SSSCA Introduced in Senate

Peter BG Shoemaker writes: "Wired is reporting that Hollings has officially submitted his newly renamed SSSCA, carrying the moniker Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). It carries all the provisions we've been worrying about...there is a new battlefield folks..." Newsbytes has another story. Reuters has a story about News Corporation and Disney lobbying in support of the bill. I haven't seen the exact text of the bill as introduced; it will probably be in Thomas tomorrow. Update: 03/22 00:12 GMT by M : Declan McCullagh has collected several documents pertaining to the SSSCA, errr, CBDTPA. He's got a faxed copy of the bill (barely legible; read it on Thomas tomorrow), plus statements from Hollings (read it!), the MPAA, the RIAA, and several lobbying groups for the tech industry, who seem less enthralled about it.

Comments

Send a letter and a check to your senator!

[StefanJ]

Email petitions are worthless.

So is email.

Faxes are a bit better.

Better yet: A well-reasoned, non-hysterical actual snail-mail letter, printed and signed and stuck in an envelope.

Best: A letter with a contribution check inside! I figure $1,000 should be enough to overcome the noise of all those check-free letters.

Remember, this is your last chance to get in some soft-money contributions. Make the check out to the senator's party. He or she will have the honor of bringing it over to HQ and will like you even more!

I figure if everyone who reads /. sends in $1,000, and convinces every relative to send in the same we'll about match what the entertainment industry spent on politicians in the last month or so.

Stefan "Sorry, I'm feeling awful cynical today" Jones

End of the electronic era

[guttentag]

The bill ... prohibits the sale of any kind of electronic device -- unless that device includes copy-protection standards to be set by the federal government.

The world laughed when I introduced my steam-powered CD-ripper, but now it will be the only game in town! I'll be rich! (insert maniacal laughter here)

Might as well outlaw science and engineering

[EccentricAnomaly]

Any computer that can do unrestricted computations can be used to break encryption and be used to copy this forbidden data. If only disfunctional computers are legal, then how can scientists or engineers do calculations with computers anymore?? A computer that can't break encryption surely won't be much use to study DNA or to calculate spacecraft trajectories.

We'll be limited to spreadsheets and graphing calculators.

The Million Geek March

[rarose]

On to Washington! Give Linus or maybe Stallman a bullhorn on the monument steps. :-)

Re:handwritten?

[Kwikymart]

That suggestion would not be very good for one main reason: You are trying to sway your elected official's opinion - not hold them for ransom.

-------text ransom note-------

deAR sEnAtOr:
dO N0T pAsS sSsCa 0r eLSe

sInCErELy,
31337 Hax0r