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EFF: 48 Hours to Stop the Broadcast Flag
The Importance of writes "Think the Broadcast Flag is dead? EFF is warning that Hollywood is trying to sneak the broadcast flag into law as an amendment to a massive appropriations bill. 'If what we hear is true, the provision will be introduced before a subcommittee tomorrow and before the full appropriations committee on Thursday. That gives us 48 hours to stop it.' Action Alert here. List of Senator's phone numbers here."
i'd write my senators, but i can't find my checkbook.
Is playing dirty somehow beneath the good guys? Oh, that's what makes them the good guys...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Philosophy.
The CRIA thing was only introduced as a bill, it's not law yet. Contact your MP. I have.
Why don't all the "special interests" who hate special interests sneaking arbitrary laws into bills get together to outlaw them?
Every bill must have a scope. It must apply to a single budget, or a single government organization, or their subsidiaries. Or it must be a "metabill", which specifies only a collection of bills related in an explicit policy, the exact relationship stated in the metabill.
Of course, Congressmembers should be voting against these big bills, with arbitrary attachments, on the principle of government manageability. But they obviously don't - they're all codependent on letting each other's attachments pass, often regardless of consequences, in exchange for the same favor later on. So we need to force them to stop doing it. Because the mass of laws, their inner complexity and scale, is killing the ability of anyone to participate in our democracy beyond any significant confrontation with the law. When only the lawyers win, we all lose.
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I'm an Australian so when I first heard about rider bills I honestly didn't beleive it. Then I discovered that Australia also had the problem of rider bills at some stage. We recognised them as a problem and we fixed them. We no longer have rider bills. Does any other democracy on earth still have them? Is it impossible for americans to recognise a problem and fix it without ballsing it up? It just seems you have all these parasites gaming your political process and you do nothing about it. You know how everyone knows that US congressmen take bribes? Well, here in Australia, it's illegal for politicians to take bribes. It's like that in the rest of the world too right? So why can't americans recognise something that's so straight forward and simple (politicans should not be permitted to take bribes) and do something about it?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Why isn't anyone clamoring for a law against pork? It has to be one of the baldest rapes of democracy going, but nobody seems to care when it isn't being used to pass a law that they don't like.
That your system of goverment is one of the most corrupt in the world?
How about spreading some democracy in your own back-yard before trying to take over the world.
Someone forward this to the Senate!
CNN may be part of the problem, but in the end they're journalists, they're ALWAYS looking for some kind of news that can raise public intrest. The CNN news room could care less about wether it goes through or not, AOL/TW might have something to say on the matter but the only thing they care about from CNN is the ratings, not the content.
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Email is routinely ignored by congressional staffers. Signing a paper petition is a little more useful. A phone call is better still. A written letter is far superiour. Saying what you think in person is better still. The reason for these classifications is that elected officials are getting spammed and information overloaded like everyone else. If you spend more effort getting your particular issue heard, they also feel you will be more likely to remember them on election day. It's fairly valid.
I am highly critical of these online petitions, because people believe that they have done something, and therefore will not follow up their web form tick-off with something more substantive like the communications mentioned above.
I know it's a bit too late to dash of a handwritten letter to your rep in this occasion. But a phone call may be appropriate.
There's always the last resort... revolt. Viva Le Revolution!
In all seriousness though, our constitution has certain articles and bills with in, should "our" government get out of control... perhaps it was time we started to look them over?
Yeah right, and presidential executive orders are about ordering more bottled water for the office.
Ok, so here we have the FCC mandating that we have to all convert our "old analog" television sets to digital television sets by 2007 or something...
Then we have the "Broadcast Flag" being driven through on a rider, shh... nobody will notice.
And now they can basically control what you can record via your "Dish DVR" or "TiVo" or TV tuner card or whatever other device you want to use, because of Hollywood pressure.
We already see DVDs where you can't bypass the intro commercials to get to the navigational menus, even for DVDs which we bought, which should have paid for the removal of those commercials.
Next, we'll see television sets being sent a signal that ignores the remote control's "channel" buttons during commercials. You just won't be able to switch away during commercials... you'll be forced to watch them (or power off your TV).
How far are we from a Telescreen here, really? I mean... all they need is a way to peer back in, and a way to stop you from turning off the TV or the volume...
Orwell would be proud.
Software:
- Companies make proprietary software
- Then charge a lot
- Have copyright law to prevent copying
- People gripe
- People makes free software.
Movies/Music:- Artists make movies/music
- Companies package and market it
- Then charge a lot
- Have copyright/DMCA law to prevent copying
- People gripe
Why not the next step: People make free movies/music?Line-item veto is a really bad idea, especially considering who's currently holding the pen.
Why should the president have authority to change the bill without it going back to congress? What would stop him from leaving in the stupid attachments and vetoing everything else?
Take a look at average donor amounts for the two political parties. You may be surprised.
