Public Knowledge Points Out MPAA's Lies On Why It Wants To Break Your TV
from the nice-work dept
For quite some time now, the MPAA has been asking the FCC for permission to break your TV, so you won't be able to record certain movies shown on TV. Specifically, it wants to be allowed to use something called "Selectable Output Control" to tell DVRs that they can't record a show. It's basically the whole "broadcast flag" concept all over again. The MPAA's argument for why it needs this makes no sense at all. It basically makes two arguments, neither of which are true. The first is that they need this in order to be able to put movies on TV earlier. This is not true. There's nothing stopping the studios from putting movies on TV earlier, other than a misguided fear that people will "pirate them." And that's the second problem: even the industry admits that the movies they'd release on TV are already pirated and available on file sharing networks, so it's not like having this would stop that. The movies will still get out there. SOC won't stop piracy at all -- but it will piss off a ton of people who bought a DVR expecting to be able to record what they want to watch.Consumer rights group Public Knowledge, thankfully, has now sent a letterexplaining all of this to the FCC:
"The MPAA has submitted no proof that grant of the waiver will serve the public interest at all. To the contrary, what proof exists in the record shows that the 'problem' of a longer window for release of movies to MVPDs than for release on DVDs is a business decision made by MPAA's members. Rather than shed crocodile tears for the poor shut-ins and busy parents who must either subscribe to NETFLIX to get the earlier window or wait a whole thirty days, MPAA's members could simply negotiate a shorter release window."Hopefully the FCC listens.
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Filed Under: drm, dvr, mpaa, selectable output control, soc
Companies: mpaa, public knowledge
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Dark Helmet mistake or inflammatory language?
"For quite some time now, the MPAA has been asking the FCC for permission to break your TV, so you won't be able to record certain movies shown on TV."
Break my TV? If there affecting anything, it sounds like my DVR, no? And even then, wouldn't this only work if the DVR providers incorporate firmware to that will recognize this selectable output control? Otherwise, why wouldn't the DVR just ignore whatever signal they're sending?
Or do I just need a crash course on how this SOC technology actually works?
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Re: Dark Helmet mistake or inflammatory language?
The set top, DVR, computer all have various output formats. Coax, Component, VGA, HDMI.
What the MPAA is asking for is the right to determine which outputs you are allowed to see. For 'in demand' movies, they would let you only record over the lower quality outputs, if at all.
Other requests the MPAA has made in the past are trying to close the 'analog hole'. To bar recording at all on these outputs and only let recording happen on 'approved' digital connections. Meaning the 'recorder' would follow the show's setting to whether it would be recorded or not.
Imagine if Ford wanted to determine what speed you could drive on certain roads? no warning, just makes your Mustang start working like a Pinto.
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Re: Dark Helmet mistake or inflammatory language?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/movie-studios-again-demand-hdtv-disabling-pow ers-from-fcc.ars
It says:
"The side effect," warns the consumer group Public Knowledge in an educational video it has put out on this question, "is that SOC would break all eleven million HDTVs in the US that don't have digital input. In essence, all the MPAA wants is to control when and how you watch the stuff you've already paid for."
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Think about the children! THE POOR CHILDREN!
Will 30 days kill the public? Will the world end because a shut in waits 30 days longer to see a movie?
What a lame concept, I hope that the FCC totally ignores this mindless commentary.
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This is just another attempt by intellectual property maximists to come up with any excuse, no matter how false or lame, to serve their own interests at public expense. This has been demonstrated here on techdirt many many times. Intellectual property maximists can't stop contradicting themselves and they keep on making up logically and factually false arguments with zero evidence to promote their position.
How about this as a response. THE PUBLIC DOESN'T CARE IF THEY DON'T PUT MOVIES ON T.V. EARLIER. If it means not breaking our technology then fine, put them on T.V. later, like your currently allegedly do.
But the real reason for this is to force people to watch commercials instead of forwarding them.
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Analog protection is already here.
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Re: Analog protection is already here.
It's a shame that people have to buy a house and move in order tho change their cable provider.
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You're being naive. All DirecTV has to do is "deauthorize" your current receiver and require you to buy one with encrypted digital outputs. Your current DVR's will become useless.
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People have zero chance..
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Copyright Creationists
There seem to be some interesting parallels between copyright maximalists and those who refuse to accept biological evolution:
• They don’t believe that business models, and even the concept of copyright itself, can change over time, and furthermore, given enough time, they can undergo essentially arbitrary change.
• They don’t believe that human history goes back a lot further than the beginnings of copyright law.
• They like to claim a “moral” basis for their beliefs, but when probed further, the documents that they refer to are of dubious validity.
Any others anyone can think of?
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Re: Copyright Creationists
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Re: Re: Re: Copyright Creationists
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...polishing the brass on the Titanic...
