| Here Lies TV |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|04:45 pm] |
At Mumbai's International Telecommunication Union - Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (ITU-AIBD), the MPAA and it's cronies have been discussing locking down future TV broadcasts. They are now mortally terrified of their A-hole emissions reaching the tubosphere. As ever, there is a deep irony in organisations that make their business delivering content going so far out of their way to prevent people from receiving it:
Conax AS International Product marketing manager Vidar Sandvik advocated "scrambling" for FTA [Free To Air] broadcasting. He cited Netherlands and Poland where 100% cable saturation did not prevent terrestrial television from thriving. In Poland where FTA had 30% of the market, FTA broadcasters added video-on-demand in HD, increasing value for consumers, and ensuring no leaks to the Net. Let the pay-TV operator subsidise the set-top box, he said, and then control box quality for content protection. As for cost, set-top box vendors paid nothing for Conax hardware, he said.
Scrambling Free to Air? Isn't that just Free to View? It's like suggesting vegetarian food should contain more meat. And "ensuring no leaks to the Net"? Oh, I seriously doubt that.
Licensing set-top box production and preventing consumers from becoming broadcasters, but enabling them to receive, store and do home networking are some rules that regulators should lay down to protect content, concluded Williams. He recommended making content protection cheaper by going completely digital. "Why do you need analog outputs?" he asks.
And there it is, who needs that festering analogue wound in the side of every receiver, spilling our digital goodness into the cupping hands of those evil pirates? Clearly the digital changeover in the US went so well that it was obviously just too easy. This time people should be forced to buy new TVs as well! Admittedly, this is the satellite TV industry talking, and they do have a habit of claiming special excuses for acting like the owners of content rather than merely the transmitters - kind of like the guy who delivers your new washing machine scratching his name on the front of it then hanging around and asking for money every time you want to use it.
Yeah, I think that's enough analogies for this weekend.
Over the last few years I've been watching TV die. Even after going out of my way to get satellite because it was the only way to get a reliable service out here in the woods, I've found myself watching less and less. It is a rare occasion indeed for me to actually sit down and watch a show from beginning to end. When I miss a show that I intended to watch there is no more "aw crap!" reaction that I recall from the past. On more than one occasion I've found myself with remote in my hand, staring at the listings and thinking "even though there is a show I thought I wanted to see, I can't actually be bothered to set up a recording." The new relationship with TV appears to be one of opportunistic sampling - when particularly bored or put out by some other medium or project I might turn on and watch whatever can be found that is the least anti-intellectual. Then, an hour later, It'll be turned off. So delicate is this connection that sometimes a show will be turned off, not because it's dull or offensive, but because having to turn down the ads to an acceptable volume every fifteen minutes is more annoying that the show is interesting.
Another thing that leads to this general malaise is that the listings are becoming a serious impediment to viewing. Despite having access to an accurate schedule for every available channel for the next seven days I can honestly say that for weeks now I have not looked at more than the next three hours in that "wall of worthless" for any channel. In a world of ballooning lateral access, locating anything of value on linear TV has become too much of a chore for too little entertainment.
So what the hell happened? Is it me? Or could it be the content, could it actually be less entertaining than it used to be? Or rather, has it stopped evolving in line my expectations of innovation? If this were multiple choice I think we'd check that last one.
The problem appears to be one of homogenisation - every channel, regardless of their original remit, wants to reach the largest possible audience. So if one type of programming draws a greater audience then every channel will want that type of programming. And so we have 24 hours of make-over and pimping shows on what used to be called "Music Television", and we even have reality TV on the SciFi channel... sorry that will be "SyFy" for the US viewers:
SyFy: where we're going, we won't need "i"s
The reason for this fuss over the locking down of a medium that is rapidly dipping below the horizon of relevance is because we can see a whole lot of defectors of this nature having a serious impact on viewing figures. The subsequent drop in advertising revenue will no doubt be blamed on illicit distribution of the same content that we can't be bothered to watch. Naturally, the finger will be pointed at the Internet. With Ireland already facing a de facto Three-strikes law and Internet censorship over music distribution, such attention is only going to add to the troubles. That the MPAA et al are deciding amongst themselves to further break our already compromised personal technology is a damning signal of both their mortally ill business and our own complacency over their power.
