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

Contacting your US Senator - call or fax

[kb1cvh]

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

In a capitalistic soceity

[agent dero]

I really hope there's somebody with a lot of money that can buy this bill through.

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 ;) 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.

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. >={

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.

I made this up

[2.7182]

Wonder if Sununu's fired now ?

(think about that sentance)

H.R. 5252 is not an amendment. It's the bill.

[Urgru]

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.

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 ... Sununu has an amendment to the substitute that would strike the flag language. His amendment is NOT H.R. 5252.

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.