[Medianews] Will Hollywood lock up our movies?

[George Antunes]

Will Hollywood lock up our movies?
New book sheds light on fight over our digital rights
By Michael Rogers, Columnist
Special to MSNBC

Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET July 18, 2005

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8617750/


You buy a DVD, and then loan it to your neighbor. You shoot a video of your 
new baby and make copies to send to everyone in the family. Your college 
professor shows a short clip of a classic film in class. You’re on vacation 
so you record three weeks of “Desperate Housewives.”  These are all rights 
we take for granted — but in fact everything you know about owning music 
and movies is up in the air right now, and where it will come down is 
anyone’s guess.

That’s the message of J.D. Lasica’s excellent new book, "Darknet: 
Hollywood’s War against the Digital Generation," a comprehensive look at 
the current battle over how record and movie companies will protect their 
digital property from piracy — and what media consumers may lose in the 
process. “Darknet” refers to parts of the Web unseen by the public and 
specifically to the world of illegal underground file-sharing — the only 
option, in Lasica’s view, that consumers may have if content owners are 
overzealous in locking up their intellectual property.

It’s hard to deny, however, that big media companies have real reasons for 
concern: Thanks to file-sharing, millions of young people — the Digital 
Generation of Lasica’s title — have been taught that digital music is free, 
and they’re well on their way to deciding the same thing about movies and 
video. The record and film industries may be coldly calculating corporate 
behemoths, but they are also protecting the rights of artists. In the end 
it’s up to the musicians or film-makers to decide if they want to work for 
free.

(It’s worth noting that "Darknet" is a book rather than a documentary film. 
Writers tend to be less concerned about digital piracy than other content 
creators because, while e-books have some devotees, most readers still 
prefer to buy the paper version. Once good digital reading devices are 
available and writers make most of their money through e-books, they may 
also grow more concerned about rights protection.)

In short, an enormous struggle over the protection of intellectual property 
is underway between the media industry and a loose confederation of digital 
freedom fighters. Lasica details every aspect of how overly strict control 
on media could hurt consumers: The new generation of media users, who 
sample existing works to create new ones, would be locked out by copy 
protection. Restrictions on commercial content may impact how individuals 
can use self-created media — some new video cameras, for example, create 
files that can’t easily be distributed to others. Educators might not be 
able to take “fair use” snippets of films to illustrate classroom lectures, 
the way they currently quote from books. Lasica even shows how upcoming 
efforts to make computers safer from online scams could also give media 
companies more control over the content we buy.


Another example has lately been in the news, and illustrates the complexity 
of the issues: the “broadcast flag.”  By the time television broadcasts 
become all-digital (probably at the end of 2008) broadcasters want a 
guarantee that people won’t be able to make perfect digital recordings of 
programs and movies and post them on the Internet (sans commercials, of 
course). The solution they’ve proposed is a bit of digital code in each 
television show that would tell any recording device — a PVR such as TiVo, 
a DVD recorder, a computer — that it’s not allowed to record the program, 
or else puts limits on the recording’s lifespan and portability.

The broadcast flag would require manufacturers to build recorders that will 
obey those commands — something the consumer electronics industry isn’t 
eager to do. So far, broadcasters haven’t had much luck promoting the 
broadcast flag (a recent court ruling said the FCC didn’t have the 
authority to enforce such a proposal), but it’s likely to show up in 
Congress at some point soon.

The broadcast flag could cause plenty of consumer headaches, but it’s also 
interesting to consider the potential impact if digital broadcasting is 
denied copy protection. Network executives have threatened that without a 
way to protect their shows, part of broadcast television might become a pay 
service. In that scenario, the free broadcast television Americans know and 
love might still exist for older, less valuable programming, but the newest 
shows and movies would now require a subscription. The networks may be 
posturing, but it reflects the flipside of the issue: if media companies 
don’t get acceptable copy protection they may adopt new business models 
that are also bad for consumers. There must be a reasonable compromise in 
there somewhere.

Lasica is careful to emphasize that he doesn’t condone piracy. At the same 
time, however, his inside look at the “movie underground” shows that there 
is a global network of brilliant minds who are obsessed with “liberating” 
Hollywood movies. While Lasica’s sources mostly claim that they crack 
encryption only as an intellectual challenge, they nonetheless make 
wholesale piracy possible. It’s no wonder, then, that studios want to make 
their copy protection rock solid and are reluctant, early on, to make 
consumer-friendly compromises. Until the shopkeeper knows he can lock the 
door, he’s not that interested in discussing whether to extend his hours.

Technologists argue that the door can never be locked — that the Darknet 
will always figure out how to crack encryption. That may be true — but the 
point is to make piracy sufficiently difficult that buying the product 
legally becomes a simpler alternative, even for those who might otherwise 
be tempted to pirate. The music industry has started down that path, and so 
far the results are mixed: illegal downloading is still popular, but as 
lawsuits against pirates continue, legal downloading is growing. 
Downloading sites like iTunes offer ease-of-use and convenience, and market 
forces are reducing both the price of music and the rights restrictions. In 
a similar strategy, the movie industry recently announced that it will also 
begin to sell movies online this fall (in addition to current rental sites 
like Movielink).


The solutions that Lasica offers in his conclusion are sensible, and should 
be required reading for media companies. But I’m not sure how responsive 
those companies will be. “The best defense against piracy,” he says, “is a 
good business model.”  Or: “Media companies need to learn to let go.” But 
how does any business model compete against free? And how does a media 
company “let go” even as they’re watching BitTorrent and Grokster threaten 
to become the digital generation’s prime source of music and movies? Both 
sides of the copy protection battle have legitimate concerns and there’s 
tough territory ahead to negotiate.

What’s perhaps most striking is how little most consumers are aware of 
what’s at stake. The Digital Generation knows about the crackdown on 
illegal file-sharing, of course. And they’ve had a taste of awkward new 
digital rights schemes, such as those copy-protected audio CDs that won’t 
play on some CD drives.  But relatively obscure measures such as the 
broadcast flag — which will likely be decided this year — would build an 
unprecedented level of copyright control directly into many of our digital 
entertainment devices. Web sites such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation 
(http://www.eff.org/) and DigitalConsumer.org 
(http://www.digitalconsumer.org/) are good places to learn more about — and 
possibly join — the battle over the future of digital entertainment.


================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923  Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu


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