Will AACS restrictions put the lock-down on your HTPC and your rights?? (1 Viewer)

[PeterTHX]

NO YOU ARE NOT!!!

Sigh, people just don't get it.
If you didn't BUY it then you can't make a copy of it, unless the copyright holder gave you express permission to.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Dan - everybody would have to draw their own line when it comes to getting extras by paying more to an eventual PPV setting. My line would be for the movies. I'm not much of an 'extras' fan, but if I end up picking up a movie that wants more money, I will send it back -- even if the disc itself only cost me one cent.

This is DIVX all over again. It won't fly (ok, maybe the disks will - right out the window)

Yes, it is the policy of just about anybody with any control to punish everybody for the actions of just a few. They call it Macrovision. If you could defeat it, I hear that you will get a better picture.
Think about that the next time you can't park in a handicapped space, or those friggin' safety caps on medicine.

And guys, quit picking on Lee! I won't be replacing my collection either. True, I probably will be able to tell the difference on my 65", but that's some serious double-dipping. When HD starts up do you really want to buy everything all over again, or would you rather get the rest of the catalog titles that you don't have yet?

Glenn

 

[Thomas Newton]

Bad example. A handicapped space is there to ensure the presence of a space in case a handicapped person who needs one comes along. It's not there to punish the able-bodied.

 

[Marko Berg]

PeterTHX, according to the laws of my country I am indeed. I don't actually need to buy a copyrighted work in order to copy it. Such private copying for personal use is covered by a tax that is included in the price of recordable CD and DVD media, videotapes, etc.

I suspect you reacted the way you did because perhaps you didn't see my location below my user name. However, I get the same reaction from many of my fellow citizens when explaining their rights (although I don't necessarily condone such practices) to them because people have taken the angry threats of the entertainment industry so seriously. This is what I was trying to illustrate in my post.

 

[PeterTHX]

OK< but does it cover work created in other countries, such as the US? I'm not one to defend movie studios but they ARE losing revenue because people are watching downloads & copies at home rather than see them theatrically. The "it's sharing, not stealing" mentality is very dangerous.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Before you can make a statement like that, Peter, you first have to have actual proof that the studios are actually losing money.

The numbers presented by the BSA for instance have very recently been severely questioned in The Economist (the article was called, fittingly, "BSA or just BS?"); all numbers reported by the RIAA and MPAA are also massively exaggerated (common sense tells us that if we look at how they arrived at those numbers)... and so far I haven't seen any research that has proven that the loss of revenue they claim even matches the "free/viral advertising effect" of people sharing files, where finding some copied files lead to people going out and buying a full copy - in the case of music, perhaps even buying an artists full back catalogue (I've done that myself.)

And finally... when the studios literally net billions due to DVD sales as it is - dvd sales are already making them more money now than the actual movie release in theaters - with people admittedly copying all the while... what exactly is the problem? They need another billion or two in profit and are getting all cranky because now the excecutives cannot afford to buy that third mansion and yacht...?

However... the scare tactics and indoctrination of the masses aside, that is still no more worrisome than the stuff they are planning on doing with the next gen hardware.

I for one am not planning to replace my DVD catalogue, but I'm definitely planning on switching over to buying new material in HD.

Now, it was a huge pain in the posterior at first to be a movie fan in Finland when DVD's came out; the locally published versions usually were of a vastly inferior quality (full-screen only or with 2-channel sound where the region 1 release was widescreen and full-on 5.1 sound, or had no extras etc) which caused virtually all movie aficionados here to buy DVD players that were hacked to play region 1 releases and then shop online from the US.

Now, apparently, the newer generation will have vastly more restrictive features in place... to say nothing of the fact that we don't even have a HD standard here in Europe... and thus I'm definitely scared about what the future holds with regards to my chances of viewing HD material at home.

 

[Marko Berg]

PeterTHX, foreign artists are compensated from the tax too and e.g. US music acts receive payments from the Finnish tax through their performance rights organizations. The tax has been around since 1984, well before peer-to-peer networks and was originally created for videotapes and music cassettes. Such a tax exists also in Germany and perhaps in other European countries as well.

Personal copying and illegal mass piracy aside, Kimmo makes a good point of how early European DVD releases (and the overall selection) were often inferior compared to what was available in Region 1. I don't see that changing when we move on to an HD home video format -- we'll probably see a technologically stronger region control system imposed in order to curb imports. Unbreakable restrictions that would make both the hardware and software more expensive and limit choices could kill any HD format before it had a chance to take off.

I recently bought a new DVD player because my old player couldn't play back DVD-/+R discs. (No, I don't download and burn pirated movies, I make DVDs from material I've shot using a digital video camera.) I chose a model which although at first region-locked was hackable through the remote. I simply pushed a few buttons and now I'm able to play back discs from all over the world. The instructions were kindly provided by the company that imports the player on their website.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

It was in virtue of just such "copyright levies" [also levied on "Music CD-Rs" here in the United States] that a French judge recently banned DVD copy protection, and a Canadian judge held that Internet music-file-sharing services were legal. These cases should have interesting repercussions, particularly if the Parliaments of those countries turn out to be less easily bought than their American counterpart [which, after all, can always salve its conscience by claiming that it was promoting domestic industry]. Surely there is no question of just abandoning the sale of DVDs to Frenchmen!

