The RIAA's Halloween Tricks

deus42 writes "BoingBoing has an interesting article about a joint RIAA/MPAA move started yesterday on Capitol Hill. From the article: 'Hollywood has fielded a shockingly ambitious piece of Analog Hole legislation while everyone was out partying in costume. Under a new proposed Analog Hole bill, it will be illegal to make anything capable of digitizing video unless it either has all its outputs approved by the Hollywood studios, or is closed-source, proprietary and tamper-resistant. The idea is to make it impossible to create an MPEG from a video signal unless Hollywood approves it.'"

Comments

Re:Please Clue Stick Me

[DevNova]

The reason being that eventually, most if not all digital methods of transmittal will be controlled by DRM, and thus, the industry already has control of that. After that, it will still be possible to make copies via analog methods, and they want to make sure those copies don't wind up in some other digital, albeit slightly quality-degraded form.

Re:[pries] my analog hole from my cold, dead hands

[Fareq]

From Dictionary.com

prise

v 1: to move or force, especially in an effort to get something open; "The burglar jimmied the lock", "Raccoons managed to pry the lid off the garbage pail" [syn: pry, prize, lever, jimmy] 2: make an uninvited or presumptuous inquiry; "They pried the information out of him" [syn: pry] 3: regard highly; think much of; "I respect his judgement"; "We prize his creativity" [syn: respect, esteem, value, prize] [ant: disrespect]

That word can mean what he wanted it to mean.

What all non-RIAA, non-MPAA members should do

[Bad Boy Marty]

is go to your 3 elected representatives (in the US, each citizen is represented to the Federal Government by 2 Senators (per state; sorry, D.C. and Territories) and a Representative (per Congressional District)) -- seriously, call up their offices and arrange a face-to-face meeting -- explaining why any legislation that in any way restricts the current "fair use" of copyrighted material is so basically wrong. Join the EFF. Explain how all "survey papers" would be made illegal if this restriction of fair use is permitted (remember, as soon as it applies to one medium, it will shortly follow that it will apply to all media).

The MPAA & RIAA are both mired in a business model that is out of date, unfair to most of the participants, and robs blind all the consumers. Ask any so-called "indie" producer. We must put a stop to this.

Re:Broadcast Flag On Steroids, But So What?

[Software]

The broadcast flag was tossed out because the court found that the FCC did not have the authority to impose it. It was only a regulation; it was not a law passed by Congress and signed by the President. If the "A. Hole" bill passes and is signed, then the law will have to be proven unconstitutional. It won't be an unauthorized regulation like BF.

Re:I don't know which is more ridiculous...

[Grishnakh]

At least not until all electronic parts vendors require all purchases of each part to be bought in $1000 bulk purchases. And it's already happening: the only local vendor for a part to fix the power connector on my Joust machine would only sell to me if I bought $1000 worth of the part.

Go to mouser.com or digikey.com. They sell in small quantities and surely have far greater selections and far cheaper prices than any place local to you.

The parts will be kept in the hands of those trusted to assemble them into compliant devices. Individuals will still be able to get soldering irons and solder; just not anything to solder with them. (It will become harder and harder to harvest parts from existing devices as well. Entire circuit boards will be covered in black epoxy.)

Well that's just great; we can then kiss our entire electronics industry good-bye in this country. There's an enormous number of companies (most small ones) in this country that make and sell electronic devices using component parts. These items are designed in-house by engineers, and then prototyped, frequently with parts from Digi-Key and other such distributors, sold in small quantities. The prototypes are debugged, and then eventually the completed design is manufactured either in-house (if the company is large enough), or out-of-house by a contract manufacturer. I used to work as a component-level design engineer, doing schematic design and PCB layout at a small company, so I know a little about this.

Eliminate the ability to buy parts in small quantities and you wipe out virtually all prototyping of electronic designs. The effects of this on the economy are incalculable.

Re:See what happens when they "get it"

[rworne]

CDs and DVDs come with printing on them that they may not be re-sold for any reason now. Not only can we not utilize a CD in art, we can't edit it to a new form and re-sell it with the same profit rules that we apply to any other physical property. How exactly is this fair?

I always thought the doctrine of first sale prevented the "no resale" markings on CDs and DVDs.

I knew it was a bad omen when Japanese publishers started marking media (especially videogames) with the "No Resale" tag to kill the secondary (used) market about 4 or 5 years ago. One court case later, SoftMap loses against the publishers and "No Resale" becomes enforceable in Japan. What it means is that you need permission from the copyright holders to resell copyrighted goods. Fat chance getting this permission since the publishers/rights holders would rather sell an extra copy than allow a used copy to change hands.

Fast forward a couple years and now it's making appearances in the US too. Why am I not surprised?

Re:A bit more detail, please

[kbielefe]

house.gov is your friend. The hearing isn't actually scheduled until Thursday at 2:00 p.m. Basically, a draft of the proposed legislation was released yesterday by a lobbyist. A congressman hasn't even touched it except for maybe a few subcommittee members reading it in preparation for the hearing. It hasn't been sponsored, co-sponsored, introduced, or even mentioned in any congressional record. There are still a dozen roadblocks before this even comes close to becoming a law. A congressman actually has to endorse it, the subcommittee chair can kill it, the subcommittee can kill it, the committee chair can kill it, the committee can kill it, the speaker of the house can kill it, and the full house can kill it. And then the whole process must be repeated in the senate. And then the president must sign it. Yes, this is a horrible piece of legislation, but in my opinion it has a slim chance of passing.

And lest you think all lobbyists are evil, Public Knowledge and the Home Recording Rights Coalition will also be testifying at the hearing.

There are no representatives from my state (Arizona) on the committee, and they get so much correspondence that they essentially ignore anyone who is not their direct constituent, but if your congressman is on the list, then now is the time to let them know how you feel, especially if you are from Texas or California.

Re:I don't know which is more ridiculous...

[VP]

Tell me again when the DMCA was passed? Oh, right, 1998. Telecommunications act, which resulted in massive cosolidations and generally screwed users? Oh, right, 1996.

Yep, passed by a Republican Congress. The same shady individuals who are still running the legislative branch of the government....

Good News

[Overzeetop]

Representative Boucher (D-Virginia) is on this commitee. He is a strong opponent of the restrictions sought by the RIAA/MPAA. There will be at least one voice on the committee that will tell them where they can put their draft.