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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.
With the new CRIA law in Canada, and now the broadcast flag in America, it looks like the recording industry 'winning'. It's looks pretty bad for those fighting for digital rights.
This sig is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Dont know if my news tip will get picked up. These things should not be sneaked in.
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.
As soon as it's a rider on an appropriations bill like this, the broadcast flag is a foregone conclusion. The committee probably won't even know what they're doing.
The broadcast flag is here to stay, regardless of the EFF's "48 hours" claim.
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 didn't think you could legislate on an appropriation bill? Is this for real? Its against the rules of the Senate (rule XVI) http://rules.senate.gov/senaterules/rule16.htm
Only residents of Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, or Wisconsin can sign this.
I'm gonna post this over on the various MythTV communities as well... try to get more support drummed up.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
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.
You can fax and email appropriation committee members for free at the EFF's action center.
By the time this story is an accepted submission, it will be 36+ hours past the deadline. All slashdotters should therefore direct their attention to criticizing the outcome pre-emptively in order to maintain an effective schedule.
We're working on a patch for that.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
See the senators flee in terror as hundreds of thousands of /.'ers email "In Soviet Russia the bill rides you".
(Note... many are confused as they believe this may be a reference to the previous administration.)
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
especially considering who's currently holding the pen.
s/pen/crayon/g
Trolling is a art,
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.
what we really need is the ability to give the Presidential Office back line-item veto power
Score:3, Insightful
This should be Score:5, Funny! I absolutely burst out laughing when I read it. It took me a full minute before I could manage focus enough to read beyond that first sentence.
Bush veto the broadcast flag? Woohoo! I guess that would be right between vetoing a Defense of Marriage item and trimming troubling new police powers out of Patriot Act II Revenge of the Sith.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I thought everybody should know that you may have just slashdotted the United States Senate Appropriations Committee.
As of 10PM PST, six hours after news first leaked out, we've reached over 4550 messages sent to the 26 senators on the appropriations committee. The median number of emails and faxes per senator is 64; the average is 150.
Patty Murray (D-WA) received over 300 from her constituents on the Broadcast Flag. Kay Hutchison (R-TX) has received over 500 mails warning her of the controversial rider. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has over a thousand faxes sitting in her inbox telling her not to accept any Broadcast Flag amendment.
And that's not including the telephone calls, which are still continuing.
Hollywood's first chance to slip in an amendment will be at 2PM EST Tuesday, in the Commerce, Justice and Science. Their next opportunity will be the full committeee mark-up at 2PM EST Thursday.
We need to keep the pressure up, but I think it's fair to say that so far this rider is not slipping by unnoticed through the halls of Congress.
If you're in the states below, please call your senator.
COMMERCE, JUSTICE AND SCIENCE SUB-COMMITTEE AND FULL COMMITTEE MEMBERS
ALABAMA Senator Richard Shelby (202) 224-5744
ALASKA Senator Ted Stevens (202) 224-3004
HAWAII Senator Daniel Inouye (202) 224-3934
IOWA Senator Tom Harkin (202) 224-3254
KANSAS Senator Sam Brownback (202) 224-6521
KENTUCKY Senator Mitch McConnell (202) 224-2541
MARYLAND Senator Barbara Mikulski (202) 224-4654
MISSOURI Senator Christopher Bond (202) 224-5721
NEW HAMPSHIRE Senator Judd Gregg (202) 224-3324
NEW MEXICO Senator Pete Domenici (202) 224-6621
NORTH DAKOTA Senator Byron Dorgan (202) 224-2551
TEXAS Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (202) 224-5922
VERMONT Senator Patrick Leahy (202) 224-4242
WASHINGTON Senator Patty Murray (202) 224-2621
WISCONSIN Senator Herb Kohl (202) 224-5653
FULL COMMITTEE MEMBERS
MISSISSIPPI Thad Cochran (202) 224-5054
PENNSYLVANIA Arlen Specter (202) 224-4254
MONTANA Conrad Burns (202) 224-2644
UTAH Robert F. Bennett (202) 224-5444
IDAHO Larry Craig (202) 224-2752
OHIO Mike DeWine (202) 224-2315
COLORADO Wayne Allard (202) 224-5941
WEST VIRGINIA Robert C. Byrd (202) 224-3954
NEVADA Harry Reid (202) 224-3542
CALIFORNIA Dianne Feinstein (202) 224-3841
ILLINOIS Richard J. Durbin (202) 224-2152
SOUTH DAKOTA Tim Johnson (202) 224-5842
LOUISIANA Mary L. Landrieu (202) 224-5824
A TYPICAL CALL
"Hello, Senator _________'s office"
"Hi, I'm a constituent. I'm registering my opposition to
the broadcast flag amendment being introduced in the
Senate Commerce Justice and Science Appropriations
subcommittee mark-up on Tuesday, and in full committee on
Thursday."
(*** You can give your own reasons for opposing the flag
here. Here's a sample: ***)
"The Broadcast Flag cripples any device capable of
receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts. It give
Hollywood movie studios a permanent veto over how members
of the American public use our televisions. It forces
American innovators to beg the FCC for permission before
adding new features to TV. "
"This is an important issue which will affect all
Americans, and should not be inserted at the last moment,
with almost no debate."
"Please oppose the broadcast flag amendment. My name and
address are ___________________."
"Thank you for your time."
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