U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg) [LWN.net]

Bloomberg reports on a recent decision [PDF] by the US Federal Communications Commission allowing broadcasters to disable "unprotected" output on set-top boxes for early-run movies. "The FCC order 'will allow the big firms for the first time to take control of a consumer's TV set or set-top box, blocking viewing of a TV program or motion picture,' Gigi Sohn, president of Washington-based Public Knowledge, said in a statement." Naturally, requirements for this type of antifeature also make it impossible to have truly free set-top boxes.

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Can you tell DRM apart from broken?

Posted May 11, 2010 15:20 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't think most people understand media well enough to tell the difference between DRM-restricted and just plain broken. (Even EFF's Cory Doctorow gets fooled.)

You set up your Grandma's TV and cable box using an "Unprotected" connection because it's the easiest, or that's the cable you have, or that's all her old TV can handle.

You go home.

Everything works fine until Grandma decides to watch a movie.

Movie is broken, she calls the cable company and complains. Hey, maybe the people really behind DRM are the contract call centers that handle product and service complaints.

Can you tell DRM apart from broken?

Posted May 11, 2010 15:20 UTC (Tue) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

D'oh! ("Your comment is marked up with tags. Are you sure you want to submit as plain text?")

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 15:58 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (12 responses)

This is what happens when you put a government body like the FCC in charge of a communication medium.

The 'big evil' Hollywood corporations lack any and all legal authority to restrict what you can and cannot do with your own private property by themselves. Instead they need a proxy like the FCC or other governmental entities (like Congress and the DMCA) to enforce their restrictions for them.

For example:

It is still completely and 100% legal in the USA to produce and distribute cable 'descramblers' boxes. These are devices that will take 'scrambled' cable channels and 'decrypt' them for you. The cable companies will tell their use is illegal, but it's not.

It is only illegal to use them if your using them in a illegal fashion. If your using it to access services your not paying for then that is illegal, but otherwise they are fine.

The reason for this is because these devices are purely analog and do not fall under the provisions of the DMCA. Therefore there is no legal authority that the cable companies or anybody else can use to ban their existence and usage.

Compare and contrast this to any sort of 'decrypter' for DRM. Since your dealing with digital data the DMCA, through legal proxy, effectively gives hollywood types the ability to dictate the design of your hardware and your software to maximize their profits. Even if your not using it for any illegal purpose it is still illegal. The simple fact that your software or hardware has the _capabilities_ of being used to perform a illegal act is enough to make it a federal offense to distribute it or use it.

So now, through some sort of bizzare twist of logic, the DMCA and FCC's ability to regulate cable television transmissions have given the FCC the authority to require hardware manufacturers to design their consumer products to specifications dictated by the movie and television corporations.

I am just pointing out all this because it's crap like this is why giving FCC power to regulate the Internet through so-called 'Network Neutrality' rules is such a freaking bad idea. Sure Comcast sucks and there is not much competition to choose from, but irregardless of the expense or inconvience to yourself you still have the full ability to choose between providers and pretty much have full authority over your computers and the software installed on it completely irrespective of the desires of your cable companies or Google or any other major internet-based corporation. This is due to the lack of legal authority for governmental bodies to regulate you. Compare and contrast cable television networks, cellular networks, terrestrial broadcast networks, telephony networks, newspapers, and any other type of 'traditional' communication medium were you are faced with massive regulation and restrictions on what you can say, what you can do, what you can use with it, and what you can do with it.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 16:12 UTC (Tue) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link] (1 responses)

Most likely, the readers of LWN know this already.

Instead, go visit your legislator and educate her or him about it.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 17:29 UTC (Tue) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]

He goes on this rant pretty regularly.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 17:33 UTC (Tue) by jhoger (guest, #33302) [Link] (4 responses)

This has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is a pro-consumer, pro-competition concept, DRM is anti-consumer, anti-competition concept.

But, by all means, rant on about the big gubmint bogeyman, libertarian.

