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Bill Would Outlaw Digital Receiver Recorders
mjdroner writes "ZD-Net has the latest on a sweeping telecom bill in the Senate. The bill provides no support for net neutrality. The bill does, however, include a provision to authorize the FCC to outlaw digital receivers that record broadcasts. The article states that those receivers would be replaced with devices that treat anything with an audio broadcast flag as copy-protected."
send rational letters and email to your reps; not that they will listen, but so they know folks are paying attention. -dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Every time this legislation comes up it gets thrown out. Why doesn't the MPAA embrace technology rather than buying off Congressmen and sneaking this line item into every damn piece of proposed legislation?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Bill Would Outlaw Digital Receiver Recorders
Is there anything Bill wouldn't either outlaw or make compulsory? I'm getting really sick of that guy.
So the FCC is going to replace my mythtv box with a new system? Are they planning to do this just after they confiscate all the firearms from the public?
"These measures will help assure that the information superhighway does not turn into a red light district," Exon said at the time. "It will help protect children from being exposed to obscene, lewd, or indecent messages."
Yeah, that worked out so well.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
The Fellas At The Freakin' FCC Song
Peter: They will clean up all your talking in a matter such as this
Brian: They will make you take a tinkle when you want to take a p*ss
Stewie: And they'll make you call fellatio a trouser-friendly kiss
Peter, Brian, & Stewie: It's the plain situation!
There's no negiotiation!
Peter: With the fellows at the freakin FCC!
Brian: They're as stuffy as the stuffiest of the special interest groups...
Peter: Make a joke about your bowels and they order in the troops
Stewie: Any baby with a brain could tell them everybody poops!
Peter, Brian, & Stewie: Take a tip, take a lesson!
You'll never win by messin'
Peter: With the fellas at the freakin' FCC
And if you find yourself with some you sexy thing
You're gonna have to do her with your ding-a-ling
Cause you can't say penis!
So they sent this little warning they're prepared to do the worst
Brian: And they stuck it in your mailbox hoping you could be co-erced
Stewie: I can think of quite another place they should have stuck it first!
Peter, Brian, & Stewie: They may just be neurotic
Or possible psychotic
They're the fellas at the freakin FCC!
Developers: We can use your help.
to keep buying congresspeople off. If they keep trying one day they will win.
Vote in a Democratic Congress this fall.
The President will veto anything they put together and they'll refuse to pass anything the president tries to put through.
With luck, we won't have any more new laws until 2008.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
My question to you would be: why would the MPAA embrace technology, when instead they can just buy off Congressmen and sneak this line item into every damn piece of proposed legislation?
Sure, it hasn't passed so far. All they have to do is keep trying.
Holy Crap! They actualy agree that I should be able to share recorded TV shows over my home networks? That has got to be the most reasonable thing I've seen from the gov't in AGES. It's got to be a mistake on their part right?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Anyone who voted Republicrat or Democan, shut up and go sit on the sidelines.
You've already demonstrated that you want an intrusive, activist government, you have no room to complain now. You ASKED FOR THIS.
If you don't want this, vote straight Libertarian this election and every election thereafter.
______________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
When some clever corporation figures out a way to turn a profit by sticking babies on pikes, a pliant US Congress stands ready to make it legal -- and to keep private citizens from doing it themselves.
All the actual baby piking will be done overseas by non-union workers, of course.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
You know, I'm starting to think that broadcast television, motion pictures and recorded music might not be worth all this trouble.
Perhaps it's time to start enjoying live plays and musical performances again. Seriously, my digital entertainment is video games and documentaries. I am starting to think the unthinkable: maybe I can live without TV and Movies.
People will continue to create entertainment and education for download right? Oh, right...Unless network neutrality is abolished and my provider decides that I can't access this freely created content.
I wonder, is it time that I start figuring out how to set up a HAM-based Internet connection?
That's what the history books will record. Corporate interests stifled freedom and creativity so much that the companies pushing this CRIPPLED new technology actually were not able to find buyers and more and more ANALOG-based innovation continued.
... UNLESS THEY GIVE ME AN EXTRA DEVICE FOR FREE. WHEN THE MPAA PROVIDES MY FLATSCREEN, TUNER, AND PVR AND ALL SUPPORT AND MAINTENANCE, I'LL GLADLY ACCEPT THEIR CONTENT UNDER THEIR TERMS.
