And Here We Go: Mozilla Felt Pressured Into Adopting DRM In HTML5

from the a-broken-system dept

We've written a few times about the unfortunate decision by the W3C to adopt DRM in HTML5 in an effort to keep Hollywood happy. While Tim Berners-Lee and others at W3C have tried to defend their reasons for doing so, they're all based on the faulty premise that somehow the internet needs Hollywood more than Hollywood needs the internet. The reverse is true, but Hollywood has convinced too many people of its own importance to the internet. Because of that -- along with the agreed-upon fact that today's plugin/extension system is a complete disaster from technological and security standpoints -- the W3C, pressured by a bunch of big companies, agreed to put DRM into the next generation of HTML (and don't buy their argument that it's not actually DRM -- the only purpose that Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) serves is to enable DRM).

Today there's a lot of discussion because Mozilla, makers of the popular (and open source) Firefox browser, have posted two separate blog posts about how they feel forced to adopt this DRM even though they hate basically everything about it. Mozilla's argument is not crazy. They're worried that by not adopting these standards, while all other browsers do, people will just shift to those other browsers. And beyond just losing market share, Mozilla has a point in noting that the way other browsers implement EME will be less secure than the way that Mozilla is doing it.

We have designed an implementation of the W3C EME specification that satisfies the requirements of the content industry while attempting to give users as much control and transparency as possible. Due to the architecture of the W3C EME specification we are forced to utilize a proprietary closed-source CDM as well. Mozilla selected Adobe to supply this CDM for Firefox because Adobe has contracts with major content providers that will allow Firefox to play restricted content via the Adobe CDM.

Firefox does not load this module directly. Instead, we wrap it into an open-source sandbox. In our implementation, the CDM will have no access to the user's hard drive or the network. Instead, the sandbox will provide the CDM only with communication mechanism with Firefox for receiving encrypted data and for displaying the results.

Traditionally, to implement node-locking DRM systems collect identifiable information about the user's device and will refuse to play back the content if the content or the CDM are moved to a different device.

By contrast, in Firefox the sandbox prohibits the CDM from fingerprinting the user's device. Instead, the CDM asks the sandbox to supply a per-device unique identifier. This sandbox-generated unique identifier allows the CDM to bind content to a single device as the content industry insists on, but it does so without revealing additional information about the user or the user's device. In addition, we vary this unique identifier per site (each site is presented a different device identifier) to make it more difficult to track users across sites with this identifier.

Mozilla is also making it opt-in -- so that everyone will have the choice to choose whether or not to activate the DRM implementation. Also, kudos to Mozilla for not taking the W3C path of pretending that EME isn't DRM. Mozilla is quite upfront that this is DRM and that they're uncomfortable with this. As Andreas Gal says:

we would much prefer a world and a Web without DRM...

But, Mozilla feels that users "need it to access content they want." Mitchell Baker similarly notes:

The new version of DRM uses the acronyms “EME” and “CDM.” At Mozilla we think this new implementation contains the same deep flaws as the old system. It doesn’t strike the correct balance between protecting individual people and protecting digital content. The content providers require that a key part of the system be closed source, something that goes against Mozilla’s fundamental approach.

Unfortunately, it appears that even though this is the case, Mozilla still believes that the internet needs Hollywood's locked up content more than Hollywood needs to adapt to the internet. That's too bad. Cory Doctorow has a very detailed discussion of why he thinks Mozilla made a mistake, while acknowledging all of the reasons why they did what they did. More importantly, he lists a number of additional things that Mozilla should do to improve the situation. I'll summarize those four things, because I agree wholeheartedly:

1. Protect security researchers: Thanks to the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, any security research into Adobe's DRM may be a form of infringement. As Cory notes, Mozilla should demand that Adobe issue a covenant not to sue security researchers or developers who find vulnerabilities.
2. Educate users: Teach everyone (including Hollywood, but mainly the public) why DRM is dangerous and harms security and privacy online. Personally, I'd add that Mozilla could also teach people why DRM is simply not necessary.
3. Research and publish the case for DRM: This goes back to the question of who really needs it. Hollywood thinks they do, but I don't think that's really true. As Cory says, Mozilla should look at the actual data to see if there truly is a use case for DRM.
4. Formulate and articulate a DRM policy: Basically don't make these kinds of decisions ad hoc -- but have a clear policy on how and when decisions like this get made.

