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Broadcast Flag Back in Congress
Tyler Too writes "When the broadcast flag was smacked down in court, it was only a matter of time before the MPAA tried to ram it through Congress. The first attempt in June failed, but the EFF reports that they are gearing up for another try. From Ars Technica's write-up: 'This latest attempt involves tacking on an amendment to a budget reconciliation bill. Since reconciliation is about cutting spending--something that always sounds good--such legislation cannot be substantially changed by the Budget Committee once it is presented, nor can it be filibustered.' Looks like it's a good time to call your congressman."
From the post: This latest attempt involves tacking on an amendment to a budget reconciliation bill. Since reconciliation is about cutting spending--something that always sounds good--such legislation cannot be substantially changed by the Budget Committee once it is presented...
So, the MPAA is now taking the route on total non-representation. Their initial approach obviously was non-representational/non populist and of course they have their own greedy self-motivation. That's okay, you can petition the government for legislation, and for protection. But they lost that battle and now look to win the war with their own Trojan Horse, a virus if you will (how ironic). The thing I find MOST egregious and offensive about this is they are sneaking their agenda in under the radar in a bill totally unrelated to their issue and likely to be passed. Normally this is a technique to snag pork for legislators and representatives, a sleezy technique for allocating money. But this is more pernicious and evil -- where the intent is to screw the entire entertainment consuming public (virtually everyone). What a crock.
...Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority in mandating that all consumer electronic devices capable of receiving digital television signals incorporate support for the flag, the media industry has been working on getting Congress to enact the flag.
Wow, all consumer devices capable of receiving digital television signals? That is very open ended legislation. I hope this only applies to over-the-air signals? Even so, I think it's too much.
Bradley Holt
When you write to your representatives and senators, be sure to include the key point that the EFF leaves out:
These laws, when combined with the DMCA, take power away from congress and give it to anybody. Corporations, and individuals alike. Even if they're not US citizens or US based. Congress should reserve the power to grant rights for intellectual property creators for themselves, instead of giving a blank law-making check to content industries.
Make sure you tell your congresspeople that they are giving power reserved for them by the Constitution to whomever wants to wield it.
bah this is awful.
but more importantly, how can we help stop it? does sending an email from a web form to your congressman do anything? i feel like i'm sending my requests into a black hole deeper than a hotmail feature request form.
does anyone know what the best way to get our views out is? should we call/email/write?
-- lol pwned
...I think that whenever a device includes broadcast flag support, there should be the option to block any program that includes it. If they don't want me to watch their show, then I don't want to watch it.
It says senate reconcilliation bill, but says "call your congressman". Should we call our senators or house member?
And then they wonder why we think politicians suck....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
You know, I'm a believer in copyright, and the rights of the copyright owners to make a living from their works - and I've been in more than a few debates in the on-line world where my opinion has been decidedly unpopular.
I've gotta say, though, over time I've been getting more and more quiet - and less inclined to defend the point-of-view of the *AA, whose positions I respected (even if I disagreed with many of their tactics).
I'm already at the point where I'm beginning to fully support DRM-cracking tools and software. They're becoming the only tools consumers have to defend their legitimate rights.
The opinion above is fiction. Any similarity to real opinions, including facts and logic, is purely coincidental.
What the hell are you talking about? CNN.Com is still on Katrina- and word is that *maybe* the dead will hit 2000 once they find them all, certainly NOT the 20,000 many feared. Rita had a death toll in the hundreds. Certainly not the worst natural disaster in history- or even this year, as the Indian Ocean Tsunami took 100,000 lives.
I'm not saying it wasn't bad- and I've got my own wishes for persecution of government officials, both local and federal, for their crimes against the people during this disaster. But it doesn't help very much claiming that it happened today or 20,000 people died.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
This has already happened, witness the "Real ID Act". Ostensibly to streamline drivers' licenses, this act is described as "To establish and rapidly implement regulations for State driver's license and identification document security standards, to prevent terrorists from abusing the asylum laws of the United States, to unify terrorism-related grounds for inadmissibility and removal, and to ensure expeditious construction of the San Diego border fence.' It was attached to HR 1268, which was a nescessary spending bill to fund troops in Iraq. No one has woke up yet it apears.
