WhatFinger


Personal Video Recorder

Bill C-11 & The Death of The DivX Player



If this law passes, that means DivX players will be useless! Just as a cigarette is a nicotine delivery device, Bill C-11 is a legal tool for the enforcement of the PVR (Personal Video Recorder)! What the distributors of Television programming don’t seem to understand is that there’s a technology out there that most of the public wishes to use.
Why not embrace this technology just as the music industry adopted the consumer driven choice of downloading MP3 files. The MP3 epitomizes how the entertainment industry adopted a technology that most of its customers preferred and they did not lobby politicians to make MP3 files illegal to download. Rather than outlawing that technology and forcing consumers to buy CDs, the law allows customers to legally download and pay for MP3s. There is no need for TV cable and satellite providers to lobby politicians in order to legally wipeout compressed digital files such as AVI, which can be run on computer media players and DivX players! This is an act of desperation by a scare tactic industry that wishes to exert full control over a perceived threat and thus, rather than embrace the consumers’ choice of technology, they decided to kill AVI’s altogether. The music industry embraced MP3 technology, the world did not end for them and in fact, an entirely new economic niche was serviced by the portable MP3 player. As a result of the MP3 player, jobs were created (in R&D, product design and manufacturing) in order to supply this product to meet the market demands of the consumer.

Support Canada Free Press


The same type of job growth could be created only if the entertainment industry would embrace the legal distribution of compressed digital files for TV programs and movies. With TV programs, there is absolutely no reason why subscribers of TV from cable and satellite providers can’t be offered the option to download TV shows legally. Customers could have the added luxury of viewing after aired TV programs on their computers or via their DivX player! Rather than perceive AVI’s as a threat, TV cable and satellite providers could adopt this technology in order to meet the needs of their customers. Because after all, more and more Canadians have adopted downloading TV shows in compressed digital files over watching TV programs live when they first air. If TV cable and satellite providers adopted the legal downloading of compressed digital files, this would create jobs and most likely this economic niche would be worth more than the MP3 market! It would also spawn the next generation of DixX players, which of course would create a multimillion-dollar market. But this economic dividend is now gone because of a selfish bunch of frightened and myopic ‘control freak’ TV programming providers! The irony of Bill C-11 is that the Tories tout it as a jobs creation bill when in fact the opposite is true! There is a very small window of opportunity to amend this bill, unless TV cable and satellite providers can be swayed to see the business model of legalizing AVI’s to download, the DivX industry will shrivel and die! If the music industry could embrace the business model of legal downloading of MP3s for their consumers, why can’t TV cable and satellite providers embrace the legalization of downloading TV shows via compressed digital files? And AVI’s can be easily encoded with copyright protection along with a password key that customers can enter in order to activate these files. It’s absolutely disgusting and reckless for Canadian politicians to allow the passage of Bill C-11 as is because of an oligopoly’s irrational fear of AVI files! Please write, phone, fax and E-mail your MP about the seriousness of this potentially devastating piece of legislation! Tell your MP that Bill C-11 needs to be amended to allow for the legal downloading of TV shows and movies (which can be done just like MP3s) because this would reinvigorate the DivX industry. It will spawn off jobs, jobs and more jobs—so go now and act, do it today or otherwise DivX technology will be dumped onto the dustbin of history.


View Comments

Guest Column Jonathan Spivak -- Bio and Archives

Items of notes and interest from the web.


Sponsored