A Copyfighter’s Musings

Last week, Congress held yet another hearing about “plugging the analog hole.” Why is Hollywood so bent on making all analog-to-digital technologies obey copyright holders’ commands? Because in an age of DRM on digital media, the analog hole is often the last refuge for fair use and for innovators trying to build new gadgets to take your rights into the digital age.

Take the Neuros MPEG4 Recorder 2 (the “R2″), an endangered gizmo that digitizes analog video output and records it to a CF card or a memory stick in MPEG4 format. The video can then be put on your computer, burned to DVD, moved to your video iPod, or slotted right into your Sony PSP. You can also output video to a display device from the R2.

In turn, the R2 helps you make legitimate use of your media and lawfully escape DRM restrictions. For example:

• Free your recorded TV content: TiVo and other PVRs restrict moving recorded video to other devices. The DMCA limits removing these DRM locks, and, if the broadcast flag proposal passes, these restrictions will get even worse. Regardless, you can lawfully use the R2 to create a DRM-free copy, recording straight from your TV or TiVo.
  
• Free your DVDs: DVD ripping software is widely available, but using it to rip a film to your computer and video iPod may violate the DMCA. The R2 gives you a legal (albeit more cumbersome) alternative. Similarly, though region-free DVD players are available, you can use the R2 to help create a region-free copy of the movie itself.
  
• Free your VHS tapes: You’ve probably faced the unhappy choice between rebuying your VHS collection on DRM-restricted DVDs or lugging around a legacy player. The R2 helps you liberate your movies from their VHS chains.

The good folks at Neuros Technology were kind enough to give EFF a device to test out. Recording both from VHS and DVD, it worked like a charm (I didn’t test recording from a TiVo because I don’t own one, but doing so shouldn’t be any more difficult). This clever gadget is light, fitting neatly in your hand. Setup is simple, and you can customize the recording resolution to suit your needs. (If you want to see some sample clips at different resolutions, check out The Gadgeteer’s nice review.)

But you might not get to use the R2 or other innovations that rely on the analog hole if Hollywood gets its way. In fact, you shouldn’t even expect that such devices will stay on the market for use with DRM-free media (e.g., digitizing your own home movies) — after all, the manufacturers will suffer great expense to install these bogus analog hole plugs and will be forced to get permission from Hollywood and regulators before innovating.

Take a stand now and save these endangered gizmos.

(cross posted at DeepLinks)

Filed by Derek Slater at 11:43 pm under Big Ideas
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Bill Patry: “if I have to read any more about John Locke and copyright I will puke.”

Hear hear — read the whole post, Does It Matter if Copyright Is Property?

Filed by Derek Slater at 10:56 am under General news
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Take action to stop the Corruptibles now!

Filed by Derek Slater at 1:22 pm under General news
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About 6 months ago, Gartner’s Mike McGuire and I published a paper called “Consumer Taste Sharing is Driving The Online Music Business and Democratizing Culture.” The paper argued, based on various data, that new taste sharing tools (e.g., playlist sharing, mp3 blogging, private group streaming) can help support the online music distribution business and create important promotional opportunities.  It recommended that rights holders and intermediaries embrace novel sharing tools and predicted that they will play an important role in new services.

Now JupiterResearch has chimed in and apparently reached much the same conclusion:

This also aubstantiates a key trend seen elsewhere, including Gartner’s data — consumers are increasingly “content foragers” (as Mike calls them).  They take a variety of routes to find music and music-related information, often the shortest path at a particular moment.  Sometimes it’s iTunes, sometimes P2P, sometimes it’s a blog, or MySpace, and so on. 

This has important implications not just for recommendation tools, but also for access to and delivery of the music itself. As Mike and I wrote, “What has become critical in the market is being able to create initial demand and then finding as many paths to spread it as quickly as possible. What we are describing is an environment in which the ‘velocity’ with which a new song — or songs from a back catalog —can quickly get from initial distribution (or reintroduction) to the maximum number of paying customers.“

The music industry needs to embrace a fluid music distribution model, allowing individuals to use the acquisition method they want and listen to the music using whatever tools they want.  Cabining them within one particular service won’t cut it.  Whether that takes the form of a VCL model or something else, there would be significant business benefits to trying to accomodate these trends.

Filed by Derek Slater at 12:52 am under General news
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Last month, I pointed out several flaws in the proposed Section 115 Reform Act.  The Act is going to be marked up on Wednesday, and it is far worse than I thought.  Fred’s written up the details - long story short, SIRA could effect subtle but dangerous changes to the scope of copyright holder’s exclusive rights. Take action now to stop this bill in its tracks — music composition licensing needs reform, but the public’s rights shouldn’t be sold out in the process.

Filed by Derek Slater at 12:38 am under General news
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