Net Neutrality

Posted May 11, 2010 18:37 UTC (Tue) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link] (3 responses)

Please don't confuse "concepts" with laws and the interpretations of them. Just because you label something "pro-consumer", "pro-competition" doesn't mean it is. You have to actually READ the laws that are passed (something our congress doesn't seem willing to do).

Net Neutrality

Posted May 11, 2010 19:11 UTC (Tue) by jhoger (guest, #33302) [Link] (2 responses)

My comment was conceptual, as was yours, as was the GP.

So I guess you're the only one who is confused.

Net Neutrality

Posted May 12, 2010 2:13 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

I don't give a crap about the concept of 'Network Neutrality'. I understand the point of the pro-Network Neutrality.

I only care about the effect of so-called 'Network Neutrality laws'. You can go on all day about why you want them and why you think they are needed... it does not really matter.

What matters is what the actual effect it will have on the Internet long-term.

The laws that will get passed, and I can guarantee this, will be much less about giving you cheap unmolested internet access to download as much stuff as you want and much more about establishing the government's ability to regulate the network.

The FCC was given authority to regulate radio spectrum due to the S.O.S. transmission from the Titanic sinking being drowned out by popular radio stations on the east coast, which delayed rescuers and cost many (mostly very wealthy) people their lives.

Yet now that translates to regulating speech (even political speech) on cable networks and terrestrial broadcasting as well as establishing requirements for DRM in order to protect the profits of MPAA.

Net Neutrality

Posted May 12, 2010 6:24 UTC (Wed) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]

I respectfully ask that jhoger look at the implementation element, and not just the concept. The implementation for Net Neutrality will likely end up at the FCC (if not initially, eventually). The FCC has a history. Look at it.

An idea with merit does not equal a good implementation. The implementation is what matters. Look it through to the end, and judge by the end. You don't end up with a concept. You end up with an implementation. Understand this and act accordingly.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 17:45 UTC (Tue) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link] (4 responses)

"So now, through some sort of bizzare twist of logic, the DMCA and FCC's ability to regulate cable television transmissions have given the FCC the authority to require hardware manufacturers to design their consumer products to specifications dictated by the movie and television corporations."

On the contrary. The FCC did not and does not mandate that manufacturers include selectable output control (SOC). Nor does it prohibit such inclusion. It does not have the authority to do so. What it has been doing is prohibiting the *activation* of the SOC by broadcasters / carriers, in the interests of end users who do not have the appropriate digital equipment. This decision creates a waiver to that rule under limited circumstances.

Imagine there was no FCC. Then there would be no rule at all, and SOC would probably be rather more predominant than otherwise. The rule regulating the activation of SOC by broadcaster/providers is probably a good thing.

Title II regulation of Internet access providers may end up with some of the same weaknesses as comparable regulation of telephone companies. The FCC doesn't have authority to require that computers include any particular hardware or software, etc. It does have authority to make IAPs behave like common carriers though, and that is a good thing. The entire purpose of the Internet (as a network) is to be a common carrier of data packets. If IAPs start blocking or impeding traffic willy nilly, that purpose will be defeated.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 17:55 UTC (Tue) by jhoger (guest, #33302) [Link]

Thank you for cutting through the FUD.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 12, 2010 3:06 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

This does not make any sense.

What is preventing manufacturers from selling customers devices that simply lie about SOC support to the cable companies, that way enabling you to watch premium content over analog connections? What is preventing manufacturers from making set-top boxes that lie about the support for encryption over HDMI? So that you can connect regular DVI devices to your digital outputs and not have anything copyright controlled.

No... All that is illegal as far as I can tell. In order to comply with DRM requirements the devices have to support SOC. The DRM requirements are protected by DMCA. Soooo... yeah. Through the combination of DMCA and FCC the MPAA has the power to regulate the design of your hardware and software.

