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Endangered Technology


elderbear
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Take a peek! Any of your favorite technology endangered by those greedy Em-Pee-Aye-Aye hyenas? Besides your ability to locate and download torrents with ease ...

 

EFF: Endangered Gizmos

 

FCC Chairman Michael Powell calls TiVo "God's machine," and its devotees have been known to declare, "You can take my TiVo when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!" But suppose none of us had ever been given the opportunity to use or own a TiVo -- or, for that matter, an iPod? Suppose instead that Hollywood and the record companies hunted down, hobbled, or killed these innovative gizmos in infancy or adolescence, to ensure that they wouldn't grow up to threaten the status quo?

 

That's the strategy the entertainment industry is using to control the next generation of TiVos and iPods. Its arsenal includes government-backed technology mandates, lawsuits, international treaties, and behind-the-scenes negotiations in seemingly obscure technology standards groups. The result is a world in which, increasingly, only industry-approved devices and technologies are "allowed" to survive in the marketplace.

 

This is bad news for innovation and free competition, but it also threatens a wide range of activities the entertainment conglomerates have no use for -- everything from making educational "fair" use of TV or movie clips for a classroom presentation, to creating your own "Daily Show"-style video to make a political statement, to simply copying an MP3 file to a second device so you can take your music with you.

 

Rather than sit back and watch as promising new technologies are picked off one-by-one, EFF has created the Endangered Gizmos List to help you defend fair use and preserve the environment for innovation.

 

Endangered "species" include the iPod, HDTV tuner boards, A/D & D/A converters + more!

 

Details about endangered gizmos and EFF actions to protect them.

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when it comes down to money it probably depends who has more.

these endangered gizmo's are gonna cost someone dearly so compromises will be found. and even if they are banned people will find ways round things.

some major manufacturers got together to try and prevent piracy but there are more clever people in the world than they can employ and their security will be compromised eventually.

 

question is, does the little guy geyt caught in the crossfire?

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The main problem behind piracy is the greed for the almighty dollar.

 

People do not want to pay $20 for a CD. $30 for a movie. $70 for a new computer game. $150 for a season of TNG.

We do not want to waste the little money that we have in order to pay for some exec at Warner, or Sony, or Universal new summer home, or his fancy sports car. I say if they want to fight piracy, make stuff cheaper. Would I pay $7 for that new cd? SURE! $15 for a DVD movie? WHY NOT. $50 for a season of TNG? HELL YA.

 

If they want to keep technology growing and not infridge on profits then they need to find ways to make the content cheaper for the people. Make it so cheap that buying it is a WAY better idea than downloading it.

 

We need the iPods, and TiVos and all that stuff because we are so busy in our lives that we cannot afford the time to watch our shows. Or we don't want to pay $20 bucks for that one Green Day song we like.

 

Its the MPAA the RIA and the software companies that make billions each year that drive these sites, and drive this new technology. Everyone is out to make a buck, so why do we have to suffer?

 

Technology will just be driven underground and black market if they keep this BS up. They are only hurting themselves.

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This crap slays me........

 

They whine they're losing money, yet they make huge profits every year, and pay the CEO's huge salaries.

 

They whine they're losing money, yet they seem to have billions of dollars to come after us.

 

They whine they're losing money, but they screw the actors & producers out of theirs.

 

......I swear to god, I sometimes think I'm the only one with a brain.

 

:stare: :stare: :stare:

 

 

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Found this in a Popular Science magazine a couple months back

 

Plugged in

THE INSIDE STORY ON

THE FORCES THAT RULE

PERSONAL TECH

BY CORY DOCTOROW

 

Go ask Hollywood

Why can’t you back up your

DVD’s? Because entertainment

execs don’t want you to

 

 

The holiday shopping guides were all atwitter over the new DVD formats, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD–competing systems for recording and playing back high-definition movies. Both feature hugely increased pixel counts, more bit-depth and a surfeit of storage. But here’s an important question that goes unasked in all the hype: What features wont your next-generation DVD device have.

