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Aug. 17th, 2006 06:33 pmI just read this quote and was inexplicably depressed by it. (It's a quote from the DMCA:)
"...within 18 months of enactment, all analog videocassette recorders must be designed to conform to certain defined technologies, commonly known as Macrovision, currently in use for preventing unauthorized copying of videocassettes and certain analog signals."
Since when is it the govt.'s business to make some private company's business model law?
For those of you not already following along at home, here's the techology involved. VCRs have a device called an Automatic Gain Control which turns the brightness of the picture up and down to equalize it before writing it to tape. Old AGCs had a defect: they would average the brightness of the entire tape, not just the visible parts, in deciding what brightness level to use. This shouldn't matter, since the invisible parts are metadata for the most part and never really change much. Macrovision is a technology which takes advantage of this defect by filling in the holes in the metadata with all-black frames alternating with all-white frames. This causes the AGC to go nuts and flip the frames of visible video alternately very bright and very dark, making the video impossible to watch.
Why would anyone do this, you ask? Macrovision-encoded frames are used to prevent videorecording of things which their creators don't want copied. It's a primitive form of DRM. (I suppose you could call it ARM -- Analog {Rights|Restrictions} Management.) When DVDs were created, consumer electronics makers couldn't get the keys to unlock their contents until they agreed to encode the video output with Macrovision, so that it would only play on TVs, not record with VCRs. (If you've ever tried running a DVD player through a VCR and the picture has gone nuts, now you know why.)
So the point of all this long-winded explanation is to show the DMCA quote above for what it actually is. What it amounts to is "thou shalt not fix this bug in thy hardware, because people with more power than you are depending on the bug to make money!" That's not a legitimate use of a law! Especially since Macrovision is not merely a technology, it's a company -- so this company's particular business model (selling a specific type of copy-protection) has now been mandated by law, forever and in perpetuity.
...
Right, anyway. The real point is that things like this depress me. Because I have enough to worry about in my own life, without having to think about the fact that our legislators are idiots, and if I don't try to _somehow_ keep an eye on them, nobody else will. In a sane world, laws like that would never be passed. In a sane world it would be possible to speak of repealing a law which is stupid and unjust. Why must I live in an insane world?
"...within 18 months of enactment, all analog videocassette recorders must be designed to conform to certain defined technologies, commonly known as Macrovision, currently in use for preventing unauthorized copying of videocassettes and certain analog signals."
Since when is it the govt.'s business to make some private company's business model law?
For those of you not already following along at home, here's the techology involved. VCRs have a device called an Automatic Gain Control which turns the brightness of the picture up and down to equalize it before writing it to tape. Old AGCs had a defect: they would average the brightness of the entire tape, not just the visible parts, in deciding what brightness level to use. This shouldn't matter, since the invisible parts are metadata for the most part and never really change much. Macrovision is a technology which takes advantage of this defect by filling in the holes in the metadata with all-black frames alternating with all-white frames. This causes the AGC to go nuts and flip the frames of visible video alternately very bright and very dark, making the video impossible to watch.
Why would anyone do this, you ask? Macrovision-encoded frames are used to prevent videorecording of things which their creators don't want copied. It's a primitive form of DRM. (I suppose you could call it ARM -- Analog {Rights|Restrictions} Management.) When DVDs were created, consumer electronics makers couldn't get the keys to unlock their contents until they agreed to encode the video output with Macrovision, so that it would only play on TVs, not record with VCRs. (If you've ever tried running a DVD player through a VCR and the picture has gone nuts, now you know why.)
So the point of all this long-winded explanation is to show the DMCA quote above for what it actually is. What it amounts to is "thou shalt not fix this bug in thy hardware, because people with more power than you are depending on the bug to make money!" That's not a legitimate use of a law! Especially since Macrovision is not merely a technology, it's a company -- so this company's particular business model (selling a specific type of copy-protection) has now been mandated by law, forever and in perpetuity.
...
Right, anyway. The real point is that things like this depress me. Because I have enough to worry about in my own life, without having to think about the fact that our legislators are idiots, and if I don't try to _somehow_ keep an eye on them, nobody else will. In a sane world, laws like that would never be passed. In a sane world it would be possible to speak of repealing a law which is stupid and unjust. Why must I live in an insane world?
