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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."
They will not be able to export their technology as other countries are protecting the right of their citizens to make private copies.
Expect the EU to adopt another HDTV standard.
that is the point made in the lawsuit, and mandating that hardware acknowledge and respect the flag after reception goes outside the scope of the FCC's authority.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
When the FCC mandates by law that every receiver must comply, then yes it DOES rather limit things!
Without FCC certification how are you going to sell a receiver?
And of course building anything that does not honr the flag is disallowed by the DMCA. It's basically a form of prohibition all over again.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is great to see people and respected institutions standing up and saying this is wrong, a betrayal of our rights-- but can they make a difference?
If people try, maybe.
If people don't try, never.
I.V.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
This is a perfect example of the FCC overstepping its original charter. Its sole purpose was originally to regulate radio spectrum to prevent interference. Now it wants to regulate VoIP, nasty words and whether or not one should be able to use their VCR. This is just getting completely out of hand. I'm sure its one of those govt departments that has an obscenely huge budget.
You suck Michael Powell.
"every computer you buy has been certified by the FCC not to cause harmful interference."
right... and that's all. They have to approve the device to not interfere with other transmissions that they govern.
This is an apples and oranges comparision to what the EFF is trying to limit.
I don't think the Republican/Democrat divide has much to do with this. Democrats depend very much upon Hollywood money (more than the Republicans do) and so are quite inclined to do the bidding of their corporate masters on this issue.
The problem isn't that this flag will actually stop people from recording/retransmitting/converting any signal. The problems is that it makes it ILLEGAL to do so.
It's very similar to watching a DVD on Linux. It takes about 5 seconds to install a piece of software to play a DVD on Linux, but everytime you do that you're breaking the law. It's not that it's IMPOSSIBLE to watch a DVD, it's that it's ILLEGAL to watch a DVD on Linux.
Now illegal in this sense doesn't mean the cops are going to break down your door, it just means that's you have to make a decision to skirt that part of the law.
So it's more important that we be ALLOWED (under the law) to watch that DVD, or that HDTV signal however we want.
Especially since that signal is coming in to my house/business over public airways. If it's coming in to my house, and I have no (reasonable) recourse with which to stop it, I should be able to do whatever I want with the signal once it gets there. But that's another argument.
It's all about rights, not capabilities.