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Consensus At Lawyerpoint

Posted by michael on from the send-lawyers-guns-money-and-blogs dept.

Seth Schoen writes "The EFF has started a weblog about the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG), called "Consensus At Lawyerpoint". This is the EFF's first-ever blog, the brainchild of new EFF staffer Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing blogging fame. Consensus At Lawyerpoint covers the efforts of Hollywood -- with the complicity of consumer electronics and computer companies -- to impose a new government mandate for copy controls in digital TV devices. This mandate would outlaw tuner cards for digital HDTV, unless they included DRM (and prevented the end-user from getting a cleartext recording). PVRs and VCRs might be allowed, but only if all their outputs were encrypted. Since all TV broadcasting in the U.S. is supposed to be digital by 2006, this could have an enormous effect on technology and on the competition for video standards in the marketplace. We hope that the blog format will help us get the word out and let interested people see what this group is up to." Interesting for a couple of reasons, both the subject matter (the beloved SSSCA/CBDTPA) and the method.

4 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. So? by Zorgoth · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As I understand it, this would just make it more difficult to record HDTV broadcasts in a digital format that's easy to redistribute on the net. And, of course, this would come at a correspondingly higher price for the hardware for the consumer. This might deter casual users, but some one determined will still be able to capture the broadcast at a reasonable quality. And I will still be able to get Simpsons episodes over some P2P network.

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  2. Whatever happend to? by red5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whatever happend to the air waves belonging to the people and the brodcasters using them as a privilege?
    CSS on DVDs is one think (still evil if you ask me) but on brodcast TV when dose the madness end?

    I can see my donation to the EFF was worth every cent.

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    I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
  3. No this isn;t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Slashdot isn't a blog it's a forum, as are most of the sites you've posted.

    A blog is a lengthy archive of self-obsessed opinion compiled and posted on the web by self-regarding people who have no other media outlet, and read by a very few others, mostly equally sad bloggers themselves. They operate on the theory that with enough howl-around feedback from each other they can claim an enormous readership and influence.

    "We hope that the blog format will help us get the word out and let interested people see what
    this group is up to."

    Not bloody likely, mate. Why don't you get in a newspaper or on television, if you want real people to see what you are up to, and not just internet types with nothing better to read at the moment.

    Basically - all blogs are a total pile of bullshit, almost without exception.

  4. Japan, Taiwan and Korea rejoice! by Quixadhal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The only real effect this will have is to force consumers to stop purchasing computer hardware in the US and buy foreign units that lack the draconian restrictive controls. If these become difficult to import, it will encourage the smugglers to bring more goods in through grey and black market routes.

    Case in point, PGP. How many people out there used the "legal" crippled version, and how many just downloaded the international version that worked as it was intended?

    I'm thinking any forced DRM attempt is quite simply going to fail, and will take a good bite out of what little consumer confidence is left in the high-tech sector.