Amendment To Kill Broadcast and Audio Flags

Bruce Perens writes "Senator John Sununu is proposing an amendment, H.R.5252, to strike both the broadcast flag and the radio flag from this year's U.S. telecommunications bill.

If the amendment does not pass, we will be faced with mandatory DRM in video and audio devices, and with a prohibition on the use of Open Source software for such devices (because it can be modified to remove DRM). Time is short, the committee markup of the telecommunication bill is proceeding now in Washington and it's important to show your Congressperson that there is constituent support to remove the broadcast and audio flags. Please see the alert and please use the information there to call your Congressperson today."

Comments

If at first you don't succeed

[Warthog9]

It boggles my mind how persistent RIAA & the MPAA are in trying to get this put into law. I understand how much of an advantage it would give them but grief there is this thing called 'fair use'. I explained the broadcast flag to my mom once, what it would mean and it's implications. She looked up at me, and said 'thats the dumbest thing I've ever heard, you mean to tell me that they would be able to prevent me from recording stuff that I'm unable to watch at the time they show it at?!' and promptly wrote her representatives lambasting the thing. It's a pity no one will introduce a law to outright ban the idea of the broadcast flag.

Re:If at first you don't succeed

[Selanit]

You can't ban ideas. It's pointless. As an example, passing a law stating "The idea of open source software is hereby banned" would NOT cause people to suddenly forget the concept of open source. Legislating thought just doesn't work.

As for their persistence in seeking broadcast flag legislation, it's not at all surprising. Suppose you're in a group of businessmen. The group's goal is to make its members more wealthy. One way to do that is to increase the output of the entire society that you live in - basically, make the pie bigger so that everyone (including your group) gets a bigger slice. But that's really, really hard to do, and the group's efforts would probably cost more in time, money, and energy than they would get back as a result.

The other way to achieve the goal is to try to re-divide the existing wealth so that your group gains more. The pie doesn't get any bigger; but your group gets a bigger slice. This is much easier, and your group gets 100% of the benefits, so it makes more sense to direct the efforts of the group in that direction. Of course, the fact that YOUR group gets MORE of the pie, means every OTHER group gets LESS. But you don't care about those others. They're not in your group. Let them fend for themselves.

The broadcast flag legislation is a perfect example of this kind of group logic at work. A small group (5 major music companies, a correspondingly small number of movie studios) seek legislation that gives them higher income and protection from a perceived threat to their business. The fact that everybody else in the society has to face the consequences of that legislation is fine with them. From their point of view, that's not a bug - it's a feature.

For more details, I refer you to "The Rise and Decline of Nations" by the late economist Mancur Olson.

Grammar/comma Nazi moment

[ZaMoose]

Sununu is a SENATOR, therefore it's highly unlikely that ANY ammendment he proposes will be "H.R."-ANYTHING. Senate legislation is preceded by an "S." in almost all cases, while House Resolutions get the H.R. moniker.

Unless the submitter was just using poor grammar and was saying that Sununu was proposing an ammendment to the combined bill that will be worked on by both Houses of Congress.

Re:Grammar/comma Nazi moment

[shadowbearer]

  Strikes me that what is unclear is the politics.

SB

I take the opposite tack

[A nonymous Coward]

We are never going to be done with copyright holders trying to hijack the legal system to lock up content. Look at how they screamed bloody murder about piano rolls, radio, tv, tape, cassettes, vcrs, etc etc etc. They will never stop. Compare that to the world before they got all legalistic; content was still produced, and by people who wanted to produce it, not factory clones.

What we need to do is let them have their locked down sandbox, build a concrete fence around it, a concrete roof, and concrete underneath to. Padlocks, hell yea, let them lock up their content as tight as they want.

They will be inside, snug as a bug in a rug. We will be outside where they can't get. Outside is a lot bigger than inside. Inside can't expand and will in fact suffocate.

