[mythtv-users] MPAA wants to stop DVRs from recording some movies

[Brian Wood]

On Monday 09 June 2008 17:23:54 Brad DerManouelian wrote:
> On Jun 9, 2008, at 4:01 PM, Ronald Frazier wrote:
> > Their justification is so flawed.
> >
> > It will help speed the adoption of DTV for the Feb 2009 switchover?
> > Please. In what way? People are going to say "well, I wasn't going to
> > buy a HDTV, but now that some movies are being shown a few months
> > earlier I guess I've got to get one"? Yeah...somehow I'm not buying it
> >
> > Second, the issue is about stopping casual piracy. Except the DVRs
> > that this would mostly effect (mostly TiVo and cable companies) are
> > also the devices that do not allow sharing recordings. So it's
> > basically "we need this so we can stop you from doing things you
> > already can't do"
> >
> > Finally. The broadcast flag was already struck down. How is this
> > anything other than the broadcast flag (except for the fact that they
> > don't actually use the term "broadcast flag")?
>
> When I bought the Apple TV a few days ago, I thought, "If it's as good
> as I hope it will be, I'll just use it as-is. If it's just ok, I'll
> dual-boot between MythTV and AppleTV depending on if I want to listen
> to music/watch iTunes movies or watch TV with it."
>
> After I set it up and discovered that I couldn't watch movies I bought
> from the iTunes store because I was using HDMI and not component, I
> immediately reformatted the Apple TV OS partition and solely use it
> for MythTV. When copy protection got to the point where it was easier
> to steal a movie and watch it where I wanted rather than spending $15
> for the movie to download, then $229 on the AppleTV box to watch it,
> plus $??? on a display with component inputs to replace the $500 extra
> DVI display I already had that wasn't being used, I said, "Forget it."
> I think a lot of consumers will eventually be pushed to piracy for the
> same reason. It's too difficult/expensive to comply with DRM. For me,
> I'll just stick to watching movies when they come on TV or come in via
> NetFlix.

Apple figured it out: How do you get folks to pay for something they can 
easily steal?

The answer is that you have to make it just as easy to be legal as it is to be 
ilegal (well, at least *almost* as easy). Most people *want* to be good 
citizens, not criminals, but they are unwilling to go way out of their way to 
do so.

The result is that Apple is now one of the top music vendors in the world.

You'd think that Hollywood would take a cue from that, but they don't, 
probably because the vendors trying to sell DRM always seem to promise that 
it is bulletproof, when in fact that will never happen.

Oh well, none of us can change this.

beww