The Gun Just Went Off

Back in late 2002 an insidious thing happened.  The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) got together with the major consumer electronics manufacturers and the FCC and colluded to install hardware in your devices that would allow the MPAA and cable content providers to remotely disable analog outputs on your TV, your DVR, your laptop, or any other device that had the ability to play On Demand content.  The only way they got this insidious deed done was by telling the FCC that they would just be installing the hardware, not actually using it.  I mean, sure, they were going to spend millions of dollars to develop and implement the technology, but only so that they couldn't use it!  

 As they say in the theater, if there's a gun onstage in ACT I it had damn well better go off in ACT III.

I've been supportive or at least empathetic to the work of the FCC under Julius Genachowski's chairmanship.  Their National Broadband Plan is as good as the political realities will allow and their willingness to curb ISP efforts to control the way consumers and vendors get to use the internet is commendable.  But the FCC giveth and the FCC taketh away, it seems. Last Friday the FCC's Media Bureau handed down a decision in favor of the MPAA that will effectively waive the prohibition against using the so-called Selectable Output Control technology.  The problem with this decision isn't what it's actually going to do, the problem is the precedent it sets and the principals it takes a hike all over.  In general, the actual decision handed down is fairly even-keeled and not entirely a handjob for the movie studios, but it's also a huge "Fuck off, eh" to the consumers.  Otherwise known as you, me, and everyone we know.  

 Rather than tell the MPAA to lock themselves in a dark room until they came up with a business model that didn't require the heavy hand of the federal government to work, they told the American consumers that they're all a bunch of thieves and will be treated accordingly.  It seems to me that the FCC should be more concerned about the quality of service the consumers receive than the whiny-ass hand-wringings of an aged industry attempting to force it's long past decrepit revenue schemes into a market that has clearly eclipsed their way of thinking—the MPAA is trying to merge a caravan of Conestoga wagons onto the 405 freeway and threatening to disable the engines of any cars that so much as honk at them.  It's outrageous that the FCC would even give these people the time of day, let alone agree with them and issue this preposterous ruling which claims this is a "public service" and multiple times refers to protecting the movie studios as if the movie studios were small redheaded orphans being attacked by a pride of lions!

The reality is that most Americans don't steal movies.  Either because they wouldn't know how--like my Dad--or because they're too lazy--like me.  However, draconian measures like this will guarantee that more will learn how and that people like me will get off their ass and go to the trouble of downloading a movie off the internet (which was probably taken directly from the movie studio anyway, by the way) than give the MPAA the satisfaction of disabling hardware on my device.  It's bad enough that this organization dictates these limitations to hardware in devices like the iPhone, the iPad, the Playstation, and the X-Box, but at least there you know going in what you're getting into before you make the purchase.  How many people have purchased TVs, laptops, and DVRs in the last seven years that were well aware of the SOC hardware laying dormant inside when they did so?  

So to the FCC I say shame on you.  To the MPAA I say what I have always said, "Go ahead, make my day."