[mythtv-users] FCC admits CableCARD a failure, vows to try something else

[Brian Wood]

On Friday 04 December 2009 03:17:38 pm Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 5:10 PM, David Brodbeck <gull at gull.us> wrote:
> > I think they'd argue it was different in the past, when piracy meant
> > mailing VHS tapes to people one at a time.
> 
> Or some guy selling them by the hundreds out of the back of van on the
> street corner?
> 
> > Now one person puts something
> > on bittorrent and a billion potential customers have free access to it.
> > I'm not saying DRM is a good idea, I'm just saying there's a reason it
> > gives them night terrors to think of giving open access to digital
> > content.
> 
> It shouldn't if they were rational.  That's the rub.  If DRM were
> effective at keeping things off bittorrent then it could be
> justifiable.  But it isn't.  It just takes one person with hdmi ->
> hdfury2 -> hdpvr -> bittorrent and then it's out there in a form
> effectively indistinguishable from the original digital data.
> 

Correct. The bottom line is that DRM doesn't work. All it does is irritate 
honest customers, which doesn't really matter when you have a 
government-mandated monopoly.

And now that the difference between the producers and the distributors is 
fast disappearing, we will all get screwed even worse.

Back in the 1930's there was the "Great Divorce" when motion picture 
studios were prohibited from owning the distribution channels (movie 
theaters at the time). The purpose of this was to prevent exactly what's 
happening now, but that was back when the government took seriously its 
duty to protect the citizens.