WhistlinDixie

A Rose By Any Other Name…

Last Tuesday, Bob Zitter, the CTO of HBO said in an address at a cable broadcaster’s conference in Las Vegas that the only problem with DRM is its name. He believes that by simply changing the name to something more positive, like Digital Consumer Enablement, will convey to consumers that DRM is a good thing because it will let you do things with content that you could never do before.

The thing that he failed to mention is that DRM is all about restrictions, not enablement. (In fact, the Free Software Foundation even officially defines DRM as Digital Restrictions Management.) Content producers can use DRM to prevent you from doing things that you could normally do, like making a backup copy of a DVD or listening to your music on any computer you like. It is DRM that takes away our fair-use rights to make backup copies of material that we have purchased and that keeps your music library (that you purchased in part through iTunes or some other online service) locked on your computer and prevents you from moving it to another computer without first "de-authorizing" it on your computer so that you can move your license over. Do you see this technology enabling you to do anything?

Zitter mentioned things that this new DCE could enable you to do, like burning television shows to DVD or distributing content in high definition. What he fails to mention is that, in a world without DRM, almost every example that he mentions would be possible to do without breaking any laws, such as the DMCA.

The real kicker is that this DCE that HBO wants to implement would force you to use a digital interconnect between your set top box and your TV, which, at this point in time, leaves HDMI as your only option. Many people still use analog connections, like component, which are also perfectly capable of transmitting high definition video. Currently, HDMI cables carry a price premium over component cables. (On a recent trip to Circuit City to get a new DVD player for my grandma, I noticed that the cheapest HDMI cable that they had in stock was a 3ft cable for $89.99!) In addition, not only does your HDTV need an HDMI connection, but it and your set top box will also need to support HDCP over the HDMI connection, which TVs older than about two years do not support.

In the end, whether you choose to call the technology DRM or DCE, it is still doing the same thing: preventing honest, paying consumers from using content that they have purchased in a way that they want. It still doesn’t stop pirates from making illegal copies because there has yet to be devised a way to distribute encrypted content without having to give the end-users a way to decrypt it. Maybe one of these days the music and movie industries will finally realize how futile their efforts are and how much angst they are causing their customers and stop placing ineffective and flawed copy protection on everything.

I Love News

OK, I’m a little late with this one (originally published 15 Nov). Anyway, anyone who has seen old NFL Films clips from the 60s and 70s has probably seen clips of Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi coaching games. One of the first things that crosses my mind when I see them is why coaches never dress in suits anymore. Basketball coaches dress to the nines at games, so why not pro football coaches? It ends up that the NFL signed a deal with Reebok in 1993 to make them the only provider of clothing to coaches for game day. Please raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a Reebok suit in your local sports retailer. What? No one raised their hand? That would be because Reebok does not make suits. That is, until a few weeks ago, when they provided them to Jack Del Rio of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Mike Nolan of the San Francisco 49ers for a test drive. I guess that I was not the only one hoping to see coaches in suits again. And guess what? Both coaches won their games! I bet it was their professional look that intimidated the opposing teams. I just hopes that this leads to suits again becoming acceptable on the sidelines, because hoodies and pullovers just look like crap (especially you, Bill Belichick).

Now, on to political correctness gone overboard. The athletics director of Dartmouth University has preemptively apologized to the student body for scheduling a game against the University of North Dakota (UND). Why would you ever apologize for scheduling a game, you wonder? In this case, it is because the AD thinks that the mascot of UND, the Fighting Sioux, is "offensive and wrong". He went on to say, "I must offer a sincere apology to the Native American community, and the Dartmouth community as a whole, for an event that will understandably offend and hurt people within our community." Honestly, what is offensive and wrong about calling yourself the Fighting Sioux? I could see how Redskins could get that billing, since it is an (old) slur against Native Americans. How do you suddenly become offensive and wrong by naming yourself after an actual tribe? They don’t even have a stereotyped mascot like the Cleveland Indians. (Check out www.fightingsioux.com for a look at their logo.) I think that the NCAA needs to stop their witch hunt of hunting down schools with Native American mascots, regardless of how they are presented, and forcing those schools to change. Also, someone tell that hippie, aka the AD of Dartmouth, that you only apologize for scheduling a team when you’re a D-III school and you scheduled a D-IA school by mistake. Other than that, let the schools and their athletic departments and traditions be.

Lastly, from the It’s About Time category: Ever buy a phone from one provider, discover that you really like it, then, when you change providers, find out that your old provider will not let you take the phone with you or that your new provider will not let you use your old phone? That situation should be quickly changing thanks to new copyright rules enacted by the Library of Congress. Among these new rules are the right of the consumer to take a handset (ie, cell phone) to a new provider (assuming that your new network supports your old handset; ie, a CDMA phone still won’t work on a GSM network). Also, film professors are now allowed to make compilation works from DVDs. This had been illegal, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forbade circumventing copy protection, which is present on all DVDs, and is necessary to break if one wants to get an excerpt of the film.