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Spill Over Effects between Media
Posted by Paul Szynol on Sunday, March 09 @ 00:40:34 EST Media Regulation

Broadcast Flag technology, in order to stem the spread of online piracy, aims to prevent the unauthorized transmission of data across the Internet by embedding in the transmission "a sequence of digital bits . . . that signals that the program must be protected from unauthorized redistribution."

The pure principle argument against the Broadcast Flag is that it would "give Hollywood unwarranted control over the development of digital television (DTV) and related technologies to the detriment of creators and consumers of the technologies" (EFF.org).

A technical counterargument to the Broadcast Flag is the Internet's technological inability to sustain the kind of piracy envisioned by the entertainment industry. Downloading an entire DVD via a dial up connection, for instance, would be painfully slow, and few - if any - individuals would attempt to transmit an entire DVD through a telephone line. And current broadband transmission speeds, though faster, are still too slow to facilitate a convenient transmission of, say, an entire DVD. The relatively slow speed of transmission, in other words, is a solid argument against the use of the Broadcast Flag - there is no need for legal or technological devices that protect against unlikely crimes.

Indeed, Professor Felten has registered with the FCC this very objection: "It is easier and cheaper to record a movie on a VHS tape and send it through the mail than to record a digital broadcast and transmit it over the Internet, said Edward Felten, a computer science professor at Princeton University." (Entertainment and computer industries face off over digital television copy protection).

CNN has just reported, however, that Stanford Linear Accelerator Center researchers have managed to send 6.7 gigs of data across 6,800 miles in just 58 seconds. And the article uses an apropos measuring cup: 6.7 gigs equals approximately 2 DVDs.

However far in the future this technology may be for the Internet proper, the general spirit of the innovation is, for Internet surfers, great news. Faster transmission speeds mean more information flow, easier access to data, and so on.

To Hollywood, however, faster transmission speeds are a threat, for they make possible the kind of online piracy the Broadcast Flag aims to prevent. Once a DVD can be delivered via the Internet in 30 seconds, online transmission will be far easier than sending a VHS tape in the mail.

If courts and legislatures are willing to anticipate a future with blazing online transmission speeds, then -- particularly given the current legal-political predisposition to overprotect copyright holders -- they will likely condone restrictive technologies like the Broadcast Flag. Developments in one medium will create spill over effects in another (a phenomenon which the Supreme Court recognized over half a century ago -- "[l]aws which hamper the free use of some instruments of communication thereby favor competing channels", the Court wrote in 1949). In this case, progress in one channel of communication -- the Internet -- might very well lead to the creation of laws that, at least for consumers, hamper a competing channel -- viz., broadcast.

 
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Re: Spill Over Effects between Media (Score: 1)
by kaos on Sunday, March 09 @ 08:17:27 EST
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It is time to stop trying to make the Internet into something it is not. The Internet was never intended to be a point of distribution for vested and moneyed interests. It is what it is, and should not be controled by those who would impose their rules for insuring their survival in a capitalist environment. That does have a place too, but it should never become a "raison-d'etre".... I would like to refer readers to this excellent article by Doc Searles and David Weinburger: "What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else." http://www.worldofends.com/


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Re: Spill Over Effects between Media (Score: 1)
by doctorow on Sunday, March 09 @ 09:26:29 EST
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While many people have drawn this conclusion -- that the new developments at the leading edge of Internet2 justifies Hollywood's fear of Napsterized HD movies -- it's not a particularily plausible one. Internet2 is an academic IPv6 network that is only intended to ever link up universities, using incredibly fat pipes (bundles of 40+ OC4* fibres), employing IPv6's QoS mechanism to "traffic shape" the system so that, for example, giant 19.4Mbs ATSC transport streams that are being moved from one dormnet to another dormnet across the country are given such a low priority that it's as though they were being sent over dialup modems. The experiment reported on in the BBC article is generations afield of the exisiting Internet2 infrastructure, which has already shot most of its budgetary wad, and is many years out from being incorporated into Internet2. An analogy: We can put humans on the moon, with careful planning and tremendous budgets, in about a day's travel. A robot drone, capable of sustaining much higher g-stresses, can make it to the moon in even shorter time, say, ten minutes (I'm making this up, though it sounds plausible). Hollywood is arguing that because we can put people on the moon, we need to erect controls in every device that an infringer might ever use to ensure that he doesn't steal his booty away to the moon and escape justice. EFF and others argue that going to the moon is an extraordinary undertaking that is far beyond the resources of even the most determined infringers (and they'll have lots of places to escape to that aren't the moon, anyway). Yes, but, Hollywood says, but the moonshot technology will surely come down to consumer pricing sooner or later -- haven't you ever watched the Jetsons? Then NASA fires its ten-minute rocket at the moon. Aha! Hollyood cries. Aha! See! We can put a ship on the moon in TEN MINUTES -- won't pirates avail themselves of this ten-minute commute and set up freehavens on the lunar surface? It's nonsensical. Very high-speed dedicated connections over academic experimental networks are interesting, but they hardly point to a plausible practice of casual, widespread consumer transfer of enormous HD files in native resolution. Felten's right. You can send a DVHS cassette in the mails cheaper and more quickly than you can transfer an HD file -- the only thing this changes is that a tiny number of experimental researchers at academic institutions can yield access to their fantastically expensive, one-of-a-kind network for use by dormnet infringers, if they choose to, and even if they did, it STILL wouldn't give you an HDTV Napster.


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Re: Spill Over Effects between Media (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 09 @ 11:54:03 EST
The conclusion of the article isn't that the new developments justify Hollywood's fear. The article says that these developments are far in the future for the Internet. The article's point is that courts might wrongly use these developments to justify the implementation of technologies like the Broadcast Flag. It's the point you're making.


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Re: Spill Over Effects between Media (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 16 @ 23:17:04 EST
Back when I first started going online, I had a 1200 baud modem. Let's consider how long it would take to send a CD using a simple calculation. Stereo CDs have 2 stereo tracks * 44,100 samples/second * 16 bits/sample = 1.4 Mbits per second. A one hour CD would therefore take 5 Gbits. My 1200 baud modem would take over 48 days to send this data.

Clearly any threat to the CD business from computers is absurd! No one could ever send that much data - it's as hard as going to the moon. It would be far easier and cheaper just to make a tape cassette copy of a song and send it through the mail than to share it online.

That's the kind of shortsighted reasoning that passes for logic in this article. It's especially bizarre to claim that no one will do this when TV shows are already widely available on file sharing services! Talk about refusing to face reality. What planet are you guys from?


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