> Title II regulation of Internet access providers may end up with some of the same weaknesses as comparable regulation of telephone companies. The FCC doesn't have authority to require that computers include any particular hardware or software, etc. It does have authority to make IAPs behave like common carriers though, and that is a good thing.

Oh.. and how does it do that actually? Oh.. yeah: by regulating the type of hardware and software that ISPs are allowed to use. The difference between private companies and private citizens are much much less then most people would imagine in terms of regulation.

> The entire purpose of the Internet (as a network) is to be a common carrier of data packets. If IAPs start blocking or impeding traffic willy nilly, that purpose will be defeated.

Yeah.. which is why they don't do it and never will. These people require the cooperation of many different people working together in order to make their networks functional on the internet and be profitable.

Breaking the way the internet functions would mean that the company that broke it would quickly go out of business.

Not to mention that the Internet, in order to function, is far from 'neutral'.

A simple example:

Companies that develop new parts of the Internet must connect to other companies. In the past you had a handful of large corporations that controlled major backbones on the Internet... the so called 'Tier 1' ISPs.

If you wanted to create a network that connected to the Internet you would be forced to pay those companies for access. If you connected to the backbone you would be a 'Tier 2' ISP and you usually provided access to a region and they you would sell network access to consumer ISPs (Tier 3).

However... What if you want to send network traffic between you and a neighboring Tier 2 Internet provider?

Well going through the Tier 1 provider would mean that both of you are going to be paying the Tier 1 corporation for network access! Why not just by-pass the Tier 1 provider altogether and connect directly to one another through a branch?

That way you could regulate network traffic between one another. He paid you for sending packets and you paid him for recieving packets and visa versa. Essentially free connections to one another. So now you have all these traditionally 'Tier 2' and 'Tier 3' type companies all connecting to one another trading traffic back and forth in a cheap fashion.

But now you have this delima.. Due to all the extra peering going on it's cheaper to transfer traffic to your neighbors then to go through the 'backbone' provider. But what if you wanted to connect to your neighbor's neighbor and your neighbor's neighbor's neighbor? It may still be cheaper to take the long route instead of going through the backbone. The routing protocols would, if left to their own devices, would have all your traffic route through the backbone provider because that would be the least amount of hops and lowest latency, but it would often be the most expensive route!

So you now have to implement controls to modify the 'natural' behavior of the packet routing so that financial cost becomes important. And because none of your neighbors wants you to take advantage of them to make your internet cheaper there needs to be ways to regulate traffic based on traffic peering contracts, time of day, and all that extra junk.

So you get that working and after a couple of years of fighting and haggling most everybody has a good agreement going.

But now you have to deal with new types of network traffic. Before most everything was not terribly time sensitive. But now you have these P2P protocols (bulk mail, massive business-to-business file transfers etc etc) that are very NOT sensitive to latency combined with VoIP (VoD and whatever else, etc etc) stuff were latency is critical!

To keep your costumers happy then that would mean that now you have to regulate some traffic based on protocols. Shoving non-latency sensitive traffic through expensive routes would waste your money and thus limit your customer's bandwidth, however shoving latency sensitive protocols through cheaper links would ruin the performance of their skype traffic and whatnot.

And so on and so forth.

All of this stuff is happening right now and these peering agreements and regulating traffic based on cost has yielded much higher 'bang for your buck' then if everything was left completely 'neutral'. More profits for the ISP means more money is available to spend on more infrastructure and cheaper rates with higher bandwidth for consumers.

Not to mention that eliminating the 'backbone' companies as the only route from one side of the internet to another has made the network much more robust against failures and more secure against the abuses of individual corporations.

------------------------------

What is _actually_ needed is regulation to increase competition and consumer choice combined with transparency for ISPs so that interested consumers can actually know what network controls are being implemented so that your not left guessing at what is wrong with your bittorrent traffic (and anything else).

This means privatizing and deregulating more and more of the radio spectrum, making it easier for towns and cities to make municipal fiber networks to lease out to multiple ISPs and things like that.