For years, the music industry insisted it needed DRM, and folks like Apple catered to them -- and that actually just helped Apple have more power over the music industry. Finally, the music industry shed DRM and it had almost no impact. Today, the book industry has the same issue, demanding DRM... and basically handing market power to Amazon in providing that DRM. It's amazing that Hollywood still insists it needs DRM. It does not. Unfortunately, it by agreeing to implement DRM here, it means it will take much longer for Hollywood to learn this lesson.

Filed Under: drm, eme, firefox, hollywood, html5
Companies: mozilla

Hollywood Has Been Pressuring Australian Attorney General To Pressure ISPs Into Being Copyright Cops

from the because-of-course-they-are dept

For years, we followed the important iiNet case in Australia. Hollywood studios, which ran a group called AFACT in Australia, wanted to "set an example" of why ISPs should be liable for copyright infringement done on their networks, and deliberately chose iiNet to sue, believing the ISP was too small to mount a serious challenge. Instead, iiNet fought back strongly, making really strong points about how ridiculous it was to pin the blame on an ISP. The result was a complete victory for iiNet. It won at the district court, at the appeals court and finally at Australia's high court.

Of course, Hollywood (AFACT is Australian-in-name-only -- a Wikileaks State Department cable revealed it to be an operation wholly controlled by the MPAA in Hollywood) continued to freak out, leading the Australian government to hold "stakeholder" meetings between the entertainment industry and the ISPs (note: no public representatives, even though they're the real stakeholders), to try to broker an agreement to make ISPs act as copyright cops. Of course, because Hollywood's position is inherently ridiculous, the ISPs noted that it was like negotiating with a brick wall, and talks soon broke down. The ISPs made it clear that it was silly to blame them when Hollywood itself was to blame by not making works available.

But, of course, Hollywood never stops. AFACT rebranded as the Australian Screen Association, and apparently has been very busy pumping new Australian Attorney General George Brandis full of misleading information and pure propaganda. We recently noted that Brandis was supporting website blocking and three strikes like programs, despite them failing elsewhere. And, he's also come out against fair use, because, fuck the public, Hollywood is upset.

Josh Taylor over at ZDnet used the Freedom of Information Act to get emails from between Neil Gane -- the "contractor" who ran AFACT and now the Australian Screen Association -- and Brandis, showing an ongoing campaign in which Gane continued to push Brandis with a series of one-sided misleading emails about how anti-consumer programs in other countries were the way forward:

In nine emails from Gane to the Attorney-General's department secretary, Roger Wilkins, and first assistant secretary in the civil law division, Matt Minogue, sent between the election and this year, obtained by ZDNet under Freedom of Information, Gane appears to be providing education notices of his own to the department, offering insights into how copyright infringement is being dealt with in other countries.

In one email pointing out Canada's moves, he notes that the Canadian government was not buying into the notion that ISPs should be compensated for having to warn customers for downloading infringing content.

There are a number of other emails, including a few that regular Techdirt readers may find especially amusing, including one mocking the "vocal minority" who were complaining that draconian copyright enforcement on things like Game of Thrones downloading might have serious unintended consequences. Update: The "vocal minority" has responded.

Meanwhile, Brandis -- who has also been vehemently defending the NSA -- recently took a trip to the US, in part to explore issues around copyright. Did he meet with copyright scholars or other experts on these issues? Nope. Instead, he met with the director of the Center for Copyright Information, who runs the US's "six strikes" program. Brandis seems to have made up his mind, after being pushed on it by the MPAA, and with no respect at all to facts or reality.

