play fair with consumers...

 

[MickeS]

Funny, I thought the idea was that I should watch the actual shows. I now see the error of my ways. :rolleyes
Here's a novel idea: pay the stars less, cut down on ad time, to maybe 3 or 4 minutes/hour, and we wouldn't HAVE to fastforward! But when the ads take up a quarter of the time, I really have better things to do than watch commercials for cars, laundry detergent and fast food.
Oh, and how about giving us unedited presentations of movies while you're at it? But I guess that would be us "stealing" from your precious ad-time.
/mike

 

[Thomas Newton]

There is no contract with the network.

I never signed a contract with any broadcaster, let alone one saying I must watch their commercials. People who are on cable may have a contract saying they will pay the bill, but I'm sure it doesn't say they'll watch the commercials.

Broadcasters force their product into your house or apartment, over the public airwaves, whether you want them to send it to you or not.

There are laws regarding mail that say that people cannot deliberately send you merchandise that you did not order, then demand that you pay for it. This is recognized as a scam, and you may keep the merchandise without paying.

The claim that you MUST watch commercials is just another variant of the "unordered product" scam.

 

[JohnRice]

It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots.

What a funny twist on words. I can't help wondering if he is intentionally twisting things around or if he really thinks this is how it works. The contract is with the network affiliate, cable company or station buying the show. They are required to air the commercials, WE have absolutely no obligation to watch them.

 

[Bob_J_M]

This argument was also used in Universal vs. Sony (the famous Betamax case). The District Court, in considering the potential harm caused by home videotaping, felt that "the practice of deleting commercials may be too tedious for many viewers." The dissenting four Supremes argued that Universal had shown the potential for harm to the value of their copyright. Justice Blackmun wrote:

or if rating services are unable to measure VTR use; if this is the case, VTR recording could reduce the license fees the Studios are able to charge even for first-run showings.

The other five Supremes, led by Justice Stevens, also looked for potential harm but there is no mention of the commercial skipping argument in their opinion.
This industry spokesperson clearly has it all wrong. There's no contract. On the other hand, there's a grain of truth in the industry argument that the practice of copying a program to avoid viewing the commercials is not legal. If your recording equipment is able to automatically strip the commercials from the content, the courts would most likely consider this copyright infringement.
"A challenge to a noncommercial use of a copyrighted work requires proof either that the particular use is harmful, or that if it should become widespread, it would adversely affect the potential market for the copyrighted work." - Justice Stevens in Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984)
Clearly, if everyone had a Tivo with auto-commercial skip, advertiser-supported television as we know it would cease to exist. That might be considered an adverse effect
However, rather than fight an unpopular battle in the courts (or, more likely, in addtion to fighting an unpopular battle in the courts), the advertising can start to be more integrated with the programming. There are many creative ways to do this. The Monkees made their own ads and if you missed them, you missed part of the show. Random spoofs of ads a la Saturday Night Live would be a fun way to get people to watch. Product placements are bound to become more and more obvious and prevalent. The Truman Show felt eerily prescient in that respect.
In addition, there are probably technological ways to foil the commercial detection algorithms, but it may force the broadcasters to spend quite a bit of money retooling their own machines and procedures. This is an expensive rat race they may not want to get into.
Bottom line- Several things may happen as devices with this feature become more popular (in order of decreasing liklihood): 1. Ads will start to become an inextricable part of the program; 2. Lawsuits could be launched against manufacturers of these devices; 3. Broadcasters may attempt to employ a technical solution that renders automatic commercial removal devices useless.

 

[Matt Perkins]

Clearly, if everyone had a Tivo with auto-commercial skip, advertiser-supported television as we know it would cease to exist.

Yes, but that's not an adverse affect that implicates copyright. Frank Rich can write a scathing review of a play, and his review may "adversely affect the potential market" for the production -- by driving people away. If he quotes some bad lines to make his point, he has committed no copyright violation.
Or, consider Warner broadcasting Friends over-the-air at no user cost. If the commercials are suddenly invisible to the user (via Replay 2000 or something), the "market" for the work is hardly gone. Warner can offer Friends on HBO; or, it can sell cable subscriptions to TFC (The Friends Channel) for $1.99/month, commercial-free.
The market for the copyrighted work is NOT implicated by commercial-skipping, because the demand for the work has not changed -- all that has changed is the attractiveness of the current business model.
If NBC or Warner doesn't like it, they can get out of the broadcasting business an let someone else in; or, they can change their business model. I have no sympathy for companies who find a revenue stream, then exploit it until they're bloated multi-national corporations, and then complain when technology obsoletes their original model. They got too big. Technology has changed. It's happened before, and it'll keep happening.
(Uhhh, got off-topic.) Point is, despite an adverse effect, copyright exists to secure exclusive rights to distribution and (first) sale. PVRs don't change that. All PVRs implicate is the business model, and copyright does not guarantee you the right to trample new techologies to keep your once-thriving revenue stream intact.

 

[Ryan Wright]

If your recording equipment is able to automatically strip the commercials from the content, the courts would most likely consider this copyright infringement.

