Entertainment Industry Looks To Force Massive Copyright Changes Int'l (who WRITE the Treaties?)

techdirt.com ^ | 10/01/09 | Mike Masnick

[Americaneedsyou]

.

. Once Again, Entertainment Industry Looks To Force Massive Copyright Changes Via Int'l Treaties from the how-the-game-is-played dept By now you should know that one of the entertainment industry's favorite tools for forcing ever more draconian copyright laws around the world is to use international treaties. Such treaties are not put together by elected officials, but appointed diplomats, often with tremendous input (to the point of allowing them to write the details) from industries that are protected. Then, once those treaties are in place, copyright maximalists just get to sit back and say "but we must make our copyright laws stronger if we ever expect to live up to our international obligations..." The latest such attempt is the infamous ACTA bill, which the entertainment industry has had a heavy hand in crafting -- but the public is told that the treaty negotiations are matters of national security and cannot be revealed. Uh huh.

[Americaneedsyou]

Such treaties are not put together by elected officials, but appointed diplomats, often with tremendous input (to the point of allowing them to write the details) from industries that are protected. Then, once those treaties are in place, copyright maximalists just get to sit back and say "but we must make our copyright laws stronger if we ever expect to live up to our international obligations..." The latest such attempt is the infamous ACTA bill, which

[DoughtyOne]

What I want to know is where are the home Blue-Ray DVRs, to replace our decaying DVD recorders?

What gives?

You can record HD on your cameras, but can’t record that quality to your DVDs.

You can’t record shows off on Blue-Ray DVD media either, to expand your library.

[HiTech RedNeck]

This looks like a Canada issue, not a USA issue.

[bamahead]

Such treaties are not put together by elected officials, but appointed diplomats, often with tremendous input (to the point of allowing them to write the details) from industries that are protected. Then, once those treaties are in place, copyright maximalists just get to sit back and say "but we must make our copyright laws stronger if we ever expect to live up to our international obligations



Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
(View past Libertarian pings here)

[bamahead]

Bump - another prime example here.

[bamahead]

Copyfraud ping.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

Art was better before copyright. Copyright art is lowest common denominator art.

“Free-thinking artists” used to actually be free thinkers, like freepers. Not the mindless leftbots of today.

[Carry_Okie]

You can record HD on your cameras, but can’t record that quality to your DVDs.

Please explain.

[Carry_Okie]

Art was better before copyright.

It was expensive and required great skill to copy. That is no longer true.

[Niuhuru]

Is anyone else other than me having problems playing dvds on their laptop. I download a simple playing program and it doesn’t work. I suspect it is the stuff they are putting on the dvds to stop them from being ripped.

[bamahead]

This looks like a Canada issue, not a USA issue.

Nope, sadly it's being driven by our own Government. And this isn't even the tip of the iceberg:

See video:
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/obama-passing-new-law-to-allow-1

[bamahead]

The Blue Ray burners for PC’s are in stores now.
Best Buy has them for about $200.

[bamahead]

DVD cannot hold true HD quality video (720p and up). It doesn’t have the capacity, and the DVD format itself isn’t capable of the higher resolutions. You have to go Blu Ray for that.

[DoughtyOne]

There are cameras out there now that will capture video in the 1920 x 1080 format. You still can’t buy a high def recorder to run that off on a normal sized DVD you can place in your Blue Ray unit to play on your television.

I’d like to be able to shoot some high quality stuff, and record it to something I can send out to share with others.

There are some units that you can purchasse to install in your computer. That still doesn’t provide the same timed recordings that we used to be able to make of live television. Yes we can use the in-house (for lack of a better term) high def DVRs, but we can’t make our own DVDs to place on the shelf, for later viewing.

[Carry_Okie]

Thx. So is this a matter of formatting in 64-bit? I was just surprised that the DVD could not hold the data, even if it wasn't very much of it.

[DoughtyOne]

Yes, I’ve seem them as long ago as last year. Do you have a DVD recorder, the replacement for your old video tape machines? That’s the unit I wish they would introduce to the market with Blue-Ray capabilities.

So far, Blue Ray has been a step backwards in one regard. Yes the quality is astounding, but they have stripped our ability to tape or record shows onto a recording medium for long term storage.

[HiTech RedNeck]

You can always downconvert the show for conventional DVD recording, but then it does not look as good when played.

[DoughtyOne]

Yes, I’ve done that. You are right though, it doesn’t look very good.

It looks quite good when played back on an old analogue television. On an HD set, it’s quite inadequate.

[antiRepublicrat]

The Copyfraud ping: copyright, patent and trademark law, mainly as applied to the digital age, especially their abuse.
If you want on or off the Copyfraud Ping List, Freepmail me.

I've written about this treaty before. Everything about the treaty was kept as secret as possible. Industry had wide representation in the negotiations for the treaty, and not just the movie industry, but software and other companies. Rights groups representing the general public's interest were excluded, FOIA requests for information denied or heavily redacted.

[bamahead]

Not really a bit issue. More due to the way the encoding/decoding of the actual picture stream works in a DVD format vs. BluRay, the wavelength of the laser, etc.

In reading up on it to refresh my memory, there are several sites that suggest you can get HD video on a regular DVD, but it requires some special software and several reencoding steps to get there.