Question Re Digital Content Security Act, banning analog to digital device

[jobycom]

First, quick summary, if anyone has missed this (There was another thread that approached it from a different angle, but no one answered my question): Basically, the Act will ban any device that converts analog digital to digital video, in an attempt to stop video piracy. Pirates copy digital movies to an analog device, then copy the analog back to digital (DVD), thus breaking all the digital anti-copy codes. Thus, the ban.

Critics say it will ban everything from PC tv tuners, some camcorders and DVD recorders, and even VRCs and TIVO, and one poster argued it would prevent websites from capturing news feeds and posting them on the internet. Even the bill sponsors admit it would affect some legal copying.

My question is on television, and I'm an idiot on this subject, so please be kind. I keep hearing that tv is going digital, and satelite dishes and cable advertise digital programming. Are these feeds actually digital, or are they still analog? What I'm wondering is whether this transition to digital tv will mean that, if analog to digital devices were no longer made, we could still record clips from news programs, and if pc tuners could still be made to receive digital signals for PC based tv tuners, etc. In other words, are the problems with this Act going to be somewhat alleviated by upcoming technology anyway, or do I misunderstand what digital television is about? (Or is my question completely unintelligable?)

For the record, John Conyers is a supporter of this bill, so I tend to not suspect foul play.

For more: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/47939.html

[JuniperLea]

1. I'm confused too... and curious

Since all TV broadcasts will cease and be replaced by digital, then will it still be ok to digitally record something that was digital anyway?

I'm a technophobe.

And it raises another question... what will happen with all the broadcast air waves? Will it be completely illegal for the public to use them? What will they be used for? Why all the hubbub and urgency to free them up?

[jobycom]

9. So then you're saying

that all broadcasts are going to become digital, so this ban on manufacturing and selling devices which convert analog to digital wouldn't stop someone from downloading a television show, since it would be digital to digital? (although that's where the broadcast flag, mentioned below, comes in, to stop recordings from television.)

What about now? We have a Dish network system that says it's digital. Is the broadcast actually digital, even for the local network channels? If so, this law wouldn't affect that, either.

[JuniperLea]

12. That's what I'm saying

Sounds fishy, doesn't it?

[liveoaktx]

13. Yes, your broadcast is digital but the OUTPUT is most likely analog

for example, my television is analog, so the Dish receiver has to do a digital-to-analog conversion. Same with the PC card in my computer-it is converting the digital signal to analog.

[liveoaktx]

14. Let me add to this that when I take the digital output from the PC card

it is in digital format and I'm obviously saving it in digital format since it's a PC file. However, because it already went through a digital/analog conversion it isn't going to be as top quality as it would be if it was digital to digital.

At some point, for example, we will get an HDTV when the prices go down. We will get an HDTV DISH receiver and it will be read directly from HDTV receiver to HDTV set without having to do a conversion, so the quality will be high.

[derby378]

2. Just look at who's running the FCC

The recent trend with media corporations has been towards the idea that all broadcast content - whether music, sitcoms, variety, or even news - is commodity. The motto is "privatize everything."

And remember what I said earlier about Nero's "ownership society" model - in an ownership society, the people get owned.

[jobycom]

4. This bill isn't about the airwaves, though, it's about copying digital

formats to analog recording devices, then back to digital. There is nothing about controlling the airwaves, and nothing to ban analog devices like VCRs, anyway.

That's a good line, about Nero. I think I'll steal that from time to time (for personal use only, I don't want to violate any copyrights!)

[liveoaktx]

5. The reason is Broadcast Flag, a bit that is put into digital content

that you can't put into analog content. What they want to do is fix it so that you could not copy something on a local machine and then, say, copy it up to the internet. It would require that what you record could only be watched on the same device.

This obviously has "fair use" issues which is why it has been fought in the court. I predict that if Congress sneaks around and does it, the ALA and others will make it a court case.