Trying to make everything 'Neutral' will, at best, institutionalize expensive and inefficient network practices and, at worst, (and most likely) lead to a whole bunch of new restrictions and regulations based around the legality and desirability of various types of traffic coming in and out your house.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 12, 2010 3:25 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

what prevents someone from selling a device that bypassed this is that anyone selling such a device is required to license the 'IP' to do so. As part of their license they agree not to do such things.

The protocol also includes the ability to blacklist particular products and simply refuse to talk to them at all if they misbehave.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 12, 2010 15:45 UTC (Wed) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]

"All that is illegal as far as I can tell"

Barring FCC intervention, nothing would stop cable / satellite companies from requiring universal SOC by contract (due to the need for various decryption keys). Is your argument then that you don't want FCC to regulate SOC, and thus make SOC far more predominant than it is now?

"Oh.. and how does it do that actually? Oh.. yeah: by regulating the type of hardware and software that ISPs are allowed to use"

There is a subtle distinction here. The FCC does not regulate the design of hardware and software. It does regulate behavior of covered entities (communications providers), which sometimes amounts to restricting the use of various features (in provider hardware) or the transmissions which cause them to be activated (in end user hardware). They regulate SOC by prohibiting cable companies from making transmissions that activate the feature, with some new exceptions.

"Not to mention that the Internet, in order to function, is far from 'neutral'."

Your entire following argument assumes a strict definition of neutrality for which there is no evidence the FCC wishes to impose. The FCC has no desire to prohibit reasonable network management practices - every network has them. Routing latency insensitive traffic over a higher latency route is not the sort of thing any rational person is going to complain about. Blocking or purposefully degrading services or endpoints outright is.

Without regulation (or the threat of such regulation) large IAPs have a strong incentive to degrade or block third party VOIP and IPTV services, charge tariffs to service providers they are not directly connected to, forge traffic, redirect requests, make up bogus DNS responses, and so on. In many areas, there is only one broadband IAP to choose from, usually either the cable company or the telephone company. Abuses of the natural monopoly of the "last mile" is why Title II was passed in the first place.

So if you really don't want the FCC to regulate IAPs as common carriers, you need to convince Congress that there is no need for Title II regulation in the first place, that it should be repealed, and FCC authority restricted to radio transmissions (if that). As it is, the idea that Title II doesn't naturally apply to IAPs is borderline insane, a product of specious reasoning of the worst kind. The Internet is the kind of network Title II was made for. The FCC is just carrying out legislative intent, and in this case in an unusually cautious manner.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 16:06 UTC (Tue) by freemars (subscriber, #4235) [Link]

Interesting that this article comes right after the one on MythTV.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 11, 2010 16:40 UTC (Tue) by ikm (guest, #493) [Link]

They've got logic. If your home tv output doesn't work, you can't watch anything, hence you can't record it, and as such, the piracy is prevented! And the baby goes down the drain with the rest of the water. I admire their business models.

Come to think of it, it *is* the only way to prevent piracy. If you don't want your content to be pirated, just never show it to anybody.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 13, 2010 21:37 UTC (Thu) by forlwn (guest, #63934) [Link] (6 responses)

No worries. Let them struggle in stupid protective regulations until the rotten fruit will fall useless in the ground, one by one, and the healthy ones will become scarce.
More and more, we can see that the world is not just only America.
China, Russia and others, are waking up, extending and spreading innovation and free competition inside and to the outside.
Soon the whole world will be benefiting from real progress at fair prices.
In the meanwhile american lowers will be accumulating richness, paid by companies to be able to put out products free of IP's threats, and those useless costs added with the lobbying ones would find their way to be included in the price that consumers everywhere will have to pay.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 13, 2010 21:47 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (5 responses)

China? Russia? 'Free competition'? Have you been paying attention to the international news at *all*? The US market, contorted though it be in many ways, is *immensely* more free than either of those state-dominated oftimes-grossly-corrupt near-monoliths.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 13, 2010 21:51 UTC (Thu) by forlwn (guest, #63934) [Link]

"China? Russia?"
Yes, "and others"....