Expect to see more digital-to-analog converters, more people paying *LESS* to get ANALOG cable TV, more people less willing to pay extra for HDTV, more people happy to have analog-based PVRs and not have their recorded sports games automatically erased, or see messages from pay movie channels that state this content cannot be recorded.
I, for one, am in NO HURRY WHATSOEVER to purchase any digital tv devices.
We need a cool catchy name for Analog TV - something like Fair use TV or unencumbered TV.
We need a crummy name for HDTV - something like Restricted use TV.
The MPAA is ready to fall on their swords for forced digital rights - they seem to not see any way to profit that doesn't involve controlling every device between them and me. I'll be damned if I'm going to give up control of my devices to the MPAA or RIAA.
Would that be like, "a computer"?
Newsflash: There's no hardware unique to a TiVo.
They'd have to outlaw PC's for this bill to work.
Let them try. It will be a death sentence for every commercially manufactured, dedicated PVR. And the birth of some truly wonderful opensource software.
Sounds good to me.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
What would happen if Congress tried to pass some Net Neutrality Law? Since there isn't any kind of ACTUAL problem now, I'm sure the bill would undoubtedly screw stuff up through the law of unintended consequences.
Congress would insert all kinds of special provisions that would benefit some group at the expense of others, all kinds of new technology would become illegal, and lawsuits would proliferate. Who knows what would happen, the point is that when congress acts on technology (eg. the DMCA) they are likely to create a huge mess and things better be PRETTY DAMN bad before Congress can do more good than harm.
Does anyone have suggestions of a device that will do this before the law is passed?
-------
Bite Me Fanboy!!
I hate to say this, But the end is near for media as we know it. This will eventually pass. And when it does pass, then it gives ground for breakage of the Sony vs Paramount law that allowed us to have a Betamax or VHS deck in our homes. Once they can successfully get that law overturned, then anyone caught with contraband such as recorded movies on tapes, or disks that are not commerially produced, will be subject to jail time and a substantial monitary damage award. If you think things are bad now, wait until they mandate that all "grandfathered" commercially produced media is now illegal to own or posess, and that you are required to deliver that material to a drop off site for recycling. Oh; and you don't get reimbersed for the money you spent on it either.
Just remember;
You voted these bozo's into office in the first place.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Uhm... it's a bill... in the Senate... My point wasn't that misarticulated.. was it?
Thinking about voting Libertarian? Check out Critiques of Libertarianism before you drink the cool-aide
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Bruce Perens warned us all this would happen 6 years ago in his "Napster Hurts Free Software" essay.
Am I the only one that thought the article summary was talking about this Bill?
God is dead -- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead -- God
Zombie Nietzsche lives! -- Zombie Nietzsche
The libertarian party seems to embrace intellectual protectionism as much as anyone else. Look at many of their candidates and leaders to know for sure that they are as gung ho on it as Dems or Reps.
As someone who doesn't illegally steal material, I'm starting to find all this DRM stuff annoying.
For example: I bought the latest Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth, only to discover that you can only play it on a PC through a proprietary software player (assuming your OS can run it, of course). That player sucks, and does annoying things like messing up my computer's volume levels. I haven't tried personally, but I'm reliably informed that it won't work in some car CD players as well.
The point here is that what I bought was marketed as a CD. It was right there on the shelf in the CD section, next to other CDs, with nothing obviously saying that it wasn't. To be fair, there might have been a note about whether or not you could play it on PCs visible in the small print– I can't remember and don't have it with me to check. But who reads all the small print when buying a CD?
Now, the word "Compact disc" is a trademark of Philips (as indicated by the funny symbol), as is the "CD" logo you see on all the cases. Philips officially denies permission to use that mark to companies using technology that prevents playing the disc properly on standard equipment. Therefore, anyone marketing the material in the manner that I saw it (be it a record shop, the music publishers, or wherever) is infringing on Philips' rights, and deserves to be sued to high heaven for it.
It's a shame Philips doesn't go after this more aggressively, because preventing this kind of bastardization of a mark is exactly what trademark law was made for. I'd imagine that if all record shops were suddenly required to separate out normal and copy-protected CDs in an obvious way, sales of the latter would probably drop ASAFP, and the problem would disappear just as fast. I can only assume that since everyone's doing it, they want a clear test case in their favor first to make it quick, easy, and most of all cheap to follow up with others. Maybe they're looking for such a test case and just waiting to make their move. Maybe they just don't care, but as one of the world's biggest manufacturers of CD/DVD burners, that seems unlikely.
