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

Legislative body

[zoward]

"... the MPAA is working on new legislation to broaden the FCC's power"

I didn't know the MPAA was a legislative body ...

Re:Legislative body

[emc]

They are not, but Orrin Hatch is.

He is also the lapdog of the entertainment industry.

Re:Legislative body

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Welcome to Corporatized America. If you can afford it, you're a legislative body.

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:Legislative body

[gr8_phk]

And he'll just append it to the next bill to fund the troops or fight terrorism and it'll go through for sure.

Re:Legislative body

[AstroDrabb]

So you get Sony, Universal, AOL, as "companies" giving their bribes. Then you can have all the big execs giving bribes at the expenisve "dinner" parties.

Have you ever looked at www.opensecrets.org? If congress critters and senate idiots could "only" get $2,000, how do you have all these corrupted bumbs getting millions every year like Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi. Go take a look at the Politicians page to see just how many millions in bribes they are getting. Oh, and then go look at the Industry page to see who is giving. Notice how the TV/Movies/Music industry gave $31,931,262 in 2004 with 69% of that going to the Dems.

Do you really think there is any democracy left in our political process with hundreds of millions in bribes going around to our "politicians"? I know I don't.

Just because they're out to get you

[WillAffleck]

doesn't mean you're paranoid.

Sigh.

The only flag I want is the one sewn on my old uniform.

Buy your own laws, here

[FunWithHeadlines]

Get yer laws, here! Nice fresh laws for sale!

Whatsa matter, sport? Courts got you down? They say you have no legal leg to stand on? Don't listen to them! Get your own laws! You write 'em. You pay for 'em. You benefit from 'em.

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

Routers

[KrackHouse]

I get the feeling that a gigantic black market will emerge if this passes. If the internet routes around censorship as if it's damage then technological progress will route around hardware restrictions as if it's censorship.

Government Logic

[Tackhead]

> The DC Circuit nixed the flag on the grounds that the FCC didn't have the authority. This language would clear that up.

1. Anything not nailed down is mine.
2. Anything I can pry loose is not nailed down.
3. If the only tool you have is a crowbar, every problem looks like hours and hours of fun!

Of course we can get along just fine with the software industry. TCPA, DRM, Steam, Valve, Half-Life, Crowbar. It all makes sense now!

Please note the difference:

[tverbeek]

A bugaloo is not the same thing as a boogaloo.

Land of the Free (except where prohibited)

[Gopal.V]

It's a path of self destruction - there's a price people are willing to pay for entertainment. Cross the line and they'll become pirates. The real challenge of capitalism is to make sure that it works out fine for EVERYONE. For socialism the challenge is induvidual incentive. Neither works, if they don't try to address these challenges.

Scott Adams: If the capitalists don't like capitalism, they shouldn't have named it after themselves.

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?

[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.

Bare with me...

[bhsx]

I'm going for a new meme here:
My mom washed the broadcast flag, and it BLEW UP!

Better copyright provisions:

[rice_burners_suck]

Perhaps it would be wisest if the government would rule as follows: Any information broadcast in such a manner as to distribute it widely shall be deemed protected under copyright law, but only to the extent that you cannot sell copies of the information; that is, you may record it in any medium you want; you may display the information in any manner you want, even in a public performance; the only thing you cannot do is charge for it; only the copyright holder may do that. Therefore, you cannot charge others to watch a public performance of the same, nor can you charge for copies on, say, DVD.

This would solve a variety of problems: Fair use would not be destroyed. And because information broadcast is, to all practical extents, available for consumption by "the public", then there should be no restriction on time- or format-shifting of the same. This law would be much more fair to both sides of the issue, as the bottom line is that our country is meant to be free, not governed by the will of corporations, though corporations should still have a fair chance at profits, even big profits, because corporations are the ones that pay us, feed us, drive our economy, and give us a better standard of living through the channeling of funds and efforts that would otherwise not take place.

Re:Better copyright provisions:

[arkhan_jg]

You're assuming the companies the MPAA represents, and the congressmen they own, want a fair deal.