All in all, Brandis appears to be only listening to one exceptionally biased party, even as a very long and thorough review process by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) found that fair use was important, and that copyright reform needed to be modernized to pay attention to the important rights and uses of the public. But apparently, that all gets thrown out the window because a Hollywood spokesperson has a direct email line to the Attorney General.

Filed Under: alrc, australia, copyright, fair use, george brandis, hollywood, lobbying, neil gane, three strikes
Companies: afact, australian screen association, iinet, mpaa

Hollywood Hires New Person To Make Same Old Mistakes In Fighting Against The Future

from the good-luck-with-that dept

A few weeks ago, a friend sent over a link to a website called CreativeFutures -- a Hollywood-created organization to (of course) push for anti-piracy efforts. What was really weird about it was that it seemed almost identical to a different such organization, called Creative America, which the same studios had used as a center piece in pushing SOPA, but which had gone quiet. The NY Times, however, has cleared up the mystery. Apparently, CreativeFutures is Creative America, with a new name and a new leader... who seems to be pulling out the same bad playbook on how to deal with innovative technologies that have changed the market for video. Here's a tip: any time you see someone insisting that "the answer" to dealing with widespread infringement is "more education," you know that you're dealing with someone who is either ignorant, or not particularly serious concerning the issue. And yet, here is CreativeFutures new boss, who the NY Times describes as "sassy," Ruth Vitale:

One idea — though now it is no more than that — is to build alliances with educational nonprofit groups that might enforce the notion that stealing an artist’s work online is just like lifting from a classmate’s desk.

“It’s as simple as this: One kid does a painting, and another kid comes up and puts his name on it,” Ms. Vitale said.

For decades, the industry has kept insisting that all people really needed was a bit of "education" and they would magically start shoveling money back down the same payment channels they used to. But, of course, that's never worked. Because it's never been an education issue. It's always been a service problem, in that the industry fails to make works available in a convenient way that consumers want. Yes, the industry has gotten better at this over the years, but they still make it way, way too difficult, and that's why there's infringement.

Second, of course, is if the education is focused on having someone else put a name on your work, well, that's plagiarism, not copyright infringement -- and there's a pretty big distinction there. And, here's the thing: people understand that difference inherently. Pretending that they don't -- as Ms. Vitale seems to do here -- is acting as if the general public is stupid. Pedantically talking down to the very public you want to support you, telling them they need to be educated, and then "educating" them with bullshit misleading analogies that have nothing to do with the actual situation and totally misdiagnose the issue... is not exactly a well thought-out strategy.

Perhaps, instead of throwing money away on bogus groups like the re-christened CreativeFutures, the movie industry would be better off, you know, letting innovators build better services instead of ones that are totally hamstrung and locked up in ways that are annoying and inconvenient to the public. But, if there's one thing we've learned in decades of watching the MPAA and RIAA do the wrong thing it's that, when given the choice between treating consumers as idiots and actually listening to them, they'll always choose the path where they treat customers as idiots.

Filed Under: copyright, education, hollywood, ruth vitale
Companies: creative america, creative futures, mpaa

Hollywood's Piracy Fears Turn Potentially Useful Product Into A $4,000 Brick

from the the-original-tin-foil-hat-brigade dept

Hollywood's inability to see any new technology as anything other than a piracy enabler continues to cripple potentially great products. David Pogue has a review of a "set top" box that has the potential (remember that word) to make your home movie viewing instant and seamless.

You feed it all your movies and music on disc: CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. The Cinema One copies each disc to its 4-terabyte hard drive. 25 minutes for a DVD; two hours for a Blu-ray.

And I mean it copies everything. Every deleted scene, director’s commentary, alternate ending. Every DVD extra. And it doesn’t touch the video — there’s no compression or anything; it copies every pixel of quality that’s on the disc.

Once these movies are stored on the drive, you can call them up instantly using the remote or the iPad app.

When you hit Play on the remote, the movie begins playing instantly.

