MPAA's Bid for Selectable Output Control

[HD Man]

Ran across this article and thought it might be of interest to the Blu-ray community. Not good news for people out there still depending on component inputs/outputs.

Cable: Let us lock down your TV (we'll offer movies sooner)
By Matthew Lasar | Last updated September 16, 2009 10:02 AM CT

Top reps from Time Warner Cable and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association have met with the FCC to back the MPAA's bid for selectable output control. It's a sure sign that Big Content is still big on this proposal, despite tons of opposition from device makers and public interest groups.
The movie studio crusade to take over your home theater system just got an endorsement from Time Warner Cable, whose top staff visited the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last Wednesday to ask, yet again, for permission to let cable operators limit video streams to HDTVs and DVRs. At the meeting, representatives of TWC and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) backed the scheme being pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA): Hollywood would send movies to cable before they appear on DVD, but the cable operators would clamp down on some of the features found in their subscribers' TV systems.
Specifically, consumers wouldn't be able to receive these flicks from an analog connection, which the studios say is more susceptible to piracy than a digital stream. The overall scheme is called Selectable Output Control (SOC), a practice currently prohibited by the FCC.
To inform and guide
NCTA and Time Warner's move suggests that, despite the failure of the studios for well over a year to convince the FCC to approve SOC, Big Content remains serious about this plan. As we've reported, the MPAA was over at the FCC's digs in late August to get the campaign back up to speed following former FCC Chair Kevin Martin's rejection of the SOC proposal last December. This latest NCTA/Time Warner meeting even got into logistics for the proposal.
"We described how operators would implement SOC at the cable headend as an application and how movies could be protected and transmitted by cable operators to subscribers using existing digital connectors and content protection technologies," the four reps explained. "We also described how cable operators can use their electronic program guides, on-demand menus, and other consumer communications to inform and guide customer purchases and to avoid customer confusion regarding whether early release movies are available to them."
Ah, to have been a fly on that office wall to hear details about the "content protection technologies" that these cable industry reps have in mind. The ex parte filing, which NCTA sent us, did not report anyone discussing the worries expressed by groups like the Consumer Electronics Association and Public Knowledge that SOC could partially or completely hobble millions of home theater components.
The MPAA now admits that this could happen in some instances, but it suggests that these estimates are "vastly overinclusive" because they count "homes where consumers do have at least one television set with protected digital inputs (even though they also may have older sets in other rooms in the house). In fact, the vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content" proposed by MPAA and big cable. Translation: only some of your home's TV sets won't work!
Public Knowledge met with the FCC a few days before the latest NCTA/Time Warner meeting, speaking to another small army of FCC Media Bureau reps and arguing that neither MPAA nor the cable folks have really explained why an SOC waiver is even necessary (beyond vague references to "security"). It would be swell if the Commission's new boss, Julius Genachowski, would tell the public what he thinks about this question, and soon.