It's sad that such a thing needs regulation in the first place. In real life if a salesman is being inconsiderate, I'll go out of my way to avoid their sales and find someone else who is better mannered. But we don't seem to apply the same measure to ads. Ads can be brash, insulting and manipulative, and yet that doesn't seem to cause a negative outcome for them. Rather it appears such ads work better and now that's what everyone's pushing towards. Human psychology is such a weird thing.
nullify88 3 hours ago [-]
We do apply the same measure, adblocking. Except since companies base their businesses on ads theres a cat and mouse game at play to ensure you pay them with your attention. I'm reminded of the scene in "Airplane" where the captain is fighting off sales people in the airport. I feel the same way about the Internet.
My earliest memory of adblocking is the VHS recorder or player skipping commercials similar today to SponsorBlock and other autoskipping methods.
ivell 3 hours ago [-]
I doubt if the ads are working better. I suspect their measurement approaches related to ads effectiveness is wrong.
If we are just measuring viewing of an ad as positive, then obnoxious ads will be viewed and thought to be effective. But the emotional response would be the opposite (getting annoyed instead of getting interested). I think for the company placing the ad it is a net negative.
ulrikrasmussen 2 hours ago [-]
I think there's so much snake oil in the ad business because it is indeed hard to measure the effectiveness of ads, in particular when shown in places where you cannot track the user behavior and correlate the ad with subsequent user behavior. In the end, platforms like Netflix and Hulu don't need to prove that a higher volume works, but perhaps their customers think that it works, and that is enough.
iamacyborg 3 minutes ago [-]
> I think there's so much snake oil in the ad business because it is indeed hard to measure the effectiveness of ads, in particular when shown in places where you cannot track the user behavior and correlate the ad with subsequent user behavior.
Or the alternative, you can track it therefore you assign a disproportionate amount of value to it versus the things that are harder to track.
iinnPP 25 minutes ago [-]
This service problem is fixed like most media-related service problems. Sailing.
MPC has the ability to normalize volume in a video automatically.
thayne 3 hours ago [-]
> It’s modeled off a federal law passed in 2010 that caps ad volumes on cable and broadcast TV, but doesn’t apply to streaming services.
Why did that law not apply to streaming services in the first place? The internet was very much alive and kicking in 2010. Sure, streaming wasn't as prevalent as it is today, but it wouldn't have taken a lot of imagination to see the same problem would become an issue on the internet as well.
idle_zealot 3 hours ago [-]
The Internet, and before it, computers, broke our legal system. There are loads of things that we decided were bad and banned, but "thing but on computer" or "thing but online" somehow were interpreted to be exempt.
For instance, there's a law banning video rental stores from sharing customer records, because it's obviously bad if private entities are allowed to collect and use potentially private information like media consumption habits. But movie streaming? Every detail about every piece of media you read or watch, when you watch, when you pause or bounce, every interaction and speck of attention catalogued and actively used to guide consumer behavior? That's fine actually, totally allowed.
How about copyright? Right of first sale dictates that you can do whatever you want with a purchased copy of some media, short of distributing copies. You can give it away, sell it, lend it out, modify it, make personal copies, whatever. But what about "media but on computer"? That all goes out the window. Oh, you don't own a copy, you just have a non-transferable limited license to view that media on a specific device for as long as the distributor doesn't change their minds. An insane legal fiction that magically nullifies hard-won rights.
bigmattystyles 2 hours ago [-]
The video store example is funny because iirc, it wasn’t until someone high up/very involved in government got bit by it. During Robert Bork’s failed Supreme Court confirmation, a reporter figured out he rented porn. Maybe it was something less raunchy / embarrassing than porn but either way, iirc, they got that law on the books fast after that….
extraduder_ire 1 hours ago [-]
Last time I looked up the Bork bill, I read that it was extended to streaming sites during the Obama regime.
tzs 1 hours ago [-]
My guess, having only looked at the text of the law but not into any of the legislative history, is that it was for technical reasons. This is based on how they worded it. The text says it applies to "a television station, cable operator, or other multi-channel video programming distributor".
This suggests they were thinking of linear television. Some searching tells me that in fact this is how it was apparently interpreted, for when it was applied to cable TV it was not applied to on-demand cable programming. It was just applied to the regular cable channels.
With linear TV everything is prepared in advance. When they sell an ad slot they know what program they will be showing at the time. There's plenty of time to match the ad volume to the program volume, which I suspect in 2010 could not be reasonably automated.
With on-demand you don't know what programs the ad will be in until the program actually starts. You could potentially be showing that ad in thousands of different programs at approximately the same time. If the level adjustments could not reasonably be completely automated this may have been impractical.
asdfwaafsfw 2 hours ago [-]
The US government typically doesn't try to preemptively regulate things (which is getting to be a problem as it now is too sclerotic to respond quickly to developments). Streaming services in 2010 were mostly paid subscriptions with no ads, I don't think the idea was on anyone's mind.
jrnng 3 hours ago [-]
It was still niche. Government is slow to react and is paid off by lobbyists and more recently outright bribes..
> a video streaming service that serves consumers residing in the state shall not transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany
I was hoping we'd find a more precise definition. Couldn't this be gamed by editing a short (1 second, for example) segment of the intended content to have loud audio to artificially set the upper bound?
potamic 4 hours ago [-]
It does mention compliance with the CALM act, which lays out the precise methodology by which loudness will be measured [1]
> The Calm Act refers to A/85, and A/85:2013
specifies BS.1770 (specifically referencing BS.1770-1) as
the source of its loudness measurement techniques
(1770-2 did not exist at the time A/85 was finalized). So
BS.1770-1 currently serves as the yardstick by which
U.S. television programming will be evaluated for CALM
Act compliance.