Read that again. The movie begins playing. Not the FBI warning, not the MPAA screen, not the previews, not the DVD menu — the movie itself. You cannot imagine how delightful that is compared with what we’re used to now: Downloading or streaming movies is handy, but you don’t get anything like the quality of Blu-ray, and you generally don’t get any of the bonus features. And discs give you the quality and the extras but require you to sit there staring at stupid FBI and MPAA screens that you’re not allowed to skip. The Kaleidescape box offers the best of both worlds.

This convenience of not being told you're a thief by your purchased product comes at a price. One is the retail price, which is an astounding $4,000. The other is a tax (of sorts) borne out of Hollywood's stupidity and paranoia.

When you want to play a Blu-ray movie off the Cinema One, you have to hunt down the original disc you own, insert it into the Cinema One’s slot, and wait for it to load. You’re not playing the disc; you’re just confirming that you own it.

But you’re also losing 80 percent of the value of having a Cinema One! What happened to “any movie in your collection, instantly”?

That's Hollywood crippling a device to ensure the $4,000 product never lives up to its potential. This is what happens when execs see nothing in the technology but a new way to pirate movies. Instead of a seamless, instant experience, you're back in the position of hunting for the purchased discs you already "conveniently" stored on the hard drive. For whatever reason, you don't have to do this with regular DVDs. (Presumably because that market isn't where the money is anymore, although at one time, that ridiculous stipluation was forced on Kaleidescape by Hollywood lawyers -- and that's when the box ran about $10,000.)

You can also purchase movies through Kaleidescape, but at this point, the selection is woefully limited. For only $2, you can purchase what amounts to a digital license to play your purchased Blu-rays without having to load the original disc, but even that is hampered by a lack of upstream licensing.

That’d be a reasonably priced solution if it were available for any Blu-ray movie you own. But it’s not. In fact, it’s available for relatively few movies: only those from Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Kaleidescape says it’s working on reaching similar deals with other movie companies, but for now, it’s only a fractional solution.

So, the studios are more than happy to cripple the device, but not so interested in providing affordable licensing of their productions. It's certainly had time to work these details out. It's been fighting Kaleidescape since 2004, tenanciously combating every technological advance the company made. Along the way, it forced the company to require the insertion of every disc before playing (including regular DVDs) and dragged it to court on multiple occasions to claim its "circumvention" of disc-based copyright protection was infringement (even if people were "burning" movies they owned to the drive).

Now, Hollywood has been forced to accept this device, nearly a decade since it first began its attack. The number of licensed movies available for download barely clears 2,000 titles. There may be more to come, but it seems unlikely to be fully embraced by the same studios who spent 10 years fighting it. And who's to say that any licenses obtained won't be rescinded in the future, punching holes in your digital collection and putting you back in the position of hunting down Blu-ray discs you stashed away after burning them to Kaleidescape's drive? It's not as though that sort of "you don't really own your digital purchases" bullshit has never occurred before.

As Pogue points out, the studios' tampering makes this product almost completely useless.

But that copy-protection business is going to kill a lot of potential sales. It’s like having a TiVo that can’t record anything on a timer, or hiring a tax preparer who hands you the blank 1040 form and a pen. It just defeats the purpose.

That's copyright protection for you. All the promise in the world negated by fearful Hollywood execs who see pirates hiding under every new technological advance.

Filed Under: blu ray, copyright, david pogue, drm, dvd jukebox, hollywood
Companies: kaleidescape, mpaa

When Will The Motion Picture Academy Take Responsibility For All That Piracy The Oscars Create?

from the questions dept

For the past few years, Hollywood and its friends have been very, very focused on trying to blame Google for their own failure to adapt to a changing business environment. This usually takes the form of ridiculous assertions about how Google can magically stop unauthorized access to copyrighted materials, combined with totally specious studies that try (and totally fail) to link Google to an increase in infringement. The RIAA and MPAA then insist that "something must be done" with that "something" usually being Google magically changing its search results and/or special laws that would make Google and other intermediaries somehow legally liable for such infringement. The key question that we see over and over again from the RIAA and MPAA is something along the lines of "when will Google 'take responsibility'?" for all that infringement.

