HomeWeekly News Roundup (1 August 2010)
Still busy with the move I’m afraid, it’s not the big things that’s the problem, it’s always the little things that you have pack carefully, and then move over bit by bit. So not a lot of time left to do any real work unfortunately, and it was a pretty light news week anyway. So we can get through this WNR pretty quickly it seems, sparing you of the pain of reading through a bunch of badly written crap nobody cares about. Or something.
Let’s start things with the copyright news, which in a week with few news items, actually produced two quite important pieces of news.
Jailbreaking the iPhone is now legal, thanks to new exemptions in the DMCA ...
First up is The Library of Congress’ announcement of newly added exemptions to the DMCA. I’ve gone through the exemptions in the linked post, so you should read up on that, but the two biggies are the allowing of of iPhone style jailbreaking, and the exemptions to filmmakers in regards to DVD ripping. For DRM hacking on phones, as long as you do it for interoperability reasons, and not for piracy related reasons, then it’s now allowed. Of course, Apple will have something to say about this, but their attempt to stop jailbreaking has never really been about copy protection, even by their own explanations (which are more to do with protecting the integrity of the platform, blah blah blah). It’s an interesting fact that the US Copyright Office, who made these changes, acknowledges the role DRM now plays in not stopping copyright infringement, but actually preventing interoperability in order to allow companies to gain a financial advantage. In other words, it’s anti-competitive.
The other biggie is that filmmakers and educators can actually break DRM on DVDs (and I suppose Blu-ray movies as well) in order to use clips for use in education, criticism or comment. The exemption had existed for educators, but the new exemption has the MPAA pretty riled up. And even with educators, remember when the MPAA demonstrated how teachers can record sections of DVDs and Blu-ray movies without breaking DRM (either the digital kind, CSS/AACS, or the analogue Macrovision kind), by using a camcorder to record a TV playing the DVD/Blu-ray? But now with filmmakers able to rip to their heart’s content, it’s no wonder the MPAA isn’t happy. But the basis of a free and democratic society is that there should be no barriers to genuine criticism and comment, and unfortunately, DRM is a barrier created by corporations, some of them the very target of the criticism that DRM prohibits. That the MPAA even has the temerity to question such an exemption, just shows how out of control and out of touch they really are. They’re bullies, nothing more.
... Filmmakers also benefit from new exemptions that means they can break DVD/Blu-ray DRM to use clips for comment or criticism
The other exemptions were all in a similar vain, an attempt to fix some of problems created by the DMCA, the consequences of which meant that fair use was prevented. It’s a step in the right direction, and there are still many steps to take before the DMCA can be truly called fair. But the message is clear – don’t use DRM for anything other than protecting the rights of license holders, and even when doing this, make sure you don’t infringe on the existing rights of consumers.
And almost at the same time, we have a court ruling that gives hope that further steps in the future will be taken to ensure the above. A judge has ruled that merely breaking DRM is not enough to trigger the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA. The DMCA was created as an extension to existing copyright laws that did not properly deal with copyright protection in the digital era. The fact that *any* DRM breaking is considered as breaking the DMCA is too wide an interpretation of the anti-circumvention provision, and I’m very glad that a judge has finally made a ruling that takes this into account. As the DMCA is an extension of copyright laws, then anti-circumvention should only be prohibited if copyright laws are broken as a result. Once again, it’s the idea that DRM should only be used to prevent copyright abuse, and that breaking DRM isn’t illegal if it’s not used for an illegal act. To use an analogy, it’s the difference between buying a knife and using a knife to stab someone. Breaking DRM, buying the knife, should not be illegal unless it leads to a crime, that is to stab someone with the knife. But the industry wants to ban not only knives, but people who make knives, talk about knives, or anything that even remotely looks or functions like a knife (everyone look out, it’s a fork!). In other words, copyright holders want to make the act of DRM breaking illegal, even if you’re doing it for completely legal purposes.
And if we interpret the anti-circumvention clause in the same manner as Judge Garza, then the DMCA makes much more sense from a consumer point of view. If making a copy of your legally purchased content, a backup, is not illegal, then breaking DRM to do so should not be illegal either. If I want to break DRM just for the heck of it, then I should be able to do so, as long as I’m not hurting anyone else’s commercial interests. And in fact, if DRM prevents users from exercising their rights, then that DRM should be illegal. And this make sense, because no individual has ever lost a court case just because they broke DRM to make a backup, and if the MPAA tried to sue, they will lose each and every time. And even the MPAA and anti-piracy agencies will admit to the fact that they would never go after anyone breaking DRM for personal, non commercial reasons. So why not put this in writing by adding further exemptions to the DMCA (or rather, just clarify the mess that it is)? All of this show just how ridiculously flawed the DMCA is as a piece of legislation, but at least there appears to be hope that something fairer will exist someday.