> BS.1770 recommends the Leq(RLB) measurement
algorithm, where Leq(W) the frequency weighted sound
level measure, xw is the signal at the output of the
weighting filter, xRef is the reference level, and T is the
length of the audio sequence.
> The drawback of BS.1770 as originally conceived is that
it measures average loudness over the entire length of
content. This may be fine if the loudness is fairly
consistent over time. If not, a quiet section of content
may, as illustrated in Figure 5, bias the average level so
that it measures as acceptable despite having some
sections that are unacceptably loud.
Off topic but I spot another one of those forcibly made acronyms
> Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act of 2010
namibj 3 hours ago [-]
Sounds like political ones are exempt?
anigbrowl 4 hours ago [-]
It's already spelled out in more detail in the FCC guidance which the legislation incorporates by reference. Backing down the private right of action is bullshit though.
spike021 3 hours ago [-]
i've noticed this with amazon prime in particular it's got to be at least 25% louder than the actual content i'm watching.
nullify88 3 hours ago [-]
YouTube does this too. We immediately fetch the remote and mute the damn thing. And I'm contemplating finding something that auto mutes for me.
kstenerud 57 minutes ago [-]
What I've been looking for in a player client is automatic loudness adjustment.
Even in the show itself, sudden loud bits just send me scrambling for the remote to bring it down to half or even quarter volume.
palmfacehn 14 minutes ago [-]
I thought Netflix was a paid service?
DoctorOW 1 hours ago [-]
I'm honestly surprised that somebody hasn't sold a bundle of a TV antenna, set-top box, and cloud storage for a DIY streaming service kind of thing. I'm aware of Plex and Jellyfin, but I feel like you could make the setup instant and painless even for non-technical users. All these problems we're seeing with streaming (content spread over many expensive subscriptions, unregulated advertising, disappearing/moving content) would be easily solved.
extraduder_ire 58 minutes ago [-]
A company tried to do that, but centralising the hardware so you didn't need to hunt for reception. They were sued out of business quickly.
My earliest memory of adblocking is the VHS recorder or player skipping commercials similar today to SponsorBlock and other autoskipping methods.
If we are just measuring viewing of an ad as positive, then obnoxious ads will be viewed and thought to be effective. But the emotional response would be the opposite (getting annoyed instead of getting interested). I think for the company placing the ad it is a net negative.
Or the alternative, you can track it therefore you assign a disproportionate amount of value to it versus the things that are harder to track.
MPC has the ability to normalize volume in a video automatically.
Why did that law not apply to streaming services in the first place? The internet was very much alive and kicking in 2010. Sure, streaming wasn't as prevalent as it is today, but it wouldn't have taken a lot of imagination to see the same problem would become an issue on the internet as well.
For instance, there's a law banning video rental stores from sharing customer records, because it's obviously bad if private entities are allowed to collect and use potentially private information like media consumption habits. But movie streaming? Every detail about every piece of media you read or watch, when you watch, when you pause or bounce, every interaction and speck of attention catalogued and actively used to guide consumer behavior? That's fine actually, totally allowed.
How about copyright? Right of first sale dictates that you can do whatever you want with a purchased copy of some media, short of distributing copies. You can give it away, sell it, lend it out, modify it, make personal copies, whatever. But what about "media but on computer"? That all goes out the window. Oh, you don't own a copy, you just have a non-transferable limited license to view that media on a specific device for as long as the distributor doesn't change their minds. An insane legal fiction that magically nullifies hard-won rights.
This suggests they were thinking of linear television. Some searching tells me that in fact this is how it was apparently interpreted, for when it was applied to cable TV it was not applied to on-demand cable programming. It was just applied to the regular cable channels.
With linear TV everything is prepared in advance. When they sell an ad slot they know what program they will be showing at the time. There's plenty of time to match the ad volume to the program volume, which I suspect in 2010 could not be reasonably automated.
With on-demand you don't know what programs the ad will be in until the program actually starts. You could potentially be showing that ad in thousands of different programs at approximately the same time. If the level adjustments could not reasonably be completely automated this may have been impractical.
> a video streaming service that serves consumers residing in the state shall not transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany
I was hoping we'd find a more precise definition. Couldn't this be gamed by editing a short (1 second, for example) segment of the intended content to have loud audio to artificially set the upper bound?
> The Calm Act refers to A/85, and A/85:2013 specifies BS.1770 (specifically referencing BS.1770-1) as the source of its loudness measurement techniques (1770-2 did not exist at the time A/85 was finalized). So BS.1770-1 currently serves as the yardstick by which U.S. television programming will be evaluated for CALM Act compliance.
> BS.1770 recommends the Leq(RLB) measurement algorithm, where Leq(W) the frequency weighted sound level measure, xw is the signal at the output of the weighting filter, xRef is the reference level, and T is the length of the audio sequence.
> The drawback of BS.1770 as originally conceived is that it measures average loudness over the entire length of content. This may be fine if the loudness is fairly consistent over time. If not, a quiet section of content may, as illustrated in Figure 5, bias the average level so that it measures as acceptable despite having some sections that are unacceptably loud.
[1] https://www.telestream.net/pdfs/whitepapers/wp-calm-act-comp...
> Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act of 2010
Even in the show itself, sudden loud bits just send me scrambling for the remote to bring it down to half or even quarter volume.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
They exist to ensure things are done right when there's no other incentive to do them right other than "it'd be nice".