To hell with the courts. Skipping commercials is NOT copyright infringement and I don't give a damn whether it's legal or not. I'll watch whatever I damn well please.
Is it also copyright infringement if I skip a chapter in a book? What if I buy a book and only read the last chapter just to see how it ends? What if I skip over the kissy-romantic parts in Star Trek? What if I go to the kitchen for a snack or use the restroom?
Skipping parts of a presentation is not copyright infringement no matter how the lawyers mangle the law into saying otherwise. Let the morons in the broadcasting industry make it illegal. I've got a great answer for them: I'll quit watching their stupid f***ing drivel. When nobody watches it, then where will they get their billions? I canceled my TV subscriptions years ago and now only watch over-the-air content.
New news headline today:
SonicBlue ordered to track ReplayTV users' viewing choices
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...ey/3186191.htm
A federal magistrate in Los Angeles has ordered SonicBlue to spy on thousands of digital video recorder users -- monitoring every show they record, every commercial they skip and every program they send electronically to a friend.
Central District Court Magistrate Charles F. Eick told SonicBlue to gather ``all available information'' about how consumers use the Santa Clara company's latest generation ReplayTV 4000 video recorders, and turn the information over to the film studios and television networks suing it for contributing to copyright infringement.
(read the rest of the story at the link above)
By the way, I hope everyone here is aware that these broadcasters were granted exclusive use of the public airways for FREE many years ago. That's right, those airwaves belong to us, the people, and our government gave them to the networks to use free of charge because doing so contributed to our entertainment. Now those airwaves that belong to us are being turned against us for profit. I think it's about time we took that resource back.

 

[JohnRice]

I'm sorry. The idea that removing commercials is copyright infringement is something only a lawyer could think up.

All this brings up the main reason I don't, and never will have a digital video recorder like Tivo until one is available that doesn't require a membership. There is absolutely no valid reason for these units not to be able to work independently of any uplink or tracking, like a VCR. I can figure out what I want to record on my own, and I particularly don't need someone being able to track what I watch and edit. Most of all, I don't need to pay a monthly fee just to use a product I paid for.

 

[Bob_J_M]

I wrote this: "Clearly, if everyone had a Tivo with auto-commercial skip, advertiser-supported television as we know it would cease to exist." and Matt Perkins replied:

Is it also copyright infringement if I skip a chapter in a book? What if I buy a book and only read the last chapter just to see how it ends? What if I skip over the kissy-romantic parts in Star Trek? What if I go to the kitchen for a snack or use the restroom?

I'm sorry, but these do not qualify. If you want to infringe, making an unauthorized copy is a prerequisite.
As distasteful as this may seem, if the purpose of your copying is to produce a copy that doesn't contain commercials, and this act can be proven to have the potential for causing substantial harm to the value of the work in any potential market (if repeated on a large scale by many individuals) it is copyright infringement. Nobody's going to throw you in jail, but they might sue manufacturers to get the feature removed from devices.
On the other hand, they know the cat's out of the bag and let's face it: It ain't goin' back in! Most likely, advertising will change and it will become even more omnipresent and insidious and objectionable than commercials ever were. Ten or twenty years from now, we'll be nostalgic about the good old days, when commercials were commercials and TV shows were TV shows.

 

[MickeS]

Yup, I think so too. If the networks don't win this case (and maybe even if they do), I'm sure that we'll see advertisement during the shows, sort of how TNN has their black bar on many shows now, and how spanish language stations do it suring soccer games: a banner on the screen during the show.
This banner will of course be moved around every few minutes in order to prevent matting of the picture.
Then we'll be wishing we could have the good old days of commercial breaks back... :frowning:
/Mike

 

[JohnRice]

Most likely, advertising will change

Hey, it already started over a decade ago. Ever heard of product placement? How about the rotating panels in basketball games? Not to mention digital virtual billboards during MLB games. Instead of 17 minutes of actual show and 13 minutes of commercials during a 30 minute program, the show will be 25 minutes with the commercials permanently built in. Has anyone watched local news lately? Half of it is just commercials thinly disguised as news.

 

[Thomas Newton]

Most likely, advertising will change and it will become even more omnipresent and insidious and objectionable than commercials ever were.

It already is. Have you tried going to the movies lately? You get to pay $9/ticket, then be subjected to slideshow ads (and perhaps radio-style ads), then be subjected to TV style ads (and I'm not talking about the trailers). The movies themselves often contain paid product placements.

Once movie theaters ran NEW Looney Tunes cartoons before a show; now they run ads. The movie industry pushes attacks on our freedom like the DMCA and CBDTPA. What a deal.

The telemarketers-from-Hell call so often that I use an answering machine to screen calls. It still doesn't keep the ringing phone from waking me up repeatedly, whenever my schedule's skewed.

I'm forced to block e-mail because of all of the spam.

Even gas stations think they have a right to bombard you with TV-style ads, while you, the 'product', are a temporary 'captive of the pump' because you were trusting enough to give them your business.

The idea that we have not been accomodating enough to the desires of advertisers is laughable. What 'accomodation' can there be with those who think that a moderate dose of commercials is not enough, that every moment of a person's life exists only for the purpose of intrusive advertising?

 

[Bob_J_M]

John,

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Extrapolate from there. As I said in another forum (or was it here?) - I look forward to the day when I see Peter Jennings with a Diet Coke prominently displayed on his desk. Suddenly, in the middle of a report on the latest war in the Middle East, he takes a swig and says "mmm, refreshing ...There was another car bombing today..."

 

[Ryan Wright]

As distasteful as this may seem, if the purpose of your copying is to produce a copy that doesn't contain commercials

Tivo and ReplayTV do NOT strip out the commercials during recording. They record them in full. They simply allow you to skip over them nearly instantly, rather than watching them in fast-forward as you would with a VCR.