Anyway, the gist of this comment is that I really haven't bought a new CD since that album. I was always selective, but I did buy a few every few months or so until that point. They've really have lost a genuine, paying customer. I don't find the loss has ruined my life; I listen to the radio if I want to hear some new music, and occasionally use a legal download service if I really like a track I've heard. Now I'm a living own-goal for the media industry's DRM technology. Anyone else?
I don't mean to troll, but it seems to me that if the MPAA and RIAA had their way, we wouldn't listen to music or watch tv at all. At least not in the manner to which we've become accustomed.
Why would I bother buying an expensive recorder if it couldn't record all of the content I might like to record? Why would I watch tv or listen to the radio if I couldn't later share the experience with friends and family?
And I'm less likely to watch tv in the first place if I can't share a funny clip with friends later. Take the Simpsons, for example. Often times I'll want to replay a clip of Homer doing something stupid for a friend. But if the MPAA has their way, I wouldn't be able to do this.
Or take talk radio. My wife and I were riding along listening to talk radio when a traffic situation caused her to focus on the road. So naturally, she's lost a little bit of context and remarked that she'd like to rewind the radio to catch what she missed. Of course, you can't do this now with a car stereo, nor will you ever if the RIAA has their way.
I've noticed that my media consumption habits have changed. It used to be that I would buy several CD's a year; I don't think I've bought one in the last two years. Yes, I suppose I could easily bypass the copy protection, but why bother. If the record label is such a jerk that they attempt to keep control of what I now rightfully own, then they can keep their shiny plastic and I'll keep my money. No sense in encouraging scumbags anyway.
And why would I bother paying Hollywood for movies that I won't be able to enjoy in the future? My uncle has a few thousand decaying VHS tapes which he won't be able to play 10 years from now. And of course, with the DRM on DVDs and thanks to the DMCA, when DVDs are obsolete, you will lose your investment. At least my uncle could copy VHS to DVD. But how long would that last when the next generation players enforce DRM?
So I've kind of given up on Hollywood and Big Music. It seems that they've become to wrapped up in their own hubris to realize that crippling content doesn't add to the value of the product. And yet, their stockholders continue to buy the old mantra, "Piracy is killing our business..." It's not piracy - it's lack of value. Why would a consumer buy something they legally can't own? The **AAs haven't figured out the American vision of entertainment is much different from their own. Americans:
By contrast, the RIAA and MPAA envision this model of consumer enjoyment:
So, even those of us who would be otherwise honest must face a decision:
So, is tv relevant anymore? Not when I can't enjoy it. Same for music and video - I'm enjoying public domain works now and independent stuff that I glean from the Net. Yes, I can afford to pay for my content, but why would I pay if I can't own it anyway?
The RIAA/MPAA can't seem to understand that individual ownership and the rights that come with it are a fundamental part of selling content. If you don't want to give up control, don't sell the content.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
that money can buy in the United States. Seriously, look no further than the DMCA, a piece of legislation introduced by the long brain dead Orrin Hatch that is so vaguely written that anything is illegal if a corporation doesn't like it.
How does this happen? Why with money of course!
It's proof positive that EVERY law written in this country needs to have a sunset date of one or two years when it's reconsidered for renewal.
What I would suggest is for you to find ways to use these laws for your benefit. It's not just for corporations.
Here's an example, it's illegal for travel agents to get together and collude, it's against the Sherman Anti-Trust act. They should be able to band together and do whatever the hell they want. I started a travel agents mailing list that after a year had been infiltrated by members of the airline industry. The solution? Start a new one, this time started with a core group of trusted people and any new agents would have to be recommended by a current member and seconded by another. Next, protect the list under provisions of the DMCA, so if a travel vendor happened to get their hands on a transmission, they would be in violation because of the DMCA.
Here's the payoff: Delta gives 10% off their fares to a particular mega agency in Chicago and American gives 10% off their fares to another large regional agency in Atlanta (one of several ticketing deals that agencies have around the country). This wonderful set up allows the agency in Chicago and Atlanta to talk and they ticket each other's discounts helping each other to not only give cheaper deals but to meet their requirements for a nice big fat override check from the airline every year.
