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

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

The film industry can block outputs on home television equipment so studios can offer first-run movies while preventing viewers from making illicit copies, U.S. regulators said.

Temporarily disabling the outputs will “enable a new business model” that wouldn’t develop in the absence of such anti-piracy protection, the Federal Communications Commission said today in an order.

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[edit on 5/9/2010 by semperfortis]

The FCC has given Hollywood permission to activate the "Selective Output Control" technologies in your set-top box. These are hidden flags that allow the MPAA to deactivate parts of your home theater depending on what you're watching. And it sucks. As Dan Gillmor notes, "Fans of old TV science fiction will remember the Outer Limits. Given Hollywood's victory today at the FCC -- they'll be able to reach over the lines and disable functions on your TV -- the intro to the show takes on modern relevance."

The FCC says that they're doing this because they believe that if they do so, the MPAA will start releasing first-run movies (the ones that are still in theaters) for TV. They say that Hollywood won't make these movies available unless they get Selectable Output Control because SOC will stop piracy.

This is ridiculous.

First, it's ridiculous because this can't ever stop piracy or get first-run movies into your living room. Even with SOC, the studios are not going to release high-value movies that are still in theatrical distribution for viewing in your house, where you could set up a tripod and high-quality camera (along with ideal lighting) in order to make your own camcordered copy and put it online.

Now, the FCC could have solved this by saying that only movies that are in their first theatrical release run can have SOC turned on, but they didn't, because they knew that the MPAA was lying through its teeth about using SOC to enable the "new business model" of showing you first run movies in your home.

Second, it's ridiculous because it's possible in the first place. The FCC (and the candy-ass consumer electronics companies) allowed for Selectable Output Control to be inserted into your devices even though they claimed all along that they would never allow it to be used. Read your Chekhov, people: the gun on the mantelpiece in act one will go off in act three. Allowing the MPAA to get SOC in your set-top box but "never planning on using it" is like buying a freezer full of chocolate ice-cream and never planning on eating it.

If the CE companies and FCC wanted to prevent SOC from being used, the best way of doing that would be to not include it in devices in the first place.

Finally, this is ridiculous because of what it's really for: ensuring that Hollywood gets control of all the features in your home's devices and computers. Here's how that works:
SOC only works with DRM-crippled outputs, like those locked with HDCP, DTLA, etc.
Now that some content will have SOC on it, every manufacturer will race to add SOC (and hence HDCP and DTLA and so on) to their devices
The committees that run DTLA and HDCP and other DRM cartels are absolutely in thrall to the MPAA. When I've attended DRM committee meetings, I've watched the MPAA reps tie the consumer electronics guys in knots, playing them off against each other, bullying them, dirty tricking them
Putting DTLA or HDCP in your devices isn't simple: in order to do so, you have to comply with an enormous about of restrictions that the MPAA dreams up and crams into the license agreements (much of these agreements are secret, and not available for regulators or consumer to inspect)
Ergo: now that the FCC has allowed SOC in devices, all devices will have SOC, and since SOC comes with DRM, and since the studios control DRM licensing, and since they shove all kinds of restrictive crap into DRM licenses, the FCC has essentially just guaranteed that the future of all media will be controlled by Hollywood, to our eternal torment and detriment
Now here's the really scary part:

I'm not just talking about TVs and set-top boxes here. This stuff is targetted squarely at operating system vendors. Both Apple and Microsoft have enthusiastically signed onto adding DRM to their OSes in order to comply with HDCP, DTLA and other "device-based" DRMs.

In the PC world, compliance with DTLA and HDCP rules isn't just about what features the OS can have, but what features the video cards, hard-drives, network interfaces, motherboards and drivers can have.

So the FCC has just handed the keys to specify drivers and components for general purpose PCs to the thrashing dinosaurs of Hollywood. Because even your cheapo netbook or homebuilt Linux box relies on components that are manufactured for the gigantic mainstream PC and laptop markets.

Now that the mainstream component market has a new de-facto regulator at the MPAA, watch for all of those components to come with restrictions built in.


(visit the link for the full news article)

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[edit on 5/9/2010 by semperfortis]

Who cares. Only the sheeple watch TV anymore.

Time to wake up and stop giving your money to those government propagandists!

I haven't watched TV for 7 years now and I've got WAY MORE time to read books, study or do something useful.

Simple solution. Don't buy the products involved. Boycott/ban the crap. It's not good for people anyway.

As is usually the case, as soon as a new lock is created, someone will soon develop the bolt cutter that will remove it.

Originally posted by ReelView
Simple solution. Don't buy the products involved. Boycott/ban the crap. It's not good for people anyway.

What if all consumer electronics start to use this technology to track,censor,or spy on its users. Are you going to go back to the middle ages? That means you computer would be included. Someone will be able an control what you watch or listen to. You could be denied access to ATS. But im sure our friendly intelligent crackers and hackers will find a way to bypass this anyway. So, no worries.

I can almost be 100% certain that someone on you tube has put up a video with a way to get around this stuff and disable the unit that stops TV outputs....

thats one of the best things about youtube nowadays.... all the nerd crews are for ever putting out well handy 'how to' videos....

Nerds do far have saved my TV from magnetism, gave me access to a pirated version of windows, showed me how to make a real laser with a pointer and many other quality bits of useful info....

Bottom line is no matter what TPTB do their is always someone out there with a way to get around it....

I don't like it either but as you mentioned it, this will actually make pirating movies much easier. Camcorders in a theater is a great risk, where at home there is no one who can stop you. And any tech-head who wants to make a DVD quality copy of the movie will figure out a way to do so.