However, with the not so surprising news that movies winning Oscar awards this past weekend saw a massive uptick in unauthorized access, a simple question needs to be asked: Why won't the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars, step up and take responsibility for its award show is clearly contributing to a massive uptick in infringement?

Perhaps it's not much of a surprise, but the day after the Oscar award ceremony the winning films are in high demand among pirates. The number of people sharing "12 Years A Slave" via BitTorrent tripled, and the number of "Gravity" downloads more than doubled.

With 7 Oscars Gravity was the big winner at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening. However, the Oscar for the best motion picture went to 12 years a Slave.

Obviously, I'm joking about my question above, but if the MPAAs of the world are going to run around blaming Google when the link to infringement there is tenuous at best, then shouldn't they be much more concerned with something like the Oscars, where the link between the event and infringement is so much more pronounced?

Of course, the proper response to both issues is that none of this matters if the movie studios put in place better business models that allowed them to capture revenue from the interest in those films, in a manner that viewers would most like, rather than leaving it open to alternative paths. But, apparently that's too difficult.

Filed Under: film, hollywood, motion picture academy, oscars, piracy

Hollywood Screenwriters Worry About Aggressive Copyright Enforcement And Threats To An Open Internet

from the good-for-them dept

The Writers Guild of America West has been quite forward looking for a while. They were a surprise early voice against SOPA, despite representing thousands of Hollywood screenwriters, who you might think would fall in line with the likes of the MPAA. But, just as they were worried about SOPA, they continue to worry about drifts towards copyright maximalism. Like many individuals and organizations, the WGAW sent in comments on the recent "green paper" concerning copyright reform from the USPTO.

The letter opens up by talking about just how much their members rely on copyright to make a living, and how important copyright is -- but then highlights where copyright law has gone too far, and how it risks harming an open internet. Furthermore, the WGAW rightly worries about certain attempts to expand copyright law and enforcement that would further harm the open internet. While this may seem surprising, the reality is that the WGAW recognizes it needs to represent all of its members, and the majority of members have found much greater opportunities by being able to work outside the major Hollywood gatekeepers. They recognizes that tools like YouTube and BitTorrent are actually really useful, rather than dangerous.

Front and center, the letter takes on the ridiculousness of statutory damages -- and not just how it creates problems for the everyday user, but how it has harmed innovation:

While penalties for copyright infringement are an important tool for deterring piracy, the massive statutory damages currently allowed under copyright law have become unmoored from the actual damages caused by copyright infringement. Plaintiff’s demands in some cases have reached hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars without any evidence of the real magnitude of harm. Viacom’s $1 billion suit against YouTube has dragged on for six years and has cost the streaming site over $100 million in legal fees. High statutory penalties are not only often unreasonable but unpayable. Recently, in its case against the torrent site isoHunt, the MPAA requested nearly $600 million in statutory damages despite admitting that $5 million at most would be enough to bankrupt the defendants. Whether a statutory penalty bankrupts infringers once or a hundred times over probably has little additional deterrent effect. In fact, empirical research by economists suggests that lawsuits do not increase legal sales because infringers’ willingness to pay is generally lower than the market price. Rather, the threat of such large damages and the cost of litigation may deter further investment in web sites that serve as venues for independent production and allow users to upload content without gatekeeper permission for fear of liability. Such venues are critical to the promotion of independent content and are only available online because television and film are controlled by a handful of media companies who decide what content consumers have access to. We suggest further study of the effectiveness of statutory damages in protecting copyright.

