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Digital Content Security Act
bdwoolman writes "Congress is leaving a special gift under the tree for Hollywood's film industry. Just before closing for the holidays, legislators introduced a new proposal designed to curb redistribution of movies.The Digital Transition Content Security Act would embed anticopying technology into the next generation of digital video products. If it makes its way from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office and becomes law, the measure will outlaw the manufacture or sale of electronic devices that convert analog video signals into digital video signals, effective one year from its enactment. PC-based tuners and digital video recorders are listed among the devices."
I had a lot of respect for John Conyers. Unfortunately, with this bill, he's spent all his political capital in my eyes.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Is this going to affect services like Tivo?
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
There's no EFF action alert yet, and I can't find the bill's title to send a fax.
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Legislating away the "analog hole" has always been a wet dream for content owners. Until the consortium for the DRMed video interface previously mentioned on slashdot manages to screw us permanently, the signal will always be available, and this is just another attempt to jump the gun. Problem is, how are we supposed to edit video without a capture card?
Their sole job is to convert from analog to digital. Equally, what about devices like DVD recorders, transferring home movies to DVD, LP to CD, etc.
Seems the "analog hole" is about to get ripped a new one.
There is no bigger threat to technical innovation than this bill presents
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
There is a great imbalance in the corporate interested regarding fair use rights, and citizens need to make up the difference if we're going to keep this kind of legislation at bay, see below for our take on why digital rights have been steadily eroding recently.
http://www.neurosaudio.com/press/freedom.asp
If you're going through hell, keep going -Winston Churchill
Something must be missing in the inflamatory language of this article. Wouldn't this outlaw the digital to analog convertor for my television? You know, the one that the federal government is going to subsidize for me when we switch to digital television in 2009?
Someone has to be misreading this act.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
What a load of crap. The Australian 'sedition' laws are the same laws that have existed for decades, reworded a bit. Did you have secret police kicking your door down last year? Odds are good that you won't this year either.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
This stupid-ass law would also outlaw all high-speed analog to digital convertors as well. GNU Radio has demonstrated HDTV reception off broadcast radio using such hardware. Why are we allowing our legislators to even consider laws which regulate computers to protect media? The computer industry is WAY larger than the media industry. Hell, computer games alone have greater revenue than movies.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
In Soviet America Analog Holes You!
Unfortunately, it seems that the Americans have been easy targets as of late. Many other nations are struggling with similar issues. I in no way condone piracy, however a default deny policy works much better in networks then it does in media laws. Banning the use of such converters may only prop up the ailing media distribution chains for a short while. These models will need to change in the near future to remain relevant. Hell WILL freeze over before I submit my home movies to Sony to convert to digital for me and charge 1000x the value of the product - for all I know it will be placed on a Blu-Ray Disc that is not readable on my PC.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
This has the potential to wreck havoc with consumers. Say I'm trying to tape my kid's birthday party and a DVD is playing in the background. Or I'm trying to tape something and someone blares music at the same time with the signal. What will happen? Will my video camera refuse to record because an analog signal is embedded in the DVD soundtrack? I think this is a very bad idea that will anger a lot of consumers. It will do little, if anything, to curb copyright infringement. For people that record movies in theaters it will just mean that they'll use older equipment or find some other way around it. Also, a lot of those movies come out of foreign countries which have no such restrictions.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
This is move made by an organization that is desperate to avoid losing control. They are evil people, who think only of themselves and what they want at the expense of hundreds of millions of others. In many ways, they are like terrorists. While defenders of freedom must stop them at every turn, they only have to succeed once with a crime like this to hurt everyone. Like terrorists, they can only survive as long as most people support them or don't care. Before the Internet, this was easy as they controlled every means of getting information out. With the Internet, people who see them for what they are will speak out uncontrollably and they will be destroyed once and for all.
The end is coming for them. They know it. And because they both powerful and evil, they will hurt many many people before they are brought to economic justice. I will celebrate the day the MPAA and RIAA are dissolved when their last member goes bankrupt for the rest of my life.
As the New Fascism steadily materializes into reality, even when Shirow-style Orcs with machine guns stalk the streets, television and movie content aren't going to vanish. Heck no! Look around you. Look at the intensity of the posts just in this article; The unanimous outcry, (on Slashdot??) is evidence of something. . .