Then we can do what we want with our non-copyright content, mix and share to our hearts' content, and their copyright lockdown will prevent them from using it. They are welcome to their corporate factory culture, and good riddance.

Re:I take the opposite tack

[Kesch]

I'm suddenly reminded of Wonko the Sane from Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy.

Actually...

[SlickMcSly]

According to the article, if the Amendment DOES PASS WE'RE IN TOUBLE. Quite a suspicious mistake.

Just a second...

[r00t]

You eliminate one amendment with another, don't you?

The bad amendment is already there. Thus we need to pass an amendment to get rid of it.

Re:In a capitalistic soceity

[Anonymous Coward]

We've acheived a Marxian nightmare, a truly capitalistic soceity

No. If this were capitalism, the government wouldn't be forcing vendors to support this flag and the market would sort it out. The problem is not capitalism, the problem is that the USA is no longer a democratic republic, but an oligarchy.

Seriously, corporations can legally bribe politicians and nobody really gives a damn because people use the weasel-word "lobby" instead of "bribe". WTF?

Re:In a capitalistic soceity

[heinousjay]

Go on believing this is new. It makes you look naive.

As soon as you come up with a way to prevent people in power from being powerful, you'll solve the problem.

(this is not an endorsement of any current situation, just a cynical but realistic look at the world.)

Re:In a capitalistic soceity

[agent dero]

I'm sorry mate, but we haven't been a democratic republic since Lincoln, I compell you to find elected officials that have come from anything but wealthy means in the past 100 years.

It's a sparse list.

Dude, I'm with you

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been saying this, too, for a long time.

It's time to move the classic "locked automobile hood" DRM analogy to a better analogy, one about supermarkets.

Let them have their freaking DRM. All it is is a fence they are building around their own content. The more they can distance their infected content from my sources of content, the easier it will be for me to acquire content that is not infected.

The content world has become like a string of interconnected weekend supermarkets. In the past, before connectivity, you could stop at your local supermarket on a weekend and get a free sample or two of some food that some company was hosting. Nah, it wasn't all that much food, just a niblet or something to munch on while you shopped, but it was a small tasty free morsel.

With the Internet, now you can sample free niblets simultaneously from every supermarket in the world. You can fully sustain yourself on free samples (free content), nibbling all day long, and never need to buy any groceries ever again.

That's what has changed. And with DRM, they can't win. The more they infect their product with DRM, the more valuable the uninfected stuff becomes. Sure, I enjoyed the Star Wars movies in English more than the Star Wreck Pirkinning movie in Finnish. But I didn't enjoy the Star Wars movies that much more. I could easily learn to live with a world of Pirkinnings.

So DRM no longer scares me.

The scarier thing is this Net non-neutrality stuff. I think the powers that be finally "get it", they realize that DRM by definition won't work so they want to cripple our access to all of those free supermarket samples so we will begrudingly accept their DRM-infected product. DRM is a fence they are building around themselves. Who cares, really? But Net non-neutrality is a fence they can still build around other stuff. That's a problem.

Re:A question from a non-US citizen

[swordgeek]

Directly, this shouldn't affect the rest of the world. However if it passes it will likely lead to the same sort of global creep that always stems from the US putting its foot down. (and historically, any dominant superpower.)

In time, the ex-US industry will follow suit in order to sell into the US. Once mandatory DRM is entrenched, the US will start to put friendly pressure on its allies in the EU--not too hard these days with Blair leading the dominant power in western Europe. One country then another will start to implement similar laws, until enough of them have done so that the EU will formally insist all member nations comply with a base-level policy, to be implemented however the country sees fit. Most will implement something stricter because they don't want to be the target of "loose laws lead to piracy" rhetoric. Eventually the US will point to the EU's now-tighter laws, and insist that they lock down their own laws further, "in order to align ourselves with international standards."

Looked at copyright laws lately? Same crap, different name. The key is that they lawmakers and industry leaders don't want the people to control the content. It's as simple as that.