The letter also pushes back on the idea of making streaming a felony, as has been pushed for a few years now:

It is important to assess the role of statutory damages in limiting copyright infringement particularly because of the Green Paper’s proposal to make streaming unauthorized works a felony. The extension of a policy that may not actually limit piracy or result in recouped monies to content creators has troubling implications for artistic expression. A broad interpretation of such a law could chill innovation through the use of copyrighted works in remixes, cover versions of songs and fair use. For example, artists like Justin Bieber have used YouTube videos of themselves singing covers as a way to gain exposure. Allowing felony charges for such activities could have a chilling effect on artists who use such independent forums an

While the WGAW is open to changes in the notice and takedown procedure, they (unlike many gatekeepers and maximalists) recognize just how valuable the DMCA's safe harbors have been towards innovation, and worry about what will happen if they're weakened:

Rather, the notice and takedown system in conjunction with the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA strike a balance between the interests of copyright owners and ISPs and sites that allow users to upload content without permission. It has allowed sites like YouTube, where artists may distribute content without permission, to flourish while providing copyright owners a method for removing their own content from such sites. The WGAW believes that efforts should be made to improve this system, both for copyright owners and online sites and services, rather than more drastic measures that would fundamentally alter the nature of the Internet by requiring affirmative policing of content. We echo the comments made by the Future of Music Coalition regarding The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA moved too far from the balance struck by the DMCA and would have had significant implications for free speech, due process and a competitive online market.

Furthermore, they rightly point out that if we're changing the notice and takedown system, it's more important to fix how it deals with "mistaken or abusive notices that target fair use." It's great to see the WGAW recognize that creators benefit tremendously from fair use as well -- rather than the way some in the creative community still seem to think that fair use is something that harms them. It's not. It's something that is a key part of creativity today.

Another interesting tidbit in the letter is the concern the WGAW expresses towards "voluntary agreements" like the infamous "six strikes" plan that a bunch of major ISPs agreed to with the MPAA and RIAA. As the WGAW notes, this can have serious consequences for the internet and its users -- taking away due process and putting the burden on the accused.

In recent years, the enforcement of copyright has expanded to include voluntary agreements such as the Copyright Alert System (CAS) between major media companies and Internet Service Providers. While these agreements have yet to prove their effectiveness in limiting copyright infringement, they have raised concerns regarding their lack of consumer protections. For example, the CAS appeals process places the burden of proof on alleged infringers and requires the payment of a fee to the arbitrator, although the fee is refundable if the challenge is upheld. Several other aspects of the process are problematic: appeals are not allowed until the mitigation stage, where Internet throttling or landing pages are implemented, and there is no further appeal after a review.

Similarly, the voluntary ad network agreement encourages networks to suspend a website until verifying that it is non-infringing; once again placing the burden of proof on accused infringers. Private agreements must not become a way of circumventing due process when an essential forum for free speech and commerce is at stake. If the government is going to endorse private agreements it should also promote transparency and comprehensive stakeholder participation in these initiatives.

Of course, nearly every argument the WGAW makes equally applies to pretty much any other content creator as well. These days, nearly all of them really do rely on an open and free internet, the innovations the internet has allowed, and the ability to more efficiently create, promote, connect, share, find fans and sell. And yet... many coming out of the old industry have this weird knee-jerk reaction against the internet, as if it's an "us vs. them" thing. We've been saying for quite some time that the right way to deal with copyright policy is to realize that content creators, innovators and the public actually have most of their interests aligned. It's not a zero sum game. It's great to see that the WGAW continues to get this, even if many other "Hollywood" organizations are still confused about it.

Filed Under: copyright, hollywood, open internet, screenwriters
Companies: writers guild of america west

Hollywood Needs The Internet More Than The Internet Needs Hollywood... So Why Is The W3C Pretending Otherwise?

from the get-on-with-it dept

Last week, we wrote about the MPAA joining the W3C almost certainly as part of its ongoing effort to push for DRM to be built into HTML5. Cory Doctorow has a beautifully titled blog post about all of this, saying that "we are Huxleying ourselves into the full Orwell." It's a great way to think about it, and Cory's quite pessimistic about the outcome:

Try as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that 2014 is the year we lose the Web. The W3C push for DRM in all browsers is going to ensure that all interfaces built in HTML5 (which will be pretty much everything) will be opaque to users, and it will be illegal to report on security flaws in them (because reporting a security flaw in DRM exposes you to risk of prosecution for making a circumvention device), so they will be riddled with holes that creeps, RATters, spooks, authoritarians and crooks will be able to use to take over your computer and fuck you in every possible way.

