9 ms·

Why Johnny can't stream: How video copyright went insane

170 points by mbell 14y ago

chime 14y ago
I hope Aereo continues to win. Another company doing the same thing is: http://www.skittertv.com/ http://www.skittertv.com/ - unfortunately neither of them support my local area. Due to my house's construction/location, I can't pick up DTV signals easily and would gladly pay $10-$15/mo to get those channels instead of the minimum $30/mo that my cable company charges for basic package.
- gergles 14y ago
  You should call the cable company back and ask for the "lifeline" package, by that specific name. It only includes the local channels, but it exists in basically every franchise area and is generally $10 or less.
  - chime 14y ago
    I did. I called three different times and not one of the sales people for Bright House Networks here in Florida knew about it. I said it is the lowest package with just the bare minimum channels like ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS and they said "No, the lowest plan we offer is $25+tax. There is nothing called lifeline."
    - simcop2387 14y ago
      If the house has been previously hooked up for cable (or still is for internet) you can try hooking up anyway. A lot of them will usually have those channels come through anyway because it costs them less in filters and things to do so. However some of them still encrypt them so it's a bit of a crap-shoot as to what you'll find.
- amalcon 14y ago
  If your house is wired for cable, have you tried just connecting your TV to that? A lot of cable companies push local channels unencrypted. That's how I get my local channels.
johrn 14y ago
So what if some company did something similar to Zediva, but with a model where customers "buy" the DVDs and then sell them back to the company when they are done streaming it? Basically use first sale to set up a streaming service where you don't need to deal with licensing issues. I pay $20/month for access to the servers and infrastructure. I get $10 of that to use as purchasing credit. Movies cost anywhere from $1-$5 depending on popularity, and the company buys them back for some small amount. The company would probably need to have some system in place for dealing with people that actually want the DVD that they 'bought'. Maybe something as simple as letting people know that they own the DVD, but the company is not responsible for shipping it to them. If the customer wants to come pick it up at the office, he can feel free to swing by and have someone pull it from the data center for him.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  Seems like a nice hack, assuming nobody made an argument that it constituted "public performance" or something similarly crazy. Plus, you get automatic coverage of damaged disks: the company will buy back undamaged disks for what you paid minus the rental fee, or for full price in the case of an all-you-can-watch service.
  - narrator 14y ago
    Except anything with a low/bid ask spread becomes money and that comes with its own set of problems. What would happen if the DVD was sold back for more than it was bought for? It's the intersection of Banking + Copyright + Tax Law. The trifecta of screwball legal areas.
    - JoshTriplett 14y ago
      You could solve some of that by making the buyback non-transferrable (so people couldn't use this as a money transfer mechanism). Beyond that, any pointers to information on regulations about things with a low bid/ask spread?
    - 001sky 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
frankus 14y ago
There's really the exact same copyright-induced inefficiency in traditional video rental places. It always struck me as bizarre that a video rental place could "run out" of copies of a particular film, when at trivial expense they could manufacture (on site) additional copies on demand. Intuitively it seems like this would result in more money for the rightsholders as well, although maybe the need for video rental shops to vastly overprovision copies of some films made them more money than the alternative.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- nl 14y ago
  Isn't video rental (in the US) done under first sale doctrine[1]? That means copyright holders only receive money from selling each physical copy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
  - frankus 14y ago
    That's right, but they wouldn't necessarily have to (strictly speaking) sell copies. They could instead license the right to make copies for a fee. My suspicion is that that fee would be set to extract as much money as possible from the rental stores (cf. Netflix) and that they are/were better off with the status quo.
aero142 14y ago
I wonder if any of the companies that require unique uploads to the cloud service play fast and loose with compression. There is a large spectrum between running a hash over a file to see if it already exists on the server, and doing the same thing over pieces of a file. Full file deduplication might be clearly against the rules, but what about running a totally generic upload cache that only looked at parts of a file to see if it already had been uploaded as a chunk of data and then copying from the server side cache instead of retransmitting from the user. Seems like there is a lot of grey area between deduplication and simple optimized compression.
tomjen3 14y ago
Meanwhile millions just illegally download the movies and tv shows of various sites, completely ignoring copyright law. And there isn't anything these people can do about it. But hey, lets do a lot more suits against companies and at least force them to do crazy things.
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
  Technically, the letter of the law only highlights transmission (uploading) as illegal in most copyright issues. Downloading most any material seems completely legal. That'd be neat to see: a bittorrent case which the user turned the upload to 0.0 . Are they infringing?
  - ljf 14y ago
    I think not. No-one has ever been sued for downloading material from Rapidshare etc - they have all be bit torrent users who have been sharing as they downloaded.
    - tsotha 14y ago
