HomeWeekly News Roundup (20 December 2009)
We’re in the final weeks of 2009, and the first decade of the 21st century, or are we still a year away from that, I don’t know. You know sometimes I wish there was actually a year zero, since it makes all of this much less confusing. This could very well be the last WNR for 2009, it all depends on how much news there is next week, and I suspect there won’t be a lot. Still, I’m sure I will write something next week, even if it is just a yearly in review type of thing. There’s quite a big of news this week, I guess everyone wanted to get their stories in before leaving on holidays or something. And please also vote for the best game of 2009 in this poll.
Copyright news is first up. The US Congress has gotten into the Christmas spirit and decided to give $30 million dollars to the MPAA crusade against online piracy. I guess it makes sense that the only industry that managed to make record profits this year is the one to receive this latest “bailout” package.
Much of the money will go towards fighting online piracy, although the MPAA was eager to tout its other, and probably more important, roles in stopping piracy. Counterfeit goods is a large problem and this is the one area where actual money exchanges hands and individuals or groups profit from these illegal activities, as opposed to some teenager downloading a copy of a movie they never intended to buy anyway.
Biden heads the list of pro-RIAA, MPAA members of the Obama White House
The increased funding comes after Vice President Biden held roundtable talks with all the interested parties in the copyright debate, well at least all of the people on one side of it anyway. Invited were the RIAA, MPAA, movie studios, music labels, publishers, the FBI, Homeland Security and even the Secret Service. Not invited were consumer rights groups, IT companies, the Internet industry, and anyone that might have had a bad word to say about the group that were invited. Biden has a long voting history in the senate in support of the RIAA, so this isn’t really much of a surprise. What is surprising is the same group of invitees coming out to publicly attack the rights of the vision impaired. With the various new layers of DRM and technology to protect content, it’s making things extremely difficult for the vision impaired when it comes to text to speech services and other helpful tools which are locked out by the DRM as well. To address the situation, a change to the copyright law was proposed to build in an exception, but to the surprise of pretty much everyone, it was met with fierce opposition. What the publishers and others didn’t like was the relaxing of copyright law, regardless for whatever reason (and this time, it was for a very good one), because they want to see the opposite and the ever tightening of copyright laws, not the reverse. When it comes to their moral crusade against downloads, there is no such thing as friendly fire, it seems. President Obama did the sensible thing and came out to support the proposed amendments.
Everyone knows my disdain for DRM. But it really only extends when it is used badly to prevent piracy, which usually means that it doesn’t prevent any piracy and only decreases ease of use for consumers. But DRM does have its place, as it is used to restrict access to certain files, while allowing access to it by others. It’s much easier than say using a password to lock a file, which means you’ll have to give the password to those that need to access it, and pretty soon, the password becomes an open secret. Encryption has the same drawbacks. So a proper DRM system with user based access control is then the preferred solution. But the problem is that with managed DRM systems, you’re relying on authentication servers and such to grant and deny access, with deny being the default. But if the authentication system goes down for whatever reason, then you end up with unusable files, which is exactly what happened to companies using Microsoft Office’s Rights Management Services. Apparently someone forgot to renew a certificate, and when it expired, the whole thing failed, locking people out of their own files. I recently read an interesting article that questioned the longevity of digital file storage. Not only are the media used to store the digital files susceptible to failure, over time, you could also find it difficult to find the right hardware to access the media. Take for example, 5.25″ floppy disks and how difficult it may be for many to get files off it and imagine how much more difficult it is in say another 20 year’s time. DRM compounds the problem by adding encryption and authentication to the file. Will the authentication servers be around in 50 years time? And will people remember what the encryption algorithm used was? Of course just before the DRM system fails, the owner of the file should unlock it, but what if they forget, or what if they don’t have rights to do it, like consumers that purchased DRM’d MP3s from just two years ago that now find the files useless.
Another aspect of DRM is its use in anti-competitive behaviour, something that Apple has been questioned about in Europe. This story of a garage door opener having both DRM and a DMCA warning notice, all to prevent the use of third party door openers, is case in point. The same company apparently already lost a lawsuit in relation to the DRM use. I could, as an example, implement a simple system that prevents copy/paste being used for this article so you can’t copy parts of it to post elsewhere, and if you attempt to break this simple encryption system, then I can sue you under the DMCA. But just like DRM, it doesn’t really prevent those serious about copying your work (they could do it the “analog” way and simply retype everything), and it adds inconvenience to readers. And in the long terms, it’s bad for me, the content owner, as others pasting parts of your article around is actually a good thing (as long as they link back to the original article). So this is why I find it so funny that the likes of Rupert Murdoch would come out against Google and news aggregators for daring to link to their content, because I would love to have people link to the stuff I write. The death of the newspaper business has more to do with an outdated model of information delivery, the ever decreasing quality of “journalism” being produced, in my opinion. There is certainly less trust towards what newspapers publish even compared to anonymous blogs, since political bias and monied interests have ruined it as a platform for trusted information.
