Death by DMCA

[BJ_M]

A flood of legislation released by the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act threatens to drown whole classes of consumer electronics

In 1998, U.S. entertainment companies persuaded Congress to make dramatic changes in its copyright code by passing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA gave copyright holders new rights to control the way people use copyrighted material and new protection for technologies designed to restrict access or copying. The movie and record companies argued they needed these new restrictions to fight increased piracy threats in the digital era.

read this excellent article here http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun06/3673

[guns1inger]

I have a PVR because there are a lot of TV shows that I cannot watch at the time they are broadcast (they either clash with something else, or are on stupidly late). If I was unable to record these to watch at my convenience, I simply would not watch them.

Don't the TV stations realise that preventing recording and timeshifting in the way that we have become accustomed to means a drop in ratings for their shows ? Certainly any show that I could not see week to week without recording the odd missed episode would be a show I would not bother to start watching at all.

As for stifling inovation - we are already seeing the lack of inovative thinking in the products being brought to market by the movie industry. Sequels and remakes have been the order of the day for the last few years. Only the independents have been able to produce anything of real worth. Perhaps if they inovated themselves, they would produce product people were happy to pay full price for, rather than try to get on the cheap because that is how they equate it's value.

From my perspective, I haven't seen anything in HDTV or HD DVD/BluRay that makes me say Wow! or "I've got to have that". Plasma and LCD, while improving, still doesn't make my wish list for consumer spending. So if they choose to screw it into the ground before it is good enough to want, it will just save me money.