purlblog

Get the F*** Out of My House!

First you may want to read this

The MPAA and RIAA want to come into my f*cking house and tell me when I can consume content. Content I paid a fair price to use in a fair manner. My demands aren't for piracy, they are for simple things:

• I want to consume my CD's on my iPod.
• I want to consume my satellite and digital cable shows on my schedule.
• i want to consume my DVD containing the Extended version of Lord of the Rings on my Linux computer or PSP.
• I want to consume Hi-Def programming, some of which I pay to have delivered (HBO-HD, Discovery HD, etc), some of which is free-to-air and supported by advertisers, at my leisure and possibly from a DVD I create myself.
• I may want to consume music I pay to have delivered (DirecTV now uses XM for its music channels) on a CD I create, on my computer or on my iPod.
• I want to consume my iTunes music on my Linux computer.
• I may want to consume my satellite and digital cable shows on other devices I own, such as my PSP or streamed to my laptop when in, say, Atlanta.
• I want to make fair use backups of media I purchase, such as loss-less digital archives of CDs I own. Such backups could prove handy in the case of damage to the original, since the RIAA would rather I only carry around the original, rather than be able to transcode it to my iPod.

The Broadcast Flag and Audio Flag are efforts to move to total Digital Rights Management (DRM) and control of all multimedia. In their perfect world, you didn't buy a CD of an artist's music. You didn't buy the right to enjoy the music on your 'pod while working the StairMaster. You purchased the right to listen to that music in a limited form, and sometimes they will sneak software onto your computer to make sure you comply. Although these efforts are cloaked in a battle to thwart a diminishing bottom line caused by rampant piracy (a claim that is quite arguable), what these efforts do is force normal citizens to resort to "soft-core" piracy to gain their fair rights use. The libraries that allow open source Operating Systems users to enjoy commercial DVDs would be considered illegal under the DMCA, as it circumvents a (trivial) copy protection scheme. The MPAA and RIAA don't trust you. They don't believe you just want to consume "high-end" content, but are looking to cut into their bottom line somehow. You are simply sheep, and they want droves of you to gobble up their content, but don't run off with it! Eat it right here in front of them, where they can spoon feed you. Go ahead and pay to watch. But, you better watch it right now, in this form we are giving it to you. If you don't eat now, you don't eat at all. There are no left overs in a Broadcast Flag world. No doggie bag of paid-for content you can save for later. If you like the taste of a different feeder's food, you must make sure you hold your mouth in a form that's compliant with their spoon . (There are several types of DRM that they are trying to get the FCC to sign off on). That TV isn't yours. It's theirs to decide what you can watch and when. You what!? You want to watch it again!? Sure! Just pay again.

But I'm just a person who enjoys media and pays for lots of it. We have digital cable and DirecTV. We pay to see a lot of first-run movies, even the ones getting the "Wagging Finger of Shame" (Ebert & Roeper). We buy DVDs of the ones we like. We rent many others, including ones we paid to see in the theatre. We've purchased records, cassettes, CDs and digital content. We enjoy HDTV, SDTV, Reality TV, even some Trash TV. We watch pay-per-view and free-to-air. I may not be perfect, but I certainly "put in" and would hate to see my fair rights disappear...

The views expressed here are representative of the owner and operator of this website