      That doesn't mean nobody can be sued for downloading material from Rapidshare. They're working their way down the ladder. First it was dedicated hosting sites like Napster and Pirate Bay. Next it was bittorrent users who were seeding. When the content providers have pretty much mined out that vein they'll go after the Rapidshare users. The real question is can they do it without losing money. My guess is they'll get the law changed so it's an administrative infraction under a certain amount, or they'll stick with people who've downloaded enough content the legal work can be paid.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Most downloading is illegal. But there is a difference between crimes that the police will arrest people over, and crimes for which someone 'wronged' can sue. For downloading the 'wronged' party can sue for damages, which would be loss of earnings for that one sale. Plus, I guess, costs. Uploading is easier to sue, because there the damages (the number of files made available) is much larger and it makes things more cost effective. It also (possibly?) acts as a deterrent to other uploaders. Criminal charges tend to come in when money is being made from copyright infringement. Selling burnt DVDs, for example. I'm being a bit vague because of the international audience. (I'm in the UK.)
noonespecial 14y ago
Storing a permanent copy rather than a buffer just large enough for streaming is a pessimization, not an optimization. And there's my word of the day. Can't wait to go pessimize me some software systems. Heh. Theses days, it's practically my job description.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html > Mel called the maximum time-delay locations the “most pessimum”.
sushantsharma 14y ago
I think this is an innovative solution and I wish aereo all the best. However, unless they can somehow include some more (premium) channels, it may be a little hard to sign up too many people. Currently available channels: https://aereo.com/channels https://aereo.com/channels
e1ven 14y ago
One of the problems with all of this is that location gets very tricksy. They say you need to be in NYC for Aereo to work. The problem is, there's no good way to verify that.. Aero seems to be using HTML5 location, which can be bypassed by setting geo.wifi.uri in Firefox pretty trivially. (I know they ask for Safari, but you can also change user-agent) Even if they used IP (which is a huge mess!), you could bounce through a proxy. The problem is the internet does NOT have a reliably way to determine where someone is. This goes all the way back to the Yahoo/France Nazi memorabilia issues back in 2000. We have hints, and suggestions at where people are, but not hard and fast proof. For technical and social reasons, this is unlikely to change- So having laws based around restricting things to certain geographic areas is never going to be a long-term solution.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is a great in depth look at the dysfunctional way copyright has evolved. One of the more interesting things will be when we all have 'Google fiber' which is to say the majority of the Internet has really high speed connectivity and we can stream back from our houses to our devices. Today that is highly constrained by 'uplink' bandwidth but that will change. And when it does we'll get a full court press to make things like the SLingbox illegal.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 14y ago
The Ars article misses out the third opportunity - a subscription based service with easy to use existing networks and protocols and software; where some of the sub fee goes to content creators. That's never happened. Even though the content creator would be getting paid for their content there would have been many court cases shutting anyone providing that service down.
nameuserc 14y ago
So if I do this: wget http://example.com/file.flv http://example.com/file.flv; sleep 5; mplayer -cache 8092 file.flv am I "streaming"? In answering that question, does it matter what I do, or only what the guys at example.com are doing? What if my system is diskless and file.flv is downloaded to a RAM disk? What if I turn off the system after watching? What if I don't? What if I save file.flv to a USB stick and watch it later? What if I loan the stick to a friend? What if I do this: ffmpeg -i file.flv file.mp3; mplayer -vo null file.mp3 Can the guys at example.com prohibit me from doing that? Based on intellectual property law? What if some user owns the IP rights to file.flv and uploaded it to example.com and the guys at example.com do not have any IP rights in file.mp3? What if the user did not give them any of her IP rights? What if I never put file.mp3 into "iTunes"? What if I never put it into "Dropbox"? What if I never send it to "the cloud"? What if I just leave it on a USB stick? What if I play it back from the stick? What if I move it from the stick to my RAM disk and then play it back? OK, enough. Enjoy your media. To get the most from the experience, it may be necessary to stear clear of people who willingly conceal the truth or, in the worst case, lie to you in order to suit their business model.
nameuserc 14y ago
Maybe Johnny doesn't want to "stream". Maybe Johnny just wants video that play backs immediately/without delay, and smoothly. And Johnny thinks that's what "streaming" means. Maybe Johnny thinks that "downloading" means he has to wait. Does Johnny know that when he watches YouTube he's downloading? Or does he think he's "streaming"? As long as Johnny does not have to wait for playback, and playback is smooth, does Johnny really care about whether he's "streaming" or "downloading? All else being equal (i.e. speed to fill a buffer or a disk block is the same and in neither case does Johnny have to wait for playback longer than in the other), I'd bet Johnny would prefer "downloading" over "streaming", since then he can watch the video again later. Just like a VHS or DVD rental. Assuming you have the storage space, all else being equal, "streaming" video when you can "download" it seems "insane" to use the Professor's term. Unless of course your business model is traditional "broadcasting" of the pre-digital, pre-internet variety.

