MPAA Says Pirate Sites Will Take Advantage of Set-Top Box Proposals

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The Motion Picture Association of America is afraid that pirates are going to build a black market business if the set-top box market in the United States is opened up. Really? Why would crooks need approval from the FCC to make illegal black boxes. They do that now already. :rolleyes:

Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission promised to "tear down anti-competitive barriers" by opening up the set-top box market in the United States and freeing consumers from $20 billion a year in rental charges. The proposals have spooked content owners, not least the MPAA who fear that pirate sites will take the opportunity to build a "black market" business.
 
Cox will be forcing a digital box soon requiring me to cut the cord. I've been analog this whole time. But I'm not giving them rental fees. I think it would even be funnier if the MPAA were right, black boxes entered the market, and could, effectively, stream anything. :)
 
How to alienate your customers? Treat them like thieves. Is it any wonder these companies get so many complaints and people are leaving in droves?
I cut the cord years ago and I'm not going back.
I recently bought my cable modem instead of renting it. I was having issues with my speed - of course, the tech blames my box immediately. I was supposed to be getting 30megs, but was getting about 10. He said he would have upgraded me to a newer modem with 300meg support. They did something on their end (jiggled the wires???) and it magically started working.
 
The MPAA is not worried about people stealing TV for free. The way the cable system is currently setup. It would be damn near impossible for someone to free load using a hacked box. Just like cable modems have to be activated on the provider’s network before you will get internet, your cable box works in a similar way. Your cable box has a cable card in them (even the ones provided by your TV provider) and that card is what decrypts the channels. Before that cable card can work on the provider’s network, it has to be activated in their system or you're not going to see shit. So there really is no way to steal cable TV these days. Not like they use to with Satellite back in the day.

Now what I can see the MPAA really concerned about is the following type of scenario. Say someone that does pay for TV subscription and thanks to this nice, shiny new open box that can do all this cool stuff like, watch my Live/DVR content somewhere other than my house without paying the MPAA for a streaming license, or take that Live/DVR content and be able to encode it to any format that I can now take with me on my mobile device and watch it without paying MPAA for a licensing fee. These kind of thingsare what they are crying and it is only because of the "Possibility in their fantasy land, never going to happen reality, but really want the money because we are a bunch a greedy assholes" revenue completely disappear from their control.

I really hope this passes and becomes law and the MPAA can suck it for what is to come.
 
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How to alienate your customers? Treat them like thieves. Is it any wonder these companies get so many complaints and people are leaving in droves?
I cut the cord years ago and I'm not going back.
I recently bought my cable modem instead of renting it. I was having issues with my speed - of course, the tech blames my box immediately. I was supposed to be getting 30megs, but was getting about 10. He said he would have upgraded me to a newer modem with 300meg support. They did something on their end (jiggled the wires???) and it magically started working.


Charter tried that with me years ago. They sent a tech out & he wanted to try a different modem. (I wasn't home) Told the wife fine, let him try. She calls me back saying that he says he needs her email password to get it set up. I told her to tell him to stop what he's doing, take his tools & leave or I will be sending the police to the house immediately. Then they tried to charge me a service fee for that. Not happening. They fixed the problem on their end & everything was fine.
 
Charter tried that with me years ago. They sent a tech out & he wanted to try a different modem. (I wasn't home) Told the wife fine, let him try. She calls me back saying that he says he needs her email password to get it set up. I told her to tell him to stop what he's doing, take his tools & leave or I will be sending the police to the house immediately. Then they tried to charge me a service fee for that. Not happening. They fixed the problem on their end & everything was fine.

Comcast does the same thing. Cable modem works fine for 2 years then suddenly speeds drop and it suffers random disconnects? I know enough to check the modem logs to see the problem is on their end yet the first thing they do is send a tech to try a new modem.
 
Does anyone else think movies are a dying medium and the MPAA isn't a long-term concern?
 
Wah Wah Wah Wah fucking Wah. MPAA Wah. They need to invent a phobia just for these crybaby assholes. Jezus.
 
the MPAA would ban the internet if they could.

They might be able to effectively ban it in its current form.

It might be that one day, all you can get will be Google services, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, and other major sites. They just won't let individuals have webpages or run their own servers without a distribution fee and such on top of the cost of bandwidth. Like the bad old days of publishing.
 
Signals are destroying the entertainment industry one boop at a time. As long as these signals are allowed to exist the industry will be forced to suffer through record profits and consistent growth year after year!

BAN SIGNALS! Won't someone think of the executives?
 
This is pretty much being concerned that you will have boxes show up that will DVR shit, SAY they obey the do not copy flag, but let you copy anyway.

They are probably right, but the rality is by the time you are copying theatrical movies from cable, they've milked them for all they are worth anyway.
 
So who are the real pirates? The ones who watch TV for free? Or the ones who charge $10/month for watching "high definition" (aka what is normal today) channels, and $10/month to record shows on equipment that you either had to pay for through said company or get locked up into a 2year contract to have, then charge $60/month for the most basic channels above OTA channels?
 
So who are the real pirates? The ones who watch TV for free? Or the ones who charge $10/month for watching "high definition" (aka what is normal today) channels, and $10/month to record shows on equipment that you either had to pay for through said company or get locked up into a 2year contract to have, then charge $60/month for the most basic channels above OTA channels?

Plus, what they call HD can barely be called SD because of how much compression that they use.
 
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