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MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!
A month ago, the MPAA filed
its report [PDF]
with the Senate Judiciary Committee on the terrors of analog
copying. I quote: "in order to help plug the hole, watermark
detectors would be required in"
-- are you sitting down? -- "all devices that perform analog to
digital conversions." At their page
Protecting Creative Works in a Digital Age,
the Senate lays out the issues they'll be looking at, including
briefs from corporate groups, and provides a
comment form
so your opinion can be heard as well. As Cory Doctorow writes:
"this is a much more sweeping (and less visible) power-grab than
the Hollings Bill, and it's going forward virtually unopposed.
...the
Broadcast Protection Discussion Group
is bare weeks away from turning over a veto on new technologies to Hollywood."
Doctorow's article on the "analog hole"
for the EFF does a great job of explaining the issues to
non-electrical-engineers, and has many thought-provoking
examples of how requiring such technology would be a giant step
backwards.
They just don't stop, they just don't listen, and they NEVER LEARN. I contact my congressman over this stuff every time, and I will continue to do so.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
There's no way the MPAA can succeed in this. All analog-to-digital conversion equipement?? I remember using a really simple A to D converter in one of my courses in University. I bet that chip costed a buck or two. Putting anti-piracy measures in it will increase the cost significantly, and for a really simple A to D converter? That's just ridiculous! Who are these morons coming up with this crap? This won't fly... no matter how dysfunctional these law-makers are.
Do these idiots realize that this proposed 'policing' of ADC(analog-to-digital converters) would include things like microphones and portable tape players? I'm sure they use these devices during their board meetings and hearings, and probably discuss confidential and/or copyrighted issues. Who's gonna police these?? Also, they will have to stop using their portable tape players to dictate notes for their executive assistants to scribe, since the information they want scribed could also be considered copyright material!
Bah, I'm getting my old VCR to plug up someone's 'analog' hole!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
So does this mean that every decent Electronics course or manual would be outlawd under the DMCA? After all, an ADC without the fingerprinting layer would be a circumvention device!
This is getting amusing. The farther they go with this, the more crazy they sound. At this point it's just a question of whether they'll realize they're trying to dig a hole in water and try to make money off the new phenomenon rather than trying to suppress it, or will they just totally flip off the deep end?
A less extreme plan is buy everything you want used, like on half.com. The Industry doesn't get any of your money that way.
Did you know the Industry once tried to purchase legislation that would let them tax the sales of used media? The law now (and then) is that once a copy of a medium is sold, it can be resold without any obligation to the copyright holder (because he got paid from the first sale, "exhausting" his rights in that copy). The Industry failed at that, for some reason.
- Have a picture
Explain to me how a watermark detector is going to prevent someone from setting up a camcorder at the prescreening of a movie and putting it out as a movie clip before the movie even releases? They are trying to find a technical solution to a non-technical problem and trying to overemphasize the existance of this problem that has actually declined over the years.
Those are all good examples of other attempts to legislate personal responsibility through the manufacturer.
That being said, however, I think what the original poster was pointing out was the speed with which federal government listens to things when business wants something as opposed to individuals. There are movements to do all of the things you mention, but they don't seem to have had the same impact as what the MPAA is doing. Maybe the MPAA sounds just as reasonable to legislators as smart guns, but I don't think so.
I think the original poster was pointing out that all those things haven't been passed (although the MPAA stuff hasn't--but c.f. the DMCA), and it may be because the manufacturers don't support them. If they did, we might see engine governors, smart guns, etc.
The fact that there have been so many efforts to get engine governors without any real legislative attention whatsoever, but immediate attention when the MPAA wants anything, is disturbing. I think the original post was pointing out a disturbing trend in which individual citizens have to comprise a massive number before they amount to anything, but business merely has to mention something.
Why doesn't someone just design and then patent an ADC that has this watermarking technology built in? I don't imagine any of the *AA's have done it yet, and ADC's are pretty simple circuits...just come up with some lame watermarking scheme, implement it and patent it. Guaranteed you'll get the patent. Then, you have THEM at your mercy (or they haul your ass into court trying to void your patent).
I'll make this short, but sweet.
The United States was founded by people who believed in the public good. They set up commissions for public libraries and promotion of the arts, while at the same time granting inventors and authors the ability to profit from their works until they faded into the public domain. Our most hallowed documents, our most cherished music, even our national anthem come from the re-use of work written by authors and musicians a generation before.
