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Broadcast Flag Sneaking in the Back Door
ZeissIcon writes "Public Knowledge.org is reporting that the oft-defeated broadcast flag DRM scheme is being sneaked into Senator Steven's Telecommunications bill. Aside from the fact that it has no business being in that bill, and making no exceptions for fair use, this particular version calls for an Audio Broadcast Flag that would affect digital and satellite radio as well. The bill goes to committee on Thursday, so there is still time for public comment."
If it was being snuck in how'd you all find out about it?
..."
" I would like to add an amendment to the bill, 100 million dollars for the perverted arts.
I say so what, let them pass it into law. Not letting people watch TV or listen to Radio can only server to raise the average national IQ. They should tack it into the next education bill, "No Child Left To Sit On His Behind"
I don't give a fuck anymore if I can or can't Tivo "CSI: Des Moines" in 1080p resolution.
But that's just one little bear's opinion.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I say let it. Let's vote in all this DRM and sneaky sneak violations of rights in the name of corporate interests. It's a lesson we are bound and determined to learn the hardway, so let's get this over with.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Eventually, Party B becomes the majority
So
A two party system sucks. This will, eventually, always happen.
They spend days arguing about Gay Marriage instead of Energy Policy. They refuse to do anything about Immigration. They vote down the Voting Rights Act in committee, they vote down Net Neutrality. Then they resort to what could be deemed "political masturbation" when they argue about resolving Iraq.
Seriously I know the Dems aren't much better but the only other alternative is to lynch them all. Which is getting more appealing everyday. Yeah.. yeah 3rd parties, well I wish getting voted in America had nothing to do with money but it does. 3rd parties will never succeed until either the average US citizen gives a crap or we publically finance campaign elections. Both will never happen. Maybe I'll just move to Sweden.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Or assuming we don't pass a law like Japan making the sale of used electronics illegal after X years, simply keep your device as-is!. Unless you're technologically inclined/motivated enough to find backdoors.
You may be kidding. I'm not. I've got lots of (legally purchased) games, movies, cds, etc. I looked at all the money I could be spending on a new HDTV, PS3, Blue-Ray, HD-DVD player, etc. They're all more hassle (due to DRM, crippled HDMI outputs, not-working-on-Linux, etc.) than fun for me at this point. After the Sony CD rootkit fiasco, I stopped buying Sony products. Even people I know with new Macs (that they like) are starting to complain that they're on machine #4 of 5 for their iTunes limit, and it seems like they didn't really buy any songs after all.
My solution: I bought a skin-on-aluminum frame folding kayak instead. Geek factor - high. DRM factor -low. No monthly upgrades to keep track of. I can do anything I want to modify it without any silly broadcast flags. All fun.
Congratulations media companies - you declared war on your paying customers and I surrendered. I won't buy your products any more, I'll do something else instead.
The Washington Post and New York Times were given large chunks of the spectrum in 1993 if they were silent about NAFTA and GATT. It was an easy deal.
Similarly, the media is silent now about this monkey business, because they expect to profit immensely by the broadcast flag and other crap.
They'll choke to death on these flags, of course, just like those spectrum licenses are almost worthless (look at the ratings of CBS news).
I pledge alliegence to the broadcast flag of Disneyland of America.
And to the Corporation, for which it stands, one media conglomerate, indominable,
under Mickey, With movies and fast food tie-ins for everyone.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This broadcast flag in no way acts in their interest. Presumably with no major television producers in Alaska we can assume it isn't what his constituents want as it doesn't benefit them in any way.
I agree with you; like I said, he gets the bridge to nowhere, he sneaks in the broadcast flag for someone else. It's the pork fat that greases the engines of democracy.
What I find even weirder (trans: more hypocritical) about this is that Stevens dissed on the broadcast flag in the January hearings. Stevens, we hardly knew ye.
Your fault, Alaska! Your fault!
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
You wish.
No, legislators work for only the people who made their election possible. That's not the voters, the voters are just pawns who must choose from the choices presented to them. No, the legislators work for the corporations, particularly the ones who control the media, because he who controls information controls everything.
There is no solution to this short of violent revolution, and violent revolution simply cannot work against a modern, well-equipped military. That means it simply won't succeed even if a reasonable number of people are stupid enough to band together and try it -- it'll only get them and their families killed, which will work nicely towards removing the tendency to revolt from the human gene pool.
It's time to face reality, folks: we've lost, and lost for good. All we're doing now is slowing the slide into darkness and despair, and not even slowing it by much.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
>
> At this point, it looks like they're going to be tenacious enough with this thing that it'll pass eventually.
>
Well, bear in mind that the lobbyists have been trying to get this into the books for years, and still haven't succeeded. And there is a time limit for the broadcast flag law. If they can't get it passed before the analog cut-off date (or the point at which a large number of voters have broadcast flag non-compliant digital TV technology), there's simply no point in continuing to lobby for it.
