[opendtv] Is a little digital egalite really all that bad?
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 18:55:37 -0400
This opinion piece by Yunko Yoshida was written before the French
Senate's partial cave-in to the walled garden lobby, which she also
reported on and I posted on this site recently.
This whole debate going on in France is closely related to the
discussion on the the way proprietary standards are being used by US TV
distribution walled gardens, not to mention the article Monty posted
today. It's all quite the same thing.
The way one supports new features without imposing the walled garden
model has been amply demonstrated by the Internet. Not that everything
in the Internet model should be emulated by the home entertainment
industry. And there's no reason to assume it would. The Internet model
depends on relying on global standards. New features are added all the
time, but are designed not to break existing applications.
If people demand the new features, they will survive. If people are
uninterested, they wither on the vine. It's not like the cable companies
can introduce new technology for free or anything. Whatever new
proprietary STBs the walled garden deploys can only create one more
incentive to increase the monthly fee. Customers can just as easily buy
their own new standards-based STB, if they want the new features, and
spare themselves the monthly fee hike. Surely, no one believes the
walled garden is handing out freebies, right?
In general, I agree with the opinion piece. The FCC's plug and play
concept also agrees, at least on the principles involved in the French
debate, if not on the specific application of the principles to Apple's
proprietary DRM scheme.
Bert
-----------------------------------
Is a little digital egalite really all that bad?
Shrieks of protest notwithstanding, proposed French copyright law
deserves a closer look
Junko Yoshida
(05/08/2006 9:00 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=3D187200447
A proposed new copyright bill in France is feeding into stereotypes of
the French as cranky and idiosyncratic. The controversy over
music-download rights grabbed headlines that read, for example, "Apple
vs. France," "France Takes a Shot at iTunes" and "France Breaks iPod's
Dominance." Thus expressed, big bad France is the villain and
little-bitty Apple is the good guy.
The legislation in question, passed by the French National Assembly in
late March, seeks to enforce digital rights management (DRM) and impose
harsher penalties on hackers. But it reduces penalties on users who
illegally pirate digital music.
Although the legislation has its redeeming features, the reaction among
many in the software and media industries has been outrage. The reason?
The sheer ambition of the French law. It takes copyright laws beyond any
previous formula, seeking to strike an egalitarian blow for the
principle of interoperability. The proposed legislation demands that any
digital music or video purchased online must be playable on any existing
device. (The French Senate late last week began debating a somewhat
watered-down version of the law, but had reached no conclusions by press
time.)
Software companies are opposed because they believe they shouldn't be
liable for how other companies or individuals configure or use their
software to develop programs used for piracy. Media companies are
opposed because the bill's interoperability provision would break down
the walled-garden business model they have created by using proprietary
DRMs. Apple calls the proposed legislation a "state-sponsored culture of
piracy." Even the U.S. Commerce Department has weighed in on the issue,
backing Apple vs. France.
In truth, the French proposal deserves calm examination because, as
unrealistic as it may sound to many of its critics--and as damaging as
it may be to Apple's iTunes business--it provides the opportunity to
step back and reflect on just what digital media technologies have
really given us thus far in the way of "progress" or contributions to
the general welfare.
OK. Everybody's got an iPod. Thanks to Apple's licensing deals with TV
content owners, we get to watch Desperate Housewives while driving to
work. Then there's Apple's exclusive deal to make Madonna's digital
catalog. What would life be without Madonna?
And none of this would have happened if Steve Jobs hadn't had the
foresight to strike deals with content owners in the first place, and
enforce his proprietary DRM on iTunes service and iPod devices.
But most important, many Apple defenders would tell us that Apple,
through the wild success of iTunes and iPod, helped create the market
for legal purchase of music over the Internet--almost singlehandedly.
While that fact alone tends to make us tech types happy, the French
minister of culture, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, pointed out a simple
fact of life in his recent interview with the International Herald
Tribune: Many of us working in the technology industry tend to forget
basic consumer needs. "When I buy a song or video over the Internet, it
should be like a CD or DVD and playable on any machine," Donnedieu de
Vabres said. "It is our intention with this law to break the hold any
one technology might hold over a cultural work." Even if that cultural
work is Madonna.
Does anyone else find it refreshing to hear a government official
putting culture and the public interest before the forces of the market
and the welfare of big corporations? Or have I been living in France too
long?
But think about it. Just because content becomes digital and a service
goes to the Internet, why should consumers perforce surrender basic
rights that they thought were theirs? By basic rights, I mean the right
to purchase, own, store and play back content as many times as you want
on any devices you own--regardless of brand. Digital media technology
has given media companies the ammunition they need to charge us per
usage, per subscription or perhaps--God help us--per note, while
imposing the sci-fi concept of an "authorized domain" as the only place
we're "free" to consume content that wasn't free when we bought it.
So far, consumers are not exactly the beneficiaries of the digital media
revolution. Apple, not us, chooses the content we can buy from iTunes,
and Apple specifies the device we use to play it back on.
Leonardo Chiariglione tirelessly labored in the late 1990s as executive
director of the Secure Digital Music Initiative in the hope, as he
explained, of creating "an industry standard that should have enabled a
legitimate digital music business to begin and flourish." SDMI never
went anywhere commercially. Big corporations like Microsoft, Apple and
Sony all went off in separate directions, each implementing a
proprietary DRM to serve its proprietary devices.
It's not that such companies are bad citizens. It's that they don't seem
to remember what it means to be good citizens.
"The problem I see in DRM," said Chiariglione, "is that it's a set of
technologies that pervades the entire distribution chain. All the
creation and consumption--everything is controlled by DRM. As a citizen,
I have a right to ask: Who controls that technology?"
To truly open the floodgates of digital media content, Chiariglione
remains a firm believer that "there should be a single DRM solution. If
it's Microsoft's, fine. I have no issue whatsoever." But ideally, he
said, "My preference is to have a standard that is open, that is even
implementable in some sort of open-source software whose evolution is in
the hands of the industry."
I've never met a technology CEO in Silicon Valley who would dare broach
such an idea. But in a global economy in which laws passed by France or
the EU can reshape both markets and technologies, it might be wise for
Silicon Valley to at least listen to foreigners like Chiariglione and
Donnedieu de Vabres.
All material on this site Copyright 2006 CMP Media LLC. All rights
reserved.
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