Category Archives: Television

Hollywood: Give up on DRM

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Check out this ars technica article. It describes the lengths that Hollywood is more than willing to go to prevent piracy of its movies from Blue-Ray and HD-DVD discs. For example, to prevent such content from being copied when played on a computer, decrypted video cannot “be present on any User-Accessible Bus in analog or unencrypted, compressed form,” because users might otherwise find a way to record such content. And that’s just one of several DRM (Digital Rights Management) “robustness rules” with which Hollywood wants to burden companies such as Microsoft and Apple.

I fully expect that the end result of this (as has been the case with previous Draconian DRM measures) will be that legitimate users get punished more than any potential pirates. We users will be punished via the increased cost of the hardware and software needed to enforce these rules as well as the increased inconvenience of the restrictions that prevent us from accessing the content in ways that are or should be perfectly legal.

Hollywood folks aren’t even willing to entertain (pardon the pun) the idea that maybe, just maybe, after I have purchased the VHS version of a movie, purchased the DVD of the same movie, and then purchased it again to get the special “Criterion” edition, I should be entitled to some discount when I purchase the Blue-Ray version. But that’s another story.

It has long been my contention that, if I purchase a DVD, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, as long as it does not include providing the content to others. So, if I want to copy the movie to my iPod, make a back-up disc, or whatever else, I ought to be able to do so — without any hassles or impediments.

Clearly, the entertainment industry disagrees. It’s not so much that they disagree in principle with my position. It’s just that to allow what I want would make it too easy for pirates to make illegal copies. This cannot be allowed in their view. To prevent this abuse, something must be sacrificed. So what gets destroyed are the rights of the legitimate users.

I have thought about this a good deal recently. I have tried to put myself in the shoes of the Hollywood executives. I am an author of several books. How would I like it if my books could simply be copied as easily as copying a Word file…and that such copies could be freely shared, given to people who never paid for the book? I would not like it. I would prefer that this not be the case. I would welcome copyright laws that say this is prohibited. Beyond that, there is not much else I would do.

The truth is that this situation already exists for my books. You can get my most recent book as a PDF file. Once purchased, you can copy it and give it to others. The same situation is also true, of course, for CDs. It is also the situation for anyone who has ever photocopied an article from a magazine to give to someone else, rather than buy another copy of the magazine.

I am sure that, if it were not so easy to do these things, more copies of books, CDs, and magazines would be sold. But so what? Times have changed. This is the technology that we live with. Despite these capabilities, publishers are still making money publishing books, artists are still making money recording and performing music, and magazine subscriptions are still a thriving business. Some of this “illegal” copying probably spurs sales. For example, after you read that article from the magazine, you may like it so much that you wind up getting your own subscription.

Regardless, my bottom line point is that we can’t go back in time to when these technologies did not exist. And we shouldn’t have laws and regulations that act as if we can. We just have to learn to tolerate a certain amount of piracy inherent in this system. We have to hope that there are enough people that are not inclined to break the law that we can still make a buck. We can also try to think of new ways to package these products so as to encourage legitimate purchases rather than illegal copies. Beyond that, leave the user alone and don’t burden us down with DRM rules that ultimately won’t work anyway.

Katrina: Why it was (and still is) different

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This week is the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. I have just finished watching Spike Lee’s HBO documentary on the subject: “When the Levees Broke.”

If I were a movie reviewer, I would have to say that the film is at times repetitive and too drawn out. It could have benefited from tighter editing. I am certain that at least an hour could have been removed from the film without reducing its effectiveness.

On the other hand, the film does a superb job of hammering home two main points: (1) the almost unbelievable enormity of the damage to New Orleans and (2) the almost unbelievable callousness and incompetence of almost every level of government, especially the Bush administration, in dealing with the tragedy.

While watching the film, one thought in particular kept bubbling up in my mind: How Katrina is different than almost every other disaster that has preceded it. The thoughts started when I watched some of the residents describe the impact on their lives of losing their home.

An initial reaction was to say, “Yes, this is terrible, but it is hardly unique. Hundreds of people lose their homes every day, due to fire or other natural and man-made causes.”

But I quickly realized that Katrina was unique.

I thought back to an incident in my neighborhood several years ago. A family across the street from where I lived lost their home, due to an electrical fire that quickly grew out of control, started when no one was home. By the time the fire department arrived, it was too late. The house was burned to the ground. My neighbors came home to utter devastation. They literally had nothing left: All of their clothes, all of their photos, all of their possessions they had spent a life time collecting, all of it was gone. Their two young daughters also lost everything they could call their own.

But…and it’s a big but…they still had each other. No lives had been lost. Even their dog (who had been in the house at the time) survived. And given their own financial resources and insurance coverage, they actually managed to rebuild an identical looking house on the same property. They moved into it within a year of the fire! While waiting for the rebuild to be completed, the family rented an apartment for the year. Their kids attended their same familiar school. Their church remained a source of comfort andf support, as did all their friends. And the entire neighborhood was there to welcome them back with a big party when they finally returned.

Compare that to New Orleans and Katrina:

Here lives were lost. And, in numerous instances, people did not learn that a relative had died until months after the storm – because recovery workers were unwilling or unable to search the house. Even if everyone in a family survived, members were often separated and sent to distant locations – to Texas, Utah and beyond. In many cases, it took months for parents and children to discover where everyone wound up and reunite. Most of these families have still not returned to New Orleans.

And of course, the damage was not limited to just a house or even just a couple of homes nearby. Almost the entire city was destroyed. The school where your kids went: gone. The church you attended: gone. The neighborhood where you lived: gone. The stores where you shopped: gone. No electricity or basic plumbing restored even as of today in some cases.

In many neighborhoods, the wreckage of the houses remain on their property – with no confirmed date as to when it will be removed. For many residents, rebuilding remains a dream that will never be realized. Especially with insurance companies often refusing to pay for damages — claiming that it was a flood, an uncovered event, that was the cause of the damage.

Katrina was different. A year later, it still is. It will be years before New Orleans moves past this disaster. It may never completely do so. New Orleans will remain on the map. But the city itself may never be restored to its former self.

Losing it over Lost!

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I love Lost. The TV series.

It is currently my favorite series on TV. And I look forward to the next season as much as anyone.

But the producers of the show seem on a mission to destroy it with product tie-in overkill.

The latest example are the Lost jigsaw puzzles.

“What’s wrong with this?” you may ask. What’s wrong is what is stated on the box covers: “Spoiler warning: Secrets are revealed.”

This can only mean one of two things, both of them bad:

• No secrets (at least none of any consequence) are really revealed. So, even if you don’t get the puzzles, you won’t be missing anything. In other words, the box cover is essentially a lie.

• Secrets of consequence do get revealed. This is the greater of the two evils! This means you now need to buy games, and possibly DVDs, books, and other paraphernalia, just to keep up with what is happening on the show itself (which is already a bit difficult to follow and which I am already a bit miffed over how long it takes them to reveal any significant secrets). If this is the case, I am about ready to give up on the show. I don’t have enough time nor enough interest in spending my money to reward this crass commercialism and exploitation of the show’s fans.

Yes, others have done it before. Recall the Matrix movies, where the animated Animatrix filled in plot details not covered in the movies. And, of course, Star Wars has turned this concept into a full-fledged industry.

But it seems particularly annoying in the case of Lost, where a big appeal of the show depends precisely on its secrets. To require spending money on a bunch of tie-in merchandise, in order to discover what these secrets are, is just an insult perpetrated by the producers of the show. Shame on them.