--You can start up fake wars which starve, burn and shred thousands of little kids, you can steal entire elections, and you can poison everybody with bad medicine and bad food, and the populace will take it all without much more than a whimper. But if you try to take away their picture shows. . ? Man, watch out!
The opiate of the masses is only truly beyond necessity when societal control has been utterly locked into place; when all the gates have fallen and most everyone has been safely processed into tasty meat products.
So don't worry about your little television picture shows. They'll be around for a while yet. Heck, if you try to turn them off, the most surprising people will expend great effort in trying to sign you up again for free. No joke! Just try canceling your cable and watch what happens. It's truly amazing.
So this legislation is just a small twist on a much longer road. A dumb distraction. One way or another, you will be force-fed media unless you very actively close your ears and eyes.
-FL
The gulibility and/or insincerity of Congress- and Mr. Conyers- on this is pretty alarming (hey kind of like iraq! Close the analog hole John! Your consituents will be greeting you with flowers, thanking you for saving their favorite programs!) At least George Bush is throwing my freedoms in the trash so he can fail to protect me from terrorists. Mr. Conyers & Co. are throwing them in the trash so that ABC can fail to prevent bittorrents of Deperate Housewives.
There is one simple reason why this is a bad idea: this legislation will not prevent a single act of piracy. This whole act is based upon a fantasy that only the media industry, blinded by self-interest, honestly believes. The fact is you won't close the analog hole until the day you DRM light. Any single act of 'astronomically' expensive piracy is not preventable. With millions and millions of people coming to own TVs and computers in the developing world and none of them able to afford a library of $13 cds and $18 dvds, the resources devoted to organized piracy will be enourmous. This legislation will stop 0% of this and these bootlegs will make their way onto the internet all the same.
Even if organized piracy stopped tomorrow, it only takes one person to defeat this silly protection scheme and make the whole thing moot. This will happen regardless of whether there are ludicrous laws that restrict what questions a person can ask or what they are allowed to learn about a product they bought and paid for.
Yes, the recording industry has a right to say how their content is used, and when they start making electronic devices they can make them however they fucking want to. But if the prospect of telling an entire industry how they can and can not design their products doesn't send a chill down Mr. Conyer's spine- products that until now where things that people actually wanted- well then Mr. Conyers you have no respect for free markets.
Mr Conyers needs to know that it isn't the goverment that isn't changing fast enough, it's the media industry. The world that industry grew up in is GONE and taking away American freedoms isn't going to change that. We might as well pass a law to make the earth rotate the other way because Jack Valenti doen't like the way the water swirls when he flushes the toilet.
Not enough people going to movies (for reasons other than them sucking)? Maybe update the technology used to show them- it hasn't changed much in DECADES, even though consumer electronics, which this bill would hobble, are making leaps every single year. Which side would you want making the rules?
The fact of the matter is that, while unstoppable, piracy is usually a little bit inconvenient. Instead of making it more of a hassle for legitimate users, try making it LESS of one. Charge a resonable price too, U2's latest album isn't a priceless work of art for gods sake. If you do this, people will give you their money, and if they don't they probably just don't have any, so stop pretending like it's some big loss. That's really what iTunes did: $.99 & no 2 hour wait on Kazaa => $$$$$.
Anyway, dream on- action like that would cost money- or worse yet, would require an admission that they aren't quite sure what to do in this new era. Better buy another law instead!
Congress is just feeding these people's delusions. They won't change until they absolutely have to. Why haven't they figured this out?
Well anyway, thanks John! I'll make sure I remember this when you've turned my TV into fucking HAL 9000- oh and on election day too.
Does it apply only to video and audio? If not will this outlaw any computer used to recieve and process faxes? How about the equipment that converts audio into text for the deaf? Analog to digital conversion is required for that equipment to work. Knowing the techo-illiterate congress we have they will probably pass a law so vague that it criminalizes everyone.
/sarcasm :p
Of course the RIAA will have Homeland Security chasing after every violater of the law because by then they will have made a case that IP is a national security issue.
\sarcasm