Seriously. Can't MPAA understand that skiping broadcast-flag is as simple as bring a single circuit board from outside US? DMCA is only valid in US, until now, and a passthrough to ignore broadcast-flag is very easy to implement.
Even if US enforces DMCA to other countries (in CAFTA, for example), I have serious doubts that third-world countries will be able to have a serious fiscalization.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
As far as I can tell HDCP already prevents you from recording a pure digital source. While the broadcast flag could be ignored, HDCP continuously negotiates between the input and output device to decode realtime picture display. Without an HDCP compliant output device using HDMI or DVI the output is not usuable, which effectively makes it a very hard nut to crack. It will be a very effective form of High Definition DRM once component output is done away with.
It can costs tens of millions to get a federal politician elected. This means that politicians needs financial backers. These financial backers expect favours in return, often in the form of pork. Since getting even a single piece of legislation through is difficult, pork is best delivered as an amendment to a piece of completely unrelated legislation that is already well on its way to being passed.
No unrelated amendments = less pork = less money for politicians.
Whadya trying to do, screw up the whole system?
I've come to the conclusion that the president should personally call out the offending pork loader when he vetoes the bill. Post on the white house website what a moron senator X is for ruining a good bill. If we've got 50 24 hour news channels, why not put them to use for ridculing politicians.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
How is it even possible or legal that this type of legislation can be appended to a bill who's purpose doesn't even come close to the flag proposal? It's not much of a stretch to view this as trojan legislation.
I'm no lawyer, congressman, what-have-you; can anyone out there shed some light on how this is OK? Does it stand on precedent alone (others have done it)? We see it all the time. It doesn't make sense that something as non-topical to cutting spending as the broadcast flag could be introduced this way...
In the courts, if your claim is denied and you bring the same claim again, it will be denied immediately because it is a thing decided ("res judicata").
In congress, if your request is denied and you bring the same request again, it will require more contributions.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Beyond writing to Rep. Sanders and Sen. Jeffords, since I suspect Sen. Leahy is one of those backing this MESS, I need to think about practical considerations.
I've been thinking of a pending hdtv card, planning to buy before the broadcast flag came into effect. Last spring when the courts threw out the FCC's ability to impose the broadcast flag, I shelved my plans. Keep in mind that I have no other hdtv hardware or services, and this is just a hedge against the future. Even without the other hardware, I want the non-broadcast-flag hdtv card while I can still get it, because someday I will have hdtv hardware/services.
So does anyone have a clue when Son of Broadcast Flag will rear it's ugly head?
What's the new deadline to buy an hdtv card?
Can anyone comment on preferences between pchdtv-3000 and air2pc (or any others) for use with MythTV?
Honestly, this is about rights of corporations vs rights of people. With this congress and this administration, I expect to lose. I'll fight in the meantime, but I also plan to make preparations to lose.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
This was my letter to my congresscritters, for all the good it will do.
Although my direct concern is Congress once again allowing industry to set law (the so-called 'Broadcast Flag'), my issue goes beyond that item.
It is far past the time to make it unconstitutional to add unrelated items to bills. It's primary use is deceit, along with the plausible deniability of claiming it was 'snuck' in at the last minute. A secondary effect is pork, which, with the current National Debt, we hardly need.
I urge each of you to sponsor and support legislation towards this end.
And PLEASE stop letting special interest groups in this country virtually write their own laws. That is NOT what our founding fathers had in mind for this country. How about considering "we, the people" for a change???
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Instead of blaming the legislative process, which has been virtually unchanged for over 200 years, why don't you blame the legislators?
The term "snuck into bills" is misleading. After a bill is reported out of committee, amendments must be offered on the floor during the Committee of the Whole. There's nothing secret or sneaky about it.