You can tell the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
The so-called Broadcast Flag is an abomination and needs to be rejected by the Senate. It will do nothing to stop large-scale piracy, and will only serve to limit the fair-use rights of American citizens to time shift television programs, save them for later viewing or view tv program's at a family members house. Authorizing the broadcast flag will force innovative consumer electronics companies to ask for Hollywood permission before introducing new products.
Media oligarchies, led by the RIAA & MPAA, tried to sue the VCR out of existence. They sued the first makers of MP3 players. They sued ReplayTV into bankruptcy because they dared to introduce an innovative product without the MPAA's permission. If the broadcast flag and similar legislative tools had been around for the last 25 years, we wouldn't have the VCR, iPods, TiVos or computer DVD recorders. These tools have helped democratize content creation, distribution & consumption by putting citizens/customers in charge of their home-made movies, music, and photographs.
Vote against the Broadcast Flag. It is simply a power grab by media oligopolies intended to criminalize the fair-use of media of Americans of all stripes.
This story needs to be reposted at slashdot peak reading time!
As for utilizing the analog hole, yes, that remains possible, but there are serious drawbacks - remember that we're talking about HDTV here - I'm pretty sure all the ways that that actually gets transmitted over the wire transmits the flag.
Now, obviously from a technological standpoint, this means nothing - there will be firmware hacks, instructions on how to assemble a flag stripper from $0.47's worth of parts from Radio Shack, and of course eBay. It will end up being slightly easier than disabling Macrovision, slightly harder than making your DVD-player region free. But the important thing is, it will be illegal!
Call me old-fashioned, but I'm fucking tired of everything I do being made technically illegal, even if it has no tangible effect. I'm not ripping anybody off, I'm not sharing with millions of my closest friends, I'm just trying to record telvision shows when I'm not home, and sometimes watch my DVDs or store my CDs on my computer. I'm not harming anybody, I'm not not paying someone when I should, and so it should. not. be. illegal.
No one thinks independently of one another. You live in a society in which events and decisions that affect you and others happen far beyond your ability to personally witness. At some point, you must trust someone. Therefore, everyone is capable of being manipulated, and everyone is manipulated to some degree.
Now, would you rather be manipulated by corporations who suck you dry, or Slashdot which, for whatever reason, is manipulating you to seek something that will benefit you (the stopping the Broadcast Flag)?
Would you rather be a Slashbot, or a corporate whore? Hey, it's your pick.
If any one american attempted to educate themselves on EVERYTHING that goes on in a given day within the government, it would be a full-time job... at best. And between you and me I doubt they'd be able to do it even as a full-time job unless they're some kind of sick freak who can envelope terabytes of data to their brains and retain it all daily. (doubtful).
The point of these "damn websites" telling us "what to do" is that you take a GROUP of people, all doing their part to police a little bit at a time. Then someone cries wolf, points out the reasoning behind it, and then we all can jump on the problem.
I am open to suggestions on how you think that an average person should stay "educated" on every bill, and every last word in those bills without a "FUCKING WEBSITE" instructing them on it's contents though. Please do enlighten us.
line-item veto has very real risks
1. Party X proposes legislation, concerns raised by party Y.
2. Safeguards added to legislation to satisfy party Y
3. Congress passes legislation
4. Party X president snips out safeguards and passes the rest
5. ???
6. Police state!!!!
I don't disagree with what you said, but you seem to have missed my point. If you can pick and choose which parts of a bill to accept, then you have the power to effectively rewrite it. That power is reserved for the congress. The potential for abuse is immense.
Congress is so in the pocket of the big companies, it doesn't seem like we voters even matter any more. I voted Republican and generally support them, and they won. But it still feels like "we" lost the election. That's because "we" don't matter. "They" will always win, but "they" have the money. Party is irrelevant. The courts run the country, the state legislatures are irrelevant and Congress is just the public relations arm of the big corporations.
Isn't that a cheerful comment on the state of our nation?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I was disturbed by Kerry's total failure to explain how he opposed that version of the war appropriation bill, after it was changed from a version he supported. I understood that he opposed the version with the unaccountable $15B (or so) in "Iraq reconstruction" funds, which still had not been spent when Kerry was campaigning, as he claimed he had feared when he voted against it. I disliked Kerry's irresponsible support for the war from the beginning: unconstitutionally handing the switch to declare war to a president, "when he thinks it's necessary to defend the national interest in Iraq" was a total copout. But it was even worse to hear a guy who'd have to spend at least the next 4 years explaining his policies to America say something in front of the campaign media so obviously doomed to be used against him, thereby deepening us into war. And into reeelction of that dangerous fool Bush. Who's much stupider, but at least has his sleazy act together.
Which is all the more reason to change the packaging of these bills to the format that I described. With my way, Kerry could have said "I voted for the rest of the bill, but not the unaccountable $15B, which they still have mismanaged, though it's extremely necessary, so the whole bill didn't pass", or even "so I voted for a better bill the next month, which the Republicans voted down, because it lacked that bad section".