Is this fair? No, but then again paying travel agents no comission isn't either. You CAN make a difference folks, stop bitching and be creative. These laws are written for you, bit e back.
As long as the new cards being sold are compliant the MPAA will be happy. The old ones will break or become obsolete soon enough. If they're smart they'll make it a felony to buy or sell these and troll on ebay.
I'm sure there will be a way around it. Driver mods or offshore software. That doesn't mean it isn't evil.
Man, you really need that seminar!
I recently went 3 years with no tv / movies. It was fine. Now I watch some tv, but mostly just in the background while I read or play games. It's pretty easy to live without TV. The wierdest part was not knowing any of the common cultural references. People would talk about shows or commercials and I'd not seen any of them.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Who needs'em anyhow, right? *sigh*
The internet has made the Independent music production market a level-playing field.
It has also made the Commercial music production industry work that much harder to produce music that doesn't suck. *obviously they are not up for such a challenge*
The commercial music industry (along with the movie industry) wants EVERYONE to think that piracy is KILLING them (like, physically, whhhhhaaaa), when in fact, it has nothing to do with piracy, it has to do with the quality of their product(s) *or lack thereof* that is killing them.
Since independent artists can't really afford to lobby these brain/heart-less politicians, we will now fall victim to the Commercial Industry's cut-throat lobbyist tactics.
This has nothing to do w/ preventing piracy, this has everything to do with preventing independent artists from continuing to compete with commercial artists.
Yet another reason to stop lobbyism in America!
#SGVLUG (irc.freenode.net)
so, even though people have been recording things on audio cassettes for decades, now that people are doing it digitally in smaller numbers (it takes some technical knowhow), all of a sudden they want to outlaw the recorders?
I think that copy protection schemes are overwhelmingly proving the idea of self-fulfilling prophecies by pushing more people into illegality. It seems like a great premise of the whole freedom thing is trusting people to do what's right in a situation, and not forcing them to do what is right by removing access to legitimate resources. Just my two cents.
Not only do they stop "piracy" but they keep the means for making digital media from becoming too cheap. The reason is this, in practical terms the corporation will cease to manufacture digital recorders (or operating systems?) for "consumers" and will enable these features on on multi-thousand dollar "professional" level equipment. After all we can't let the rabble have an independent media and report things the corporations don't want us to know right? Fortunately I can always keep Tiger on my OS X G5 box, or put Linux on a generic box, but watch "consumer" level (cheap) digital recorders and OSs (end to end encryption ring a bell) fade out not, for technical reasons but so the corporations can gain ever more control on what content is made and how it's distributed.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
A few more steps, and they will be on the dark side ...
This is a total joke. Almost ALL of the legislations that are proposed or pass the U.S. congress has something to do with 'copyright'. This is a total outrage. It seems like U.S. consists of nothing but copyright olders and the serfs who has to pay for their 'copy' 'rights'.
Somebody has to stop this.
Read radical news here
Vote in a Democratic Congress this fall.
You mean the same ones who tried to blokc a bill recently because it did not grant the FCC enough power to regulate telecom net neutrality issues? The same FCC that wants the broadcast flag (as evidenced by this bill).
The FCC should not have any more power, period. Vote for Senators who do not want to give the FCC power, REGARDLESS of what party they hail from.
Vote based on the individual, not the party.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think you missed the benefits of 'preferential voting'. Essentially it means:
'I'll vote for this guy, but if he doesn't get in then
I'll vote for her, but if she doesn't get in then
I'll vote for them.. etc'
To use an example from the previous US election, one could vote for (say) Ralph Nader, but preference John Kerry. (Yeah, yeah, so I'm left-of-centre). With preferential voting, you're not wasting your vote, even though Nader will probably not get in. Rather, you're sending Kerry a message that you don't really approve of his policies, but just prefer him to the Other Guy. The crux is, that your vote still goes to Kerry.
Another benefit, is that minor parties can allocate their own preferences. So one could just vote for (say) Nader, and he could negotiate his preferences with the major parties. This would give him leverage in the policy development of the major parties in the lead-up to the election. It also makes people more inclined to vote for minor parties, because they know it's not a 'wasted vote'.
That's the system we have in Australia, and I think it works really well. I think it's absolutely essential if we're to encourage multiple parties (even if they're minor parties).
