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Fritz's Hit List
wwwssabbsdotcom was one of several to submit news stories about Ed Felten's latest venture: Fritz's Hit List, a list of electronic devices with some sort of digital storage and processing capabilities sufficient to qualify them "digital media devices" under Sen. Hollings' CBDTPA bill.
Today on Fritz's Hit List: Big Mouth Billy Bass.
That's right, your favorite wall-hanging, singing, dancing, animatronic fish qualifies for regulation as a "digital media device" under the Hollings CBDTPA. If the CBDTPA passes, any new Billy Bass will have to incorporate government-approved copy protection technology.
Fight piracy -- regulate singing fish novelties!
I thought the CDBPABST was supposed to be a bad law. How can anything that aims to regulate the proliferation of Singing Billy Bass be evil?
I love you, Fritz Hollings!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Fritz Hit List #8
Those voice-boxes for throat-cancer patients that enable them to speak with a deep voice will now need to protected with government approved anti-copright protection.
Fight Piracy = Regulate deep throating devices!
Tournament Management Online &
You're right. They forgot the gigantic dollar sign in the middle.
(Note to mods: Yes I know that it's supposed to start with a red stripe at the top.)
Makes sense, if not in this light.
After all, imported robot pets are finding employment without green cards and taking rewarding pet jobs away from more expensive to maintain domestic alternatives.
You laugh now, but when that little robotic R2-D2 takes your waitressing job because he's willing to work for less than minimum wage, you'll change your tunes!
I'm sure there's a Slashdot article around here somewhere about hacking your "Billy Bass" to record and playback MP3s. You should try it. The sound quality is incredible.
It's too bad that more of the public is clueless on measures such as this. Maybe if we portray the CBDTPA as an Government mandated tax for the entertainment industry on many common electronic goods. The DRM hardware cost is borne by anyone who uses computer or consumer electronics, but all it really protects is the entertainment industry. Contrast that to many other government regulations, which impose costs on businesses, but generally to help protect the public.
I looked at the RIAA's web site, and listened to all the soundbites from Jack Valenti, Sen. Hollings and Hilary Rosen, and I agree.
"Piracy is theft"
Downloading a song from the internet is every bit as bad as stealing a CD from a shop. I didn't realise this. I was stealing music all this time
Now then, if I had come across several CDs that I didn't own, and I knew who their owner was, I would take some efforts to return them.
Now, I have several gigabytes of stolen mp3s. I think I should return them to their rightful owner. To whom do I email them?
Machine: You had 3 messages. 1 Message deleted automatically since it has copyrighted material.
User: Oh no, Grandma again left a message with her radio on in the background.
Is that when you consider the amount of idiotic lawsuits over laws that can be broadly interpreted... that some of these common devices might very well indeed end up under fire
Politicians seem to spend a lot of time patching up too-broad laws that don't meet their expectations, and an equal amount of time making silly new too-broad laws.
Felten's list gives the impression that it's the crazy interpretations of CBDTPA we have to fear.
But the real problem is that CBDTPA is a crazy bill to begin with. You can't fix something like this by giving back the singing fish. If every single one of Felten's examples were exempted from the bill, what's left would be no less outrageous.
Hmm... US government puts out bill to require anything digital to have copy protection on it... cost for digital equipment goes up.
Last month, US government drives legislation to force all TVs' to have digital tuners installed, including all TVs' manufactured in the US, and all being shipped via the US. Cost for TVs' and consumer electronics goes up.
US government also tables legislation requiring all television networks to convert to digital within 5 years. All existing TVs' and VCRs' will be obsolete. Cost to consumers goes up.
Result: In 5 years, all televisions and VCRs are digital, copy-protected, and controlled. Government gets to dole out the new "digital" channels to whomever meets their standards.... or should that be 'ideals'?
Earlier in the year (and the year before, and the year before) the US government threatens to put stricter regulations on the Internet, including what you can do, what you can read, and where you can read it. Stocks of net-filtering software go up, ad banners start to reduce fees paid because of declining revenue, free-speech sites and those not funded by a corporation start going away.
Earlier this year, US government tries to force libraries to filter the websites available on their public computers. US government also successfully forces schools to filter content. Those who do the filtering? Corporations who use their own judgement to determine if a site should be filtered or not.
DMCA serves as pretense to shut down P2P networks, mp3/warez websites, Instant Messangers with file sharing capabilities (it's coming, just you watch) etc.
"THE WAR ON TERRORISM" (tm) serves as pretense to search anyone, anywhere, even from outside the country.
US government arrests people that it invites into the country (the two russian credit card hackers and the FBI) or those that haven't even done anything to the US (Skylarov ((SP?)))
You know, I saw a sig that said "Canada: It's like being in the loft above a really great party". I don't know about you, but I'm starting to think that not all the noise from the party downstairs is good.
And, on a different note, as IANAL (sorry, everytime I see that I read I-anal. I just can't write it with a straight face), what happens if I come down to visit with my Sony minidisc player? Do I get arrested for having non-conforming hardware? Technically, this could extend to anything with a memory, including a watch, a car, a phone.... sound worrisome?
You know, I started this post out noting increased costs... then I got to noting the decreased liberties... then I started thinking "Yanno? If I were slightly more paranoid, I'd almost think that the US government is trying to discourage free speech and push internet and technology access up to the higher tax brackets, where they have more control, while removing these tools for freedom from the 'unwashed masses'. But that would be a bad thought, and I'm double-plus good!"
And, if you think I'm kidding, take any of the paragraphs up above and look in slashdot archives... they all came from here.