This kind of bundling is exactly the reason we need scope rules on bills. Scoping makes it harder for Congress to shove pet projects down each others throats, and thereby ours, because it makes them address the bundling explicitly, and gives a public voting mechanism to reject tangential bundles. And it makes their positions on bundles much easier to explain to the public, especially considering the kind of atomicity required of soundbites from nonincumbents, when the corporate media is the filter.
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make install -not war
That's where your mom comes in: she's a different generation and (on average) a different gender. This surprises the staffer, and they'll add a +2 to whatever your mom says.
She can use one of the standard talking points, or mention how she wants her techie child to continue being employed. And, if she has grandkids, then variations of "Nothing, but nothing gets in the way of my showing off hi-def videos of my grandkids to my friends" could be useful. Plus, sad to say, the staffers are more likely to believe her when she says that she votes (or contributes to campaigns) because (on average) its true.
If you haven't figured it out yet, every time you buy a product you are voting with your dollars.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
When writing of calling the senators, rather than just saying how much you dislike the thought of turning over more power to the FCC there's another point you can make that should pull at the heart-strings.
Remind them of a world of working people working wierd hours - late nights at the mall, night shifts, and the like. These are the forgotten people that all make our lives a little asier that are going to be most screwed by this evil broadcast flag. Not the people of Slashdot who can collectivley hack around most laws, but the bread and butter of each senators voting district who just do thier jobs and don't need the government coming in to tell them what can and cannot be recorded.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and it said residential calls are not accepted on this voicemail system
Does this mean that U.S. Senators don't need to take calls from US residents ?
Could someone explain how this works ? Is this normal in the states ?
I think I would be a bit concerned if our politicians wouldn't even pretend to listen.
The way to do it is to start a centrist party. A party which believes in liberalism but with a dash of social justice thrown in, after all for every right there is a corresponding responsibility[1]. It'll take support from both the left and the right.
[1] Something the founding fathers seem to have forgotten, where's the bill of responsibilities?
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Here is what I sent - including a nice sound bite that anyone could use to attack the root of the MPAAs arguments, very simply. As a constituent and a proponent of innovation, I'm registering my opposition to any Broadcast Flag amendment introduced in the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations subcommittee mark-up on Tuesday, or in full committee on Thursday.
If you read nothing else, I can summarize this letter with one sentence:
"Real American Companies Innovate, not Legislate."
The so-called Broadcast Flag is an abomination and needs to be rejected by the Senate. It will do nothing to stop large-scale piracy, and will only serve to limit the fair-use rights of American citizens to time shift television programs, save them for later viewing or view tv programs at a family member's home. Authorizing the broadcast flag will force innovative consumer electronics companies to ask for Hollywood permission before introducing new products. (Note how quickly the cable industry has approved "Cable Cards" for receiving digital cable, to enable digital-cable-ready TVs - After two years, there is exactly one approved.)
The history here is clear. Large sheet music companies tried to sue the nascent recording industry out of existence. Radio tried to stop TV. Large media companies tried to sue the VCR out of existence. Only after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of fair use did they realize the revenue stream available to them. They sued the first makers of MP3 players. They sued ReplayTV into bankruptcy because they dared to introduce an innovative product without the MPAA's permission. If the broadcast flag and similar legislative tools had been around for the last 100 years, we wouldn't have the record players, tape decks, television, VCR, iPods, TiVos or computer DVD recorders. These tools have helped democratize content creation, distribution & consumption by putting citizens/customers in charge of their home-made movies, music, and photographs. The media revolution IS the story of American Capitalism at it's best.
In addition, if recording off-the-air was forbidden, innovative teachers would have had substantially less material for thier class. Many routinely use clips from broadcast documentaries to enliven thier classes. All this would have to bow to the MPAA's desire to protect their old revenue stream.
Please vote against the Broadcast Flag. It is simply a power grab by the large media companies, intended to protect their current revenue stream, without having to innovate, like every other sucessful American company has to. Send them a message - "Real American Companies Innovate, not Legislate."
You're right, Duverger's Law (spoiler effect) is a feature (bug!) of the system itself, not any inherent flaw in the platforms of the minor parties. If we used Condorcet voting (not the same as IRV), every party could stand on its own merit. There would be no advantage inherent in being an incumbent party, or having the perception of being one of the most popular.
Of course, if everybody voted honestly instead of strategically there wouldn't be a problem either. But since that's awfully hard to do when the system encourages strategic thinking, we ought to change the system so that it encourages honesty. I don't know how we can have truly representative government if the people don't vote how they really think.
Politics isn't one-dimensional, so why do we think two parties can accurately reflect all political views? Politics is n-dimensional, for the n different issues that have become political. A strong multi-party system where everybody has a representative voice would be a big help.
Constitutionally Correct