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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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make install -not war
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yap yap revolution yap yap. How about running for Congress, on a legitimate reform platform, or backing someone who will? Most of the Constitution has articles, and a "bill" of rights, to institutionalize "revolution", without opening the door to anarchy, mob rule, or - most likely today - corporate fascism without its mediagenic face. The entire House of Representatives, and 1/3 of the Senate are up for grabs in only 18 months. Unless you're willing to throw constitutional representative democracy itself on the line, why don't you just use the revolutionary institutions we've got, to throw out the tyrants? It
s because you sound so much cooler talking about revolution than talking about campaigning for election, right? Actually putting liberty, to say nothing of your life, on the line, has nothing to do with your tough talk.
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make install -not war
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.
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.
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!!!!
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.
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