Digital Hubbub – IEEE Spectrum

Law and the hub

Set-top hub proponents are confident, however, that a standard PC will never become a hub for the mainstream user. Why? Because if it’s not illegal, they say it ought to be. The PC “is a hacker’s paradise,” contends Moxi’s Farrand.

If so, hub makers are ready for them. For one, TiVo has designed its PVRs to encrypt stored video so that crackers cannot copy shows from one unit to another, or make Web archives for downloading by anyone. Samsung, for another, has inserted a block in its circuitry to prevent copying DVDs to the hard disk.

With an eye on Linux enthusiasts, the Recording Industry Association of America has already filed multiple lawsuits to prevent DVDs from being played on computers that run Linux, because Linux programmers haven’t bought decryption licenses from DVD patent holders. And Microsoft’s proposed antitrust settlement specifically protects the company’s digital rights management software from disclosure.

In the U.S. Congress, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act has been introduced. It would require all PCs and other devices that can store copyrighted material to contain hardware that would enforce copyright restrictions.

Clearly, with copy-protected compact disks already being sold, the Secure Digital Music Initiative for music available on-line, and encryption or watermarking proposed for pretty much every form of digital content, digital rights management will become an increasingly thorny issue for home-entertainment hubs. [See “Making Music Pay,” IEEE Spectrum, October 2001, pp. 41-46, and “Getting Copyright Right,” February 2002, pp. 47-51.] TiVo’s Malone cites uncertainty in this area as yet another reason his company is moving slowly toward a multipurpose hub.

Dream versus reality

Any build-up to a single home gateway that controls your television, air conditioning, and e-mail will not come overnight, according to Jakob Nielsen. People won’t replace their VCR, DVD player, and home network all at once, he points out.

Thus far, barring a few exceptions such as “universal” remote controls and serial control inputs for some cable boxes, manufacturers still seem focused on locking consumers into a single supplier. Whether that philosophy can stand up to the ultimate purpose of a digital hub—connecting all the disparate entertainment devices a consumer may own and even replacing some of them—is probably the crucial question for the evolution of this new technology.