It won’t have a button for making a backup copy of the DVD you just bought, or for sending the movies to any portable video player. And if you put one of these long-awaited new discs in you PC, you won’t have the option to rip it to your hard drive the way yo do when you insert a CD.

No matter how pretty its picture, what you’re expected to do with a DVD today is the one thing you could do in 1994: watch it on your TV. Why? Because when the companies created the DVD, they sold you out. They let Hollywood hold its content hostage so that they could control who gets to build players and what those players can do. Tech execs have not only rolled over, they’ve joined the other side, advocation laws and restrictions that serve the entertainment conglomerates first and us second.

If that doesn’t seem like such bad news, think about the way it used to be. When Sony created the VCR in 1976, it enabled anyone to make near-perfect copies of movies. Sony did this without permission, and Hollywood went nuts. The Motion Picture Association of America launched an eight-year battle against the VCR that culminated in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision declaring the device legal and changing copyright law to address these new capabilities. That ruling is the reason you don’t get sued for recording a TV show. (During one Congressional hearing, MPAA spokesman Jack Valenti uttered theis infamous hyperbole: “The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.†Today, prerecorded media earns the studios more revenue than box-office tickets sales.)

The phonograph, radio, jukebox, cable TVâ€â€Âall share similar stories..New technologies inherently defy existing rules and scare the entertainment establishment. But if consumers want the devices, cipyright laws adjust and profitable new business models evolve.

The DVD broke that system. The studiosâ€â€Âby then aware of the lucre in home videoâ€â€Âcontrolled the format from its inception by agreeing en masse to a patented encryption scheme for the discs; anyone who wanted to build a player or create a DVD feature had to ask them for the key. They set up a cartel in 1995, now called the DVD Copy control Association (DVD-CCA), to dole out these licenses. Anyone making player without one is breaking the law. A Fox Studios executive told me, “It’s a polite market place.†Sure, if polite means stagnant.

Think of all the things you can do with a track from a CD now that you couldn’t do 10 years ago: rip it to your laptop, turn it into a ring tone, send it to your friends, burn a mix. Many of these capabilities are illegal, and the recording industry has tried to stop them all, but they’re out there, challenging the old rules and feeling their place in the market. Innovators have tried to enable the same flexibility for the DVDs, but the MPAA sued it into bankruptcy before a court could rule on whether or not the product was legal.

Just last month, this magazine gave a Best of Whats New award to a $27,000 movie jukebox from Kaleidescape, praising the maker’s efforts to appease Hollywood aby locking down content on the device so it can’t be shared. Kaleidescape thinks the product is within the boundaries of its DVD-CCA license, but my Deep Throat on the cartel says the group desagrees and is currently deciding how the company will be punished. Penalties range from a stern warning to fines to lawsuits. (When I called the DVD-CCA for an offical line, I got this reply: “I’ve been asked to tell you we have no comment.†“Who asked you to tell me that?†“I can’t tell you.â€ÂÂ)

The VCR exists because a behemoth with deep pockets stood up for it. But today, only easily crushed upstarts are willing to take chances, and the big tech firms are all in the entertainment business themselves. Sony recently bought MGM to secure content for Blu-Ray. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and of the animation studio Pixar, told studio heads and tech leaders in a private meeting that studios shouldn’t release anything for the DVD-HD format until they get a promise that recorders will never appear on a PC.

We can’t rely on the vendors to act in our interest these days, dragging the entertainment execs kicking and screaming to the money tree. The irony is that the tech companies say that this is all done in your interest, that by pleasing the studios, they can give you a device for which Hollywood might make a few movies available. But it will be on their terms, not yours.

Whth friends like that, who need the Boston Strangler?