A while back I read a study reported on in the economist, that looked at what the effects of the legislative branch being controlled by one party and the executive branch by another. The only legislation that it curtailed were big controversial changes (say socialisation of health care). However, it was also noticed that pork spending increased dramatically, apparently because it was used as a bargaining chip to get one side to agree to the others legislation. I'll post a link to the study later if I can find it.
Furthermore, both parties are on the side of increasingly stringent "intellectual property" legisation. They are both in favor of continually increasing penalties in general, to appear "tough on crime", without concern for making the punishment match the crime, or the diminishing returns on decreasing crime. They both are in favor of throwing our rights away to "protect us from terrorism". They are both in favor of huge pork spending that benifits the industries in the area.
I am not saying that both parties are the same - they are vastly different in many of their views. But in the areas where they do differ, there is rarely enough support to bring those ideas to fruition, so the differences have less practical effect then you would think. It is the areas that they agree that have the biggest effects on our lives, and their views in those areas are frightening.
The answer is to get more third party candidates that have respect for our rights elected into congress. Speaking of which, Michael Badnarik is running for congress and has a decent chance of winning. Who is elected to congress effects us all, and he could certainly use some help letting the people of his district know what he stands for.
Now I'll be the first to tell you that I don't agree with the libertarians on everthing, and the idea of a government controlled entirely by libertarians is almost as frightening to me as the one we have now. But I also know that's not going to happen overnight. What matters in a candidate is not thier idea of the perfect government - what matters is what direction they are going to take us in over the next 4 years. I may not like the libertarian's final destination, but compared to the major parties, I love the direction they're going, and I have no problem riding that train till it's time to jump off.
From now on I'm voting for every third party candidate I can find that supports my rights, regardless of thier views on social spending, regulation or anything else, because if we loose our rights then none of that other stuff will matter.
I don't think you understand proportional representation. PR has nothing to do with equalizing demographic segments; rather, proportional representation ensures that within a certain state, if 40% of people vote for one party, 40% of the members from that party will be elected... it means that gerrymandering within a first past the post electoral system would effectively be over.
n tation
I think you should read up a little bit more. This is a good primer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_represe
Of course, with only two political parties and a political system that forces voters to register as members of either, it is less effective. How to fix that? Bring back civics classes and engage the public. How to do that in the US? Don't ask me. I think you guys are fscked.
Urban Detail
I think what he most likely meant was that rather than there being a certain number of districts per state, the seats would be divided based on the vote across the entire state. For example, if a state has 10 House seats, and the state votes, say, 40% Republican, 40% Democrat, and 10% independent, then there would be four Republicans, four Democrats, and one independent. This would basically eliminate gerrymandering, and make it easier for small political parties to gain a voice.
Sigh. Except that imbalances of power are not addressed in the libertarian ideology. So market forces would lead to the concentration of power, which would skew market forces and raise barriers of entry in all markets, which would lead to more concentration of power and so forth. Content owners have a right under libertarian philosophy to protect their content. They have a right to collude with content distributors and electronics manufacturers however they like. And those rights, unregulated by government, would lead to a situation where all the most popular content is protected.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Much of the good recorded music (most pop pre 1980) was recorded by people who were playing live 6 nights a week. Since midi and protools pop music has been made by programmers - we literally have machines that do that now. I like modern sound sculpture music, but the lack of live music means the dying off of a skill set. Without hours on the bandstand, there is no Louis Armstrong, Bird, Motown, Beatles.
"Unplug the jukebox, do us all a favor
That music's lost its taste
Try another flavor
Live music"
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Maybe I'll move to sweden, i heard they have sane copyright laws there (from thepiratebay.org, though. Don't know if I can trust those guys.)
Where do you get this peculiar notion that copyright lasts one hundred years? Are you daft? That would be ridiculous! No self-respecting artist would allow their work to be held for that long.
No, my friend, copyright has an unknown duration with a theoretical maximum of about two hundred years. Now _that's_ a monopoly guaranteed to make me get out there and produce! Why, if I knew that my as-yet unborn children's children's children might find themselves unable to live off of my work, I daresay I'd be heartbroken and unable to write a single line of code. But security in the knowledge that my descendants out to six generations or so will be able to collect the non-existent royalties off my outdated work is truly inspiring!
Dyolf Knip