Posted on 24-7-2002

Digital Tide Hits Media Moguls
by Alan Marston

King Canute's instructive failure to stop the tide is not serving as a
lesson to old corporates in the entertainment industry today who are
striving mightily to hold back newer companies in the technology industries
who have developed digital media technology to the point of distributing
digital TV programmes on the Internet. The Hollywood studios have
maintained that they will not send digital copies of movies and other
programming over the airwaves unless safeguards are in place to prevent
perfect copies from being redistributed online. That, in turn, is seen as
holding back the market for digital televisions and the on-demand services
that might come with them.

The media giants have powerful friends in the heart of digiland, the USA.
In a letter Friday to Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the US's F.C.C.,
Representative Billy Tauzin, a Lousiana Republican who is chairman of the
House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Representative John D. Dingell, a
Michigan Democrat, wrote that the agency should move quickly to require
computer and consumer electronics manufacturers to include anti-piracy
technology that would prevent a program from being redistributed. "While we
had hoped that the industry players would achieve a meeting of the minds on
these critical issues voluntarily, unfortunately no comprehensive agreement
has been obtained to date," the letter read. In a separate letter, Senator
Ernest F. Hollings, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, also
encouraged the F.C.C. to act. "Absent robust protection, copyright owners
may increasingly restrict their best television programming to cable and
satellite networks," Senator Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina, wrote.

However relying on sticks with no carrots is not going to work, humans have
always opposed naked force with first passive, and then active resistance.
Passive resistance has already begun. Earlier this year US legislation that
would have required electronics manufacturers to build copy-protection
technologies into their machines, has not been acted upon.

Consumer groups have argued that any regulatory body acting on the
copy-protection issue should first examine its impact on consumers. Under
the system proposed by the studios, it is not clear, for instance, if
someone would be able to record a show in the living room and watch it over
a wireless home network in the bedroom, or retrieve it over the Internet to
watch at a second home or a friend's house.

Some technology companies have argued that the entertainment companies
should protect their broadcasts before they go over the air, by encrypting
them at the source. Others, cognisant of history, have questioned the
necessity of the expense involved in carrying out the copy-protection
effort, given the likelihood that it would be cracked. "We would support
implementation provided it was focused on functional requirements and the
process for choosing technologies was fair, open and transparent," said
Andrew Moss, the Microsoft director of technical policy for the new media
platforms division.

Its only a matter of time before Internet users will select TV programmes
and movies for download and viewing, at the viewers convenience. Isn't that
what the consumer society is all about, consumer convenience? The total
focus on consumption and production of good consumers has its `other side',
a side the promoters of consumer first ideology are starting to feel bite
them very painfully where it hurts most ... no, not there, in their wallet.