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FCC Broadcast Flag Struck Down
An anonymous reader writes "CNet is reporting that the courts have struck down the FCC's broadcast flag requirement! 'In a stunning victory for hardware makers and television buffs, a federal appeals court has tossed out government rules that would have outlawed many digital TV receivers and tuner cards starting July 1.'" The EFF has details on the flag, the official ruling is online for examination, and commentary is available from BoingBoing and Ars Technica.
We really need to do something about them as they are obviously out of control. Don't they know who pays for their appointers election?!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
They just set it to 0.
The onus is on the industry to find a solution within technology and capitalism, not within politics and law.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
So it's nice that this lost, but it lost because the court said the FCC has no jurisdiction. This wasn't a victory for fair use, nor is it the end of the discussion. The MPAA will return to hammering Congress to either make the rule itself or grant the FCC the authority to do so (which the article clearly states at the end). This just gives us more time to get the word out about why the flag is a bad idea.
Since the entire American government is owned by corporate interests, it'll take about 5 minutes for this to get passed by Congress.
I'd hope that the consumer electronics lobby is stronger than the MPAA, but I fear it isn't so.
jh
Now what am I supposed to do with the warehouse of capture cards I bought to resell after this passed!?
rm -rf
woohoo! that means more HDTV quality stargate episodes!
I've put together a collection of links as well as pulling out various key elements of the case: Victory in Broadcast Flag Case! FCC Has No Authority Says Court
And it never will be until the slimeballs behind this (movie industry) get what they want. They are willing to pay more and wield more influence than the electronics makers. Watch for some legislation to be bought soon.
Do you have ESP?
Wow, that's great news, but isn't it coming a little late in the timeline? If sets on sale in July were supposed to have BF support, you'd think that they would already be being manufactured that way. The TV makers would have had to already have designed BF circuitry into their sets and be producing them with that capability, if all the sets in the stores by July were supposed to work that way, as required by the law.
I wonder if there will be a way to disable BF circuitry in sets which get sold that already have it built in? Or will the makers even tell people that they are buying sets that are BF enabled? Maybe some people will buy them without even knowing it.
This is fantastic news for products like http://www.pchdtv.com/ which would have all been destroyed by this. Means a bright future for custom pvrs no less and creativity. When you start limiting what consumers can do with information you start limiting that which is often what leads to greatness.
So long as the following tweaks to the system are not implemented Congress will be able to ignore the wishes of the people and grant any and all favors to their lobbyists.
No representative or senator should ever be allowed to vote on any piece of legislation which they personally have not read
Any vote on anything that involves de facto laws, rules, regulations or monetary impact of any kind must be by roll call vote
The name of the legislator who introduced or modified each line of text in each and every bill must be fully disclosed
The 17th amendment must be repealed
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
A judicial ruling that makes sense. I'm scared.
This was originally posted on slashdot when the case started, and it is excellent news to hear that the FCC regulation was indeed overruled. It is important to note that this case was about whether the FCC had the jurisdiction to impose such regulations, not on the legality of the regulations themselves. If congress decided to pass a law requiring the broadcast flag, it would probably stand.
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As an aside the American Library Association (ALA) has been very active in working to protect our fair-use rights and trying to make copyright law more balanced, even though they might not be as well known here as the EFF and ACLU are. I would highly encourage anyone who cares about these things to help support them
Recent events seem to indicate that the U.S. is moving closer and closer to some kind of state mandated censorship. A growing number of states are trying to pass legislation that would outlaw the sale of "violent" video games to minors. So far these laws have been struck down on constitutional grounds, but I don't believe that will be the final word on the matter. Anyway, once video games are censored or otherwise restricted, it is just a short hop to doing the same thing for movies, music and television.
So far the entertainment industry has strongly opposed anything that looks like censorship. But they are also so vigorously pursuing stronger copyright restrictions that they may be willing to deal. If they believe they can make more money by giving up creative freedom in exchange for stronger copyright laws, I believe they'll do it in a heartbeat. To get the broadcast flag now, they'll have to deal with Congress.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
The courts struck down the broadcast flag because the FCC was getting too big for their britches. They got all up in there, and the Judge was like "no you didn't." Judges do that a lot--watch Judge Mathis to see what I mean.
The courts didn't say that the broadcast flag was illegal because it interfered with fair use rights. While the effects of this ruling are to encourage consumer rights, that hardly seems to be the intent of the judgement. The fact is, the FCC was never supposed to make these kinds of rules--and someone finally called their bluff.
No more donating to the ACLU for me - it's all EFF from now on.
The ACLU was needed in the age of McCarthy, but the work of the EFF seems more beneficial to me right now - in the short as well as the long term.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Let us turn to our computers, and that mecca of intellectual stimulation, slashdot.org!
Because the broadcast flag was so technically feeble, it required "robustness rules" to actually enforce it. In other words, equipment manufactures would have to "weld shut" their devices to prevent user tampering. This would've spelt disaster for GNU Radio, which lets you define an ATSC HDTV receiver in software.