170 points by mbell 14y ago

chime 14y ago

I hope Aereo continues to win. Another company doing the same thing is: http://www.skittertv.com/ http://www.skittertv.com/ - unfortunately neither of them support my local area. Due to my house's construction/location, I can't pick up DTV signals easily and would gladly pay $10-$15/mo to get those channels instead of the minimum $30/mo that my cable company charges for basic package.

gergles 14y ago
You should call the cable company back and ask for the "lifeline" package, by that specific name. It only includes the local channels, but it exists in basically every franchise area and is generally $10 or less.
- chime 14y ago
  I did. I called three different times and not one of the sales people for Bright House Networks here in Florida knew about it. I said it is the lowest package with just the bare minimum channels like ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS and they said "No, the lowest plan we offer is $25+tax. There is nothing called lifeline."
  - simcop2387 14y ago
    If the house has been previously hooked up for cable (or still is for internet) you can try hooking up anyway. A lot of them will usually have those channels come through anyway because it costs them less in filters and things to do so. However some of them still encrypt them so it's a bit of a crap-shoot as to what you'll find.
amalcon 14y ago
If your house is wired for cable, have you tried just connecting your TV to that? A lot of cable companies push local channels unencrypted. That's how I get my local channels.

johrn 14y ago

So what if some company did something similar to Zediva, but with a model where customers "buy" the DVDs and then sell them back to the company when they are done streaming it? Basically use first sale to set up a streaming service where you don't need to deal with licensing issues. I pay $20/month for access to the servers and infrastructure. I get $10 of that to use as purchasing credit. Movies cost anywhere from $1-$5 depending on popularity, and the company buys them back for some small amount. The company would probably need to have some system in place for dealing with people that actually want the DVD that they 'bought'. Maybe something as simple as letting people know that they own the DVD, but the company is not responsible for shipping it to them. If the customer wants to come pick it up at the office, he can feel free to swing by and have someone pull it from the data center for him.

JoshTriplett 14y ago
Seems like a nice hack, assuming nobody made an argument that it constituted "public performance" or something similarly crazy. Plus, you get automatic coverage of damaged disks: the company will buy back undamaged disks for what you paid minus the rental fee, or for full price in the case of an all-you-can-watch service.
- narrator 14y ago
  Except anything with a low/bid ask spread becomes money and that comes with its own set of problems. What would happen if the DVD was sold back for more than it was bought for? It's the intersection of Banking + Copyright + Tax Law. The trifecta of screwball legal areas.
  - JoshTriplett 14y ago
    You could solve some of that by making the buyback non-transferrable (so people couldn't use this as a money transfer mechanism). Beyond that, any pointers to information on regulations about things with a low bid/ask spread?
  - 001sky 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

frankus 14y ago

There's really the exact same copyright-induced inefficiency in traditional video rental places. It always struck me as bizarre that a video rental place could "run out" of copies of a particular film, when at trivial expense they could manufacture (on site) additional copies on demand. Intuitively it seems like this would result in more money for the rightsholders as well, although maybe the need for video rental shops to vastly overprovision copies of some films made them more money than the alternative.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
nl 14y ago
Isn't video rental (in the US) done under first sale doctrine[1]? That means copyright holders only receive money from selling each physical copy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
- frankus 14y ago
  That's right, but they wouldn't necessarily have to (strictly speaking) sell copies. They could instead license the right to make copies for a fee. My suspicion is that that fee would be set to extract as much money as possible from the rental stores (cf. Netflix) and that they are/were better off with the status quo.

aero142 14y ago

I wonder if any of the companies that require unique uploads to the cloud service play fast and loose with compression. There is a large spectrum between running a hash over a file to see if it already exists on the server, and doing the same thing over pieces of a file. Full file deduplication might be clearly against the rules, but what about running a totally generic upload cache that only looked at parts of a file to see if it already had been uploaded as a chunk of data and then copying from the server side cache instead of retransmitting from the user. Seems like there is a lot of grey area between deduplication and simple optimized compression.

tomjen3 14y ago

Meanwhile millions just illegally download the movies and tv shows of various sites, completely ignoring copyright law. And there isn't anything these people can do about it. But hey, lets do a lot more suits against companies and at least force them to do crazy things.

TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
Technically, the letter of the law only highlights transmission (uploading) as illegal in most copyright issues. Downloading most any material seems completely legal. That'd be neat to see: a bittorrent case which the user turned the upload to 0.0 . Are they infringing?
- ljf 14y ago
  I think not. No-one has ever been sued for downloading material from Rapidshare etc - they have all be bit torrent users who have been sharing as they downloaded.
  - tsotha 14y ago
    That doesn't mean nobody can be sued for downloading material from Rapidshare. They're working their way down the ladder. First it was dedicated hosting sites like Napster and Pirate Bay. Next it was bittorrent users who were seeding. When the content providers have pretty much mined out that vein they'll go after the Rapidshare users. The real question is can they do it without losing money. My guess is they'll get the law changed so it's an administrative infraction under a certain amount, or they'll stick with people who've downloaded enough content the legal work can be paid.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Most downloading is illegal. But there is a difference between crimes that the police will arrest people over, and crimes for which someone 'wronged' can sue. For downloading the 'wronged' party can sue for damages, which would be loss of earnings for that one sale. Plus, I guess, costs. Uploading is easier to sue, because there the damages (the number of files made available) is much larger and it makes things more cost effective. It also (possibly?) acts as a deterrent to other uploaders. Criminal charges tend to come in when money is being made from copyright infringement. Selling burnt DVDs, for example. I'm being a bit vague because of the international audience. (I'm in the UK.)

noonespecial 14y ago

Storing a permanent copy rather than a buffer just large enough for streaming is a pessimization, not an optimization. And there's my word of the day. Can't wait to go pessimize me some software systems. Heh. Theses days, it's practically my job description.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
JoshTriplett 14y ago
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html > Mel called the maximum time-delay locations the “most pessimum”.

sushantsharma 14y ago

I think this is an innovative solution and I wish aereo all the best. However, unless they can somehow include some more (premium) channels, it may be a little hard to sign up too many people. Currently available channels: https://aereo.com/channels https://aereo.com/channels

e1ven 14y ago

One of the problems with all of this is that location gets very tricksy. They say you need to be in NYC for Aereo to work. The problem is, there's no good way to verify that.. Aero seems to be using HTML5 location, which can be bypassed by setting geo.wifi.uri in Firefox pretty trivially. (I know they ask for Safari, but you can also change user-agent) Even if they used IP (which is a huge mess!), you could bounce through a proxy. The problem is the internet does NOT have a reliably way to determine where someone is. This goes all the way back to the Yahoo/France Nazi memorabilia issues back in 2000. We have hints, and suggestions at where people are, but not hard and fast proof. For technical and social reasons, this is unlikely to change- So having laws based around restricting things to certain geographic areas is never going to be a long-term solution.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This is a great in depth look at the dysfunctional way copyright has evolved. One of the more interesting things will be when we all have 'Google fiber' which is to say the majority of the Internet has really high speed connectivity and we can stream back from our houses to our devices. Today that is highly constrained by 'uplink' bandwidth but that will change. And when it does we'll get a full court press to make things like the SLingbox illegal.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

DanBC 14y ago

The Ars article misses out the third opportunity - a subscription based service with easy to use existing networks and protocols and software; where some of the sub fee goes to content creators. That's never happened. Even though the content creator would be getting paid for their content there would have been many court cases shutting anyone providing that service down.

nameuserc 14y ago

So if I do this: wget http://example.com/file.flv http://example.com/file.flv; sleep 5; mplayer -cache 8092 file.flv am I "streaming"? In answering that question, does it matter what I do, or only what the guys at example.com are doing? What if my system is diskless and file.flv is downloaded to a RAM disk? What if I turn off the system after watching? What if I don't? What if I save file.flv to a USB stick and watch it later? What if I loan the stick to a friend? What if I do this: ffmpeg -i file.flv file.mp3; mplayer -vo null file.mp3 Can the guys at example.com prohibit me from doing that? Based on intellectual property law? What if some user owns the IP rights to file.flv and uploaded it to example.com and the guys at example.com do not have any IP rights in file.mp3? What if the user did not give them any of her IP rights? What if I never put file.mp3 into "iTunes"? What if I never put it into "Dropbox"? What if I never send it to "the cloud"? What if I just leave it on a USB stick? What if I play it back from the stick? What if I move it from the stick to my RAM disk and then play it back? OK, enough. Enjoy your media. To get the most from the experience, it may be necessary to stear clear of people who willingly conceal the truth or, in the worst case, lie to you in order to suit their business model.

nameuserc 14y ago

Maybe Johnny doesn't want to "stream". Maybe Johnny just wants video that play backs immediately/without delay, and smoothly. And Johnny thinks that's what "streaming" means. Maybe Johnny thinks that "downloading" means he has to wait. Does Johnny know that when he watches YouTube he's downloading? Or does he think he's "streaming"? As long as Johnny does not have to wait for playback, and playback is smooth, does Johnny really care about whether he's "streaming" or "downloading? All else being equal (i.e. speed to fill a buffer or a disk block is the same and in neither case does Johnny have to wait for playback longer than in the other), I'd bet Johnny would prefer "downloading" over "streaming", since then he can watch the video again later. Just like a VHS or DVD rental. Assuming you have the storage space, all else being equal, "streaming" video when you can "download" it seems "insane" to use the Professor's term. Unless of course your business model is traditional "broadcasting" of the pre-digital, pre-internet variety.