> intellectual property maximists who cause so many problems
> to our specie.
Natural selection is already starting to do that despite
the fact that they are in a good position to try and short
circuit natural selection entirely. The meteor has already
slammed into their world and they are too busy trying to
live in the past to bother adapting.
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Re: ...polishing the brass on the Titanic...
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Re: Copyright Creationists
Actually I'm Christian...
And who are you?
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Re: Re: Copyright Creationists
http://forums.christianity.com/m_4498976/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm#4498976
h ttp://forums.christianity.com/m_3777330/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm#3777330
http://forums.christianity.co m/m_3795161/mpage_1/key_/tm.htm#3795161
http://forums.christianity.com/Bandwidth_too_expensive_ in_the_U%25S/m_4371765/mpage_1/tm.htm#1
http://forums.christianity.com/m_4484545/mpage_1/key_/tm. htm#4484545
I'm Christian but this notion that Christianity (or religion in general, I highly doubt Muslim nations are pro intellectual property for instance) somehow supports the current broken intellectual property system that's designed to exploit the public is nonsense.
If anything I would argue, from a Christian perspective, that everything belongs to God, all intellectual property is God's intellectual property (we didn't think of it first and the brain that God gave us to think of things comes from God), and as such it doesn't belong to anyone (besides God) and everyone should be allowed to freely use what God has given us.
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Re: Copyright Creationists
Bettawrekonize wrote:
On what basis? Does it say this in your Christian Bible somewhere?
Yes we did think of it first. There is nothing in the Christian Bible about “intellectual property”—this is an idea invented by humans, not by any god.
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Re: Re: Copyright Creationists
I'm Christian and I believe in evolution. I only mention this because I don't want people to get the idea that all Christians reject evolution or science.
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Welcome to the grand 'ol United States of Corporate America!
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Re:
http://voxsapienti.blogspot.com/2007/05/individualism-in-american-culture.html
F or example, in America most people don't know their neighbors. In other countries EVERYBODY pretty much knows EVERYBODY ELSE within a community. This makes it easier for people to gather together, discuss political issues and what needs to be changed, and act uniformly for the public interest against governments and corporations and anyone trying to impose ridiculous laws on the public.
Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that corporations in America have pushed for an individualistic culture knowing very well that such a culture harvests a system of corruption to their advantage. But I find this hard to believe, why can they easily do it in America and not other nations?
Another possible cause could be that America was mostly a sparsely populated area before the Europeans migrated here and when many people from different areas suddenly migrated to America, many of whom probably have conflicts with the people of other countries and many of whom probably don't know each other, they pretty much didn't bother to form communities. Also, there were initially so many natural resources in America that people were too busy grabbing and exploiting them and figuring out get rich schemes to form communities. While everything seemed to work out at first, perhaps partly because whenever someone wanted more resources they could just move to unoccupied areas, eventually our lack of a community oriented culture caught up with us and now we are paying the price. Also, when the Europeans first came to America they acted more uniformly since they were all of a more similar culture and whatnot. Perhaps as more diverse people later on migrated to America the relative community within neighborhoods and such shrank. America is still a young nation and maybe it just hasn't had enough time to form a more sophisticated community oriented culture like other nations. However, I also find this one hard to believe as well, other countries are more interconnected with each other and people don't have oceans to overcome for people in one nation to meet in another (ie: in Europe). You can go to Europe and different people speak many many different languages within one location even and they seem to still have a more community oriented culture. There are many other problems with my above synopsis as well.
Another possibility could be that in America people are very work oriented relative to other nations (which begs the question, why have we developed such a work oriented culture relative to other nations?) For instance, we tend to work more hours and often times a husband and a wife both work. In other nations people tend to start their careers and have a family at an older age than in America. Perhaps the time that we spend working takes away from our ability to form relationships with one another and to form a community.
Any other thoughts?
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Then again one could argue a lot of corruption exists in Mexico. On the other hand I doubt so much corruption existed before the Europeans migrated here. So perhaps, with the more recent up rise in population from what was previously a very scarcely populated area, we just haven't yet developed a culture sophisticated enough to uniformly combat the inherent corruption that government and special interest groups try to impose on the people.
Then again, there is a lot of corruption that exists in underdeveloped nations and they've been around for quite some time as well. But many of those underdeveloped nations have been oppressed and/or are being influenced by other nations as well. It's really a lot more complicated than anything I've said in my post.
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Yeah, that human sacrifice stuff was just great, huh?
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Another problem with this argument is that in Japan they're also very work oriented yet they're a lot more community oriented than in America.
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Re: Re: Re:Arigato mr robato...
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The damage has already been done
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And the chickens will fly to the moon
ROLFMAO
Sorry, most likely they will do that.
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