Brits May Go Where Americans Dare Not — DRM TV
They did it to music – now what about TV? ReadWriteWeb reports that the BBC wants to prevent piracy, ad removal, and illegal copying by encoding all listing metadata and using a compression
algorithm to limit playing abilities. In other words – DRM for TV content.
Danny O'Brien gets into the details of the "crazy" plan over on the Electronic Frontier Foundation blog, but the gist is this: the rightsholders want copy-protection technology built into every TV receiver device, and make manufacturers sign an agreement that would ultimately limit their ability to innovate, for fear of violating the "metadata compression parameter" license.
Rewind 5 years and change continents: here in the US of A the same measure was suggested by the FCC and the Motion
Picture Association of America, trying to force HD encryption on digital television, before we transitioned from analog. The court wasn't convinced, and the idea was thrown out.
Even if they had succeeded, the rise of open source TV services like Boxee means that people could watch protected programs at home, just not via their HC receiver. A Boxee spokesperson remarks, "The way for content owners to make money is to cater to their audience,
not to stifle innovation by creating a DRM racket like what's proposed
here." Square off, guys.
This boring regurgitated dribble of a post is what makes digital content useless and “PR” writers useless members of society.
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Rick, I think you don’t like the post. But if digital content were useless, how would we see your comment?
October 27th, 2009 at 4:46 pm