DRM ruins 3D Avatar preview screening
But that’s a discussion for another time, perhaps. But back to the theme of how DRM ruins lives, in Germany, a 3D preview screening of the hit movie Avatar was ruined by the DRM system now employed by studios and cinemas to prevent piracy. Instead, the excited cinema goers had to settle for a 2D version of the film instead, which I’m told is definitely not the way to watch Avatar. DRM systems are not so complicated, the cinema ones involve authentication servers, certificates, time-sensitive data, encrypted hardware devices and whatever else they would manage to squeeze in – any failure in any of these components means the film won’t play. And even with all these precautions, a screener version of the film has still made its way online, although the fact that a pirated version was available hasn’t really affected the box office figures for a movie that everyone knows would be best seen in the cinema (and preferably in 3D). It’s this reason that I think why Hollywood box office receipts broke all records in 2009, and there’s a new article that provides further analysis of the record breaking figures, and why Hollywood tries to hide their success.
And the lies don’t stop there. The MPAA also claims that everything they do is for the good of the consumer, to give them more choices. This is from the same group that sued Real Networks and Kaleidescape for offering consumer more choices when it comes to how consumers chose to watch their legally purchased DVDs. While nobody denies that piracy is a problem, and it’s a problem that’s on the rise according to recent studies, but I think the differences lie in how to solve this problem, and nobody really thinks Hollywood’s solution is the best one, since it has proven so far to be very ineffective. So perhaps instead of trying to fight change, they should embrace it and come up with new innovations that can protect their profits, as well as give people what they want. It seems that in their bitter crusade, many have lost sight of the latter part of the previous statement, that companies exists not to protect their profit, but to give people what they want and need. Apple managed to it through iTunes, and the only losers were the music industry, which in their single minded approach against online piracy handed the immense opportunity to a computer company instead. The movie industry cannot make the same mistake again.
The party of French President Sarkozy, UMP, and the hardliners in the global anti-piracy fight with their introduction of three-strikes laws, is again at the center of copyright infringement. The first was when they used a song without permission in an online video, the next was when they were caught pirating 500 DVDs of a documentary that promoted Sarkozy. And now, their third strike, is lip dub video that used a song they were expressly prevented from using by the content owners, who did not want to associated the song with politics. But the UMP decided to ignore the wishes of copyright owners and used the song anyway. They’ll no doubt only get a slap on the wrist, and they should consider themselves lucky that they don’t live in a country with harsh copyright laws. Oh.
In a similar incident, video sharing site Vimeo was sued by EMI for promoting the use of lip dubs. EMI says that most lip dubs use full length songs without having obtained license for this public broadcast, and that by promoting the creation of these lip dubs, Vimeo is not only condoning but promoting piracy.
In HD news, the specifications for 3D Blu-ray has been finalized, hopefully more finalized than the whole Managed Copy debacle which you can read about in previous issues of the WNR. The specifications includes notes about the PS3, which can be upgraded to support 3D Blu-ray through a firmware update. There is less detail about other Blu-ray players, but I would expect that only the ones with powerful processors will be able to be upgraded through firmware to support 3D.
The specs are finalized, but a TV upgrade is most likely needed if you want to watch 3D Blu-ray
The other good news is that 3D discs will carry 2D versions of the film, which means that studios won’t have to produce two packages for consumers. The bad news is that you’ll most likely have to get a new TV to enjoy 3D, since there’s only a handful that supports it at the moment. No doubt with the finalization of the specs, more TV manufacturers will come out with 3D TVs, but whether people want to watch 3D at home is another thing, as it’s not exactly the same experience as watching 3D on a big cinema screen.
There’s not much in gaming, but I will mention the 2009 game of year poll again. I suspect Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 will win, it is easily the best selling game of the year, and it really is a good game, combining the excitement of previous Call of Duty games, plus a pretty good storyline this time. Add a splash of controversy, and you have a winner.
That’s all we have time for this week, and possibly this year. Have a good week, and a good holiday period. See you next week … or next year.