Yet, the MPAA and the RIAA want to tell *me* that this is Unamerican. That my role in society is not as a citizen, or a voter, or a patriot -- but solely one as a consumer. Had this been the prevailing attitude in the late eighteenth century, there would be no Congress, no Senate, no President, no freedom; we would all be loyal subjects of the King, and Benjamin Franklin would be remembered as an eccentric intellectual imprisoned and executed for copyright violations.
I am not a consumer, or a "content provider", or a market statistic; I am a *citizen*. Please treat me like one.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
"They" play what people want to listen to. "They" are providing a service. If you don't want to pay, that's fine--don't use the service.
Isn't that what we thought about the original Hollings bill?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I'm Australian, living in the Netherlands, but anyways,
I remember as a kid, I wanted to go to America to work, I remember having to wait for months for games to come out on the NES/SMS, yet I would read American games magazines and they where out there....same with movies, we could wait 6-12months for new movies......
Things still havent changed much, music releases are mostly on par globally, games and movie releases arent (BladeII is coming out in June I think, maybe July....) and I think this is a large source of this piracy (I already saw a dodgy screener of BladeII)....the reason being not for gain or to subvert the system, mearly because of the fact that we have to wait so long to see/play anything over here.
Which I actually find pretty amusing. I could imagine that alot of this perceived problem is actually caused by us outside of america, so when in america, we see a bill being passed like this, its kinda amusing....its not right, but its still funny.....its almost like in america, they believe the internet is theirs, they own it, they can regulate it....trully arrogant and bound to fail.
but I appear to have gotten myself sidetracked....as a kid, i wanted to live in america, but after recent events, the government openly telling people "dont question us", the feds with almost absolute power to get any info on anyone without reason, the tracking of H1B visas and now, chips in ADs....I am sure that if they are putting in cpus in them, i'm sure tracking functionality cant be far away, i mean, i could imagine they would mainly target techie gear, soundcards/vidcapture cards.....i think i will stay away from america now, far far away.
all you are, is all you are, i'm so sorry for you.
O.K., you're in a public park having a family outing. You are video taping your youngest for posterity. To your amazement, right on camera, he speaks his first words!!! (takes his first step, whatever). Unfortunatly, to your disgust, the latest synthetic boy band comes on the radio the people over by that tree are listening to. Your camcorder shuts down.
On the other hand, if you carry a simple transmitter that emits a watermarked white noise stream (baseband radio transmitter), will security and/or traffic enforcement cameras cut out? If they're allowed not to, won't they become a big black market item?
Well, the Feds find out, and put the owner of the shop in prison for multiple violations of the analogue hole act. Maybe at the behest of one of his law abiding competitors, such as Walmart, who have been scrupulously complying with the analogue hole act and only selling screwed-up camcorders.
You, the uber-geek individual can still take a trip to Hong kong, Taiwan or wherever they still sell non-screwed-up camcorders, and probably get it back into the U. S. with no problem. Just as individuals purchasing pirate DVDs in those places probably won't have a problem, but shops that import them are basically only able to operate under the protection of organized crime.
Of course, God help you if you get someone with any governmental power after you if you have any of these things. They will cheerfully see to it that you, the individual, are prosecuted for the crime of having a non-screwed-up camcorder, even if your real crime was embarrasing them politically.
I wouldn't dismiss this, it can and will be used against us.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I'm pretty sure there will be test modes to disable the copyright control circuits also - during development, they may need to disable the controls to acurately evaluate the device performance.
:)
Also, perhaps some magic marker tricks might do the job too
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
In today's NYTimes (registration blah blah) there's a big op/ed piece on the subject of Hollywood versus, well, everyone else, and why the public and it's representatives in Congress just don't get it.
This is beginning to sound a lot like the "Temples of Syrinx" movement of Rush's album 2112:
"The massive grey walls of the Temples rise from the heart of every Federation city. I have always been awed by them, to think that every single facet of every life is regulated and directed from within! Our books, our music, our work and play are all looked after by the benevolent wisdom of the priests..."
We've taken care of everything, The words you hear the songs you sing, The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes...
Creepy.
You want proof? My Geo can't break the 90 MPH barrier...
My Mother told me that when she was a teenager, the dairy industry got a law enacted that made it illegal to sell margarine mixed with yellow dye. The dairy industry thought that this would protect the butter market.
One possible method would be to have something BEFORE the ADC that plays with the analog signal. For example, if you invert and phase shift and generally muck with the signal such as it is no longer the same, I doubt the 'cop' chip will find a signature whatsoever.
Then, after the ADC, an algorithm reverses the original filter to produce the now digital-copy.
Perhaps they would have better luck trying to make our ears and eyes illegal.
(Btw... what would happen now to someone who had purchased copyright use... no equipment would allow them to use it, regardless. idiots)