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Hollywood Tastes New Copyright Victory - Act NOW
Geekwannabe writes "The FCC is about to pass regulations requiring all television
manufacturers to include copy-protection in any television receiver or
recorder. The 'broadcast flag' regulation is intended to allow TV
networks and broadcasters to determine which of their shows you can
record (essentially giving control of your VCR, TV and Computer back to the
broadcasters.) In order for the new, copy-restrictions to succeed
the FCC will make it illegal to manufacture or sell non-copy-protected
devices in the U.S."
...even if everything on T.V. is crap and not work recording anyway.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
http://www.fcc.gov/e-file/ecfs.html
A lot of slashdotters attack libertarians, but the root cause of this kind of FCC mandated regulation of your lives is your trust in big government. Both liberals and conservatives want big governmetn and what that creates is huge departments that have no accountability to anyone, except congress, and even then they are not held in check.
The FCC has no right to prevent me from buying any product I want form anyone who wants to sell it to me-- whether it has copy protection or not.
Every time you vote democrat or republican or green, you are voting for these unanswerable, unchecked government powers.
You're just reaping what you've sown.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Design the damn DRM system so that it doesn't need laws to stand on its own. Laws that exist just to ensure a company a profit because they have subpar technology are stupid.
May we never see th
Since the current crop of HDTV sets do not have built in tuners they use external set-top boxes.
The RGB outputs of the set-top box are then hooked up to the HDTV set which is basically a monitor.
The problem is that since the RGB ouputs can be copied they will use the broadcast flag to determine when you can really get a 1080i signal from your set-top box. Anything with the broadcast flag set will come out in 480i.
That will make the current round of HDTV sets junk since most good programming will only show up as 480i. To bad for all of the early adopters.
Well yes, but there are several problems with laws like this:
1. They suddenly make an assumed legal activity illegal. People have come to expect that they can time-shift broadcast TV with VCRs. In fact, their right to do this has been upheld in the Sony v. Betamax case. While this can change, it hardly serves what the public wants to do with the content it receives.
2. Because of history (see 1, above), there is something that seams fraudulent about suddenly depriving people of a capability they had. I doubt that this new "feature" will be widely advertised.
3. Criminal laws are enforced at public expense. If it is impractical to enforce the law (i.e. the technology can be easily circumvented), expect either increased taxation to fund the "war on time-shifting" or selective enforcement.
don't you own your house?, what about the broadcasted waves that go through your place?. can't someone make it ilegal to broadcast copy-controlled content through his/her house?.
Difficult. Yes, you own your home, subject to eminent domain, zoning laws, and HOA covenents. But, your elected representatives explicitly permit broadcast television. About the only thing you could fight are excessive radition levels (i.e. someone getting a broadcast license and putting up a tower right beside your home -- but that doesn't happen).
In the case of cable, since you permitted the installation in the first place, you'd have no case.
i don't live in the us, but if this gets passed, it probably will spread to third world countries such as mine who are always passing laws in order to get more money lent.
Dunno. The dynamics aren't the same as with, say, the drug trade. I'd expect that similar laws would get passed by pressure from local content owners for the same reasons as in the U.S., rather than because of pressure from the U.S. government.
You could've hired me.
Every six months or so I turn on a TV (or get stuck someplace where one is on & too loud to ignore. Given what I've seen the past few years, I'd be in favour of some sort of flag bit that not only prevented recording the programs, but also prevented broadcasting them in the first place.
-- MarkusQ
If they pass such a stupid law it would be the best thing that could happen to our argument. It would be a good hard slap in the face to consumers, rather than slowly boiling a frog. I hope they make the laws cross TVs and Digital VCRs, and that there is a rush of people buying the older (non-crippled) components, and then a falloff on buying as the market becomes saturated with the new devices.
Then, hopefully, someone raise their voice and make the point that it is hollywood and special interests hurting the consumer electronics and computer industry, rather than the "end-user". Say goodbye to Jack Valenti's influence in Silicon Valley.