To them, it won't be a fair setup until everything we watch is
a) produced by a MPAA member
b) paid for* by every watcher, every time they view it. Yes, that means you pay twice as much if two people watch one show simultaneously.
c) even better, paid for by potential viewers, whether you watch it or not.
d) uncopyable, unless they're doing the copying
e) Chargable like b) every time you change format or viewer, in addition to the per-viewing fee.
f) only viewable when the MPAA producer wants you to watch it, especially if you're in a different country
g) eternal copyright, so that all of the above applies to all content, forever.
h) all fair use of any kind is eliminated.

* paid for to include a flat rate fee, per-viewing fee, or unskippable commercials. Ideally, they'd like all three at once.

"[Skipping ads with a PVR or VCR] is theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial . . . you're actually stealing the programming."

This beautiful piece of logic was bruited about as part of the Big Media blitz against ReplayTV's model 4000 personal video recorder.

This is what we're dealing with.

Interesting Implication

[Bob(TM)]

You know, it's interesting that the MPAA is taking the approach of giving additional regulatory power of the FCC rather than lobbying congress to mandate the flag.

Laying groundwork for easier actions in the future, perhaps ...

with apologies to Mel Brooks...

[Foobar of Borg]

"Fellow members of the American Senate, hear me! Shall we continue to give hand-out after hand-out to the rich? Or shall we aspire to a more noble purpose and draft decent legislation for the poor? How does the Senate vote?"

[in unison] "F**k the poor!"

"Good!"

Problem with it is...

[snwcrash]

The device makers will put up a pretty strong resistance to this. MPAA isn't the only industry group that would be lobbying over this.

The FCC regulations were politically convenient, since the elected officals could distance themselves from it, claim to support or oppose it depending on the direction of the political winds.

Republicans would probably find it hard to increase the amount of regulation on high-tech industries. Not saying it's impossible, but it's hardly going to zip right on through. Unlike the DMCA which was generally pro-business this bill pits several intrests against one another. If the bill directly attacked consumers it would pass in a hearbeat :)

Jurisdiction

[Doc Ruby]

The FCC mission is to prohibit interference among signals, by enforcing the assignment of segregated communications channels. Some of those channels travel over "airwaves" owned by the public: the space between points in the US which carries light in frequencies invisible to humans. That trusteeship of the airwaves justifies another role: publicly receivable signals transmitted over those airwaves must meet acceptable standards for public consumption, as agreed by transmitters in the terms of their license for spectrum leased from the FCC. Those standards are limited to offensive criteria, like sexual representations, some politics, and (minimally) violence. That is the FCC's entire mission, which excludes private transmissions (including subscriptions like cable and satellite), and transmissions in media other than the airwaves (including telephone and data networks).

This "broadcast flag" rule is not just "technically illegal". Content policing is the jurisdiction of the Library of Congress' Copyright Office. That office is already complicated (and often contradictory) enough, with its own overreaches (eg. copyright perpetuation). This rule is not so much the FCC filling a gap, or even augmenting LoC oversight. It is really a recognition by a bureaucracy that its main source of power, administering the airwaves, is becoming a tiny area of activity. As other media dwarf the airwaves in traffic, and tech like phased arrays undermine even the necessity for segregation of channels by frequency, the FCC is becoming merely a 20th Century office, as obsolete as the 19th Century offices governing horsedrawn carriages. But its ability to influence Congress, while it still controls the still popular airwaves (which carry most news broadcasts), offers a way to change its mission to one with more power than it ever had. If it jumps beyond the airwaves domain, to define its mission as censor (rather than guarantor of signal integrity), it will not only have power over otherwise free American activities, but need never again be threatened with obsolescence.

The FCC's creeping power grabs are completely predictable, given the increasing irrelevance of the underlying problem it is chartered to solve. But Congress should see this as a chance to phase out a dangerous and unnecessary bureaucracy. Preserving only its technically necessary functions, while they still exist. Then let it die, not reanimate it as a monster censor we'll never banish.