In general, the longer time goes on, the harder it is to get a bill passed. You're not the only one thinking "My god, are they trying to get this through again?". Staffers in Washington feel the same way. If they can't get this through this year, in the words of one knowledgeable Washington commentator, "it'll be postponed until next year. Which is to say, never".
There's also the question of opportunity cost. The more effort the entertainment industry has to spend on each of the laws it tries to pass, the less it has to pass other, draconian bills. If the broadcast flag had passed on one of the other occasions that it was attempted, the MPAA would be free to throw all its weight on analog hole legislation by now. Politicians are waking up to the fact that these regulations are unreasonable -- and that there's more political capital lost to appearing to kowtow to special interests than they thought.
I think it is more difficult than that, if anything, the current US government is at least very strong millitary speaking. They are not about to allow an armed revolution to take place.
That is why they are working on the terrorist laws and removal of all of the Freedoms. The terrorists are a great excuse to turn an entire country into one giant prison cell.
The soldiers in the millitary of-course should be recruited from the lowest classes of the population, so that they could be controlled easier and rewarded in a cheaper kind of way.
What will bring down this government? Will it be wars with external enemy, kind of wars that the general population will not be comfortable with?
Here is one possible future of the US:
A giant WAR machine driven by corporate interests. Cannon fodder recruited from the poorest classes, easily satisfied by a few handouts and a promise of pensions. Social structure that is falling appart: growing taxes, inflation, growing oil prices, more and more expensive healthcare. The widenning of the gap between the rich and the poor.
What happens next in an environment, in which those in power don't believe they have any obligations to the nation, but only have obligations to the highest bidder - corporations? The country's economy will start to fail, the millitary will be used for corporation profit regardless of the concern for the country, because corporations are international and have no loyalty to any nation at the same time. The country will become one giant prison with a very powerful war machine. Where will this lead? Well, if history teaches us anything, it is that those who command the millitary have the power.
It will take one strong millitary leader, and the country will become a dictatorship that will start a war to 'improve' the declining quality of life. By then the county will lose most production capability that is not aimed at millitary purposes. Why wouldn't this country attack other successful economies? Strong millitary leaders don't last though, and this one may fall and give place to a committee of some sort, who will try to rebuild the republic. All of this will be accompanied by years of economical degradation and depression.
But the US is big and there are plenty of needs to be satisfied, and it will be small businesses that will have to satisfy them.
You can see that I believe that things happen in cycles because anything that is too linear creates great disbalance and cycles allow to balance things out on a long enough time scale.
You can't handle the truth.
Well I think the revolution leading to the Declaration of Independence was largely sparked by having to pay taxes. Significantly more serious than the loss of freedom to use your digital media, and the monopolistic prices you have to pay for it? I think many would say no, especially when media is so important to many in this day and age.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
That second part is really kind of silly, better would be if all legislation had to have a Constitutionally mandated and specified sunset clause. Then all legislation would be like the federal budget, having to be periodically checked over. If it was 6 years or something similar (same as senatorial terms). Also it would help to remove cruft from the law books. On the other hand, it does make certain things rather volatile, but that might actually be a good thing.
I regularly use XP/MCE to record StarGate and DrWho on SciFi channel with no problem. A few weeks ago, Media Center stopped recording the first half of the DrWho season finale about 30 minutes into the episode. XP/MCE logged a reason of:
So far, that was the only episode this has happened with, but XP/MCE flatly refused to record the episode on any of its repeat airings, citing the same reason. Since then, XP/MCE has recorded the second half episode and some repeats without a problem. I'm wondering if this might've been a test of the infamous broadcast flag or if there's something worse afoot in the part of Microsoft that is beholden to the Hollywood Nazis.
I think it was because it would give the executive branch too much power. Not a bad reason, actually...although it would be nice to have a line-item veto that could only be used if the item being line-vetoed was demonstrably unrelated to the legislation.
I think I mentioned this idea in another thread, but _my_ daydream proposal is to limit the total # of words in all valid laws to some maximum number N (where hopefully N is something reasonably small). When a legislator proposes a change to the laws (either by adding new ones or amending existing ones), the change would have to result in the total # of words fitting under the limit, otherwise the change will be rejected.
You'll also have to fit all of the agency regulations under the limit (otherwise the legislators would just shift all the verbiage into the various agency regulations.)
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century,free flow of information is the only safeguard against...
Okay, here is something like this in action. I live in WA state, and I love to read constitutions (yes yes my state is the one that make online poker illegal, regardless).n dex.cfm?fa=education_constitution.display&displayi d=Article-02
Refer to our constitution here, specifically section 19
http://www.courts.wa.gov/education/constitution/i
SECTION 19 BILL TO CONTAIN ONE SUBJECT. No bill shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.
that's the good shit maynard, some congressman with some balls needs to make that Amendment 28 (after pinning some stupid shit to the proposed amendment, cause Washington appretiates irony)
I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
Oddly enough, the British government actually *reduced* taxes on tea (eliminating the usual colonial tax in the American colonies), to undercut merchants and smugglers so the British East India company could have a monopoly. However, they started to crack down on people not paying their taxes, and that combined with the large number of smugglers who made their living selling tea, led to the Boston Tea Party.
