Broadcast Flag 2 - Electric Boogaloo

blamanj wrote to mention that, a week after we reported on the court rejection of the broadcast flag, the MPAA is working on new legislation to broaden the FCC's power. From the article: "The draft bill says, simply, that the FCC will 'have authority to adopt regulations governing digital television apparatus necessary to control the indiscriminate redistribution of digital television broadcast content over digital networks.' The DC Circuit nixed the flag on the grounds that the FCC didn't have the authority. This language would clear that up." Update: 05/13 19:20 GMT by Z : Title amended with apologies to the Bugaloos.

Comments

Re:Legislative body

[eln]

You would be surprised at how much legislation is actually written by corporations, and given to "friendly" Congressmen who sponsor it as their own. Many large businesses and businesses organizations have lobbying groups whose job it is to craft legislation friendly to them, and sell it to members of Congress.

Re:Buy your own laws, here

[The Importance of]

You can actually read the full text of the proposed law here: MPAA Shopping Draft Broadcast Flag Legislation

MPAA was elected?

[twl1973]

I love it how the MPAA can draft legislation for the Congress now. I thought that we elected people to actually draft legislation but I guess I was wrong. Now all you need to draft legislation is a billion dollars and the knowledge of where to deposit some of the money.

Re:MPAA was elected?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...that's the way that it's been for, oh, about 200 years. You don't really think that those congressmen and senators draft the bills themselves, do you?

Want to draft a bill? Write it up and send it to your legislator.

No news here.

Re:MPAA was elected?

[brontus3927]

No, no, no. Any one can draft legislation. All you need is to know how to write, and a way to write it down. We elect people to sponsor legislation, debate legislation, and vote on legislation. Further, I'd hazzard a bet that there hasn't been a bill on the table in many years that was actually WRITTEN (i.e. drafted) by a Congressperson. Most were written by their staff.

Re:Well...

[brontus3927]

Anyone can write a bill, you don't have to be in congress for that. Private citizens can write a bill on any topic they want. What a private citizen can't do is sponsor legislation. A congressman/senator has to sponsor a bill before it will be "debated" and voted on. I'm not naive enough to think there isn't at least 1 congressman whose campaign wasn't paid for by the MPAA and has a cushy $200,000 job waiting for them after they leave office, which is actual the issue that who are so, rightly, indignat about.

Re:No such thing as "digital"

[mjh]

In one sense, you're right. Digital is an abstraction of a wave. But that's like saying that there's no such thing as red, just an EM wavelength. The reality is that we call a particular wavelength red because that's the name we've given it. Digital is the same way. There are lots of different naming conventions, but they all come down to this: this particular waveform is a 0 and this other one is a 1. 0 and 1 are names for the wave form in exactly the same way that red is the name for a particular EM wavelength.

That being said, I know what you mean, but we abstract all kinds of things and give them names. Take cars for example. That's just an abstract name for an engine, a control system, a cabin, and wheels. But because cars are really composed of all of those things, doesn't mean that cars don't exist as things themselves.

$.02

Re:harder this time

[cpt kangarooski]

That's not technically true, just practically true.

1201 et seq only apply to works protected under Title 17. Once a work hits the public domain, it's okay to circumvent with regards to it.

However, when this argument was tried with regards to DeCSS in conjunction with CSS-encrypted public domain movies on DVD, it flopped, since the courts that looked at the issue didn't think that this was a real impediment to getting those works generally, and that it would make these provisions pretty useless if that argument were accepted.

Once most movies on DVD are in the public domain, something currently scheduled for the mid to late 21st century, perhaps it will find a more receptive audience. Personally I'd like to think we'll come to our senses and get rid of the DMCA and generally fix copyright law, long before then.