End result: an industry that produces something dull that we don't care about is trying to control us because we don't particularly want their product any more. The sounds of their desperate scrabbling for power are not unfamiliar. |
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| The First Rule of CSS Club... |
[Apr. 25th, 2009|01:13 am] |
In the case brought by the DVD Copy Control Association against Real over their RealDVD movie copying software, the MPAA are seeking to seal the courtroom from the public. Their argument is that the details of the Content Scrambling System at the heart of the case are super secret and their entire business model would crumble before our eyes were a single syllable of it to reach the ears of pirates!
Excuse me, I have something in my throat...
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# 531-byte qrpff-fast, Keith Winstein and Marc Horowitz <sipb-iap-dvd@mit.edu>
# MPEG 2 PS VOB file on stdin -> descrambled output on stdout
# arguments: title key bytes in least to most-significant order
$_='while(read+STDIN,$_,2048){$a=29;$b=73;$c=142;$t=255;@t=map{$_%16or$t^=$c^=($m=(11,10,116,100,11,122,20,100)[$_/16%8])&110;$t^=(72,@z=(64,72,$a^=12*($_%16-2?0:$m&17)),$b^=$_%64?12:0,@z)[$_%8]}(16..271);if((@a=unx"C*",$_)[20]&48){$h=5;$_=unxb24,join"",@b=map{xB8,unxb8,chr($_^$a[--$h+84])}@ARGV;s/...$/1$&/;$d=unxV,xb25,$_;$e=256|(ord$b[4])<<9|ord$b[3];$d=$d>>8^($f=$t&($d>>12^$d>>4^$d^$d/8))<<17,$e=$e>>8^($t&($g=($q=$e>>14&7^$e)^$q*8^$q<<6))<<9,$_=$t[$_]^(($h>>=8)+=$f+(~$g&$t))for@a[128..$#a]}print+x"C*",@a}';s/x/pack+/g;eval
That's better.
I wonder, is the secret they are trying to keep the fact that everyone with even a passing interest in the field already knows everything single little thing about it? Is it a secret that this pitiful attempt to dress the shadow of obscurity as effective security was blown wide open at least ten years ago? Is it a secret that their throne is at the shore?
Would that they hang their crowns when this tide wets their robes. |
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| Glitch |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|10:49 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | civil liberties, copyright, drm, economy, movies, mpaa, music, net neutrality, news, p2p, politics, rant, technology | ] |
Listen, Glick, the movie industry is already doing the one thing that guarantees I will never illegally download their 'products', namely they are now making such deficient, low-brow, half-assed, worthless, over-hyped, over-funded, overwritten, sub intellectual, inadequate, substandard, ridiculous, inferior, scoff-worthy, malodorous, cringe-making, mismanaged, shoddy, insufferable, incompetent and defective low-com-dom crap, that I would never ever even consider wasting one single byte of my precious bandwidth on any of it. I would be perfectly happy to see every last bit of your meritless trash forever erased from the internet were it not for the fact that you are trying to do it by introducing a radically disproportionate mechanism: ending Network Neutrality!
Don't cover your ears Glickster, you need to hear this: Shrek 3 is not important enough to bring an end to our freedom. The only reason the movie industry can say it's losing money now is because they spent way too much on producing something that nobody actually needs and nobody really wants. The Western World will not crumble because they can't turn a profit, but it might if we lose the integrity and security of the single most important communications tool in history.
One way or another the IP delusional industries are one the way out. It's only a matter of time before the average consumer figures out that their 'entertainment' just isn't worth it any more, that the busker on the street outside the cinema is a hell of lot more creative, interesting and memorable than the claptrap movie they just walked out of. How long do you think they'll watch their technology subverted, their personal data ransacked, their legally purchased media disintegrating, and their communications tapped and blocked before they think: "But I didn't even like the Bourne Appendectomy!"
Anyone invested in the movie or recording industries with even an iota of common sense should be selling up now, while their stock is still worth the ferromagnetic material it's stored on. You know it can't go on like this. It just isn't reasonable in consider this a survivable scenario for anyone involved. I mean it. Get out now. This is going to end badly, and you know it.
Glicky, you are not adding to our culture in any positive way beyond uniting the rest of us against you. You are not curing any horrible diseases. You are not on a crusade of righteousness. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are not welcome here. |
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| Forever Less One Day |
[Apr. 27th, 2007|03:02 pm] |
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone."
- Jack Valenti (1921 - 2007), President of the MPAA, in his testimony to the House of Representatives, 1982.
Lest we forget. |
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