They just don't give up and neither should we! Choose to contact congress or complain forever.
Andrew Kantor: CyberSpeak - Digital Content Protection Act would be consumer disaster Andrew Kantor, USA TODAY
Sat Jan 28, 10:05 AM ET
Here's a scenario: You can pay for a ticket at your local movie theatre, or you can hop a small fence and sneak in a back door that you know is open.
Being a generally law-abiding person, you pay for your ticket. (Besides, hopping that fence is annoying and you do worry a little about being caught.)
But then the movie theatre starts adding some new rules for ticket holders. First it starts telling you where you have to sit; you don't get a choice. Then it requires you to sit through all the commercials; no arriving a little later. Then it requires you to buy a certain amount of candy or popcorn.
It justifies all these things by explaining that it needs to keep its revenue up in order to continue to bring you the movies you enjoy.
You follow these rules, even though they start to get annoying - you don't really enjoy having your movie-going experience controlled more and more by the theatre. Further, as the theater's rules increase, you notice more and more people hopping that fence and sneaking in the back.
At what point will the rules get so annoying that you start sneaking in the back?
Hold that thought.
Bad business
When it comes to home entertainment - music and movies - the Senate is considering making those rules a lot more annoying. A bill was introduced by Sen. Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record) (R-Ore.), it's called the Digital Content Protection Act of 2006. It's designed to give the FCC (and, let's be honest, the movie and music industries) control over the capabilities of home entertainment technology.
The government, rather than the free market, would be able to say what capabilities a new device could have. And you can bet the entertainment industry would have a big say in that.
If this was law a few years ago, the entire digital music movement would have been stopped in its tracks. See, the RIAA fought tooth and nail against the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300, eventually losing in federal court. Had the DCPA been in effect, Diamond never could have made it; the FCC would have said No. (Note to purists: The Rio was not the first MP3 player. That honor goes to the Eiger Labs MPMan, built by Saehan in Korea.)
No portable MP3 players would likely have meant we'd be stuck with $18 CDs and clunky players and other RIAA-approved devices.
TiVo and other digital video recorders? Forget it. The entertainment industry, through the FCC, would have said No.
In short, this bill is designed to crush innovation, because the entertainment industry is unable to handle it. Its content and revenue model is stuck in the 1990s, and the people running it don't have the business sense to keep up with the digital times. They need to beg Congress to pass laws protecting their business model.
Last I checked, that ain't how capitalism worked.
Newspapers are still in incredibly profitable business, but people in it know that the Web is the future. So papers are moving online in a big way. You don't see the major papers demanding that Congress grant the government the right to regulate online news.
Good businesses change with the times. Or they die trying.
Your innovations, please
Here's how it works. The DCPA would allow the FCC to regulate any device capable of moving content around. Can you transfer content to it from your computer? It's regulated. Can it convert music or movies from one format to another? It's regulated. Does it have output jacks? It's regulated.
What features couldn't the FCC regulate? Only which permit "customary historic use" - such as playing music and making low-grade copies.
In other words, the government would have to approve any new features in any digital entertainment device. Again, imagine this had been in place a few years ago. A feature to compress audio? You can bet the RIAA would pressure the FCC to ban it. Record a TV show to watch later? No, thanks. The ability to create a mix of your favorite songs for the car. Uh-uh. Make a backup of a hard-to-find CD? Not a chance.
In one fell swoop, this bill would give the FCC the right to authorize - or ban - innovation. I hope you like your 2006 technology, because if it passes that's where the U.S. is gonna be stuck.
This new law that the entertainment industry wants passed will mean that the music or movies you get legally will come with more restrictions than what you'll be able to get illegally.
Because, as we've all seen over and over, anti-piracy measures don't stop the hackers who really want to crack them. Every time a new method comes out, someone finds a way to beat it. It's a losing battle, but one the entertainment industry insists on fighting.
Sure, these techniques stop the low-hanging fruit - the people who might want to make a quick, illegal copy of something for a friend. But the cost of that, as Sony learned when it came up with an anti-piracy scheme that actually damaged users' computers, is that you end up hurting the people who buy and use your product legally. (Sony, by the way, is facing a lawsuit from the state of Texas; possibly suits from Florida and New York; class-action suits in the U.S. and Canada; and possibly criminal charges in Italy.)
Anyway, this is where my movie theatre analogy comes in. As the entertainment industry puts more and more restrictions on what you can do with the media you own or receive, getting free and unrestricted content, even illegally, will simply get more and more appealing.
It goes against common sense that a version of a song or movie you buy should come with more restrictions than one you can steal.
So the big-time pirates - the kind folks who burn thousands of DVDs for sale on the streets of Beijing - will be unaffected. And a good number of people who are affected will start using file-sharing software to get better-quality copies of their entertainment.
And there's the irony: People who simply want to exercise their legal rights under copyright law - to make a backup copy of their music - will be forced to get their entertainment illegally. And the people who obey the law will find they're getting less and less value for their money.