1) digital cable weren't so overpriced.
2) more stations provided on demand content. 3) content available on demand is available for longer periods (not just a month)
I think the problem goes deeper than just wanting people to buy dvds and watch shows in syndication. Eventually we will see more of #2 as broadband speeds increase and make it possible because most people would rather pick what AND when they consume content rather than have schedules dictated by television stations. The problem with DVRs is that they prevent stations from being able to charge for "on demand". Its silly to pay an extra X dollars PER month when they can pay a 1-time cost of the DVR.
Now as for DVRs needing to wait for the show to air before being able to deliver you the content, shows that are aired on a weekly basis are only available on demand AFTER thier original showing. "On demand" will only get you access to shows your DVR missed or are being rebroadcast.
Not that I disagree with you, but if you could explain how the consitiution, if enforced, would be adequate (with or without extra "law(s)" or (an) "amendment(s)"
It required amendments to make the Constitution's intent explicit, but fortunately they both were passed two centuries ago.
Unfortunately, Amendment IX is practically unenforceable because while everyone can agree that there are human rights not explicitly protected by the Consitution, nobody entirely agrees on which rights those are. Amendment X is theoretically enforceable, but hasn't been enforced in so long that it's probably too late to start now; no Supreme Court Justice wants to be the guy who says "Hey, did you guys notice that most of the federal laws on the books are unconstitutional?"
I think the important difference (besides possibly not being struck down by the Supreme Court ;) is that it offers a compromise solution. By being able to approve the bill - as intended - and reject the graft, the President has the ability to put the onus back on Congress.
If it's a "must pass" bill (such as is typically used for the slimiest of these tricks) and the President says "sure, I'll pass it, but hold the side of pork", it is then up to Congress to 'justify' the pork. The same circumstances that make it difficult for the President to reject such bills now then gets turned back around on Congress. They might be willing to pull 'routine' bills with attached pork, but it would be hard to stall e.g. disaster relief just because their toys got taken away.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
They dont list any sources other than a vague reference to a "reconciliations bill" due in October, and none of my googling and searching http://thomas.loc.gov/ can find the bill in question. I'd like to see a source for this concern, and until then it's all just smoke and mirrors or whatever the phrase is...
All this stuff is very useless. I have hundreds of gigs of mp3 files and cd's are really cheap nowadays. So after I burn and listen to a CD a while and get bored of it I leave it in a friendly spot like a bus stop or on a mailbox, etc. They can try and try and try to force this broadcast flag but one hacked piece of hardware is enough to unlock the entire thing. As digital TV quality goes up the ability to tape right off the screen gets better and better (analog hole), not so many years ago in the telecine room film motion pictures were projected onto screens and recorded with a video camera to port movies to television. The quality might be a few percentages below the "digital realm" but who really cares? MP3's sound a little off but obviously the millions of itunes users aren't total audiophiles. I mean, they are today paying for a non-digitally-perfect representation of a song, and for some reason the recording industry feels that people would not be willing to trade non digitally perfect copies of movies or songs. It really doesn't make a lot of sense.
The definition of a patriot is a person that is willing to die in the defence of their country.
Regardless of his reasoning being right, or wrong, he felt that his country was at risk and took action. In the process laying his life on the line, for his country.
That would qualify him as a patriot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A number of presidents have vetoed relief/aid bills in the past. I used to have a number of them collected in my quotations list, but I lost that when I reformatted my machine and the backup failed. I believe one was Teddy Roosevelt, concerning a draught in Texas - but that's purely from memory so I may be wrong. Personally I like Col. David Crockett's "Not Yours To Give" speech on the floor of the House.
Constitutionally Correct
Then it's settled, all we need is another organization that will propose some law no one will vote for to kill any bill the MPAA or RIAA get their hands on. A marijuana legalization law tacked onto this bill would be enough to sink it good, then repropose the original version of the bill clean of the MPAA/RIAA proposal and have it passed immediately (assuming it would have passed the first time).