Transcript
Celine Dion’s Singing Crashes Computers
April 13, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: We're back with On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. A proposed law prepared by Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina amounts to a new salvo in a war between two powerful industries. One produces entertainment and the other the technology to disseminate it. Fear that the consumers of music and movies could get something for nothing has motivated the lawmaker to insist that computer makers build in technology that prevents copying. This obviously benefits the entertainment industry at the expense of computers. But also, it seems, at the expense of the economy, because while Hollywood generates according to one estimate about 40 billion dollars a year, computer technology generates in the neighborhood of 600 billion. We've invited NPR's Rick Karr to come in and explain how this would work. Welcome to the show, Rick.
RICK KARR: Thanks, Brooke. It's great to be here.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This Copyright Protection Act that Hollings proposes - how would it work?
RICK KARR: Well the way the language in the law is drafted, it says that any device that would accept a digital input and has a digital output that could be used to copy something that's copyrighted must have a copy protection scheme in it. Nobody's really sure how this would work out. What it's clear that the entertainment industries want though is digital television, say, music ideally, and movies on DVDs impossible to copy on to your computer hard drive or on to another CD or DVD.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: There is a certain presumption here that all copiers are pirates.
RICK KARR:That's absolutely right. The recording industry points at a fairly disastrous 2001 --sales down by about 10 percent -- they put to Napster. They say it's all Napster's fault. But a lot of people who are friends of mine who are rock critics and music critics and who care passionately about music say look, there were a lot of bad albums that were put out, the economy hit the dumps, we had September 11th which kind of put us all out of a frame of mind in which we wanted to celebrate with music and movies -- yeah, there is this kind of blurring of the line that-- you know, copying is always bad when in a lot of ways, I mean, I have photocopies in front of me right here, and in theory if it were a digital photocopier, Senator Hollings' bill would have prevented me from copying this very piece of paper I'm holding right now.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You mentioned the Napster example. They got rid of Napster. But there were plenty of other similar technologies that came in to take its place that they can't get rid of, so is it even possible to suppress this -- what seems to be innate urge to copy?
RICK KARR: I don't know that it's possible to suppress it. I'm-- I think that it's possible to minimize the degree to which it goes on. There are an awful lot of people in the digital music field who will say look, most people don't steal cable TV now. Why don't they steal cable? Because, except in New York City anyway, the prices are fairly reasonable, and it feels like it's free. You turn it on, and it's there. These people encourage the music industry to kind of take the same look at music -- look, create services that feel like they're free that don't over-charge people and you know what - people won't have the incentive to copy any more -- they'll be able to get what they want.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Actually Hollywood did have the same fears about the VCR when it was invented, and the response wasn't to prohibit VCRs or to impose federal technology mandates on them. Eventually Hollywood figured out a way to make money from the new technology by adjusting their business model. Isn't that what they should be doing now?
RICK KARR: They have a business model that works more or less for them right now, and everybody is afraid of change. Nobody wants to see their entire business model destroyed overnight by a new technology. Having said that, you're right; Jack Valenti did say to Congress back during hearings about the video cassette recorder that it is to the American movie industry what the Boston Strangler is to a woman alone. [LAUGHTER] And of course I think last year was the first year in which videotape and DVD rentals actually generated more revenue for Hollywood than box office receipts did.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Well now it appears we have one of the first freelance efforts not mandated by law to protect the copying of music, and it's the new, incredibly well-selling Celine Dion release. This is the first time Sony Music has admitted to using copyright protection software. How does that work?
RICK KARR: I'm really glad that your producers didn't force me to listen to the record before we did this. [LAUGHTER] The way it works--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Wait a second--
CELINE DION: [SINGING] HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN LOVE--
RICK KARR: The, the way it works is that a home CD player is basically designed to play a messed-up CD -you know say you toss it in the back seat of your car; you bring it home; you stick it in the home CD player - it's designed to play a schmutsy CD -- one that's scratched up - one that has errors in it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Because if they were too persnickety, they wouldn't be able to play anything.
RICK KARR:Exactly. The second that you got one scratch on your CD, it just wouldn't work any more. So the home CD players are fairly robust. Computer CD players are designed to read computer programs as much as they're designed to read audio, so they are more prone to being put off track by these deliberate errors that are introduced. So the idea is you can take the CD, put it in your home CD player -- you can listen to it just fine. You can make a cassette tape of it just fine. But the second that you put it into your computer and try to make a bit for bit copy of it on to your hard drive, the CD drawer in the computer says - uh--uh-- there's something wrong with this - I can't play this. So you can't make the copy. Now some computers are more robust and can play it. So it's inconsistent. Now the interesting thing is that the record companies tried to all get together -- they tried to form this thing called the Secure Digital Music Initiative so that they would all use the same technology. They failed miserably at this. They couldn't get off page one, and finally the whole initiative was just taken apart last year and the record companies have said we're going to go it alone. The motion picture and television industries learned from that experience, and they realize that without a little bit of help from Washington they were never going to get the technologists to get off page one. So the sort of conventional wisdom on Fritz Hollings's [sic] bill is that it's not so much something that Hollywood and the record companies want to see part of law. It's a way of forcing the technologists to negotiate with them to come up with a standard, and in fact last week and early this week News Corporation and Disney released statements saying that they were happy to see that the computer industry and the consumer electronics industry were finally sitting down with them to come up with ways to deal with the two most pressing problems they face. Now that the technologists are actually sitting down and talking with them, they may not need to push quite as hard for Fritz Hollings' bill.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Yeah, but without the bill this marriage can't last.
RICK KARR:Well, you know, and that's something that a lot of people in the technology community say, and in fact if you look at the big motion picture studios and record companies you realize that a lot of these companies have hedged their bets -- they've laid money on both sides of the table. Sony, for instance, makes DVD players, makes movies. AOL/Time Warner builds the date pipe into your home; makes movies and records. Disney to some extent is that way, so everybody's kind of trying to hedge their bets, cause nobody knows how this is going to work out.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well thanks a lot, Rick.
RICK KARR: You're quite welcome Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: NPR cultural correspondent Rick Karr.