"If you don't think, you're letting the terrorists win!"
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Because, of course, you're the resident expert on the law. Perhaps some concrete citations of WHY you believe they wouldn't fall under the law might help boost your credibility....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Nope, no sig
Those greeting cards that let you record a personal greeting to be played back to the recipient when they open the card.
"Sorry mom, I wanted to get you a personalized greeting card but the DRM chip added $25 to the cost of the card."
The funny thing is, hackers in Germany could give a shit, because they will still be able to buy DRM-free hardware and software. People seem to forget this applies to US citezems and US manufactured goods only. I can still buy some Japanese, German, Chinese, etc. hardware/software that will be totaly free of this crap. The funny thing is by introducing this kind of stuff, the US could be closing themselves off from the global economy, especially in the hitech sectors. This could cause the US economy to continue to slide.
If this passes, and HDTV sales don't pick up, what's next? Passing a law that makes it mandatory for every American to buy at least one $2000 HDTV set?
What? You mean it's already happened? Arrgh!!!
All this means is that software and hardware development move out of the US, and what we get will be the dumbed down versions that companies think people will buy in the US despite the added expense and reduced functionality incorporating DRM will mean. However, this isn't a big deal because in a post-CBDTPA economy, those of us who stick around will be too busy looking for work to buy toys... and new computers and too broke to afford them.
Why are the vendors still playing "deer in the headlights" about this? Do they figure it's cheaper to move out of the US than fight?
Why hasn't a real PAC been put together by the high-tech rank and file to save our jobs? (hint: GeekPAC is a joke, a "political organization" that can't put together a decent website together isn't going to rise up and take Congress back)
Note that the industries affected are 10x the size of Hollywood in terms of income. So why is the tail wagging the dog?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Reported contributions list
Top 3 Industries (PACs and Individuals):
1 Lawyers/Law Firms $1,463,550
2 Communications & Electronics $698,958
PAC Contributors:
Walt Disney Co $6,000
AOL Time Warner $5,083
National Assn of Broadcasters $5,000
Comcast Corp $2,500
Motion Picture Assn of America $3,000
ASCAP $1,000
Cablevision Systems $1,000
Charter Communications $1,000
Sony Pictures Entertainment $1,000
Universal Studios $1,000
Viacom Inc $2,000
3 Financial & Investment $404,349
Additional PAC contributions here.
Personal Finances are here.
Others who sit on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
If you think he's bad, check out Boxer.
As an EE student, I have to say that I love this idea! If this bill ever passed, it would make my job VERY hard. Just consider the following example:
Sure it may be easy to compute fourier transforms (or whatever) in realtime for a 44KHz singal, checking for some sort of watermark, but what about high bitrate systems? A 96KHz 24bit 6 channel stream of audio amounts to 13.8 Mbits/sec of data. A computer to check all that data in for copyright infringement in realtime is going to be pretty expensive. What if all I'm asking is a digital delay box for that data? All I'd nomrally need inside the box is some RAM and something to read and write to that RAM. Now that all of a sudden, I need to do real computation on that data the cost of my device would skyrocket. It might suddenly become cheaper to get 1ms of delay, by using 100' of wire than by doing it in the digital domain!
What about Digital Storage Oscilloscopes? Does a 1GHz DSO have to check all that data (A ton of data, even if it doesn't caputre at that rate continuously) before letting me download it to a PC? I could easily hook that oscilloscope up to the output of a protected device and caputure the signal.
What about FPGAs? Are they goiung to be regulated devices? Right now one could co nnect one to the coax SPDIF out on their DVD Player and program it to run an FIR filter to remove the watermark. It would be pretty much impossible to make it so that I couldn't program it to filter a watermark and still have it be a useful device.
Last week, I had a pretty interesting discussion with on eof the professors for a DSP course I'm taking, just talking about all the stupid thing that hollywood was tried to get pused through. They actually tried to get a law passed so that your audio device would not copy music if it contained a certain frequency! Not even a combination of frequerncies, but one single frequency! A single distorted guitar, would probably be enough to set that off!
Hopefully certain companies (TI for instance makes audio ICs, and DSP chips, but doesn't own a record label.) understand how much this law would increase their costs and get it killed, fast.
Life is too short to proofread.
Even so, they can have my DNA Polymerase when they extract it from my cold, dead fingers (and arms, blood, liver, etc.)
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Well, I don't think we'd ever quite reach the point of modifying a toy cash register.
There would be lots of interesting market effects if this law passes though. For instance, if the law passes there will be a short grace period to allow non-compliant hardware to be sold through the supply chains.
So, I expect that there would be a rush to stock up the last generation of uncrippled hardware. I personally would try to buy at least a dozen of the biggest hard drives I could get my hands on, and a few fast computers to plug them into.
Also, there would be a black market for uncrippled hardware smuggled in from free countries to the US. Imagine buying hard drives and motherboards made in China out of the back of a car under a bridge somewhere...
I expect there would also be some sort of "pro" hardware without the crippling locks. It would either be a lot more expensive or you would need a "media production license" to buy it. But some of it would leak into the regular market anyway.
But anyway, I'm not too worried about digital music storage. Four 120 GB drives would make a RAID-5 big enough for me to rip and store another two thousand CDs together with the ~2000 I already have on-line. I'd keep enough spare hard drives in storage to replace the ones I'm using as they fail over a decade or two. Even if they are obsolete, they will still work and be big enough.
By then the law will have been found unconstitutional, or I'll have moved to a free country, or both.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox