Consensus At Lawyerpoint

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.

Comments

Google

[Alsee]

Now that the EFF has their own blog, they can start Google Bombing!

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Press Conference.

[Vidmaster_Steve]

Bill Gates/Micheal Dell/Steve Jobs steps up to a podium. He holds out a plain white mouse in one hand. Then swiftly, he closes his hand upon it. The rodent makes a sharp, shrill sqeak that booms in the ampitheatre...

He drops the mouse to the floor, and silently, solemnly walks offstage...

In all seriousness, doesn't Microsoft have orders of magnitude more LIQUID CASH than the Movie/Record industries make per annum? Why don't they just crush these ninnies, remind them that their place is to entertain us, not create laws in which to enslave us.

Re:Press Conference.

[Melantha_Bacchae]

Vidmaster Steve wrote:

> Bill Gates/Micheal Dell/Steve Jobs steps up to a podium. He holds out
> a plain white mouse in one hand. Then swiftly, he closes his hand upon
> it. The rodent makes a sharp, shrill sqeak that booms in the
> ampitheatre...

Steve Jobs would never do that! Mice are sacred to Mothra, due to the heroic antics of Shiro ("Mothra" 1961) and Kimi-chan ("Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks" 1998).

> In all seriousness, doesn't Microsoft have orders of magnitude more
> LIQUID CASH than the Movie/Record industries make per annum?
> Why don't they just crush these ninnies, remind them that their place
> is to entertain us, not create laws in which to enslave us.

Microsoft is now sitting on a DRMOS patent. Any law like the SSSCA would benefit them enormously by essentially giving their monopoly force of law. The one you can look to for help with this is Steve Jobs. When he accepted a Grammy for Apple this year, he told off the RIAA on their silly obsession over DRM. He said that 80% of the people would happily buy if they made their products convenient and affordable. Due to Apple's contributions to both the music and the movie industries, and his being the head of Pixar, Steve Jobs is the one man they might actually listen to.

If they don't listen to him, they can argue point with Typhoon #8, now equipped with a stinger. Yep, Mothra, nemesis of the MPAA and RIAA, is on her way to America, and this time, she's not alone. Baragon is quite upset to hear about our "war on terror" resulting in the destruction of wild life santuaries and "clean" coal being seen an a solution to our energy "problems". Godzilla has had it up to here ("here" being 60 meters up, his current height) with Microsoft, not to mention the US government's attempts at trivializing the use of nuclear weapons (that leaked memo). King Ghidora, well he's happy to fight with Godzilla and cause destruction. ;)

"Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidora: Giant Monster All Out Attack" is due in American theatres possibly as early as this summer! Repent and shape up, for the end is pretty seriously nigh!

Whatever happend to?

[red5]

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.

On "Lawyerpoint"...

[Colin Bayer]

Isn't "Lawyerpoint" the coolest phrase ever? I can hear the news reports now...

"7 people brutally murdered at lawyerpoint. The suspect is still on the loose, assumed armed and litigious."

There is nothing llike...

[theolein]

a lawyer to destroy any incentive for invention. I think that if there is If there is anything in your country that will one day make the US a technnological backwater it will be American laws giving lawyers so much power.

At the moment it is in a balance in that people who invent have a large incentive to make an enormous amount of money but will that always be so?

Re:There is nothing llike...

[Winged Cat]

You know, it would be so ironic if being threatened with a frivolous lawsuit that would take hundreds of thousands of dollars and lots of time to defend against, were legally ruled as "duress" such that agreements made under said threats were legally null and void. Of course, to make sure the law remained a valid deterrent when used as intended, there would have to be some clause like "defendant knew, or had reason to believe, that said lawsuit would be frivolous, or otherwise had little chance of prevailing".

Re:All digital ?

[Martin S.]

> So far, only the massive pockets of Rupert
> Murdoch have been able to make Digital TV stay
> afloat at all,

The big problem for most Digital providers is they spent a fortune on infrastructure, a fortune giving away STB's that are obsolete after a year and a fortune on rights to Sporting Events. However not enough people are prepared to pay enough to watch sporting events events they used to get for free to balance the books. Sky are also losing money fast, they plan to be the last man standing, then winding up the prices and presure. However this is doomed to failure.

To make Digital TV work, the providers need to provide new value added services that people are prepared to pay for. Games/Video/Music on Demand, High Speed Internet, and a truly Interactive (2Way) experience. The technology used by the existing Digital Providers can not provide these valued added services.

1) Terrestrial Digital (ITV Digital) is broadcast only; no return-path/uplink; no On-Demand Services; No Email, Web or other Internet service. Client Side PVR only.

2) Satellite (Sky) is broadcast only, si no return-path/uplink, so no On-Demand Services, No Email, Web or other Internet service. PVR on Client Side.

3) Cable looks good on the surface but it has a big road-block. Its network topology is a ring, the capacity is finite and this causes big contention problems, it also has the most expensive infrastructure to install.

4) xDSL, the new distruptive technology, it cheaper infrastructure than cable, includes a proper return path and supports IP; So true On-Demand and High-Speed Internet, the value added service to win.

I've seen the future and it's IP TV.

Am I just na�ve?

[Control Group]

I've always believed that one should never ascribe to evil what can be explained by stupidity. In my mind, this applies to the House and Senate as much as (or more than) it does to the American public at large.

But we're hitting a point here where I find it literally incredible that anyone capable of getting him/her self elected into the legislative branch can possibly not realize what's going on. Is it just me? Is this issue tougher to understand than I think? Do I just think the injustice is so obvious because most people on /. agree with me?

My one hope has been that if the demands of the entertainment industry got preposterous enough, someone would "catch on," the light bulb would go off, etc. But that hope is rapidly being crushed. I'm beginning to think that we've already lost, and all the valiant, worthy efforts of the EFF won't end up mattering a tinker's damn.

what I don't get...

[mikeee]

Forgetting for a moment that this is wrong and harmful, it's also stupid: how on earth is copy-protection of TV ever supposed to work? I point a camcorder at my TV during play, and boom, low-quality copy. Use optical zoom and some moderately cunning software to merge video streams and I might even be able to get a copy at near-full resolution.

Digital TV doesn't excite me.

[NanoGator]

Part of me can't help but think that the real reason this industry is trying to encrypt the digital signal is so that VCR companies will have to pay them royalties. I don't think they care as much about what happens to their signal after it hits household TV's.

I'd be okay with royalty extortion, except they're trying to control what I do with the content. Well, I have a piece of advice for them. The minute that a TV show becomes too hard to watch because I refuse to be anchored to my TV day and night is the minute that I stop watching TV. I have plenty of things I could be off doing, TV is more of a luxury than anything else.

How do they seriously expect people to adopt Digital TV over Analog TV when they don't get the same priveledges they are used to? Hell, the reason I don't have Digital Cable right now is that my home-brew PVR can't work with it!