Andrew Kantor: CyberSpeak - Digital Content Protection Act would be consumer disaster Andrew Kantor, USA TODAY
Sat Jan 28, 10:05 AM ET
Here's a scenario: You can pay for a ticket at your local movie theatre, or you can hop a small fence and sneak in a back door that you know is open.
Being a generally law-abiding person, you pay for your ticket. (Besides, hopping that fence is annoying and you do worry a little about being caught.)
But then the movie theatre starts adding some new rules for ticket holders. First it starts telling you where you have to sit; you don't get a choice. Then it requires you to sit through all the commercials; no arriving a little later. Then it requires you to buy a certain amount of candy or popcorn.
It justifies all these things by explaining that it needs to keep its revenue up in order to continue to bring you the movies you enjoy.
You follow these rules, even though they start to get annoying - you don't really enjoy having your movie-going experience controlled more and more by the theatre. Further, as the theater's rules increase, you notice more and more people hopping that fence and sneaking in the back.
At what point will the rules get so annoying that you start sneaking in the back?
Hold that thought.
Bad business
When it comes to home entertainment - music and movies - the Senate is considering making those rules a lot more annoying. A bill was introduced by Sen. Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record) (R-Ore.), it's called the Digital Content Protection Act of 2006. It's designed to give the FCC (and, let's be honest, the movie and music industries) control over the capabilities of home entertainment technology.
The government, rather than the free market, would be able to say what capabilities a new device could have. And you can bet the entertainment industry would have a big say in that.
If this was law a few years ago, the entire digital music movement would have been stopped in its tracks. See, the RIAA fought tooth and nail against the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300, eventually losing in federal court. Had the DCPA been in effect, Diamond never could have made it; the FCC would have said No. (Note to purists: The Rio was not the first MP3 player. That honor goes to the Eiger Labs MPMan, built by Saehan in Korea.)
No portable MP3 players would likely have meant we'd be stuck with $18 CDs and clunky players and other RIAA-approved devices.
TiVo and other digital video recorders? Forget it. The entertainment industry, through the FCC, would have said No.
In short, this bill is designed to crush innovation, because the entertainment industry is unable to handle it. Its content and revenue model is stuck in the 1990s, and the people running it don't have the business sense to keep up with the digital times. They need to beg Congress to pass laws protecting their business model.
Last I checked, that ain't how capitalism worked.
Newspapers are still in incredibly profitable business, but people in it know that the Web is the future. So papers are moving online in a big way. You don't see the major papers demanding that Congress grant the government the right to regulate online news.
Good businesses change with the times. Or they die trying.
Your innovations, please
Here's how it works. The DCPA would allow the FCC to regulate any device capable of moving content around. Can you transfer content to it from your computer? It's regulated. Can it convert music or movies from one format to another? It's regulated. Does it have output jacks? It's regulated.
What features couldn't the FCC regulate? Only which permit "customary historic use" - such as playing music and making low-grade copies.
In other words, the government would have to approve any new features in any digital entertainment device. Again, imagine this had been in place a few years ago. A feature to compress audio? You can bet the RIAA would pressure the FCC to ban it. Record a TV show to watch later? No, thanks. The ability to create a mix of your favorite songs for the car. Uh-uh. Make a backup of a hard-to-find CD? Not a chance.
In one fell swoop, this bill would give the FCC the right to authorize - or ban - innovation. I hope you like your 2006 technology, because if it passes that's where the U.S. is gonna be stuck.
This new law that the entertainment industry wants passed will mean that the music or movies you get legally will come with more restrictions than what you'll be able to get illegally.
Because, as we've all seen over and over, anti-piracy measures don't stop the hackers who really want to crack them. Every time a new method comes out, someone finds a way to beat it. It's a losing battle, but one the entertainment industry insists on fighting.
Sure, these techniques stop the low-hanging fruit - the people who might want to make a quick, illegal copy of something for a friend. But the cost of that, as Sony learned when it came up with an anti-piracy scheme that actually damaged users' computers, is that you end up hurting the people who buy and use your product legally. (Sony, by the way, is facing a lawsuit from the state of Texas; possibly suits from Florida and New York; class-action suits in the U.S. and Canada; and possibly criminal charges in Italy.)
Anyway, this is where my movie theatre analogy comes in. As the entertainment industry puts more and more restrictions on what you can do with the media you own or receive, getting free and unrestricted content, even illegally, will simply get more and more appealing.
It goes against common sense that a version of a song or movie you buy should come with more restrictions than one you can steal.
So the big-time pirates - the kind folks who burn thousands of DVDs for sale on the streets of Beijing - will be unaffected. And a good number of people who are affected will start using file-sharing software to get better-quality copies of their entertainment.
And there's the irony: People who simply want to exercise their legal rights under copyright law - to make a backup copy of their music - will be forced to get their entertainment illegally. And the people who obey the law will find they're getting less and less value for their money.
