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EFF Goes To Court To Fight The Broadcast Flag
Silwenae writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation and nine other organizations including Public Knowledge (PK) and the American Library Association (ALA) have gone to court to fight the Broadcast Flag. The press release sums it up: The brief argues that the FCC has no authority to regulate digital TV sets and other digital devices unless specifically instructed to do so by Congress. While the FCC does have jurisdiction over TV transmissions, transmissions are not at issue here. The broadcast flag limits the way digital material can be used after the broadcast has already been received."
but all it takes is a nice little Time Base Corrector to strip the digital crap out to clean up the signal
;)
This is for digital television broadcasts. If you strip the digital information out you'll be left with a blank screen.
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The MPAA. If you want a CSS license to sell DVD players, you have to include Macrovision and region locking, etc.
Hitachi can put whatever "features" they want in their TVs, the EFF is saying the government can't mandate what goes in and doesn't.
Ie; V-Chip is optional, TV and Movie ratings are all completely voluntary, there are no US laws that have to do with PG-13.
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For a number of years, this ruling was used to justify federal regulation of just about anything. In more recent times, however, courts have somewhat limited this authority. The gun free schools act was overturned in 1995 when the supreme court ruled that the government had overstepped it's authority regarding interstate commerce regulation. Although courts have traditionally sided with the federal government in issues of regulatory authority, there have been exceptions, so it's hard to say what will happen in this case.
Well, the FCC clearly does have some authority over end-user devices: notice the FCC logo on the back of every monitor/TV in the US?
That's completely different. That ensures one device is not preventing another device from receiving a transmission. Basically, it ensures one device does not interfere with another. Which means, such restrictions exactly fit with the FCC's charter.
The broadcast flag has nothing to do with it's charter. Never has, and never will, save only by changes in law by Congress. Which is exactly the point.
The Court's 1942 decision in Wickard vs. Filburn gave Congress the power to regulate anything. In that case, the Court remarkably held that the interstate commerce clause could be used to regulate an individual farmer's wheat production or his family's consumption. The reasoning was that since the farmer grew his own wheat, he affected interstate commerce; otherwise, he might have purchased wheat that had moved in interstate commerce.
Much has been written about the interstate commerce decision/clause. Here's an excerpt:
Beginning with the Hepburn Act (1906), the ICC's jurisdiction was gradually extended beyond railroads to all common carriers except airplanes by 1940. Its enforcement powers to set rates were also progressively extended, through statute and broadened Supreme Court interpretations of the commerce clause of the Constitution, as were its investigative powers for determining fair rates of return on which to base rates. In addition, the ICC was given the task of consolidating railroad systems and managing labor disputes in interstate transport. In the 1950s and 60s the ICC enforced U.S. Supreme Court rulings that required the desegregation of passenger terminal facilities.
The ICC's safety functions were transferred to the Dept. of Transportation when that department was created in 1966; the ICC retained its rate-making and regulatory functions. However, in consonance with the deregulatory movement, the ICC's powers over rates and routes in rails and trucking were curtailed in 1980 by the Staggers Rail Act and Motor Carriers Act. Most ICC control over interstate trucking was abandoned in 1994, and the agency was terminated at the end of 1995. Many of its remaining functions were transferred to the new National Surface Transportation Board.
Suffice it to say that the ICC has been oft-abused in a search/grab for power, and many activities we take for granted in our daily lives are now subject to continuing jurisdiction of the government under the ICC. Do you check email? That email crossed state lines and someone paid for connectivity at both ends... thus the software, keyboard, mouse and monitor you use with your computer are theoretically subject to ICC regulation. Want to use Linux instead of Windows? Want to install SP2 on your Windows box? Maybe Congress will decide that it needs to regulate software distribution and require you to register your use of any updates with them...
The ICC is a big, dangerous thing in the hands of often overzealous public officials...
If I can hear or watch it, I can record it. So what if its not digital? Other than instant fast forwarding, I'm not really impressed with DVDs over VHS. If it gets ridiculous, people will just sample off movie screens or TVs, the Gubmint won't be able to stop that. All you've done is created newer, more interesting types of piracy.
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You misunderstand the reasoning for the wording.
Let's look at the 2 parts in the context of your TV.
