Copying
of Entertainment Content
Ever
since voice recording became cheap and ubiquitous in the 1940’s -50’s, kids and
others have been copying copyrighted music from public radio stations. The fact that the content is being played on
public media makes it generally available for listening and ostensibly for
recording using available technology. “If
it’s in the air, and I’m clever enough to record it, no harm, no foul (more
Later). The technology was originally a primitive wire recorder, and has now
evolved into pretty sophisticated, and cheap, recording devices. To be noted is the fact that the music is
copyrighted, and is being copied from publicly available sources.
Is
this legal? Purists to this day question
the legality of copying content over the air and maintain that the artist or
music company should be paid for each copy made. Of course this is impossible in practice, and
copying publicly available copyrighted music is common.
Video
recorders became generally available in the late 1970’s and people started
recording copyrighted movies and other material from their TV sets. Universal Studios sued Sony (Betamax) saying
it was illegal to make copying of copyrighted movies available. Sony won the case in the U.S. Supreme Court
in 1984, and it was established that copying movies from broadcast TV was not
illegal.
Along
came TVRO analog satellites in the early 1980’s which broadcast television,
including copyrighted movies, in the clear for the first few years. Then, HBO, Showtime and other so-called
premium content providers scrambled their channels and began charging substantial
fees to access them. The scramblers used M/A-Com technology out of Dallas at
first, and later General Instruments encryption out of San Diego, who absorbed
M/A-Com. GI was also later absorbed by
Motorola.
These were the original Videocipher I and II
encryption/scrambling systems. They were
quickly broken, and receivers which defeated the encryption became ubiquitous
in the U.S. Literally, nearly everyone
with a big dish had a cracked system. The concept of free access to the
airwaves is expressed as follows:
"The airwaves should belong to the people. If a TV signal comes
trespassing onto my property, I should be free to do any damn thing I want with
it, and it's none of the government's (or a monopolistic scrambler’s)
business."
To correct this flaw (and to protect their monopoly status), General
Instrument released an updated version of the descrambler called Videocipher II
Plus in late 1991. Also known as VC-RS (for "renewable security"),
the new units replaced the multiple chips in the unit with a single chip. Any
effort to copy or replace the chip would disable the unit entirely. More
importantly, the units included a renewable encryption system through the use
of a "TvPass" smart-card (similar to a credit card). Should a breach
in security occur, the encryption information on the cards can be changed
quickly and inexpensively. Major programmers switched to the upgraded system
with due speed, as HBO became the first programmer to shut off its consumer Videocipher
II data stream on 19 October 1992. Other programmers quickly followed suit.
Furthermore, HBO's satellite transmissions to Europe, Latin America, and
elsewhere use the VC-RS technology. A full review of scrambling schemes and how
they were broken is given in the following link:http://www.wirelesscommunication.nl/reference/chaptr01/brdcsyst/dvb/psystems.htm
The battle between the hackers and the monopolies (GI, HBO and more and more service providers), continued. Caribbean satellite TV pirates reversed engineered successive scrambler boxes. GI used various ECM’s to counter. A descriptive article on the situation in the Caribbean in the 1990’s is in the following link. http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/2.08/satellite_pr.html. Particularly pertinent is the last paragraph entitled “The Will of the People”.
Many U.S. users simply switched to GI’s new Videocipher II technology and paid to descramble. Trying to keep pace with the offshore hackers was simply too complex and time consuming. Rates were at first somewhat reasonable, but there was a perceptible escalation of rates over time.
The next stage was 4DTV which entered the digital and HD (high definition) world. 4DTV technology was originally developed in 1997 by General Instrument, now the broadband division of Motorola. The DigiCipher 2 encryption system is used in digital channels much like the VideoCipher and VideoCipher II systems were used for analog encrypted transmissions. Motorola abandoned 4dtv technology when they shut down the mapping stream on 12/31/2010 and converted most of the receivers in use to read one satellite only.
In the meantime, European hackers were also active and developed their own method to bypass the high costs of paid programming. This link refers. http://www.satshop.co.uk/content60/Foreign-channel-packages---How-to-receive.html. This European aspect is included since some of this technology is used in modern methods to bypass high cost paid access of TV programming.