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 13, 2010 22:10 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

Straying off-topic, but I'm not sure you're right about China. While nominally the state has an interest in most large enterprises, Chinese enterprise generally seems quite free of any state oversight. Look at any Chinese town or city - it'll be absolutely overflowing with small businesses, effectively almost utterly unregulated.

Western economies by comparison have far far more central control, in the form of effective regulatory and enforcement bodies. While this is mostly a good thing (worker and consumer rights, environmental standards, etc), it can (to drag this back on topic) also be subverted by private interests.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 14, 2010 10:29 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

What you say is true. I was thinking of the conjunction of crushing state-controlled monoliths and pervasive low-level corruption making it hard for independents to get started, but I shouldn't have posted because I've dragged this subthread way way off topic, so I'll shut up now.

This is EXACTLY why they are free...

Posted May 14, 2010 6:29 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

The US market, contorted though it be in many ways, is *immensely* more free than either of those state-dominated oftimes-grossly-corrupt near-monoliths.

Sorry to disappoint you, but market by itself does not produce inventions. People do. And people are significantly more free to innovate in Russia and China. Exactly because there are rampant corruption. Where in US companies think about IP and all such bullshit in terms of compliance in Russia and China they all have cost - and usually quite sensible costs. Which has nothing to do with penalties written in law - you don't pay then to competitors after all, you pay to bureaucrats who are overseeing the law and these people are not interested in killing your business, they are interested in steady revenue.

And if you want to see the result - look on search engines market. Google is dominant everywhere except in China and Russia. Why? Because the hands of Google are tied. It tries to obey multitude of silly restrictions and the competitors don't. Sure, Google was able to overcame smaller competitors in China and Russia, but market share of the main one is steadily above 50% - the reverse of US situation. Google even decided that it does not like the China game and left. You can view at as "the stance for freedom", but in reality it's admission of impotence.

There is hope for US companies yet: if the US government will be able to impose strict sanctions and force China, Russia and others to stop innovating and obey the US law (actually obey not just write papers about compliance) then there is hope. I doublt US government has the clout to do this now...

P.S. The situation when "tax corruption" (heavy burden in usual circumstances) impedes the progress less then IP laws shows how dire the situation is in reality. The IT industry in US is preparing to go the way chemistry industry went in XIX century. I'll help you recall:
1862 - Britan & France have over 90% of market combined
1873 - Britan & France have 30-35% of market combined
1914 - US imports dues from Germany by submarines
Only Treaty of Versailles broke the hold Germany had over "civilized world" in chemistry market. You can read more here...

This is EXACTLY why they are free...

Posted May 14, 2010 9:23 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

There is hope for US companies yet: if the US government will be able to impose strict sanctions and force China, Russia and others to stop innovating and obey the US law

When evaluating this, you need to consider that 19th century foreign imperialism is still kept fresh in the Chinese psyche. There will be reflexive reaction to defend Chinese sovereignty to any perceived attempt to pressure China into bowing to western laws/interests. Something to consider, in addition to the fact that the west lacks leverage with China now.

U.S. Lets Hollywood Disable Home TV Outputs to Prevent Piracy (Bloomberg)

Posted May 13, 2010 21:48 UTC (Thu) by forlwn (guest, #63934) [Link]

No worries. Let them struggle in stupid protective regulations until the rotten fruit will fall useless in the ground, one by one, and the healthy ones will become scarce.
More and more, we can see that the world is not just only America.
China, Russia and others, are waking up, extending and spreading innovation and free competition inside and to the outside.
Soon the whole world will be benefiting from real progress at fair prices.
In the meanwhile american lowers will be accumulating richness, paid by companies to be able to put out products free of IP's threats, and those useless costs added with the lobbying ones would find their way included in the price that consumers everywhere will have to pay.