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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."
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."
If you are a US Citizen, if you want to influence your Congresscritter,
it's probably best to write if you can rather then call.
As snail mail takes a long time to get to DC and must be scanned and disinfected, etc,
I find that writing a letter and faxing it to the Congresscritter's office is the best
way to proceed.
Of course, if you can't get the fax off right away, a call is better then nothing.
Senator Barbara Boxer of California's fax# is 213-894-5042
Of course, your mileage may vary.
Have a good Field Day
73 de Peter
Peter AI6PG
I really hope there's somebody with a lot of money that can buy this bill through.
;) Our politicians aren't even hiding this anymore, they're in the pockets of corporations, and that's that, get bent, if you don't consume you're obviously a terrorist, or a left-wing nutjob.
The broadcast flag has zero use to the average american, and is nothing but a means of control as to what can be done with broadcast signals in favour of the media corporations. We've acheived a Marxian nightmare, a truly capitalistic soceity
To quote Lewis Black, "politicians and corporations have been in bed together our whole lives, they've just stopped hiding it."
Bah, I think I woke up on the wrong side of this democracy. >={
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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.
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.
Infuriate left and right
Wonder if Sununu's fired now ?
(think about that sentance)
H.R. 5252 is the House telecom bill, sponsored by Rep. Barton. It's been passed by the House and referred to the Senate Commerce Committee for consideration. The Senate Commerce Committee is marking up the Barton bill ... sort of. It's common practice in Congress to take a bill from the other bodt, strike everything after the enacting clause, and insert new text. This is important because the House and Senate can only go to conference to resolve differences on a piece of legislation that both have passed.
... Sununu has an amendment to the substitute that would strike the flag language. His amendment is NOT H.R. 5252.
The very first thing the committee did at markup was strike everything and insert text derived from S. 2686, a bill introduced by Senators Stevens and Inouye (the chair and ranking on the committee, respectively) earlier this year. The text they're working from isn't identical to S. 2686, because the members and their various staffers negotiated changes after that bill was introduced, but it is much more closely relatved to the Senate bill than the House bill that they're supposedly amending.
So
Anyone crazy enough to want to listen to the Senators do their thing can hop onto the committe website and read Sen. Stevens' opening statement, or listen to the markup. It's a realplayer video stream captured from internal Senate TV, but is actually audio only (no cameras were in the room). The markup starts near the 23 minute mark. Opening statements from the various members last until an hour and 20 minutes in, at which point the markup starts in earnest.
--- "DNA helicase kicks more ass than a barrel of highly trained ninja monkeys. Never forget that." - N. Howard
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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.