Sooooooo...

When are we going to finally seen antitrust charges leveled against these asswipes? Hell, when is someone going to fight to restore fair use?

DisposableInterloper

Hahahaha this is great. So they'll put in a chip so that when some guy streams it to record it's "blocked" - at least until the first program pops up to decode the block and lets him stream it again, or he pops the box open and mods the chip.

For the love of jeebus people - make a good product, save yourselves the cost of security and dont put in more than a "white fence" to stop the normals. You'll still profit plenty. Bastards.

GodzillaDad

Yea, and after that, they will want to make video cameras illegal because I might record a movie with it while I'm watching TV!

yet_another_user

OK, does anyone other than 12 year old kids on the basement of an 80's apartment pluging two VHSs together to copy porn still uses the analog output of devices??? I really doubt it.

Still, the MPAA should develop technology that blocks output to the screen of crappy material, so we are not submitted to the 99% of movies released and approved by them. I would pay for a Shit-Content-Lock.

Aegis2k

Oh yeah? I got your analog hole right here.

Kaiser-Machead's Raging Insomnia

This makes no sense for people like me. I don't know about Comcast, but Bright House (even more the devil) doesn't get their on-demand movies up and running until after they've been on DVD for about a week. And I'm NOT going through the trouble of rigging my cable box to my computer just to record "RV" on TBS.

alexmg2420

Are there any good movies left that aren't on DVD yet that I can record off of poorly compressed cable or satellite connections?

I want to start my collection today.

smcallah

@tarrantm: Exactly - I think this is a direct response to the Hauppage HD DVR. As long as folks were just capturing the S-Video stream, they didn't care.

Canoehead

This is getting more and more silly each day. I haven't purchased a cd backed by the RIAA since sometime in early 2000, does the MPAA want to suffer the same fate? People, especially americans, don't generally like other people, especially huge corporate conglomerations, telling them what they can and can not do with things they pay for.

It's just bad business.

nachobel

Wasn't this all sorted out in the days of VHS?

Canthros

In a related press release the MPAA has announced litigation to ensure that nobody will be able to watch or listen to anything anymore. The MPAA Spokesman went on to explain that

"by allowing humans to watch or listen to content and then discuss it with their friends, they are maintaining and accessing an illegally retained memory of the content in their brains, thereby violating the no reproduction directive we uphold. If humans are attempt to remember something they have watched or heard, we will prosecute them to the full extent of the law. We believe the legislation should require every human to pay a royalty for anything they think they would want to watch or listen to, but would prevent them from actually watching or listening to it."

johncon3

@Aegis2k:

You do realize component video is still analog right? And devices like the Hauppauge HD PVR still uses it to stream HD to computers because some of us don't feel like being locked down by Cable Labs and their little robber baron monopoly.

tarrantm

There are somewhere around 200 million analog TVs still in use. The cable boxes and DTV converters for these TVs use analog inputs, typically old composite video and not even s-video. A huge number of "HD-Ready" TVs sold were only component video, not HDMI.

The MPAA is off their gourd if they think cable companies are going to support this kind of legislation which will alienate a major part of their customer base.

Milio

@alexmg2420: I think the MPAA is concerned about old movies that have not yet been released on DVD.

I don't know of any new theater-run movies yet that make it to cable before they're out on DVD. There may have been 1 or 2 as promotions.

But it's just like before Star Wars was officially on DVD, there were lots of places to get it on DVD. Plus, you could have made your own if you felt you really needed to.

smcallah

What about legit devices that use analog out like the SlingBox? I guess the MPAA wants you to pay again for mobile copies.

Or what if i'm using a monitor that only has analog inputs? the MPAA will force me to buy a new TV with HDMI? this is ridiculous.

There will always be a way for people to copy content, those who really want to do it will find a way, while the rest of the honest consumers get screwed out of options.

Chromium

I'm sick and tired of this cat and mouse B.S. with the RIAA and the MPAA and P2P, etc. I'm sick and tired of it. Things are even worse in Europe, as reported by the Zeropaid website.

Have those idiots embrace the 21st century and be done with it. If we can't do it legislatively, I recommend we all buy stock in the major studios and then raise the issue at each and every board meeting/stockholders' meeting until they wise up. If the record labels had any brains, they would have kissed Shawn Fanning's butt when he created Napster. Instead, they went the moron route.

As for the MPAA, their worries are ludicrous. Are they not aware that there are THOUSANDS of websites where one can watch cam copies of first-run movies, DVD rips, etc.? Are they REALLY this stupid? Have they never used Google???

And did the Supreme Court ruling re the VCR destroy Hollywood? It boosted their revenues a million-fold. I just can't believe peoples' short-sighted stupidity. Watch, soon they'll be demanding that everyone register everything they watch, down to the second.

Open_universe

Serious Q: Anyone here ever get an e-mail from your ISP or a legal letter re downloading music or movies?

Open_universe

@alexmg2420:

As far as I'm concerned, if there is a movie that people want to see and it's unavailable anywhere, they have a right to download it via P2P. "The Kremlin Letter" is a great example, is was supposed to have been released about a year ago, FOX Video dropped the ball and hasn't released it yet.

Open_universe

I have been waiting years for the MPAA to release a movie that would be good enough to watch more than once.