But I would personally be thrilled to be able to watch a brand-new movie at the comfort of my own home, for a reasonable price of course, which it won't be. (I'm betting it will be $25 minimum)

I can almost be 100% certain that someone on you tube has put up a video with a way to get around this stuff and disable the unit that stops TV outputs....

Yeah...precisely, people will find a million ways to get around it...like the OP said, if all else fails, they can simply film the TV with a video camera...you could get near equal quality to the original if you did it right...they are really stupid if they think this is a good move...I bet pirates are praying they go through with it...

Don't they realize that the more they try and prevent people from doing this kind of stuff, the more the people are going to do it? Heck the only thing I have to say about this argument is look at Spore by EA. They put tons of DRM and copy protection in this game, so much so that legitimate people were having problems running the game. It also turns out this was the most pirated game of all time. Why? Because you (EA) told them (the pirating community) it would be impossible and they did it just to embarrass you.

I'm not saying piracy is the right thing or even good for certain industries. It's just goofy to think you're going to stop it. It will never happen. You could possibly stall it for a while, but with the generation that's coming now, they'll rip apart your DRM in minutes.

All they're doing is making it easier and putting out a message of "I challenge you!" Unfortunately for them the response will be "Challenge accepted."

DRM has been around for a while and is easily cracked. Have a look at this site for example.

Ubisoft came up with a novel anti pirating feature to use in their game, Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic. To play the game, you had to be always connected to the internet, presumably in touch with their servers to check if it's a pirated copy or not. Even while playing the game, if you were disconnected from the internet, then the game kicked you back to the main menu. This protection was cracked in less than 24 hours.

While hollywood focuses on forcing hardware manufacturers to comply with their demands (including SOC), the cracking is likely to be done at the byte level, before the hardware even sees the data. I imagine this would involve a program on your computer that removes the SOC (and other DRM) bytes and makes a copy of the Blu-Ray disc sans protection.

Also, I believe that when the Blu-Ray DRM detects non-DRM compatible hardware, it reduces the sound quality down to DVD quality. It probably reduces the picture quality too. Most people would not be able to tell the difference between DVD quality sound and Blu-Ray quality sound.

The only way to stop piracy is to not release the movies (and games etc) to the public. Therefore they either practically go out of business, or put up with it.

[edit on 9/5/10 by GobbledokTChipeater]

Sounds so hard to get by. Go and get a copy of the movie. This will be in the new MPEG 7 format, so recode it into Div X, remove the drm, break it down into .rar files and let the illegal downloading begin. (only if I understand correctly) HMMM, why does this sound so familiar? Oh yea, that is what the pirates are doing right now. As a PC gamer I got fed up with drm so I use steam. They better get them a service like steam real soon, or even I will start pirating these videos.

Look at the Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, It's restrictive DRM are proven to be the one of the downfall of this game

It's like when Direct TV dishes first came out, a lot of people bought the card flashers and started selling unlock cards for the receiver. This was widespread and many in Canada had them too. Direct TV decided to do something about it and decided to "Cook" all the "illegal" cards and ended up frying 2.5 million legit users also. The backlash was torturous for them.

This is just another invasion of privacy disguised as something else.

Tell Hollywood to piss off and start producing something worth watching. I'll be soo glad when reality TV runs it's course. The only thing that's done is dumb down the masses.

Fringe is a great show and you actually have to think a little.


MESSAGE TO HOLLYWOOD. MAKE SOMETHING WORTH WATCHING AND GET OUT OF MY PRIVACY!

Pretty much just puts another percentage point on top of the 100% assurance I already have of never being subjected to settle for watching it for entertainment purposes again.

If these...cough cough...people...ever took their drive and did something CONSTRUCTIVE with it, we might see something great come out of Hollywood; instead, they choose to act the fool while expending all their efforts to fight futility.

"It's quite the waste of motivation, opportunity and energy," he barely musters.

You know you're fighting against being violated, when your motive switches from wanting to see something, to wanting to do something JUST for spite. I don't acquire information for the information anymore...I acquire it for some semblance of dissent; some semblance of the illusion of freedom; some semblance of doing something they have the gall to tell me not to.

It's ALL intangible. And this is why they'll never win...because they don't want to. As long as this "fight" is perpetuated, we fight for something ridiculous, so we don't fight for something real or tangible.

People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Really very ironic, indeed.

reply to post by Djdoubt03


Take data.

Place on PC.

Record.

KTHANXBYE

Don't even have to put it on your computer.

As soon as you stream a video, it's in your "temp" folder to be copied and pasted.

As soon as you have a picture on the screen, you have an opportunity to employ the "print screen" key.

As soon as you hear any sound whatsoever, you can copy and paste it from your temp folder.

Unless they either stop putting things on computers (and thus lose 80% of their markets), or the power grid goes out (lol)...this fight IS FUTILE...period. Pathetically futile! It's a power-trip of EPIC proportions. A WASTE OF HUMAN RESOURCES, TIME and ENERGY!

It's ridiculous that we give so much credence to something so intangible and virtual in the first place.

If we can't see past the bull____ of this garbage, how can we ever hope to see anything REAL at all?!?

George Carlin was right about our rights in this country. It is being taken slowly away. They blame piracy, but yet they still get 100+ million or so from tickets from certain movies. I guess that is not enough for them is it?

reply to post by dragnet53


Yep, I'm sure he's up there right now (or down there...hehee) laughing at all of us. I'm sure he would have gotten plenty of 'entertainment' out of the current state of affairs. I always loved how he told it like it was...without hiding behind any kind of facade whatsoever.

He gave us all the warnings we'd ever need in the most eloquent way possible - with humor. Cause that's all people seem to be interested in.

This is why people with any recent copy of Windows (XP,Vista,7) need to familiarize themselves with the 'takeown' command.

Anything tries to do anything with my computer, it's got to be OK'd by me first.