But then the industry will say, yes, many people will use Blu-ray rippers, for example, to make backups, and many more will use the same software to pirated movies. And a new study does show that there are increasing numbers of people doing the so called rent, rip and return, and now with Blu-ray, as opposed to just DVDs. Well my response to this is that, let’s take a look at the people not breaking the law but still breaking DRM, and see why they’re doing it. If they’re doing it to protect their legally purchased goods, for example backups, and if DRM prevents them from doing that, then the implementers of the DRM should provide tools that allow backups to occur, but not piracy. If people are breaking DRM so they can play games without the original disc inserted into their drive, then make something that will allow them to do this, but without enabling piracy (Steam, anyone?). And you know what? If they do it right, they may actually make money out of providing these solutions to the problems that DRM creates. And then there’s the piracy problem, which according to the same study, is becoming more of a casual piracy problem (ie. people copying movies they buy so they can share it with friends and family). But the industry’s response will be the introduction of more and more complex and “fool proof” DRM systems. It’s like watching Wile E. Coyote goes after The Road Runner, the industry versus piracy, and instead of ACME products, it’s DRM. And just like the cartoons, not only will the industry certainly fail to stop piracy, they’ll probably end up hurting themselves in the process. But like most of society’s more complex problems, one should always try to examine the cause and find solutions, most of them not easy, not quick fixes. There is no magic bullet to the piracy problem, no magical DRM that will prevent all copying forever, not without seriously impacting on the usability of the product, so stop looking there. Instead, look at why people are participating in casual piracy – and don’t say because they don’t know it’s wrong or illegal, they do (most of the time) – but seriously examine why people, knowing it’s wrong, still do it. Is it because it’s fun? Or because it’s easy? Or perhaps it’s because people can’t afford to pay the money that’s being asked of them for the goods in question. And if stopping piracy means dropping prices, possibly reducing revenue in the short term (but probably good for the long term), is that a solution the industry is willing to adopt? Or if the alternative is that high prices with higher (short term) revenue, but with some piracy to be expected, then is this not good enough? The MPAA can’t have its Roadrunner, and eat it too.
R4 and similar carts to receive banning in the UK
In gaming piracy news, the UK is set to ban R4 style DS carts that allow pirated games to be played on the portable console, after a recent court ruling in favour of Nintendo. There’s no question that R4 style carts are predominantly used to pirate DS games, but these types of carts also have other uses. Primarily, it allows gamers to carry hundreds of games store digitally in memory cards, as opposed to carrying their purchased carts everywhere. Also, there’s almost always some multimedia function built in that otherwise does not exist for the console, and lastly, it enables development of homebrew software. While the ban is understandable, because DS piracy is rife, but just like Sony’s recent decision to pull Other OS/Linux support for the PS3, there are unintended consequences that hurt the platform. Nintendo will introduce the ability to store games on memory cards, but without an apps platform, homebrew development and the development of non gaming software for the DS will be severely hurt. This goes back to what I mentioned earlier about finding solutions to the problems that DRM creates (or in this case, the problems created by a legal decision to ban these carts), and then profiting from the solutions. Look at Apple and Google with their apps platforms, and don’t you think the DS needs something like this too?
There’s a surprising lack of HD or 3D news. Those that follow my weekly Blu-ray sales analysis will notice a slight drop off in Blu-ray market share in recent times.
There’s no need for panic (yet), as most of this is due to the lack of A-list releases. The overall trends is still of positive growth, but growth may be slowing down. The biggest enemy of Blu-ray is that the fact that DVDs are still pretty darn good value, and that a lot of movies and TV shows won’t really benefit from the full HD treatment, not at a considerable higher price. But if studios drop prices, then Blu-ray loses its ability to earn more revenue for studios, because it’s definitely not cheaper to produce and manufacturer a Blu-ray movie compared to a DVD one.
Studios will hope 3D Blu-ray can keep the format at a higher price premium, but people want their stuff and want it cheaper than before, and this has always been the driver behind the ever dropping price of movies. Ironically, I think dropping prices may be the key to increasing revenue – instead of having people buy a few movies at high prices, how about getting them to buy tons of movies at low prices. For that though, possibly some kind of digital distribution is needed, because if my recent house move has told me anything, it’s that having hundreds of discs to pack, ship and then store at the new place is a lot of trouble.
And finally in gaming, another firmware update for the PS3 and another round of problems being reported. What was supposedly a simple update, firmware version 3.41, to add a “recommend” feature to the PS store has turned out far more complicated.
Apparently, the new firmware stops people upgrading their HDDs, a feature that Sony has often promoted as being superior to the Xbox 360’s use of official hard-drive accessories (and they’re right, the Xbox 360 hard-drive accessories really are a rip off). It’s very likely just a bug, as opposed to another “Other OS” situation where firmware updates actually remove previously supported features.
I’m not a big fan of the PS3’s firmware update schedule. It’s a good idea to add new functionality to the console, but it’s a bad idea to update every couple of weeks, because there’s always a risk with every update, with software of firmware. Imagine if Microsoft released a service pack every month for Windows, and you get the reason as to why there are so many problems with the PS3 updates. Do a major update every 6 month or so, with small patches to fix bugs and issues in between, and that’s more than enough. If firmware releases come too frequently, there’s no way Sony can do any sort of comprehensive testing to ensure bugs are not present.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got this week. There *has* to be more next week, I hope, so until then, have a good one.