The main problem the MPAA needs to start to address is Netflix. Ultimately, who needs to pirate a movie when every movie is available to you at no cost? That is their real enemy. Movie piracy is so ten years ago.

Anyone willing to watch a pirated copy of a movie generally does not care about the 'quality' of it. So, unless they can stop people from pointing a video camera a their TV, it seems unlikely that they can stop pirating of their movies.

What increases sales of their DVD/BR products? Releasing something that people are willing to pay for. Release Lord of the Rings on BR, and watch as every copy is sold out in minutes (as well as every BR player) because it is a movie that is good enough to justify the ridiculous cost. That said, I am not certain there are a whole lot of other examples out there.

Monty

@Monty:

I think the issue is that the whole paradigm has been upended. With digital distribution over the Internet, you can no longer control who watches or listens to what unless you're actually monitoring every single TCP/IP packet and banning encryption. The issues involved go much deeper than just getting a "quality" product out of Hollywood. And they do have a point: If no one pays, or has to pay, to see a first-run movie, who will make first-run movies?

Another issue is viewing older movies. They can't justify asking someone to pay to see an old movie.

Open_universe

Sky have already got rid of the component output on there HD set top boxes due to this reason. Which has upset a lot of people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually TVs with analogue inputs get rarer and rarer.

IanC

ALL THIS DOES IS INCONVENIENCE YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS!!!!

Look the analog gear has been readily available for years. So all this will in fact do is cause no company to make any new analog products. But until the way TV shows are transmitted change dramatically there is no possible way to block the analog hole.

Cry me a river MPAA. I officially don't give a shit about your problem.

I have never pirated or even downloaded a thing. I do however copy TV shows and placeshift them in my own home.

MPAA you are turning me off of your product. Do you want to be universally hated just as the RIAA is?

axiomatic

I don't really understand the point, if they disable the analog outputs, someone will just make a device that can digitally record it or at the least convert to analog to record.

secretmanofagent

lolwhut?

Yeah I know very useful comment but that was my initial reaction :).

Those guys are as lame as the RIAA and about just as useful. I wish them luck with that. Me and my HTPC will be laughing hard.

StarControl

Total Failure. Once the signal is decoded it's 100% up for grabs. This would change nothing. Make it harder, yes, but changes nothing.

JEmlay

Apparently the MPAA is trying to make this "0 for 3" month. There is the old Ampex decision on the doctrine of "fair use". This was followed by the Betamax decision which in essence said "media is media and fair use still applies." If this gets challenged in court, the MPAA will lose yet again. It's not about what it's worth, it's about how it was obtained. No difference, no reason to overturn previous decisions.

Spiny Norman

@Aegis2k: Component is analog. I still use it because my DVR is pre HDMI and there are sometimes copy protection flag issues with DVI to HDMI cables. Can I fit any more acronyms in there?

This is lame, lame, lame.

joshman

@hologon: awesome video!!!!

axiomatic

The MPAA says that releasing VoD -BEFORE- DVDs is a "new business model" that deserves a waiver of the original 2003 FCC order banning SOC.

They want to push the release window for VoD up before DVD release dates, but are afraid that the HD content will get out onto teh intarwebs before DVDs if they do this. So in addition to image constraint tokens (i.e. downrezzing) and key revocation (i.e. entirely breaking your decoder), they want SOC.

Keep in mind that SOC is ALREADY enabled in tru2way (fo riz... go read the spec); the only thing holding SOC back is not the technology in your devices on CableCARD but rather that the FCC (which has jxn over the stream before it enters your house) has said that from a policy standpoint, MVPDs (cable companies) are not allowed to embed the flag turning SOC on.

Some more information:

[www.publicknowledge.org]

and

+ Watch video

Enjoy!

hologon

This is why we will most likely NEVER see standalone Blu-ray recorders in the USA!

thewarm

I'm sorry, MPAA, all I heard was, "I don't want you to watch another movie again, EVER!"

Call me back when you have something, you know, UNoffensive to say to the people who (used to...?) buy your crap.

ldsdj

@hologon: HOLY SHIT MAN, THATS BETTER THAN ANY MOVIE RELEASED BY THE MAJOR STUDIOS IN A LONG TIME, other than The Dark Knight and Iron Man.

No, but seriously, WHAT. THE. FUCK. These guys can take their DRM, their SOC, and all of their other TLAs and shove them up their collective ASS. I'm gonna have to get me an inexorably advancing wall of ice now...

Con Seannery

"I am confused: does the movie exist for the audience, or the audience exist for the movie?"

You certainly are. The movie exists because of the revenue it can potentially generate. The fact that they are technologically naive is irrelevant to the moral issue. The moral issue is that lots of people want to steal their intellectual property and they don't want it stolen. The producer of a product has the right to set the terms under which he will sell it. Don't take this to assume that I support blanket approaches where the studios which to break other people's intellectual property rights and rights to terms of sale - ie the producers of copying media. On the other hand, the pathetic fact that movie producers are incompetant to protect their property does not make it right for people to steal it just because we can. That moral assumption for that argument seems to revolve around, "Well, it was just lying there..." God (if there is one) forbid, that you should ever leave your home or car unattended under that species piece of intellectual nonsense.

ray_cathode