So in effect, the government, in an attempt to grant a total monopoly to a floundering company, created seemingly decent legislation that didn't seem too harmful, yet people doing an illegal act started a revolution because they didn't like it. It's happened before, what's to prevent it from happening again?
I've been saying this for years.
One bill, one purpose. One bill should be able to do any of these things:
1. regulate one certain narrowly defined type of behavior, including punishments for it and including assigning a specified portion of tax revenues to enforcement of the regulation (or the buidget appropriation for it)
2. set up one certain narrowly defined helpful government program, including assigning a portion of tax revenues to it (or budget segment)
3. honor one person or group of people, including assigning a portion of tax revenues to cover whatever announcements, plaques, monuments, or whatever are deemed necessary
4. give Congress or other federal employees raises which come due after the end of each Congress member's respective term (No one should be able to give a raise to a buddy in some bureau while the Representative or Senator is still guaranteed access to power.)
5. Give Congress longer vacations, effective immediately. It's become obvious we're usually better off when these misanthropes aren't busy exerting their might as pocket monkeys of the big corporations, anyway.
6. ban lobbying by professional lobbyists. ban corporate-paid Congressional fact-finding trips. Ban the peddling of influence altogether, under penalties of imprisonment and fines. Imprison the Congress member along with the lobbyist if this is broken. If these yahoos start going to jail for listening to their wallets, maybe they'll start listening to their consitutents like they should be doing.
Like I said, I'm not a big fan of the concept. I would rather these people do the job that I'm sending them to Washington to do. Currently, there's the agreement in Washington--I'll support your pork if you'll support mine. What Congress is trying to do is make sombody else the bad guy. "Well, gosh, I tried to get everybody in America to pay for the Ball of Twine Museum in my district. Unfortunately, that mean ol' President vetoed it. Blame him, not me!"
This is their responsibility. If they abdicate it, then why the hell are they there?
Fair enough--I was going off of memory. I remember that the line-item veto was part of the Republicans' "Contract With America" back during the elections. When they passed it, I don't know.
A line item veto doesn't give the President any more direct control over the contents of bills than a total veto does. Congress retains the power to legislate that line item in another bill. When invoked, the line item veto simply forces a majority in congress to explicitly validate what some legislator wanted to have quietly enacted on the merits of another issue.
By the same note, the way riders are currently used in practice essentially gives congress an end run around the Presidential veto, by holding important or popular legislation hostage to distasteful items that are completely unrelated to the main issue a bill addresses.
A fair compromise would be to limit the line item veto's power with a test of how integral the item is to the purpose of the bill. A President shouldn't use such power to redesign the main provisions of a bill, but given today's congress, I would take that defect over the current situation.
Pi Ran Out
What I think would be better is a Constitutional requirement that a bill outline its intended effects and if those effects are not achieved (or significant progress made) by a certain deadline, the law is automatically repealed. Just for fun you might throw in the requirement that concerns of those opposed to the bill be added with a promise that X, Y, and Z will not happen as a result of the bill. If X, Y, or Z does happen the law is automatically repealed. You specify that a non-partisan analysis of the bill's effects shall be conducted by an agency like the GAO or CBO at least every two years, and if it is not performing as promised ... yep, repeal.
Step 0: Read the bill first!
Specifically section 454.c.1.B which requires that a review board create regulations that respect fair use for audio broadcasts. I don't see a reference to a video broadcast flag being enacted by the bill, just a requirement for commissions to make some more rules. It also recommends that the commission investigate abuses of Internet routing under Title 9: "Net Neutrality". The commission will be composed of IT, software, recording, broadcasting, satellite, and consumer electronics industries along with public interest organizations. If anything it's just a wrapper bill around a process to actually work on issues like DRM and net neutrality, not specific regulations.
If anything, I wonder if the submitted article isn't just a shill trying to marginalize rabid Internet users who will oppose any legislation based on hearsay with no references to specific sections of the bill. If you call your senator and claim they are trying to enact a broadcast flag, your senator will not listen to you the next time you call because you obviously did not take the time to actually look at the bill.
I am opposed to bill S.2686, because there is a rider having to do with the broadcast flag. I am very much opposed to that."
This is a perfect example of rabid, unguided sensationalism. What exactly do you oppose? Would a bill making the broadcast flag illegal fall under that broad statement? More importantly, are you opposed to the broadcast flag in particular, or DRM that prevents fair use in general?
If I was going to try to call my Senator (who happens to be Stevens) the night before a vote, I might try to make a reasoned argument instead of something a staffer will autoreply to. As it is, I don't see any terribly bad things in the bill. On the other hand, Stevens also introduced that bastard child of the DMCA, the SSSCA... He got a long email about that one.