As open source, it fails the robustness rules. Heck, as open source, it even encourages "user tampering." With today's victory the project has some hope, and we can see some future innovations exploiting it.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you get your legal advice on slashdot, you're likely to end up as a "guest" of the government.
This is the stronger of the two main ways that the court could have struck down the ruling. Often, it's the *form* of the rule, in paraticular the way the administrative agency chose to make the rule, that gets struck down. This leaves the agency free to pass the same rule through the proper process. (Similar to the way the appellate court struck down the judge's behavior in the microsoft case--the governmet could have sought another order splitting microsoft.)
In this case, it's the *substance* of the rule that was stricken. The FCC *cannot* regulate in this area, and cannot try again.
However, this didn't adress the question of whether or not Congress could grant the power to regulate in such an area, nor whether Congress could pass such a law itself.
hawk, esq.
There is a massive amount of interest in Broadcast Flag-free equipment. The market loves a vacuum, so even if we don't see equipment from major producers, somebody will manufacture or continue to manufacture this type of equipment. It just may be an outfit like Elgato rather than a Motorola.
Ermmm, these judges actually took a "strict constructionist" approach. Congress didn't give the Executive Branch the authority to regulate, so the Court properly slapped the FCC down.
Ain't nothin' "activist" about this.
Well since the Broadcast Flag is passed through PSIP information present with the DTV broadcast it will be fairly easy to remove. PSIP is the fundamental protocol behind guide data, ratings and some other useful stuff recently imposed on broadcasters for DTV.
This will merely require a firmware update to the existing PSIP generator systems to remove the feature.
The BF itself is embedded in the data that originates from the broadcaster. So, even if the PSIP generator contains the ability to pass along the broadcast flag, content providers need not simply provide the setting. (Which in this case, apparently makes it unlawful to do so.. though I haven't yet read the article)
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
We have stories about the Federal legal decisions almost every day. Yet Slashdotters (and worse, the Slashdot editors) manage to read all these stories without learning anything about how the courts work. Pretty pathetic.
You can be unhappy with the way your fellow citizens vote, but corporations aren't electing these people into Congress. Other people in your community are. If you don't like that, don't sit on your beanbag and complain about how corporations are destroying the country. Go out and tell people why they should vote the way that you want them to. Money is just a megaphone. If you're spouting garbage, it will just make the garbage stinkier.
It's funny how the things that are beyond our control are the things that we'd otherwise have to get off our buns and do something about.
Well I am happy there isn't a broadcasting flag anymore but what about firewire ports on cable boxes?
If you look at the ruling "FCC Eases Digital TV Transition for Consumers."(PDF) it states that all digital cable boxes must have a firewire port. This port is used to control the box and record from it. Now this has been in effect for a while now, although it takes alot of effort and showing your cable company this pdf article to get them to give you a box that has a firewire port and that port is enabled. My concern is the ruling seems to also removes the FCC's power in this area as well.
And the worst part is MythTV just started supporting recording over firewire...
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
as citizens. We have more power with congress then the FCC.
AS always write, fax, email. Maintaining freedom takes regular work, few hours per week.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's a variety of factors in place, but if you posit that the average voter is intellectually curious and able to form opinions not based on sound bites I'd tend to agree with you.
However, this simply isn't the case. Congressional elections are viewed with much less interest than the Presidential election (which is ironic in itself) and voters as a whole don't tend to be intellectually curious OR well informed. So it truly does become a matter of money, which is where the corporations CAN influence policy.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
In effect the xxAAs are trying to rope the FCC into making all broadcasting a synchonous pay-for-view service without any recourse for pay-per-view-later (that would kill ALL recording, nevermind TIVO)
They are essentially trying to rewind the calendar to before they xxAAs lost the 'fair use' trials against those pesky player pianos. (And radio and TV and restaurant juke boxes and sheet music.)
They are against anything that makes a noise and they aren't getting paid. And fair use doesn't enter into their vocabulaty.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I believe the Broadcast flag would have killed HDTV adoption in the US; If my brother-in-law couldn't record his NASCAR to watch after work, what good would HDTV do him?
HDTV equipment couldn't be made in the US for export, because no other country would want broadcast flag equipped products, ensuring the ongoing death of manufacturing in America.
It would raise the cost of, and decrease the desirability of better HDTV, increasing the time until we can turn off the old signals.
The airwaves belong to the Public, and private interests should not be allowed to run rampant over the limited useful spectrum, all of the FCC's decisions should have a statement explaining exactly how it is expected to benifit the public, with respect to the spectrum used; just as with the EPA and Environmental Impact statements.
private encrypted tranmissions have a place (cell phones, military, wireless networking), and it other areas a balance can be struck (TV networks using satillites to send shows to affiliates should be protected) but government angencies should not profit from, or pander to business interests. (except from taxing their profits)