IP: more on Lawmakers Seek Rules to Stop Redistribution of Digital TV

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Nathan Cochrane <ncochrane@theage.fairfax.com.au>
Organization: The Age newspaper
Reply-To: ncochrane@theage.fairfax.com.au
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 12:19:42 +1000
To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Re: IP: Lawmakers Seek Rules to Stop Redistribution of Digital TV

Hi Dave

"The Hollywood studios have maintained that they will not send digital
copies of movies and other programming over the airwaves unless
safeguards are in place to prevent perfect copies from being distributed
online."

This is a furphy. The quality of digital reproductions available to the
bulk of the television watching public is likely to be far poorer than
free to air for the next 10-20 years. What is streamed now, even in
DivX;), is of a much lesser technical quality. Not until there is fibre
to the home, and an increase in speed and decrease of latency of several
orders of magnitude, will this become a "problem".

What the studios are likely to be concerned about is that consumers
won't mind the degradation for the convenience it offers.

But in reality all the studios are doing is refighting the Sony-VCR
analog battle. What they lost in the analog age, they hope to recoup in
the digital age. It is a massive transfer of wealth from the public to
the private sector.


------ End of Forwarded Message

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