[jobycom]

8. I see, but since this is different than "broadcast flag," I'm starting to

wonder if Conyers is backing this as an alternative to BF. The difference is that with the BF, you can't copy a show off tv and send it to the Internet or through email (although you would still be able to copy it to TIVO for your own viewing), but with this new ban, you could still upload the show if the show was broadcast digitally. Although that was my question in the first place--are shows that are broadcast digitally actually digital, or still analog? If they are analog, the result would be the same. If they are digital, then the machine ban wouldn't affect tv news clips as much.

I think. My head's starting to hurt. I would just say oppose them both, but since Conyers is backing one, I wonder what I'm missing.

[liveoaktx]

10. On my home situation

I have an analog TV with a DISH receiver that accepts digital content. The receiver does a digital to analog conversion so that my tv, which isn't digital can see the content. I have a TV card in a pc in the other room that is analog, so it receives the content from the receiver and does a digital to analog conversion. Thus, it is up to the receiver. As another example, I could have an HDTV capable receiver, but my tv doesn't accept HDTV signals, so the receiver would still have to do a conversion for me to watch. IF I took the digital content from the receiver and recorded it digitally on, say, a DVR, it would be digital content because it went through no conversion.

[Wordie]

7. In the "ownership society", the people get owned." Excellent observation.

[liveoaktx]

3. Read up on Broadcast Flag technology which has been in the courts

Basically, it's this
1. FCC tried to pass broadcast flag technology in 2003
2. They were smacked down by the courts this year
3. Since FCC couldn't do it, now Congress is trying to push it as a bill

The issue, as you note, is about issues such as fair use, which is one reason the American Library Association was part of the lawsuit against the FCC ruling.

[jobycom]

6. The article says this is different than the broadcast flag

"We've recently won a case against the FCC about the broadcast flag, which is a little bit different than the analog hole," Curtis said. "The broadcast flag dealt with digital television, whereas the analog hole deals with the analog-out on all of your television devices. We won that case on the grounds that the FCC didn't have jurisdiction."

The same group is opposed to the new Act, as well.

[liveoaktx]

11. Yes, BUT.... look at it this way. MPAA wants to prevent digital

copying and has been pushing the broadcast flag for digital technology. That leaves a hole, in that, IF you could just record stuff from an analog device, you could bypass having to get equipment that was broadcast flag enabled. The loophole, as I see it, is a way for MPAA to try to prevent even analog devices from doing conversions. So that you would be FORCED to use hardware that was broadcast flag enabled and you'd be breaking the law if you record using an analog device, which would bypass hardware with BF

The clue to this is in the first sentence. Is it going to help consumers? No, it's a GIFT to the MPAA & related industry.
<snip>
Congress is leaving a special gift under the tree for Hollywood's film industry. Just before closing for the holidays, legislators introduced a new proposal designed to curb redistribution of movies.

The Digital Transition Content Security Act would embed anticopying technology into the next generation of digital video products. If it makes its way from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office and becomes law, the measure will outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital video signals, effective one year from its enactment. PC-based tuners and digital video recorders are listed among the devices.

</snip>
They are calling broadcast flag "anti-copying technology" in a way to try to hide what they're doing.

[SlipperySlope]

15. A slightly technical explanation...

Let me try to explain what the "analog hole" is all about.

For those who don't understand the difference between analog and digital, let me take a quick tangent to explain.

In the analog systems, information is stored and transmitted as some sort of varying level. It could have been the varying strength of a radio signal, the varying voltage on a telephone wire, the varying magnetic level stored on a tape, or the varying width of a phonograph groove. Because of inaccuracy in measuring these levels, there is a certain amount of imprecision (also called "error" or "noise") inherent to these system. Those errors build upon each other with with each additional machine that has to handle the information. That's the fundamental reason that a "copy of a copy of a copy" always sounds so bad in an analog system - the original information had been distorted by multiple layers of imprecision.

