The Clicker: DTCSA -- A whole lot of analog holes are being plugged

Every Thursday Stephen Speicher contributes The Clicker, a weekly opinion column on entertainment and technology:

No one can be 100% sure what the written agenda was when the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin, Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, and the distinguished gentleman from Michigan, Democrat John Conyers, got together for a bi-partisan game of strange bedfellows. Nor will we know if alcohol was involved. All we know is that on that fateful night they looked into each other’s eyes and decided it was finally time to plug each other’s analog holes. Thus was born the Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005 (DTCSA).

To be fair – they’re not just looking to plug each other’s holes, they’re looking to plug yours too.

So what is the “Analog Hole?”

Ever since the birth of digital content-protection there has existed a “loophole” that drives copyright-proponents nuts: Like it or not, audio-visual content needs to be heard and seen. It seems like an obvious point, but it’s been the bane of existence for many a production studio. You see, content owners can place all the encryption they’d like on the files, but once it hits the analog stage, it’s free for the taking.

It started with its most basic form: the guy who took his video camera to the movie theater and sold duplicates on the streets of NYC. Sure, there might have been a hat in the shot and you were a slave to the filmer’s “artistic direction,” but you had the content.

Fast forward a couple decades to today and, with the help of the Internet, analog content duplication has become much more widespread -- or has it? We’ve all been told that the dreaded “Analog Hole” is evil incarnate, but where are the facts to back it up? Sure, there are a lot of files flying around the Internet. You can download just about any episode of any show (provided that you look hard enough), but with few exceptions these shows weren’t captured through the “Analog Hole.” The source for the these shows usually tracks back to one of three places: DVD rips, over-the-air HDTV, and direct-from-digital satellite.

Accordingly, it wasn’t surprising in 2002 to see a studio such as Warner Bros flirt with the idea of removing analog protection from its discs entirely. When faced with paying the 5 cent per DVD Macrovision licensing fee, Warner chose to release Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone sans analog protection. This begs the questions “Why legislation?” If companies are unwilling to pay minimal fees for protection, why should they be afforded special rights such as those in the DTCSA?

So what is the DTCSA?

In a nutshell it’s the “Broadcast Flag” on steroids, but this time it’s for analog signals. The DTCSA makes it illegal for any device to input and convert (or input and output) an analog signal without respecting the “rights-signaling” flags in the analog input stream. Unlike the previously-defeated and ever-resurrecting “Broadcast Flag” which simply governed devices whose purpose was to receive the flag via the over-the-air ATSC, the DTCSA governs ALL devices capable of converting an analog signal to digital. If it inputs an analog video signal, chances are it’s covered by the DTCSA.

If the DTCSA goes into effect, you might find yourself asking, “Why are all the VCRs so damn expensive now? I used to be able to buy a low-cost machine.” Why would prices go up? Because nearly every PVR, VCR, etc. will need to be reengineered. In the case of PVRs (e.g. TiVo) this is simply a nuisance and the price increase might only be minimal. However, in the case of legacy products such as VCRs, many companies won’t have the resources to re-invest in a product that is sustained purely by momentum. This will decrease competition and increase the cost for those machines still made.

What about computers? The bill contains such vague language as “any analog video input device that converts into digital form an analog video signal that is received in a covered format.” While it’s unlikely to affect giants such as Microsoft, whose Media Center Edition product already fully complies with the rights-signaling rules in question (much to the annoyance of many users), smaller companies which might lack the resources to develop DRM protection, signal reinsertion, etc. could find themselves in quite a pickle. It’s also unclear how these rules will be enforced in an open-source environment such as Linux. Who’s liable? Is it the software engineers? Is it video card manufacturers? In a decentralized systems like open-source projects (or computers themselves, for that matter) it’s unclear what constitutes a “device” and which entity is responsible for the entire chain being “secure.” Perhaps the lawmakers should start by plugging the holes in this bill.

What’s most troubling about the bill, however, isn’t the idiocy of it. Sure, introducing legislation to plug the analog hole is a lot like using a contraceptive after the fact. It ain’t gonna work! But we’re used to idiocy from our lawmakers. What’s troublesome about the bill is that it upsets the natural harmony of DRM.

The most compelling argument for DRM is often “It will work for a little while.” Content providers release a new product and, on the other side of the fence, “hackers” work to free the content for “Fair Use.” The result is that it helps to keep content providers moving forward. For instance, one could argue that movie studios are being driven by the ease of DVD-ripping to evolve past DVDs (e.g. to Blu-Ray) in order to incorporate higher levels of copyright protection. Likewise, when in a few years that copyright protection is broken, content providers will need to develop new and even more compelling offerings in order to entice consumers to switch over to a new system with even stronger protection schemes still. It’s a natural ebb and flow. By codifying a law that so heavy-handedly gives power to the content providers, legislators are potentially stifling innovation and giving studios the ability to rest on their laurels.

If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, drop me a line at theclicker@theevilempire.com