Tuesday, July 16, 2013

HBO: VLC Media Player institutes as an illegal downloader

The Entertainment industry is now going after open-source software (P2P software is still illegal) including GPL licensed media players that constitutes as illegal downloaders.

If you remember Aereo case the New York District Federal Appeals had turned down the lawsuits from FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Univision, claiming that Aereo's website doesn't constitute as copyright infringement, including the mini-antennas.

How can receiving receiving over-the-air be copyright infringement?

Cable channels on Mobile DTV stations are encrypted.

Channel 55 licensed by MediaFLO (now part of AT&T) which is now used for wireless internet and phone and Channel 56 is licensed to Echostar which is uplinked from one of its satellites through the wireless antennas.

Receiving Encrypted Mobile DTV signals without paying is theft, like cable piracy.

Time Warner channel and content original owner HBO has filed DMCA against Google to take down the list of torrent sites (I cannot list the addresses due to copyright policy) and VideoLAN maybe on the list.

It's not an error. Big IP holders are going after open-source things as the TPP agreement is coming close to a final deal in October while many of the members say it would take longer.

Furthermore, after August recess, Congress will be voting to renew the Fast Track Trade Authority, which would lead to the approval of not only TPP and TAFTA/TTIP but ACTA as well by a up-down vote with no amendment and debate is limited to 20 hours. Japan was the first to ratify ACTA, and it will come to Congress to approve ACTA once fast track is renewed.

Majority of House Democrats have pledged to vote against the renewal

Congress will probably block Japan's entry into TPP because of it's currency manipulation, and the Abe-controlled government is being a total jerk of going back to its Meiji-era fascist state. Osaka Mayor Hashimoto would not shut up about the "comfort women" and offends the US suggesting that our military should have brothels.

But back to this issue: The worst part is that Silverlight has been discontinued and Flash is near its end, while Google and Microsoft is ready to integrate DRM into HTML5 called Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) that will be used not only for movies and music, but also for web sites and digital images.  Netflix is the first company to begin this process, and social media site like Facebook could use this to charge users a fee to access content and share. Game developers will also use this feature to encrypt online games for a premium free.

Apparently those who post rumors about Facebook charging users for a fee (including price charts for Gold Membership) is actually coming true. Facebook could and soon likely implement EME to its site and start charging new users to open an account and current users to keep their accounts open.  And sharing someone's post to keep their account free is not going to happen.

HTML5 with DRM/EME is the End of the net as we know it. While XP support ends in the next several months, Vista ends in 2017 and Win7 ending in 2020. It's back to the old Pony Express

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