The demise of 4DTV basically ended the efficacy of the big dishes or BUD’s. in the U. S. There was still some free content in the Clarke belt, but all of the major content providers were scrambled on one or two satellites in the middle of the arc. However, some services are still available for die-hard 4DTV aficionados. http://skyvision.com/store/c-band_store_page1.html.
Free to air (FTA) service was also still available across the Clarke belt with a simple $100 FTA receiver. This was really the “wild west”, with no programming guides, easy recording or time shifting. All of the channels were out there, including Dish, Direct TV, etc., but these were scrambled using modern scrambling technology. There were many channels in the clear if one had the wherewithal to look for them, but this effort was purely experimental.
In the meantime, another phenomenon emerged: P2P or peer to peer file sharing. Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program that searches for other connected computers on a P2P network to locate the desired content. The nodes (peers) of such networks are end-user computer systems that are interconnected via the Internet.
Peer-to-peer file sharing technology has evolved through several design stages from the early networks like Napster, which popularized the technology, to the later models like the BitTorrent protocol.
Several factors contributed to the widespread adoption and facilitation of peer-to-peer file sharing. These included increasing Internet bandwidth, the widespread digitization of physical media, and the increasing capabilities of residential personal computers. Users were able to transfer either one or more files from one computer to another across the Internet through various file transfer systems and other file-sharing networks. By 2015, P2P has become ubiquitous, particularly among young users. Movies, music and other digital content are easily and securely shared using the Torrents and VPN and proxy technology.
This
link is to an article on a fairly sophisticated, but not uncommon, use of P2P
by a modern user. http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/pirated-tv-can-and-should-it-be-stopped/
Some historical background is also
presented.
They are still there, and still providing ways to bypass conventional high cost programming. Since FTA is still available, it became possible to subscribe to the scrambled services, and then provide keys to other users who had FTA receivers.
But then someone said “we have this thing called the Internet. Why bother with satellite dishes and receivers in the users’ hands, when we can stream the whole bloody lot over high speed Internet”. At this writing, one can obtain IKS (keys) or IPTV (streaming services from several offshore sources, which opens up not only all of the so-called “premium” services offered by the content provider monopolies, but also foreign channels from all over the world.
As to the legality of IPTV, the user is still paying for IPTV service. Rather than paying huge sums ($180/mo and up) to the paid service providers like Dish, Direct TV, AT&T, Comcast, etc, consumers can buy an STB, pay for high speed Internet and pay an offshore company for IPTV access. If the signal is on your property in the form of the Internet, and you are clever enough to catch it and decode it, no harm, no foul. Various companies and government agencies have tried to catch and prosecute users, virtually to no avail.
One such effort is the “six strike system”, which is an effort by several large movie studios to convince major ISP’s to issue warnings to users of Torrents and others downloading copyright movies. This is a sham which has not been enforced, and which can easily be defeated by use of VPN’s and/or proxies. This link refers.
https://torrentfreak.com/six-strikes-anti-piracy-scheme-is-a-sham-filmmaker-say-150513/
The upshot of all this is that free exchange of entertainment material will continue, whether over the air, over the Internet, or by someone physically handing a copyright DVD to a friend. Is such activity of dubious legality? Possibly, but not proven. Is it ubiquitous? Absolutely. Is it stoppable? No way!
Details concerning IPTV are given below:
What is
needed for IPTV?
MAG 254 -- Set Top Box --
IPTV OTT Linux TV Box -- Streaming Media Player -- Full Hd
TV
$94 on Amazon
D-Link Wireless Dual Band
N600 (300/300 mbps) USB Wi-Fi Network Adapter
(DWA-160)
$23 (only wireless dongle that worked for me) (You can also wire in broadband)
Iptv4less service, $70 per
year, 920 total channels. 580 English
(710 Spanish) language VOD http://www.ioffer.com/i/1-month-subscription-ipguys-iptv-mag-box-250-254-avov-605609234
(Video on demand) movies.
(Do not use IKSCLUB. They are a scam. Use IPguys instead. They provide the
same service and seem quite capable and
responsive).
Check to ensure channel line up is not the same as IPTV4less
Dallas, Texas, October 7, 2015
Ray Gruszecki
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