|
Let me try to explain what the "analog hole" is all about.
For those who don't understand the difference between analog and digital, let me take a quick tangent to explain.
In the analog systems, information is stored and transmitted as some sort of varying level. It could have been the varying strength of a radio signal, the varying voltage on a telephone wire, the varying magnetic level stored on a tape, or the varying width of a phonograph groove. Because of inaccuracy in measuring these levels, there is a certain amount of imprecision (also called "error" or "noise") inherent to these system. Those errors build upon each other with with each additional machine that has to handle the information. That's the fundamental reason that a "copy of a copy of a copy" always sounds so bad in an analog system - the original information had been distorted by multiple layers of imprecision.
In digital systems, all information is stored as numbers (i.e. "digits") - hence the name digital. All digital media (like digital photos, CDs of music, DVD movies, and digital television signals) are made of long strings of zero's and one's. Digital electronic machines (like computers) are capable of making exact copies of digital information. Since each copy is perfect, errors never slip in,
Since the 1980s, consumer electronics and media have been slowly but surely moving from analog to digital formats. The CD replaced records, the DVD replaced VCRs, and now digital television is staged to replace conventional television. But before television goes digital, there is one big issue that the "media industry" wants to deal with - piracy.
Depending on whom you listen to, piracy of music and movies may or may not be rampant. One thing is clear though, the "media industry" believes that it is, and they want to put a stop to it. They are attempting to put a stop to it through a combination of technology, legislation, information campaigns, and lawsuits.
The media industry, the computer industry, and the electronics industry have forged a set of standards and agreements to make sure that all future media (be it text, music, movies, software, or whatever) can be used only by people who the industry want to use it (in other words, people who have paid). They key to making this whole system work is to encrypt the media, and then to make sure that it stays encrypted.
The first time the industry tried this was with the DVD player. The information on a DVD is encrypted, and useless, until it is unencrypted using "secret" formulas and keys. However, the encryption on DVDs was reverse engineered (first by a Norwegian teenager) and the format is now effectively open. There were two lessons that the industry learned from the breaking of DVD encryption.
Lesson one - if you are going to encrypt something, do a good job of it. DVD encryption wasn't cracked due to the genius of hackers, DVD encryption was cracked due to some lazy implementation.
Lesson two - if you can't do a good job, you need a way to cover your ass if you do a bad job. At the time DVD encryption was cracked, there really wasn't an effective way to punish people for reverse engineering it. Today, thanks to hollywood and the music industry, it is a federal felony to reverse engineer an encryption system.
Ok, so here we are in 2005. Digital TV is coming, along with a whole host of new digital media devices. The industry learned a lesson about doing encryption right with the whole DVD story, and there are now strong laws in most countries that severely punish people for breaking encryption. The industry is poised to introduce a whole slew of new electronic devices, but they are still worried about one thing - the analog hole.
Human beings, of course, do not like to spend a lot of time listening to or staring at strings of ones and zeros. We are still analog animals, and ultimately all of our fancy digital media has to be converted to analog for us to enjoy it. The television we watch is made of levels of colored light, and the music we listen to is made of levels of sound. At some point in the process of delivering this high-tech, super-encrypted, digital media to us, it HAS to be turned back analog data.
Human beings also, over the past few decades, have bought a bunch of fancy electronics gear that all works on analog data. Some of us would like it if our 1999 high-definition television and our 2002 VCR and even our 1970 hi-fi speakers could still be used in this brave new digital world. But all of these devices only talk analog, and to use them in the digital world, they've got to be fed analog signals.
"Closing the Analog Hole" is all about making that analog data as useless and as hard to access as possible.
Put simply - if you can buy a component for your home theater system that can read an encrypted digital signal and output a high-quality analog signal (so you can connect it to your old devices), that high-quality analog signal is potentially something that could be copied. Because hollywood can't control that copying, they want to make the high-quality analog output illegal.
Similarly, since you could (in theory) copy a super-encrypted television show simply by point your digital camcorder at the television screen, they want to mandate that future camcorders have to have circuitry to detect this and stop recording.
There are two schools of thought about all this:
The "media-industry": Our business is built on controlling copies. New technologies have come along that enable people to steal our work from us, and this must be stopped. We will do whatever it takes to preserve our business from being stolen by these crooks, even if it means ending "fair use" and controlling what sort of electronics people are allowed to buy. We are willing and able to get legislation passed to protect our business as well.
A combination of libertarians and technophiles: The business model of the media industry only existed because it made sense given the state of technology from 1920 to 1990. Technology has advanced, and the old business model should go the way of the buggy-whip and slide-rule. The only way the industry can get what they want is through a combination of limiting the progress of technology, destroying the concept of "ownership" of anything consumers buy, and paying off congress to pass draconian laws. This leads to a future where consumers have no rights, and the same technologies that restrict copying will effectively restrict freedom of speech.
Whew! Sorry I was so long winded!
|