 

[PeterTHX]

Well, it is a primarily domestic industry and quite lucrative. It does affect the American economy to a degree (electronic stores, DVD sales & rentals, HDTVs, HTPCs, etc).

It's arguable the countries that allow this have little to nothing to lose.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Despite the very popular notion in the US that the world ends where the american borders do, I feel the need to point out that this is a theory much like the old theory of the world being flat... it's not really true, you know.

There is a great deal of content being produced outside the US borders; music, movies and other copyrighted material is produced all around the world.

What differs is the fact that most of the rest of the world crazily enough seems to find something morally objectionable about throwing teenagers or very young adults in jail with multi-year felony convictions because they downloaded just one pirated copy of just one movie before that movie was released on DVD... something that new laws in the US make quite possible now and most likely inevitable sooner or later considering how litigatious the RIAA/MPAA/BSA are.

When a government starts throwing private citizens in jail (or even makes it legally possible) basically just to safeguard the profits of media corporations, something is very wrong.

 

[Marko Berg]

Even if every movie released in France on DVD was American, French corporations and that country's economy would suffer a setback if copy-protected releases were categorically prohibited. Home video distributors, DVD production/authoring companies, retailers, and others would all lose. American copyright holders that would refuse to license content to French distributors for fear of mass piracy would also would no longer receive royalties from French licensors of their content.

One more point I'd like to make regarding a media tax imposed on recordable discs and sometimes even computer hard drives in some European countries is that it basically punishes people that do not make copies of copyrighted works. If I burn DVDs of home movies, or burn computer files to a CD as backup in case there is a hard drive failure, music publishers and film distributors in other countries make money from that even though they aren't entitled to it. The media industry has basically been sanctioned by governments in several countries to benefit from something they never owned the copyright to, and yet they are crying robbery?

Although the tax is too small for me personally to get bothered about it (and it's even possible to legally avoid it by mail ordering cheaper media from another country within the EU), even the presence of such a tax does show what happens when legislators listen to narrowly presented arguments from the entertainment industry.

Yes, thanks to the tax private copying of published copyrighted works for personal use without the copyright owner's permission is legal, but it also punishes some people. And for how long will making copies for personal use be possible? Experience has shown taxes are seldom repealed, and once a decision to impose a new tax has been pushed through, it is not that difficult to raise an existing tax later.

Never mind copying entire copyrighted works, just e.g. using parts of a copyrighted work for academic study (what I believe is allowed under "fair use" in the US) could become impossible due to some draconian DRM measure, and still we pay taxes for a privilege now possible only in theory.

 

[PeterTHX]

In reality that is NOT happening.

Those arrested have dozens, hundreds of films & pirated material on their PCs. Even then it's rare.

Do you subscribe to the notion that young adults have no idea what they are doing is wrong?

 

[Jesse Blacklow]

One problem is that the government (and the industries to which it is now beholden) is going after the consumers of the illegal product, instead of going after the source. Even worse, there doesn't seem to be any movement for the companies to start policing themselves. Large amounts of pirated material, in particular the stuff that comes out before standard releases, are obtained and leaked by internal sources, not stolen outright. And unlike say, child pornography, there is such a disconnect between the top tiers and the end user that it's not easy to link the two in a legal sense. And since almost every other country has made American enforcement impotent overseas, they peevishly retaliate at those easy targets that are within reach, much like the pecking order at an elementary school.

Another problem is that the industries now assume the consumer to be a criminal, and are willing to "break" the equipment that is supposed to be able to play their titles in order to punish their audience for something that they may not have done (see also: closing the analog hole, the Broadcast Flag). Even better, their technologies don't suffer. Instead, the consumer electronics industry is forced to take the hit. If you're J6P, and you just bought that HDTV, but the salesdrone doesn't mention it's component only, or non-HDCP, then you're SOL. You're not going to be pissed at the studios, youre pissed off at that your shiny new TV isn't working as advertised. I see this a lot with folks who didn't realize all the extra equipment they'd need for HD or even just surround sound, never mind the time and effort to set it all up. Not suprisingly, the CEA and Consumer's Union are pretty upset with the studios, even if some of their memebers are under the same umbrella (i.e., Sony).

In the end, it's mainly a way for the entertainment (and to a smaller extent, software) industries to avoid taking responsibility for their own failures, whether they're artistic, technological, or financial. The steep drop-off in theater attendance is an example of how those chickens are coming home to roost.

 

[Marko Berg]

Youngsters should be educated on what is right and what is wrong. In my country it's OK to make your own copies but it's not OK to distribute, and people do need to be aware of this. There were a few high-profile arrests made here last December when sites allowing BitTorrent downloads and sharing of pirated material were shut down. Good riddance; those folks knew exactly that what they were doing was illegal.

Having said that, I don't support threatening underage children with serious legal action and trying to charge them thousands of dollars or euros for perceived losses. Common sense should be used, and if the entertainment industry is going to offer a "Clean Slate" programme, it would be nice if that wasn't just deception that actually means nothing as far as a person's legal status is concerned.