While I am quite frequently in agreement with Cory, I'm at least marginally more optimistic than he is about the eventual result here. Putting DRM into HTML is monumentally stupid, and he's right that it will create massive security and legal liabilities for almost everyone. But the history of DRM has shown, over and over again, that it gets broken to bits in minutes once released, and even if there is legal liability involved in such things, it always happens. It will happen again here, and there will be "patches" made pretty quickly. It will be a tremendous waste of resources on pretty much everyone's part, but I'm not convinced that it will be effective in making things that much more unsafe.

That said, the larger point that Cory raises reminds me of the key point that I'm still at a loss to understand here. Why the W3C and others who support this proposal seem to be so willing to kowtow to Hollywood on this. Yes, as Cory explains, it's really Netflix driving the bus here, but it's the Hollywood studios that are out there telling Netflix they need DRM:

And it’s basically all being driven by Netflix. Everyone in the browser world is convinced that not supporting Netflix will lead to total marginalization, and Netflix demands that computers be designed to keep secrets from, and disobey, their owners (so that you can’t save streams to disk in the clear).

But here's the thing: the internet wasn't built to be the next broadcast medium for big Hollywood blockbusters. It was built as a computing and communications platform. That's what made it special and it's why so many people have flocked to it. It's why it's "the internet." Hollywood came late to the party and has been trying to redesign the web in its own image ever since -- and that means locking it down so it's more about a broadcasting model, in which the "professionals" in Hollywood get to determine what you, the peons, get to do.

But there's a reason Hollywood so desperately wants to control the internet: because all the people are here. And that's an important point. Hollywood (and, by extension, Netflix) need the internet much more than the internet needs Hollywood. Sure, the Hollywood folks like to claim that the reason the internet is so popular is because of professional content, but there's little to no evidence to support that. Yes, people like to have access to that content, but it's never been the driving force for why people want to be online.

And we've seen this game before. The record labels demanded DRM from online music stores for years... until they realized that this was a complete waste of time and money for no benefit. And they finally agreed to what the public wanted: no DRM. There's no reason for the W3C to make this same mistake. The studios and Netflix can resist all they want. They can stick with their proprietary Silverlight players no matter how annoying and technologically backwards they might be. But, in the end, they'll come around to better, more open technologies like HTML5 because that's where the people are and that's what the people want.

So, the W3C has a serious choice to make here, and it's been betting on the wrong horse. Sure, Netflix will resist HTML5 for a while. Because that's what it feels it needs to do. But it won't last. Because it can't. History has shown over and over again that companies will eventually follow the will of the public and it will happen again here. There's no reason to go through a stupid, shortsighted and wasteful process of DRMing everything, only to see it cracked and broken within hours of being launched. Just drop the DRM, focus on building a system that better provides what the public wants... and Hollywood and Netflix will get there eventually as well.

Filed Under: drm, hollywood, html 5, internet, movies
Companies: mpaa, netflix, w3c

Oh Look, Hollywood Had Yet Another Record Year At The Box Office

from the but-piracy-is-killing-the-industry dept

It seems that we report something like this each and every year, but once again, it looks like Hollywood has set a record at the box office, even as it continues to whine pitifully about how "piracy" is destroying its business.

The trick apparently -- and I know, this is crazy -- is to Make Good Movies. Shocking, I know.

"Going down the list of studios, they all had great movies that kept people coming back to the theaters all year long," said Nikki Rocco, president of distribution at Universal

What a concept.

Of course, some will argue that the box office is only a part of the industry's revenue -- and that's absolutely true. Of course, to argue about declines in home video revenue is pretty disingenuous since the industry fought incredibly hard to block that revenue stream from ever existing. Besides, as with the box office, we're seeing that when studios (gasp!) produce good content and make it easy and convenient to watch at home for a reasonable price and without painful restrictions, audiences seem to jump on board.