This device may not cause harmful interference
This says that your TV cannot interfer with anything else - if it does and somebody complains, you have to turn your TV off. No if, ands, or buts. So if your TV is throwing out a spurious emission at 146.52 MHz and thereby is interfering with my ability to talk on my 2 meter radio, upon my informing you of the interference you have to turn your TV off until you get it fixed. If you cannot get it fixed, you cannot use it. Equally, if your TV is interfering with MY TV, and I so inform you, the same thing happens.
OK, now let's look at the second part:
this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.
Why is this here? OK, let's look at a scenario. Your TV has a badly designed front-end, and is interfered with by my transmissions on 146.52 MHz. You complain to me. I check my equipment, and determine that I am not generating any spurious emissions outside of the 2 meter amateur band. Your TV is at fault here, in that it is not correctly rejecting my signal.
You can *ask* me to stop transmitting. You cannot *order* me to stop transmitting, even though I am interfering with you - my part 97 amateur gear, operating properly in band, trumps your part 15 TV. (in reality, I am going to do everyting I can to help you resolve the problem, but I am not under any legal obligation to do so).
In short, the second part is to clarify where part 15 stands on the totem pole - at the very bottom.
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From the FCC's V-chip page:
Of course, it's up to you whether you want to use the V-chip that the gov't forces you to buy.
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I think you are mistaken, have a look at the list of EFF victories for reference.
The Federal Government has been usurping more and more power over the past 100 years...The Court's 1942 decision in Wickard vs. Filburn gave Congress the power to regulate anything...
You'll be pleased to know that this exact point is going before the court again this year. The Supreme Court will consider whether Congress can ban medical marijuana in California even if it never leaves the state.
The WWII wheat-quotas-are-OK case (Wickard v Filburn, 1942) is looking pretty weak after the can't-prohibit-guns-near-schools case (US v Lopez, 1995). I can hardly imagine that the Court will force a broad role-back of Congressional authority, but we'll know in a few months or so.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Europe and the US has a history of never using each other standards. Just look at PAL/NTSC, NMT/APMS, GSM/DAMPS, Metric/Imperial, 110V60Hz/230V50Hz.
It isn't quite that simple, PAL is a derivative of NTSC. The French then came up with SECAM. The USA actually signed the Treaty of the Metre (pre Noah Webster) yet has never implimented it, the system actually used in the US is called "English" which is not the same as the Imperial system of measurements.
But do they have any authority over what happens to signals after they have ceased to be freely radiating RF?
Doesn't matter at all. because the FCC DOES have the right to say "you shall make all receiving devices compatible with this (broadcast flag) device..."
This ain't new, and I'm surprised the EFF thinks it has even a slim chance with such a play. Apparently no one at the EFF has read their history books:
The problem was that UHF stations would not be successful unless people had UHF tuners, and people would not voluntarily pay for UHF tuners unless there were UHF broadcasters. Of the 165 UHF stations that went on the air between 1952 and 1959, 55% went off the air. Of the UHF stations on the air, 75% were losing money. UHF's problems were the following:(1) technical inequality of UHF stations as compared with VHF stations; (2) intermixture of UHF and VHF stations in the same market and the millions of VHF only receivers; (3) the lack of confidence in the capabilities of and the need for UHF television. Suggestions of de-intermixture (making some cities VHF only and other cities UHF only) were not adopted, because most existing sets did not have UHF capability. Ultimately the FCC required all TV sets to have UHF tuners. However over four decades later, UHF is still considered inferior to VHF, despite cable television, and ratings on VHF channels are generally higher than on UHF channels.
The allocation between VHF and UHF in the 1950s, and the lack of UHF tuners is entirely analogous to the dilemma facing digital television of high definition television fifty years later.
Even fifty years ago the FCC had the power to (and did) regulate receiving devices. They mandated all sets sold with something larger than (I believe) a 13" screen MUST have both VHF an UHF tuners... and it stood, and it worked... just as this latest move will.
DAT has the same kind of no-copy flag, and I think there were devices produced that would strip this flag from the digital stream.
It was congress that passed that law, with an exception for 'professional grade' equipment, which started showing up shortly after. The no-copy flag is believed to be largely responsible for the minimal penetration of audio DAT in the US.
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Congress had passed enabling legislation in the form of the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962.
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