EFF Comments on HDTV Copy Restriction Plans

Seth Schoen writes: "EFF has been following the work of the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (which was featured in a CNet article linked from slashdot on Thursday) since it was founded in November. Co-incidentally, we today released an EFF overview of this work which contains some of our criticism of these efforts to control the ability of future consumer devices to record digital HDTV broadcasts."

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[stuffman64]

As the article points out, PVR's do not use removable media (hey, now there is a good idea for me to patent... if only I believed in our patent and copyright system and it was how it should be). Therefor, it makes it nearly impossible for me to distribute/lend my copy to someone else (network TiVos are something else). This was the video industry's major gripe against VCRs when they were introduced. All though I would be quite enraged if they prevented me from recording broadcasts on a removable digital media, I would be far more enraged if I could not make digital recordings on a PVR.

Ultimately, IMHO, something like SCMS will be introduced to prevent multiple perfect digital copies originating from one source. However, SCMS was a joke for MiniDisc/DAT-- many units simply ignored the copybits or gave the option to turn them off. If worse came to worse, you can whip up a bit stripper and copy until your heart is content. Hopefully, if we end up getting a SCMS-like system on digital broadcasts, it will be taken as seriously as it was on MD/DAT and/or be very simple to beat...

...Then, of course, we would violate the DMCA and go to jail for months before our arraignment...