It's almost as if... the problem has never been "piracy" but the fact that the studios have spent years resisting providing consumers with good alternatives...

Filed Under: box office, hollywood, movies

Hollywood Studio Bosses Ask Obama To Help Improve Relationship With Silicon Valley... While Pressing TPP That Will Harm Silicon Valley

from the yeah,-so-that-first-bit... dept

Just before Thanksgiving, it appears that President Obama got to spend some time with the heads of the various major film studios, during which they made two key requests:

1. Help them improve their relationship with the tech industry.
2. Push forward with the various maximalist copyright proposals found in the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) agreement.

Apparently, these studio bosses don't realize that point number two is a big part of the reason why they're having trouble with point number one. Of course, the reality is they don't want "better relationships" with Silicon Valley, they want Silicon Valley to do exactly what they want, which is to try to kill off or block innovations that challenge their legacy business models, even if they provide better services to artists and the public alike. Furthermore, pushing bogus concepts like the maximalist copyright rules that the US has been seeking in the TPP agreement -- basically as a way to backdoor in much of their legal agenda -- is hardly the way to get Silicon Valley to be more friendly with Hollywood. It's just their way of trying to screw over the very industry that keeps providing them with the innovations that they need to adapt and to provide better services to consumers.

Filed Under: barack obama, copyright, hollywood, silicon valley, tpp

When Will Hollywood Stop Blaming Everyone Else And Help Itself?

from the stop-blaming-others dept

Just last month, we talked about two studies released by Hollywood. The first was one from the MPAA itself, which (as happens all too often) focused heavily on blaming Google for its supposed problems in monetizing the online world. It used some highly questionable methodology to suggest that people doing searches ended up downloading unauthorized flicks. This was released in coordination with a Congressional hearing on copyright, in which the message pushed by the MPAA's sister organization, the RIAA, was "what we really need is for Google to help us return to our former glory." Oddly, that same day, NBC Universal released the second version of its own "piracy" study, which aimed to show how "big" the problem was. However, as we noted with both this and the original version of that study, when you look at the data, it shows pretty clearly that the "problem" is one that Hollywood has made for itself. That is, when good, convenient and reasonably priced offerings hit the market, an awful lot of video watching moved to those authorized offerings. It's when those offerings were missing entirely that the amount of unauthorized access seemed to shoot up.

Inspired, in part, by the thinking about these studies and claims, Jerry Brito from the Mercatus Center teamed up with Eli Dourado and Matt Sherman to launch a new site called piracydata.org, which attempts to collect (and visualize and -- most importantly -- make available) data that shows whether or not the most "pirated" works each week are available for legal access. It's still at a small sample size so far, but the initial results don't speak well to Hollywood's claims that it's adapted to the digital era. The MPAA's attempt to talk its way out of the hole it's dug itself is kind of funny. Basically it's a "hey, squirrel!" response.

The Walking Dead was pirated 500,000 times within 16 hours despite the fact that it is available to stream for free for the next 27 days on AMC's website and distributed in 125 countries around the world the day after it aired. Our industry is working hard to bring content to audiences when they want it, where they want it, but content theft is a complex problem that requires comprehensive, voluntary solutions from all stakeholders involved.

Now, if you're not the MPAA and so tied up and confused by unauthorized access, you might look at that information and realize that putting it on AMC's website was probably the mistake. That's not where people look for stuff these days. Yes, they made it free, but they didn't make it convenient, meaning they didn't put it in a form that some portion of consumers want, and watching it directly on AMC's website appears to take a large group out of their natural flow. That's something that Hollywood could learn from, but it never does. It just points the blame finger.

However, the data continues to be fairly overwhelming that the "piracy problem" is a problem of Hollywood's own making. It could solve it if it wanted to, by focusing on making more content more widely available in more convenient ways and prices. Yet, instead, it wants to blame everyone else and order them around to "fix" a problem of it's own making.

Filed Under: authorized access, availability, convenience, copyright, hollywood, infringement, movies, piracy