Will your big-screen Super Bowl party violate copyright law?: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.
An offhand comment the other day by a friend caught my attention—"Did you know that you can't watch the Super Bowl on a TV screen larger than 55 inches? Yeah, it's right there in the law."
With the Colts and Saints set to do battle in Super Bowl XLIV, this seemed worth looking into as a public service. Could it be that some of those giant flat panel TV sets now finding their way into US living rooms are actually violating copyright law?
Read Original Article:(Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)
SOC's slippery slope: good enough for movies, why not sports?: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.
Back when we had our debate with cable's top lobbyist Kyle McSlarrow over whether to let Hollywood block analog streams to your home theater setup, I asked a worried question. If the Federal Communications Commission does give movie studios and cable companies the green light to implement Selectable Output Control (SOC) on "premium" early run movies, who else might petition for it next? read more... »
MPAA to FCC: critics of video blocking proposals are lying: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.
The movie studios have a new Holy Grail, it seems: Federal Communications Commission permission to cable companies to shut down the analog streams on video-on-demand movie programming. As Ars readers know, we've been covering this issue for a while. But the Motion Picture Association of America's latest letter to the FCC pulls out all the stops, rhetoric-wise, calling criticisms of this scheme "complete and utter nonsense that only can be intended to stir up baseless fears among consumers that their equipment will suddenly go dark and be unusable for any purpose." read more... »
5 million Star Trek pirates vs. 1 FCC broadband plan: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.
Paramount Pictures says that, in the months following the theatrical release of Star Trek, the media company tracked more than five million IP addresses that downloaded one of six camcorded copies of the movie. The first was in Russian, but it was followed by editions from the Philippines, the Ukraine, Spain, Germany, and finally the United States. Who does Paramount blame for this? Pretty much the entire Internet, it seems, including google.com, youtube.com, Microsoft's bing.com, yahoo.com, and, of course, millions of 'Net users.
Read Original Article:(Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)
DRM by any other name: The latest from Hollywood: Via Freedom to Tinker.
Sunday's New York Times had an article, Studios' Quest for Life After DVDs. To nobody's surprise, consumers want to have convenient access to "their" media, wherever they happen to be, without all the annoying restrictions that come into play when you add DRM to the picture. To many people's surprise, sales of DVDs (much less Blu-ray) are in trouble.
In the third quarter, studios’ home entertainment divisions generated about $4 billion, down 3.2 percent from a year ago, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade consortium. But digital distribution contributed just $420 million, an increase of 18 percent.
Given that DVDs are really a luxury good (versus, say, food or electricity), the 3.2 percent drop seems like Hollywood is getting off easy. read more... »
Movie studios again demand HDTV disabling powers from FCC: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.
Hollywood's bid to force a yet-to-be-agreed-upon number of households to buy new home theater gear is back in business. The Motion Picture Association of America has once again asked the Federal Communications Commission for the right to selectively control output streams to the TV entertainment systems of consumers. "The pro-consumer purpose" (!) request "is to enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content," three MPAA biggies explained during a meeting they held with seven FCC Media Bureau staffers last Thursday. read more... »
Supreme Court Serves Up Remote-Recording Victory: Via Threat Level.
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a copyright case testing whether cable operators may permit customers to store television programming on company servers to be viewed at a later time.
The issue concerns an August ruling by a federal appeals court, which lifted (.pdf) an injunction against Cablevision Systems blocking it from offering customers a recording service that stores programming on the cable company’s own servers instead of on viewers’ in-house playback devices.
Hollywood and television programmers maintained Cablevision’s service directly infringes their exclusive rights to both reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works. read more... »
Into the DTV era, with no broadcast flag mandate: Via EFF.org Updates.
Today (June 12, 2009) marks the completion of the U.S. transition to digital television, as TV stations switch off their analog transmitters.
Just a few years ago, some broadcasters and movie studios argued that this transition couldn't happen without a DRM mandate -- a legal requirement for devices to obey the broadcast flag and apply DRM restrictions to free, over-the-air broadcasts. And they said they would hold up and obstruct this transition unless they got their way.
The DMCA has already been used to restrict the ability to produce innovative, useful products that copyright holders disapprove of. read more... »
EFF comments on Child Safe Viewing Act: Via EFF.org Updates.
Recently, EFF filed comments with the FCC in connection with the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007, which requires the FCC to conduct a study of V-chip-like blocking technologies that might apply to media other than television – such as Internet access, perhaps. The law requires the FCC to study these "advanced blocking technologies" and report back to Congress, which might then take some further legislative action based on the report's contents. Our comments emphasized First Amendment issues, but there turns out to be a copyright angle lurking here too (which we'll discuss in a separate blog post). read more... »
The Child Safe Viewing Act and another DMCA victim: Via EFF.org Updates.
In an earlier post, we mentioned that EFF filed comments with the FCC in connection with the Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007. This process unexpectedly drew our attention to a copyright issue, which we discuss below.
The comments of one blocking technology company, TVGuardian, reveal an interesting angle: TVGuardian and companies like it are unexpected victims of DRM and the DMCA! read more... »