EFF: Who controls your television? [LWN.net]

The EFF has published a report on the workings of the Digital Video Broadcasting project, which is creating television standards for much of the world outside of the Americas. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of DRM involved. "Consumers would never choose this future, so Hollywood will try to force it on them by regulatory fiat. DVB's imprimatur may put restrictive standards on the fast-track to becoming legally-enforced mandates, and existing laws already limit evasion of DRM even for lawful purposes. In effect, private DRM standards will trump national laws that have traditionally protected the public's interests and carefully circumscribed copyright holders' rights."

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EFF: Who controls your television?

Posted Mar 14, 2007 0:35 UTC (Wed) by Junior_Samples (guest, #26737) [Link] (2 responses)

It is interesting to note that much (most?) of our preserved movie and broadcast culture from the 20th century is due to so called "pirates".

The major media companies had no interest in investing in preservation. Maybe 90% of the silent era films were discarded or left to rot or burn. Sound films did not do much better--perhaps half of all sound films have disappeared. The birth of radio with its dramas and comedies which were the staple of mass entertainment were often performed live and never recorded, or the transcriptions were tossed after rebroadcast.

"Pirate" projectionists and film collectors sometimes "duped" films, these dupes often being the only existing available images for thousands of films. Fox, RKO, Columbia, and other major studios had no use for most its library after the first run. Even famous institutions such as MOMA let thousands of reels of film history perish through neglect. Without the "pirates" many of these films would not survive at all.

And broadcast networks were no better at preservation. Radio fans recorded their favorite shows on acetate disks, wire recorders, or early reel-to-reel tape. Again, thousands of shows which would have otherwise been lost were preserved. In fact, there weren't nearly enough "pirates". So much has been irretrievably lost. Sadly, in early television, home video recording technology was not yet available. Had it been, countless cultural gems and milestones might be with us to enjoy today.

DRM is anti-culture. It exists to stifle preservation of what we find important, in contrast to what they find marketable and profitable.

EFF: Who controls your television?

Posted Mar 14, 2007 15:56 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

Yes, that's exactly the point. The movie studios and record labels are all about profit. Pure and simple, since that's the American way, after all. Their mission is to make as much money as possible while spending as little as possible--any business school student will tell you as much. The problem with this, of course, as we see it, is that this is often exactly opposed to the goal of the viewer--to be able to enjoy cultural materials whenever and however they wish, at as little cost as possible.

The issue of cultural heritage, of course, is one that the studios care not a crumb for, since when it's not profitable anymore, it's worthless, right? In fact, if they care at all, it's in making sure they destroy all the existing copies except ones they can resell as a "collector's edition" with properly sealed DRM, etc., etc. ad nauseum.

And the issue of copyright as a limited-time grant, is out the window completely as far as anyone in power is concerned--it's an "ownership society" now, meaning, grab anything you can and beat people with your lawyer club when they try to exercise their natural instinct and right to share.

EFF: Who controls your television?

Posted Mar 15, 2007 22:41 UTC (Thu) by shapr (subscriber, #9077) [Link]

Also, standards change, ABIs change, and iTunes will go down at some point.

When that happens, your children will not be able to listen to your iTunes music collection unless some "pirate" has cracked the encryption.

This holds for Adobe's ebook encryption and more.