Tag: Analog Hole

Consumer rights advocates and media companies have been fighting over digital rights management (DRM) software for many years now. In the age of the closing digital media store, the negative effects of DRM are more apparent than ever before.

Just a few days ago Yahoo! announced it would be closing its music store, taking the authentication server for its DRM offline in September. This will leave its users without access to the content they believed they bought once they: switch computers, alter their operating system, or try to copy their Yahoo! store music to an MP3 player. Luckily for Yahoo! customers the company has said it will compensate them for music they bought.

We just produced a two-minute video on selectable output control, entitled “Selectable Output Control: How the MPAA wants to break your TV (again)”. It’s a quick summary of what SOC is and its potential effect on home entertainment devices.

Check it out on YouTube.

In last week’s post, I discussed the MPAA’s petition for waiver of the FCC’s ban on selectable output control (SOC).

At the end, I suggested that one possible outcome is that a content provider could shut down ALL your existing standardized output plugs, forcing you to buy a new TV, DVD player, and DVR with a special “MPAA-approved” connector plug in order to view their content.

To some people, it might have sounded like FUD, but this time the truth comes a little close for comfort.

Hot on the heels of the MPAA’s petition for waiver of the selectable output controls order by the FCC comes… movie theater owners? (PDF)

Right. They’re worried that streaming feature films direct to homes sooner than ever (but still one to two months after an exclusive theater release) could spell “the destruction of neighborhood movie theaters across the country” and “have a devastating effect on… consumers of motion pictures”. Them’s fightin’ words, Billy Joe!

On May 9, the MPAA filed a petition to waive the FCC’s ruling against selectable output control (SOC) (PDF). The MPAA and its studio constituents seek to allow multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) — that is, cable companies — the power to turn off the digital and analog outputs on your devices, as they choose. This includes not only cable boxes, but also anything connected to your cable signal, such as your Tivo, your Slingbox, or even a TV using CableCARD.

The MPAA and its studio constituents are interested in releasing theatrical releases to home viewers earlier than ever, possibly because box office receipts are growing at a slower rate than in the past decade. Before, release windows for video-on-demand and pay-per-view became available approximately five months after the theatrical release.

Yesterday, the Motion Picture Association of America admitted something that many of us had suspected all along – an MPAA-funded study showing that 44% of the industry’s losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students using campus networks was overstated by a factor of 3. The MPAA now says that only 15% of its losses come from campus activity. Hollywood has been using that larger number to push for legislation, now pending in the House of Representatives, which would require colleges and universities to filter their networks for copyright infringement.

Today’s article in the Financial Times titled Studios push anti-piracy rules on Apple reports that the studios are pushing for tighter copy-controls on Apple’s iTunes movie distributions. They write:

After months of discussion, a sticking point has emerged over the studios’ demand that Apple limit the number of devices that can use a film downloaded from iTunes.

And in the very next paragraph, FT.com states that the studios want to avoid piracy—demanding that Apple introduce a new distribution model for movies.

As a bit of background, currently, music downloaded from the iTunes store can be copied to at most five authorized computers (computers all purchasing music with the same iTunes account), synchronized with an unlimited number of iPods, shared via streaming with five other computers on the same network within 24 hours, and the same playlist of tracks can be burned seven times to a standard CD format and ripped to remove any of these copy restrictions. Video bought from the iTunes store, on the other hand, cannot be streamed to other computers, nor can it be burned to a standard physical media to be played in a DVD player or other digital device. The point is, even though music is fairly locked down via the iTunes service, control over video is already considerably more restrictive.

The Digital Freedom Campaign was launched today, and I was delighted to join my colleagues from the Consumer Electronics Association, the Media Access Project, Computer and Communications Industry Association and The Electronic Frontier Foundation at a press conference to talk about the campaign. My statement is here.

The purpose of the campaign is to build grassroots support for copyright laws that protect, rather than limit, creativity, innovation, free speech and competition. While attempts by the content industry to strengthen copyright further through increased penalties, government technology mandates and lawsuits is nothing new, the past several months have seen perhaps the greatest onslaught of legislation and litigation since Public Knowledge was founded five years ago. You can read about those initiatives here, here and here. These efforts have been particularly irksome because the industry won the Grokster case at the Supreme Court (and just recently at the district court), has been successful in its lawsuits against individuals, got Congress to pass the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which gives the industry special protection for “pre-release” works, and has entered into agreements with ISPs to pass on warning notices to individuals they believe to be engaged in illegal file sharing. So to paraphrase the immortal words of Howard Beale - We’re as mad as hell and we are not going to take it any more.

I just returned from three days in the Bay area, and the highlight of my trip was getting a tour of, and giving a policy talk at, the Google campus in Mountain View. It was everything you may have heard about, and more - terrific free food, a top of the line health club, water treadmills, Segways, scooters, even washers and dryers, complete with free detergent and fabric softener. While these amenities were remarkable, I was more struck by the touches of whimsy - each conference room named after a foreign city (I had a meeting in the Bangui conference room - anyone know where that is?), massage chairs in the waiting rooms, and a “mouse” made from a basket, carefully placed in a stairwell to look like a rodent had taken up residence. Many thanks to Google Policy Analyst Rishi Jaitly for his hospitality.

But the policy talk, entitled “From Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley: Copyright, IP Law and Innovation was serious, as was the meeting I had beforehand with several of Google’s top product lawyers (old friends Daphne Keller and Glenn Otis Brown), as well as its top copyright lawyer (and new friend), Alex MacGillivray. With its recent $1.65 billion purchase of You Tube, copyright law and the prospect of future litigation weighed heavily on the Googler’s minds. And well it should, since Universal Music just announced that it was bringing lawsuits against two other video sharing sites, Grouper.com and Bolt.com. And even though You Tube has licensing agreements with several of the large music companies, those agreements don’t cover Hollywood, or people like video journalist Robert Tur, who is claiming that You Tube “induces” copyright infringement. Moreover, to the extent that those licensing agreements include uses of copyrighted works that could be considered fair use, there is concern about setting a precedent that presumes that such uses need to be licensed. Another concern is that once the content companies get their feet in You Tube’s door, that they will demand design control and other concessions regardless of the value they receive from the promotion that You Tube and its brethren provide.

Last Friday I had the privilege of being on a Telecommunications Policy Research Conference panel with Yochai Benkler to discuss his new book, “The Wealth of Networks.” If you haven’t yet heard, PK will be honoring Benkler, Jessica Litman and the Krikorian Brothers at its IP3 Awards Ceremony on October 19. The book discusses the sea change in markets, individual freedom and in democratic discourse brought about by digital networks and the willingness of individuals to engage in collaborative projects (or “peer production”) with little or no financial incentive. Benkler discusses the political economics that drive these collaborations, and also the policy threats that seek to derail them. I was proud to see Public Knowledge mentioned prominently in the policy chapter.

Despite my reservations about reading long books on topics related to my work, I found the book extremely accessible, and unlike many other books in the field, optimistic about the future of media. That optimism was not unbounded, however. Benkler does not seek to set up the Internet as utopian, but he does argue that compared to the top down, centralized and closed media that we have been subjected to for centuries, the freedom that the Internet provides for everyone to speak and be heard is indeed revolutionary.