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Build Your Own TV Without Broadcast Flags
doom writes "An account of an event sponsored by the EFF, a "roll your own television" build-in. The San Francisco Bay Guardian has coverage in an article entitled Build Your TV!". From the article: "According to the FCC, the flag is going to ease the nation's transition from today's analog televisions to tomorrow's high-definition televisions. What exactly does it mean for a government agency to "ease" the transition from one kind of TV signal to another? In this case, it seems to mean making the entertainment industry feel very warm and fuzzy inside." The EFF's efforts against the flag have been covered before on Slashdot.
I thought the courts slowed/stopped the fcc from mandating anything like this? References in reverse chronological order
/. Story One: Broadcast Flag in Trouble /. Story 2: Court Says FCC Out-of-Bounds With Digital TV
Like here
Or Here
So why are we worried?
Wang33
PAGERANK++ Robsell.com
I agree it will likely be a flop. People are just too used to recording shows on TV. Either there will be quiet ways around the problem (like in your regionless DVD player example) or a major backlash which will get Congress to change the FCC's direction.
But, before that happens, the Court opinion is meaningless. All the Court said was that the FCC might not have authority from Congress. Thus, all Congress has to do is to give its authority. Even with Congress, that could take less than a month.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Won't be possible. There is a provision in the broadcast flag legislation that states the devices be rugged and difficult to modify. A simple little chip removal ain't going to happen.
Nope: if you rta, you'll see that there is also a prohibition on models which are easily circumvented by the user. So no kit tvs.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
It is exactly like the copy protection found on all audio CDs. Audio CDs include two flags for copy protection. The first marks the disk as copyright, and the second marks it as original. A copier that fully complies with the specification will allow copies to be made from CDs with both flags set. The copy will then have the copyright flag set, but not the original flag. Copies of the copy are then not permitted. CDs without the copyright flag set may be copied, whether or not the original flag is set (although the original flag should be unset in the copy). Technically, copying music from a CD without maintaining this flag is in violation of the DMCA...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Where exactly in the constitution does it give you the right to record shows?
p.s. The constitution does not grant rights to individuals. Instead it limits the rights of the government.
Bush is a great president and he will not let this broadcast flag happen under his watch. I know liberal /. probably doesn't get this, but the Republicans are all about SMALLER gov't, people.
You've got to be joking. (At least, I hope you're being sarcastic) Check the second chart down. Bush has increased nondefense discretionary spending faster than Clinton by a large margin, and that's *with* a Republican dominated congress. Of course, that's not even including the *huge* growth in defense and homeland security related spending, most of it stuffed into little-reviewed supplemental appropriation bills. ("Yeah, we need another $90 billion for Iraq. Don't count it against the deficit figures, please.") Just look at the absurd Medicare prescription drug coverage bill- any true conservative would have run from this screaming.
The Republicans today are all about huge, intrusive government. They want to make sure you're a good little consumer, worship the proper god and avoid the gay. Oh yeah, and don't worry about running up the deficit to 3rd world levels- we'll never have to pay that back...
Just sign me "Disgusted ex-Republican".
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
From ATI:
Regarding Broadcast Flag:
There will only be one version of the card produced and after the date of the
Broadcast Flag institution the cards manufactured after this date will support the feature.
I do not know if Canadian broadcasts will have a similar limitation.
Regards,
Rick Carman
Customer Care
ATI Technologies, Inc.
http://www.ati.com
The DMCA gives content producers the right to attach "access control mechanisms" to their content and prevent unauthorized parties from producing equipment to access that content. Patent law also prevents manufacturers from implementing certain technologies without a license. Region locking works in that framework indirectly: an ACM, called CSS, is attached to the majority of DVDs. A group called the DVD-CCA licenses CSS ACMs on behalf of content producers who use it. They also license a package of rights to use patented technologies incorporated into DVD players. In order to obtain a license from the DVD-CCA, you have to agree to a contract that includes a provision that you must implement region encoding. If you don't agree to that license, your ability to implement DVD readers without risking a patent lawsuit becomes difficult, and, more importantly, you are breaking US law, criminally, if you produce a DVD player that can play DVDs "protected" with CSS.
Regionless DVD players are produced by people who have a license to produce DVD players that support CSS. They essentially break their contracts, which makes the entire matter civil. Once the DVD-CCA finds out, they can sue for breach and revoke the license of the offending company, but any DVD players produced before the license is revoked are, essentially, legal.
What does this mean in this context? Well, the situation is entirely different.
Instead of DVD manufacturers obtaining licenses under contracts that they then breach, they're bound by the FCC's rulemaking from day 1. This means that if they breach the FCC's rules, they're in trouble, in a sense, immediately. They can't just produce TVs that violate the law until the FCC wakes them up and revokes a license, as they would with DVD players and the DVD-CCA, the moment the FCC finds out they're producing "illegal" TVs, they can be fined for each one.
So, if the High Court upholds the right of the FCC to enforce a broadcast flag, don't hold out hope that there'll be little hidden hacks sneaked in by TV manufacturers to disable it. It will not happen. TV manufacturers will, by and large, have to obey this rule.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
IIRC, it actually says it will become illegal to manufacture hardware without "flag support" after that date. Anything built, even if its not sold, before that date is OK.
"Every administration, of whatever party, has overseen the growth of the government in one form or another. And virtually every one has overseen unprecedented growth, in that no previous administration had grown it that much."
So, you're saying that government is a cancer?
I'll buy that.
As a photographer for the Bay Guardian. (You can only see my lovely portrait of Helen Seltzer if you pick up the dead tree edition of the paper.)
There were three women there. They were taking apart computers. I saw it and (even) photographed it.