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Found this in a Popular Science magazine a couple months back

 

Just last month, this magazine gave a Best of Whats New award to a $27,000 movie jukebox from Kaleidescape, praising the maker’s efforts to appease Hollywood aby locking down content on the device so it can’t be shared. Kaleidescape thinks the product is within the boundaries of its DVD-CCA license, but my Deep Throat on the cartel says the group desagrees and is currently deciding how the company will be punished. Penalties range from a stern warning to fines to lawsuits. (When I called the DVD-CCA for an offical line, I got this reply: “I’ve been asked to tell you we have no comment.†“Who asked you to tell me that?†“I can’t tell you.â€ÂÂ)

 

Kaleidescape Sued By DVD CCA

 

"The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) is suing a company called Kaleidescape that makes a high-end DVD jukebox for home movies, despite the fact that the DVD CCA has already sold Kaleidescape a license."

 

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/dvrs/kaleidescape-sued-by-dvd-cca-027191.php

 

:stare:

 

 

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The main problem behind piracy is the greed for the almighty dollar.

 

People do not want to pay $20 for a CD. $30 for a movie. $70 for a new computer game. $150 for a season of TNG.

We do not want to waste the little money that we have in order to pay for some exec at Warner, or Sony, or Universal new summer home, or his fancy sports car. I say if they want to fight piracy, make stuff cheaper. Would I pay $7 for that new cd? SURE! $15 for a DVD movie? WHY NOT. $50 for a season of TNG? HELL YA.

 

If they want to keep technology growing and not infridge on profits then they need to find ways to make the content cheaper for the people. Make it so cheap that buying it is a WAY better idea than downloading it.

 

We need the iPods, and TiVos and all that stuff because we are so busy in our lives that we cannot afford the time to watch our shows. Or we don't want to pay $20 bucks for that one Green Day song we like.

 

Its the MPAA the RIA and the software companies that make billions each year that drive these sites, and drive this new technology. Everyone is out to make a buck, so why do we have to suffer?

 

Technology will just be driven underground and black market if they keep this BS up. They are only hurting themselves.

 

I feel the same way most of the time. I kinda hate to think that greed is the bigger factor in life than life itself... I mean why bitch for more when you have so much already? I'm satisfied with the odd episode of Star Trek , [any series]... and an occasional watch. Of course if you watch it on TV it is not illegal because of the vast ammount of waste-your-time advertisments are being played. I can safely say that 98% of advertisements don't even affect me. So... I like pepsi and sometimes I like watching the pepsi comercials but thats about it....

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What the MPAA and the studios have forgotten is the very basis of what their whole business is. One may ask why are theatres never more than half-full except for long awaited blockbusters? Why are people trying to find other ways of spending their entertainment dollars? Can it be because the studios have forgotten the one capitalistic maxim - charge a fair price which the market will bear. If the consumer is not filling those theatres nor buying DVDs or CDs then the reason is that they have been priced out of range of the average consumer.

 

As for the the emerging technolgies, as noted in other responses, it will ultimately be the consumer who will drive the market. If manufacturer A comes out with a machine that decrypts and burns a blu ray disc, rest assured manufacturer B and C will follow suit (and at a cheaper cost).

 

What I do find hilarious is that some of these conglomerates are saying "No you cannot copy our product" but they are more than willing to sell the consumer the means to copy their product - burnable discs and the burners.

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This discussion reminds me of something......

 

Awhile back, I had a real expensive (at the time) HIFI VCR.

 

The machine played flawlessly for months on end. Then I played a Macrovision-encoded tape.

 

......It never played right after that. Annoying problems kept happening.

 

(Macrovision, for those that don't know, is the encoding that prevents you from making copies.)

 

Anyone else have a similar occurance??

 

:stare:

 

I've since replaced my HIFI VCR, but I'm reluctant to play any tapes in it......

 

 

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What I do find hilarious is that some of these conglomerates are saying "No you cannot copy our product" but they are more than willing to sell the consumer the means to copy their product - burnable discs and the burners.

 

Yeah especially SONY... they are the biggest hypocrits of all

 

"don´t copy our cd´s"

 

"buy our new and improved cd and dvd burners"

"buy our minidisc"

 

:stare: :stare:

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