EFF Suing The FCC Over Broadcast Flag

Tamor writes "According to this press release the EFF with 'five library associations, Public Knowledge, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Consumers Union' is suing the FCC over its decision to mandate the broadcast flag." Reader MImeKillEr explains "The lawsuit is charging that the FCC exceeded its jurisdiction, acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and failed to point to substantial evidence in adopting a broadcast flag mandate. The FCC has asked the court to put the lawsuit on hold, pending the FCC's decision on petitions to reconsider the broadcast flag mandate, although all of the petitions address unrelated matters. The coalition of organizations opposed in court the FCC's attempt to postpone the lawsuit."

Comments

Timeshifting

[kathgar1]

IANAL(I know, it's shocking! Someone on slashdot that isn't a lawyer!) but wasn't timeshifting deemed fair-use by the courts? Thus doesn't the broadcast flag impair the viewer's fair-use rights? (I didn't read the brief, I'm not a masochist.)

Re:Is digital TV important enough for this flag?

[Alsee]

The broadcast industry is already having trouble making money.

Really? Not many years ago there a whopping SEVEN channels worth of programming (and that's counting the Public Broadcasting channel). That pretty much amounted to the entirety of nation-wide US programming. Maybe one channel of that was semi-regional.

Now I am personally supplied with over 270 channels, and that doesn't even touch on the chennels I don't happen to get from all of the satellite networks and the huge increase in regional programming.

If there is any difficulty getting money to produce more expensive programming the sole reason is because the staggering EXPLOSION in the amount of programming being produced. There is a huge amount of money for creating programming, there's just a lot of competition to divide the pie. Guess what? That's ordinary capitalism.

No matter how much total money is available for programming, each program will always get stuck with about the same budget. Increase the total available money to increase each budget and people will enter the business and splitting the pie more ways drives the budgets back down. Lower the total available money to lower each budget and people will quit the business and splitting the pie less ways drives the budgets back up

If someone claims they will stop broadcasting their programming without a broadcast flag then I say fine, call their bluff. They broadcast stuff because they make money broadcasting stuff. There are several hundred channels worth of programming, if someone wants to quit the business then everyone else in the business will quite happy with a few less competitors and that much larger market share.

The broadcast flag plan is just plain stupid. There's nothing wrong with the flag itself, it's just a zero or one sent along with the (free and public) broadcast signal. The absurdity is the accompaning need to enforce that everyone can only have CRIPPLED TV's and other crippled hardware. The TV signal is free and in the clear, but they want a rule that all TV receivers must then encrypt that signal. It then enforces that all hardware like VCR's must be crippled and enforce all sorts of restrictions that copyright holders have absolutely NO RIGHT to under copyright law. Crippled hardware that will forcibly delete somthing you recorded after just 90 minutes, even though under copyright law you have every right to keep it as long as you like or make copies of it for a number of uses.

My TV and my TV are MY PROPERTY. I have every right to open them up and rewire it to a home-made 1200 inch disply, and I have every right to rewire my recorder to play a recording backwards looking for satanic messages if I like. A functional broadcast-flag system would require revoking my rights over MY OWN PROPERTY. It would require IMPRISONING ME for making such modifications.

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