In digital systems, all information is stored as numbers (i.e. "digits") - hence the name digital. All digital media (like digital photos, CDs of music, DVD movies, and digital television signals) are made of long strings of zero's and one's. Digital electronic machines (like computers) are capable of making exact copies of digital information. Since each copy is perfect, errors never slip in,

Since the 1980s, consumer electronics and media have been slowly but surely moving from analog to digital formats. The CD replaced records, the DVD replaced VCRs, and now digital television is staged to replace conventional television. But before television goes digital, there is one big issue that the "media industry" wants to deal with - piracy.

Depending on whom you listen to, piracy of music and movies may or may not be rampant. One thing is clear though, the "media industry" believes that it is, and they want to put a stop to it. They are attempting to put a stop to it through a combination of technology, legislation, information campaigns, and lawsuits.

The media industry, the computer industry, and the electronics industry have forged a set of standards and agreements to make sure that all future media (be it text, music, movies, software, or whatever) can be used only by people who the industry want to use it (in other words, people who have paid). They key to making this whole system work is to encrypt the media, and then to make sure that it stays encrypted.

The first time the industry tried this was with the DVD player. The information on a DVD is encrypted, and useless, until it is unencrypted using "secret" formulas and keys. However, the encryption on DVDs was reverse engineered (first by a Norwegian teenager) and the format is now effectively open. There were two lessons that the industry learned from the breaking of DVD encryption.

Lesson one - if you are going to encrypt something, do a good job of it. DVD encryption wasn't cracked due to the genius of hackers, DVD encryption was cracked due to some lazy implementation.

Lesson two - if you can't do a good job, you need a way to cover your ass if you do a bad job. At the time DVD encryption was cracked, there really wasn't an effective way to punish people for reverse engineering it. Today, thanks to hollywood and the music industry, it is a federal felony to reverse engineer an encryption system.

Ok, so here we are in 2005. Digital TV is coming, along with a whole host of new digital media devices. The industry learned a lesson about doing encryption right with the whole DVD story, and there are now strong laws in most countries that severely punish people for breaking encryption. The industry is poised to introduce a whole slew of new electronic devices, but they are still worried about one thing - the analog hole.

Human beings, of course, do not like to spend a lot of time listening to or staring at strings of ones and zeros. We are still analog animals, and ultimately all of our fancy digital media has to be converted to analog for us to enjoy it. The television we watch is made of levels of colored light, and the music we listen to is made of levels of sound. At some point in the process of delivering this high-tech, super-encrypted, digital media to us, it HAS to be turned back analog data.

Human beings also, over the past few decades, have bought a bunch of fancy electronics gear that all works on analog data. Some of us would like it if our 1999 high-definition television and our 2002 VCR and even our 1970 hi-fi speakers could still be used in this brave new digital world. But all of these devices only talk analog, and to use them in the digital world, they've got to be fed analog signals.

"Closing the Analog Hole" is all about making that analog data as useless and as hard to access as possible.

Put simply - if you can buy a component for your home theater system that can read an encrypted digital signal and output a high-quality analog signal (so you can connect it to your old devices), that high-quality analog signal is potentially something that could be copied. Because hollywood can't control that copying, they want to make the high-quality analog output illegal.

Similarly, since you could (in theory) copy a super-encrypted television show simply by point your digital camcorder at the television screen, they want to mandate that future camcorders have to have circuitry to detect this and stop recording.

There are two schools of thought about all this:

The "media-industry": Our business is built on controlling copies. New technologies have come along that enable people to steal our work from us, and this must be stopped. We will do whatever it takes to preserve our business from being stolen by these crooks, even if it means ending "fair use" and controlling what sort of electronics people are allowed to buy. We are willing and able to get legislation passed to protect our business as well.

A combination of libertarians and technophiles: The business model of the media industry only existed because it made sense given the state of technology from 1920 to 1990. Technology has advanced, and the old business model should go the way of the buggy-whip and slide-rule. The only way the industry can get what they want is through a combination of limiting the progress of technology, destroying the concept of "ownership" of anything consumers buy, and paying off congress to pass draconian laws. This leads to a future where consumers have no rights, and the same technologies that restrict copying will effectively restrict freedom of speech.


Whew! Sorry I was so long winded!